Unmaking Percy

Part III - I (The Dizzy Tent)

The letter that Armand had sent Evans, requesting his assistance with a friend who had also been cursed, gave them just enough to go on. His friend's name was Tombert de L'Isle; in three days' time, they were to be found at a week-long festival that was about a four days' ride away; and they were, if Armand's words were to be believed – and the tone of grudging admiration that tinged the letter was all the evidence there needed be – an incredibly famed musician.

Their road took them past the borders of a region that Percy was immediately charmed by. Not all would call it idyllic: it had nothing of the gentleness of rolling hills, and its rock-strewn dirt was far drier and dustier than the fertile earth that flushed with crops around Percy's town each summer. The jagged mountains he had noticed earlier in their travels grew higher, and their cliffsides more abrupt; the landscape was ripped and torn, from ragged crags to deep carved valleys. And there were countless rivers and streams carving everywhere at the earth too, cascading in thin trickling waterfalls guarded by ferns and moss of a young green. Everywhere was the scent of warmed pinewood, boxwood and lavender.

It was not a bucolic paradise, striving to please and charm its visitors, as was Percy's home, with quaint little villages where the well was placed just so, and the ivy grew just right, and the flowers lived tidy and well-behaved lives in fenced-in gardens. Here the flowers grew where they pleased, begged no permission, and made no apologies. There were forests for those who wished to get lost, caves for the shaded lonesome, and wide-open fields where settlements could grow; and for that reason alone, it was welcoming.

Every time they camped, between dusk and night, and dawn and morning, Valeria sat and watched, her sword on her lap, for the sorceress to appear to Myrtle; but she never did. It did not seem to surprise her, and Percy heard her, early one morning, muttering something about fae only showing themselves when their presence would rattle others. Myrtle kept knitting her scarf of a horrid yellow, and enlisted Evans to hold up the yarn, trusting that his unending patience would make him the perfect man for the task. And Percy watched them all in awe, wandering at how he had come to ride with them.

A day before they reached the destination Armand had pointed them to in his letter, they left their camp terribly early, hoping to escape the ear-piercing chatter of gossiping toads in a nearby pond. Dawn waned and warmed into day as they travelled, and though Myrtle kept looking over her shoulder, no sorceress appeared.

Riding his mare in a lazy trot, Percy glanced idly to a field on his left, and saw something shift in its stillness. He focused his stare on the tall grass by the road. It rippled everywhere, like golden fur on a stretching cat.

"There's something on that field" he said, squinting.

Valeria was closest to him, but she ignored him. It was slightly more insulting than being told it was probably just a restless gerbil.

"I know you never take me seriously when I say this, but it could be bandits" he insisted, tipping his nose upwards. "And one day, it will be, and I'll be able to say 'I told you so', which you'll hate. They do frequent roads too, you know, it's not just sorceress and fae. There's not exclusively mythical creatures about."

He could sense Valeria's growing annoyance, and it fed him well, for they had breakfasted in a hurry, and hunger still gnawed at his stomach. Evans trotted up to his side.

"What did you see exactly?"

Percy turned again to the field, and widened his eyes.

"Well, alright, so maybe it's not bandits. Yet. But there is something."

Out from the grass sprouted a dozen heads. Small heads, far too small to belong to human adults, but far too shaped and fashioned by years to belong to children. They wore brown berets, and some sported facial hair so supraphysically superb that the merest twitch of whiskers threatened the very fabric of reality. Because their bodies were hidden by the grass, their heads gave the impression of acorns gently bobbing on a stream. They all had their backs turned to the road, and their attention fixed on the field facing them. They seemed to be lying in wait for something.