Beyond the Firefly Field (17 page)

“There are the churlas!” Penny exclaimed as they came to another panel showing a raging battle. Cheela nestled back in Penny's arms after climbing on the others as they hiked the spiraling stairway. A deeply carved cutaway in the panel showed a string of caves. Each appeared smaller to convey distance as they angled up and across the wooden panel. Way up in the far upper corner, tiny fairies streamed out of a cave, while others were building a log pile over the cave's exit.

“This is the escape SanDroMonEnLor told us about,” Penny said in awe. Clayton turned red when he realized what he had missed by not listening to the old fairy's story.

“Those must be the nermleks,” Paul said.

“That's really gruesome,” Brian whispered, pointing to a scene in the largest carved cave. The carving showed a fairy being savagely eaten by a nermlek, while another monster was grappling the hapless fairy to grab a bite. Around them, masses of nermleks were devouring countless animals.

“Eeeww!” Penny cried, wishing she hadn't seen that part. “Don't look at this one, Cheela,” she warned, protectively rotating the little creature away from the carving. The grisly panel also showed fairies and churlas flying through the air after being viciously clubbed by the nermleks' massive hand weapons. The group hurried off to the next panel.

This panel showcased a village of tree houses. A collective sigh of relief was heard as the group stared at a gentle, peaceful scene. The closest tree house featured a cutaway view of fairies and churlas playing games and chasing each other. Other tree houses were carved smaller and smaller as they poked out of forested hills in the distance. The center of the panel featured a festive gathering with much activity. Fairies were eating, drinking, playing, and competing in group games. However, as the cyclorama unfolded, the fairies were once again fighting. This time, they were battling the much larger humans. The panel concluded at the first stair landing, and everyone hurried into the small room, glad to escape the message of the last wooden glyptic.

Inside the landing room, benches were attached to three six-foot-long tables. A fairy presided over each table, and pieces of wood cut in every imaginable shape were piled in front of him. They were busily trying to fit the stray pieces into assembled clusters to invent something useful.

A fairy entered the room after descending the stairs with a load of wood haphazardly bundled in his arms. Pieces of wood constantly fell from his overloaded arms, and he stooped to retrieve each one. Only ten steps separated the fairy's load from the bin on the side of the table, and the fairy seemed determined to deliver the entire load all at once or not at all. Clayton assumed it was a helper fairy, and his guess was confirmed when SeeLee introduced him as Helper Jence.

As SeeLee explained the other fairies' activities, she pulled the protesting Jence over to the wood bin and tugged the load out of his arms, dumping it into the bin. Jence's face lit up with a smile as he quickly picked up the dropped wood and was able to complete his task. His face beaming with pride, Jence said his goodbyes and tripped and stumbled up the steps to fetch another load.

“Sometimes we have to help the helpers,” she explained.

“Can we try putting something together with the leftover pieces of wood?” Karl asked.

“Of course,” SeeLee was barely able to utter before the group rushed past her to find a seat at the tables. The fairies graciously backed away, and the kids were soon busy pulling and pushing, twisting and turning, and poking and prodding the wood to see what they could make. Grooves in the wood were cut so they could interlock. After a flurry of activity, only Karl proudly displayed a finished project.

“Big deal!” Penny protested. “So you made a bench.”

Everyone looked at Karl. His bench had a back rest, and two armrests separated the bench into three seats. He had a satisfied smirk on his face, beaming with pride. “Not
just
a bench,” he corrected, as he pushed some of the pieces, turning the bench into a rocking chair.

Penny was finally impressed and climbed into the rocker as Karl stood up to take a bow. The fairies were also very impressed.

“That's very good, Karl,” SeeLee praised, “but don't ever try anything like that in the furniture factory or they'll never let you leave.”

“You're kidding, aren't you?”

“This time I'm not sure. Let's hope we don't have to find out.”

After saying goodbye, the group headed up the stairs, leaving the fairies to study the simplicity of Karl's chair.

Once again, the carved panels continued to tell the fairies' history. As the cyclorama progressed, there were fewer strange creatures and more humans pictured.

“What
are
these things?” Clayton finally asked. They stood in front of a panel that showed the strange creatures massed together. He pointed at the largest creature with a large boulder raised over his head, aiming at a fairy tree.

“Those are the ogres,” SeeLee answered.

“There really were ogres?” Penny asked incredulously.

“Yes, they were big, dirty humanoid brutes who wore a green tinge from plant fungus that got under their skin. They contaminated each other with it, and they soon started being born green as a genetic trait.

“The fungus made their hair fall out, and the ogres were usually scratching themselves since the itching was terrible. Males were born hairless, but the females had blotches of hair on the top of their heads. They usually had bloated bodies from eating too much grass and too many roots, but they ate meat whenever they could find it. They were twice the size of humans and five times stronger. Their clothes, made from sticks and logs tied together with leafy vines, looked funny.

“Ogres were actually kind and loving creatures. But when they got hungry, watch out! They would run after animals and eat any creature they could get their hands on. They ate until they were satisfied.

“After their feeding frenzy, the ogres slept for a full day, then spent two days being kind and loving, then got hungry again. It was a vicious cycle.

“This panel shows the first time humans were evolved enough to organize and fight a major war of extermination against the trolls, ogres, orcs, goblins, gargoyles, and gremlins. In this battle, we joined forces with the humans and fought all these other species together. Hundreds of years of skirmishes led up to this one big fight.”

SeeLee pointed at a creature standing next to the ogre. “That's a troll. Below the waist, the troll looked much like a goat. It was covered in shaggy fur, with overly large thighs narrowing down to thin bones below the knees.”

Clayton was awestruck. The troll's feet were three-pronged hooves. Long, thin, tightly-muscled arms ended at hands with short, triangular claws. Arms hung from broad shoulders, settling on the troll's barrel chest, ballooning from his small stomach.

Even the troll's head looked half human and half goat. Its human features were distorted by a long snout. Matted hair dangled under its chin, and small horns curled back from the sides of its forehead. It had teeth like a dog, which left no doubt that it was a meat eater. Although SeeLee said trolls could walk on hind legs, this carved troll ran on all fours like a goat, climbing rocky slopes with ease.

“This next one is an orc,” SeeLee went on. “Similar to a human shape, orcs were half the size of a human. They were wiry, strong, and fast. With claws attached to their hands and feet, they could easily run up trees or cling to cave walls and ceilings. They were completely hair-covered except for their sparsely covered, ugly, little heads. They didn't wear clothing, which they felt would slow them down and catch on rocks or branches. They always attacked in numbers sufficient enough to bring down any sized creature. They would spring from behind bushes and drop out of trees to ambush an animal, and they usually started eating it before it died.”

The crowd of children gasped.

“Those, over there,” SeeLee pointed, “are goblins.”

The goblins looked mostly human and were close to the same size, but very thin. All their joints were extremely large and bony. Their enormous heads balanced on bony shoulders. They had large, triangular eye sockets set deep into their foreheads, but no human nose was evident. Instead, two narrow, triangular slits sat above a very large mouth of misplaced, mismatched, jagged teeth. Goblins wore animal hides to cover themselves.

“Whatever goblins ate was smashed to mush to make chewing easier. They hunted in packs with one goblin playing ‘possum dead,' which was easy to do since it looked half dead anyway.

“The goblin would lie on the ground looking as dead as possible. When any creature or animal came along to sniff and eat it, they were surprised by the dead goblin coming to life and grabbing them. Disguised goblins, covered with sticks and leaves, popped up around the decoy. They would kill and devour whatever it was they had tricked. Goblins frequently hunted on roads, going from town to town to search for food, which made traveling very dangerous.

“And here we have the gargoyles,” SeeLee noted as she pointed to an ugly, bulldog-faced, owl-looking thing roosting on a tree branch. Stubby wings jutted from its sides.

“Gargoyles were small, bony, heavy creatures that couldn't fly. They were covered with a tough, grey hide, and they used their short-clawed arms and legs to climb trees. From that height, they would crash down onto their prey using their stubby wings to steer as they fell. Their bony heads would smash into the unsuspecting victim, killing it instantly. When humans killed a gargoyle, they would display it on a pole above their huts so other gargoyles would be afraid and avoid the area.”

“They were still putting cement gargoyles on public buildings a hundred years ago,” Karl said. “Now we know where that came from.”

“Then there were the gremlins,” SeeLee continued, her voice now sounding aggravated and full of contempt. She pointed to a creature about half the size of a human. Some were shown running, and looked like dogs with shaggy body hair, and furry heads overwhelmed by gargantuan, pointed ears. Others were shown standing as tall as humans, and they had gnarled mittlike hands bulging at the end of shaggy arms.

“Gremlins were the most clever but annoying creatures of all. They were originally called ‘grimlings,' because no matter what the condition of your life, when they showed up it became much grimmer. They might have even been the smartest species. Their fingers and thumbs were thick with sharp claws on the ends of their hands. They had dog-looking heads covered in long, matted, brown and black fur, and their ears were so big they could hear for miles.

“They ran like dogs with their fingers curled under, and broad pads covered their knuckles for protection when they ran. When they really wanted to run fast, the gremlins uncurled their fingers and grabbed the ground, their claws digging in for traction so they could thrust themselves forward in long, fast leaps. With their massive, curled hands, they could easily hide a rock in their palm and pitch it hard and fast to drop whatever they were chasing. They were very good hunters—very cunning and vicious.

“In this panel, the gremlins are shown running through an army of humans who were marching toward a battle. Running gremlins often tripped a human, while others braced pointed stakes against the ground for the human to fall upon. Others are shown biting at humans' legs or clawing at their eyes to disable them.

“It's when they're standing that gremlins get really annoying. They were very good with their hands and could take anything apart very easily. If you built something, a gremlin would come along and destroy it. If you stored food in a special container, a gremlin would get into it somehow and steal the food.

“Their favorite pastime was to rig something to fall apart when used. They loved to create chaos, then jump right in the middle of the melee, barking, laughing, and tossing things around. And maybe worst of all, they could talk. They easily learned whatever language was spoken wherever they were. They'd bark and growl the words, and Grandfather always said that gremlins made any language sound vulgar. All the Old Ones say gremlin laughter is the worst sound they ever heard.

“Of all the creatures, gremlins gave us and the humans the most trouble. For thousands of years, gremlins preyed upon all species equally. They could have developed into the dominant species on the planet, but they spent all of their time fighting with each other and destroying everything they came across. In the battle shown here, they were on no one's side, attacking all other species indiscriminately in blood-driven frenzy. On the other hand, any creature that could kill a gremlin happily did so.

“We formed an alliance with the humans before this battle. We teamed to lure all these different creatures to a spot where an army of humans and fairies could ambush and attack them. The fairies acted as bait since we were more experienced at fighting on the run. A few decades earlier, we learned to levitate, and in this battle, we found we could levitate others. Look here.”

SeeLee pointed to a spot on the panel where two fairies were spiriting a gremlin twice their size, then plummeting the gremlins to their deaths.

“Did you win the battle?” Paul asked.

“Nobody won this battle. Almost everyone died. Small groups of each species escaped, and just a few fairies were left flittering over a lifeless battlefield. Almost all the males of each species were wiped out, and we went our separate ways to recover and regroup.” SeeLee shuddered, and Clayton knew it was the sadness and pain the battle scene evoked.

Up until this point, Penny felt so carefree with the fairies. But now that she had seen the grotesque panels, she knew she would have nightmares.

The remaining panels showed humans and fairies in times of peace. Occasionally, fairies were being chased by humans, but the group hurried past those panel scenes.

“In this carving, the fairies are shown escaping an island being destroyed by an erupting volcano. That was Atlantis, and we lived peacefully there for a thousand years with the Atlantans.”