Gag

She looked out over the kingdom through the ice crystal her magic had formed. She looked down on the light happy day, the birds chirping, the children playing, the lovers loving, and hated. She hated. She stewed in it like a rotten potato in a stew of curdled milk and dead things. She lashed out with her magic and through the distance of time and space she reached out with her hate, with her ice, and lovers quarreled, and children felt a chill and were afraid, and birds flapped and flew and hid themselves. She was unsatisfied, something about the day touched her heart somewhere she didn't understand and she hated it far more than usual.

Her gaze searched through the crystal; her will flew far and wide until her eyes rested upon a tranquil village. "Perfect, just look at it, it's PERFECT!" She hated it. She looked through the village, her gaze razing hackles on dogs' necks, causing people to shiver on a warm sunny day, to snap and argue without reason... She looked for the most perfect thing in the village. There...

The young couple, beautiful, strong, handsome, comely, together, loving each other with heart, soul, body... And there the spark of new life!

*HATE*

There was no conscious thought behind her actions she simply lashed out, deep inside the innocent girl, twisting the new innocent, perfect thing into something vile, noxious, and twisted. Even better the moment was spoiled! No more sweet lovemaking, only fear unknowing, terror at a feeling of pain unspeakable and doom twisting in the couple where moments before there had been only joy.

~Beginning~

"Get away you disgusting thing!" The foot of the washerwoman flew out and kicked Gag cruelly. His knotted body, bent and deformed was at least solid enough, despite his meager stature, to avoid any permanent damage, though he gasped in pain.

"Sorry Miss!" he gobbled, his voice never coming out quite right, never sounding like something that didn't send shivers up the spines of the hardiest souls. He just managed to duck most of the contents of the chamber pot she hurled after him.

"Noxious Troll! Be gone you foul creature!" It echoed after him as he half scampered, half hobbled down the alley, stopping to pick at some scraps that might almost have been edible. He didn't seem to notice, it had always been this way. He was not like them.

He didn't blame them as he eked out life at the edges of everything else, didn't blame his father for leaving his misshapen form at the church after his mother died giving birth, didn't blame the couple that had taken him in for raising him with their dogs, not their children. He wasn't like them; it had always been table scraps for him; it was what it was, nothing more. He didn't blame them when they took that from him, either. He had grown to adulthood, but never looked more like a man. Always just a strange misshapen boggle, even the dogs turned on him in the end. He had no place of his own, no one else like him.

Wistfully he stared out at the park from the shelter of some wretched flotsam, safe in the similarity. There in the light he saw children playing in the light of the sun and each other's regard. He wasn't jealous, only curious. As a child will regard a frog or a dog a porcupine before the quills, he gazed enthralled. Perhaps, it was this moment that started everything else, that changed his life.

A girl, blond, delicate thing, perhaps eight or nine, dancing with a ribbon, she swirled; she twirled, an angel in her grace. He was entranced. His eyes tracked her, the sunlight in her hair, the joy and life that emanated from her like rivers of sunlight and he was warm just looking at her, he felt safe... he'd never felt safe before, but the innocent joy of her at such perfect peace with the world around her left him with a touch of peace. It was too much. Without thinking his hand stole inside his little smock to the place his one possession lay: a beautiful agate stone the size of his thumb of such opalescent beauty that his heart ached to look at it. He had found it in the muck and it always reminded him that things could be beautiful and kind even if they seemed to be ugly. His foster mother had said that once...

He didn't think; he acted. He scampered out from the cover of his filth and to the angel of such grace. He tried to smile at her and unable to trust his voice he simply held up his treasure to her, an offering. She didn't cringe; she didn't scream; she smiled; she reached out and took the proffered jewel and said sweet thing of kindness in a voice of joy, acceptance, and thankfulness. Gag stood straighter than he ever had before. He felt 15 feet tall! And that's when it happened.

~CRACK~

The club hit him in the side, rough hands grabbed him and he whimpered. Rough voices yelled and the hands carried him like a piece of trash. He saw her once again for a brief second and his heart sank to see the shock and pain in her eyes.

The hands balled his small frame up and threw him. He heard their words, some of them, the vile hateful things seemed to somehow matter now, now that she had smiled at him. Now that he'd felt safe...

Gag was cold. He shivered, his few teeth chattering together crookedly. He had never been out of the town at night before. He had never been away from some source of warmth, even the comforting warmth of the filth in the alleys. Now there was nothing, he was soaked from the steam he had fallen into, bruised and bloody from the roughing up he had sustained, from the hits, from rolling down a hill, from the rocks, from the branches, and the tree trunk that had finally stopped his careening body. He was alone, now truly alone. Not even those others that were never truly his were there and he was afraid.

Gag hid, Gag crawled, eventually Gag found a place under an overhanging ledge at the edge of a stream where there was mud he could bury himself in. The mud and the muck in his mire blocked out the cruel wind and he felt a little warmer, the heat of the day still in the bank. Then he found fear. He could see their eyes. Wolves, many wolves came, fanning out searching crossing the stream and milling, seeming confused. He knew not to make a sound; he barely breathed, thankful of the muck and the mire masking his scent and concealing his twisted body from the hungry eyes of the pack.

They left, flowing back into the darkness in search of surer prey and he slept.

Gag wasn't sure how much time had passed, several years he was sure. The seasons had changed, come and gone. He had slowly moved further and further from the place he had known, hiding from man and beast, eating what he could find, grubs, bugs, berries, something, anything. Some had made him sick; he remembered those and was more careful to try only small amounts of new things, careful... careful... always careful always hidden... He had found a sharp stone and fashioned a kind of knife, a carcass of a deer and risked the dangers of a fresh kill to skin part of it. From the bit of its skin he fashioned a kind of poncho, a covering to keep him warm, to keep the rain off. He learned and he traveled. In his dreams he dreamed of the girl, of his foster mother, of the dogs that had been his playmates, but he dreamed as a boy, as a young man, as a thing he had never been and didn't understand. He was confused and tortured by his dreams, waking with shudders held in check for fear of the wild. For, Gag was small and weak and he knew it.

She looked out upon the kingdom, upon the range of her forest, dark and deep, upon the ice thick upon the castle around her. She was not content; she couldn't imagine such a state, but more of empty of rage, of anger, of the seething desire to rend to hurt which came upon her so often these days. She remembered other days, days when knights and heroes had come to brave the walls of the keep, to seek her out. It had been futile, she had killed them all, all but the last. Even the first she had killed all unawares. She contemplated the memories of their gaping stares, the shock and horror as their very bones had frozen inside them, as their hearts and brain, muscle and sinew, skin and breath had frozen from the inside out. How she had learned that she could not be saved. How she had learned of the monster she was in the horror of their looks, in that moment of rejection, just before they had died.

She cherished those memories, used them to build the icy ramparts that sprang up from the original keep to make her fairytale castle. She cackled, a fine castle for a sweet and retiring princess, waiting only for her charming prince. She remembered the last, the one that had escaped. How dare he leave! He obviously couldn't have staid, even if he had lasted longer than the others, even if he might have... bah. She raged, she would have killed that bastard prince in due time and he slunk away in fear, he must have. But she would punish him and his rotten kingdom. Already she had twisted much of it, sowing hate and fear, twisting the hearts of his once loyal subjects, raising resentment and hate. It was going well.

Odd... her eyes caught sight of a strange creature, so hideous that she couldn't tell what it might possibly be under its little fur covering. Intelligent then, she sent out wisps of power. She would see if it could survive, this vile thing that crept through her forest.

Gag was pursued. At every turn the wolves or stranger things he had no name for seemed to pursue him relentlessly. He survived only because of the time he had spent in the forest up until this turn for the worse. Every lesson, every bit of knowledge was stretched to its limit and perhaps beyond to find safety, hidden sports to rest, bits to eat as he fled from his pursuers. There were no more dreams, they were far behind. There was hardly time for breath and even that seemed to be sucked from him at odd times by wisps of winter frost in the warm summertime.

Gag did not know what to make of this, but he knew he was afraid. He knew he could not keep up his shambling pace forever. His now hardened feet and hands were not holding up well to this new grueling pace, his body wasn't either. His spirits were terror and horror wrapped up with a bit of a flimsy dream of seeming happiness in being beaten and screeched at in the place he had once lived... the place getting steadily farther from his memory with each passing day of flight and horror.

She had almost forgotten about the kingdom and its bastard of a prince in her play. She summoned ice sprites to harass and vex this new thing, wolves and crows, winter winds, and foul things in the blackness around him to hound him day and night. She drew him closer with each day. It just seemed natural, she had no thought of what to do with this strange creature once he arrived. Each day she was astonished and fascinated that he was still alive and redoubled her efforts. Until the day that she saw him step onto the ancient path that led up to her castle.

It was like a bucket of hot water had been thrown on her icy visage. Certainty cracked and spun away, she instinctively banished the vile things pursuing this strange beast-thing, and retreated into her tower to consider what she should be doing. Why was she spending time on this odd beast when she should be punishing that vile man, that coward? What did it matter if some strange boggle was wandering through her forest, and why, oh why had she brought it here?!

Gag couldn't hear the wolves on his trail, the terrible slither and snap of the things that reached for him from the shadows and tormented him when he slept. He looked up. Up, up, up at the most wondrous sight he had ever imagined. He had once upon a time seen a painting of a castle being transported on a peddler's cart. This was nothing like that or perhaps like the truth of what that artist had only dared to imagine a hundredth part. The castle soared up in towering heights, ramparts and towers, bridges in the air, fantastic things he had no word for...

For the first time in a very long time Gag stopped and felt safe. This thing in front of him was not the angelic grace of the girl, but Gag somehow knew that whatever had pursued him would not venture here. Perhaps those things were too afraid of this incredible masterpiece of ice and stone. Perhaps there was some other reason, but no matter, Gag scampered up the ancient bed of stones and gravel, slick with ice though it was, anything was better than the hellish pursuit of the last weeks.

Gag looked at the imposing gate works that would laugh at an invading army, looked at the walls towering to the sky, saw the old pockmarks in the ice of the cliff and wondered if perhaps some hardy souls had once climbed those walls. Gag was no climber; Gag slithered across the frozen moat and took shivering shelter under the edge of the ancient stones of the gatehouse. There! A crack in the ice seemed to beckon and the ice seemed to thin near the walls of ancient stone. Gag pulled out his stone knife and chipped at the ice...

~CRACK~

The ice under his feet gave way and he plummeted down crashing onto hard stones that seemed somehow warm. Gag had never learned to be superstitious in his lowly state, something that had likely saved his life on the terrible flight from the dark and stood him in good stead now. Gag did not question his good fortune, but snuggled into the warm stone nook and went to sleep.

The beast had disappeared. She wasn't sure why that bothered her the way it did. But nothing was supposed to be able to escape her notice this way! She had checked and he had not scaled the walls and she knew there were no other ways into her magnificent ice castle, she had seen to that long ago.

But still, it disturbed her; this strange thing was an anomaly, an oddity in her perfectly ordered and arranged universe. It disturbed her. She could not find it, nor its body, nor even traces of blood or fur, in frustration she reached to the north and summoned a huge snowstorm using its ice and snow to build her defenses higher. Then she fell asleep, fitfully dreaming of the strange beast she had hounded.

Gag woke slowly, but soon his stomach summoned his conscious mind from the first real rest he had experienced since his days in the town, so long ago. He awoke to find, to his astonishment, that the crack he had fallen into was no longer there, sealed over with a fresh layer of hard, thick ice. Shocked he looked around frantically to realize in wonder that he had fallen into much more than a crack. A kind of passage ran away in both directions circling with the ancient stone of the castle and was illuminated by light filtering down in strange silver light through the ice above. Shrugging his poor shoulders Gag set out in his rolling gate down one direction, as good as another his foster mother had once said, slowly but surely covering distance and hoping to find something, anything...

There, it had been an interminable slog through the narrow passage, Gag had rested, shambled, rested again, and felt himself getting weaker, but there, there was something different. He wasn't sure what, a gust of air, a slight difference in the stone, a smell, perhaps it was just instinct, but Gag knew, something was different. He reached out hesitantly feeling the wall, poking, examining, curious.

~CLICK~ ~GRIND~ ~CRASH~

In front of Gag there was now a doorway in the stone, whose ancient mechanism Gag had somehow triggered and whose lock had snapped itself open as fluidly as its ancient builders could ever have hoped. Through it was a strange room, mostly in shadow, but in which crystals glowed upon the walls and ancient runes were inscribed on the ceiling. Gag didn't care; this was an escape from a slow death under the ice.

As soon as he had stepped into the room the door snapped shut behind him and the runed walls and crystals in scones glowed brighter illuminating the room in a strange fey light.

Something was different! She didn't know what, but she felt it! Ancient magic, she could smell it. But where?! She searched the kingdom, the wood, even the frozen wastes to the North, nothing! How could something hide from her!? She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat, her rhythm was disturbed and no thought of the kingdom and its vile prince entered her mind. She must know, must understand, must find this disturbance in her surety, her control.

Gag read. Gag had never read before. Gag didn't know how to read. That didn't matter to the runes and it didn't matter to Gag; so, Gag read. Gag read a history of an ancient people full of magic. A people that had once shepherded the lands about with great wisdom and love, and the desolation brought about by greed, jealousy, one terrible man and the damage he had done to the Old Queen. The curse that had been placed upon the entire castle, all but the baby Princess, the light of the Queen's heart encased in icy sleep. The last notes of the repentant King, who had fled here in the last moments before her rage had encased the castle in ice. Gag read other things, things of magic, things of knowledge of things he had never imagined, things that could bring life, hope, growth, peace, and joy. Perhaps it was his simple nature, but it never occurred to Gag that these things could bring death, despair, pain, and the icy prison of the castle itself, that he was learning the how's and why's of this places destruction. He only saw that perhaps he might be able to help, poor innocent little Gag...

When Gag had read all he could in the strange place of the runes and crystals, eaten, some strangely filling bread, even more strangely preserved in that fey place, rested, for how long he had no idea, and awoke, he approached the door to the castle. He had no idea what he would find, even though he knew the interior of the castle from the rune's tutelage he also knew that this was not the castle of old and that the ice would conform to no pattern he knew...

She was no the calm collected master of all she surveyed. She was ragged, frustrated, confused, and still could not trace the strange scent of magic, so familiar and yet so alien. What?! Here? In

her

castle? How was it possible? It wasn't possible! But yes, she felt the vibrations in the ice, somewhere someone else moved in her castle. She reached out her magic but something was in her way, it confused her senses distorted her eyes she couldn't see! So, she unleashed the running things, the flapping things, the icy shadows and launched them at whoever dared invade her domain!

Gag explored; at first each place was new and also old to him, giving him a strange feeling of having been each new place he discovered. The understanding of the old things went with him and he reached out to the castle and felt it stir in response. Ancient rooms covered in ice, hallways whose foreboding air changed as he passed to one of expectancy and almost excitement. Something was changing. But as he ascended from the depths of the castle things changed.

The ice which now made up the hallways and passages, bridges and stairs, seemed hostile and cold. While it reacted to his passage it was with the indifference of a seasoned blade, of a winter's day, clean but pitiless. Then they came, frozen shadows launching themselves at him, but he was not longer the terrified boggle of his flight in the forest. He met them with songs of welcome, a recognition that confused and frightened the shadows, that reached out to them and wrapped them in light. They hesitated only moments and launched themselves at him again, compelled by the magic that had impelled them, launched themselves into the light of the crystalline passage, icy with the breath of winter. They came, three low loping things of wind and icy teeth, four darting flashed of tearing icy wind slashing down at him from above. They came into light. Through the light they exploded in a shower of shards and broken bits of ice tumbled four birds and three dogs, confused, terrified, shivering. He gathered them to him, found places for the birds on his shoulders and let the dogs huddle against his small form. Soothing words flowed from him wrapping them in care and warmth and acceptance. Soon he rose, and shambled on, now with a coterie of song birds and escorts true and faithful.