The next morning Billy awoke to the soft stab of morning sun and a breakfast of cold mutton he must have tucked underneath one of his teats long ago. He was groggily wiping his mouth when a broad-shouldered figure slapped what wound up being his inner thigh.
“Ready to roll, Billy?” Wide receiver Greg Lewis!
Billy hopped on Lewis’s back with a sigh. “Ready as I’ll ever be, Ocho-Tres.”
The great creature whooped and sprinted to catch up with his teammates. Wind whistled past the wobbit’s caulifloral ears as he nestled down among Lewis’s abundant triceps.
The team made for the hills, sprinting and leapfrogging one another, and occasionally retrieving Doc, who kept falling headfirst off his Eagle, painfully reminding everyone of the dangers of chronic head trauma in football as well as the fact that Doc existed. But then it was time to put the fun aside and return to YOLO-as-usual. The Eagles wished them a strong season and headed back to their locker room, where ice baths, hot towels, and lukewarm cheerleaders awaited.
“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks!” exclaimed Dumbledalf, though it was unclear to whom he was exclaiming. “Catch the queefle!” he added, making it all too clear that he was just exclaiming for the fun of it.
The band marched onward. They crossed a stream and a rock and then another stream, which turned out to be, technically, the same stream. Exhausted, they stopped at the next same rock to regroup. Dumbledalf cleared his throat.
“It appears it’s way-parting time,” he began heavily. “You must act as you see fit, and I—I shall act.”
At this he snapped on two white gloves, smeared black mud on his face, and began to sing the opening bars of “Toot, Toot, Tootsie! Goodbye!”
Ballin and Drawlin quickly put a stop to this new career.
“Very well. Still, I didn’t anticipate coming even this far with you. This is, after all, Hairy’s adventure.” He turned his twinkling, disturbingly exaggerated eyes on the wobbit. “All I wanted was to see you through puberty. Now that I know how short and weird looking you wind up, it is time I take care of other business.”
The Little People halfheartedly begged him to stay, though inwardly they were all a bit relieved to have a break from the old man, who had recently taken to referring to them as “Dumbledalf’s Armoire” and stuffing his extra hats in their mouths.
“. . . but first I will stay with you for a couple more chapters, because I have completely forgotten what that other business was,” the wizard continued. He sensed it involved elves and was incredibly important and interesting, so important and interesting, in fact, that someone producing a bloated movie adaptation of their quest could just make it up later. “Oh well, breakfast time!”
Despite it being well into evening, Dumbledalf went on to outline their options in this land: a Denny’s, a nice Greek diner, an IHOP, or Björn’s house. Once the Little People realized he had stopped talking, they burst into debate, discussion, and a little bribery, none of which I will detail here.I They finally decided to go to Björn’s house, because the bathroom would probably be cleaner there, and they all really needed to go by now. Besides, IHOP in Widdle Wearth stood for International House of Putridity, and Denny was more of a sci-fi guy.
Dumbledalf soon slowed to a walk alongside the wobbit. “I care about you very much, Hairy. Which is why I will tell you in advance of our destination, do not stroll the corridors at night. Also, look what happens when I have important things to say.”
Billy found this to be sound advice. Wobbits have trouble both with strolling and with corridors, since they fall over doing the former and can’t eat any part of the latter.
The sun was doing its final spiral down the great drain of the sky when Doc shrieked. Everybody assumed he was just having another one of his day terrors until they noticed a swarm of suspiciously hairy bumblebees in a clump of suspiciously antlered plants.
“If one of those things were to prick me, I’d swell to twice my size,” moaned Loin. The others held out for something promisingly raunchy, but gave up upon remembering that Loin had very serious and life-threatening allergies.
A pregnant pause followed, which Dumbledalf soon aborted: “We have reached the driveway to Björn’s house. You secondary characters should wait while Hairy and I go on ahead.”
A line of horses approached them in the driveway. Like the bees and plants, however, there was something strange about these horses, like the fact that they were all seven feet tall and wore comically large top hats. Still, each one of them was clearly labeled “Normal Horsey Horse,” and horse-labelers had never lied to Billy before, so he put aside his doubts and prepared himself to meet the man of the house. It was then that he realized the man of the house was already standing in front of him, though he was so dark and brooding that Billy had mistaken him for a mere shadow of the house.
“You are excused,” Björn grunted to his beasts. “Go and do some normal horse things.” Billy silently marveled at the intriguing enigma of the man before him. He had jet-black hair, so black that it almost seemed unnatural. His skin was a deep, oranged tan and, even though he stooped, he seemed as though he must be nearly twice as tall as the safe and reliable car parked outside his house.
Björn turned to Billy, sensing the wobbit’s growing depression. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“I am Dumbledalf,” said the smiling wizard. “And this is Hairy.” He raised his eyebrows significantly at the giant man.
Björn adjusted his definitely real hair.
“Hairy,” repeated Dumbledalf.
Björn cast his unremarkable, dark brown gaze over the rest of the Little People, who had, of course, completely ignored Dumbledalf’s command.
“I only harbor refugees from Moblins,” Björn grunted. Everyone became rather dejected at hearing this until Drawlin explained what “refugee” meant.
Dumbledalf acquainted Björn with the true purpose of their quest while the others entered Björn’s estate. Their host followed them in. With a clap of his great hands, fluorescent lights turned on and several massive dogs appeared from the adjoining massive-dog storage room.
“Bork bork bork!” said the dogs.
“Bark bark bark!” corrected Björn, as he adjusted their dog costumes and hurried them out of the room.
The not-dogs soon returned with great dishes of meatballs and berry parfaits on their strong backs. The weary travelers then had such a feast as they had not enjoyed since L. Ron’s hospitality in Livinwell. As they ate, Björn swilled vodka from a secret flask and gave them advice for surviving the impending dark forest of Jerkwood and its enchanted river.II The Little People ignored what he said, having grown too frustrated by this point with their futile attempts to assemble their chairs.
It is a queer feature of Björn’s part of the woods that the sun sets only briefly in summer months. It has something to do with how the sky works, and after that it is a total mystery. Thus, Billy had a hard time sleeping that night. He tried counting sheep, but there weren’t more than a half dozen outside. He tried counting calories, but he loved each of them too dearly to objectify them like that. He tried to let the deep and very normal rhythm of the woods lull him to sleep, but he slowly realized that ear-shattering, thumping bass isn’t actually all that easy to sleep to. Then he remembered Dumbledalf’s warning. What did happen in these woods at night?
“Oh, Billy, you really do have some Gram fat globules in there among the Bagboy,” he thought to himself as he crept curiously to the window. He wiped the fog off the glass and watched for the mere seconds he had before his gaping mouth would fog the window back up again.
And what was that beat in the woods but the pounding of House music! And there in the very center of the multicolored light-up dance floor, among the fog machines and strobe lights, leading the revelry—their host! Björn would have been nearly unrecognizable if his original disguise had not been so transparent and terrible. He bobbed to the music with Nordic efficiency, his sculpted body raised to its full height and his beautiful blond hair let free from its mousy prison. His eyes were bluer than blue, and so bright that they seemed to light up the entire forest. Yes, Björn was a skin-changer, able to wash off the layers of bronzer he normally caked on to reveal the pale, luminescent flesh below. Nor did he revel alone: all the bumblebees and horses and plants and dogs had shed their sunglasses and trench coats, and Billy could now see them for what they were. They were moose, great and noble beasts that had converged on this spot to shake a well-subsidized and high-standard-of-living leg along with their Swedish master.
The next morning a visibly hungover Björn saddled up his most convincing ponies and sent their group off with provisions and good wishes. Billy remained quiet about what he saw, even when the Little People speculated about the glitter covering Björn’s entire body.
“I too will leave you here,” said Dumbledalf then, much to their elated protestation. “Good-bye! Remember to never be centaurs.” And off he wandered.
The rest rode north in somber silence to the fringe of great Jerkwood. As they marched single file into the gloom of the woods, it grew to be pitch-black. Not the pitch-blackness you and I have experienced in our comfortable bourgeois lives, but rather a fantasy-novel sort of pitch-blackness. The Little People could barely discern the path by day. At night they ate their meager rations around a lantern fueled by extra bacon grease Billy had found between his bacon.
Worse still, the darkness only amplified the voice of the forest. Quietly but aggressively, it blew through the branches of the trees and just acted like a total jerk.
“Look at this, a kindergarten field trip,” it said smugly the first night. “Is that a beard, or just a hairy bib your mommy makes you wear?” Hearing this, Buffer punched wildly at the darkness, but the voice of Jerkwood only chuckled.
“Perhaps you will prevail in this journey after all,” it commented one night at dinner, as Billy prepared to bite into his meager supper. “But you will never stop being four feet tall.”
Indeed, all the wildlife in that morbid place bore marks of Jerkwood’s bullying. The adventurers’ daily slog took them past drooping flowers and moss-covered rocks gone prematurely bald.
One day, at last, they reached a roaring current. A river! And a boat on the other shore! What a jerk this forest was.
Billy and the Little People set to scheming. No one could recall Björn’s warnings about the water’s enchantments, but they remembered it had the effect of dampening clothes. Determined thus to reel in the boat, they tied a hook to a rope and told Beefer to throw it into the vessel. Beefer nodded feebly, as the forest had brought out all the insecurities he had spent his entire life overcompensating for.
He gave it a hurl and missed.
“Nice shot,” came the smug voice of Jerkwood. “Do you even lift?”
Incensed, Beefer decided to go heavy or go home, and his inability to do the latter was kind of the whole point of this quest. He tied the rope around Doc and hoisted him above his head. He then spun around several times and flung his unnecessary friend out across the water, thus simultaneously inventing the sport of midget tossing and the art of involuntary scuba diving. This time the rope clattered promisingly into the boat, and Doc fell with a slightly more worrying clatter amongst the sharp rocks on the other side. “Complete success!” hollered Beefer. Billy and several Little People joined him on the rope and hauled as Whorey, Slorey, and Kourtney did nothing and Sorkinshield did nothing importantly.
The boat didn’t move! It must have been tethered to the other bank, which is literally the only reason a rowboat would be staying in one place in the middle of a large flowing river.
“No pulling-out method will ever work!” ejaculated Groin despairingly. “I can go into the physics if you’d like.”III
The Little People are a feisty and persistent people, however, with a fairly serious Napoleon complex (and an even more serious Oedipus complex, which explains why it was so important to them to force their way back into the dark, enclosed cavern where they were born). At last they brought the boat to shore and crossed. But just as the last of them were reaching the other side, Buffer noticed the prone figure of Doc, and in reaching to hoist him out, lost the boat.
“No turning back now,” remarked Billy. Until then it had always been a legitimate possibility.
The others were trying in vain to awaken the still bleeding Doc. They concluded that the jagged rocks he had hit his head on must have been enchanted with some sort of strange sleeping spell.
“He looks cute when he sleeps,” observed Slorey. “Look at him spasm! It’s like he’s dancing in his dreams.” They all agreed that it was adorable and decided to wipe the foam from his mouth and keep going.
Suddenly Fili stopped dead along the path. “Say, is that a bluesy concert poster pegged to that tree?” They squinted at the red oak.
“You’re a bluesy concert poster,” spat back Jerkwood, then coughed quietly. Heckling could be a difficult business, even for a forest. Disregarding the crickets chirping in the background, they all agreed it was a concert poster.
With music dancing in their minds and filling their hearts and bloating their souls, they soon became convinced they could hear just such a concert in the distance. They would run toward it, glimpsing a lithe figure in a shining cape performing for an arena of jiving fans—only for the scene to vanish before their eyes. The letdown of these hallucinations was horrible, especially for Doc, who was still unconscious.
What eventually awoke Doc, of all things, was an old wobbit song sung by Billy. It just so happens that most wobbit songs are orchestrated for one voice and one sword hit against a big rock. Really, they are just a sequence of swallowing noises over arrhythmic clanging sounds, but they were loud and discordant enough to wake up Doc with a start.
“You and I just saved a Little Person through the power of music alone!” gasped Billy proudly to his little blade before sheathing it. “I must call you Sting.”
His heroism had barely sunk in before a huge spider dropped into their midst. I mean, seriously, this thing was massive. Sorkinshield, Fili, Kiwi, Beefer, Buffer, Loin, and Groin blanched. Whorey, Kourtney, and Slorey blanched to the roots of their tans, which wasn’t far. Drawlin and Ballin blanched just like anybody else would, because why wouldn’t they? Doc, having just awoken, was not allowed to blanch for three weeks.
Billy blanched hardest, for this was, like, pretty much the biggest spider he had ever seen. At least an inch and a half across, legs akimbo, it treaded softly toward them with death in its eyes and at least enough poison in its fangs to make you itch for a week or so. Not even a small dead leaf in its path could slow down this monstrosity for more than a minute, and as it drew closer, the Little People held an urgent council to decide who should face it down.
“Beefer! Buffer!” clamored Loin and Groin.
“How about you pipsqueaks instead?” snarled Buffer, who had always felt intimidated by creatures who could perform more simultaneous arm curls than him.
“Me? I would have no clue where to stick it! And I have no protection!” cried Loin defensively.
“Seriously, do you not hear that setup?” shot back Beefer. “You have one job on this journey!”
Whorey smiled, feeling at home in petty debate.
“Maybe we should send Fili in there, since Kiwi can carry on their mutual genes even in the event of his death,” suggested Slorey practically.
“We are not brothers,” sputtered Fili.
“Don’t forget me, losers!” interjected the voice of Jerkwood.
“Sadly, they don’t realize they are two hundred paces from the forest’s edge,” thought yours truly.
Just then Kourtney shrieked. The spider had crawled up her ankle. She passed immediately into a dead faint. Refusing to be outdone, Whorey and Slorey released a fragrance called Dead Faint and then passed out as well.
Beefer, Buffer, Loin, and Groin too lay on the ground, having knocked each other senseless. Sorkinshield and Drawlin were busy restraining a still-sputtering Fili, and the spider seized this opportunity to weave a web between Sorkinshield’s and Drawlin’s shoulders. Billy and Ballin rushed to their rescue but got another spiderweb all over their faces, giving them a deathly scare. Meanwhile, confused by all the hubbub, Kiwi decided to calm his nerves by eating the spider.
Before anyone could appreciate this anticlimax, into the clearing burst a colorful gang.IV They gathered up the prostrate figures of Billy and the Little People and bound them in rope. Kiwi cocked his head curiously, which they thought was cute so they took him too.
Had they been in any state, our adventurers would have recognized their captors as figures from their strange earlier visions; but they were not in any state. They were in a forest, and soon they would be in a kingdom.
I For greater descriptions of this and other deleted scenes, see The Harvard Lampoon’s The Similar-illian, a book still seeking a publisher.
II Go around the impending dark forest of Jerkwood and its enchanted river.”
III v2 = v02 + 2a (x – x0).
IV Do not fear, dear reader. I know exactly how to structure a story. Every word here is written with the knowledge that I will one day expand this children’s bedtime tale into two thousand pages of complex adult literature.