The final of Tales from the Dark Mountain by Patricia Johnson - at least for now perhaps...

This is the last of the series of modern fairy tales by Patricia Johnson from her Dark Mountain series. The others have been posted on this blog here, here and here. All stories copyright Patricia Johnson.

Bendy Boys

Far away on the other side of the world a village rests on the face of a dark mountain. Early every morning when the villagers awake from their night time dreams they hurry out into the sunlight. Dressed for a day of work, they walk together to their fields.

The mountain is so high that its highest peaks disappear in the clouds. If anyone was to want to go to the village, they would have to walk for days up from the foothills below. The people who live there have their houses and their fields on a little plain that is level and fertile with a mountain spring running through it. They think they are lucky to live there.       

The villagers plant their crops and water and wait and one day the heads of little boys pop up out of the earth.  The villagers are surprised; they didn’t plant little boys. They already have their own children. The little boys are different to the village children. These boys are growing out of their fields. Their little heads wear  caps of a brilliant blue that fall softly over their eyes, and their eyes are  bright.          

The villagers are so happy and so proud, but the boys are buried in the fields and they must grow  before they can walk. Their bodies are unformed below the surface of the ground, but above ground their bright eyes are very bright indeed. They are almost popping out of their heads, always watching, learning and wondering.

One day when they go to the fields to see if the children have grown, the villagers  find their shoulders have popped out of the ground and growing from the shoulders are very long bendy arms. The little shoulders and long bendy arms wear little blue jackets that match their caps -  their caps which, because the boys have grown, no longer fall over their bright eyes. The villagers stand on the edge of the fields, pointing and admiring the children.   

Whack! One of those long bendy arms has reached out and grabbed a man. The child turns the man upside down and shakes him.  One two three, like someone shaking salt onto his dinner he shakes him and on three the long bendy arm bangs the man’s head onto the ground. He goes in up to the shoulders and his body stands up like stick pushed into the ground.         

The villagers all begin to run in different directions but they are too late. They hope the young monsters will just go away but long bendy arms are scooping them up everywhere, turning them upside down  and shaking them. Bright eyes are brimming with laughter as the villagers are banged like nails into the ground. There is uproar, there is mayhem in the fields. And then it is quiet.                                                                                                                

The  children erupt out of the ground like olives being squeezed out of a narrow bottle top, laughing and calling to each other in excited voices, ‘we won! we won!’ They dance and throw their blue caps in the air and fall about laughing at the way they land. They gather together in the centre of the field and dance a mad dance. The go faster and faster until they are out of breath and their long bendy arms are intricately entangled with each other. They pat their friends on the back but their arms are so long they don’t know who they are patting.

‘Bendy Boys! Bendy Boys!’ they cry. ‘We are the Bendy Boys.’ They begin to dance again. But there is trouble this time. Their arms are so entangled that boys keep falling down. They begin to cry. Boys turn red. They try to punch other boys, but their fists are a long way away; they cannot hit the boy they intend to. Instead they hit other boys. Those boys hit back. Long bendy arms are throwing punches everywhere., Little blue jackets are covered in dirt. There are split lips and bloody noses. There are all sorts of wounds.                                                

Blood starts to flow. It is everywhere. Blood, blood, blood. It mingles with the tears of the boys who are just caught up in the long bendy arms. The boys turn pale, their blue jackets covered in red, as their blood pours into the field. This does not stop them fighting. They go on and on until they have no blood left and fall onto the ground. They are a blue mountain of legs and heads and long bendy arms, silent, motionless. The boys cannot be separated as they are so entwined; they are all one mountain of blue.                                                                    

The villagers are still stuck upside down in the ground. They are like stiff pegs that stand tall and straight, that circle the mountain of blue. The wind blows, the mountain of blue shifts and sinks a little. Days pass and then one morning ‘Bluuurk!’ Straight up, high in the sky, pops one of the villagers and when he comes down, he is upright and smiling. He is alive. ‘Bluuurk!’ Another villager pops up, and then another and another. ‘Bluuurk! Bluuurk! Bluuurk!’ It is happening everywhere and soon the air is filled with flying villagers, somersaulting in the air and landing right side up and smiling.                                               

The villagers are so happy to be back. They look at each other, laughing over the pile of blue and begin to walk in a circle around and around the Bendy Boys. Around and around, tramping, swinging their arms in unison, they march. And as they march, they make a trench in the ground. They wear down a path and the ground where they walk gets lower and lower, and soon the blue pile of Bendy Boys is high above their heads. The villagers keep walking in a circle, round and round. Suddenly they hear a noisy scraping sound.

With difficulty they climb and clamber out of the deep trench. The circle of blue in the middle, looking like a cake that has risen in the oven, slowly turns and falls to one side. It stands on its curved edge and like a wheel begins to roll down the mountainside. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, it careers downward, a giant blue coin slicing through the thick forest of trees and right out of sight.        

When it is really gone and can be seen no more, the villagers look at the middle ground, underneath where that blue pile had been. What they see there is a great mound of gold coins, hundreds and thousands of them. They rush to the center and sink amongst them, each holding a coin up to the light to examine it, showing the coins to their neighbours and wondering at their good fortune.                                                                                         

It is a pool, a pond of gold. As the sunlight bounces off it, the light changes and a soft glow settles over everything. The villagers  are enjoying the feeling that they are swimming in gold, when they are startled to hear a great rattle like a huge bucket of nails being tipped out. The coins are falling away, and there is a rustle and a shaking of scales as a great head emerges from the centre of the pool of gold. A dragon’s head!! Silver head shining against the gold, it’s evil eyes heavy-lidded and unblinking, the dragon swivels round and with a great jerk the head darts skyward on a long neck.                                                                

The villagers panic and run up into the hills. The huge eyes of the dragon watch them until they are all gone, all hidden by the trees. The eyes flash malevolently as the head moves around the edge of the pool, gathering in the gold. The villagers are very afraid. They understand that they have disturbed something that they had no right to disturb. They pray the dragon will not attack them for their foolishness.                                                                 

The silver head glints in the sun. The eyes bore into the eyes of each of the villagers, sending a warning of unmistakable intent. Then very slowly the head spins, the neck begins to be swallowed by the earth, the gold pours  into a cavern of enormous size below, and the dragon and all of the gold sinks below the surface of the ground. There is no trace left of all that gold, of all that has happened. Not one coin shimmers in the sunshine.                             

The villagers are safe. And they have much to say to each other. But they have had enough; they are sick of adventures. They are ready to go into the mountain. They walk along gloomy tunnels, resting and travelling, and resting again. When they have gone far enough they lay down and cover themselves in furs deep in the earth where it is dark and quiet. For years the seasons come and go. They are part of the mountain that does not change and as they sleep the strength of the mountain enters their minds and anchors their dreams.