That Which Cannot Be Explained

Chapter 7: Dark Secrets in the Secret Dark

THE SMALL HEART of Michael of the Manor leaped for joy inside his chest. He stuck his arms out in the dark abyss blindly searching for something to touch to be certain something was there to touch. He held his breath as he moved from one area to the other and let it all out when he felt the bony leg that poked him once before. He patted it up and down and felt a foot at the end of the leg as is natural to do so. He squished it to feel the toes and the foot quickly jerked back.

"Alright! Okay! Sure, play with my foot! You've discovered a leg, a foot, and some toes. Congratulations! Now leave me be," shouted the voice once heard before.

"Can it be? Oh, such good fortune I do fall upon in great times of need! Could you be he who I be looking for? The Individual, I mean to say, is that you?" asked Michael looking in the wrong direction.

"Yup—HICCUP—yup, yup," hiccupped the Individual.

"I do say! The Ladies of the Grape were indeed truthful and quite the helpful bunch. May they be blessed with a thoughtful thankyou note."

The Individual gave an awfully loud and obnoxious snore and Michael waved his head around to follow the direction the sound was coming from. If he could see himself, he would have been stricken with shameful guilt for he looked like a rooster with his head cut off and replaced by a pig's head waving it around like a lizard. Scooting in closer, Michael found where the Individual was leaning against an empty barrel in the corner of the cellar that they both were and are thrown into. He found the snores to be far too loud and slapped the Individual across the face to shut him up and make him talk.

"Now see here! I do have many questions to ask you and if time were to permit me, I do intend to receive answers. Now my first question is a doozy for you: Can you yet still answer to questions?" questioned Michael but received only a grunt of a chuckle from the Individual.

"Do you know why the Intoxicated keep me in this cold, damp cellar? Do ya?" asked the Individual.

"Is that the answer to my question?"

"Let me tell you, I pray, if only you'd not be so pushy. They keep me here alive for two reasons. One, they always forget I am here and only remember when they don't forget. Two, when they do recall my existence here, they ask of me the most absurd questions ever asked of me."

"So, you do answer to questions asked of you yet still?!"

"Oh, I answer them alright. Say, the other day an Intoxicated approached me and asked me, 'Why do they call it a girl cheese sandwich? And not a boy cheese sandwich?' So I replied simply, 'A boy cheese sandwich would smell too much.' And the fool believed me. Another asks me, 'What causes the waves to wave at man?' 'Plain as day,' I answer him, 'The great tails of the whales cause the waves to wave at man.' And the fool also believed me. What's worse, Drunkard Wino the fair 'Lord of the Tipsy' asked of me the most foolish question of them all. He asked me if he was 'getting too fat to drink'! So I told him he wasn't and yet again he believed me and went on drinking more and more," explained the Individual all the while hiccupping every other sentence.

"But I do not understand. You do indeed answer to questions asked of you. So what is the problem?"

"I did not know the answers to their foolish questions! I told them whatever I wanted to tell them. It didn't matter how ridiculous the answers might have been, anyone in this wicked Intoxicated Village believes every word from my mouth."

"How peculiar. So it is true," said Michael of the Manor with an unbelieving tone.

The Individual was alarmed at what he heard. He was heated by the thought that he had been gossiped about in all parts of the Land. Who was anyone to speak ill of him? What is it that they had said of him?