Chapter 7 - Tiffikin Magic
His dreams were full of fairies, Tiffikins and armour that shone like a rain beetle and disappeared in a puff of smoke. He tossed and turned, his head full of questions that he had no answer to - where had he come from? How come he had a human father? Who was his mother? Was he really a Tiffikin? Flashes of faces he didn’t recognise punctuated his dreams, images of monsters and dark forests and fearful faces swirled like a whirlpool until Jasper found himself sitting bolt upright in the little bed, sweating and breathing heavily. He tried to remember the faces from his dreams, but the more he tried the quicker they slipped away until he could hardly remember anything at all.
He turned to get out of bed and saw that someone had left him a plate of food while he slept. Pancakes, it looked like, piled high with stewed berries and honey. The smell wafting over to him was delicious and he quickly jumped out of bed and devoured the entire meal in three bites. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was until now and was thankful to the person who’d brought the food; the supplies in his backpack were all but inedible after the incident with the bursting water bottles. But wait, he though, if someone had brought him food then someone had been in this room while he slept. Panicking, he ran to the bed and slid his hand under the pillow, reaching for the dagger and hoping more than anything that it was still there and hadn’t been taken while he was unconscious. He fumbled around, feeling only the soft feathers of the mattress before finally his fingers grasped the hilt of the dagger. He let out a sigh of relief and slid the blade out from its hiding place. He couldn’t afford to lose this. Without the dagger, he couldn’t complete his quest and he would never be able to live among humans as an equal. Humans - funny how he now thought of his Father and all the people he had known his whole life as “humans“and not just “people’. Did he really think they were different to him? Did he really think he wasn’t human? It seemed increasingly likely that he wasn’t, and yet he couldn’t quite think of himself as a Tiffikin. Their existence hadn’t really sunk in yet and anyway, if he was one of them then how had he ended up living above a coffee shop run by a human?
Someone pushed the mossy door open, distracting Jasper from his thoughts. Warm light shone in from outside - it looked like mid afternoon out there so he’d been asleep for quite a few hours. He’d have to get going if he wanted to complete all his tasks on time; he only had 72 hours to complete everything and he’d used up 18 of those already getting here, defeating the Dark Knight and sleeping. He had to get a move on.
“You’re up, I see.” Princess Sapphire stepped into the room and fixed him with a stare that made Jasper feel small for the first time since he’d set foot in the Tiffikins“world. “You slept for several hours - I couldn’t wake you.” She sniffed disapprovingly and Jasper felt a pang of annoyance. She’d sleep for a long time, too, if she’d just done what he had. He swallowed his irritation.
“Yes, well, I need to get going now anyway. Thanks for breakfast.”
Sapphire nodded and continued to eye Jasper curiously as he checked through his backpack of belongings, hoping that the map hadn’t gotten too wet to read. It was magic, after all, so hopefully it would be okay. He pulled out the now empty, burst water bottle and discarded it, making his pack much lighter.
“You’re headed to the quarry next, I guess?”
“Yes. My next task is to defeat the Stone Golem. How did you know?”
“He’s been terrorising us too. The Dark Knight was bad enough, snatching us from our homes and trying to force us to brew potions for him, but the stone Golem is worse. He uses his rocks to… grind things. I can’t even bear to think about what he’s done with those of us he has captured.“She hung her head and a teardrop fell from her cheek on to the wooden floor below her. Jasper wouldn’t like to think about those things either - and the thought of being ground up himself wasn’t really a welcome one. He stepped forward, placing his hand on the princess’s shoulder to comfort her as Citrine had done to him, and tried to reassure her.
“I’ll do my best. I need to do this; I don’t fit in at home and this is my only chance. I’ll fight as hard as I can to defeat the Golem. But, I could use a little help.”
Sapphire’s head rose up and her bright blue eyes locked on to Jasper’s dark ones, a glint of determination shining brightly within them.
“I’m ready. I will fight with you.” And she took Jasper by the hand, dragging him out into the afternoon light and through another trapdoor in the dirt.
When Jasper had asked for help, what he’d really meant was that maybe Sapphire’s guards could come along with him as backup. He hadn’t expected Sapphire herself to start strapping armour to her body and tying swords and knives to her back. He said as much to her and was met with a look of disgust.
“Guards? Those guys aren’t my guards! We fight together; they’re my partners, my comrades, my wingmen, but not my guards. Why would the princess of the Tiffikins need guards?”
“Well, it’s just… princesses where I’m from don’t really fight that often. They mostly just; I don’t know - dance, I suppose? Go to balls and dance with a handsome prince? I’m not really sure - I only know what I’ve read in story books, but I’ve never heard about a fighting princess before.”
Sapphire looked both amazed and disgusted at the same time. “Dancing? How do they take care of their people through dancing? How do they fight in a ballgown?”
“Well, I’m not sure, but I think it’s usually the king and his guard who take care of the people.”
Sapphire’s face fell and she looked sadder than ever.
“Yes, well, I suppose that makes sense,” she mumbled, and she turned away from Jasper to rummage in a cupboard for more armour. Jasper wanted to ask Sapphire where the king was, where her father and mother were, but she didn’t look like she wanted to talk so he stored that thought in the back of his mind. Maybe he’d ask her about it later.
“These should fit you well enough.” She suddenly shouted from the depths of the cupboard, and came out backwards, dragging a pile of acorn husks and bark chips in front of her. It didn’t look much like armour, but as she started to extract each piece from the pile and lay it out in front of Jasper, he saw how they all connected into a full suit that would hopefully protect him from some of the Golem’s blows. Not only that, he thought, it would make him look like one of the Tiffikins. A sudden warmth began to spread through his body at the thought of being just like the Tiffikins, and for a moment he imagined himself battling the Golem for the sake of the Tiffikins rather than for his own purposes. For a moment, he felt like one of them.
Sapphire picked up the pieces one by one and began to strap them to Jasper’s body. Acorn husk shoulder pads, a strong tree bark chest plate and shin guards, and a helmet made from a hollowed out conker. It all certainly looked impressive, but would it be enough to keep him safe from a beast made of hard rocks and stone? Sapphire reached into the cupboard again and took out a small jar that glowed faintly orange. She took off the lid and dipped her finger inside, coating it in what looked like a thick, glowing marmalade. What was that stuff? Was it one of the Tiffikins“potions that Jasper had heard about but had yet to see? Sapphire touched Jasper’s armour with the marmalade-potion-covered finger and drew a symbol he didn’t recognise: two half-moon shapes, one flipped so it was a mirror image of the first, right in the centre of his breastplate. The orange glow seemed to spread over the entire suit of armour and it became light, easy to move in, and when Jasper knocked on it, it seemed stronger than it had before.
“For added protection” was all Sapphire said, before repeating the process on her own armour and turning to Jasper. “It’s time. Let’s go.”
Chapter 8 - The Stone Golem
They made their way swiftly through the forest, Sapphire one step ahead, leading the way to the quarry. Jasper kept pace, feeling as though the Tiffikin potion had begun to seep through his armour and into his skin and bones, making him stronger too. He was barely out of breath as he rushed along at Sapphire’s side, leaping over fallen branches and ducking through bushes without making a sound. The pair kept quiet, communicating with each other through looks and hand gestures, focussed on the task that lay ahead of them and too lost in their own thoughts to vocalise any of them.
Finally, as the light shining through the trees began to glow orange and the sun dropped in the sky, Sapphire stopped, holding her hand up to Jasper to indicate that he should stop, too. They had arrived. Jasper stepped forward so he was directly beside her and looked around for the golem.
In front of them was a steep drop, the ground changing suddenly from mossy forest floor to dry rock and rubble that slid and shifted with every gust of wind. Pebbles rolled down the steep surface in mini avalanches every few seconds, landing with a clatter far below in a large, flat clearing. Jasper scanned the area, bracing himself for the sight of the golem, but all he saw down below were more rocks. These ones were much larger than those from the slope, and were piled together in bundles dotted around the dusty floor, but they were still just rocks. He glanced at Sapphire questioningly and saw that her eyes were widened slightly. Was she scared? He reached out and tapped her lightly on the shoulder, making her flinch.
“Where’s the Golem?” he whispered as quietly as he could. Though he couldn’t see his enemy in front of him, he knew that the Stone Golem could be anywhere and he didn’t want to risk being heard. Sapphire stared back at him, with a strange expression on he face, then turned and pointed down below to the piles of rocks.
With the light fading as they day grew to an end, the clearing at the bottom of the quarry was falling into darkness. Long shadows cast by its steep walls shifted and began to creep up the sides of the rocks. Each pile began to quiver, a loud rumbling sound echoing through the quarry and reaching the ears of Jasper and Sapphire high above. Then, with the thunderous sound of boulders crashing together, one of the rock piles stood up.
“Are you ready?” Sapphire whispered, so quietly Jasper barely caught her words. Was he ready? He’d known what he was coming here to do, but now that he’d actually made it he wasn’t sure he could do it. Suddenly, despite the Tiffikin potion, his armour felt like it weighed a tonne and a trickle of sweat fell from his brow on to the dry ground below.
“I…I… I don’t know…” he stammered as he watched each pile of rocks below quiver and come to life. There were five of them pacing around the floor below him now, rumbling and grinding as they walked. He hadn’t signed up for FIVE stone golems, just one; and even then he wasn’t sure he was even able to do that.
“Yes, you can.” Sapphire whispered back at him forcefully, her eyes glinting with determination. “You fought the Dark Knight for us without even thinking about it and defeated him within minutes. You readied yourself for this battle with no fear and I will not let you back out of it now.”
Suddenly, Sapphire reached out to Jasper, grabbed him by the back of the neck and gave him an almighty shove, hurtling him down the side of the quarry wall in another rocky avalanche and towards the creatures below.
If the creatures had seemed large from their high viewpoint, that was nothing to how they looked now as Jasper stood at their feet. He tilted his head so far back he felt his neck would break as he craned to take them in, and the dread that had begun to creep up on him almost took hold of him completely as he struggled to work out how he, a six-inch-high boy, was going to defeat them armed with nothing but a dagger which must seem like nothing more than a toothpick to these creatures.
A clattering of rocks behind him drew him out of his thoughts, and Sapphire appeared at his side, her head held high and her chin jutting out defiantly.
“Okay, lets do this,” she almost shouted, and pushed past Jasper into the open clearing.
Jasper wasn’t ready. How could he ever be ready for something like this? And yet, he found that as Sapphire moved forward, his feet carried him alongside her and into the midst of the five giant rock men. His hand gripped the hilt of his dagger as he prepared to fight and as the pair moved forwards, the creatures began to stop in their tracks and turn towards them.
“Well, it’s now or never, I suppose,” Jasper breathed, and started to pull the dagger from his belt. To his surprise, Sapphire grabbed his wrist, stopping him from unsheathing his blade. Her eyes were locked straight ahead, in the direction they were walking and she nodded slightly to indicate that Jasper should do the same. He dragged his eyes away from Sapphire and the creatures surrounding them and forced himself to look dead ahead, blocking out the sight of the elemental creatures he was sure would crush them both at any second.
“Look,” Sapphire whispered through her teeth, “there.”
Up ahead, on the opposite side of the quarry wall, was a roughly hewn cave Jasper hadn’t noticed before. It was large, almost half the height of the wall, but hidden behind piles of the slate-grey quarry rocks. It was only when facing it directly as they were doing now that it was really noticeable at all. If he squinted hard enough, Jasper could just make out a large shape moving inside the cave. He stepped closer and as he closed the distance between himself and the quarry wall ahead, his eyes finally found the outline of the object inside the cave.
It was a rock golem. Not unlike the ones that shuffled around the quarry floor, their rumblings surrounding Jasper and Sapphire so that the earth shook and it sounded like a thunderstorm around them; not unlike them, but not quite the same either. For a start, this one was bigger. As they moved closer, it stood up, its massive body filling the opening to the cave. Jasper had never felt so small, and in that moment all he could think of was the golem striding forward and crushing him like a bug. It was certainly capable of it. It would have taken no time at all, in fact, and again Jasper felt his shoulders sag and his armour weigh heavy on him as his doubt set in.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered vaguely in the direction of Sapphire.
“Yes, you can, Jasper. You have to. There’s no going back now.” And, for the second time that night, she placed her hand on Jasper’s back and gave him an almighty shove.
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