Long ago there was a boy named Oric who lived near the ocean, and one night he came upon a floating orb of liquid and he touched it and was spirited to another land, a magical realm made exclusively of water, a place where all of his dreams could come true. In this realm, he created a hummingbird and dubbed it Potoweet. That hummingbird was I, but I was not like other hummingbirds, for I was given the power to speak and I possessed knowledge of the magical realm. I knew not where this knowledge originated, only that it was born into me. I shared the knowledge with Oric. I became his friend and guide.
Within the magical realm, Oric created a village that he called the Hutch, and beyond the Hutch, he created fields and stone walls, a dirt road along which to come and go. He populated the Hutch with friendly and happy souls who attempted, but sometimes failed, to lead virtuous lives. Oric adored playing pretend, and every afternoon he staged theatrical performances on a raised platform in the middle of the Hutch. The people cherished the performances and they bestowed endless praise upon Oric.
Oric, however, soon grew discontented. He had dark feelings within him, resentment toward his loyal creations. He knew better than to let such feelings be known and risk the loss of their adoration, so he constructed an underground fortress, a stone palace where he could be alone on occasion. He hid the fortress beneath a sea of blood, so that the people of the Hutch would keep their distance. Of course, I knew of this fortress, for Oric shared all of his secrets with me.
“Before I created the Hutch, back in the world where I was born, there was a sea beast that died among the rocks in a cove,” Oric confided to me one evening. “It had many legs, slick and twisty appendages that when sliced open were hollow inside, like a bone without its marrow, like tunnels that connect faraway places. This beast has haunted me and haunts me still, for I imagine it is the sort of monster that steals people away from their slumber. If one is haunted, then one must be master of that which haunts him, and so I would like to have a similar beast in this fortress for me to command as I wish.”
Thus and therefore a giant mass of hollow tentacles was born upon the ceiling of the fortress, and Oric gave himself control of the tentacles by way of a series of ropes. Pull a rope and a tentacle would stretch to unimaginable lengths and snatch up animals and people from far away. Now, as I’ve made clear, Oric was a god and had the power to smite using nothing but a simple wish, but it was a power he had always wielded judiciously. He believed in gracing his creations with a certain amount of free will. The tentacles, however, brought out a sinister side in him.
If someone in the Hutch angered him or annoyed him, whether by word, action, or simple gesture, then Oric would retreat underground. He would use the tentacles to capture that person and to bring them to the fortress and set them upon a pedestal. Whilst reclining in a tortoiseshell swing above the pedestal and disguising himself in a red cloak and a mask made of goat horns, Oric would play the part of a wraith.
“You have been wicked,” he would say, or, “You have been selfish,” and the people would grovel, weep, and beg forgiveness, which Oric would grant them, but only on the condition that they alter their ways. Upon their agreement, he would once again deploy the tentacles and transfer the people back aboveground, where they would regale the others with stories of the horn-faced monster that they soon titled … the Mandrake.
Yes indeed, yes indeed, and once this fictitious Mandrake was introduced, a curious and fortuitous change occurred. As long as Oric’s creations feared the monster, then their lives strained closer toward virtue, and Oric could safely exercise his dark feelings without anyone surrendering their love for him. The Hutch was more peaceful than it had ever been. I, as you might surmise, was wary of the arrangement, but I had no right to object. “Someday the dark feelings will abate,” Oric assured me, “and we will have no need for the Mandrake.”
Sadly, the opposite occurred. His feelings became darker and darker still, and soon playing the part of the Mandrake did not suffice for Oric. He had the urge to destroy what he had created, to rain Armageddon down upon everyone and everything.
“I wish I could purge these thoughts from my head,” he cried one night whilst he and I were alone in the fortress. “I wish I could put an end to this evil inside of me.”
A voice arrived in his head and remarked, “I can give you that.”
“Please do, please do,” Oric whimpered in reply.
A creature both featureless and nameless and made entirely of nothingness instantly appeared in the fortress, wielding a pen constructed of bamboo. It placed the pen into Oric’s ear and placed its mouth upon the pen and began to suck.
That is when my mind went blank. For how long it was blank, I may never know, but when my mind returned, it arrived with the knowledge that while the creature was gone, so too was Oric. Vanished, disappeared, like the stars with the dawn.
I, of course, mourned the loss of my master, but I knew that I must carry on. I returned to the surface through a small tunnel I burrowed with my beak, and I told the people of the Hutch that Oric was no more.
“What about the Mandrake?” they asked.
Knowing that the Mandrake was the one thing that kept order in the Hutch, I lied. I told them that the Mandrake lived on, but they need not fear him so long as they were good and honest people. And they were good and honest people and remained as such for a long time.
For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I possess the gift of everlasting life, but nobody else in the Hutch shared this gift, and so generations lived and died, on and on for many years, until Oric was completely forgotten to all but me, and the Mandrake was all that was remembered from the days of old.
Until one morning, someone we had never seen before, a boy clad in scale mail, arrived in the Hutch. “Who are you?” the villagers asked. “And where do you come from?”
“I am Hadrian,” the boy replied. “I come from a place very different from this. Will you host me as I pass through on my journey?”
Though they had never had a visitor, they were a kind people and they agreed to help Hadrian, yet they told him that he must act honorably or else he would face the wrath of the Mandrake.
“This Mandrake frightens you?” Hadrian asked.
“Most thoroughly,” they replied.
“What if one were to hunt down and destroy this Mandrake?” Hadrian asked.
“We would be forever grateful,” they told him. “We would be indebted to you, for you would have saved us.”
“Where does he dwell?” Hadrian asked.
“Beneath the sea of blood,” they told him, pointing in the distance to the red liquid they so carefully avoided.
“Then I will swim to the bottom and find him,” Hadrian said.
This thrilled the people, but it worried me, for I knew that Hadrian might gain access to the fortress, where he would find nothing except for the ropes and the tentacles. So I burrowed down to the fortress once again and waited for him. It was not without some guilt that I prayed for Hadrian to drown and no longer pose as an impediment, but alas, Hadrian was a skilled swimmer and a determined and wily boy, and he reached the fortress mere moments after I arrived.
“It is a hoax,” I regretfully admitted.
“To keep them docile?” Hadrian asked.
“Indeed,” I said, and I proceeded to tell Hadrian about the tentacles and how they operated.
Hadrian was understandably intrigued. “So a dead Mandrake is of no use?” he asked.
“No, it is not.”
“I see,” Hadrian said, and it was then that I recognized the lust for power in his eyes, and it was also then that Hadrian climbed onto the swing, seized the ropes, and commanded the tentacles to capture the blacksmith and the baker from the Hutch. Only he did not simply scare these men. He bade that the tentacles suffocate their lungs and place their dead bodies upon the pedestal.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
Sneering, Hadrian leapt to the pedestal and produced a quill from within his underclothes. He began piercing the men’s dead bodies with the quill. “I am giving them their Mandrake,” Hadrian said.
“Oric was kind to them,” I pleaded. “He never hurt them. This is not the proper way!”
Hadrian laughed and climbed back upon the swing. He pulled the ropes and made the tentacles transport the bodies to the wooden platform in the middle of the Hutch, and when the people awoke to discover this horror in the morning, they were understandably upset.
“Who did this?” they cried.
Bloodied and dirty, Hadrian appeared before them and said, “The Mandrake. I fought him. I could not defeat him. Yet I uncovered his identity, and now that I know his true nature, he means to destroy us all.”
“His identity?” they asked. “His true nature?”
“The Mandrake has lived among you for many years. He takes different forms, and one of them is that of a hummingbird. I believe you call him Potoweet.”
The small holes on the bodies matched the width of my beak. The culprit seemed clear. Enraged, a mob set out to destroy me, but I was too quick and my small size made it easy for me to hide. One would think I would have tried to explain, but I was always viewed differently in the Hutch. Everlasting life has a way of breeding suspicion and contempt.
“You are not safe here anymore,” Hadrian told the villagers. “The Mandrake is too fast, too clever, but I know of a place where we can be protected from him.”
He led the people to the blood sea, and while they were hesitant at first, they saw that the sanguine waters did not harm Hadrian, so they trusted their faith and they followed him below the surface. They lived there, within Oric’s secret fortress, for years, trusting in and serving Hadrian whilst fearing the Mandrake. To keep me out, he blocked my tunnels with stone. I am not the type of bird suited to swimming, so unless one of those tubes snatches me up and carries me there, I will never be able to enter that fortress again. And Hadrian will have those people forever under his spell. Occasionally, to show his commitment to their safety, he dispatches a noble hero to fight the Mandrake, and that noble hero almost always meets an ignoble end.
As will you, Mr. Cleary.