Ben - 4. Chapter 4

Two figures lay in the huge bed snuggled into one heap of satiated flesh. The taller and larger of the two couldn’t imagine his luck in finding two welcome humans so willing to couple with him. His was an aberration, a fluke, a freak! He became a Mountain Ranger for that very reason. Oh, yes, there were a few, but not husband and wife. And, what a wife! Not only was she, in the purest and truest sense of the word, a wife, but with a bit of magic he still couldn’t grasp, she became a husband with a very prominent member, quite a satisfying member, in fact.

The other, the one impaled on his pole at this very moment, throbbed with magic so strong it nearly overwhelmed him. Yet, this was not accessible magic, this stayed with the sorcerer, none leaked out even when in the throes of their passion he burst deep inside the man, nary a drop of magic flowed into his veins. This man truly was a Sorcerer of Old who had, seemingly unbeknownst, more power, more pure magic, more pure strength of will, than any schull taught sorcerer of today.

“Okay, you two, up with you! Right now!” exclaimed Edwina at the foot of the bed.

“Oh, please, go away,” Gregor moaned. “I have, yet, to suck all of the life force from this remarkable man.”

“You can suck it tonight,” Edwina said. “The children need to be fed and you know Margo is down with Deirdre, so I’ll have to do it myself. We need a bath, too. And, you know who does that around here.”

“Ooo, such a nice tool,” Gregor moaned extricating himself from the Ranger’s arms and the wonderful pole slowly sliding out of his ass. What a wonderful dream, it was, too. Brother Timothy didn’t know it yet, but something was going to change around here once the Ranger was on his way. Brother Timothy needed only two more finger-spans of length and he’d be nearly as long as Arvald. Yes, a thing was going to change around here, if only for more pleasure.

“Come, Arvald, times awastin’!” Gregor exclaimed. “Time to wash all the passion from our skin.”

“A bath? Baths are dangerous, they’re detrimental to the very soul of man,” Arvald protested. “I have that on the best advice from the best physicians in the Hinterland.”

“Phooey!” exclaimed Edwina. “Now get your sorry ass out of that bed, right now!”

“She means it,” Gregor whispered.

“And, you get the hot tub going, now!” exclaimed Edwina.

“Can me and Trudy bathe, too,” Bea said at the bedroom door.

“Yes, dear, if your father ever gets the tub going,” Edwina said.

“You know, you can do it yourself,” Gregor said. “I’ve told you before, just ask the great oak and it will happen. Since it’s a warm day, it’s outside.”

“Thank you,” Edwina said. “Now, the two of you, in the tub, now!”

For Arvald there was little choice, as the magic swept him out of the bedroom and dropped him into swirling waters with a great splash. If he’d paid a bit of attention, none of the water spilled onto the ground, but was pulled back into the tub.

“I do this under protest, Madame!” Arvald exclaimed.

“Yes, yes, here’s your bar of soap,” Edwina said. “There are any number of loofahs strewn about the bottom, so there’s no excuse for you not to get clean.”

“Oh, this soap, it’s scented,” Arvald said holding the bar to his nose. “Is this homemade?”

“Of course it’s homemade,” Trudy said as she climbed into the tub. “Do you know of any markets around here?”

“But it smells so, so, what’s the word?” Arvald asked with the soap nearly squished into his nostrils.

“Yes, Brother Timothy knows just the combination of herbs, wild flowers, roots, fruit, and berries to give soap a pleasant aroma,” Gregor said. “Here let me wash your back and what a mighty back you have. Do you wax or are you naturally hairless back here?”

“All the men in my family are nearly bereft of body hair,” Arvald said. “Surely, you noticed, well, you know.”

“Yes, but we thought you shaved,” Edwina said.

“Or, at least, kept yourself well trimmed,” Gregor said.

“No, just no hair,” Arvald said. “If you noticed, my legs are nearly as smooth as a baby’s bottom.”

“Oh, by the Earth Mother’s holy bosom, Ben!” Gregor exclaimed. “It was right here all the time. Arvald, you couldn’t have come at a better time. I must be off!”

With that, Gregor dunked himself in the tub, disappeared into the cottage, and soon reappeared wearing all of his sorcery gear, including a staff the great oak presented to him on his birthday.

“I’ll be back with Ben, shortly,” Gregor said. “Edwina I’ll need a poultice of devil’s club root, thyme, three eyes of newt, the little ones with the red spots, coriander, and a flour of mashed acorns from the great oak.”

Then he was gone.

* * * * * * * * *

Dirt stood beside the gnome and the elf as the two other beings discussed his selling price. He was taller, now, and bigger, too, maybe as tall as a man, though he still felt like a little boy. Would he scream like a little boy when the elves ate him alive?

He didn’t know the answer. He didn’t know a lot of things. He had forgotten about a lot of things. He couldn’t remember anything except that his name was Dirt and he worked for the gnomes in the walnut orchard. He supposed that was all he needed to know.

“Two full bags of gold,” Pomelo said. “That’s my final offer.”

“You know what we can do if you don’t take our price,” the elf said. “You know what we can do.”

“Your threats are empty here,” Pomelo said, not showing the fear in his puny heart.

“We’re not in your orchard,” the elf said. “It’s over there across the path and we’re here, practically out in the open, practically across the veil.”

“The orchard is in me, I am the orchard,” Pomelo said.

Suddenly, there were nearly a hundred little gnomes around them, pressing their small bodies in against Pomelo, the elf, and Dirt. Weapons were drawn, ready to turn the elf into a puddle of putrefying flesh.

“Peace, brother, peace,” the elf said. “Point taken. Two full bags of gold, but this one had better be ready when I come back.”

“Release that boy!” Gregor the Sorcerer exclaimed.

Lightning swept around him knocking down the lesser gnomes, singeing the nearest walnut trees, turning that one little spot of the netherworld into a three-dimensional space full of a powerful Psimilias Sorcerer.

“Don’t want to give him up?” Gregor asked. “So be it!”

The ground shook, fire burst out of the ground lighting the whole orchard into a great conflagration, a burst of lightning grounded onto the top of the elf turning him into a puff of dust that wafted away on the breeze. Pomelo stood aghast, looking at his beautiful walnut orchard going up in enchanted flames and then he, too, was consumed in flames. The lesser gnomes, too, disappeared in the fire, leaving only Gregor, the Eighteenth Psimilias Sorcerer, and what had been his son.

“Come, Ben, let’s go home,” Gregor said. “Hold my hand and I’ll lead you across the veil.”

The boy-man held out his fleshy hand and took one step. The netherworld dropped away and they stood under the great oak. Ben collapsed and Gregor picked up his little boy and held him in his arms.

* * * * * * * * *

Ben lay in his parent’s bed in a feverish stupor as Gregor frantically read every scroll he could draw up from the libraries of the distant past. The suppurating wound in Ben’s neck was covered by the poultice Gregor had read the most about, but there seemed to be something missing. The boy simply couldn’t wake up, yet there didn’t seem to be any need of nourishment, nor was there any discharge of bodily fluids and substances. It was as if Ben was still held by the gnomes.

“How is the boy?” Percy asked as he walked into the cottage.

“No change,” Gregor sighed. “Something’s missing, I know it. This shouldn’t take so long.”

“It’s only been a week,” Percy said as he pulled back the poultice. “This needs changing. How often do you change it?”

“We haven’t,” Gregor said. “Should we change it? There was nothing mentioned about that.”

“It’s a poultice, it needs changing,” Percy said. He knelt close to the boy and looked at the wound. “Bring me fresh spring water. It needs to be blessed by the great oak. I’ll need a drop of sap from the great oak and a cup of the Ranger’s piss, too. Yes, I know, but we don’t have the right kind of horse around here and the Ranger’s not family. I need saltwort mashed and dried; I’ll dry it with a flame. The wound needs to be cleaned. Then I’ll have to cauterize it. Dragon flame is the only thing that’ll work on gnomic magic. Come on, Gregor, we need to do this now.”

Gregor sat and stared at the scroll he’d been reading. Ben stirred slightly as if trying to pull away from the open wound. Gregor looked at his son and wondered where he’d gone wrong. He was a great sorcerer, wasn’t he? How could he get this wrong and to think it was a dragon who was going to save his son.

“Gregor!” Percy exclaimed. “We need to do this now. We can treat the poison in his body later, but this wound needs to be cleaned and cauterized now. Come on, let’s go.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do it, now, yes, I must help Ben,” Gregor mumbled. “Yes, Arvald the Ranger and the great oak. Yes, I can do that.”

Gregor ambled out of the bedroom in a daze of incomprehension. Why hadn’t he asked for help? He didn’t even ask the dwarfs or pixies when they might have had a solution to Ben’s problem, but no not for the sorcerer, a sorcerer knows all. He failed. He sat down in the rocking chair on the porch and stared out across the bench toward the far snowcapped ridge. He failed.

There was a flurry of activity around him, but he took little notice. A dragon, well a former dragon, was curing his son when he couldn’t and he was the sorcerer. Fly through the air; call down lightning, and what else? It was all show. He was a failure at being a sorcerer. He had no business staying here. Maybe everything would be better if he just went away.

* * * * * * * * *

“Mummy, where’s Papa?” Ben asked as the fever started to fade and awareness peeked through the weakening gnomic magic.

“Don’t you worry about him,” Edwina said as she wiped her son’s still feverish face with a cool, damp cloth. Where indeed was Gregor? “You just need to get better. Now, go back to sleep and later you can have a cup of broth.”

“Okay,” Ben whispered. “He saved me. He burnt them all away. He’s a great sorcerer, isn’t he Mummy?”

“Yes, dear, now sleep,” Edwina said as she bent to kiss Ben’s forehead. It was still too hot. Where was Gregor?

“How is the boy?” Arvald asked when Edwina walked into the living area.

“He woke for a bit, but I sent him back,” she said as she slumped into her rocking chair by the fire. “The fever has lessened, but he needs his father.”

“Do you want me to look?” Arvald asked. “I can ask around. I do have my sources throughout this area.”

“I’ll look, too,” Percy said.

“And, us, too,” Exetor the pixie said. “We’ll ask the great oak. Sometimes it knows things breathing beings can’t fathom.”

“He’s with us,” Karn said walking in the front door. He took a chair at the table and poured himself a tankard of ale. “Ah, just the thing in this troubled hour. How is the boy?”

“Better, but human medicine can only do so much,” Edwina said. “We need a father and a sorcerer, I’m sure.”

“That might be a bit of a problem,” Karn said with a dreary stare.