A Fib

"Nettle Swine" image by Christopher Moeller

© Wizards of the Coast 2013

"There's legend that in these woods, there's a creature," the old man said. "It's fifteen feet tall, twenty five long, and fierce. Tusks bigger around than a man's leg, longer than a spear. It sits still for so long, it's got thorns growing on its neck and back, and when it does move, it is hungry." The light flickered on his face, and the children sat around him, wide-eyed, some of them with mouths open. A mosquito or fly lit on his tongue, and he spat and coughed and wiped his mouth with his hands, which were probably considerably less clean than the bug, even though he wiped them on his trousers first.

"Careful Paul," the old man warned. "Leave your mouth open like that, and you'll attract all manner of trouble."

"Do open mouths attract him?" One of the children asked, and the man thought his answer over carefully, so that he could scare the child, but keep telling the story.

"Not if they have a naturally deep voice coming out of them," the old man decided wisely. "I should be able to keep you safe for the moment, if I keep telling the story, but try to keep your mouths closed all the same." He winked at Paul, who looked at him, obviously terrified by the pause in his story, and therefore, his voice.

"Back in the old days, there were lots of them, and they were very large, nearly as large as he, eight feet tall and twelve long. My grandfather was killed hunting an enormous one, along with six other men bigger than your father," and here he glanced at the child with the largest father. "It was a dreadful blow to the village, losing those six men, as it meant they only had twelve left of age. From then on, the men decided they would never let a rage boar get that large again, so they hunted them and hunted them, until they thought there were none left." Some two-thirds of the children straightened up, having not understood the emphasis on the word "thought", as the old man gave a long pause to catch his breath and, though the children did not know it, to think.

Before his dramatic pause had finished, as he was looking round at each of the children's faces, a child next to him gave him a nudge. "Keep talking."

"Feeling insistent Josh?" He asked. "Very well, very well. Where was I? They thought none were left?" All the children's faces went white - they realized the mistake they had made earlier. "There was still one left though, a baby, the size of a full grown regular boar. When they're babies, they just lay around and eat all the bark and insects and leaves and dirt and worms and mushrooms and anything they can put their snouts on. Then they start growing, and they get a taste for meat." He paused here, and looked around quizzically. "You kids know why boars don't usually eat meat don't you?" The children stared back, sure he would tell them, and he did. "Most animals," the old man explained, "aren't small enough to fit in a boar's mouth, and he's not very good at biting off chunks like you are." He paused again before continuing. Pauses in the right places drove the children crazy, it didn't take long to learn that, and the old man had been telling stories for a long time.

"But," the old man started again, "they eat rats, and snakes, and worms, and bugs. So by the time the rage boars get the size of a man, they can eat children, and by the time they get eight feet, they can take a man, particularly if they kill him first. Now this last one, he's the only one, and he's pretty smart, see?" The children saw. They heard every word, and saw it in their eyes, and their wonder was clear. "So as he's been growing up, he's hidden real well, got a mighty briar  on his back, usually looks like a hill between a few trees. Whenever something small enough for him to eat walks by, which is near enough anything right now,  men, women, little boys and girls, small families, horses....anything he likes really, he eats it up and goes back to sleep. Soon he'll be too big to kill at all. Most of us adults, we've seen him, we can point him out. But you kids, you've never seen him before, might not know what he looks like. Be careful that you don't go into the forest alone."

"A Fib" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.