Shadows of the Emerald City (42 page)

“
Whughhuhh…” Nick greeted her, his tin tongue clicking in his tin head.

“
Yes,” Nola Amee said, in the voice of one trying to appease a fully-grown and possibly dangerous idiot. “Yes, hello. See what I’ve brought you? Just look. Look and see.”

Nick was already looking at her, having turned his head completely round on his shoulders. Chopper knew perfectly well who the old woman was really speaking to.

Bored and now irritated, the axe directed Nick to swing it slowly around so it could see. It was almost amused; the silly bitch was holding
another
axe and grinning with large fearful eyes. They never once left Chopper’s gleaming head.

“
You see? A fine new axe for you, a real beauty! Far better than that old thing you’ve been hanging onto, eh? You can throw your grindstone away, this one practically sharpens itself. Its edge is fine enough to slice shadow.”

Chopper understood her intentions. She wanted Nick to take this new inanimate axe in exchange for itself so that she could go hobbling off to the other old woman. The mutterer who had first woken it. She would then make good on the mutterer’s promise to destroy it. The audacity of this—the sheer wrong-headedness of the plan—amused the axe mightily. If it were capable of laughter, it would have howled.

It made Nick laugh instead, throwing his head back and staggering, filling the forest with a grotesque, chattering roar. Nola Amee stepped back with goggling eyes, clutching the impostor axe to her droopy bosom. At that moment, fortuitously enough, the rat-weasel’s bloody remains spasmed in Nick’s fingers. The creature’s head rose, a semblance of life returning to it courtesy of the axe’s vitality. It made a queer, piercing noise—half angry chittering, half squeals of agony—that went badly with Nick’s metallic hilarity.

This was apparently too much for the old woman. She threw the axe down and fled. A perverse urge made Chopper set Nick on her, suffering itself to be dropped so the woodman could have a hand free (he seemed reluctant to relinquish the rat thing, for some reason).

Nick caught Nola Amee easily, seizing her arm with a force more than sufficient to crush the bone. Chopper found this interesting; it had been under the impression that there was nothing left of the old meat-born Nick. All his parts had been replaced with good, sensible tin. It was wrong; evidently some gobbets and smears of his original self remained. At least that part of him that had despised the old woman.

What was there was little more than a vicious, childish perversity. He rubbed the rat-creature’s broken body in her slack-jawed face in an attempt to get her to eat it.

Nola Amee surprised Chopper a bit as well; it would have expected her to faint or die of what must have surely been unbearable pain. Instead, she fought back with remarkable force, spitting fur and destroyed flesh back in Nick’s face. Her ruined arm dangled limp and bloody at her side but she managed to slap his cheek once hard enough to make him grunt.

“
Whoreson!
And me a fool! I should have done you myself with honest poison! But no, I trusted a witch! Now I’ve lost Nimmie all the same and made a monster!”

There was more, but pain was catching up with the old woman. Most of what came out then was babble, chiefly concerned with Nimmie and how her intentions had been blameless. She sank to her knees, wailing piteously and clutching her smashed arm.

Chopper had a thought.

It had Nick take Nola Amee by the hair and drag her back to the hut, picking itself up on the way. What it had in mind was simply too good to miss.

“
Yuh wun’ Nimmie?
” Nick gurgled. “
Wun’ see er?
”

He kicked the hut’s door open with one foot. Then he threw Nola Amee to the ground and kicked at her until she clambered in on her knees, supported by her one good hand.

There was little in the hut these days: endless rows of stacked firewood, mounds of faggots Nick had busied himself tying during the long and dark nights.

And there was one other thing, something that got up and looked at Nola Amee and made a horrible noise that she immediately echoed.

The chunks and bits of meat Chopper had made Nick claim from Ku Klip had not stayed dead. Like the rat creature, like the metal parts that now composed Nick, they had in time succumbed to the remaining influence of the powder of life. They had squirmed in their basket, spewing blood and less appetizing substances. The nose snorted in and frantically exhaled air. The fingers clutched, the eyes rolled and saw. The organ of Nick’s that the axe had so coveted early on grew hard, softened and stiffened again in an endless cycle. All of this made for fascinating viewing—but merely watching didn’t satisfy Chopper for long.

It had never been acquainted with the word
experiment,
but it would have understood it at once. It was in the spirit of experiment that Chopper had Nick apply lit matches and sharp-edged knives to his old skin and flesh, wrench his old teeth from his old gums and divide his old tongue and old penis by holding an end in either hand and pulling.

Finally Chopper had grown bored…and still more ambitious.

There was a heavy cobbler’s needle and a reel of stout twine in the hut. More twine was purchased on Nick’s next trip to the village, along with nails and steel clamps and solder. Chopper was curious; if the pieces of the old Nick were put back together in some reasonable semblance of his previous form, would it have created, in effect, two Nicks? One of meat and one of tin? It found the philosophical implications of this fascinating.

Unfortunately, the experiment had only been partially successful. Somehow the parts did not make up a whole man, only a slouching, dripping, broken thing that gabbled and shuddered and filled the hut with unbearable stenches.

Chopper had been undaunted. There were gaps, so they would have to be filled
, t
T
hat was all. Rabbits and mice and a few dogs that strayed from the village provided initial pieces, but the effect their hastily sewn-in bits provided was less than pleasing.

Then, one day, someone came tapping shyly at the hut’s door, someone who had taken herself from Nick’s life but could not bear to stay away. Chopper had been delighted.

“
Nimmie!” the old woman sobbed, tearing in mindless anguish at her cheek. “Nimmie, no! No, no…”

Nimmie Amee’s blue eyes regarded her coolly from a face that had seemingly been sprinkled with eyes, as a cake is sprinkled with raisins. Meat Nick (as Chopper thought of it) reached out a torn and skinned and much-stitched hand. A hand with two thumbs but less than the requisite number of fingers. Those fingers it had it fit around Nola Amee’s throat, and with a quick, convulsive squeeze ended her life. Tin Nick shrieked and stomped.

Having died but not by the axe’s blade, Nola Amee would not revive.

There was a certain justice to the whole scene.

The axe made two mistakes when it left the hut.

First, it left behind the oil can. Meat Nick and Tin Nick had enjoyed themselves playing with Nola Amee’s remains for some time. For the first time since it had begun its association with the woodsman, Chopper had difficulty controlling him–either of him. It had felt that a bit of woodcutting to distract Tin Nick would be a good idea. With the abundance of new meat provided by Nola Amee, there was no need for any more rat creatures to stop up the remaining gaps in Meat Nick’s body.

The second mistake was not locking the door behind it. The door had been damaged when Tin Nick kicked it open, but not too badly. The lock was still whole. Chopper could easily have had Nick repair it. But it was irritated with him and still excited from witnessing Nola Amee’s death. Meat Nick would be busy for some time yet with the corpse. There was no need to worry about anything so mundane as a broken door. Chopper relished the cold wind that had blown up; the rumbling thunder seemed to echo deep in its haft. It looked forward to burying its edge deep in some young wood.

But when the storm hit minutes later it regretted its hastiness. Nick, busy demolishing an apple tree, had gotten into a rhythm and it was difficult to get him to break it. Even though the rain was soon sluicing over him and gathering in a wide puddle at his feet.

Then Meat Nick came bounding out of the hut. Until now, the creature seemed either afraid of its tin brother or regarded him with a certain reluctant deference. But now sibling tensions broke through.

The two battled for nearly an hour in the downpour.

That Tin Nick would win the fight was a foregone conclusion, but it took longer than it should have. As did the brief rest Nick insisted on taking afterward. Taking note of the rough red patches sprouting on his trunk and thighs, the axe forced urgent thoughts into his head.

Oil can,
it thought, keeping it simple.
Oil can…

“
Oi-i-eel-c’n
…” Nick grated obediently through a mouth that now would not open properly. He began walking, but the rain was still falling, and by now his joints were sticking. He was slow.

And the hut far away.

Meat Nick’s remains—ironically revitalized by Chopper’s power even as its blade had laid it low—rallied and attempted a final assault. The axe was furious at this effrontery and ordered itself raised, but the rust in his joints prevented Tin Nick from letting the planned blow fall.

But Meat Nick was now little more than sinew and cartilage and mindless rage. The stitches and clamps could no longer effectively hold him together. As Tin Nick’s consciousness fell into a rusty sleep, the faulty structure of rotted flesh and bone splinters collapsed and lay twitching on the grass, waiting for the rain to wash it away.

Rust had gathered on Chopper’s head as well. It was angry, but now that the traitor had been dispatched, it was philosophical.

Sooner or later it would be rescued.

Sooner or later someone would pass by the hut and this time it would not be slow. As the rain continued, its thoughts turned feverish.

It had been foolish to restrict itself to one servant–or even two, if the Nicks were counted as separate beings. Since taking its name, it had felt itself growing ever stronger, more than ready to try another slave. And if it could take two or three, why not five? If five, why not a dozen?

Why not an army?

The Green City was where it should have gone from the beginning. The axe saw that now. This foreign wizard-king the people talked of was nothing but a sham. A humbug. He could not stand against Chopper.

All it needed was a passerby or two, preferably someone with the Green City already in mind. Someone inexperienced and gullible to start with—perhaps a young girl, like Nimmie Amee. Or, even better, a fool; some ninny without a brain in his head would take orders beautifully. A coward would work equally well, for that matter, a sniveling creature who would do anything to avoid the threat of harm.

Thinking this, Chopper fell into a rusty, contented sleep. All it needed to do was wait. The world, after all, was full of ingenues and idiots and cravens. Getting all three at once, of course, would be the best possible scenario—but the axe doubted it would be that lucky.

The End.

by E.M. MacCallum

Oddlaug pocketed the small note in the seam of her dress when her two goblin guards arrived.

The dungeon was especially damp today, the evening rain the night before provided puddles all throughout the lower stone hallow of the castle.

Oddlaug sat in the cage obediently, hearing the grey skinned goblins latch the top of her cage. Curling her spine, as the wooden cage was only tall enough for her to sit with her shoulders hunched, she waited to be picked up by the two silent guards.

The stout round goblins had stick-like arms that one would assume couldn’t pick up a wooden cage, let alone with a human in it. But they did and they performed their duties without a struggled breath or wobbled knee.

Lifting her above their heads, she was carted through the empty corridor of the dungeon and out towards the gateway leading to the Commons. She struggled to cross her legs beneath her tattered skirts, hiding her feet from view. She tucked her hands into her lap as the iron gates to the ruby palace closed behind them.

She tried to ignore the crowd of Munchkin goblins as they poked and prodded at her with sticks through the flat wooden bars like malicious children. She glared hatefully with her pale purple eyes at the lopsided grins oozing saliva. The grotesque creatures bred like cockroaches in a junk pile. There were hundreds in the courtyard that day. They milled around each other, waddling in their blue frocks with their heads high as if they had something to be proud of.

Carried through the nameless crowd in her tiny portable cage Oddlaug shielded her eyes. Even with the sun hiding within the confines of the clouds it still stung her vision.

Today was the one day out of the month Oddlaug would be allowed outside the dungeon.

Her half sister Gayelette would be away today. The beauty couldn’t stand the sight of her own flesh and blood. In fact, Oddlaug hadn’t seen Gayelette since they were children. Gayelette was utterly beautiful. Oddlaug was just as ugly.

Oddlaug clenched her bony hand into a fist, feeling the rage bubble inside her. She and her sister never got along. When Gayelette became a sorceress she banned Oddlaug from her sight.