Short Story: The Cyclops And The Ostrich Egg

Chapter Eleven
The Cyclops and the Ostrich Egg

I spent the night wrestling with the mummy wrap, which was bad since the linen was itchy. But worse was the confined space. It made me nuts. Luckily, I heard footsteps in the hall. The door opened and Mason came into my room. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes. What happened?”
“My mom sort of went crazy—” I started to explain. “Just unwrap me.”
“All right, stand still.” He grabbed the end of the gauze between my shoulder blades and spun me around like a top. “Cool?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
We bumped fists and headed downstairs. At the breakfast table, Mom was seated slowly slicing a grapefruit in half while scanning the newspaper. She set her knife down and turned the page. The headline blared:

Dimple’s Diner Gone in a Moment.
“Feeling better, sweetie?” she asked, glancing up and smiling.
I nodded. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in the garage tinkering with his Chevy.”
My dad taught microbiology at the junior college in town, and he loved science, but his true passion was cars—anything older than him. In fact, the ‘55 Bel Air was his pride and joy.
I opened the door, poked my head inside the garage, and caught him absently scratching his rump while staring at a disassembled carburetor. “Hey, Dad.”
He smiled. “I just can’t seem to figure out why she keeps stalling.”
“Aiden? Breakfast,” Mom called.
“Coming.” I went back into the kitchen and sat down across from Mason.
“The paper said something about a gas leak at the diner. You guys didn’t smell anything?” Mom asked, setting plates in front of each of us. She placed a platter stacked with bacon and sausage next to the eggs and splashed some orange juice into our cups.
I shook my head.
“Well, thank goodness no one was hurt.” Mom took a sip of her coffee and finished buttoning her peppermint-striped scrub jacket. “Anyway, I have to run some errands after work.” She snatched her stethoscope and the key fob for her SUV off the kitchen counter.
“How is Gramps?”
“He’s still resting, sweetie. Hey, it’s a beautiful day, why don’t you guys go for a swim?” She hugged me, squeezing tight enough to make my sides groan. Then she let go, grabbed my face with both hands, and kissed my nose. “Bye, boys.” She gave us another smile and hurried out the front door.
“How embarrassing was that?” Mason smiled.

“Luckily no one saw her kiss you except me, and I’m your friend, so I don’t count.”
“Never mind that,” I said, dragging him outside. “Come on.”
We followed a broad footpath trodden under the feet of slow-chewing cows that were, let’s just say, extremely messy. The path wandered along in turns and easy angles and came at last to the woods. But after reaching the shadow of the first sugar maple, it veered sharply left and bordered a creek that had been dammed up to form a swimming hole.
I stripped down to my boxers—which I’d started wearing after my atomic wedgie—and climbed up onto an overhanging dock, stretched out my arms, and dove deep into the cool water. I amused myself for some time swimming laps and floating on my back.
Mason cut through the swells like a shark, using only his hips to generate motion. Then we raced each other, and once we’d tired ourselves out, we climbed onto the shore and napped. When the sun was too hot, we leaped back into the hole, and when the chilly water made us shiver, we scrambled out again, and so it went until we finally started back to the house on sopping wet, slippery

sandals.
Inside at the table, I asked Mason if he was ready to kick some troll rear end.
He rolled up his sandwich and started munching—never a guy to let impending doom stand in the way of a hearty meal. “What the heck.”
“Let’s go,” I said and pushed back my chair.
Then I heard my dad’s voice. “Aiden?” He stepped into the kitchen, his tasseled loafers tick-tick-ticked across the tile floor. “Hey, guys.” He set a grocery sack on the counter. “What have you been up to?”
“Not much.” I stood up. “Mom’s still running errands?”
“She’ll be home soon.”
“Thanks for lunch, Mr.

Greene,” Mason said, blasting toward the door.
“Anytime.”
“Aiden?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
He winked at me. “Have fun, okay?”
“Absolutely not.” I winked back, even though I knew I would.

Fifteen minutes later, we were literally stumbling around a winter wonderland. Silver snowflakes floated down from the sky, and frost crept across hackberry branches. Squatting on the hard-packed, bluish-white snow was a fifteen-foot cyclops with one large yellow eye that looked like a poached ostrich egg right in the middle of his forehead. His gnarled hands and bare feet were as big as your average school bus. Despite the cold, he wore a green tank top that read: “Installing Brains, Please Wait . . .” and a teeny-tiny pink sarong.
I smiled uneasily at the super-sized beast. He smiled back, his split tongue flickering between pointed teeth.
Hang on. Split tongue? I thought and took off running toward a spindly shrub.
“AIDEN GREENE!”
My flip-flops squeaked to a halt on the ice. I took a deep breath, shaking like a leaf, and turned to face the monster.
“Where are you going?” he boomed.
“Uh . . . err . . . um.” Mason stifled a pathetic giggle. “No

place.”
I figured the only way to survive the cyclops encounter was to make myself appear larger than life. I raised my hands up above my head, spread my legs wide and yelled, “You want some of this, mister?”
I could tell he was scared by his platter-sized eye and the choked down squeal, which came out sounding like a squeaky toy squashed under a sofa cushion.
“Easy does it, grandson of the Great Legend Greene,” he whimpered. “I’m Argos. Son of Ouranus. I helped out on the farm for a while.”
Shivering there in the snow, I remembered something Gramps had said about a cyclops with a neck as round as a redwood trunk and shoulders like stones sliding two towering peaks apart to form our valley. Then, I squeezed our farmhouse in between and sprinkled apple seeds on the soil. He’d chuckled. Seconds later, a sprawling orchard stretched up and over the hills.
The cyclops pointed to a willowy fairy with gleaming wings attempting to hide behind a couple of twigs. “That’s Cyrailia. I found her in the woods, and we struck up a conversation. She was running from the troll’s castle and didn’t want to go back, so I took her in. She is sort of bashful, but she’s a magical creature.”
In the distance, a hairy little imp with enormous pink ears popped out of a snow-covered bush. She wore half-a-dozen gold bangle bracelets on each wrist and a silver tiara. “I’m Lady Fairdale, darling. And who are you?”
Without even thinking, I blurted out, “Aiden Greene.”
“You are as cute as a button, sweet thing.” The creature swooned with an odd clacking sound, like a chime made of wooden spoons. Her lips twisted into a hideous grin, revealing two long, bucked teeth.
“Don’t encourage the imp,” Cyrailia warned. “She’s a terrible flirt.”
“Right.” I shivered again as a bitter, icy wind swept across the snow and rifled through my shorts and flip-flops. Mason stood beside me coated with frost like a powdered sugar donut frozen into place.
“You guys look cold,” Argos said.
“Yes,” the little fairy agreed. “Aiden’s lips are almost blue. Go home and change your clothes.”
Suddenly, the sky shifted, revealing a kaleidoscope of colored lights as fireworks exploded overhead. The temperature rose, and we were snaking down a maze of curling waterslide tubes and pipes, landing flat on our backs in the grass. I stood up and smoothed my rumpled shorts, but Mason lay there motionless.
“Stop messing around,” I chided.
“But—”
“Grab a jacket and meet me at the tree in ten.” I bolted inside and dressed for the weather: a pair of long johns, jeans, a turtleneck sweater, four scarves, a warm insulated jacket, a knit cap with matching mittens, two pairs of winter socks and boots lined with fur.