author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Notes from the author:

Cards from the board game Dixit make great writing prompts. Unlike Tarot cards, their evocative images don’t come prepackaged with someone else’s interpretations. The card that inspired this story showed a fairy-like girl holding a gnome-like boy over the toothy mouth of an enormous creature, and there was no telling whether she was rescuing him or feeding him to the monster.

Jibbit always knew his friendship with Miffy was doomed. They’d grown up together like twinned seed pods on the twig, but inevitably metamorphosis would launch one of them ahead of the other into adulthood, and they’d never be so close again.

When one of them got their wings, that would be the end. But he’d never expected such a stark betrayal.

“Don’t do this,” he pleaded, breathless and strained. His shoulders ached as his full body weight swung from Miffy’s skin-tight grip on his wrists. “You always said—you promised—you’d never leave me behind—”

“Shut up.” Miffy squeezed tighter. Her nails dug cruelly into Jibbit’s flesh. “Stop making this so difficult.”

“But I don’t want to die!”

“I said shut up!” Miffy’s tears spattered Jibbit’s upraised face. “Everyone will die if the Randrakk doesn’t get its due. But you don’t care about that, do you?”

Below them and not so far ahead, the Randrakk tracked their approach with bulging eyes the size of wagon wheels. Its chin rested in the sand of the shore, a position from which it had not moved since its appearance three days earlier. A little of its scaled, spiny neck was visible above the waves; the rest of its bulk lay unmeasured and submerged.

“If you cared,” said Miffy, almost as an afterthought, “you’d have given yourself up the moment the Randrakk arrived. You’re the oldest pre-fledge in the village. You knew it was your duty. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have made me have to do this.”

“I’m sorry,” Jibbit said. He meant it, too. He wished he could have been that kind of hero, to march willing and fearless into the Randrakk’s mouth. He wished he was less scared of dying.

Miffy pulled up into a hover, her wings beating hummingbird fast. The Randrakk eyed them thoughtfully for a moment, then reared up with terrible speed until its head was level with Miffy’s flight. Miffy gave a tiny shriek and backwinged in panic. For a breath or two, Jibbit thought the Randrakk would snatch them both from the sky in a single mouthful. But the Randrakk only opened its mouth wide and waited.

Its breath was oddly pleasant. In a way Jibbit couldn’t explain, it smelled like a warm welcome after a long walk through the cold. But the Randrakk’s mouth was lined with many teeth, and they looked sharp.

“I love you, Jibbit,” Miffy said. Then she let go, and Jibbit fell.

He fell a long, long way, long enough to stop thinking, This is it, this is where I die, and start thinking How big is the Randrakk, anyway? He fell long enough that gratitude over having been spared the Randrakk’s teeth turned into fear of being digested alive. Then he began to think his fear misplaced. Surely he’d be dead by the time he hit the monster’s stomach. After such a fall, he’d die on impact—if he didn’t die of old age first, or simply starvation. Then even that terror left him, and only boredom remained.

And still he kept falling.

He fell down a tunnel that seemed made not of flesh but rather ice, or rock, or crystal. He fell past walls full of grass and wildflowers so that he lost his sense of direction. Was this how Miffy felt, flying over the big meadow east of the village? Only she probably didn’t fly feet-first, did she? Besides, it wasn’t a meadow at all, but a vast ocean of rootstock roasted golden brown and striated with melted mallowtop. His stomach clenched and rumbled a vicious complaint. He stretched out a hand, but the feast remained just out of reach. Then it was gone, swallowed up by mist, and the mist was blown away by a vast wind.

And it came to him that he was no longer falling.

His feet told him he stood on hard-packed earth; his legs told him that they had not been smashed to bits. The space around him felt vast and empty, and it was utterly dark. Silent, too; the thrum of his heartbeat in his throat was all he could hear.

He wondered whether he had died after all, and this was what came after. He hoped it wasn’t going to be like this forever.

“Hurry.” Jibbit touched his mouth, but the faint, breathy word hadn’t come from there. “She’s found another one.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t feel anything.” Two voices, light and lilting and very far away.

“Seriously? You’re lucky. I felt it like they’d landed on my ribs.”

“Hello?” Jibbit called out. “Do you mean me?”

“Hey!” The responding voice was the first one, the one that had urged its companion to greater speed. “Hang on. Keep talking so we can find you.”

“What should I say?”

“I dunno. Tell us how you got here? You must have a story.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said the other voice, the skeptical one. It sounded nearer, and it came from a definitive direction this time, but something about the darkness continued to muffle it. “Everyone has the same story. Tossed to their supposed death by a village of cowardly idiots.”

Jibbit hugged himself nervously. “They’re not cowards. I’m the coward. I couldn’t bring myself to go.” Shame stole the strength of his voice, so that he was barely whispering. “So my best friend had to carry me over. She didn’t deserve that.”

The scoffer’s voice came from the darkness directly in front of him. “You forced her to look you in the eye when she killed you. She owed you that much.”

Jibbit remembered how Miffy had stared straight ahead while he pleaded for his life. He tried to change the subject. “So I really am dead.”

“Of course not.” Now the voice was crisp and clear and close as twinned seed pods on the twig. A hand fell on his shoulder. “If anything, you’re more alive now than ever.”

Another hand found his and tugged him into a slow walk. “Didn’t you ever wonder why there were no people like yours anywhere outside the village?” Jibbit had not. Until now, he’d never left his village. He had no idea what other people were like. “That never was our world in the first place. A handful of us got stranded there generations ago, and the World Serpent’s been trying to call their descendants home ever since.”

They were walking faster now. Jibbit kept expecting to stub a toe or trip on an unseen obstacle, but the ground beneath his feet stayed flat and kind. “The World Serpent? You mean the Randrakk?”

A snicker from his left. “Is that what your village call her now? Frog-Dragon? That’s hilarious.”

“Cut it out,” said the voice on his right. “You’re embarrassing them. Yes, that’s the World Serpent. She comes every—oh, I don’t know, time runs differently there. Every so often. And she waits. Waits to see if everyone’s ready to come home, if they’ve remembered her, or at least become less afraid of her.”

“Or at least,” said the voice on his left, “stopped being such murderous cowards. You know it’s true! They’re so afraid of the monster that they’d feed it their own children rather than risk getting eaten themselves. Imagine if instead they all banded together and said, ‘No more sacrifices! Not anymore! Do your worst—we’re done buying safety at such a price!’”

Jibbit gulped. “Everyone always said, if the Randrakk didn’t get its due, it would swallow up the whole village.”

“Sure would! Terrible being swallowed up, isn’t it?” Laughter on his right. His hand squeezed companionably. “Come on.” And they were running, hand in hand in hand, feet pounding audibly on the hard-packed earth. Jibbit found himself laughing too, for no better reason than that they were running. They ran endlessly through the dark until one step no different from the one before brought them abruptly into the light, and they skidded to a halt under a mid-morning sun, with a wide soft valley spread before them, a breeze coming off the mountainside that smelled like the first breath of home.

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