Rocks Float Up From Liquid Ground
ONE EVENING, after a day of desert wind flapping the soldiers’ tents and flicking sand into their faces, the ground shrugged and rippled. It was not like an earthquake—well, not quite like an earthquake. The earth didn’t so much shake as flow; soldiers’ feet sank into the ground as if it had melted; and smaller rocks started to rise up in the air. It started with a trembling, an unsteadiness underfoot, and then half a minute of chaos. Horses stumbled and bucked, while the men scrambled for higher ground, which was difficult as it rose and fell like a wave. And then it was over. With a pitter and a patter that sounded like angry rain, the floating stones fell back down and struck the once-again-solid ground. Wooden posts, wheels, and tent poles, not to mention one or two unlucky soldiers, were embedded half-askew and half-deep in rock, and had to be chipped out.
Once something like that has happened to you, you become a little bit nervous. You wonder if you can still trust the ground under your feet, and how far you can safely stray from the nearest tree or broad raft-like table. You never worried about it before, but now you start to wonder how deep the earth underneath you is, and how far down you would sink if it were to once again cease to be solid. And so, little by little, you get scared. After all, the most likely cause for such a thing is magic, and bad, unnatural magic at that.
Soldiers are really no different from other people, so they were scared too. They whispered to each other nervous guesses, which in time would become rumours, which turn into bad news, which becomes fear. Everything up until this event had been very easy: they’d sailed across the sea, they’d navigated the salt marshes and the wild forests, they’d marched across the desert to the dragon’s hideaway, right up to the rocky borders of where its lair was reputed to be.
So when this happened—when the earth itself stopped being solid, even though it was just for a little while—the army got a little jittery. This, the soldiers were thinking, could be the start of the difficult bit.
Lord Jasper was less troubled than his men because his tent had the thickest canvas, the tightest ropes, and—best of all—a wooden floor. But the whole thing did shift a bit, a little off-level, so that a jug and some candlesticks and the weapons rack fell over. He was leaning over his campaign map, spread out on his wide table, when the ground rolled and yawed, just as if he were still back on the ship. Then his carved stone paperweights rose up as if they were learning to float, and the maps took the opportunity to try to roll themselves shut now that their corners were no longer being held. Lord Jasper slammed his palms down and out, and spread his arms across the table, flattening the papers back out and glaring at the stones, as they danced up into the air above him.
The stones floated upwards towards the tent’s roof for a while longer, as the floor shrugged and buckled; and then the oddness ended. The paperweights clunked back down onto the table. Lord Jasper remained for a while still stretched out over his maps. After a minute, when he was sure the ground wasn’t going to lurch or roll, he straightened up and strode out of his tent.
Outside, his generals and captains were already gathering, uncertain what to do. The nervous whispering stopped as soon as Lord Jasper appeared. He glared first left and then right. Some things looked normal: orange campfires flickering, diamond stars twinkling in the black sky, and moonlight glinting off weapons and helmets. But some things were wrong. Some of the tents had collapsed completely, others were at odd angles, and there were one or two shouts from men wanting to be freed from the ground they had sunk into. But worst of all, the troops were nervous. This would not do.
“This is nothing,” Lord Jasper declared loudly. “If the stones dance a little tonight, so be it. Probably it shows we’re close. Keep the fires alight on the perimeter, for light to see by. Double the lookouts. But otherwise, sleep it off. By tomorrow morning you will be complaining once again that the sun is scorching your armour and the sand is getting into your eyes. It’s not dangerous, it’s just unnatural. Good-night!”
That did the trick. Some of the soldiers gathered round the fires to eat the evening’s stew, while others dug and chipped away to free their sunken comrades. Before long they had all wrapped themselves tightly in their blankets and curled up in their tents. The sentries strapped their steel helmets on (in case stones rose up and dropped down again), rubbed their hands and stamped their feet to keep warm, and peered into the blackness of the desert night. They had come to kill a dragon (although, strictly speaking, not everybody believed there was such a thing): a little bit of strangeness was to be expected, after all, and if Lord Jasper was untroubled by it, perhaps there was nothing to worry about.
Still, solid earth rolling like the sea and stones becoming weightless: that’s not natural.
. . . continues
The Knot-Shop Man © Beholder / David Whiteland 2009