Golem in the Gears Read online

  “But you—” she faltered.

  Grundy lunged at the Hag’s ankle, catching it a grazing blow. “I will follow, once you are safe!” He jumped back as the broom came at him again, telling its position more by sound than sight.

  “You little piece of excrement,” the Hag cried. “When I get through with you, you won’t be more than a spot on the wall!” And the broom smashed down with such force that the wind almost blew him off his feet.

  “You can’t even catch me, you big piece of excrement!” Grundy responded.

  “Just let me make another light!” the Hag said. She fumbled her way to the kitchen, where there was evidently another lamp.

  “Going down,” Snortimer called in monster-tongue.

  “On your way!” Grundy replied. “I don’t know how much longer I can distract her.”

  The Hag came back, carrying a new lamp. Light flooded the chamber. “Where’s the damsel?” she screeched, abruptly realizing what had happened.

  “She gone, old fang,” Grundy informed her. “She has escaped your clutches at last.”

  The Hag dashed to the window. “She’s descending her own hair!” she cried. “I’ll cut it off!” She drew an immense carving knife she had evidently brought from the kitchen.

  Oops! Grundy hadn’t counted on this! One slash with that knife, and Rapunzel and Snortimer would both plunge to the rocks below.

  He charged forward—but now the Hag could see him. She pointed the terrible blade at him. “Come within range, Golem, and I’ll skewer you right through your big mouth!”

  Grundy hesitated. Her threat was no bluff; she could and would do exactly that. He would not be able to do anyone much good if she wiped him out. Strangely, he felt no fear, now, just a wary frustration; how could he distract the Hag long enough to allow Rapunzel and Snortimer to reach the foot of the Tower?

  The Hag reached behind her and caught the hank of hair that went out the window. It was securely knotted to the chair, and the chair was too big to fit through the window, so the anchorage was good. But now the Hag slowly brought the knife to the taut hair. “One cut, and poof!” she cackled, grinning.

  Grundy thought fast. If he charged in, she would skewer him, then cut the hair. His hatpin was no match for her knife. If he threw the hatpin at her, it might distract her a moment, but couldn’t really hurt her, and then he would be without any weapon. If he insulted her again, she would merely get even by cutting the hair. He had to find some other way.

  He found it: logic. “If you cut that hair, Rapunzel will fall to her death—and you won’t have a nice young body to take over. You’ll be stuck up here with no way to get down and no body left to take but mine.”

  “Yuck!” she exclaimed. She looked at the knife, then withdrew it. “You’re only half-right, Golem, but that’s enough. I’m not limited to whatever’s close at hand; when I become a ghost, I can travel any distance to seek a new host. But it is true that I don’t enjoy pot luck; I’d much rather have the body I have so carefully prepared, young and beautiful and packed with exactly the information I have chosen. So I won’t kill her.” She grimaced. “But you I have no use for. You I can dispatch now.”

  She lunged for him, her blade sweeping through the place where he stood. But Grundy, alert for exactly this treachery, jumped straight up, came down after her hand passed, and stabbed a mighty stab of the hatpin into the back of her hand.

  “Yowch!” she screeched, wrenching her hand away. The pin was caught in it; Grundy had to let go lest he be carried along. But he made good use of this new moment of distraction. He ran to the lamp and shoved at its base, trying to push it over. In darkness he would be relatively safe.

  “Oh no you don’t!” she exclaimed, recovering herself enough to snatch up the lamp. It had been too heavy for him to budge quickly enough; that play had failed.

  Grundy scrambled for the window. He grabbed the hair and started to let himself down outside.

  The hair was now slack below him; Snort and Rapunzel had reached the bottom! But now the Hag’s head poked out the window. “I don’t want her to die, but I’m happy to have you die, Golem!” she exclaimed, putting the knife to the hair again.

  She had him this time! Grundy could neither let go nor stop her; his life was in her hands. But perhaps his wit could save him. “If you cut it, you’ll still be trapped up here,” he said. “You can kill yourself and seek another body—but right now Rapunzel won’t accept you, so you’ll be stuck with whatever else is handy, and then you’ll have to die again to get to Rapunzel. You’ll have to get her up here again, without her hair to climb on. That’s an awful lot of trouble to get one silly golem.”

  “Confound it!” she swore. “I hadn’t thought of that! I don’t like to die any more times than I have to. It hurts, for one thing, and I’m disoriented for a while after I move into a new host. The girl would be apt to get away.”

  “Too bad, old wrinkle!” he agreed.

  For a moment he thought he had overdone it, for her knife slashed at the hair. But then she stopped. “You’ll not trick me that way, Golem! I will preserve my descent. But maybe I can still get rid of you!” And she took hold of the hair and started to shake it.

  Grundy’s grip on the hair was already tiring, for he was not used to sustained hanging. Now he was banged against the ivory wall. He was in worse trouble than ever; even if she stopped moving the hair, it would not be long before he fell on his own. It was a long way down!

  But at least he had saved Rapunzel! If he had to die, this was the way to do it. He had at least done somebody some good.

  “Get away, monster!” the Hag cried angrily. Grundy wondered at that, as his hands lost power; he was hardly a monster!

  Then his grip slipped. His little hands tore free of the hair, and he fell into the night.

  9

  Escape

  A big, hairy hand caught him and hauled him in. Grundy tried to fight, thinking it was the Hag—then realized it was Snortimer. “You caught me!” he exclaimed, dazed.

  “Well, I was coming up to get you anyway,” the Bed Monster replied gruffly in monster-tongue.

  Grundy shut up. He was weak with relief. He had thought he was going to die, but was glad he had not. After all, he had not yet completed his Quest! It would have been very embarrassing.

  Snortimer carried him down to the base, where Rapunzel waited in the pale moonlight. Apparently this emergency had caused the Bed Monster to become less shy of that light. Rapunzel was human-sized, and sitting in the Hag’s rowboat, for the tide had come in and flooded the island. Grundy wondered whether she had remained that size while Snortimer carried her down the wall; she must have been very heavy. But if she had turned small, then what about her hair? That had remained full-sized. Well, it wasn’t worth worrying about; they were all safely down, and they had the boat.

  But Rapunzel’s hair was tied to the chair at the top of the Ivory Tower; she could not travel from this spot! Unless—

  The damsel drew out a pair of scissors. “Oh, I really hate to do this!” she exclaimed. “But—”

  But what choice was there? They had to get moving before the dawn!

  She handed the scissors to Snortimer. “You do it,” she told the monster.

  Snortimer took the scissors in one big hairy hand, and grabbed her hair with the other. Holding it firmly clear of her head, he hacked away with the scissors. In a moment Rapunzel’s head of hair was short and wild, while the remainder of her tresses swung from the Tower. It was done.

  Tentatively, she touched her head. “How do I look?”

  “Awful!” Grundy said without thinking.

  Rapunzel burst into tears. “My lovely hair!” she cried in anguish.

  Snortimer, mortified, scuttled under the seat.

  Grundy hated to see such a lovely creature in distress. Her hair was nightmarish, but Rapunzel herself remained beautiful. He had to reassure her.

  “I meant—” he started.

  “I know what you me
ant!” she wailed.

  “But you were so brave to cut it off!” he said.

  She brightened slightly. “Was I really?”

  “So you think you’ve gotten away, do you?” the Hag called from above. “Well you haven’t! I’m coming down.”

  “We’ve got to get away!” Grundy exclaimed. “Rapunzel, you’re big enough to use the oars—”

  “Don’t you dare!” the Hag called. “You just sit right there, girl, until I come for you.”

  Rapunzel sat frozen.

  “We have to move!” Grundy cried. “Take the oars and row!”

  “I can’t,” Rapunzel said tearfully. “Mother Sweetness told me not to.”

  “But she’s not your friend!” Grundy reminded her. “She only wants to use your body!”

  “I know. But still, I can’t directly oppose her. She’s all I have known.”

  Grundy realized that he was up against a truly nice person. Rapunzel, even though she now knew the facts, simply could not bring herself to act in a contrary manner. She couldn’t betray the person she had known all her life.

  Meanwhile, the Hag was climbing out the window. Obviously she intended to climb down the hair, land in the boat, toss Grundy and Snortimer overboard, and carry the damsel back up to the chamber atop the Ivory Tower. With Rapunzel captive again, the Hag would have all the time she needed to persuade her that it was all a bad dream, and in the end she would have the body.

  He had to do something! But what? It simply was not possible for him to man the big oars himself.

  “Snortimer, can you—?”

  But then the moonlight intensified, and the little monster scrambled farther under the seat. He was no help—not while the light was too strong.

  Grundy looked about. Above the heaving sea a mean little cloud hovered. That was the one that had moved out of the way, allowing the moonlight to shine down on them unimpeded.

  Was that coincidence? That cloud had a familiar look. Could, it be Cumulo Fracto Nimbus? This was just the kind of thing that cloud would do, when it saw its opportunity!

  But maybe Grundy could turn that malice to his advantage! He knew that Fracto had a bad temper and a lot of hot air. If he could make the cloud blow its cool—

  “Hey, Fracto!” he called. “What are you doing so far from home? You’d better get back to land, where it’s safe!”

  The cloud huffed visibly. That was Fracto, all right!

  Meanwhile, the Hag was starting down the hair. This was going to be close.

  “Fracto, you’re nothing but a windbag!” Grundy cried. “You used up all your power back in the Gap! You couldn’t work up a decent storm now to save your foggy skin!”

  The cloud puffed up ominously. An experimental bit of lightning flashed, and there was a rumble of thunder.

  “Don’t pull your fakery with me, foggybottom!” Grundy cried. “I know you’re just a cottonpuff! All you can do is huff and puff and rattle around! You don’t have enough power to blow at that Ivory Tower, even!”

  The cloud huffed and puffed and blew at the Tower.

  “Hey!” the Hag cried. “Watch what you’re doing, you soggy mass of nothing!”

  Affronted, Fracto blew harder. The Hag swung about on the hair, banging into the Tower. She was only a quarter of the way down, and couldn’t move well while the wind was blowing.

  “Leave my ugly friend alone!” Grundy yelled with sudden inspiration.

  Naturally Fracto now concentrated on the Hag. The cloud moved nearer the Tower and began spitting rain at it.

  “Get away from here, you vacuous piece of mist!” the Hag screamed, furious.

  “Yeah, cauliflower-nimbus!” Grundy put in. “Do what she says!”

  The cloud was really worked up, now. It had swelled to triple its prior size, and fairly glowed with contained lightning. It oriented more carefully on the Tower.

  The Hag, perceiving this development, hastily scrambled back up the hair toward the safety of the chamber. She didn’t want to get caught halfway down when that storm let loose.

  Fracto, seeing her trying to escape, hastily sleeted on her. Tiny pellets of ice bounced off the Tower, but they weren’t enough to make the hair slippery.

  “See?” Grundy called nastily. “Your real name must be Cucumber-Fraction-Nimble!”

  A jag of lightning fired out of the cloud to strike the Tower. But the Tower was impervious to influences from outside; it stood unaffected. The Hag clambered back into the chamber, then turned to lean out and shake her fist at the cloud. “I’ll occupy a roc and flap you into oblivion!” she screeched.

  The cloud had not only driven back the Hag, it had blotted out most of the moonlight. “Come on, Snortimer!” Grundy said.

  Rapunzel clapped her hands. “That was very clever of you, Grundy!” she exclaimed.

  Good—she had recovered from her stasis. Now if he could just get her safely away from the Tower before the Hag realized—

  Snortimer grabbed the oars and began to row. But the boat was moored to the base of the Tower. “Untie it!” Grundy cried, for the knot was too massive for him to handle.

  He had been speaking to Snortimer, but it was the damsel who did it. That was interesting—she answered to the voice of authority, wherever it might be.

  They nudged out to sea. But now the storm was striking in earnest. Hailstones plopped into the water all around them. “Get under cover!” Grundy yelled, afraid the damsel would be struck.

  Rapunzel changed to golem-size and ran under the seat. Snortimer shipped the oars and joined her. Grundy went there too, as the hailstones began scoring on the boat. The waves were getting so rough that it would have been useless to row anyway.

  In fact, they were too rough. The boat rocked up and down, proceeding from apex to trough in horrendous fashion, and water began slopping inside. “Oh, we’ll drown!” Rapunzel cried.

  Grundy knew he had brought it upon them. He had used the storm to stop the Hag, but now it threatened to stop them too. “Maybe I can summon the Monster of the Sea,” he said. “He’s out here somewhere, and if we drift far enough from the Tower, he can pick us up.” He climbed to the top of the seat.

  “Oh, be careful!” the damsel cried.

  “Got to be done,” Grundy said grimly. He worked his way to the side.

  “You’re so brave!” Rapunzel said.

  “Brave? I’m terrified!” he said. And he was. But he saw no other course.

  He braced himself, stood up as tall as he could, and yelled: “Monster of the Sea! Monster of the Sea! Can you hear me!” There was no answer. He called again, and again, but either the noise of the storm was too great, or the Monster was too far away to hear, or both.

  A larger wave washed over, knocking him down. One of Snortimer’s hairy hands reached out and caught him before he tumbled to the bottom of the boat or, worse, overboard. He was getting to like hairy hands!

  “What were you doing?” Rapunzel asked, frightened. “I thought you were going to call the Monster.”

  “I was calling the Monster!” Grundy snapped as he shook some of the water off his body.

  “But you were honking! Were you blowing your nose?”

  “That’s Monster-talk.”

  “You mean you can talk their language?” she asked, amazed.

  “Certainly. I’m the Golem of Communication. I can talk to any living thing.”

  “Oh, that’s impressive!” she said. She was not being sarcastic, for there was not a sarcastic bone in her lovely body; she was really impressed.

  Another wave smashed across the boat. “But he didn’t answer,” Grundy said gruffly. “And if we don’t make contact with him soon—”

  “Maybe if—” she began, hesitantly.

  “Yes?” It was better to keep talking, so that the hopelessness of their situation would not be too apparent.

  “If you can talk to anything—” Again she hesitated.

  “I can, but—”

  “Maybe if you asked a fish—”
/>   Grundy knocked his head gently against the side of the boat. Of course! He could send a fish as a messenger to the Monster! “Good idea, Rapunzel!” he exclaimed, giving her a quick squeeze.

  He scrambled back up to the seat and the edge, heedless of the waves, and yelled at the water: “Hey! Any good fish about?”

  There was no answer. He realized that the fish, being underwater, couldn’t hear him; he had to get into their medium. “Hey, Snort! Tie a line to my foot so I can dangle in the water!”

  “No!” Rapunzel exclaimed, putting her fingers to her mouth in that maidenly way she had.

  “Got to be done,” Grundy said. “I have to talk to the fish in their medium.”

  Snortimer was good at handling cords and ropes, because of his several strong hands. In moments he had Grundy secured by the feet. “Pull me out after a moment, so I don’t drown,” Grundy told him, and jumped overboard.

  The water caught him the moment he entered, hauling him back. He scraped along the outside of the boat before the slack was taken up. Then he called to the fish in fish-tongue: “Hey, your poor fish! My name is Grundy. I need a messenger!”

  Now a fish swam up. It was a big bass. “My name is Tard; I need a meal,” it said, and opened its big mouth wide.

  Grundy scrambled to get away, but could not; the line held him fast. He kicked at the fish’s nose. Then Snortimer hauled on the cord, and Grundy was drawn up and out of the water, escaping.

  “Did you talk to one?” Rapunzel asked anxiously.

  “Not exactly,” Grundy spluttered. “I was almost eaten by a big bass, Tard.”

  “I’ve heard they’ll eat anything,” the damsel said disapprovingly.

  “Got to try again,” Grundy said, and jumped back into the water.

  “I need a messenger!” he called, alert for the bass.

  A chunk of fish floated by. In a moment an aggressive, masculine fish arrived. “Did you see the rest of the cod I was eating?” it inquired.

  Grundy decided not to aggravate this one. “The cod piece went that way,” he said, pointing.

  “Thanks, pal,” the fish said, swimming after it. “I wouldn’t want to lose that meat!”