Granite Guts was a spriggan, one of the nastiest and meanest of the earth faery. He was an untidy humpbacked sprawl of a creature with hard rocklike skin and gnarled yellow toenails and a gaping maw of a mouth from which half the thick yellowed teeth were missing.
His favorite things in the world included hassling foot travelers and pelting them with stones when the sought to rest their weary feet on the side of the road. He fouled their water, stole their food and often times snatched every pair of clean dry socks they owned, dunked them in his ditchwater well and returned them soggy and muddy.
While Granite enjoyed making life for travelers difficult. Gorgonsa reveled in it. She would sneak into a traveler�s camp while they slept and urinate on their sack of supplies while chuckling evilly before heading off to nearby creek beds in search of dark slimy leeches to leave in a traveler�s sleep sack. She lured spiders and snakes to the resting-place of any whom dared to sleep within her territory. She once lashed a sleeping man to a tree and painted him in pure honey before stirring up a hill of red ants with a stick until the poor creatures, mad with rage, took out their frustrations on the body of the unfortunate.
Some spriggans, if you have something they want, will break off their harassment in exchange for said item. Gorgonsa would hear of no such thing and was all the more inclined to bring out more serious methods of cruelty for such an offer.
Granite clattered over another small hill and entered his lair bellowing in the true spriggan manner into the dark dank hole. Gorgonsa roared back and flung a small kettle at Granite�s head before turning over in the parasite-ridden pile of rags and fur she had flopped down upon. Her stringy hair was greased down with half-dry waterweed and pond scum frosted her hide-like skin under its fashionable coating of dark mud. But by Scumnose the Putrid she was a sight for sore spriggan eyes!
�Get up Beast!� He rumbled at his sleeping wife. (May I make a note here that the phrase �get up Beast� is the spriggan equivalent of �I love you�) When she didn�t respond Granite followed up the order with a swift kick to the pile of rags, missing her ribs by inches. She roared awake, lurching to her feet and struck Granite a glancing blow with one ham-like fist.
�Rot you! I�ll fry your liver in frog tripe and suck it up with the jelly from your eyes!� (Note; this is the spriggan equivalent of �I love you too�)
What ensued is best left to the imagination for there was a great deal of yelling and hurling objects. But in the end, Granite left the lair, beaten but unrepentant. He�d decided that he was going to pull off the mother of all spriggan plans to show his wife that he was just as downright nasty as she was.
Granite sat for a long time on his Hill wondering what in the world he was going to do to, and to whom. He didn�t dare go home until he�d formulated a plan so he sat all night wondering. (Spriggan�s in general are not the brightest of beasts; they are only slightly behind trolls in stupidity) The day dawned and the cheery morning found Granite in a black mood. (All cheery mornings put spriggans in black moods, but this one was particularly cheery hence Granite�s particularly black mood) As he sat on his Hill wondering, the sound of music reached his clay encrusted ears. He honked his nose and wiped the result off onto his disgusting verminous brown trousers where it simply left another stain among the multitude.
Granite clattered and rattled over the high point in the hill and settled down to watch whatever it was that came along the path below him. Around the bend of the hill came a human man. He was dressed in the clothes of a wanderer of little means and across his back he carried a battered lute with a jury-rigged strap from a harness piece to secure it over his shoulders.
Granite could hardly contain his glee as he fought to hold still and not dance in place at the prospect. (Dance is a relative term, seeing as how spriggan �dances� tended much toward beating your partner or partners with blunt objects and flinging interesting colors of slime around) The human seemed oblivious, eyes partially closed, lips open and pouring his heart into the song he was singing. Granite had begun to form a plan in his slow spriggan brain.
Up ahead there was a lovely trench of blackish-red mud filled with all sorts of delectable (to a spriggan) creatures. If he could trap the human man in that trench, the man would be his to do with as he liked until he thought of some sort of delight to inflict upon him. Granite followed behind the human man as he continued walking and dropped down behind him. (The landing was intended to be silent but spriggans are very much like elephants performing ballet when it comes to silence.)
The man of course heard Granite�s fall. He had actually noted the creature some time back, when he had first come around the bend in the road. Knowing a little about the faery kind and their liking for trickery; the man, whose name was Aldon, prepared himself for the journey, knowing that he would be passing through faery land. So when he�d heard the telltale clattering and rattling of a spriggan on the prowl (once again we must be reminded of elephants in pointe shoes) he had been entirely unworried.
Aldon stopped and pretended to be startled by the sudden sound. He turned around quickly and backed away from Granite who was even now picking himself up out of the dust. The spriggan smiled, or at least that�s what Aldon assumed he meant by the gesture that was half grimace and half wolfish growl. Pretending to be frightened Aldon backed away, hands outstretched in a gesture of warding.
Granite bared his teeth, what little of them there were, as the human jumped like a startled hare when he landed ungracefully in the dirt behind him. Picking himself up and eyeing the human he chuckled harshly.
�Hello there little man-thing.� Granite growled making no move to come closer to the human. The man�s brown eyes were wide with fear. �Tell me, would you like a chance to explain what you are doing near my Hill?� Granite knew he was a frightening sight and was taking fiendish pleasure in the human�s fear.
�B-Be gone faery fiend!� Aldon stammered doing a credible imitation of very real fear. Inside he was smiling but the spriggan was too intent upon whatever it was he had in store for Aldon to notice the cheery twinkling in his eyes.
�Gone to where human man? This is my Hill and you are trespassing on the lands of Granite Guts! The most feared of the faery in all the hills!� Granite thundered, pleased with his ability to frighten the human. The man said nothing but slowly began backing away from the howling spriggan.
�I-I-I�m s-sorry. I-I�ll l-leave im-me-me-imediately!� Aldon stammered turning as if to run but in reality trying not to laugh in the disreputable thing�s face.
�Oh no you don�t!� Granite howled and gave chase. Granite was sniggering internally; this stupid man was following his vile spriggan plan to the letter. It was almost too easy!
The human ran through the hills, stumbling and clattering over the stones and dodging trees and small lizards with Granite in hot pursuit. He jumped over ditches; Granite clattered afterwards. He darted through scrub; Granite blundered through shortly behind him. Aldon was beginning to enjoy this and ran this way and that as if he were positively mad with fright. Granite was always behind him, capering and gibbering at him in an attempt to look terrifying, but really just looking rather foolish.
Granite was beginning to get tired. The man was darting about like a dragonfly and jumping over obstacles and looking very frightened. This thought cheered Granite but he was beginning to run out of wind. Never fear, he thought, the trench was right over the next hill.
Aldon ran, maybe not ran, more liked jogged because he knew the spriggan was close behind him and didn�t want to lose him. He had plans for Granite. Granite thought to do the tricking, well, he was going to be right royally tricked when Aldon got done with him! Aldon knew these hills; he�d grown up not very far from here. He knew the spriggan�s goal was the deep hole over the next rise. Likely the creature thought to catch him in the trench and keep him there until he thought of something vile to do to him. Well, Aldon wasn�t about to spoil the poor creature�s plan.
He topped the next rise and took two steps before leaping into the trench and landing hard at the bottom. The ground was hard and dry under him and he allowed himself a little smile and a chance to catch his breath. The pit had dried up, as it did every year, so the �delights� the spriggan had planned to be in there, of course, weren�t. (Spriggan�s are not very good at remembering the seasons and they have very little long-term memory so of course Granite hadn�t thought that the trench might dry up in the summer)
He waited until he heard the spriggan�s shuffling gate and then sprawled himself artistically across the bottom of the pit as if he was dazed from the fall. Granite�s ugly face peaked over the lip of the hole and he set eyes on Aldon lying senseless on the dirt floor of the pit. He began to rumble and snigger with glee and fidgeted in fiendish delight.
Aldon roused himself and hid another smile in the semi-murk of the dark pit. He peered up at Granite helplessly as he struggled to sit up.
�P-please let m-me out of-f-f-f here. P-please d-don�t l-leave me h-here.� He stuttered and raised his hands imploringly at the spriggan. Granite gape-grinned at him evilly.
�I told you there was punishment for trespassing little man. Now I may do whatever I like with you!� He cackled rubbing his knobby fingers together with his bony wrists. Aldon pretended to be horrified at the notion and stared in shock.
�What are you going to do with me spriggan?� He snapped standing up and shouldering his lute with a scowl on his face.
�I haven�t decided yet man-thing. Maybe I�ll feed you to the slime-wogglers or perhaps the muddle-crawlers. Or maybe I shall skin you and use your skin as a doormat. Maybe I�ll cover you in leeches and leave them to gorge upon you. Or perhaps I shall simply crack open your skull and use it as a bowl for my evening muck.� Granite said. This went on for some time, Granite describing the awful things he planned to do and Aldon pretending to become more and more frightened as the litany went on.
After a while Granite ran out of things to say (spriggan�s aren�t long on creativity) and this elicited a round of posturing and glowering on both parts which elicited another round of threats, then glowers, then threats, then glowers. This went on all day until the sun had set in the sky and Granite retired to sleep outside the hole next to his captive.
When the spriggan drifted off and began snoring as only a spriggan or a troll could Aldon sat down on the floor of the pit and snickered as he began opening his pack quietly. Out of the pack came a rope, a climbing hook, and a pair of leather gloves with thick leather palms. Donning these gloves and attaching the hook to the rope, Aldon tossed it out of hole in the direction of a rock pile nearby. The first attempt clanged discordantly on stone and he winced at the sound, but there was no change in Granite�s snores. He pulled the rope back into the hole and tried again. Two more times, the hook clanged and fell but on the third time he felt the hook catch in what must be the pile of boulders. Giving a sharp tug on the line to secure it, he set his feet against the sides of the hole and began to climb. A short time later, he was out of the hole, packs on his shoulders and hook and rope back on his belt.
Granite had rolled onto his back during his sleep and was very deeply unconscious and snoring enough to wake the Faery King and Queen beneath their Hill. Aldon snickered again in the moonlight and un-looped the rope from his belt.
~~~
Granite woke with the sun directly in his eyes and growled. Opening his eyes a little wider, the entrance to his lair loomed in front of him. He started to pick himself to go into it when his brain caught up with the rest of him. He wasn�t supposed to be here! He was supposed to be over near the trench with the human inside it! He�d had such lovely dreams about the things that he could inflict upon the man with the lute. He picked himself up with a loud growl and looked down, then stared. Gone were his filthy brown trousers with seven years worth of muck and mud on them, gone was his verminous shirt that was so stained it was impossible to tell what color it had been. His gnarly jagged yellow toenails were neatly snipped and filed down and his skin, oh by his spriggan ancestors, his skin! As he explored he groaned deep in his throat. Every single inch of him, every part that he had worked to perfect, every bit was scrubbed spotless.