Chapter 24: A Bagful of Eyeballs

“Oh, he’s a wicked man who comes to little children who won’t go to bed and throws handfuls of sand into their eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody; and he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half moon as food for his little ones.”

--E.T.A. Hoffman, “The Sand-Man”

As a being that never sleeps (unless you count being knocked unconscious from lack of air), Bennu freely volunteered to stand guard over the others. “I reserve the right, however, to wake any of you as I deem fit. To keep me company, sing me songs, tell me stories, argue philosophy, praise my beauty.”

Grace nodded at Bennu’s little joke as she nestled her head against Goldtalon’s warm tummy, but was not really listening. Everyone else had already passed out.

Sandy tundra was nobody’s ideal place to take a nap. Nevertheless, between heavy coats and Bennu’s heat, it seemed manageable. But to generate warmth, the phoenix stressed himself. Pushing too long without a recharge of cinnamon would eventually put him out entirely. They could easily freeze before reaching the Easter Bunny’s castle.

Bennu woke them sooner than expected. His dark plumage had turned scarlet. He said nothing to Grace. His panic was conveyed by nudges and twitches. He pointed his beak insistently at a corner of the crater. Among the broad shadows cast by a plateau, one drifted into the vicinity of their impromptu camp. 

On second thought, not a shadow. Like Adamson, it possessed just enough depth. The figure’s dark impression came from it wearing some sort of black cape and hood. It looked roughly the height of an adult man, perhaps six feet. A few yards away, it ceased creeping and began a casual stride. While still impossible to make out its features, a sound like rusty hinges emanated from under the hood. Suction sounds came from all over.

“Wake up! Run!” Bennu finally screeched. “Everyone, get away!” His red feathers flashed.

“What’s happening?” Diana slurred from grogginess.

Aside from Bennu, the only light came from Schrodinger’s eyes. “A Sandman? The only decent excuse to wake to cat!”

“You know about these things?” Fox punched herself up from the dust.

“So you don’t have to!” Schrodinger replied.

Only Goldtalon remained asleep.

Schrodinger called the creature a “Sandman” but nursery rhymes had not prepared Grace for what approached. She would rather take the half-elephant, half-tiger from Yokai-Town if she truly wished for restful sleep. This Sandman was straight from a nightmare. It (for she could not well call the monster “he”) walked on two skeletal legs. Like some fowls, its feet had spurs on the heels. Extra joints at the knees let it bend in ways no human form could. Its lengthy arms similarly featured too many joints. Its hands had too few digits. When the black cloak swished aside for a moment, Grace saw a second pair of arms, slightly smaller and thinner.

Grace failed to get a clear look at the monster’s face. She felt grateful, knowing (somehow, in the way one can instinctively know something in a dream without needing to be told) if she looked the creature fully in the face, she would go insane and never recover. Seeing its body was more than enough. For Grace and her stomach.

Under the cloak, the Sandman wore nothing. In places, it had reptilian scales. In others, the shell of a beetle. Its color was sick jaundice. The parts exposed by rips in the cape were full of pores, sucking air and gasping out yellow dust.

The attack happened almost too quickly for Grace to respond. The top pair of hands reached for her, but she ducked to the side. Another cold claw tugged the side of her cheek, its palm sounding like a vacuum. Even knowing she should struggle, the leaking sand made her very badly wish to fall asleep.

Unlike the anesthetic used by doctors, the experience still hurt, but Grace was being compelled not to care. Truly, the grit falling in every crack and corner of her face felt rougher than sandpaper. She was conscious enough to notice the switch of the Sandman gripping her with its lower set of hands. The upper pair was now concerned with batting Goldtalon away. They were amazingly strong for such skinny limbs.

The griffin had been last to awaken. His eyes were still half-closed. Nonetheless, he rushed to defend Grace, rearing on hind legs to better slash with his eagle claws.

The Sandman hissed, tightening its three fingers and thumb around Grace’s throat. It lifted her clear off the ground! The monster and its captive were so close, Goldtalon could not strike without also hitting her. The griffin bowed his head.

Grace fought even as she drifted off, kicking the monster’s ribs. No pain seemed to register. The Sandman crushed her sides with all four arms. Goldtalon decided to risk it and flew back in.

The Sandman brushed open its cape, reaching into its chest with a lower hand. The torso was sunken, almost hollow. Flakes of abrasive sand practically seeped out. A handful was thrown directly into Goldtalon’s face.

The griffin was knocked off balance, crashed to the ground. His eyes glazed over—or had they looked that way for a while?

Grace had gone limp when the Sandman bounded into the air. Only then did she realize…it was not wearing a cape at all. These were its wings. Down below, she saw her friends checking on Goldtalon, Bennu foremost. Her captor landed in a crater nearly identical to the one she was snatched from. While the lower arms held her in place, the monster poked her face with its upper pair.

Grace’s outward paralysis could not be more opposite than the panic inside. She shut her eyelids to protect them from the sandpaper feel, but that made her sleepier. Her satchel had also been brought along, but on landing, the strap broke and it flew some distance away. She heard the commotion of stomping before her friends appeared over the rim. Bennu was in the lead, flashing scarlet.

“Fox, Di, any-wan…” Grace managed to slur, “g…get Rid-dl!”

Fox lifted the sword from the bag, pulled it from it scabbard, and threw it at Grace. Blade first. It struck the Sandman. Not for the first time, nor the last, Grace wished it could act like a normal weapon. Then the monster would have already been defeated. Her left hand felt like another person’s body-part, but it closed around Ridil’s pommel. Despite being righthanded, she swung it fine. She hoped the dull blade would at least surprise the Sandman into dropping her.

The monster continued strangling her. Grace’s brain was near shutting down as her body was injured. The fear of death encroached on every other thought, but she had to push it out of her mind. In using Ridil for a while, she had figured whoever called on its power required supreme mental focus, which for her was compromised.

While she only got pink embers out of it this time, the balm that came to her drove agony from her eyes, then her throat and lungs. Her mind was her own, yet her body remained too weak to break loose. Ridil did not seem capable of spontaneously creating muscles.

She struggled anyway. Her efforts seemed to instigate an eruption of noises below. Huge grubs began bursting from underground. In disgust, Grace realized this crater was a nest, and these were the Sandman’s offspring, though the dozens of larvae did not resemble their parent. Not exactly centipedes (though they possessed many legs), they were the color of maggots, easily long as her thigh, which they crawled on. There had no heads to speak of, only serrated beaks.

Grace’s friends were trying to get to her, but larvae clung at their feet. Diana tripped. The Sandman let Grace go, little worried she might escape in her weakened state. Instead, it got greedy, coming after Fox. The older girl warded off the hand grasping towards her with a thrown flint.

Before any further assaults, a call sounded from above. Like the screech of a newly widowed owl, the warning of a drunken rattlesnake, and the borings of a clock-sized deathwatch beetle blended together. A second creature landed in the crater, the approximate height of the Sandman, with the same black wings only resembling a cape. This new figure approached Grace’s captor. If she hoped they would fight, she was disappointed.

The two Sandmen greeted each other with nothing but affection. If these were the parents of the grubs, it felt unclear which was the male and which the female. Perhaps even the Sand “men” could not differentiate. During their embrace, a cloth sack the second monster carried dropped to the ground.

Because Grace was lying on hands and knees, relearning to breathe, she got a straight look at the bag. It was covered in crusty stains; some faded brown, others freshly red. Round objects rolled out. They came in brown, gray, green, and blue. Larva blindly squirmed over; their beaks spread wide…

If it helps to sleep easier, you can imagine the bag contained marbles. All the brown-red stains were merely ketchup from lunches messily eaten before a great rush to the playground. Yes, that is it. The Sandman flew down from the moon and, as everyone slept, secretly borrowed the most beautiful marbles from all the world’s children, bringing them home for its own offspring to play with! Consider this chapter’s title a joke.

You could choose to believe that, certainly, and go about your life a smiling, unworried individual like your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, doctors, teachers, preachers, babysitters, police officers, firefighters, lawyers, judges, and president expect from you. But is it not better to know the truth, even when it proves unpleasant?

There is a difference between fantasies and lies. The world of the Astral contains both, and may other things besides. But mostly dreams. In dreams there are pleasant things, happy and beautiful, just as there are pleasant, happy, beautiful things in the waking world. Denying this is plainly wrong, and a million pessimists insisting that nothing good exists will not alter reality… any more than wishing the self-evident problems of the world away will fix even one issue.

If anyone claims fantasy has no place in the world, you should tell them that, yes of course what goes on inside your own head might not be as “real” as the trillion billion things happening outside it. But just the same, it should count for something. What is fantasy can become true. No invention or artwork could presently exist without some past person thinking it could be. Yet, the utility of fantasy is challenged by authorities. All the while, lies that never improved or enriched anyone’s existence always find a welcome—even honored—niche in society.

Happy lies, founded on ignorance and misplaced trust, are just as treacherous and damaging as the cynical sort. The notion that a person can feel happy all the time is more of a fantasy than fantasy itself. Even with a muse sitting on a person’s shoulder, supplying advice and giving encouragement, art and inventions are only made available because someone worked hard to bring it to the public.

Plenty of adults grow old and die certain in the belief that everything in the world is perfect, and if you ever feel sad or scared, the problem’s with you, not the simple reality that life can be sad and it can be scary, whether outside or inside your head. Grace, Goldtalon, Bennu, Schrodinger, Fox, and (naturally) Diana were all, to some extent, sad and scared in that crater on the dream side of the moon.

You don’t have to be, though! Instead, you can imagine the bag merely contained marbles, that the Sandmen suddenly turned nice, Ostara appeared, and it turns out all this trouble was a huge misunderstanding, and to make up for it, she gave everyone a lifetime supply of candy, and those birds who had their heads explode really just had mild headaches and now they felt all better and while the apartment became pretty crowded, Grace’s parents and Grandmam adopted anyone who felt unwanted, and somehow they never had to worry about paying the bills again, and everyone lived happily ever after.

THE END.

But that would be a lie, instead of a fantasy, which still has the possibility of becoming true.  Only you can decide for yourself what rolled out of the bag, what made Grace sick to her stomach, and want to cry…

Grace was left in the cold dirt as the first Sandman resumed attacking Fox. The older girl summoned boulders, which crushed one of its hands. Another stone hit a foot. In retaliation, the monster tried impaling her chest with its spur. Schrodinger called on Goldtalon to help. The griffin moved in, headbutting the Sandman. The attack was stilted, however, with none of his normal energy.

The second Sandman attacked Diana, only just getting back up after tripping. Schrodinger jumped on its back. His yowling befitting a wild cat better than one from a library. No damage was done against scales or beetle carapace, so the grimalkin mauled the pores, sticking claws directly into the Sandman’s guts. Sleeping sand spilled onto his paws. His usually well-groomed appearance was in disarray when he fell to the ground. He did not land on his feet.

Schrodinger was unconscious. The green glow from his eyes snuffed out. The friends would be stuck in darkness were it not for Bennu’s tail. He waved it like a flaming branch.  Sandmen were not deterred by the display. A grub bigger than Schrodinger made for the sleeping tabby. Bennu’s attack met with more success. The larva wiggled back into its hole. But there were dozens more, still famished after emptying the bag their parent carried past the Place of Dead Dreams.

Fox divided her attention throwing boulders at either Sandman, but a creature that nipped past a barrier of fears, regrets, and lost hopes for a grocery run could deal with any turbulence from the air while on the wing. The second Sandman sprung, diving at Diana. It lifted the pudgy girl into the sky while gouging her face, as its partner had with Grace.

Grace prepared to join the fray, but not before waking Schrodinger with Ridil. He bounced back from the sand’s drugging, and fought the original attacker with Bennu while Fox resorted to warding off the increasingly aggressive larva with mini-boulders.

That left Grace with Goldtalon, but when she leapt on her partner’s back, he did not immediately take off to rescue Diana. She had to suggest it. His wing movements came awkwardly, a few times veering off in wrong directions. Grace did not expect his usual playfulness, but he so totally lacked the agility and poise inherited from two unique animal dynasties.

Every second Diana was with the Sandman was another moment she could suffer mutilation. Even after a great red flash courtesy of Ridil, the drowsy look in Goldtalon’s gaze did not in any way abate. Can’t just be sleeping sand. Granny Spear-Finger was right. By constant encouragement, Goldtalon nearly reached Diana before getting unbalanced and hitting the crater’s far edge.

Spread-eagle on frozen ground, Grace stared as the Sandman’s beak opened. A long tongue covered in barbs worked its way to Diana’s sockets. Grace heard a clicking, then sucking, and finally a scream. She knew Diana well enough to know that did not come from the squonk. More like an owl turning inside-out, then forced to puke itself up.

The Sandman holding Diana crashed, not far from Grace and Goldtalon. When Grace dragged herself over, she witnessed something acidic eating through the monster’s barbed tongue. There was smoke coming from its mouth, and a smell like sizzling rubber. Diana suffered the same attack as Grace and the others. The only obvious difference was she was bawling. Sand combined with her tears.

The mixture was harmless to Diana herself, but far from agreed with the Sandman. It reached at her face with an upper hand. Tears/sand burnt a hole through the appendage, deeper and more jagged than its natural pores. The monster fell to its multijointed knees. Diana’s loose, moist skin helped her wiggle out of its bony grip. There was not just pain in its strangled gurgling—it was surprised.

It must’ve had plenty victims cry before Grace thought. But that probably just gave the eyes an extra-salty flavor. “It’s squonk tears!” She said out loud. Goldtalon was unconscious. Schrodinger, Bennu, and Fox were so busy fighting the original Sandman and its offspring, they failed to notice what had befallen the second adult.

Fox’s goggles did a good job keeping sand out of her eyes. Just to be safe, she tightened the straps. Her rocks hit grubs biting Bennu’s tail. The effort of manipulating stones took a clear toll on her. She gagged and wheezed, inhaling sand leaking from the first Sandman. “Like shards of glass!” she yelled.

Then, the Sandman throttled her, its barbed tongue flicking at the goggle lenses. But at the tortured screech of its mate, it glided to where Grace, Diana, and Goldtalon lay. Fox was carelessly dragged along, one pair of skeletal-yet-strong hands loosely wrapped around her neck.

On landing, the monster kicked Diana aside with a scaly foot. She was perhaps an inch away from the spur. Her fright set her to wailing.

“Don’t just moan,” ordered Grace. “Fox needs you to make more tears. Somehow, that’s these monsters’ only weakness!”

The first Sandman kneeled over the second, which spasmed before going still. The original cast up its head up and gnashed its beak. Then, it furiously squeezed Fox’s throat with all four arms!

Diana made the heroic effort to cross the distance to them, wobbling on uncertain, half-webbed feet while apologizing “Sorry I’m so slow!” She was still apologizing while she stood at her full height, trying to spread tears on monster claws. She found, for the first time, her eyes were completely dry. “Boo, I hate being put on the spot.”

Fox could not talk, so her last attempt at communication was an eyeroll.

“If it helps,” Bennu flew over, “think of hoses dripping, rivers flowing, rain falling, waves rolling, oceans churning, fountains wishing.”

“You kidding?” Schrodinger dropped and rolled out of Bennu’s claws. “Diana Hemlock doesn’t need any help crying.”

The Sandman regarded Diana long enough to reach a hand into its chest and throw sand in her face. Sheer pain evoked a flick of tears which landed on one body hand. All four arms flailed, twisting in their sockets.

Fox landed on her feet. Her forehead was a reservoir of sweat.

The mix of squonk tears and the monster’s own sand worked against it. A barbed tongue darted in and out of its mouth. It gurgled, then screamed; a bit higher than its partner. The Sandman’s beak opened, as if to swallow Diana whole. Its whole lower jaw melted. There was that same burnt rubber smell.

The Sandman never learned that, every time it struck Diana, she cried more. Riddled with extra holes, it fell beside its partner. Six limbs continued thrashing as dozens of larvae slithered over. These had not moved fast enough to claim the goodies from the crusty sack like their siblings. Now, they snuck their hungry, headless beaks into their parent’s hoods.

With a whining lack of remorse, they took their mealtime, at last. The nest erupted in a shrill orchestra, followed by a great clicking and sucking. Everyone except Fox looked away.

Grace’s eyes were still blurred and unfocused. Her throat had lacerations. She decided a healing sword was not the worst thing in the (or any) world. But before fixing herself, she moved to check on Goldtalon. He did not move. Did not even seem to breathe.

“Wake up!” Grace pleaded. While not intended as an order, Goldtalon immediately rose to attention. She knew the more instructions one infected by the Root of All Evil was made to follow, the closer they got to losing their head. No. We won’t get to that point.

***

“You know,” Diana said after shuffling out of the crater-nest, “For the first time I can remember, I don’t especially want to cry. Even at Fort Stone, I thought I should, though times there were pretty okay.” Her blue-but-bloodshot eyes appraised her companions. She tapped a finger to her lower lip, like she wanted to say more, but could not think what.

Fox leaned nearby. Ridil healed her enough to speak without pain. “Well, let’s hope there aren’t any more Sandmen in our way to this palace of curds and whey, or whatever. Otherwise… what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to smile again.” Diana showed off her surprisingly well-maintained teeth. “It hurts less the more I practice. The real difficulty is I don’t like happiness.” She never moaned, but her voice cracked.

“You are not just a squonk,” Bennu rose to a cheer, “you are Diana Hemlock, most Deep and Sensitive of All, as you,” he turned to Fox, “are Tatum Esther Levinson, Mighty Chucker of Stones.” 

“Now you mention it,” responded Fox, “I’ve been thinking. It’s pointless to throw stones at folks who just want to be my friends.” The others thought she was done speaking, but it was merely a pause. “Not when there’s plenty of jerks who deserve to have rocks thrown at their heads!” She cackled manically, kicking aside a fat grub attempting to crawl onto her leg.

Grace groaned. Diana sighed. Bennu laughed nervously. Schrodinger purred. Goldtalon inspected his trimmed nails. It was progress, at least.

In planning what to do next, nobody argued for more sleep. They were tired, cold, and had nothing to drink besides one water skin. There was the stuff in Grace’s tinfoil, but most were suspicious of it. Goldtalon wondered if they would find food in Mooncry. “Not stealing if it’s from a thief, right?”

 Grace smiled. It seemed he was coming back to himself.

Bennu arched his neck back, gazing far past the plateaus. “Does it seem like the moon’s become a bit, I dunno, less spherical? Swear there’s a point rising in that direction,” he pointed a wing. “Like a summit that wasn’t there before. I turn the opposite way, and there’s another. Steep crescent peaks.”

“Yes, keep an eye on that,” said Schrodinger. “But the other eye on the road. We’re heading to Mooncry.”

“Should we just leave the grubs here?” asked Diana.

If anyone had a response, it was drowned out by the terrible thunder of tanks. They treaded to the opposite side of the nest, only stopping at the crater’s edge. Then, they split into two convoys, moving from left and right to head off Grace and her friends.

If they moved straight, the companions had a head start. Goldtalon took Grace, Diana, and Fox. The latter felt too worn out to travel by stepping stones. Bennu held tight to Schrodinger, and managed to fly despite his extra baggage.

Those tanks leading the charge fired into the air just as the griffin and phoenix took off. Both grounded themselves in haste. These were clearly warning shots. From such close range, the tanks could easily reduce the companions to smithereens. Multiple cannons tracked the group’s movements.

 In the dust clouds made, Diana lost herself in a dune. Fox had to drag her out. More accurately, she drew on her frustrations to part the pile in half. Sand, after all, is ultimately just small rocks. The effort knocked Fox out.

Ice on the moon proved the extreme of slippery if bad luck and bad footing found you running along it. Grace fell, and saw green spots under her eyelids. Without Ridil, her entire back would soon wear one mighty bruise. Goldtalon bent his head, helping lift her to her feet.

A figure strolled in a straight line from the crater’s opposite side. With a hand gesture, the two tank convoys stopped, but blocked the most obvious escape route. The only way would be back through the nest of larvae.

“I haven’t met everyone here,” said the crossing figure. “But as events stand, we won’t need to know each other on a first-name basis.” He wore a white suit instead of his usual black. Even with adult Sandmen, he could have strutted by with impunity. Sleeping sand was unlikely to affect blazing eyes. “Oh, ew…” Mr. Aitvaras noticed the grubs writhing about him.

He called up fire and smote a circle around him. Larvae were reduced to cinders, and the bodies of their parents with them. With another hand gesture, the presently idling tank opened their hatches.

A horde of glowing silver rabbits bounced out to surround the companions. They lacked the horns of jackalopes, having only hard, rodent-like teeth and long, unkept nails. Those alone would not normally outmatch the natural weaponry on Schrodinger and Goldtalon, the literal firepower of Bennu, plus Fox’s increasingly refined skills at lithobolia, should she awaken. Moon rabbits lacked the intelligence, strength, or size to match Grace and her friends.

What made them a credible threat, however—even discounting their cannons—was their numbers. There were not just dozens of Ostara’s soldiers, but a minimum of a hundred, and there could still be more working the tanks. They only awaited Mr. Aitvaras to give the signal to bloody their teeth and nails. One eyeing Schrodinger drooled and gnashed his buckteeth. The rabbits began forming pyramids, scrambling onto each other’s shoulders, each trying to be on top of the heap. Tall, close-knit walls blocked off anywhere for the companions to run.

 It transpired that Bennu’s flashing tail had alerted the closest tank patrol, which called for reinforcements. The only option Grace and her friends had was surrender. The one positive aspect of the situation was they managed to enter Ostara’s palace without any fight.

Goldtalon appeared fine on the surface, but Grace did not like something about his new bearing. If they could just find those last two ingredients. Schrodinger expected his scientist friend to be trapped, possibly in need of rescue. If William Henry could invent a way out, he should have done so already.  

Instead of discovering one prisoner at Mooncry, however, the companions found two…