Beamish Boy

“Sometimes Father makes me so angry,” said the young man in the purple robes.

“So what did he do this time?”  asked his fur clad companion.  “I thought he was glad to have you back home.”

“That’s just a show he puts on for the subjects.  I was gone a year, and all I got was a hug and a few shouts of joy.  Plus he kept and called me boy! I’m a man by the laws of any country you care to name.  Of course, there’s quite a bit that comes before my return home.  A few years back, Father got the idea from your father to have a poet chronicle my life with the hope that I would do something worthwhile.”

“I thought the court poet never left the king’s side.”

“You’re right, he doesn’t.  The poet just took what I told him and prettied it up.  Besides,

Father doesn’t like to have the family’s less than perfect image made too public, so he orders him away occasionally when he really wants to chew me out.  So there I was before the entire court for the public farewell.  It was all ‘Beware this thing and that thing, and shun the other.’ Then having done his fatherly duty, he orders everyone else out of  the room, and I’m left alone, standing there looking up at him on the throne.”

“‘I warned you about crossing me in public didn’t I?’ he said as pompously as if he hadn’t cleared the room.  I nodded back, not wanting to talk to him at the time, and he said,  ‘Now I’ve got to send you out into the wilds so you can prove yourself worthy of the crown.  I’ll give you a horse, which is more than my father ever gave me you can be sure, but as for the rest…  you’re on your own.’”

“He didn’t give you anything else?  Not even the family sword to carry to glory?”

“Are you kidding?  He was still saving that in case I didn’t quite turn out the way he wanted.  At least I’d been saving some gold from my allowance, and was able to take along something I could call my own.  Now I can appreciate the tradition your family follows of handing a sword down from father to son through the ages, but if Father wasn’t going to give me the family’s honor, I figured I’d start my own chain of hand-me-downs.”

The man in purple drew the sword, and carefully passed it to his friend.

“It looks nice though,” said the one in the furs.  “No patina, but still kind of impressive.”

“Yours was new once too...  Before you broke it.  This one’s a genuine Vorpal brand sword.  It’s guaranteed to cut sun light into rainbows, and monsters into bleeding piles of meat.”

“It looks almost as if it were made out of moonbeams.  Almost fragile.”

“Surprising what they can do nowadays, isn’t it?  So anyway, I was supposed go out and make a man of myself and prove my worth.  Well, I still had some gold left over, so I found a nice tree that had high branches, yet was wide spread enough to provide cover.”

“Sounds like your average Tum Tum tree, all right.”

“That poet must have been a botanist in a former life, because I certainly couldn’t have told you what kind of tree it was, and I was there.  Now it’s not like it was a lone tree out in the middle of a field or anything.  It was actually on the edge of a meadow.  You know the one that the road passes through on the way to the next town to the east?”

“Isn’t that the Tulgey Wood?”

“Probably.  I never was much good at geography.  So I stayed there for almost a year cooling off, and doing a little traveling to the nearby villages.  I made enough money to get by what with the seasonal tournaments and occasional guard duty, but the last few days I’d been staying at the camp.  The anniversary of my exile was approaching, and I was considering how to celebrate.  First, I got angry all over again, so I practiced my forms with the sword.  It was hot work, but I when I’d calmed down at the end, I leaned against the tree, and took stock of my situation.  It was when I had rested enough to stop huffing and puffing that I first heard the sound.  Can you believe it?  Camped in the same spot for almost a year, and never heard the thing until then.”

“What did it really sound like?”

“Imagine the sound a horse would make if it breathed through its mouth while its mane

was hanging over its nose.  That’s almost the sound that was drifting across the meadow, but you have to add the sound that bubbles in volcanic mud pots make when they pop, except several times a second.”

“Right on the nose.  It definitely sounds like whiffling and burbling to me.”

“Okay, maybe Father’s poet had words for those sounds, but they’re not the type of words I’d use every day.  So while I’m trying to figure out just where the sound is coming from, I saw the eyes.  They looked like two respectable sized campfires floating through the woods toward me.  There wasn’t any chance I was going to let this thing jump me while I was standing under the tree, so I pulled my sword out of the ground, and charged into the meadow.”

“Did you really kill it as fast as the poet describes?”

“I guess…  Almost…  He doesn’t mention that it got me first.  Once I was clear of the branches, I think it got a good look at me, and then it was on me too fast to follow, with a roar that shook leaves from the trees around us.  First it caught me in its claws, and then it sank those needle‑like teeth you’ve seen into my thigh.  The thing’s powerful jaws just bit right through my leather, and it was hardened against a knife blow.  I guess I screamed in pain, but I just remember flailing about with my sword.  I felt four swings connect, and then

I stabbed it a couple times before I realized I’d already cut its head off.  The blade kept making the trademarked ‘snicker‑snack’ all Vorpal swords make, and I didn’t realize the monster had stopped roaring.”

“Sounds like you got lucky.”

“Hey, I’ll be the first to admit that, but Father won’t hear of it.  I put the head in one of my food sacks, and limped back home, as well as I could.  I guess looking back on it, galumphing does describe it, what with the pain of walking mixed with carrying the sack, and the sword hitting the wound every now and then.”

“You just left the body there?”

“I had to get home, and show Father.  Plus I didn’t have enough gold to see a public healer.  So I get home, and Father’s subjects see me as the Prodigal Son, but I get bundled off to tell my story to the poet.  Maybe it had something to do with the holiday celebration, but I was hoping for more.”

“That’s quite a tale.  It is good to have you back though.  Frabjous Day to you,” the man in fur got up to leave.

The man in purple stood up, and caught his arm, saying, “Well, Frabjous Day to you too.  But before you go, won’t you tell me where you’ve been while I’ve been gone.  Your family’s always been so much closer than mine.  What have you been up to while I was gone, Beowulf?”