In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener

It wasn’t until he was partway up the trail that he noted the poppy dust was thick in the air all around him, and that he was quickly growing dizzy with narcotic stupor. It was getting harder and harder to keep rushing. He felt his legs getting numb; pain and panic was fast being replaced with the stupidity over his mind and body. He was close now, the end of the trail just two hundred meters away. It poured over him, in warm, gooey flagons of spiced winter’s mull. He stumbled, fell, then forced himself to his feet again, the world swimming in a doped, drippy mind. “Oh come on!” Domingo sloppily cursed under his breath. How much worse could this get?!

He turned and looked back. Though everything was blurred and crumpled with the thickness the poppy dust in the air and in his brain, he could make them out. “Blasted luck,” he slurred. Two of the beasts were coming up the trail.

Ah. That was how much worse it could get.

They’d somehow gotten free of the tangle that was engaging the rest of them, and were hot on his scent. He’d be lucky to reach the base of the hill before they were on him, let alone up the path to the graveyard at the top.

A sneaky bastard, this Midnight Gardener. It was a well-planned trap, to be sure.

The poppy dust had turned him into a somnambulist, making him easy prey for the beasts. Dead ahead, the trail banked up and around the outside of the hill. Straight ahead, where the trail met the hill, there was a rocky outcropping of small boulders that lay at the hill’s base. These were surrounded by a small area of weedy earth. Domingo very much doubted this would be off-limits to his pursuers.

His head swam and his eyes crossed with intoxicated lethargy. Realizing the peril of the poppies detritus, he held his breath and did his best to cover his nose from the dizzying pollen, but instinct and stupor had him take a deep inward breath before holding it. The effects were nearly immediate.

The soporific stuff washed through and over him. His mind and body went numb. His steps stretched to a snail’s pace; his thoughts oozed like treacle. “Daaaaaaammmmmnnnnniiiiitttttttt,” his mouth drawled out, but he felt no part of it.

In his half-dreaming state, he recalled as a boy hearing the ancient tale of such a trap played on a girl and her three companions as they crossed the Gaian realm of Oz. A Faer had saved them, or so the tale had gone. Domingo doubted he’d get any such help. He reached back, unsnapped one of the pouches on his satchel, grabbed a pinch of the Garali and without bothering to examine the dose, crammed the nasty-flavored goo into mouth.

The Garali had an almost instant clearing effect, but not as clearing as he’d hoped. The poppies’ spell was strong, not to mention his exhaustion, so that the best the stimulant gave him was a diminishment of the opiates over him. It would have to be enough.

With this new-found energy, he forced himself to concentrate and ran with all his might.

The boulders were just up ahead. They were high enough to make a decent climb of it. Above the boulders, a cliff of granite extended up a good six meters up before reaching the sharp bank of the hill itself. He’d have to see if he could get up--

Too late. A heavy weight slammed into his back, nearly toppling him. Nasty claws slashed at his back and neck. Domingo could feel the snapping rasp of the beast’s razor-edged petals going for his left ear. The beast had sunk its claws into his satchel, now riding piggy back on his pack while it tried for his neck and face. He shook side to side, trying to both dislodge the thing and keep himself from its ministrations. For a few awful moments, he thought it might work, but then agonizing pain erupted from his neck where one of its claws found purchase.

Domingo screamed, threw himself to the ground, slamming his back hard against the ground. He landed his full weight on the beast, and immediately hacked backwards at the thing with the mattock, heedless of how or where he struck it. Three fast blows and he managed to rend a huge section from the beast’s head. It let go, but continued slashing. More than one of these tore gashes in his upper back and shoulders. Domingo lurched away, stood up and brought the sharp edge of the mattock up and down, up and down, until he’d reduced it to a quivering orange mass. The claws continued to twitch and scratch the air like the legs of a smashed spider. He turned to face the next one.

At last, a bit of blasted luck, even if just a taste of it. The other one was still coming, but from the looks of it, it was wounded from the earlier melee with its kind. Large gouges had been taken out of its side, and one of its legs was dragging behind it, bent and broken. But though a brief thought overcame him to wait, to engage the wounded thing, Domingo ignored it. The thing was hurt, but so was he. The wounds to his back and neck were profuse. His shirt was already half-soaked in black red. The poppies, his wounds, not to mention his growing exhaustion, all of it had him close to dropping.

He turned for the boulders, eager to make his escape. Seven long strides and he was climbing up them. The wounded beast took that chance to make a mad dash at him, and he only just climbed up as it took a fast swipe at his boots. That was all the creature had; the thing was not up to the challenge of climbing up after him, so Domingo turned and gave it a swift kick for good measure, then climbed on. When he finally reached the topmost boulder and stood before the granite cliff, he fished out the climber vine from inside the satchel. In doing so, though, he dropped the mattock. Before he could turn and grab it, the thing bounced and tumbled down to the ground below. A pity, that. He’d loved that thing. “Bloody beasts,” he snarled, now with another reason to hate the things.

He tossed the climber rope, and as expected it went rigid, immediately clinging to the granite. The vine wasn’t the problem; his exhaustion, wounds and opiate-addled brain were. Every hand-over-hand was a dismal exercise in pain. He felt weakness dragging at him, until he was sure his hands would give up and he’d be falling backwards towards the rocks. It was only his imbecile will to go on, the beast waiting below and Juan Polino chortling at him that kept him from giving up. “Don’t slip,” Juan Polino laughed. “Oh heavens no! Not that! What would become of my star pupil then?”

Up he went, hand over searing, blistered hand, his boots slipping and sliding on the smooth granite. He cursed a blue streak, hauling his miserable carcass up that blasted cliff face. When he finally felt his hands touch the grassy soil of the hill, he was close to tears with exhaustion and relief.

Domingo dragged himself up, then tried to stand. That was not about to happen, so instead he just dragged himself along the grassy hill and collapsed. “So this,” he thought absently, “is the place where I’m going to die.” He looked about, at the crumbling gravestones, the wet, oily grass, the spooky shadows cast by the tomb. He shrugged. He could imagine worse places to die. Yet he noted with a slight disappointment that there were no blood turnips. Not that he knew precisely what the things looked like, just vague references in rumour and books. But he knew an empty graveyard when he saw one. It was nothing but a weed-infested graveyard, a dead end so to speak. This made him laugh, cough, spit up blood and then laugh some more. He managed to pull a jar from one of the outer pockets, unscrew it, and smear a paste on his still-bleeding neck. Survival instinct, he supposed. Not that there was much point in it, but what the hell. With that, too woozy to manage the salve on his shoulder or back, he collapsed onto the soil, felt the dark rush forward, and he winked out with a cloudy black.