Hero's Manual: Chapter 14
Sep. 13th, 2006 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sickle_storiesA/N: A somewhat forced chapter, especially getting the characters to work the carpet. Hero is becoming surprisingly adept at the hero-work. The carpet insisted on being somewhat sentient. I never knew that making Huzzah have glowing purple ectoplasm would be so useful. (He bears no relation to the green slime ghost from “Ghostbusters”.) Oh, and everyone wants tea, what of it? Tea makes everything better. Just ask this thread and icon.
Chapter 14: Carpet Morse Code
“It’s midnight,” said Huzzah. Gwen woke up, startled, and saw that, though the candles had burnt out, the cellar was not dark. Every corner of the cellar was lit by Huzzah’s purple glow, which seemed much stronger than before, when she’d fallen asleep to Huzzah’s Tiger vs. Man story. “If I am to find anything tonight, it is now.”
Huzzah floated to a near-by carpet-pile to another and peering at their designs. Due to being made of largely insubstantial ectoplasm, Huzzah had to look through the top carpets to the see those at the bottom of the piles. When he’d finished with the conglomeration he floated on to the next, leaving the carpets coated in slightly luminescent goo. When he reached the pile Gwen was lying on she quickly moved away, not wanting to be coated in goo of any colour.
“Well, I’ll be buggered,” said Huzzah, floating in the middle of the cellar. “I know it’s here.”
Gwen stepped down from a chair and carefully made her way across the room to the sofa, avoiding the piles and occasionally trails of slime. On the sofa, wrapped up in a number of carpets, was Hero, snoring lightly. He was not covered in any quantity of slime.
“You’ve missed a pile,” said Gwen. Huzzah floated over. “Should I wake him?”
“No,” said Huzzah. “I think I can manage.” With that he craned his neck and scrutinized the three or four designs that were visible. There were two other carpets, one visible just under Hero’s ankles and one under his head as a pillow, which Huzzah could not see.
Hero awoke to the sensation of cold slime running up his legs and down into his ears. This is not the best way to wake up.
Unfortunately, the shock made him leap from the sofa and through Huzzah, who’d been leaning over him.
Again, not the most pleasant of sensations.
“Dear me, Hero,” said Huzzah, once he’d regained his shape, “there’s no need to shout like that.”
Hero ignored him and continued shaking the slime off whilst doing the Dance of Disgusted Shock.
“I would’ve thought you’d be used to slime,” continued Huzzah.
Gwen, for her part, was laughing uncontrollably until she got splattered with slime.
“Oh come on,” said Huzzah as the two jumped around the dungeon. “Am I really that repulsive?”
Once both humans had rid themselves of Huzzah’s ectoplasm they crowded round the sofa where Huzzah was hovering. “Sorry,” they both mumbled, but Huzzah ignored them.
“It’s this blue carpet,” he said, not looking at them. “I’m sure you both know how to use it.”
“Uh, no, said Hero. “No, we don’t.”
“Yeah? Well that’s just tough!” said Huzzah. He floated over their heads and up the stairs. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
“Huzzah, please, what’s –” began Gwen, but Hero clamped a hand over her mouth.
“I command you, genie, to explain the situation,” he said.
Huzzah drifted over the stairs and looked at Hero with an appraising look. “You might just make it, little frog.”
Hero twitched. “Tell us what to do with the carpet?” As Huzzah gave a tight little smile, Hero took a step towards the stairs. “I order you to answer.”
“You sit on it.”
Hero took another step towards the genie. Somehow, the thin man managed to walk menacingly. “I demand a full explanation,” he hissed.
Huzzah seemed rather pleased with the situation. “As I’ve said, you sit on it. You sit on the carpet, blue-side up, and, having previously opened the window, tell it to fly. Where you go once you’re in the air out there in the courtyard is your own decision.”
“Damn it, you should’ve said it was a magic carpet,” said Gwen.
“What else were you going to do with a carpet? Unravel it and knit yourself a camouflage sweater?” Huzzah floated the rest of the way up the staircase. “Any other questions? I’m dying for a cup of tea.”
Hero and Gwen exchanged a glance. “Do you know how to fly one of these?” she said.
“Voice command,” said Huzzah. “Real simple.”
“Well, then I guess that’s it,” said Hero.
“Splendid.” Huzzah drifted under the door until just his head was inside the cellar. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “there’s a start-up password. Cheerio.”
Hero and Gwen stood silent for a moment, Hero gripping the carpet tightly.
“That slimy bastard!” he said, too any to fear the dark. “That purple smirking bastard!”
Gwen reached for the carpet, running her fingers over the swirling designs. She walked closer to a pile of carpets and squinted in the glow of the slime to see which side of the carpet was “up”.
She walked back to where Hero still stood staring at the faint purple trail leading from the lamp to the door. She dropped the carpet onto the ground beside two glowing piles and tugged Hero’s sleeve. He resisted a moment, then sat down beside her, eyes still glued to the door.
“Come on,” she said, “it can’t be that difficult. The word’s probably ‘start’ or some such.”
“That bastard…” was all Hero said.
“…is not coming back anytime soon. He went for tea, remember?” said Gwen. “And you know who makes tea in this place.”
Hero glanced down at her. “The butler.”
“Yeah.”
“He hates making tea.”
“Right.”
“That bastard.”
Gwen sighed and began thinking of all the synonyms for ‘start’ that she knew, whispering each in turn to the carpet. None of them worked.
Abruptly Hero stood up and walked towards the purple trail. He walked along it, occasionally muttering curses, particularly when he accidentally touched the goo. When he sat down again beside Gwen, he was smiling. In his hands was the genie’s lamp.
“Bastard won’t help us, will he?” he hissed. “Let’s see if he gets to drink his tea.” Hero set the lamp down on the carpet and looked up at Gwen. “Any luck?”
“Obviously, no.”
“Have you tried ‘commence’?”
“Yup.”
“And ‘initiate’?” Gwen nodded again. “‘Launch’? ‘Fire up’?”
“Everything. They don’t work.”
They were silent a few minutes, occasionally muttering synonyms.
“What do you know about magic carpets?” said Gwen.
“Not much,” said Hero. “Nothing, really.”
“Oh.”
They tried ‘get going’, ‘switch on’ and ‘rev up’. Those didn’t work either.
“Maybe there’s some sort of magic word?” said Gwen.
“That’s what we’ve been trying,” said Hero.
“No, like, abracadavra.”
The two sat in silence until Hero leapt up with a shout.
“Cookie!” Gwen stared up at him. “Magic carpets start up with cookies. Or a word having to do with baking.”
Gwen’s face twisted in incomprehension. “Why the fin would they?”
“It’s…it’s a thing. Kitchens are very important in magic.” Hero sat back down.
The two wracked their brains for cookie names, then moved on the cakes, then spices. Then they tried snacks and kitchen utensils.
Hero was getting increasingly frustrated, gnawing on his nails. Abruptly he jumped up. “Snaps!” he yelled. “I know it was ‘snaps’. I read it somewhere. All carpets start with that word.”
Gwen caught hold of the genie’s lamp and stared at the carpet. “Not this one.”
“Sesame! Sesame snaps!” Hero was jumping up and down on the carpet. “Up, damnit, up sesame!” He almost fell off when the carpet rose up and hovered halfway to the ceiling. He quickly hunkered down and grabbed the edge of the carpet. “See?” he said, gritting his teeth.
They tried to direct the carpet towards the window but nothing they said seemed to work. Hero was practically frothing at the mouth in frustration, threatening the carpet with the promise of scissors. Finally he slammed his fist down on the carpet and yelled out, “Forward, you lump! Mush!”
The carpet inched forward. It’s impossible for a carpet to fly through a room sheepishly, but this one tried very hard to give that impression.
“Mush?” said Hero again.
The carpet kept drifting. Unfortunately, it was drifting towards the staircase.
“Go left,” said Hero. “Mush left.”
They reached the stairs and drifted upwards.
“No, left.” Hero reached across Gwen and tugged the left corner of the carpet. The carpet stopped and hovered.
Hissing in frustration, Hero tugged the corner again. The carpet whined, but did not move. Hero tugged again. The carpet inched forward and reached the door, wobbling slightly as Hero kept tugging on it. He even put his foot against the door and pulled hard, shouting, “Left! Mush to the left!”
At this the carpet turned sharply to the left and flew across the room at a harrowing speed. They careened towards a wall (decorated with various candlesticks).
Gwen threw her arms over her head. “Stop!”
The carpet stopped and hovered, wheezing a little.
“I think it’s a mite deaf,” said Hero. “Must have a lot of dust in its weave.”
“Splendid,” said Gwen. “Just what we need for a quite getaway.”
They then spent fifteen minutes shouting and tugging at the carpet, trying to establish a system. Finally the carpet wavered in understanding: tugs on its individual corners indicated the direction, tugging both corners indicated “up” (for the front corners) and “down” (for the back ones), whilst pokes in its middle meant “start” (one poke) and “stop” (two pokes). Once this was established, the two managed to steer the carpet towards the window.
Gwen watched over Hero’s shoulder as he struggled to open the window without falling off the carpet. It was too dark to see whether Clyde was in the courtyard. She felt relieved, however, that there was no light in any of the windows.
“Hero, why are you afraid of frogs?”
Hero’s hand slipped and he bumped his head against the windowpane. He rubbed his head a moment then turned to Gwen. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Huzzah called you ‘little frog’,” pushed Gwen.
Hero looked out the window and sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t say anything until he’d managed to open the window and they’d managed to squeeze through it. As they hovered behind the rose bush, Hero finally answered her.
“I was a frog,” he whispered, eyes glued to some point in the courtyard.
Gwen turned and looked at him carefully.
“Got turned into a frog once,” he repeated, “by a testy old lady.”
“But you got better,” Gwen pointed out.
Hero stared at her for a moment then turned at tugged the carpet’s back corners. “I’ve been psychologically scarred,” he hissed.
As they rose over the courtyard and maneuvered their way over the walls, they left behind a faintly glowing purple trail. The lamp in Gwen’s hands shook and grew heavy as they flew away from the mansion.
They didn’t notice the glowing figure of Huzzah as he flew across the courtyard behind them. He’d been dragged out of the kitchen (where he was accosting Quasi for a cup of tea), though the halls, down into the cellar and through the window by the lamp.
Floating helplessly behind the carpet, Huzzah whispered a curse: “May you be overrun by a thousand sheep.”
“It’s midnight,” said Huzzah. Gwen woke up, startled, and saw that, though the candles had burnt out, the cellar was not dark. Every corner of the cellar was lit by Huzzah’s purple glow, which seemed much stronger than before, when she’d fallen asleep to Huzzah’s Tiger vs. Man story. “If I am to find anything tonight, it is now.”
Huzzah floated to a near-by carpet-pile to another and peering at their designs. Due to being made of largely insubstantial ectoplasm, Huzzah had to look through the top carpets to the see those at the bottom of the piles. When he’d finished with the conglomeration he floated on to the next, leaving the carpets coated in slightly luminescent goo. When he reached the pile Gwen was lying on she quickly moved away, not wanting to be coated in goo of any colour.
“Well, I’ll be buggered,” said Huzzah, floating in the middle of the cellar. “I know it’s here.”
Gwen stepped down from a chair and carefully made her way across the room to the sofa, avoiding the piles and occasionally trails of slime. On the sofa, wrapped up in a number of carpets, was Hero, snoring lightly. He was not covered in any quantity of slime.
“You’ve missed a pile,” said Gwen. Huzzah floated over. “Should I wake him?”
“No,” said Huzzah. “I think I can manage.” With that he craned his neck and scrutinized the three or four designs that were visible. There were two other carpets, one visible just under Hero’s ankles and one under his head as a pillow, which Huzzah could not see.
Hero awoke to the sensation of cold slime running up his legs and down into his ears. This is not the best way to wake up.
Unfortunately, the shock made him leap from the sofa and through Huzzah, who’d been leaning over him.
Again, not the most pleasant of sensations.
“Dear me, Hero,” said Huzzah, once he’d regained his shape, “there’s no need to shout like that.”
Hero ignored him and continued shaking the slime off whilst doing the Dance of Disgusted Shock.
“I would’ve thought you’d be used to slime,” continued Huzzah.
Gwen, for her part, was laughing uncontrollably until she got splattered with slime.
“Oh come on,” said Huzzah as the two jumped around the dungeon. “Am I really that repulsive?”
Once both humans had rid themselves of Huzzah’s ectoplasm they crowded round the sofa where Huzzah was hovering. “Sorry,” they both mumbled, but Huzzah ignored them.
“It’s this blue carpet,” he said, not looking at them. “I’m sure you both know how to use it.”
“Uh, no, said Hero. “No, we don’t.”
“Yeah? Well that’s just tough!” said Huzzah. He floated over their heads and up the stairs. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
“Huzzah, please, what’s –” began Gwen, but Hero clamped a hand over her mouth.
“I command you, genie, to explain the situation,” he said.
Huzzah drifted over the stairs and looked at Hero with an appraising look. “You might just make it, little frog.”
Hero twitched. “Tell us what to do with the carpet?” As Huzzah gave a tight little smile, Hero took a step towards the stairs. “I order you to answer.”
“You sit on it.”
Hero took another step towards the genie. Somehow, the thin man managed to walk menacingly. “I demand a full explanation,” he hissed.
Huzzah seemed rather pleased with the situation. “As I’ve said, you sit on it. You sit on the carpet, blue-side up, and, having previously opened the window, tell it to fly. Where you go once you’re in the air out there in the courtyard is your own decision.”
“Damn it, you should’ve said it was a magic carpet,” said Gwen.
“What else were you going to do with a carpet? Unravel it and knit yourself a camouflage sweater?” Huzzah floated the rest of the way up the staircase. “Any other questions? I’m dying for a cup of tea.”
Hero and Gwen exchanged a glance. “Do you know how to fly one of these?” she said.
“Voice command,” said Huzzah. “Real simple.”
“Well, then I guess that’s it,” said Hero.
“Splendid.” Huzzah drifted under the door until just his head was inside the cellar. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “there’s a start-up password. Cheerio.”
Hero and Gwen stood silent for a moment, Hero gripping the carpet tightly.
“That slimy bastard!” he said, too any to fear the dark. “That purple smirking bastard!”
Gwen reached for the carpet, running her fingers over the swirling designs. She walked closer to a pile of carpets and squinted in the glow of the slime to see which side of the carpet was “up”.
She walked back to where Hero still stood staring at the faint purple trail leading from the lamp to the door. She dropped the carpet onto the ground beside two glowing piles and tugged Hero’s sleeve. He resisted a moment, then sat down beside her, eyes still glued to the door.
“Come on,” she said, “it can’t be that difficult. The word’s probably ‘start’ or some such.”
“That bastard…” was all Hero said.
“…is not coming back anytime soon. He went for tea, remember?” said Gwen. “And you know who makes tea in this place.”
Hero glanced down at her. “The butler.”
“Yeah.”
“He hates making tea.”
“Right.”
“That bastard.”
Gwen sighed and began thinking of all the synonyms for ‘start’ that she knew, whispering each in turn to the carpet. None of them worked.
Abruptly Hero stood up and walked towards the purple trail. He walked along it, occasionally muttering curses, particularly when he accidentally touched the goo. When he sat down again beside Gwen, he was smiling. In his hands was the genie’s lamp.
“Bastard won’t help us, will he?” he hissed. “Let’s see if he gets to drink his tea.” Hero set the lamp down on the carpet and looked up at Gwen. “Any luck?”
“Obviously, no.”
“Have you tried ‘commence’?”
“Yup.”
“And ‘initiate’?” Gwen nodded again. “‘Launch’? ‘Fire up’?”
“Everything. They don’t work.”
They were silent a few minutes, occasionally muttering synonyms.
“What do you know about magic carpets?” said Gwen.
“Not much,” said Hero. “Nothing, really.”
“Oh.”
They tried ‘get going’, ‘switch on’ and ‘rev up’. Those didn’t work either.
“Maybe there’s some sort of magic word?” said Gwen.
“That’s what we’ve been trying,” said Hero.
“No, like, abracadavra.”
The two sat in silence until Hero leapt up with a shout.
“Cookie!” Gwen stared up at him. “Magic carpets start up with cookies. Or a word having to do with baking.”
Gwen’s face twisted in incomprehension. “Why the fin would they?”
“It’s…it’s a thing. Kitchens are very important in magic.” Hero sat back down.
The two wracked their brains for cookie names, then moved on the cakes, then spices. Then they tried snacks and kitchen utensils.
Hero was getting increasingly frustrated, gnawing on his nails. Abruptly he jumped up. “Snaps!” he yelled. “I know it was ‘snaps’. I read it somewhere. All carpets start with that word.”
Gwen caught hold of the genie’s lamp and stared at the carpet. “Not this one.”
“Sesame! Sesame snaps!” Hero was jumping up and down on the carpet. “Up, damnit, up sesame!” He almost fell off when the carpet rose up and hovered halfway to the ceiling. He quickly hunkered down and grabbed the edge of the carpet. “See?” he said, gritting his teeth.
They tried to direct the carpet towards the window but nothing they said seemed to work. Hero was practically frothing at the mouth in frustration, threatening the carpet with the promise of scissors. Finally he slammed his fist down on the carpet and yelled out, “Forward, you lump! Mush!”
The carpet inched forward. It’s impossible for a carpet to fly through a room sheepishly, but this one tried very hard to give that impression.
“Mush?” said Hero again.
The carpet kept drifting. Unfortunately, it was drifting towards the staircase.
“Go left,” said Hero. “Mush left.”
They reached the stairs and drifted upwards.
“No, left.” Hero reached across Gwen and tugged the left corner of the carpet. The carpet stopped and hovered.
Hissing in frustration, Hero tugged the corner again. The carpet whined, but did not move. Hero tugged again. The carpet inched forward and reached the door, wobbling slightly as Hero kept tugging on it. He even put his foot against the door and pulled hard, shouting, “Left! Mush to the left!”
At this the carpet turned sharply to the left and flew across the room at a harrowing speed. They careened towards a wall (decorated with various candlesticks).
Gwen threw her arms over her head. “Stop!”
The carpet stopped and hovered, wheezing a little.
“I think it’s a mite deaf,” said Hero. “Must have a lot of dust in its weave.”
“Splendid,” said Gwen. “Just what we need for a quite getaway.”
They then spent fifteen minutes shouting and tugging at the carpet, trying to establish a system. Finally the carpet wavered in understanding: tugs on its individual corners indicated the direction, tugging both corners indicated “up” (for the front corners) and “down” (for the back ones), whilst pokes in its middle meant “start” (one poke) and “stop” (two pokes). Once this was established, the two managed to steer the carpet towards the window.
Gwen watched over Hero’s shoulder as he struggled to open the window without falling off the carpet. It was too dark to see whether Clyde was in the courtyard. She felt relieved, however, that there was no light in any of the windows.
“Hero, why are you afraid of frogs?”
Hero’s hand slipped and he bumped his head against the windowpane. He rubbed his head a moment then turned to Gwen. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Huzzah called you ‘little frog’,” pushed Gwen.
Hero looked out the window and sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t say anything until he’d managed to open the window and they’d managed to squeeze through it. As they hovered behind the rose bush, Hero finally answered her.
“I was a frog,” he whispered, eyes glued to some point in the courtyard.
Gwen turned and looked at him carefully.
“Got turned into a frog once,” he repeated, “by a testy old lady.”
“But you got better,” Gwen pointed out.
Hero stared at her for a moment then turned at tugged the carpet’s back corners. “I’ve been psychologically scarred,” he hissed.
As they rose over the courtyard and maneuvered their way over the walls, they left behind a faintly glowing purple trail. The lamp in Gwen’s hands shook and grew heavy as they flew away from the mansion.
They didn’t notice the glowing figure of Huzzah as he flew across the courtyard behind them. He’d been dragged out of the kitchen (where he was accosting Quasi for a cup of tea), though the halls, down into the cellar and through the window by the lamp.
Floating helplessly behind the carpet, Huzzah whispered a curse: “May you be overrun by a thousand sheep.”
