Martin woke to darkness. Darkness and closeness, and no air. No air and yet … he could breathe. He inhaled deeply and smelled dirt, earth, rich soil. He was in the ground, buried alive! Martin began to panic, his breath coming in short, erratic bursts. He calmed himself down and began to think. That, it turns out, was a mistake. As soon as he began to think about his situation he began to wonder how much air he had left. Then, he remembered that there was no air to begin with, he’d noticed that groggily upon waking up. He thought about what he was breathing if it wasn’t air, and suddenly his nostrils and mouth were filled with dirt and he was suffocating. I’m going to die, he thought.
Desperately, Martin began to dig upward. There was no indication that the direction he was digging was in fact, upward, but Martin had a strange sureness about it. The dirt was loose, and yielded to his pawing hands. He lost his pack and his broadsword in the flurry of activity.
Then, the worst thing that could happen, happened. Martin began to sink. Despite his frantic clawing and climbing, he was moving downward, being sucked farther into the moist earth, feet first. Martin began to struggle harder, but it wasn’t long before the oxygen in his lungs was used up. He began to feel dizzy, up seemed to replace down. He seemed to be falling upward, feet first, through the dirt. Finally, he fainted from the lack of air, and his last thought, strangely, was a rational one, If I am sinking, then there must be something hollow that I’m sinking toward.
Martin’s last thought had been correct. The hollow thing he’d been sinking towards happened to be the open air. He woke a second time, this time on the ground rather than in it, and the first thing he did (because it was necessary for his continued survival) was spit out the dirt in his mouth, inhale deeply, and blow the dirt out of his nose. This took a couple of tries, but he finally got to the point where breathing was comfortable again. He looked about him. The castle was nowhere to be found. In fact, Martin found himself to be in no place that he recognized. At first glance it looked to be some sort of treeless jungle. Thick foliage surrounded him, but instead of the woody boles of trees all he saw were broad, pulpy looking plants, shooting six or eight feet in the air, the shortest of them terminating in points just above his head. He walked past a few of these plants, wondering what they were, and then something caught his eye. It was his pack, and his sword was lying beside it, only a few feet away! How fortunate; now he would at least have a change of clothes to wear (Martin didn’t fancy visiting strange lands in his pajamas).
Martin found a particularly dense cluster of the strange plants and went inside to change, and not a moment too soon. The second he’d concealed himself, he heard footsteps and soft voices. He strained to hear what was being said, and attempted to peer through the foliage at the speakers.
“It would appear we have entered the Underland undetected.”
“That is very good. Although, something strange happened near the end of the traversion. Something prevented the gate from closing when it should have.”
A third voice broke in, “No matter, no matter. Magicks of three threes are unpredictable by nature. We are here and intact, and that is what is important.” Martin caught a glimpse of the speakers. It was the druids from the castle courtyard. Of course, he thought, I followed them here, to the Underland, it is only natural that they would be nearby. I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t surface closer to them.
The first druid spoke again, “Intact yes, but not in stature. It is a pity we were unable to retain our original size, our goal would have been much easier to achieve.” With that the voices and the footsteps faded out of earshot.
Martin finished dressing and puzzled over what the last druid had said. Their goal he already knew, they came here intending to rule and enslave whoever lived here. The banshee’s people, Martin supposed. But what was that bit about size and stature? They looked to be the same size they were in the castle’s courtyard, and Martin’s body had not grown or shrunk as far as he could tell.
He shouldered his pack, rammed his sword through his belt, and stepped out of the copse of pulpy plants, pondering what the druid could have meant. And then he saw it.
Onopordum acanthium is a very long Latin word. It is also the scientific name of a plant more commonly known as the Scotch Thistle. The Scotch Thistle is Scotland’s national flower. It is a green plant, covered all over with prickly barbs and topped with a lovely purple blossom. In a Scotch Thistle’s second year it can grow up to nine feet in height.
Martin found himself standing directly in front of a Scotch Thistle. He’d seen several growing ’round about the old castle on his way in. He knew that Scotch Thistles rarely grew taller than nine feet. This Scotch Thistle towered over him, as a giant California Redwood does over a man. How could a thistle grow so tall? Martin quickly put the pieces together. The druids had shrunk, and so had he. The thistle was not of abnormal size, Martin himself was. And he’d just changed clothes in a patch of grass.
