BLEAGH, GARRRGH, AND EUEUW

Meg found herself standing on the spot where Grietje had burned alive and knew that some traces of her friend must still be there under the scorched cobblestones, even though the snow, rain, and sunshine had worked hard to remove them. The square had no crowds in it today, just a flutter of people getting ready for Carnival. Meg knew a few by name, and they waved greetings at her as they hurried by. Best not to be seen here, standing alone, she thought. Why was she here, anyway? That was the question that let the names in, all those strange and difficult names that now echoed in her stomach.

“Not here,” she or they said. “Not here.”

She looked up above the squat houses and the rampant church spire. She looked past the mass of the monastery and up to Das Kagel. And the names seemed louder inside her. She left the square, the streets, and walked past the allotments and the gardens into the fields, where she could feel the mountain without anyone knowing. There was something in or on Das Kagel that needed to make itself known. She stopped and sat by a small brook. The sound of the water eased her anxiety. The names needed to come out. She looked around and could see only a distant figure, well out of earshot, ploughing the land. As she spat out each name, she tried not to hear them. Occasionally she would stand and look about her to be certain that she was alone before continuing. She did not realize that she was saying far more names than poor Grietje could have had time to say before the smoke and the pain stopped her.

Meg started dredging more names from somewhere deep inside her.

“Vinegar Joe,” she called. “Elek. Gef.”

“Here, Mistress.”

She spun around to confront a weasel wearing a yellow hat. Was this the same thing that had spoken to her in the garden? The one she had so upset by explaining that it was not a member of her family? But this one was bigger and had a different air about it, a different kind of personality. Perhaps they had only one hat that they passed around.

“Were you in my garden? Did we speak before?” she asked, tentative.

“Might have.”

There was no doubt in its voice, just a cocky playfulness.

“What do you want of me?” continued Meg.

“Nothing yet.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you just called me.”

Meg was horrified.

“I…I just said those names to get them out.”

“And you did. We are all here.”

“All?”

“All the names you called.”

“No! No, I didn’t mean to.”

Gef lifted its tiny yellow humanlike hands palms upward in a shrug—the same gesture of baffled resignation that another Woebegot had made to her. The one she had sliced in half. A terrible cold guilt flooded over her. These things had intelligence and speech!

“Can you all talk?” she dribbled out.

“Nah, not many, but they are learning. None of ’em as good as me cos I’ve been here longer.”

Meg’s mouth was making small gulping movements like a fish, but her amazement was beginning to settle.

“They understand more than they can say. How many languages do you speak, Mistress? At the last count, my own tally was up to nine. There will be many more on the other side of this place.”

Meg had no idea what this creature was talking about, but she thought she caught a glimmer of very human condescension in its expression as it finished speaking. Then there was a rustling in the tall grasses and reeds nearby that made her jump, and she remembered what it said about them all being nearby.

“Tell them to go away. Please!”

“Just talks to me then?”

“Yes, but please make them go away.”

Gef let out a ricochet of agitated squeals.

“All done, Mistress, just us for now.”

“For now?”

“You called; we came.”

“But I don’t want you.”

“Thens you gonna have to tell ’em yourself, each one.”

Meg could not believe what was happening to her.

“I can fix that in time.”

“But I don’t want to do this! Can’t they just go away?”

“If you don’t dismiss ’em proper-like, then they will never go away.”

“What must I do?”

“Understand.”

Meg hung drab and exhausted at the prospect.

“I think you need to meet some of the others in the Tower, the hill.”

“In Das Kagel?”

“Mostly,” replied Gef as it turned, beckoning Meg to follow.


Two hours later, they were inside the mountain in tunnels that were never made for Meg’s proportions. It was pitch-black and smelled of the sea and of cellars. Gef led the way with a fish lantern. He had given Meg her own, which was more rotten and therefore brighter than his. Like all animals, Gef had a deep fear of fire, so phosphorescence was the only alternative for those that were not nocturnal. Many of the tunnels used by the Woebegots were impassable for Meg, but fortunately they had found ways into the taller, arched structures that had lost their true shape to decay and ruin over the centuries.

The last thing Meg ever suspected was that the mountain was hollow, but as they traveled deeper and deeper, her initial trepidation was overtaken by wonder at its gigantic strangeness. Gef stopped and signaled Meg to be quiet and watch. There was sound and movement ahead. Three shadows could be seen digging in the shadows and sifting through rubble.

“These three are blind and are looking for their names and other words,” whispered Gef, so close to Meg’s ear that she felt his whiskers tickle her face, which made her giggle and blush in the darkness.

The rotting-fish light showed that the weasel disapproved of such behavior, but he did not comment on it; instead he cupped some of the broken wall and earth in his yellow hand and gave it to her to inspect.

In this place, the stone and earth had been crushed with rotting paper and parchment, what was left of decomposing books and scrolls and their wooden shelves. The tremendous weight of the collapsed floors above had compressed them into a dense material. Although solid and impossibly thick, the substance was porous and resembled gritty frozen chocolate, or stale, atrophied cake. Word had spread among his kind, explained Gef, that the application and usage of this stuff induced states of knowing and development in the art of speech, especially in those creatures that possessed mouths.

Bleagh, Garrrgh, and Eueuw had found their names here by eating quantities of this material. Bleagh had the advantage of being faintly luminescent. A cold blue glow rose from the short feathers that covered most of his egg-shaped body and the small patch of his bald head just above his long, pointed beak. He pecked with care and diligence like a heron. Garrrgh was less delicate and shoveled the mudlike stone into his wide-open mouth, which looked like a baggy purse. Eueuw licked the nutrients of wisdom after snuffling the particles loose with her flat head and paddlelike hands and feet, much like the duck-billed platypus she almost resembled.

They were eating their understanding, which had nothing to do with learning through experience and the accumulative lessons of cause and effect. Those abstract properties did not abide with them. They thought they could learn their names by chewing on great mouthfuls of the stony paste until words and ideas began to be released, but its insufferable taste made it impossible to swallow. So, after a tolerable amount of mastication, they spit it out with great force, not unlike the later practice of chewing tobacco or betel nuts.

Gef explained these details to Meg so that she might learn how to communicate.

“If the juice obtained in this process gave them their names, why did they choose such ugly ones?” she asked.

“This is the great mistake I mentioned. Each one receives a proper title but cannot say it. Instead, the chewers hear one another spitting and misunderstand these loud expulsions to be the exclamations of their new names. Thus, Bleagh, Garrrgh, and Eueuw became the names by which each recognizes the other, even though their real names sound quite different. In fact, a certain Latin loftiness emerged from the mixture, so that Bleagh thought his name was Phlenaphonion Candidius and Garrrgh considered his to be Ugax Chrempsicholicus. Eueuw was still a little uncertain of the magnitude of his name. Needless to say, this process leads to much confusion, especially when some gather enough confidence to call out the name of another, which, when heard by the others, is then considered a declaration of the speaker’s name.

“The only good thing is that when mobs of them spew up chunks of words and totally misunderstand one another, it is much like the behavior of your people in hostelries and public houses. In many ways, this pleases most of the Woebegots and further establishes their belief in their similitude to you, whom they call the Great Ones.”

“This is all very difficult to understand. How will I be able to un-call them?” asked Meg.

“You won’t have to, because these are not those ones.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“To show you that it is not going to be easy, working together.”

“But I don’t want to work together.” Meg was getting angry and tired.

“O but you will.”