Chapter 12
The Cripped Lion
Blue is the colour of the sun,
and nothing stops when everything is done.
“No one is ever truly beyond redemption,” Falco protested.
“Guilty!” The judge chewed his wig.
“The judge is the culprit!” screamed a pig.
“No,” hissed a vile creature. “Nobody is every truly beyond corruption.”
Then it bit his foot and faded away. The green bubbles that floated everywhere flew down and carried him away, and then he disappeared again. Such fun black holes were, no?
* * *
“Come on, kids, rise and shine!” Peppy whacked a clipboard against some metal piping until Katt and Bill emerged from the two makeshift infirmaries.
Katt stretched luxuriously and yawned. “I feel much better now,” she said, with a bit of a purr. “I’d feel even better if the beds in Great Fox weren’t so lumpy and ugly.” Then she shot a pointed glance at Slippy, who looked puzzled. “Ha! Joke! Funny! Get it?” she lied again.
Bill scratched his nose. “I feel better, too. Boy, that night life is something else, isn’t it?”
“Be that as it may,” Fox said primly, “It’s still time to go see to our duty.”
Everyone noticeably saddened at this, but they knew the truth of it as much as Fox did. After breakfast, Great Fox landed outside of Kamilton, or what was left of it.
It was nothing but a memory of a town now, and looking at its ghost was nightmarish and frightening. Fox felt the gorge rising as he looked at the bodies of those who had resided here in life; in death, who knew where they were? A building in the town square was still smoking, but the smoke did not billow and curl as most smoke does; it streaked upwards in one pallid, listless strand, rising straight up through the suddenly bleak sky.
Bill started to search for clues, but Katt could not. She stood there looking around, positively green, and then ran off into the cover of some boulders. Nobody called out to her to stop; they knew how she felt. They let her go without question.
Once there, she cried over the souls of those gone on before and those that would go on after, all at the cost of this childish feud over a system, the primal need for more power, sacrificing comfort and the miracle of life. She cried over the sorrow, blood and tears that made a war and the unfeeling monoliths of pure power that were behind them, watching animals with real feelings and basic needs give their all to a cause that would not reward them. She cried over the destruction of a city, a city that had been home to families, to children; a city that had been at the command of the Cornerian Army and had perished for it. Then she could not cry any longer. She forced herself not to care and went back out so it could start again.
* * *
A crowd of pink bunnies leaned out of the spiraling tower and sang children’s songs at him as the little blue fireflies swarmed about his face. Falco opened his mouth and sang along as the icy green sun rose above the yellow mountains, signaling the end of the day. Then the purple mists rose up from the ground and took him away again.
* * *
Gerdendrul was not one to give up easily. When the Falco clone had “died”, the feather remained. Now was its opportunity to start over with it.
Two minutes later, a new Falco walked obliviously out of the clearing, seemingly not noticing or caring that a vast stone rottweiler was watching him earnestly.
* * *
Kamilton had been built on the edge of a high cliff that overlooked the spreading valley in which Haransdale lay. It was Katina’s biggest valley; if you want it in terms you will know, the valley was as large as Rhode Island all told, and Haransdale nearly filled it.
There had been a bank, or perhaps a school, that perched on the edge of the cliff. Its strong supports had kept it safe while it was still in use. Now it would never be needed again.
Fox was exploring the interior of this, all the time moving in fear of the building’s impending collapse. But it was his job to do this, after all, and he wasn’t going to chicken out now. He didn’t know Gerdendrul had stolen around the outskirts of the town while his team was running around.
A subtle crack and Fox nearly jumped out of his skin. A timber went, and then two, and he threw himself out a window. Luckily, the window was on the land-facing side of the building, or Fox would have been out of luck quite fast.
He watched the building die once and for all, his mouth hanging open, tears threatening to spill over as he thought of the bodies that were still inside. As the supports fell apart and the building went over the edge, he nearly fainted. A full thirty seconds later, a faint crash was heard. It was followed almost immediately by another crash, but that was different. It was the crash of stone on fur, and Fox had the wind knocked out of him proper. Gerdendrul had smacked him a good one in his back, not strong enough to break his spine, but strong enough to send him flying. Then the bio-weapon fled as quickly as it had come.
Fox was nearly over the edge, and he scrabbled desperately in the soil. He lodged his foot into a little hollow he found, and his searching eyes found Bill a few meters away, having heard the building go down and come running.
“Bill---HELP ME!!!!” Fox dug his fingers deeper into the side of the cliff, but his foot slipped on the tiny outcropping and he slid farther down the edge. Bill had just had enough time to grab a rope that was lying by what must have been the school’s playground and secure it around a tree and himself before Fox went over the side completely, and luckily he caught Fox’s hand just in time. He tried to pull his friend up, but, unfortunately, the only tree he had enough rope to reach was a young sapling, and, also unfortunately, he wasn’t wearing his super-grip boots.
“AAGH!” Bill slipped, fell on his backside, and bumped down some rocks before hanging there, suspended by the thin rope.
“Great. Just greaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!” Fox screamed as he looked down at the ground and slid a few more inches down the side.
The awful grating noise of a rope rubbing against gravel met the ears of the motley pair, and Bill moaned. The weight of both of them was too much for the thin rope, especially when the thin rope was tied only to a flimsy, weak sapling. Fibers of it started to snap off, and Bill counted them, dread gnawing a hole in his stomach.
“Hey, no need to fear, Katt is here,” they heard a smooth, confident voice say. Today there was something underneath the voice, a tinge of sorrow, or maybe despair, but it was hidden very well. “I’ll get the roWHOOAAAA!!!” Katt strained as the rope snapped. Luckily, she’d grabbed it before it broke, but she wasn’t standing very far from the edge herself. “*unnhh* Maybe you two should *erg* cut down on the donuts?” she gasped, pulling as hard as she could. “It’s....the adrenaline...why I can hold you up....but I can’t *gasp* keep this up for long!” Katt puffed. Her heels dug into the extreme edge of the top and she tried desperately to keep her balance. “SOMEONE HELP ME!!!”
Peppy had come running as soon as he’d heard Fox fall, and now he arrived. The long loose ends of Katt’s sash were blowing in the wind, so Peppy grabbed them and pulled as hard as he could.
“Ouch! OUCH! That hurts!! Well, at least I’m not down there with Tweedledum and Tweedledumber,” Katt winced. She managed a weak smile. “Oh well, I knew this sash would come in handy someday if I wore it long enough. URRRGH!!”
Peppy breathed hard, not thinking to mention that she had only bought the sash two days prior. “SLIPPY!! Get yer butt over here and HELP US!”
“Whu--? Okay, here I come! OH MAH GAWSH!” Slippy galloped over and gasped when he saw what was going on.
“STOP GAWKING, YOU FOOL, AND HELP US!” Bill screeched at him.
Slippy snatched the ends of Peppy’s long coat and yanked hard. “You don’t need to get angry! .....Man, I wish Falco were here!”
“Well, he’s not!” snapped Fox irritably. You can’t really blame him; speaking as one who is seconds from death, he was actually extraordinarily kindly. “Do you think you can hold us up??”
Bill grimaced, dangling uselessly from the rope. Small pieces of rock coming loose from the cliff face bounced off his jacket as Katt struggled for a firm foothold.
“Ooohhhhh nooooo!” Peppy groaned as Slippy fell heavily on his rear and the foolish looking train traveled a few feet. Katt went over the side but managed to curl her tail around Peppy’s neck and pull herself back up as Slippy scrambled clumsily to his feet. Meanwhile, Peppy choked as Katt’s tail tightened, then gasped and made an odd screaming noise in his throat.
“Oohh, I’m SORRY!” Katt said. “I didn’t know that was you...” She made an apologetic face as she regained her foothold and resumed heaving on the rope with all her might.
But it was to no avail, for they slowly crept closer to the edge. Katt bent over the side, off-balance, teetering only millimeters away from certain demise. Fox was sweating as he peered at the ground, who knows how many kilometers below. He tried to anchor himself a little by pressing his foot into a small dent in the rock.
“AAAHHHHHHH!” Katt screamed as someone grabbed her and pulled her up. Her death grip on Bill’s rope didn’t loosen, so up came Fox and Bill as well. Katt’s face, flushed from the effort, twisted into shock and then pure joy as she turned around and saw that Falco stood there.
“Eee!” she shrieked. “You saved us!”
“Aww, it was nothing,” he said with mock humility.
They didn’t have time to celebrate his return. Five seconds were enough time for Gerdendrul to arrive on the scene, and it lost no time enfolding all those that it could in its liquid blanket. Katt’s joy turned to terror as her nightmare came true one more time. Fox went under as well, and Slippy whimpered as his head sank below.
Falco, Bill, and Peppy jumped back dumbly, their eyes fixed on Gerdendrul. Three mounds that could only have been their friends were raised up as the puddle seeped over the edge and landed with a splat thirty seconds later, apparently still wholly intact, with Katt, Fox, and Slippy still alive as well on their pedestals, then continued its journey, although it was too far away to be seen clearly by those that were left now.
Panicking, they turned tail and fled, trying to find the quickest way down into the valley so they could save their friends. Something inside them told them it was all over, but they couldn’t believe it. After all, nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it, so they fooled themselves for lack of anyone else to fool.
* * *
Falco pranced about on the ceiling along with his new friends, large spindly stalks of something eerily like celery. Someone made a visual scream as a puffy pink noise reverberated through the condominium. Then they knocked him down with buckets, and Pietro danced around the corner in a business suit and a straw hat.
Someone appeared with a camera and said, “Smile, this is for Life!” and took their picture, then distributed free magazines. Falco smiled as he flipped through his, looking for the article on fluorescent lights. Suddenly one exploded in his face and he appeared back in his Arwing, flying through a celestial rainbow of different coloured cows and bunnies, navigating through rips and tears that suddenly appeared. A rock went straight through the glass of the windshield and knocked him in the head. Then all was silence, and he could see lilies shooting each other with arrows. Each time a lily was shot, it flew straight up and did a dance number, so far as he could tell. Then he could tell that everything had finished what it had set out to do, so the black hole took him somewhere else. Life is a highway down in a chasm, but someday we’ll make it up to a sunlit place...
To chapter 11 | To finale |
