A Walk in the Forest
A conflagration in the Forest! One thing leads to another! Mages, Max's and Mad's at odds. Moth Girl a new Helen? A tragi-comedy in five Acts. A re-post from Lux Umbra Dei.
[A last (I promise you) re-post from an era of fewer subscribers. A follow up to the Crooked Game!]
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February, 2024
[Tales of the Neighborhood Whimsy]
Act I. Provocations
Sylifex the monk-magician was out wandering in the forest near the Chapterhouse of his Order. The sun dappled the path, and the little birds sweetly sang, but Sylifex's mind was elsewhere: he was in the blackest of moods. He was fuming about how the old Brother Superior of his order had bypassed him, pious Sylifex, in the annual committee promotions. What an injustice! Did not the old dotard see his manifest worth? Did the Brother Superior bear him a grudge? So, alternating dark thought with pious prayers to his peculiar deity, robed Sylifex, his head cast down walked along.
It was perhaps inevitable that he should bump into tree or stone or stumble into a bramble bush, so engrossed was he. But as misfortune would have it, Sylifex collided head on with old Mnomus, a fellow magician, who was standing in the path, birder binoculars to his eyes, watching a delightful and exceedingly rare Great Ruffled Yellow Tuft disporting in the branches above!
The collision knocked off Sylifex's tiered monk's cap and old Mnomus dropped his birding notepad and pencil! But worse the binoculars dealt Sylifex an unintentional buffet. Out of such small things, great contentions can arise it sometimes happens.
Sylifex, wondered, “Why didn’t the old fool see me coming and step to the side? Did he want to see me fall to the ground perhaps! Why did he strike me with those binoculars? How vicious!”
Mnomus, who had always entertained suspicions of the younger magician wondered, “Why didn’t the fellow just walk around me? He could see I was distracted. Perhaps he wanted me on the ground where he would have trod on me. What a bully!”
Both men collected themselves, straightened their clothes, gave each other sidelong glares and parted company-. The Great Ruffled Yellow Tuft ponderously winged away to Mnomus's consternation and bitter resentment.
Though never on cordial terms, the two magicians now made efforts to avoid each other even to the extreme of dropping their participation in a weekly poker game they formerly had frequented and at which game each had considered themselves dab hands.
So things stood and perhaps kindly Time would have eventually dulled the edges of their mutual resentment and perhaps even provided some serendipitous moment allowing a measure of reconciliation.
But an ill star shone in their firmament and the next time Sylifex and Mnomus met was on aisle 12 at the town grocery.
Both mages were pushing carts in the condiment section. Both espied the single remaining jar of Mama Criojalla’s Six-Pepper Habaneros Drench, a sauce they each loved dearly and hard to find! Old Mnomus was closest and avidly reached for the jar- it would soon be his! But alas, treacherous Sylifex hastily spoke Theophan's Urgent Summons, and the jar was snatched through the air to land in Sylifex's cart! Mnomus was as red as the sauce with anger and quickly chanted Carlopel's Come Hither whereupon Mama Criojalla’s concoction lofted back through the air to Mnomus, but alas his palsied grip was not up to the moment’s demands and the glass fell to the floor and shattered. Cleanup on Aisle Twelve!
Uniformed security and store employees gathered and the two miffed mages reluctantly parted, with no sauce in their carts but thunderclouds of grievances in their hearts.
Back at last at his Chapterhouse Sylifex fumed. Twice that old dotard had thwarted him! A salutory lesson lesson must be administered! One could sense a Greek choir warming up as the prayerful priest crossed over a Rubicon of sorts-from chance anger to malicious intent. Oh sing Muse, of black hearts, vainglory and their fall!
Act II. Escalation
The next day the tiered hat magician went up to a high grassy prominence where he could observe the boglands where old Mnomus was wont to do his birdwatching. Sylifex knew well that the possibility of sighting the Great Ruffled Yellow Tuft again would have the gallivanting geezer out with binoculars in hand.
Sure as shooting, the villain was down there, and Sylifex thought his peculiar deity had answered his heartfelt prayers when a large flapping bird flew high over the misguided old mage's bald pate. The time had come to mete out the deserved punishment!
As thought is sometime father to misdeed- berobed Sylifex rose waving his hands in mystic patterns and invoked Romuald's Pride's Precipitate Descent. The spell took effect, the flapping bird’s wings folded and it fell forthwith into a malodorous fen. There was a great splash! Sylifex, looking down, gloated of how he had robbed birder of bird.
But Sylifex had erred and erred grievously. Perhaps it was that he spent too many nights poring over sacred texts by candlelight for it wss no flapping Yellow Tuft he had sent tumbling into the reeking bog, but modest brown Moth Girl, a superhero from nearby Maximal Manor!
Now Moth Girl had the power of fluttering flight, but she also had the additional power of her super-acute Mothvision™ and before her mishap she had seen the furtive figure on the hilltop waving hands and gesticulating just as a mysterious Force paralyzed her wings. Correlation always implies causation! She recognized Sylifex and knew he had tossed an unprovoked spell at her, innocent little lamb, modest little Moth Girl!! What a bullying beast!
She emerged from the stagnant greenish pond, bedraggled and begrimed and with moth wings too soaked to flap, trudged the weary miles back to Maximal Manor. There she ignored questioning gazes and pinched noses and rushed to her shower!
Meanwhile old Mnomus who had observed none of the ruckus, his head being buried the whole time in his Guide to the Birds of Eastern America, had wandered back, no ruffled Tuft in sight great or small, to his humble domicile deep in the shady woods and there he took a nap.
Act III. Consultation
Moth Girl at long last emerged from her tidy room to be confronted by fellow Superheroes gathered en masse to hear her account. There she related how vile and villainous Sylifex had bewitched her. At the thought of the perfidy involved she shed a tear or two or perhaps even three and many another Maximal present did as well though some scowled with pent fury!
But what could they do? They were sworn to do Good. To do only Good. They could not be vigilantes! They could not take revenge on the malicious malefactor or malefactors (for all they knew the other magicians at the Chapterhouse may have put odious little Sylifex up to it. Perhaps the crazed clerics hated all Maximals!)
It was indeed a perplexing conundrum and the superheroes needed wise counsel. So Brainator, foremost of their number in cognitive alacrity, got on the landline to his opposite number, Reza Mensa, at the Lab, where their new friends the Mad Scientists (they preferred to be called “Technologists”) were always tinkering with their wacky contrivances and maniacal machines.
A meeting was arranged! A large contingent of Maximals, poor little Moth Girl, the very image of a wronged waif, in the van, walked over to the Lab to be met by the waiting Technologists. Then Max's and Mad's alike trooped into the cluttered confines of the otherwise commodious Conference Room to have a confab!
There piteous little Moth Girl, damp hankie in hand, owned as was her due all eyes and ears as she again related her tragic tale. Perhaps she embellished the nefarious narrative a tad- the plunge far more precipitous, the waters far more chilly. Perhaps she also brought forth her hanky more often than was strictly speaking necessary. No matter, let’s not nitpick the lachrymose lass's thespian theatrics. They were effective in moving the brainy but somewhat emotionally immature scientists to pity. Except one- and he was moved to a smouldering rage. Sing, oh sore-throated Muse! Sing, sing again of thoughtless Anger and the fate that doomed the hitherto peaceful sylvan peoples!
Act IV. The Conflagration
Grim-visag'd, bushy eyebrowed Kropotkin it was, who consumed with cankerous rage, rushed out of conference room and Lab to his isolated Shed whilst the other Technologists still struggled to give the superheroes good counsel.
He had not been moved by Moth Girl's youthful years or copious tears- he cared not a fig for tender emotions! No, he was angered by the notion that Sylifex was a religio! And Kropotkin, militant atheist as he was, hated such!
Now there are two sorts of sorcerers: the secular, solitary ones like old Mnomus, and the devout ones like slippery Sylifex. And the latter tended to glom together in great flocks of pious penitents- these wads of worshipers sheltering in convents, monasteries, temples, sanctums, or abbys like the Chapterhouse Sylifex graced, just down the road from the mad scientists. Kropotkin had long been irked by both that particular institution and its inhabitants and now saw opportunity to finally shame the beatific blister and chastise its pestiferous prelates!
So rushed he to his Shed and tore off the dusty canvas covering an antiquated control panel festooned with dials, knobs, levers, red, green and amber lights, switches, handles, microphones, screens and even a radar display!
There were also in evidence: great coils of wire, screwdrivers, alligator clamps, vacuum tubes, and other such paraphernalia- the pan-functional panel was obviously a work in progress!
Scowling Kropotkin threw a switch, an ancient gas generator wheezed to a fitful start, lights came on- many glowing green, many amber, some blinking red. The stage was set for dire devastation!
Outside, a decoy outhouse, complete with crescent moon door and Sears Roebucks mail-order catalog (dour Kropotkin obviously knew of Potemkin) toppled over as a giant metallic monster rose to its feet from its hiding place in the fertile loam!
Endlessly the blocky and boxy, riveted and riveting automaton arose, it was well over sixty feet high! And its riveter, Kropotkin loved it dearly, naming it after his fourth and last wife, in his language, Попова- Popova. “PoPo” for short, his term of endearment.
PoPo was neither short nor endearing and from the start there was something seriously amiss with it. Steam arose from holes where rivets were missing, sparks and intermittent electric arcing could be seen in gaps where armor plates had never been installed! Legs seemed creaking as if badly needing a lube, some of the head cannon were still capped- even the chest death ray projector was cobwebbed. Only the arms seemed fine, but a discerning eye would notice the giant pincers on each were badly misaligned! This would make it incapable of picking up anything from possums to telephone poles!
So pitiful, poorly wrought PoPo was sent out on its mission of vengeance by pityless Kropotkin, himself somewhat incapacitated by a night of heavy intake of both cheap gin and somewhat overripe sardines.
PoPo blundered unsteadily through the bosque, guided by the steadily drinking scientist at the ancient control panel in the Shed. Kropotkin avidly stared at the television screen's flickering picture taken by the video camera glued to the robot’s right knee fifteen feet off the ground! Not the most felicitous of placements since the leg's motion made the picture gyrate wildly- almost like the mad scientist himself- unsteady on his feet having drained two demijohns of Stoly. An ominous start indeed!
The giant automaton went crashing through the forest knocking trees over, sparking, steaming, collision alert sirens blaring, radar dish spinning, yellow low flying aircraft warning lights circling in a plastic dome on top its square noggin- a surprise assault this would not be!
Kopotkin pushing buttons, twirling dials, pulling handles, stomping on foot pedals and spinning the navigation wheel, finally spotted the crazily bouncing Chapterhouse on the staticy television screen. He brought the jaunty junkpile to a shuddering halt. The hard part was over! The console mike was keyed and from PoPo's loudspeaker, Kropotkin's slurred thick accented voice blared out, “Shrndurer me Zyluflix!” Or at least that's how it sounded to the priest-mages, who had emptied out of their belfry’d sanctum. They all looked at each other in puzzlement, shrugging shoulders. Kropotkin repeated the demand even louder- everyone knows that speaking louder makes for better comprehension! For emphasis, hauling on a hand-crank the tetchy Technologist made the menacing machine extend its giant arm- an effect that surely might have impressed all had not the sudden motion caused a pincer to detach!
The confused but choleric catechists came to a sudden decision. A group of them gathered up their robes and sprinted off widdershins to the Mad's Lab whence this monstrosity must have surely come The remainder defiantly howled imprecations and incantations at the teetering and tottering Colossus!
Poor PoPo was beset with whirlwinds, lightning strikes, puffs of noxious gas, clouds of biting gnats, bunions, and showers of rotten potatoes! Never stable at the best of times, sparking and smoking even more furiously than before, its radar dish disabled, its weather vane folded in half, the loyal Leviathan seemed ready to collapse!
In the distant Shed, Kropotkin's control console was similarly beset, smoking, sparking, lights flashing like a demented Christmas tree: green, yellow, but mostly a dire red. The rueful Kropotkin was coughing in the thick smoke, his lab coat badly singed. He did not know how to proceed! Blindly he stabbed at the panel and his finger instead of hitting the little black OFF button, struck the big red one, labeled “Fire All Weapons”. Immediately his creation fired a furious fusillade of bullets, BB's, shells, darts, projectiles, leaflets, Tootsie rolls (these latter were supposed to have been treats for neighborhood kids from the day a younger and kindlier Kropotkin had built the behemoth) knockout gas and grenades!
These should have secured victory but fortunately for the dumbfounded deists, most of the munitions were well past their expiration dates, far beyond their “best by” stamps and so most fell to the ground inert. As did the mages, overcome by the still potent knockout gas. There they lay, all cattywampus- a sight worthy of marvel in winddrifts of disarrayed robes and scattered tiered hats, covered in blankets of stale Tootsie rolls! Even this low blow would have proven minor, but the sparking and loosened wiring caused PoPo to fire off its orange death ray which struck, with a boom and flash that lit up the evening sky, yes, blew to flinders the right wing of the Chapterhouse! A truly grievous loss since that wing had been recently converted to an Entertainment Center for the pious wizards with big screen TVs, a disco hall complete with Glitter Ball, billiards tables, and a pinball parlor with authentic soda fountain! Also therein was a sports betting room, a keno wheel, a discreet line of slot machines (with religious themes) and a Slurpee machine. Weary worshipers certainly deserved such rests!
But the damage had been done and the aghast Kropotkin hurried to recall PoPo from the smouldering ruins and encyst the trusting tin tower in it's previous hidey-hole, so that none might know who or what had authored such destruction. In short, Kropotkin didn't fancy spending the rest of his life in the county clink!
And perhaps that possible incarceration should have been the least of his worries- for as the battle still raged back at the Chapterhouse, the pack of furious shouting priest-magicians had arrived at the frontyard of the Lab- which building discharged the mad scientists, all puzzled by the hub-bub and furor. What could be amiss? they wondered.
An extended heated discussion ensued with accusations and protestations of innocence quickly following on each's heels. No sooner than a bitter charge was spoken than an equally emphatic denial was voiced. So the affair continued for some time and it threatened that conflict might erupt for neither robed Hierophants nor lab coated Technologists were willing to compromise.
One shudders to contemplate what might have transpired if things had come to hard knocks. Scientists transformed into squeaking mice? Mages reduced to buttercakes by the BZK Gun? Dismal fates for both!
Thankfully, nothing so lurid was to happen for crusty Kropotkin had successfully directed the lovable PoPo back to the Shed, but both the control panel and robot being increasingly unresponsive, his fine control was lacking and the sixty foot high armored automaton careened into the Lab building, reducing the latter to a pile of smoldering rubble and itself into a mammoth pile of scrap metal! Won’t someone please call the trash haulers or at least Got Junk? But at least, at long last, tranquillity reigned.
Act V. Resolution
Days passed and the abashed former antagonists sifted through the cooling remains of their respective establishments. A broken test tube here, a splintered magic wand there, here a dented oscilloscope under a some sheet metal, there a smoke damaged box of prayer beads stamped “Made in China” under a burnt out slot machine! Such sad memories and yet salutory reminders of the follies of vaunting ambitions, of giving safe harbor to grudges, of resorting to vain violence. And of course, the wisdom of securely off-siting one’s indispensibles in the likely event of a repeat of such peccadilloes!
A chastened Sylifex was perhaps not punished for his manifold crimes as severely as he merited. The Brother Superior mandated he be assigned to lavoratory and kitchen cleanup duties for six months with no access to the rebuilt Recreation Wing in all that period. The unrepentant Kropotkin also got off lightly, a committee of the mad scientists voted that he pay nothing but provide the design blueprints for PoPo to all. His invention had excited universal admiration among them!
Moth Girl left Maximal Manor for Hollywood where her superpowers and acting talents landed her a very lucrative job at a studio who specialized in such emotive roles. She enjoyed spectacular success and in five years she had surpassed the studio's previous profit center, Arachnid Boy!
She never forgot her roots in the Mansion and yearly sent substantial cheques to the Altruists of which honorable company her heart would always belong. Quam plurimus prodesse was her motto.
But what of the trees? The shattered and uprooted trees that were destroyed that night? Humans are so self-centered! No one gave thought to them then. But although humanity is capable of so much folly, greed and stupidity, noble impulses can sway it also. The Chapterhouse magicians used Saint Vigur's Edenic Restoration spell to instantly restore the forest while the Lab's Technologists in their bubbling beakers produced fast-acting chemicals to promote growth and hardiness! There's hope for us yet and the Great Ruffled Yellow Tuft again disports in the green branches.
Old Mnomus is still a-napping though spring, great Spring is icumen in!