Heart Of Ice

Title: Heart Of Ice: Chapter Eleven: Pesky Pixies
Author: Allison Wonderland
Rating: PG-13 this chapter, NC-17 overall.
Summary: Avery meets several of the labyrinth’s inhabitants.
Warning(s): Language and a peeing hunchback.
Disclaimer: Technically, this is a rewrite of the movie Labyrinth. However, how much it resembles the movie remains to be seen. I do not own/am not associated with Labyrinth or anything related to it. However, all of the characters and some of the ideas in this story are mine.
Note(s): The name Mohandas means servant of something or other. I thought it was appropriate.

~*~

Avery stood on the hill overlooking the labyrinth, his mind trying to make sense of it all. There seemed to be no design to the labyrinth, it snaked about and doubled back on itself and twisted and turned so many times it seemed to Avery that he would need thirteen years to get through the whole thing rather than just thirteen hours. He wondered idly if someone, some engineer or architect or whoever, had sat down and actually planned it out or if it had just magically sprung up that way or become what it was over time. Once again he was overwhelmed by a sense of how impossible it would be to get through the labyrinth in thirteen hours, let alone at all. But if he wanted his sister back he had to get through it. Avery sighed. “Well,” he said to himself, “it doesn’t look that hard.”

Yeah. Right. But he had to be optimistic if he planned to get through this.

“Come on, feet,” he said as if his feet were another entity entirely that were trying to hold him back. He picked his way down the path that wound down the steep hillside, his bare feet being scratched by tiny stones the whole way.

At the foot of the path he encountered a wall made entirely of large square stones badly fitted together with cracks and chips in them and little brown growths of vegetation sticking out from between the stones where the mortar had fallen away. The wall went on to both the left and right for as far as Avery could see but nowhere could he make out a door.

A movement off to the right caught his eye and he glanced that way. Off to the side of the path and directly in front of the wall sat a fountain. Avery was sure fountains were supposed to be beautiful but this one was…rather not. It was, in fact, hideous. The main basin that would hold most of the water should the fountain actually be functioning was filled with lily pads, weeds, greenish brown water, and several other things Avery could not identify. In the center of the fountain stood a…er…man Avery supposed although he was in fact a rather short man if that was what he was. The creature held on his head a large bowl in which stood several more of the creatures, these less than half the height of the first one. And they appeared to be…er…peeing…into the bowl?

Avery made a face. “Gross,” he murmured to himself. Another statue of one of those little men on the corner of the fountain moved. Avery gasped. It was a real…umm…creature.

It was completely bald with large bat like ears that stuck straight out from the sides of its head and stood regarding Avery with small black beady eyes beneath thick bushy gray eyebrows. Its face was a mass of wrinkles that made the boy think it must be very old indeed. The creature was dressed in a dark green tunic type shirt that was cut quite large in order to fit over the hump on its back and dark brown leggings with ankle high boots made of the same color leather. From the belt that held its leggings up dangled a collection of jewelry that looked to Avery like the kind one might find in the quarter machines outside Wal-Mart alongside the mechanical horse. Its leggings were open and it was…eew, gross…peeing into the murky water in the fountain.

“Oh!” Avery gasped. “Excuse me!”

“Eeh?” the little hunchback…dwarf…thingy…asked dully. “Oh,” he said upon seeing Avery. “It’s you. Excuse me.” It tucked its…okay, he was not even going to think about that…back into its pants and hopped down off of the fountain’s wall. Once down from the low fountain wall he picked up an old, rusted bug sprayer and looked upon Avery from his lower height. “Huh. Well,” he said. Avery could not decide if the creature looked surprised or angry. “Huh. Well,” he said again.

Avery sighed, completely exasperated. They were accomplishing nothing this way and he had no way of knowing exactly how much time he had left but he was not going to waste any of it. “Um,” he began a little unsurely because though it was small the creature’s eyebrows made it look fierce and not in good way commonly heard during fashion week. “I have to get into the labyrinth. Can you show me the way in?” His voice sounded so small.

The creature blinked stupidly up at him once or twice. “Huuuhhh….” He said again and Avery found himself wondering if he had a brain at all. Then something distracted the little man-thing and it rushed away toward a row of half dead looking flowers planted along the endless stone wall. “Fifty seven!” he shouted spraying one of the flowers with the bug sprayer. Something brown fell out of it.

Curious, Avery stepped closer to see what it was. “Oh, how could you!” He bent to gently scoop up the little brown thing that had fallen from the flower. It was a pixie, the only beautiful thing Avery had yet seen in this place. His skin itself was a sort of brownish cream color, his hair a color of brown much like Avery’s own. The pixie wore a sort of tunic like it seemed everyone in this place wore only it appeared that his was made from a dried brown leaf and on his feet were tiny shoes that resembled little brown flower blossoms. “How sweet,” Avery murmured. “You poor thing.” Half dead, the pixie boy looked up at him with big brown eyes that made the human boy want to cry.

The little man…dwarf…murderer…thing answered only with a grunt.

Avery frowned. He had to struggle not to cry yet again. “You monster,” he accused. He felt a sharp pain in his thumb and dropped the pixie with a high-pitched yelp. There were two little pinholes oozing blood in his thumb. “It bit me,” he shrieked. He stuck his thumb in his mouth to clean off the blood.

The little man snorted. “What do you expect pixies to do?” he asked as if it were obvious that they bit. “Fifty eight!” Another pixie fell from another flowering weed. This one was female but Avery did not get a good look because it became a puff of dust as it his the dirt.

“I thought they did nice things,” Avery said. “Like granting wishes.” They all did nice things in the stories at least. Like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.

“Ha!” the little man laughed as he went on hunting down the pixies. “Shows what you know then, don’t it?” He raised the spray can again as he depressed the plunger another pixie fell down dead. “Fifty nine!”

“Oh, you’re horrible!” Even though the pixies were, apparently, prone to biting, Avery still thought they were beautiful. So why kill them? He idly brushed at the back of his pajama pants. They were dusty from trying to slide down the hill.

“No I’m not.” Another pixie died. “ Sixty! I’m Mohandas. Who’re you?”

“I’m Avery.” Introductions, he thought, now maybe we’re getting somewhere.

Mohandas nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He sprayed another pixie but when it did not poof into dust when it hit the ground he stomped on it for good measure. “Sixty one!”

Avery frowned. This vile little man seemed to know him. Or at least know of him. So Mohandas must know Fabian too. After all, it was Fabian who had brought Avery here and who was, presumably, the only person – or creature – that knew he was here. So this little man had to have something to do with the Goblin King. Maybe he worked for him as some kind of gardener or something. Or maybe he had been put here to help Avery through the labyrinth. But that was stupid. Fabian did not want him to get through the labyrinth. Did he? But there was nothing else to do. Avery had to have help from someone. “Do you know where the door to the labyrinth is?” he asked.

Mohandas shrugged as well as he could, considering the hump on his back. “Maybe.”

Now they were really getting somewhere. “All right. Where is it?” he asked. Avery hoped it was not too far away. He had wasted enough time trying to get a straight answer out of this repulsive little hunchback dwarf.

Mohandas did not reply. Instead he went after another pixie. “Sixty two!”

“I said ‘where is it’!” Avery did not like being ignored even if it was only by this thing.

“Where is what?”

He sighed. “The door.” Maybe they weren’t getting anywhere.

“What door?”

Avery had to repress the desire to scream. “The door to the labyrinth,” he shrieked.

Mohandas laughed cruelly. “Ain’t one,” he informed the clueless boy.

There had to be a way into the labyrinth somewhere. Otherwise why would Fabian tell him he could get through it? Had Fabian told him he could get through it? Avery suddenly realized he did not remember. “It’s hopeless asking you anything, isn’t it?” he asked.

Mohandas grinned and it looked just as evil as his laughter had sounded. “Not if you ask the right questions.”

Avery kicked at the ground with one bare foot. “How do I get into the labyrinth?” he asked, frustrated.

“Ah,” Mohandas said, spraying another pixie, “now that’s more like it. You gets in…there,” his voice sounding ominous, he pointed past Avery. “Sixty three!”

Avery spun around. Only a few feet away from him the endless wall was interrupted by a large intricately carved iron gate.

That had not been there before.