Izzy Chapter 5: Turns Out, Plants Don’t Think So Good (Patreon)

“Ey. Ey, gobbo! What do you think you’re gonna do? You're as wrapped up as me!” The little creature sounded like it was taking personal offense at Izzy’s escape plan.

“Shut up! Trying to think! I have a spell that maybe works. Just dunno if I have enough mana. Or if it'll work at all.”

“You’ve got—!” the creature exclaimed, choking it off and then hissing, as though the absent spider might hear and somehow understand. “You’ve got mana!? How? I saw the thing drain you!”

“Dunno!” Izzy said. How was she going to do this? Did she even have the range? Only one way to find out!

She wanted to make a vineling. That was the primary thing. She couldn't move her hands to point at any of the bone piles, but she did have her new staff, which had worked just fine earlier. If she could just point with that…

She tried to shift it the slightest bit, but no luck. The spider silk cocoon held it tight against her, pointing almost straight down towards the ground. Neither could she bend at the waist; the staff kept her nice and straight. But her struggles made her swing a little, this way and that, as she slowly spun. It made her feel like she might return everything she’d eaten that morning to nature, but she could use it!

With determined and directed squirming she managed to make the swings longer and longer. She turned. She swung. She bumped her head on a nearby branch at one point, but that was all right. The swinging and spinning continued.

Eyes locked at the nearest fallen cocoon, Izzy focused on what she wanted the spell to do. Vines punching up from deep beneath the poisoned soil, wrapping around the… whatever had been in the cocoon. Wrapping around the bones, giving them senses and movement. It was a little hard to picture without knowing what the form would be, but she did her best to cover a bunch of possibilities, like squirrels and birds. The cocoon wasn't all that big, after all.

She felt the spell connect to her mana, but nothing happened. The other end of the spell had nothing to grab on to. Then a swing pointed her staff almost right.

The spell tried to latch on, but failed. Izzy almost spat with frustration. The idea of hanging there until she died didn't touch her. It was too abstract, days in the future and not at all like the immediate threat of painful death, like with the humans and the cat. And White, kind of. But hanging there for days with nothing to do but talk to the foul mouthed whatever-it-was would be so boring!

Then she began her downswing, just a little to the side of just before. Everything lined up. Mana flashed from the somewhere and connected, through her and the staff, across the short distance and into the earth around the bones.

Izzy swung away, but the connection remained. She could feel the vines in the back of her mind. The next time she saw the cocoon, it was being torn apart by curling green shoots. The next, something made of gray and green was rising. And then, there it was. A small shape of bone and vines, hunched over like a squirrel but with a shape more like a tiny goblin. “Brownie-squirrel Vineling,” said a bunch of little squiggles on it, readable despite how tiny they were. It sat there, waiting for Izzy to tell it what to do.

“Feck! Sylvana’s rotund rear, you fecking did it!” Her fellow captive still sounded more offended than anything. “I dunno how you’ve got any mana but you fecking did it!”

“I did!” Izzy cheered. Not because of the possible freedom that the vineling represented, but because this was awesome! She’d made a minion! It hadn't existed a few breaths ago and now here it was, eager to do her bidding! “It says it’s a brownie squirrel! Is that what you are?”

“What? Feck are you on about, brownies and squirrels? I’m a fairy, you bastard, finest you’ll ever find! Call me a brownie again and see what happens! Now, how long can you keep that up?”

“Ah… dunno.” Izzy checked her gourd. It was almost empty. As she watched, a single drop fell, vanishing into the sky below her feet.

That was bad.

“Minion!” she shouted. “Grab the broken arrow and get me down!”

The vineling stayed exactly where it was.

“Stupid…” she muttered, but old memories surfaced, telling her what she was doing wrong. She focused on the broken arrow. “That thing! Pick it up!”

The vineling stirred. It took one step, then another. It occurred to Izzy that it might get stuck in the web on the ground like she had, but pieces of cocoon stuck to its feet and let it move without its feet sticking. Many more steps of its short legs brought it to the broken arrow.

The arrow looked rather large compared to the vineling not-squirrel. Still, it bent and wrapped its reedy arms around the broken length of the shaft. With a heave it stood, knees bent, holding the arrow like a short spear.

Izzy cheered. “Yes! Good! Good vinething! Here, now, go to the tree and climb it!”

Again, the vineling did nothing.

Step by step, Izzy guided her minion through getting to the tree, climbing it — which it did easily, the arrow tucked under one arm — then getting out on the right branch.

“Good. Good, good, good! Now cut me down! Cut the string!”

“Ey, gobbo, might want to—”

Izzy didn't hear the rest. The vineling, for once understanding exactly what to do, walked around so that it stood upside down on the branch, little tendrils from its feet keeping it anchored. With one mighty push it drove the arrow through the base of the cord of spider silk, to the side where it connected to the branch and was thinner.

In one movement the silk parted. Whatever the arrow didn't cut snapped under the added strain.

Izzy’s manic grin turned into an “Oh” as she realized the problem with her plan, and then she fell.

Four great pieces of luck came together to keep Izzy alive. The first was that the spider hadn't hung her very high. The second was that she managed to reflexively twist enough that she landed on her back, instead of her neck. The third was that the mat of leaves was thick enough to cushion her fall somewhat. And the fourth was that she stayed awake, instead of just lying there unconscious until the spider came to hang her right back up.

As it was, Izzy didn't fully appreciate her luck, because falling several lengths onto your back really hurts.

“Ooow!” she declared, to the cackling laughter of the little ball of spite still hanging among the branches. “Minion! Come down here!”

The vineling dropped. It bounced off Izzy’s chest, the arrow smacking into her cocoon just deep enough for her to feel it tickle her belly button.

The cackling from above intensified before petering out. “Good on ya, genius gobbo! You’re down after all! Well done, you! Now what?”

“Cut me loose,” Izzy groaned at her minion, ignoring the little shit laughing at her.

It was a delicate process. While the vineling could cut through the silk with the arrowhead, layer by layer, it also had trouble with the difference between “cut me loose,” “cut my dress to shreds,” and “cut me open.” By the time Izzy managed to wriggle her arms free and took over, her once nice deerskin dress suddenly had a plunging neckline, and she was bleeding from a multitude of small cuts down the center of her chest.

On the bright side, the spider silk didn’t stick to her, which would have made things even more annoying, and the little ball of spider feed in the tree actually sounded impressed. When Izzy got her legs free and stood up with a flourish, only to immediately wobble and land on her behind, it didn’t even ridicule or otherwise abuse her.

“I never doubted you, gobbo!” it shouted, suddenly full of enthusiasm. “Come on, get me down too!”

“Why?” Izzy demanded, getting unsteadily to her feet. She put her hands on her hips and a grin on her face. “Why should I help you, you nasty little bugger? Rude!”

“Ey, ey now! That was all joking! You can take a joke, can’t you? You’re the cleverest gobbo I ever saw, and I told myself, ‘Here, Caj, here’s a gobbo who can take a joke!’ I’m not wrong, am I?”

“Mmm, I don’t know…” Izzy really drew it out, making a show of thinking it over.

“Aw, come on!” the nasty little bugger pleaded, something desperate in their voice. “I’ve been here for three days! It’s… I’m not thinking good, see? Haven’t had a crumb to eat or a drop to drink, right? You won’t hold something said in confusion against a fellow, will you?”

“I suppose not…” she drew it out again, as the little fellow, Caj, wriggled and pleaded. “All right! Minion, climb up there!”

Her minion immediately fell to pieces. Caj shrieked.

“Aw, shite,” Izzy said and checked her gourd. It was empty as empty could be. Oh, well. She’d just have to do it herself.

Caj’s despairing cries faded into the background as she considered the problem before her. Soon she nodded to herself and got to work. Using the arrow she cut and tore off four big pieces of her cocoon, testing to make sure that they didn’t stick in the web on the ground. With two pieces of silk gripped in her toes, the other two in her hands, and her arrow in her teeth, she carefully made her way to the trunk, where she left her staff and started climbing.

It was slow going. She had to use her non-stick silk rags wherever she gripped, and occasionally had to stop to cut away sticky threads that had glued themselves to her dress or her skin, but with care and patience born from the anticipation of future rewards and amusement she made it to where Caj’s cocoon was anchored to the branch.

“Great! Great job! Now— Oh shite!”

Izzy had wasted no time cutting Caj’s cocoon loose. She watched it drop for a heartbeat before stopping with a crunch of dry leaves.

“Ah, you absolute bastard!” Caj groaned from the ground, as Izzy laughed. “I can’t believe you’ve done this! I’ll have you once I get loose! Mark you my words, I’ll— Oh feck, stay absolutely still!”

“Hah! Yeah, you wi—” Izzy’s gloating died in her mouth as realized that Caj did not mean that as a statement about what he was likely to do with his time. Many lengths away, at the edge of the clearing where the light of the setting sun lit the bushed and fallen leaves in golden greens and red and yellows, one long, segmented, hairy green and brown leg stretched from behind a tree to touch the carpet beneath the mighty old oak. Then came another leg, and another, followed by the body of a spider the size of a boar. It stepped fully onto the mat of leaves, then became absolutely still, just standing there, being horrible.