But then the rustling he had been initially ignoring, even while his mind was trying tenderly to raise an alarm that he should exercise more caution, became too difficult to ignore as the movement of grasses within feet of his right side just ahead of him flagged a bold second occupant of the meadow. Jackson stood still. All about him he heard the soft brushing of grasses and leaves coming to stop. A best guess of five or six locations around him within a fifty foot diameter might have been highly pessimistic. He waited.
Ten seconds since the last whisper from the plants had rolled by. Then twenty. Then thirty. Agent Davison recognized the valor of patience, especially when his goal as so near. Better not to rush in than to grasp at a target not near enough and tumble in the near miss. He allowed a full two minutes by his count before checking his watch. Oh! Why didn’t he check it before? The watch was indicating more than one little LED about the face shining brightly red. Confirmation of multiple targets about him was clear now. For a moment, he though perhaps the very Imps for which he were searching were hunting him. But then he recalled that the assumption Imps were tiny creatures easily concealed in a field such as this was a terrible misconception by those few who actually believed they may exist. No. Based on his experience, an Imp could not hide near well enough in the grasses at such a near range despite the growth being up to Jackson’s chest. And there were no smells as with the one he’d seen as a child. These creatures hunting him were something different altogether.
Rustling began slowly again at the two minute mark and then, a titter of laughter so quiet an agent to one of the government protection units would have a tough enough time hearing it, let alone a typical IPMA agent. They weren’t trained for this, Davison thought to himself. His training in a military unit set him apart. It was almost a sixth sense that told him the beasts were slowly circling and closing the distance.
Glancing about in the few feet around him, the agent noted a fairly large pricker bush and he took two steps backwards slowly and one step to his right, then hunkered down in front of the bush until he could just feel the barbs poking into the back of his suit jacket. The brush was nasty enough it could serve as a defensive position even if the things stalking him were very small. He’d make a fight from there.
~~~
When the collection of toadstool faeries struck Johnny Appleseed fully expected to see the foolish IPMA agent jump and stand straight up and then dash back to the way from which they had come. He expected to hear screaming. He had hoped the agent would somehow fend them off or have enough resolve at least to stop running at the edge of the field to try again. Secretly he hoped he got through with plenty of bites but enough gumption to go on and meet the tree. He’d love to see what the Agent would make of the tree.
It’s not as though the faeries actually intended to kill the agent, although some of the more wiley ones they’d enlisted as part of the team might be thinking it. And if the worst did happen, well…perhaps that would be the message they needed to send to the IPMA about meddling in the Goblin’s business with the Mountain Trolls. Still…it would be nice, Johnny thought, to see what sort of state the agent would be in if they had the tree just swallow and hold him for a day rather than actually digest him. Would he be able to hear the cocky agent scream from within the living wood casket?
But no. No screaming. In fact, no jumping up, or even standing. Instead, when he was sure the toadstools had sprung their trap he heard only rough wrestling about in the grasses several hundred feet away.
Here and there a toss of dust or a few grasses would fly up in the air and catch the full moonlight. Then a site that made even Johnny giggle though it shouldn’t occurred. One of the pudgy little toadstool faeries came flailing above the grasses and tumbled through the air for nearly sixty or seventy feet. It bellowed, or perhaps burped, just about the whole trip, until it landed in the grasses with a heavy thud. Johnny, having the superb hearing of a Pixie heard the toadstool’s breath leave his body in a rush. He wasn’t sure if it would merely be unconscious for a while, or if he’d met his fate trying to take a bite out of a crazy human IPMA agent.
This first trial was not going the way Johnny had planned.
~~~
Jackson was extremely irritated when the first three faeries jumped. What were they trying to prove? But then they bared teeth and started clamping down. That, as it turned out, was a mistake, because it only made Jackson angry. Two had clamped down each on an arm and the third was gnawing on his right ankle. As four more small, round, brownish colored faeries crept into the small clearing made by the agents movements earlier and his digging in, Jackson brought both forearms down on the ground in front of him hard, pinning the faeries underneath. They both let go immediately, but only one scrambled back into the brush. The other lay bleeding from its lips on the ground.
Then two from the second round of four pounced and tried just about the same tactic as the first, one landing on a forearm and the other on a shoulder. The one on his shin flicked eyes back and forth to the human and to his brethren, pausing only momentarily between looks. Eyes were wide and Jackson smirked a bit, then addressed the two on his arms while the last two circled him from the ground, arms stretched as though getting ready to strike.
A grab at the toadstool on his forearm resulted in a grunt. Still squatting, Davison tossed the creature in his hand up into the air a short distance, threw himself back on his left arm to counter-balance as he swung his right foot up in the air and gave the little faerie a tremendous drop-kick, sending it a good sixty or seventy feet towards the end of the meadow that Johnny Appleseed had slunk off to.
Taking no time to admire the arc of the little creature through the air, Jackson reached back over his shoulder and managed to grab the one chewing on it by the feet. He yanked it over his head, ripping his suit doing so, and then began smashing it into the ground repeatedly and heavily. The first two whumps elicited a satisfying huff of air and a painful grunt. But the next three poundings seemed to leave the thing entirely lifeless. While Davison wasn’t interested in killing any of the faeries providing the “trials” on this night, particularly since he was here on unofficial business, he wouldn’t mind too much of the little critters’ own poor judgment resulted in a painful end. He couldn’t be blamed for a self-preservation reaction, now could he?
Again the ugly thing on his shin looked from injured to as-yet-to-attack comrades and back to the human’s face. Jackson gave him an even uglier smirk. The gnawing paused even longer, and the agent swore he heard the thing whimper before returning to its work on his leg. Adrenaline had kicked in strongly enough he didn’t even really feel the quarter-inch teeth digging into his skin through his suit pant leg.
But as he planned his approach with Johnny Appleseed on the other side of the meadow following the dispatching of the first trial participants, Jackson was assaulted by the remaining two faeries from the ground. They rushed at once and instead of jumping upon him they rushed up his legs and scrabbled all around his body, taking small, quick bites at the same time as staying out of the human’s reach.
Special Agent Davison grunted for the first time as he felt and heard a crunch by his ear and was sure he felt blood even before the creature moved on to another part of his body. That one, Davison though. That one’s the one I’m going to make pay.
For the next several seconds Jackson flailed making grabs at the two creatures. They were quicker and seemed smarter than the others. Perhaps that is why they waited and assessed while the first groups attacked. Had Appleseed been able to see more of what was going on, those few seconds would have perhaps made him a little more positive about the situation, but in lieu of visual cues, the human continued to give very little away by way of sound. He owned the fight, and he wanted to make sure that was clear.
Finally, nearly half a second after the other, Jackson had one in the right hand and the other in the left. They must have been wearing some ba
ggy, dirty brown clothes or else their skin was loose enough it felt like burlap and gave him a hand hold. One of them, in his left, he had a firm enough grip on that it made little noise and fewer movements. It was having troubles getting breath in to do much else it seemed. The other was flailing. It was the little nasty one that had gotten his ear, he was sure. Blood dripped from its tiny fangs. He shook it roughly for a moment until its thrashing settled somewhat. It tried to crane its head around and bare teeth and Jackson knew this was definitely the one of them he wanted to make an example.
Looking down at the third little faerie still gnawing on his ankle, Davison had to smile despite himself. It was looking at him very timidly, frightened in fact, yet still trying to maintain some sort of desperate action on the human’s ankle. He swung his foot a little between bites so that the little brown thing swung around to plop on his bottom on the dirt between his feet, still holding Jackson’s pant leg.
The agent brought up his other leg very high, bending at the knee sharply. As the foot came down the little faerie seemed to recognize his fate in the last second, he squinted his eyes, turned his head away and let go of the pants to raise his hands before him. There was a satisfying crunch under Jackson’s heel. And then the human snorted a bit. You got yourself into that one, twerp! he muttered to himself.
~~~
Johnny Appleseed had seen the shadow rise out of the grasses in the middle of the meadow and make a grab at some of the toadstool faeries. It was only a few seconds before the human seemed to have everything the way he wanted and then start trudging towards the deer track hole on the opposite side. Johnny figured it was probably about time to make his way over to the trail to greet his guest. But he wasn’t entirely happy about it. The shadowy figure strode a little too eloquently still. And there seemed to be a couple of his comrades on this Devil’s Night still struggling in the human’s hands. The next conversation might not go very well.
~~~
Strolling out of the meadow and directly into the first canopy of the shrub oak around the hole to which Johnny Appleseed had directed him as his goal, Jackson gave the ear-biter a final round of very violent shaking, while its brother watched helplessly from the human’s other hand. There was Johnny, sitting on a boulder that mounded out of the dirt before him in the track. His arms were crossed, although the smirk and lifted eyebrow seemed to make an attempt at joviality.
“Well then. You’ve passed the first trial,” Johnny growled. “Did you have fun?”
With that Jackson banged the more mellow toadstool faerie against a nearby tree one last time and then tossed it up over his shoulder back into the meadow. He listened, but did not hear the creature make any noise to get away through the grasses. “Yes I did, actually. More than I thought I was going to. Kinda got the blood pumping again!”
“Is that right?” Appleseed’s hands moved from the crossed-arms position to his hips in a motherly posture. “And what of my faerie brethren? Did you kill any of them?”
Jackson shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of.”
The remaining, ear-biting toad grumbled and growled his way through what might have been a sentence in Faerie. It caught Johnny’s attention for just a second, during which the sprite frowned.
“Well,” said the little sprite hopping up from his perch on the rock, “I suppose it’s not my problem anyway. Never really liked toadstools. Nasty, smelly things.”
It almost seemed like the remaining toadstool faerie had a moment with Jackson as they looked at each other, and then the faerie shrugged and upturned his palms in a questioning gesture. It quickly went back to flailing its arms though and cursing in Faerie at both Johnny Appleseed and Jackson together.
“Hang on a second!” Jackson said noisily. Johnny turned back slowly, somewhat irritated. “Are you saying this little turdy guy isn’t any good to me as a hostage then?”
Casually, Johnny completed his turn back to the human and shrugged. “Not really. No.”
Before Appleseed had a chance to turn all the way around and continue on the trail, Agent Davison spoke up again. “Well then, why don’t you do me a favor and tell me what your real name is? Or is there a reason you’re avoiding the subject?”
Johnny’s mouth started to move but before he could, Davison squished the toadstool faerie’s face up against a tree and removed something from behind his back and under his coat. The movement was casual and it took the sprite back just a little. He hesitated as he said, “Why don’t you take a guess then, human?”
Without looking at the sprit, Jackson raised his left arm back and Johnny could see the glimmer of a knife about six inches long. “How about…Tweedle Dee?” And with that he drove the knife in deep enough to pin the toadstool through the torso to the tree.
From the corner of his eye, Jackson could tell he’d struck a nerve with Johnny Appleseed but the little sprite did his best to retain his composure and answer too. There was only a slight elevation in his voice as he replied, “Nope! Try again.”
“Tweedle Dum, then?” Jackson asked again, brushing his hands off.
“Sure, Agent Davison,” the sprite turned back to begin the trek on the trail ahead. “You can call me Tweedle Dum.”
~~~
After a few moments of trudging up the deer trail through oaks and maples, with the full moon hiding in the canopy, Tweedle Dum finally turned around and stomped his feet. “Why did you kill that toadstool, human?!”
Finally, some sort of reaction. Maybe now the little sprite would be a little more forth coming and understand Jackson wasn’t a typically oblivious human to be trifling with. “Oh. I thought you didn’t care about toads?”
“I don’t,” Tweedle huffed and then continued. “But you have a reckless, destructive side, even more than most humans. Tell me again, why I should be helping you get what you want? You clearly don’t value life, so I don’t think I should be associating with you.”
The question was valid, and Jackson realized he hadn’t really considered that. Why would any faerie be incented to help out a human, anyway? Then it struck him that there was something in the sprite’s early indication of the conditions of this particular Devil’s Night.
“Tell me, Tweedle, are you planning on killing me tonight?” Jackson asked reverently. “Are you planning to sacrifice me, or anything?”
Dum crossed his arms again and tapped one toe on the root upon which he stood. He pondered for what seemed to be several seconds before answering. “No. I’m not going to sacrifice you tonight.”
Then the sprite was grumpily trudging up the trail again.
“I’m not done asking you questions yet.”
“Yes you are,” called the little faerie.
“No I’m not,” Jackson found himself smiling a little despite himself. He was definitely being taken seriously. Now he had to be on his guard. “The words you used were, ‘I’m not going to…’ So, does that mean someone else intends to sacrifice me?”
“No!” Tweedle’s dander was getting up and he screamed the answer in irritation.
“So, you also said, ‘tonight’. Does that mean you’re planning on sacrificing me after midnight?”
“NO!” the faerie yelled again. Then it grumbled to itself, “Irksome, stupid human.”
“Alright,” Jackson continued, barely containing a bit of a giggle, “So is anyone going to kill me in the next twenty-four hours as something other than a sacrifice.”
“NO!” Tweedle Dum turned on the human. “Now there! No more questions. You said you were committed, now shut up and enjoy what we’re going to do to you!”
Jackson stopped and folded his own arms. “And what are you going to do to me?”
The sprite caught himself in his own irritation. He kicked at the dirt and then turned back up the trail again as he grumbled back at the human, “We’re going to torture you…as much as we possibly can without killing you.”
Jackson did laugh o
ut loud a little despite himself, though he recognized the faerie may be absolutely truthful on this point. He continued pressing never the less. “Will I get to see Imps though afterwards?”
“Oh, yes!” Tweedle giggled a little himself. “You’ll see Imps. That’s for sure.”
Jackson began tuning in his mental acuity. He sensed he was likely to be tested significantly worse than just the meadow before the night was over and he wanted to be ready for whatever a hodge-podge of faerie folk could put together. A few more minutes passed in silence as they neared the self-same rock face above the stream which the Johanssons had maneuvered near during the past summer.
“What’s next then, Tweedle?”
“The Old Man of the Forest would like to meet you.”
Jackson took many more steps pondering where he’d heard that term before. Then he remembered a documentary he’d seen on television once many years earlier. “You mean I’m meeting an Orangutan?”
Tweedle Dum turned on him indignant. “Now what the Devil’s Night is an Orangutan?”
“It’s sort of a funny looking ape, I guess,” Agent Davison replied. They then continued walking.
“No, you’re not going to meet yourself, ape-human. You’ll see. He’s a tree. The Old Man of the Forest is a tree, you idiot.”
So the faeries were having him meet a tree…and he was the idiot?
~~~
When the two had climbed another forty minutes or so and it was nearing 11:00PM Tweedle scurried down a ravine and splashed into a small creek at the bottom. He looked up at the human and gestured for him to join him in the little stream, and then he started walking up it staring straight at the trickling water.
Jackson was a little hesitant but he too made his way into the bottom of the cut with only a moderate loss of grace. He then started following the little faerie.