Puddlebrain

Chapter Thirty Two

"Now we get somewhere. If you'd just asked in the first, place, instead of gibber-jabbering, you could have been on your merry way, and I could go back to sleep. But oh, no. Not you, girly. Get yourself all worked up and thinking you're no good for nothing. Well, if that's what you'd be thinking, that's what you'd be doing. Just ask a straight question and you'd get a straight..."

"WHO ARE YOU!" Puddlebrain shouted. Oh, would he just get on with it? She thought. Get on with it or get lost!

"Get lost?" the old man smirked. "Methinks it's you who's lost. Now, seeing as you asked so nicely, I may even tell you."

He stood up, his movements no longer awkward, his joints no longer creaking. Even though he looked so old, he was more fluid than even the witch.

"I, my Lady, " he said bowing low, "am Thistle."

He straightened and looked at Puddlebrain, acting as if that one sentence explained everything.

"Thistle?"

"Thistle, indeed."

?

"And I thought we were making such progress, girly."

Puddlebrain sighed. What was the point?

"The point is what you, my girly, are going to be poked with if you don't drag you back to yourself and stop withering about!" He leaned in close. "The point," he whispered, "is that you need to get along, and quickly."

"But I don't know what to do!" Puddlebrain said.

She winced at the whiney tone in her voice. It was so unlike her to be down trodden, even when her older sisters were playing their older sister parts.

Come on girl, she told herself. Get a grip!

"Excellent advice!" Thistle said, suddenly prancing around her, his feet skittering across the ground, his cane lying discarded.

"Who are you, really?" Puddlebrain asked. It seemed like the most important question in the world at that moment. The location of her sisters and the townsfolk was suddenly secondary to knowing the true identity of this strange little man.

"So I'm little now, am I? And there's you a mighty redwood! Oh yes indeedy."

He danced away, snatching up his cane and flinging it high into the branches of the great oaks. Puddlebrain flinched, half expecting it to land on her head, but after a moment realized the cane wasn't coming back down. She looked upwards cautiously. The staff had vanished.

"Not vanished, girly, just returned."

Returned? The whisper of a thought that had brushed her mind resurfaced, a vague shadow like a painting seen through a net curtain. Puddlebrain deliberately ignored it, knowing that if she tried to run after it, the thought would be , playing a game of chase she would never win. She, instead, concentrated on trying to see where Thistle's hat ended and his head began. She couldn't see a gap, or even a line between the two. It was as if the hat was part of the old man's head.

Part of his head...

The cane was... returned?

And...

Puddlebrain's eyes opened wide as realization dawned. How could anyone walk amongst the Grimace if the forest didn't want them to? Why were Thistle's movements so awkward to begin with, yet now he appeared as if he could be a dancer? Was it...?

"Oh, well done! Give the girly a medal! A big shiny gold star! A trophy with her name on it! A..."

"OK!" Puddlebrain snapped. If she was correct, and Thistle's reaction hinted that she was, then perhaps he might actually be able to help her!

Thistle shut up. His eyes were twinkling, stars shining in the coal black night sky, and the sides of his mouth were raised in a barely controlled smirk.

"I knew you had it in you!" he grinned. "You just needed a nudge."

"So," Puddlebrain ventured, "you're the Grimace?"

It sounded crazy saying it out loud. How could this old man, who seemed to be becoming younger by the minute, be part of the forest?

"Not so daft as you might think," Thistle beamed. He pirouetted over to her side and dropped down beside her. "Not daft at all, no sir-even-though-you're-not-a-sir!"

Puddlebrain waited for something more, but he was simply grinning at her inanely.

"Well?" she asked. "Are you?"

"Yes and no," he said. "Quite and not quite. It sort of depends on who you ask and what answer they give, you see?"

Puddlebrain obviously did not see, but she decided she might as well work this through. Thistle would only tell her what he wanted to, and in his own time. She really had no place to go right at that moment so had little choice other than to wait.

"Choices, choices. You have no choice but to have a choice!" Thistle said. His head bobbed from side to side as he talked and his Puddlebrain noticed his fingers kept drumming against the ground. It was as if he was finding it difficult to keep still, or perhaps movement was new to him and he was keen to keep trying it out.

"See," he said, "you're not as dense as a midnight mist, are you? You do have an inkling of an idea now and again!"

Puddlebrain nodded slowly. Maybe she was right. If he were the Grimace, or at least some part of it, then he would probably spend decades immobile. He could be rooted like a tree, the wind providing his only escape. Perhaps that explained why he was so creaky to begin with and so fluid now. He had to get used to being able to walk and move about. And he wanted to take advantage of his time, hence the fidgeting.

"Indeed," said Thistle thoughtfully. His face was downcast and there was a hint of something like regret in his voice, but then it was gone and he looked up again, the beaming smile returned.

"So, you're the Grimace?" Puddlebrain asked.

She was tired of repeating herself, but it appeared to be the only way of gleaning any information. She didn't have the time to keep saying the same thing over and over again, but Thistle apparently found it difficult to answer a question before the twenty or thirtieth time of asking.

"You just need to ask the right question the right way," he said. "And then you'll get your answers. It's not so hard, you know. The same question can be asked a hundred different ways, using the same words, but if you ask it the wrong way, you'll get the wrong answer."

"Or no answer," responded Puddlebrain.

"No answer isn't the right answer, so it still counts as the wrong answer."

Well... Puddlebrain couldn't disagree with that. She needed, though, to figure out a way to ask the right answer in the right way to get the right question! Or something like that! All this digression was wasting valuable time. She was beginning to feel desperate.

Thistle reached up and cradled the witch's chin in his hand. His touch was warm and soft, almost relaxing.

"Time, "he said, his voice as gentle as his fingers, "is something we don't have to worry about."

-

I accidentally named the title numbers incorrectly so missed posting this chapter! Sorry!