Concentrikey

The Boglanders

A short story from The World Outside the Shell

Tamm stood alone in a field of dead Bleak plants. He was an old man, remembering the day he opened a book and read about his future adventures. “I wrote a memoir.” The water rushed in and the marsh was reborn.

He climbed a hill and sat at his desk.

The loud hum of wings broke the silence of the morning as a swarm of Boglander creatures passed overhead.

The only blue one in the swarm of red wings landed on the hill.

The Boglander said, “And how did you write with such detail, before these things came to be?” He was a curious creature with ten legs, and two long arms rubbing together to mimic the sound of human speech.

The second Boglander in close pursuit was a smaller creature with similar features.

“I lived the story as it was told.”

The triangle head spun in a slow full-turn as the blue Boglander formed a sentence, and the single large triangle eye looked bored. The creature had no mouth or other interesting features. 

“And how did you survive all the bad things in the story?”

“I simply lived!”

The unusually quiet sister of the curious Boglander started laughing, but said nothing.

“Of course, not being dead helped when I decided to write a memoir.”

Tamm dropped his feather pen into an inkwell. The wind was picking up and he was frustrated by the near constant need to reach out and slap down pages as the yar-wind tried stealing them. “Go away, I have work to do!”

The silent moment of reflection passed without another word until a second Boglander landed. The Boglanders froze in place, wings tucked into their sides and looked hurt.

“Oh sorry, I meant the yar-wind.”

The wind stopped and calm silence filled the air, but the scorching heat of the sun brought an unwelcome return of the bog stench.

The large desk, made from trees not from the same world, was firmly planted at the top of a ridge, on  a dry grassy hill in the middle of the empty marsh. The crystal vase in the center of the desk was filled with the stems of flowering sour-bleak plants.

“And what happened to the sour-bleak plants?”

“The flowering plants need watering, always more watering, and I neglected them.”

“And how much water do the sour-bleak plants need? The plants grow in a marsh and water is everywhere.”

“Good question. All of the water!”

“And why are the plants called sour-bleak?”

“Have you tried eating one?”

The Boglanders were looking up into the sky, their ridiculously oversized heads tilted to the wind, and the large fully extended in the face of a roaring wind.  “The yar-wind is back!”

“What a miserable afternoon,” said Tamm, as he dropped a large paper weight onto a stack of papers, then slipped both arms into leather straps bolted securely to the furniture. “I wish to someday become a turtle, with the power of flight so I can drift on the wind inside as slow as the clouds drift on a summers day.”

The wind was so strong the frail old man lifted like a paper kite in the breeze, parallel to the ground. Soon, the wind calmed down and he returned to his writing as his office dropped to the ground on the crest of the hill.

The Boglanders had taken flight and circled the desk.

Tamm looked up, worried about the ominous change of mood.

The hill collapsed into a sinkhole, filling with water and nearly drowning the old man. The lightning fast arms of three women in white robes reached out to rescue the busy man.

“We are the Boglander singers.”

Tamm sighed and looked down into the sink-hole. “I lost the desk and a full-days worth of memoir pages and deep thoughts!” The leather straps were still securely wrapped around his arms, the desk was not.

The tallest of the Boglander singers said, “The writing was sad and filled with self-pity.”

“I write what I know.”

The middle height singer said, “The writing was too bleak.”

The shortest singer said, “I think we saved you from ridicule and rejection.”

“I NEVER share the writing so there will NEVER be ridicule OR rejection.”

The tallest of the Boglander singers said, “We read the chapter on the history of our kind.”

The shortest singer said, “I nearly died from shock at the mention of the annual spring concert!”

Tamm begged the women to let him down and they slogged through much and standing water to another, higher hill. “I want to thank you all, for saving me from the sink hole.”

The tallest of the Boglander singers began to sing a three note scale, while the others harmonized and seemed to lose interest in the old man.

The yar-wind began to rise and darkness fell in an instant. The sky was pitch black with no clouds and the singers were gone.

The sound of buzzing wings in the still filled Tamm with dream, until the familiar voice of a Boglander called out, “And where do you live?”

Tamm laughed and said, “I live where you find me.”

“And you are here?”

“Yes,” said Tamm. He waited for the blue Boglander to settle into a comfortable position on the hill. The curious creature looked ready for another long evening of stories. The yar-wind was always no more than a light breeze when the sun was sleeping. 

“And why do you live on a hill?”

Tamm did not sleep. Time had no meaning.

The ground rumbled and glass shards rose high into the air marsh in every direction, reflecting the dim light of the soft glow from flowering sour-bleak plants.

Tamm was unmoved by the terrors of the marsh. “I lost my first writing desk when the boat sank in a sinkhole.” 

The Boglander tucked into a ball and rolled off the hill into the marsh water. The sun rose the moment he vanished under the murky surface and the yar-wind returned with a vengeance. Tamm was blown three hills to the south and landed on his back.

The Boglander returned. “And where do you want the desk?”

Tamm looked up at a welcome swarm of Boglanders hovering and holding the desk, covered in mud, dripping wet, and floating in the air. “The desk should be lifted onto a hill, please.”

The furniture was dropped onto the hill, narrowly missing Tamm who rolled backward into the marsh water. He pulled himself out using the long reeds of sour-bleak in the shallow water.  

The now glowing with white light shards of mirror glass sunk into the waters of the marsh before mid-day, lighting the still waters from underneath.

The rolling balls of iron spikes crossed the marsh in the distance as Tamm returned to his writing. He started singing for no particular reason.

The stack of blank pages he needed were found in a small desk drawer, water stained, but quickly drying in the hot sun.

Tamm soon completed an original poem about the song of a lonely Boglander.” I like all three, but there is only one for me. The tall one!  No, the short one! No, the iron spikes of rejection are too much for a lonely Boglander.”

The trees planted on the hills surrounding the marsh became a forest and the world was reborn.

The days of too much rain would not begin again for a very long time.

Tamm missed the Boglanders. The marsh had moved on, but the Bleak plants returned, growing from the seeds planted by the rolling balls of iron spikes. He looked in a glass shard and heard the faint echo of distant voices, the spring song of his friends.

He returned to his desk, held the pen over a blank page and wrote, “It appears to be a Tuesday, and I wish to become a turtle.”

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