Dewey Decimal - Appetizer
Treats of Haunted Nettles
You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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“This thicket has to end eventually,” came a one-tone voice on one side of interlaced bracken fronds.
“Sure… after the… nettles… tax… half our… skin,” complained another from the same place.
A knotty pole of wood slashed the woven bracken. A candlelight sliver struck a patch of clear earth on the other side. Honeydew wriggled through the wall behind her whacking stick. Burs ran in zigzag lines and bunched like grapes across her robe; they seemed to irritate the golden-lily eyes with a bloodshot tint. Mr. Grey pushed the edges of the bracken tear gently wider, and followed her into the clearing with his candle-stick. He carried no burs. Instead he wore, over his head and shoulders, a cloak of ivy; the climbing kind.
Mr. Grey examined the tangle of plants enclosing them. The same tangle they’d plumbed for many tocks. He pinched his chin, then walked to a thin-looking barrier of rushes. As he parted them with the dirt-end of his candle-stick, he said, “You know, I haven’t noticed a clause in the visa applications regarding plant allergens. I might suggest it to Mr. York when we’re back in Starharbor.”
He broke through the rushes and stepped into another tiny plot of clear ground. Honeydew prowled in behind. She said, “I should hold our visa from now on.”
“To what purpose?”
“You’re careful. But I’m a fiercer protector, we both know. Any beast could be prowling behind the next weed.”
Honeydew cleaved at a Queen-Anne’s-Lace barrier. She gained only a fresh supply of that plant’s burs. Her stick thudded like it had struck dirt. One of the baby-skin-bark trees hid behind the flowering screen. They’d find no passage that way.
Mr. Grey pushed a clinging vine from his brow. “I believe that’s against King’s Law. The prime signatory on the document the proper holder,” He stepped to a thinner part of the thicket. He stopped when he saw ivy; the poison kind. He searched for a better route.
“I’m this vacation’s leader,” said Honeydew. She plucked one of Queen Anne’s burrs and flicked it back at that royal plant. “By decisions-made and ends-forwarded.”
“Don’t we each pull our weight when the time calls? No need to classify a ‘leader’.”
“Tom led before. The wrong way. Now I can take the… it’s like a steam swan,” said Honeydew with a stick-swish to emphasize the idea. “You remember our ride? How clumsy. Each trying to handle one side. Think of it that way. I’ve got a license for picking routes.” Honeydew swung a sideways slash out at another barrier, this one Cobbler’s Pegs. Behind it, she found another wide trunk.
Mr. Grey set his violin coffin on a thick, soft root. He held the candle flame to a patch of brambles. The light lay like melted butter over clusters of anvil-shaped berries. He plucked a fruit but didn’t swallow it. Mr. Grey said, “I also think it’s safest in the coffin. It’s a fragile swatch. A shame if it got stained in this overgrowth. Or if a thorn tore it from a pocket.”
Honeydew had reached for the coffin when Mr. Grey said the visa was snugly inside. She stopped, however, at Mr. Grey’s description; the tiny cloth, stained or torn. She shuffled around the coffin, like an old dog around a sleeping kitten, and walked next to him. Honeydew folded her arms at Mr. Grey and the fruits. He shrugged, so she snatched an ironberry from the bramble and bit. The anvil popped with a juicy spray between her teeth. After a few chews she spit.
“No good,” said Honeydew with a bitter grimace. “Tastes like blood-beans.”
“It did seem too easy.”
“If you’re the leader, point the way, Captain Grey.”
“I’m not-” Mr. Grey stopped and let the argument slide. “This way looks clear of nettles, burs, and ivy at any rate.” Mr. Grey reached back, grabbed his coffin up with his suitcase, and pushed through the bramble with the torch. Honeydew followed.
After a short, bushy rustle of their own, they came out into another bubble of breathing-room in the tangled thicket. More walls of rushes, brambles, bracken, nettles, ivy (climbing), ivy and oak and sumac (poisonous), beggarticks and cockleburs and puncturevines, and every other strain of thorned, prickly, ill-begotten shrubs and weeds and vines, closed in. Only the less-penetrable trees or, rarer yet, an occasional thumbtack of moonlight shining from another clearing, interrupted the weave.
As Mr. Grey and Honeydew entered this clearing - alike to each they’d entered before - neither was more or less dressed in burs or ivy. Both wished for a break in the long, wooded night. Both felt just as hopeless lost in the undergrowth maze. Both were hungry.
“We’ve been here before,” said Honeydew with a groansome click. She shook her bur-tangled hair. “I recognize that tree. We’re going in circles!”
Mr. Grey pondered the growth around them; the ivy vines clinging to his shoulders gave him an old, wise look. “But the plants don’t show signs of passage. And look,” he added, holding his lighted stick lower, “the soil has no tracks.”
“But the trees look alike.”
“Our only experience is with poetrees. Not much in the arboreal way back in Starharbor.”
“Meaning?”
“Nothing particular. Only that, well, they look similar to me too. But I’d say they’re different trees, than the ones you're thinking of, when we get down to it.”
“Maybe it’s an enchanted forest? Maybe someone’s playing a tune and a trick. The plants might move over our tracks.”
“Well…” Mr. Grey’s monotone sounded doubtful.
“Okay, fine. That’s absurd,” said Honeydew. She swished her stick through the rushes. “We might as well be circling.”
“What we should do is stop for a moment. Consider the circumstances.” Mr. Grey set his violin and suitcase down and stuck the bottom of his stick in the dirt. He held his hands up to the flame for warmth.
Honeydew plucked at the sticky plant pods on her robe. “You’re the one pushing us forward.” She sighed, set her own suitcase down, and prodded at the leaves and branches. Tocks passed; they stretched lungs and limbs in tired silence.
“Could we burn our way out?” suggested Honeydew after a moment’s thinking. “No, forget that. It’s too verdant, and too much risk. If I only had something sharper than this stick. A knife or a hatchet.”
“King’s law-” began Mr. Grey.
“Not a weapon then. An ice skate might work.”
“We could call for help.”
“Bet not. No one else’s fool enough to enter this tangle.”
“It has to end sometime.” Mr. Grey breathed determinedly through his nose. “We’ll just try to go straightmost.”
Honeydew nodded, but looked glumly at the weed walls. Mr. Grey untangled his anchor shawl from the ivy drapes. While folding it for his suitcase, he noticed not one bur sticking on the ship-weight wrap. He held it to Honeydew and said, “You could try wearing this. The fabric seems resistant to the grabbers and stickers.”
Honey gave a noncommittal click. “Forget it,” she said.
“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather be less laden with burs?”
“I’d rather not be in this to start with. But we’re here, and I’m coated. It’s no use now. Thanks but no thanks.”
Mr. Grey re-entangled the shawl with the gathered ivy coat. “Well like I said, we’ll just persevere. It has to end eventually.”
“I guess so.”
Honeydew lifted her suitcase and prodded the walls with her stick. Mr. Grey noticed her heart didn’t seem to be in the act. He considered going back on his earlier thought; letting her carry the visa. After all, did it matter who held it as long as they stuck together? But in the end, he thought it better keeping the cloth - their proof of identity, their passport through the Odormoats - safe in his coffin. Instead, Mr. Grey decided to inspire by example. He ignored the hunger in stomach, and the cold, and the woods’ close darkness, and stepped through the thin-looking wall of hedge.
Mr. Grey entered the next clearing; an ivy overgrown statue enchanted with existence. He found it occupied. There stood two ghosts. Mr. Grey saw they were ghosts - despite their wearing cardigan-style robes, as any non-ghost might - by their trademark ghostly translucence, like a shadow on the water.
The ghosts picked at a bramble as they gathered anvil-shaped berries. They didn’t notice Mr. Grey or the light of his candle. Honeydew entered quietly behind. The hairs on her neck stood pointed. Mr. Grey cleared his throat and said, “Pardon, hello.”
The ghosts, a man and woman, spun. The man yelled, “Evil Stepmothers! What a start.”
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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