Mulrox and the Malcognitos Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Kerelyn Smith

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Fog Field Press

  15600 NE 8th Street, Ste. B1 #389,

  Bellevue, WA, 98008

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  * * *

  Names: Smith, Kerelyn, author.

  Title: Mulrox and the Malcognitos / Kerelyn Smith.

  Description: Bellevue, WA: Fog Field Press, 2020.

  Summary: Mulrox the ogre is a poet with terrible ideas. But when his ideas come to life, Mulrox must go on a quest to save them.

  Identifiers: LCCN: 2020900256 | ISBN: 978-1-7342169-0-5 (Hardcover) | 978-1-7342169-1-2 (pbk.) | 978-1-7342169-2-9 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH Poetry--Juvenile fiction. | Poets--Juvenile fiction. | Ghouls and ogres--Juvenile fiction. | Magic--Juvenile fiction. | Adventures and adventurers--Juvenile fiction. | Imagination--Juvenile fiction. | Fantasy fiction. | CYAC Poetry--Fiction. | Poets--Fiction. | Ghouls and ogres--Fiction. | Magic--Fiction. | Imagination--Fiction. | Adventures and adventurers--Fiction. | BISAC JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance | JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1 S64 Mul 2020 | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  Cover Illustration by Matt Rockefeller,

  Cover Design by Tim Barber at Dissect Designs,

  Copy Edited by Jenny Bowman,

  Proofread by Carlisa Cramer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

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  Love the book? You can make a big difference!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  To everyone whose ideas are less than perfect. And to my father, who loves all of my malcognitos anyway.

  1

  Great-aunts do not make good houseguests. Neither do ogres. Unfortunately for Mulrox, Great-Aunt Griselda was both.

  “Mulrox!” The walls of his hut rattled. “Get in here!”

  “I’d rather not,” Mulrox said under his breath.

  “Grandnephew!”

  Mulrox looked miserably at the map-adorned wall that separated him from his beastly great-aunt and then back at his blackboard. There, his latest poem, painstakingly scrawled out in his jagged handwriting, was almost complete. He had been working on this one for the better part of a month. Only the final couplet was left. If he stayed quiet, she might think he’d gone and he could spend a little longer on—

  “MULROX!”

  A blur of motion from the corner of the room made Mulrox look up in time to see his pet toad tumble from the top of her perch amidst a landslide of odds and ends and a cloud of chalk dust.

  “Geraldine!” Mulrox closed the distance between them in a few hurried steps, clearing thimbles and hand drills and drying nuts from his path. “Are you okay?”

  The toad glowered at him.

  “Of course you are. My mistake,” Mulrox said, peering around the step stool at her. “You look…”

  Normally Geraldine was a dignified animal: large for a black toad, her head came up to his ankle. Down her back ran a single yellow stripe with a series of jagged lines radiating from it. Now, however, a fine white powder covered every inch of the toad. If it weren’t for her golden eyes, which were giving him a particularly odious glare, she could have been mistaken for a garden figurine. “You look statuesque,” he finished.

  She swiped at him with her long, pink tongue and Mulrox chuckled. He brushed the dust from her back and then scooped her up into his arms.

  She softened but then turned toward the offending noises—his old bedroom.

  “She’ll go back to Raggok soon, I’m sure of it. Griselda hates it here—why would she stay?”

  The map on the far wall shuddered again, and the crunching moan of splintering wood echoed through his hut.

  Geraldine raised an eye ridge.

  “Alright, I’ll tell her,” Mulrox said. He set Geraldine on her perch. “She has to go.” He took a deep breath and made his way to his old bedroom, which was now serving as his great-aunt’s recovery room.

  * * *

  Great-Aunt Griselda lay sprawled out on the covers of Mulrox’s four-poster bed, dressed in a nightgown that must have been several centuries old. The ridiculous lace collar stretched out in a cone around her neck, making her look like an unappetizing ice cream cone. The gown was too short, and her arms and legs poked out of the fabric, revealing dark blue skin as tough and weathered as corrugated metal. Two thick planks of wood—one in front, one in back—anchored her fractured hip bones in place. Next to her were the splintered remains of his side table.

  “Let’s have it then.” She held out her immense blue hand and opened and closed it expectantly.

  Mulrox looked around him.

  “The tooth file.” She pointed to the dresser, on top of which sat a metal file encrusted in flakes of old food and saliva.

  Mulrox held the file out to her.

  “Here I am, cooped up in this horrible little room,” she said. Mulrox stared at the hand-carved scene that ran along his bed frame, full of toads and squirrels and flowers. He glanced at the window seat in the far corner and the thick, mossy rug at the base of the bed. He tried to swallow down the ridiculous feeling of homesickness that clawed at his throat. She snatched the file from him and smacked the bed with it. “And now my teeth have gone dull. They barely tore through that old leather book you had lying about.”

  His stomach dropped. Shreds of leather and paper that had once been one of his prized volumes of Vroktar’s poetry covered his bed. It hadn’t been lying about; it had been in a place of honor on his desk.

  “Perfect outside, perfect inside, I always say. Maybe if you spent a little less time in here with your books and more time working on your smashing arm, you’d look more like a proper ogre and less like an overripe tomato.”

  Mulrox’s ears burned, and he knew he was turning that particular shade of maroon she was referring to.

  “There’s no point changing colors on me.” Griselda scoffed and began to saw at her lower canine teeth. “It’s the truth. Accept it.”

  Mulrox couldn’t help it. He knew he was only turning a darker shade. He was small—too small—and scrawny. Not at all the build an ogre should be.

  Griselda sighed. “It’s no surprise. Grendel knows your side of the family has always been trouble—what with your puny necks and wild ideas, no
underbites to speak of—just look at what’s happened…”

  Mulrox wanted to sink into the floor.

  “I’ll never understand why your father sold off your land.”

  “For me.” The words came out so soft he wasn’t sure if he had spoken out loud.

  “For you? You should have left Ulgorprog altogether! Living in this hut, surrounded by those ridiculous flowers, and right on the border of the Woods Mercurial.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Mulrox said, trying not to look at her as bits of spittle and tooth sprayed the sheets. “You just stay out of the woods and it mostly leaves you alone.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. My hip is no better, thank you for asking. Apparently for a quattrocentenarian, my recovery is miraculous. Rubbish. How long have I been here? A week? Two weeks? And I’m still strapped into this monstrosity.”

  It had been four days since she had appeared on his doorstep in the middle of the night with a bruised eye, a broken hip, and a mountain of suitcases. It felt like years.

  She leered at her hip. “They told me no more roofs—can you believe that?”

  It seemed like sound-enough advice to him. According to town gossip, it had been stomping through a roof and landing on a stone fireplace that had put Griselda in this state.

  “Do they think roofs cave in on their own? Bad omen is what it was. Blasted unlucky new moon. I told them it was no night for it. No moon. No raiding. Dark as death, it was. I’ve been crushing roofs with Debtor’s Doom for four centuries with no incident. No more roofs!” She shook her head. “Is that the rubbish they’ve been teaching you in the Raid Brigade?”

  “No, nothing’s changed.” Nothing in Ulgorprog ever did. “It’s still the same: drums, formations, smashing.”

  She regarded him for a moment. “If you’re anything to go by, they aren’t doing a proper job. I’ll have to speak to Groxor. Do you think the king pays us to not get our hands dirty? No. We are to instill fear in those dirty, little tax evaders.” She took the file out of her mouth and began to wave it about. “A few broken windows will not cut it!” she spluttered. “The terms are very clear. Destroy everything but their puny people. Every! Thing!” She had to catch her breath.

  It was as good a time as any.

  “You know Great-Aunt I… I was thinking.” He was rushing through his words. Slow down, he told himself. He stared at the lines and whorls in the floorboards and continued. “If you would be more comfortable, we could always arrange for you to go home.”

  Silence. Many moments passed before he dared to look up.

  “Home.” Griselda was smiling. Mulrox tried not to wince. “It’s an intriguing concept. I have a few more inquiries to make, but yes, we will discuss home. Let’s say tomorrow. At the Proggrog. Is that soon enough for you?”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He nodded. “I’ll see you at the Slobber and Snore.”

  “Again?! That dump?”

  “It’s held there every week.”

  “That place is a disgrace.”

  Mulrox loved the Slobber and Snore. He had practically grown up in that inn: hidden behind the bar, or crouched with his arms threaded through the slats of the stairway, or darting from one lopsided table to the next as he shadowed Trolzor, the innkeeper. Mulrox didn’t have many friends, but Trolzor had always looked out for him, even when the rest of the town had turned their backs. And the Proggrog was one of the few parts of being an ogre that Mulrox understood. Every week they gathered to share food, stories, and Svenn’s music. Mulrox’s mouth watered just thinking about the bone-meal biscuits dripping with honey butter. There was even the occasional poetry reading, as long as the poem was properly bellicose and grim and the reader did not get carried away with emotion. He didn’t love all the droning on about tradition, but he tried to nod along and enjoy being a part of the group for once. He didn’t expect Griselda to understand any of that.

  “It’s the only place big enough,” Mulrox offered.

  “Miserable, little town. Without even a proper gathering hall. No choice of bean-sprout wine to speak of. And that six-fingered slug, what does he think he’s playing at?”

  “Svenn.”

  “All that music—it’s not ogreian. ‘Dishonesty will not be tolerated.’” She was quoting from the old laws. Not known for their wits, the elders had had a natural fear of anything pretending to be what it was not. Most ogres ignored the laws banning music, storytelling, and art, but a few stalwarts like Griselda clung to the spirit of them. “What’s a giant slug doing in a town full of ogres? It’s suspicious. He has far too many fingers.”

  “Svenn is…”

  Svenn had lived in the Slobber and Snore for as long as Mulrox could remember. Ogres did not like outsiders; however, Svenn was not only the best musician in town but quite possibly the best in all of Veralby. His fingers flew over the strings of his theorbo as though they were made for it. No one knew why the slug lived in Ulgorprog, but as long as he continued to play, they didn’t much care. To Mulrox, Svenn was a true artist, a kindred spirit, and Mulrox watched him from afar with admiration and longing.

  “Svenn…”

  Griselda raised an eyebrow and Mulrox felt that horrible color returning. He looked at the floor.

  “As I thought,” Griselda said. “Rinse this off on your way out.” Griselda chucked the file at his head.

  He put a hand up to catch it, but it clattered to the ground, spattering him with white and green fragments. The Proggrog was tomorrow. He picked up the file with two fingers. It was slick with saliva. You can make it to tomorrow.

  “And try to keep it down out there. Grendel knows what you are playing at, but I need my rest.”

  2

  Geraldine was waiting for him. She had placed herself in his path so that when he rounded the corner into the living room, he had to stop short to avoid running her over. She gave him a quizzical croak.

  “Yes,” Mulrox said. “And I think it worked! We will talk tomorrow. We’re going to get our house back!”

  The toad made a happy chirp and began to hop about the living room, kicking up chalk dust as she went. There was so much scattered dust that it looked like she was leaping in and out of a cloud.

  He hadn’t realized how dreadful the mess was. Mulrox loved words, he loved the sound of them as they rolled about in his mouth, words like excruciating, blubbering, particulate. Sharp words like masticate, round ones like omnibus, rich ones like candelabra, and gaseous ones like flabbergasted. He loved the shape of them, the peaks and valleys, the dark swarm of letters, the space and promise of a line break.

  But despite his passion and effort, Mulrox knew he was not a real poet. He had never been very good, but lately it seemed he had had nothing but bad luck. Everything he wrote, every word, was terrible. Each misstep tormented him. If he wanted to be like Vroktar, there was no room for sagging half-baked thoughts. Vroktar was the self-proclaimed enemy of mediocrity. And so Mulrox was too, accepting nothing less than perfection in every sound and syllable. So when the words came out lazy and twisted, Mulrox obliterated them, ripping out pages from his notebook or dashing them from his blackboard. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, and chalk dust coated every surface, the shelves, the books, even Geraldine with the dusty remains of his terrible ideas.

  Mulrox gathered an armload of balled-up papers and tossed them into the fireplace. The fire leapt and cackled at its good fortune. The flames licked the spiked edges of the grate as though ready to erupt from the mouth of the dragon carved into the fireplace frame.

  Mulrox put his hand against one of the dragon’s jeweled eyes and sighed. He tried to call to mind the words of Vroktar’s poem for inspiration.

  When I strive for perfection,

  I see my reflection

  In hundreds of myriad ways.

  If I change my objective

  to this new perspective,

  the ideal will point the way.

  Mulrox’s ideas didn’t seem to care wh
at he strived for; there was no insight, no light, just mountains of terrible ideas. At this point he’d do anything for a little guidance. “I’m more eraser than writer.”

  Geraldine materialized above the swirling mass of chalk dust and glared at him before she dropped below the surface. She leapt again and this time clicked her heals together midair.

  Mulrox laughed.

  “Come on, you audacious amphibian.”

  She leapt again, rolling over once in the air before landing. “You tilting tadpole.” She went higher. “You twinkling toad. Let’s get you a snack.”

  Geraldine landed with a splat at the mention of food and followed Mulrox to the pantry. He leaned on the brick behind the stove, and they waited as the floorboards groaned open and the worm bin cranked up foot by foot to the kitchen from far beneath the house. He plunged his hand into the dirt and pulled out a fistful of the wriggling creatures.

  “I’ll never understand why you like these.” He kicked the trapdoor closed and then tossed the worms toward her. Geraldine didn’t wait for them to land but shot out her pink tongue and snatched them into her mouth.

  In one swift movement, the toad swallowed the entire mass of worms. She closed her eyes and drew back the corners of her mouth until her grin spread to her ears. She stayed like that for a few seconds before her eyes flew open and she bounded back to the living room.