In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener

Domingo turned and bolted. He intended to cross this field for the next trail, then over to the next field before too many of these things had grown to full maturity. If he was lucky, he’d make it across before the beasts could. Nope. To the left and right, on the trails to either side of the field he was crossing, the things were loping, making the mad dash with him. And if that wasn’t confounding enough, the field was growing some style of rice, making the ground less earth and more an earth soup. He was less running and more slogging, splashing, stumbling and cursing, making terrible time as he went. Gooey muck flew everywhere. Domingo tore through the rice plants, as this was the only semi-solid ground to be had, but it wasn’t really helping. He could see the beasts making up the short advantage he’d had, already surpassing him on the clay trails to either side of this field. They’d reach the next trail he needed to cross just ahead of him. They intended to cut him off, trap him or catch him as he crossed.

“Oh to hell with it,” he cursed, catching himself mid-stumble. With a final push of speed, he leapt into the trail, planted his boot on one of the beast’s backs for a leg up, and leapt up and over the trail into the next field on. A scrabble of claws slashed at his boots and pant-leg, nicking them just enough to send him sprawling. He flew face first into the next field, sliding on his chest through the moist earth.

He sat up, spat out a mouthful of dirt and weeds and turned to see the frustrated things pacing the field’s perimeter. “Sorry chaps,” he said, wiping the grime from his face. “All’s fair and all that guff.” He coughed out a mouthful of dirt, spat and wobbled off.

So there he was, standing in a field of half-grown cabbages (at least the ground was solid), his only haven from these gourd demons. They were prowling on all sides, their gruesome flower heads snorting the air. He was safe for now, which did him or his quest little good. He plopped down unceremoniously in the cabbages to take stock of his gloomy situation. Time wasted, nasty claws on all sides, a mouthful of muck, his body already battered and bruised from those wretched maize plants, and he was no closer to his goal than when he’d started. He huffed. For all he knew, the blood turnips could be back the other way. He looked around for any sign this hadn’t all been in vain.

Behind him, the manor house was dim and uninviting, but at least there were no more lights, no sign that guards had been alerted, coming to finish the beasts’ work. The fields in front of him were more of the same: Different plants, same nothing.

To his right, more fields. Beyond them, one of the red clay trails wound along and then up, taking a turn up and around the hill he’d seen in the distance. The hill was illuminated by some thin slivers of moonlight peeking through the clouds and oho! Domingo twisted his begrimed mustaches and nodded. Atop its grassy peak, he could make out the tell-tale signs of a graveyard, a slanted stone crypt the centerpiece. A bit of good luck, at last. Unless there was a slaughterhouse on hand, that’d be the best locale for the blood turnips. He prayed that the legends about the turnips weren’t just that. The graveyard wasn’t more than a kilometer off.

Then his shoulders slumped. Of course, the distance wasn’t really the issue, was it? The beasts were. He took a quick scan of the surrounding trails. There had to be at least thirty of the blasted things by now. Ugh. That last encounter had been too close. He was tough enough in a fight, but against all of those? He didn’t have the luck, the nerve nor the strength to try taking on that many. Taking them on wasn’t an option, not one he favoured at any rate. Those things were strong. One or two he could kill, but beyond that, they’d shred him in a heartbeat. He needed another means to hand him his edge.

He paced the field, eyeing the distance across the next trail, but if anything, the trails were wider than the previous ones, making a mad dash impossible. As he paced, he could see the beasts trailing him, stalking his movements wherever he went. They weren’t going to give up on him without a kill.

He’d only brought two writher pods, so that trick was out. Besides, that’d only made the situation worse. If he tried it again, he might end up with hundreds of these things on his heels.

Most of his supplies and ingredients were good for quick altercations. A deadly battle with so many beasts would fall flat on its face. He wondered idly if that gourd mother was still spawning these things, not that it really mattered. By now, there were so many of them, their numbers might have well as been in the thousands. He could feel his confidence and nerve ebbing as the options for escape dwindled. Eventually, if he sat here long enough, the Tindalosi would come and go, and even worse, the Midnight Gardener or whoever called this place home would return. Domingo’s proverbial goose would be well and truly cooked.

Domingo squatted, gnawing at a bit of dried beef, angrily muttering to himself.

Old Juan was laughing at him, staring at his pathetic state. What a buffoon to be caught and too witless to find his way out. “Oho,” old Juan guffawed, lounging casually. “The great duster trapped by a bunch of rabid pumpkins, eh? That’s rich!”

“Shut up, old man,” he cursed, watching the old man’s mouth burst with donkey laughs.

“Is this all the better you can do?” old Juan chortled. “Are these things so invincible? Without flaw?”

Domingo snarled. “Yes, no. I don’t know. Sure,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re the master, alright? Clearly you’d find a simple but genius way out of this mess.”

“Not so much genius, as gourmet,” the old master said. “Mmmmmmm, nothing so delicious as pumpkin with a dash of spice.”

“What are you going on about?” Domingo demanded testily.

“Look closer, you lack wit. Look!”

“Fine!” Domingo Ladrón yelled. He crept a tad closer to watch the beasts, if only to get the old man off his back. Not that there was anything more to see. He saw the stupid beasts. There they were. He had a long, scrutinizing look, scrunching his brow for good measure, just to ensure he wasn’t being further hounded by old Juan Polino. Thankfully, the master troublemaker had shut his hole. Domingo thought he’d never put a cork in it.

And yet still, Domingo took a deep, long look at the beasts. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing. The big ugly brutes. Was their being painful eyesores supposed to be part of the puzzle? This was unlikely. Even with the blue sight from the Faer Fire draught, he could only just make out their dark shapes lumbering about, their weird snuffling flower heads small on their distended bodies. Wheezing, always wheezing...

Domingo wondered. He watched them moving about, snuffling the air in that creepy pulsating way with their obscene flower heads, as if they were smelling, trying to sniff him out.

The thought dawned on him that perhaps, just perhaps the devils couldn’t see. Not precisely. Perhaps at short distances, those tiny stalks in those misshapen flower heads could work some semblance of sight. But it was smell, always smell, which was giving him away.

It was a theory as good as any other, he supposed. Now to test it. Time to put his scent elsewhere.

Domingo pulled the spare shirt from his pack, mopped the sweat from his face and back, then wrapped the shirt in a big stone. He wanted them to take some interest, to catch his scent, so he saw no point in hurling it too high. Instead, he bowled the big stone underhand, so it could pass close enough to the main pack of them. The stone flew, bouncing across the field, then skipping through their ranks on its way into the adjoining field.

The monsters went mad, howling and racing after the tumbling projectile, cramming in so large a mass that they were all but on top of one another at the trail beside the field where the stone finally came to rest. The beasts gathered in droves, pacing and clawing and desperate to get at his shirt with his stench. He was lucky that the stone made it to the next field, but was still close enough to the trail that the smell of his shirt held their gruesome attention.

Now for himself. Domingo grabbed handfuls of the tilled soil and smeared it all over. His face, his body, his arms and his legs, he smeared the muck until no part of him wasn’t covered in the stuff. For final measure, he flung himself down and rolled himself about. He was caked in mud. His stink would be masked, for now.

Domingo crawled forward, dragging himself along, slowly and by his elbows, until at last he was at the edge of the trail. None of the beasts paid him the least never mind, so busy they were with his stink elsewhere. He didn’t have much time. The mud would soon dry and his stink would return. Those beasties would be back.

“Pumpkin with a dash of spice,” the old bastard had joked. Domingo had at least learned some part of old Juan’s riddles. He opened his pouch and took out a handful of fat, black and red peppers. Cradjul chilies, a cross-bred super species of the old Gaian plant, lay in his hand. Chilies had been one of humanity’s great contributions to the living words. They’d become an instantaneous hit amongst the Faer, who found uses for them in most every aspect of their lives. The Cradjul chilies, these were a Ghornish cross-breed, and quite possibly one of the strongest ever bred. They were fresh and ripe, slightly wrinkled in contour, each about the size of a human thumb. These chilies were inedible, their capsaicin far too strong for anything so pedestrian as spice. When rendered and combined with certain dense oils, the chili’s active ingredients could be burned as a near white smoke that would clear a crowd. Direct contact with the chili’s oils could blister flesh, blind an opponent, even cauterize a minor wound. The toxins could be easily extracted to kill a man, or to heal a cornucopia of diseases and poisons. If thrown into a fire, they’d quickly heat and explode, creating a caustic, burning spray. In a pinch, a handful could be smashed open and scattered around a campsite, as no creature for miles around would approach their lethal stench.

They were an excellent general purpose item he’d learned to always have on hand.

Now to see if they were up to the task at hand.

Careful as he could, Domingo used his knife to slit one quickly, keeping it turned away from his face. Even so, the reaction was almost instantaneous. The acids from the chili’s capsaicin burned his skin and watered his eyes. Before he was too blinded to see, he hurled the split chili as close to the beasts as he could. The split chili wasn’t heavy enough to fly very far, but it landed near enough to the rear guard of the beasts.

The one furthest to the rear of the pack took the bait. It turned for this new smell, rushed to the chili and inhaled deeply. With animals and people, the effect of these chilies was immediate. Burning, stinging, whimpering cries, and a desperate need to be anywhere else was the standard reaction. For this creature, the outcome was far worse.

The beast sniffed deep with its flower head at the chili, and it shrieked. Not howled, not snarled, it shrieked. Its flower petal head shuddered, then peeled back, singed by the capsaicin contained inside. The flower head petals peeled back, exposing the inner stigma and stamen. These fared even worse to the searing acids of the chili, twisting and shrivelling in the acidic touch, in due course falling away. The thing’s blossom head shriveled completely and dropped away, decimated.

The creature went mad, spasming and thrashing horribly. Its sensory organs had been destroyed in such a painful way, leaving the beast in horrible pain and now literally without a head. And yet the beast didn’t fall. It hurled itself about, soundlessly, bucking and clawing, slashing blindly in every direction.

He looked down at the six chilies in his hand and smiled. He had at least five more in one of his inner pouches. “Let the games begin,” he chuckled.

He scooped up his reserves, stashed all of them save two and, on all fours, crept closer to the upper corner of the field, ever closer to the main body of the pack. Most were still hot on getting at his stinking shirt, but doubtless that wouldn’t last. His scent would fade and soon enough they’d be back on him again. It was time to act.

Unfortunately for him, he’d not packed gloves. It was a stupid oversight on his part, but there was nothing for it now. His right hand was already quite hot from what modicum of the chili’s poison had sprayed on him when he’d slit it open. His eyes were hot and watering. He knew their potency reasonably well. He’d be lucky to get off two, maybe three more of the projectiles before the deadly stuff rendered him all but helpless.

For his hands, he cut a band of cloth from the leg of his trousers, wrapped his left hand so as to minimize the exposure, and prepared to slice more projectiles.

Meanwhile, Domingo’s first victim was causing a minor row all its own. The headless thing had, in its blindness and agony, strayed into one of its brethren, and begun rending and clawing like mad. The assaulted beast responded in kind, giving as good as it got, and their tumbling and fighting brought the attention of others of their kind. These circled the melee, emitting short rasps and hisses, unsure what was happening.

The stench of their own kind’s flesh filling the air was most likely unnerving them.

Another of the beasts had found the split chili in the dust. And while the dust and grime on the chili must have somewhat lessened the effectiveness of its poisons, only badly singing the beast’s flower head, without outright destroying it, the further pandemonium this wounded beast caused only added to the numbers gathering. By now, more than three quarters of the beasts were engaged by the mayhem. The lesser injured beast was slashing at any of its kind which edged too close to it. The headless beast was fast losing its battle with its enemy, chunks of it strewn all around. The victor, reasonably mangled as well, wasn’t taking any chances. It tore and slashed ferociously. Asides from a few stragglers still huffing to get at his shirt, the pack was completely engaged in the hullabaloo the first chili had caused. Now was his chance.

Domingo was lying at the edge of the field, not fifteen meters from the pack. He took four of the fattest chilies in his wrapped hand, leaned as far back as he could, then split each of them in half. His cutting hand got its share of singe; his eyes and face felt on fire. Tears streamed, and he gagged on his urge to cry out. By the slicing of the last of the four, he was acting blind.

Wiping and re-wiping his eyes until he could make out at the very least the dark shadow of their shapes, Domingo hurled the pieces in a high arc, one after the other, hoping to drop them in the midst of the ending melee. Several fell short, while others sailed a bit wide. But the last four halves, these he managed to drop directly into the pack. The beasts, catching the new odour, rushed in.

He couldn’t help it. He giggled evilly as the chaos broke loose. At least ten of them got a good strong snoot full of the caustic stuff, and another bevvy of them got a lesser dose before the chili halves were trampled underfoot. Blossom heads withered and fell away. Shrieks and claws and mayhem were the punch line. The ravenous hordes were instantly at each other. The air reeked of acridity and pumpkin flesh. Pumpkin with a dash of spice.

It had come at a costly price. His eyes were on fire, running with tears and him all but blinded. His cutting hand was burning now, already blistering and swollen. He’d have to hold the pick with it if he intended to fight, and the touch of its handle made him reflexively pull away from its grip. He quickly cut another strip from his trousers, wrapped his hand, took up the pike and prepared to bolt.

He stowed everything, got up, wiped his tears and dashed. He was running away from the beasts, cutting across the next trail and bound for the next field. This field was shoulder high with enormous red poppy plants. He glanced back, noting he wasn’t yet being pursued, and so ran the length of the trail, then turned left, following that trail up towards the hill. The trail was long, the better part of a kilometre long, with a field of the poppies on either side. The trail was the same clay red as the rest had been, but was lightly dusted in the pale yellow poppy dust come off these plants. He ran straight as he could, weaving and half-blinded, stumbling occasionally as he went.