Willowmina and Slub Glub bobbed along for thirty minutes or so, as the brook gently wound around various bends, getting a little wider as it got further along. “I feel some floaters upstream a ways, near my neck,” the water gurgled up at them.
“Your neck? Where are we now?” Willowmina asked. Slub Glub was asleep, nestled comfortably between her branches.
“My armpit, can’t you tell?” Indeed, there was a sharp right-angled bank along their left side. A little while later they passed by a trio of ghosts, who were being passively swept along by the current. Their eyes were rolled up towards the stars, and their legs were rigid as they buoyed past. “At least they’re not too heavy, due to their missing various parts,” the water reflected.
“You don’t happen to know how they met their unfortunate ends, do you? I’ve got to keep them from coming this way any more,” Willowmina asked.
“Ah, you’d be doing both of us a favor if you did,” the babbling brook replied. “They’re really stinking up my scent. And I’ve found the stray eyeball or left arm dangling down in my muddy bottom. But no, I just roll them along, I don’t know what their story is. But there may be a clue up ahead – I think I see one of their boats.”
The brook was right; there was a small wooden raft appearing on the horizon, seemingly unoccupied. It looked like it had been in some bad situations; there were large holes in its sides and its deck was severely splintered. Willowmina rustled one of her branches on the head of the sleeping Slub Glub. “Wake up, blue thing, and find out what you can from that broken boat.”
As the not-quite-a-life raft approached, Slub Glub dutifully latched onto its hull with one tentacle and pulled it alongside them. Peering over the edge, he spied some strange scrawls scratched into its sides. “There seem to be some drawings in here, scratched into the wood.”
“Ah, maybe that’s a clue, what do they look like?”
“There’s some stick figures, and some things that maybe are supposed to be boats, and they’re being turned upside down by a kind of giant black spider.”
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Get the graphic novel from Eraserhead Press.
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb