Dissun and Dudderun

The irritated woman opened the door with a force that ruffled hairs of the corpulent pomp’s mustache. She checked to see that his officious, ring-fingered fist hadn’t knocked loose the talisman made of dog and horse hair wrapped around a piece of chalk. The last thing she wanted was to have to go back to the old crone who’d made it for her and get another one. Goblin repellant was expensive, and the crone had bad breath and talked a lot.

“Where’s the man of the house?” the taxman huffed, straightening his squirrely mustache with a finger and thumb.

“Which one?”

For a brief moment, the man was puzzled. His fingers slid down from the mustache to the equally squirrely beard, grasping it like a ratted rope. He looked up with what he believed was a twinkle of cleverness, but in reality looked like he’d developed a spasm in one eye.

“The one in charge, of course,” he said, puffing out his chest and moving his hand to find the belt under his belly, hooking his thumb between it and the strained uniform.

“Well, which is it?” said the woman. “Do you want to talk to the man of the house or the one who’s in charge?”

The squirrely mustache hopped up and down.

“Confound it, woman. Let me in!” The man shoved his way past her and stomped his large and dirty boots across the just-swept floor. He spied an old man sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fire.

“Ho, there. You’re the man of the house?”

“Eh?” the man put the boiled egg he was trying to crack back on the plate that was resting on his lap.

“He wants to know if you’re the man of the house,” said the woman. She thought of reaching for the broom and sweeping up the mess in an exaggerated manner, just to make a point, but decided to wait. The taxman not only wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t notice. And she’d end up doing twice the sweeping after he’d left.

“Am I?” The old man’s eyebrows raised with excitement at the opportunity.

“Of course you are,” said the taxman.

“Awlright den,” said the old man. “Hows can I help you?”

“I need the names of them two newborns.” He waved an arm towards the crib at the other end of the hearth.

“Why don’t you ask me?” said the woman. “I am their mother, you know.”

“Leave us be,” the taxman scolded. “Get back to your woman’s work.”

“Yeah,” the old man chimed in, “and crack dis here egg for me.”

“That’s a potato, you old sot.”

The old man looked at the spud. “So it is,” he said, and he held it to the few molars he had left and began to gnaw on it.

“Boy or girl?” With a flourish, the taxman held up the clipboard that was tied with a rope to a hidden belt loop. His fat fingers grabbed, fumbled and grabbed again the stick of black chalk that was tied to the top of the clipboard, ruining the flourishment of the moment. When he had everything ready to write, he looked up at the old man.

“What’s dat?” said the old man.

“Are they boy or girl?”

“Who?”

The taxman’s eager hand lost its enthusiasm and began to tremble in a different sort of emotion.

“They’re twin boys,” said the woman.

The taxman pretended to ignore her, but wrote it down.

“And their names?” He continued to look at the old man.

“Whose name?” Pieces of gnawed potato flew from the old man’s mouth.

“I can tell you,” said the woman. “They’re Cor’Nan’Deagun’Lug’Maod-Has and Ran’Ousa’Erult’Antach-Lain.”

The taxman, wiping potato from his face, turned to look at the woman.

“They’re named after their uncles,” she said.

The squirrely monobrow twitched.

“They’ve lots of uncles.”

Turning back to the old man, the taxman tried again to speak with the only other sensible person in the room.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” with an emphasis on the sir, “can you tell me their names?”

“Well, lemme see.” The old man pushed himself out of the rocking chair with boney arms that seemed to have too many elbows, and he shuffled over to the crib.

Two round faces looked up at their grandfather and the giant squirrel standing next to him. Newborn-blue eyes twinkled and their mouths curled into grins that would have been frightening had there been teeth behind them. In the folds of the blankets, their small fingers wriggled in gleeful imaginings of grabbing tufts of squirrel hair.

“Well,” the old man pointed to one of the infants, “dere’s dis-un.” Then he pointed to the other one. “And dere’s d’udder-un.”

The taxman scribbled the names on the clipboard. He looked at the words he’d written. They didn’t look like real names, but he certainly wasn’t going to ask the woman about it. Besides, any how you looked at it, Dissun and Dudderun were better than Cor’Nan’Deagun’Lug’Maod-Has and Ran’Ousa’Erult’Antach-Lain. As he saw it, he was doing the boys a favor.

~~~~

It was the eighth shearing of the sheep since the twins had been born, and now the boys were old enough to help. So, of course, they were up in the tree overlooking the pond, far enough away to claim they were out of earshot and couldn’t possibly have known they were missing out on the fun.

“What’s she doin’?” Dudderun lay with his belly across the thick limb of the naked tree, squinting at the view across the water.

“Looks like she’s kissin’ frogs,” said Dissun. He was in the same position as his brother, but up one branch higher.

“Poor frog,” said Dudderun.

“I wonder what else she might kiss.”

“I seen a big, fat toad down in the gully.”

“Nah,” said Dissun, “she probly’d not kiss somethin’ dead.”

Dudderun wasn’t convinced of that, but decided talking about what girls might kiss was getting boring. He looked up and asked, “D’ya think it’s been long enough?”

“Sun’s not barely past mid-day. They’ll be doin’ it ‘till they can’t see no more.”

“So whadda ya wanna do?”

They both knew that neither of them wanted to go home.

“I wish we’d brought some lunch,” said Dissun.

“If we’d tried they’d’ve know’d we was gonna sneak off. You know that.”

“Yeah, but that don’t mean I ain’tn’t hungry.”

They climbed down the tree and looked around, trying to pick the best way to go without risking being seen.

Dissun’s stomach growled.

“Shush!” his brother said, holding up a hand and waving a palm.

“I can’t help it. It’s gots a mind of its own.”

“No, not your stomach,” said Dudderun. “I thinks I saw somethin’”

There was a rustle and this time both of the boys heard it. With the skills earned from several years of hiding from chores, they dropped to all fours and hugged the ground, listening.

“Which way’d it come from?” Dissun barely whispered.

Dudderun’s face said I can’t tell.

Like four-legged spiders, they crawled through the grass along the edge of the pond.

Whatever it was made another rustling sound.

“There it is again,” said Dissun. “A susurration of sorts.”

Dudderun nodded and motioned with his chin that they should crawl that way.

The rustling rustled and the boys crawled towards the noise. It rustled again. It rustled and rustled. And then it stopped.

And just when it stopped, the boys emerged into a clearing where the grass was smoothed flat underneath a huge shade tree, and a hearty lunch rested on a large flat rock in the middle of it all.

Dissun started for the food, but his brother held him back.

“We don’t know whose that is,” Dudderun warned.

“Nope,” Dissun wriggled free, “but it’s ours now.”

Dudderun looked around and saw nothing. So he shrugged and went to join his brother who was sitting on the rock and had already eaten half a loaf of bread and was preparing to stuff a chunk of cheese into his mouth.

Snap!

The net pulled tight around the boys and they were hoisted high into the air.

Dissun stopped eating.

“I told ya so!” Dudderun yelled, grabbing at the webbing of rope.

“No’s you didn’t!”

“Did so.”

“You said we didn’t know whose food it was. You didn’t say nothin’ about it bein’ a trap.”

“Same thing.”

“Isn’t!”

“What’s that sound?” Dudderun looked around. “Sounds like… grunting.”

“I told you not to put the rock in it!” a voice came from somewhere behind the tree.

“It looked nicer on a table-like,” said another.

The voices were distinctly individual, but shared a low, croaky gargle in their intonations.

“Seelies?” Dissun whispered to his brother.

“More likely Unseelies,” came the answer. “Seelies don’t do this kinda thing.”

“Shut up the both of ya!” growled one of their captors. “We’s got work to do and don’t want to hear ya whinin’.”

“We wasn’t whinin’,” said Dudderun. “We was just wondering what you are.”

“Why….” said one of the voices, trying to sound sweet, “we’re the Gwragedd Annwn.” Croaking giggles bobbled from behind the trunk of the tree.

“Naw, I don’t think so,” said Dissun, peering through the ropes. “Gwragedd Annwn are supposed to be pretty.”

“Only because they get to live by the lake!” a definitely not-giggling voice shouted back.

“C’mon,” said Dudderun, “we can tell you’re Unseelies. You might as well show yourselves.”

“We don’t like that name.”

“Well, if you don’t come out, we can’t figure out a different name for you, can we?”

There was some tittering behind the tree, and then a dozen little fairies stepped out into the clearing. They were about as tall the tine of a pitchfork and just as skinny, with skinny legs sticking out from under tunics that looked like they were made of old sheets. They had equally skinny arms ending in hands as big as their feet and fingers as long as their toes. And each set of hands was straining to hold the end of a rope that was draped across the overhead branch and attached to the net that held the boys.

“So….,” Dudderun looked at the Unseelies, “what else do you want to be called?”

Both of the boys remembered the admonishments from their grandmother to always be polite to a fairy, Seelie or Unseelie.

“We don’t know what else to answer to,” said one with tangled green hair that hung to the knees. It stood in front of the others, who also had tangled green hair that hung to the knees.

Dissun thought for a moment. “How about if we say it politely? Like…,” he gathered his best excuse-me-mum voice and said, “Unseelie.”

The Unseelies looked at each other, chattered a bit, then turned and nodded as one. The one in front, with the tangled green hair down to the knees, said, “That would be fine.”

“So,” an Unseelie said to the others, “what are we going to do? It’s too heavy to carry all that way.”

“I told ya not to put that rock in there!”

“Yes. We already heard you.”

“Ya should’ve listened.”

“Yes. Now shut up and let’s figure out what to do.”

“We could drop it,” said a tiny, but still croaky, voice. “Lift it up and drop it. Do it a buncha times ‘till the rock breaks up and falls outta the net.”

This was answered with a group of nodding green-haired heads.

“No!”

The nodding stopped and twenty-four Unseelie eyes looked up at the boys.

Dudderun gathered himself and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you might kill us. Me and my brother, that is.”

“He’s got a point,” said a green-haired Unseelie. “We can’t’s hand ‘em over if they’s dead.”

“We’d give it a listen if you’ve got any ideas,” said one of the Unseelies.

Dissun looked at his brother. They both had grins that were mildly frightening now that they had teeth behind them.

“You could open the net and we’ll push the rock out,” said Dissun.

“That might work,” said an Unseelie.

“Are you daft?” said another. “The minute we open the net they’ll run off!”

The first Unseelie looked back at the boys. “You ain’t gonna run off, are you?”

Both boys held up their hands, palms forward. “We absolutely promise,” they said in unison, as if they’d had years of practice doing the very same thing for their mother.

Dissun handed a hunk of cheese to his brother and they ate while the Unseelies debated what to do. They were just finishing up when the Unseelie in front, the one with the tangled green hair down to the knees, stepped up to the net.

“We’re holdin’ you to your promise,” it said.

The boys nodded.

The Unseelie bobbed its head at the others and they all let loose of their ropes.

Dissun and Dudderun scrambled over the rock, wriggled out of the net and ran as fast as they could towards the pond.

“You promised!” the Unseelie shrieked from behind them.

“That’s right,” Dissun called back, laughing. “But we didn’t say what we were promisin’.”

“Not technically,” laughed Dudderun.

“Breakin’ promises is rude!” the Unseelie yelled at them.

Dissun and Dudderun, still running as fast as their young legs could carry them, looked at each other. One was about to ask the other if they should be concerned when they fell flat on their faces and found themselves being dragged – pulled by long, tangled green hair that wrapped around their legs and feet – back to the huge tree where they’d first been caught.

“Well, it was worth a try,” said Dissun.

“Still better than a day of shearing sheep,” said Dudderun.

His brother nodded.

~~~~~

“What’s that smell?” Dissun wrinkled his nose.

“I think they’re cookin’ stew,” said Dudderin.

“That don’t smell like no stew I’ve ever smelled.”

They looked at the cage they’d been tossed into after being shoved back into the net, then dragged across the river and a field to the edge of the woods. On the wall behind them was a slab of wood with what looked like writing that had been hastily wiped over. To the side of them was a firepit with a large cauldron hanging on a hook and full of something that smelled as ripe as the worst of the days with their grandfather.

“It’s goblin stew,” came a low voice from somewhere across the cave. “Your people don’t make stew like goblins do.”

“Why does all of this seem familiar?” Dissun said to himself, but also to his brother.

“What happened to the Unseelies?” asked Dudderun

“Oh, they’ve got what they bartered for.”

“And what was that,” said Dudderun, “if you don’t mind me askin’?”

“That I eats you instead of them.”

“Ah,” said Dudderun. He sat down next to his brother. “Well,” he said, “this is new for us.”

“It is,” said Dissun, “but it’s also not. I think I know where I’ve heard about this before. Hold on a minute,” he said. Then he called out to the Likho sitting against the far wall. “Not meaning to be nosey, you see,” he said, “but are you, by any chance, blind?”

The Likho grumbled a mirthless laugh. “Why do you ask?”

Dissun thought for a moment. Then he said, “We’ve heard stories about you. You’re famous, you know.”

It dawned on Dudderun where and with whom they were. “He’s right. We’ve been hearin’ tales about you since we was babies.”

The twins looked at each other, grinned, and nodded an unspoken: ‘We’ve got this one figured out.’

“I’m sure you have,” growled the Likho. “It wasn’t a random thing, those Unseelies catching the two of you.”

The twins lost their grins.

“I’ve smelled you two since your mother was in that cage. She’s the reason I’m blind.” The Likho rose from where it was sitting in the shadowed recess of the cave. “I figure she owes me one.” It thought of what it’d just said, then laughed, “or two!”

Its body was like a dark, misshapen tree in the deadest dead of the coldest winter. Arms and legs like weathered branches, hands like bark, and fingers like dried and twisted roots pulled from droughted soil. The boys watched with wide-eyed wonder, unbelieving in their luck to witness such a thing.

“In the stories she told, our mum said you had family,” said Dudderun, wrenching his eyes from the vision and looking around the room, trying to find clues towards an escape.

“I did. But they couldn’t stand to be with me after I tore my eyes out.” The Likho sighed. “Weak and no good at bein’ careful, that’s what they said I was.” The huge goblin almost sounded pathetic, but it caught itself. “So that’s why I gots you two. I’ve invited them all over for dinner. They’re gonna see how week and no good at bein’ careful I am. It’s gonna be a feast! And then they’re gonna have to let me back in.”

The Likho found the cauldron, dipped a hand in the bubbling broth and stirred, then stuck a long finger in its mouth. “Mmmm…,” it said, smacking its non-existent lips. “Nummy!”

“Where’s your eyes?” Dissun asked.

The Likho turned on them, scarred sockets where flashing eyes would have been. “Hobgoblins!” A heavy fist slammed on the wall, rattling the rock. Little stones fell on its head. “They’re next.”

Dissun and Dudderun watched the pebbles fall.

“I dunno know about that,” said Dudderun, “I hear they’re pretty smart, those hobgoblins.”

“Rrrrraaarrwwrrrruuugggghhhrrrrr…!!!” the Likho roared. “Not smarter than me!”

“And stronger,” said Dissun.”

“Those weak little hobgoblins?” the Likho scoffed.

“Oh, yes,” said Dissun. “There’s lots of stories about them,” he paused for effect, then added, “more stories about them than there are about you, even.”

The Likho roared and slammed its fist against the cave wall again. More pebbles fell on its head.

The boys looked at each other.

As had happened may times before, when the boys were in a contest of wits with anyone but their mother, they usually won. So it was with the Likho. They needled and wheedled, making it angrier with every question and comment. And the Likho growled and roared. It stomped and slammed its fists against the walls of the cave. With each smash, rocks fell on its head. At first, small pebbled and stones. Then larger rocks. Until, with a final massive blow, the sides of the cave filled with cracks and the entire thing came crashing down.

Dissun and Dudderun grabbed the slab of wood from the wall behind them and held it above their heads, shielding themselves from the deluge of crumbled cave. When it was over, the cage around them was nothing but broken twigs and they easily stepped out of their prison.

Dissun looked over his shoulder towards the rubble as they found a path that might take them home. “D’ya think he’s dead?”

“Dunno,” said Dudderun.

They walked a bit more.

“Slow down,” said Dudderun.

“Why?”

“We don’t wanna make it home ‘til after it’s dark.”

~~~~~

Sorcha Monk lives in a small town in a desert near a river. She belongs to four dogs who love her, and four cats who occasionally acknowledge her existence but always allow her to feed them. Sorcha used to be a middle school teacher, but now that she has her life back she writes stories, rides a large motorcycle, dabbles in ceramics and reads a lot.

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