A Monster Calls Part 4

Oh, I have heard of it, the monster said, putting its huge branch hands on its hips. But people usually know better than to speak it to me.

"Can't you just leave me alone?"

The monster shook its head, but not in answer to Conor's question. It is most unusual, it said. Nothing I do seems to make you frightened of me.

"You're just a tree," Conor said, and there was no other way he could think about it. Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.

And you have worse things to be frightened of, said the monster, but not as a question.

Conor looked at the ground, then up at the moon, anywhere but at the monster's eyes. The nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he'd been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did.

"I thought," he said, but had to cough before he spoke again. "I saw you watching me earlier when I was fighting with my grandma and I thoughta"

What did you think? the monster asked when Conor didn't finish.

"Forget it," Conor said, turning back towards the house.

You thought I might be here to help you, the monster said.

Conor stopped.

You thought I might have come to topple your enemies. Slay your dragons.

Conor still didn't look back. But he didn't go inside either.

You felt the truth of it when I said that you had called for me, that you were the reason I had come walking. Did you not?

Conor turned round. "But all you want to do is tell me stories," he said, and he couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice, because it was true. He had thought that. He'd hoped that.

The monster knelt down so its face was close to Conor's. Stories of how I toppled enemies, it said. Stories of how I slew dragons.

Conor blinked back at the monster's gaze.

Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?

The monster looked up and Conor followed its gaze. It was looking at Conor's bedroom window. The room where his grandma now slept.

Let me tell you a story of when I went walking, the monster said. Let me tell you of the end of a wicked queen and how I made sure she was never seen again.

Conor swallowed and looked back at the monster's face.

"Go on," he said.

THE FIRST TALE.

Long ago, the monster said, before this was a town with roads and trains and cars, it was a green place. Trees covered every hill and bordered every path. They shaded every stream and protected every house, for there were houses here even then, made of stone and earth.

This was a kingdom.

("What?" Conor said, looking around his back garden. "Here?") (The monster c.o.c.ked its head at him curiously. You have not heard of it?) ("Not a kingdom around here, no," Conor said. "We don't even have a McDonald's.") Nevertheless, continued the monster, it was a kingdom, small but happy, for the king was a just king, a man whose wisdom was born out of hardship. His wife had given birth to four strong sons, but in the king's reign, he had been forced to ride into battles to preserve the peace of his kingdom. Battles against giants and dragons, battles against black wolves with red eyes, battles against armies of men led by great wizards.

These battles secured the kingdom's borders and brought peace to the land. But victory came at a price. One by one, the king's four sons were killed. By the fire of a dragon or the hands of a giant or the teeth of a wolf or the spear of a man. One by one, all four princes of the kingdom fell, leaving the king only one heir. His infant grandson.

("This is all sounding pretty fairy tale-ish," Conor said, suspiciously.) (You would not say that if you heard the screams of a man killed by a spear, said the monster. Or his cries of terror as he was torn to pieces by wolves. Now be quiet.) By and by, the king's wife succ.u.mbed to grief, as did the mother of the young prince. The king was left with only the child for company, along with more sadness than one man should bear alone.

"I must remarry," the king decided. "For the good of my prince and of my kingdom, if not for myself."

And remarry he did, to a princess from a neighbouring kingdom, a practical union that made both kingdoms stronger. She was young and fair, and though perhaps her face was a bit hard and her tongue a bit sharp, she seemed to make the king happy.

Time pa.s.sed. The young prince grew until he was nearly a man, coming within two years of the eighteenth birthday that would allow him to ascend to the throne on the old king's death. These were happy days for the kingdom. The battles were over, and the future seemed secure in the hands of the brave young prince.

But one day the king grew ill. Rumour began to spread that he was being poisoned by his new wife. Stories circulated that she had conjured grave magicks to make herself look far younger than she actually was and that beneath her youthful face lurked the scowl of an elderly hag. No one would have put it past her to poison the king, though he begged his subjects until his dying breath not to blame her.

And so he died, with still a year left before his grandson was old enough to take the throne. The queen, his step-grandmother, became regent in his place, and would handle all affairs of state until the prince was old enough to take over.

At first, to the surprise of many, her reign was a good one. Her countenance a" despite the rumours a" was still youthful and pleasing, and she endeavoured to carry on ruling in the manner of the dead king.

The prince, meanwhile, had fallen in love.

("I knew it," Conor grumbled. "These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love." He started walking back to the house. "I thought this was going to be good.") (With one swift movement, the monster grabbed Conor's ankles in a long, strong hand and flipped him upside down, holding him in mid-air so his t-shirt rucked up and his heartbeat thudded in his head.) (As I was saying, said the monster.) The prince had fallen in love. She was only a farmer's daughter, but she was beautiful, and also smart, as the daughters of farmers need to be, for farms are complicated businesses. The kingdom smiled on the match.

The queen, however, did not. She had enjoyed her time as regent and felt a strange reluctance to give it up. She began to think that perhaps it was best that the crown remained in the family, that the kingdom be run by those wise enough to do it, and what could be a better solution than for the prince to actually marry her?

("That's disgusting!" Conor said, still upside-down. "She was his grandmother!") (Step-grandmother, corrected the monster. Not related by blood, and to all intents and appearances, a young woman herself.) (Conor shook his head, his hair dangling. "That's just wrong." He paused a moment. "Can you maybe put me down?") (The monster lowered him to the ground and continued the story.) The prince also thought marrying the queen was wrong. He said he would die before doing any such thing. He vowed to run away with the beautiful farmer's daughter and return on his eighteenth birthday to free his people from the tyranny of the queen. And so one night, the prince and the farmer's daughter raced away on horseback, stopping only at dawn to sleep in the shade of a giant yew tree.

("You?" Conor asked.) (Me, the monster said. But also only part of me. I can take any form of any size, but the yew tree is a shape most comfortable.) The prince and the farmer's daughter held each other close in the growing dawn. They had vowed to be chaste until they were able to marry in the next kingdom, but their pa.s.sions got the better of them, and it was not long before they were asleep and naked in each other's arms.

They slept through the day in the shadows of my branches and night fell once again. The prince woke. "Arise, my beloved," he whispered to the farmer's daughter, "for we ride to the day where we will be man and wife."

But his beloved did not wake. He shook her, and it was only as she slumped back in the moonlight that he noticed the blood staining the ground.

("Blood?" Conor said, but the monster kept talking.) The prince also had blood covering his own hands, and he saw a bloodied knife on the gra.s.s beside them, resting against the roots of the tree. Someone had murdered his beloved and done so in a way that made it look like the prince had committed the crime.

"The queen!" cried the prince. "The queen is responsible for this treachery!"

In the distance, he could hear villagers approaching. If they found him, they would see the knife and the blood, and they would call him murderer. They would put him to death for his crime.

("And the queen would be able to rule unchallenged," Conor said, making a disgusted sound. "I hope this story ends with you ripping her head off.") There was nowhere for the prince to run. His horse had been chased away while he slept. The yew tree was his only shelter.

And also the only place he could turn for help.

Now, the world was younger then. The barrier between things was thinner, easier to pa.s.s through. The prince knew this. And he lifted his head to the great yew tree and he spoke.

(The monster paused.) ("What did he say?" Conor asked.) (He said enough to bring me walking, the monster said. I know injustice when I see it.) The prince ran towards the approaching villagers. "The queen has murdered my bride!" he shouted. "The queen must be stopped!"

The rumours of the queen's witchery had been circulating long enough and the young prince was so beloved of the people that it took very little for them to see the obvious truth. It took even less time when they saw the great Green Man walking behind him, high as the hills, coming for vengeance.

(Conor glanced again at the monster's ma.s.sive arms and legs, at its raggedy, toothy mouth, at its overwhelming monstrousness. He imagined what the queen must have thought when she saw it coming.) (He smiled.) The subjects stormed the queen's castle with such fury that the stones of its very walls tumbled. Fortifications fell and ceilings collapsed and when the queen was found in her chambers, the mob seized her and dragged her to the stake right then to burn her alive.

("Good," Conor said, smiling. "She deserved it." He looked up at his bedroom window where his grandmother slept. "I don't suppose you can help me with her?" he asked. "I mean, I don't want to burn her alive or anything, but maybe justa"") The story, said the monster, is not yet finished.

THE REST OF THE FIRST TALE.

"It's not?" Conor asked. "But the queen was overthrown."

She was, said the monster. But not by me.

Conor hesitated, confused. "You said you made sure she was never seen again."

And so I did. When the villagers lit the flames on the stake to burn her alive, I reached in and saved her.

"You what?" Conor said.

I took her and carried her far enough away so that the villagers would never find her, far beyond even the kingdom of her birth, to a village by the sea. And there I left her, to live in peace.

Conor got to his feet, his voice rising in disbelief. "But she murdered the farmer's daughter! How could you possibly save a murderer?" Then his face dropped and he took a step back. "You really are a monster."

I never said she killed the farmer's daughter, the monster said. I only said that the prince said it was so.

Conor blinked. Then he crossed his arms. "So who killed her then?"

The monster opened its huge hands in a certain way, and a breeze blew up, bringing a mist with it. Conor's house was still behind him, but the mist covered his back garden, replacing it with a field with a giant yew in the centre and a man and a woman sleeping at its base.

After their coupling, said the monster, the prince remained awake.

Conor watched as the young prince rose and looked down at the sleeping farmer's daughter, who even Conor could see was a beauty. The prince watched her for a moment, then wrapped a blanket around himself and went to their horse, tied to one of the yew tree's branches. The prince retrieved something from the saddlebag, then untied the horse, slapping it hard on the hindquarters to send it running off. The prince held up what he'd taken out of the bag.

A knife, shining in the moonlight.

"No!" Conor said.

The monster closed its hands and the mist descended again as the prince approached the sleeping farmer's daughter, his knife at the ready.

"You said he was surprised when she didn't wake up!" Conor said.

After he killed the farmer's daughter, said the monster, the prince lay down next to her and returned to sleep. When he awoke, he acted out a pantomime should anyone be watching. But also, it may surprise you to learn, for himself. The monster's branches creaked. Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

"You said he asked for your help! And that you gave it!"

I only said he told me enough to make me come walking.

Conor looked wide-eyed from the monster to his back garden, which was re-emerging from the dissipating mist. "What did he tell you?" he asked.

He told me that he had done it for the good of the kingdom. That the new queen was in fact a witch, that his grandfather had suspected it to be true when he married her, but that he had overlooked it because of her beauty. The prince couldn't topple a powerful witch on his own. He needed the fury of the villagers to help him. The death of the farmer's daughter saw to that. He was sorry to do it, heartbroken, he said, but as his own father had died in defence of the kingdom, so did his fair maiden. Her death was serving to overthrow a great evil. When he said that the queen had murdered his bride, he believed, in his own way, that it was actually true.

"That's a load of c.r.a.p!" Conor shouted. "He didn't need to kill her. The people were behind him. They would have followed him anyway."

The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with scepticism, said the monster. And so the injustice that I saw, the reason that I came walking, was for the queen, not the prince.

"Did he ever get caught?" Conor said, aghast. "Did they punish him?"

He became a much beloved king, the monster said, who ruled happily until the end of his long days.

Conor looked up to his bedroom window, frowning again. "So the good prince was a murderer and the evil queen wasn't a witch after all. Is that supposed to be the lesson of all this? That I should be nice to her?"

He heard a strange rumbling, different from before, and it took him a minute to realize the monster was laughing.

You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?

It laughed louder and louder again, until the ground was shaking and it felt like the sky itself might tumble down.

"Yeah, all right," Conor said, embarra.s.sed.

No, no, the monster said, finally calming itself. The queen most certainly was a witch and could very well have been on her way to great evil. Who's to say? She was trying to hold on to power, after all.

"Why did you save her then?"

Because what she was not, was a murderer.

Conor walked around the garden a bit, thinking. Then he did it a bit more. "I don't understand. Who's the good guy here?"

There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere inbetween.

Conor shook his head. "That's a terrible story. And a cheat."

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers' daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You'd be surprised.

Conor glanced up at his bedroom window again, imagining his grandma sleeping in his bed. "So how is that supposed to save me from her?"

The monster stood to its full height, looking down on Conor from afar.

It is not her you need saving from, it said.

Conor sat up straight on the settee, breathing heavily again.

12.07, read the clock.

"Dammit!" Conor said. "Am I dreaming or not?"

He stood up angrilya"

And immediately stubbed his toe.

"What now?" he grumbled, leaning over to flick on a light.

From a knot in a floorboard, a fresh, new and very solid sapling had sprouted, about a foot tall.

Conor stared at it for a while. Then he went to the kitchen to get a knife to saw it out of the floor.