The Everhood
On the night after Klaymen saved the Everhood, Hoborg had his first good night sleep in years. His “deep helpless sleep”, as Willie Trombone had called it, had left him exhausted. Hoborg couldn’t remember half the goofing off his sons had undertaken. He had a hunch that some of it wouldn’t have been approved by him, so he didn’t try very hard to remember. But half a day of real sleep, of that honey dew which he had longed for in his coma-addled, incoherent thoughts, had done wonders for him. The once-again king of the Everhood had never felt so good.In the morning Hoborg took a walk through his castle. It seemed like Klogg had modified it on several places to make it scarier. Hoborg removed the jagged door and the spears that blocked the way to the throne room. He was just plucking out the spikes installed under his throne when Klaymen came inside.
“Good morning,” Klaymen said and bowed. Hoborg got to his feet.
“Good morning, Klaymen,” he said and dusted his hands. “Have you slept well?”
Klaymen made a face and then smirked. “They’re very loud.”
“Oh, do you mean your brothers? Well, it was the first party in their life, so they must have enjoyed it immensely.” Hoborg smiled at the thought of his sons goofing off in every corner of the Everhood. “Did they keep you from sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Hoborg said rubbing his chin with his finger. “Maybe you could try sleeping in the castle. My sleep here wasn’t interrupted at all.”
Klaymen shook his head. “I slept in Big Robot Bil with Willie. The castle is scary. Others have been saying that.”
“Ah, is that why nobody slept in here? But there are rooms with beds on the upper floor… Well. I have been working on fixing the scariness of this place. I would be glad if you helped me,” Hoborg suggested.
Klaymen smiled and nodded.
Together they rid the throne room of all traps and evil devices that Klogg had left behind. Klaymen proved himself to be a bright solver of riddles. He figured out what each switch did and how to turn it off. He even managed to disable most of the traps before they were set off. Much sooner that Hoborg had hoped, the throne room was safe and clean of all evil.
“Good job, Klaymen,” Hoborg said and gave Klaymen a thumbs-up.
Klaymen grinned. Then he pointed to a wall. “There’s a hole in it,” he said.
Hoborg realised what had made that hole. It had been Klogg, his first son. He sighed. “There wasn’t a place for him in the Everhood.”
Klaymen nodded. Then his expression became confused. “The Everhood?” he repeated.
(Picture by shinakazami1.)
Hoborg gave him a puzzled look. “The Everhood is the name of this world. Don’t you know?”
“Willie told me it was called the Neverhood,” Klaymen said.
“The Neverhood? That can’t be right. I named this world the Everhood. Even the Hall of Records mentions it as the Everhood, isn’t that correct?”
Klaymen shrugged. “Everyone calls it the Neverhood now. I can ask Willie about it,” he offered.
“Please do,” Hoborg agreed. “Calling this world the Neverhood is very unsettling for me.”
Klaymen nodded. “How do we fix the hole?” he asked.
Hoborg leaned down to study it. “Well, it seems like most of the klay bricks have fallen out. Allow me to concentrate.”
Klaymen watched intently as Hoborg laid his hand on the wall. The purple klay began to ripple like water. Waves ran over its surface and swarmed into the hole. In a few seconds, the hole closed up and the wall was repaired.
“There,” Hoborg said.
“Cool,” Klaymen said. He patted his wrist with two fingers. “It’s lunchtime now. Will you have some sandwiches with Willie and me?”
“I would be delighted to,” Hoborg accepted.
They used the teleporter to travel to the Cathead Mountain. Soon they reached Bil’s pit. The giant robot waved at them.
“Me Bil,” he greeted the people who had saved his life.
“Hello Bil. How do you do?” Hoborg asked. The robot smiled and made a happy, creaky sound. At that moment, the hooped head of Willie Trombone poked out of Bil’s chest.
“Klaymen! Hoborg! Hi!” he shouted and waved frantically. “I made sammiches! Come, come eat!”
Hoborg reckoned that it was rather nostalgic to be inside Big Robot Bil again. He’d got to know the robot well during their journey to the Mountain of Best Klay and back. He knew every button and lever by heart and he was joyful to sit down in the middle of the metal chamber to eat with Willie again.
“So…” Hoborg said after he finished the first sandwich. “Klaymen told me that my sons call this world the Neverhood.”
“Yep,” Willie said, contemplating which side of the sandwich would be the most delicious to bite into.
“Yet I have named it the Everhood,” Hoborg continued. “When did the shift happen?”
“When Klogg took the crown,” Willie said. He looked up and stared at Hoborg. “The world where we would live forever went boom. Ripped to pieces. It would never be happy. It was the Neverhood.”
“But we are happy now,” Hoborg said in a soothing voice.
Willie shrugged and he decided that the sandwich was more important than the conversation. Hoborg sighed and asked Klaymen:
“Do you think that you can persuade your brothers to call their home its right name, the Everhood?”
“Not sure,” Klaymen said and stared sadly at a worm eating through his sandwich.
The Neverhood
“It has been four hundred years since Klaymen saved the Neverhood.”
Hoborg paused. He placed his quill pen aside and examined the last word he had written into his diary. Neverhood. He had got used to the name. It had a melancholic feeling.
“We have been living mostly peacefully since then. The most recent event was the arrival of a new Klogg.”
Hoborg stared at the sentence, considering erasing it. It sounded bizarre. Yet it described perfectly what had happened.
“It was the 17th time Klogg has tried to come back and it was, by far, the most successful. In the previous attempts, Klogg was always vanquished immediately.”
Hoborg remembered the first time his first-born had tried to return to his homeland. There was a lot of confusion about the matter. Nobody knew what the Evil Engine no. 9 was or what had actually happened to it until the Hall of Records wrote of the event. After that, it took Klaymen several years to return to the Neverhood. When he finally did, he stated that, without a doubt, Klogg was dead and gone to his reward.
Hoborg couldn’t help straying away in his thoughts. When Klaymen came back, he was withdrawn. He rarely talked to anyone anymore. He was often seen talking to himself. Hoborg was reminded of Willie Trombone, who had also spent years alone with only Big Robot Bil to speak to.
Oh, back to the diary. “In the previous attempts, Klogg was always vanquished immediately.”
But Hoborg couldn’t write on because he was flooded with memories. In his mind he heard Klaymen’s warning: “Klogg is not as he was before. He is evil. I will try to protect the Neverhood from him. But please, take precautions, Hoborg. I may not be there when he comes back again.” Hoborg hadn’t understood how a dead person could come back and he hadn’t taken any precautions. It had been a mistake, and Hoborg’s sons paid the price.
Hoborg rubbed his brows with two fingers. He didn’t remember much of Klogg’s second return because it began with his dethronement and he was out until he got the crown back. His children told him a tale of a shadow which knocked his crown off and jammed it onto the head of one of them. Apparently it was hoping to make him his minion. It didn’t work. The Neverhoodian refused the power he was being offered and he returned the crown to Hoborg. The shadow dissipated. The ruler of Neverhood would have disregarded the event as one of the strange things that were always happening if it wasn’t for one thing. Every witness said that the shadow was wearing Klogg’s face.
Again and again, Klogg tried to reclaim his homeland. Hoborg had no idea how he had managed it if he was truly dead. But there was no mistaking – each of the seventeen occasions had Klogg’s handwriting. The last one was particularly disconcerting.
“This time Klogg sent out his good self, a dominant, power-hungry, but still innocent Neverhoodian. I didn’t let anyone hurt him because I was hoping that there was good in him. Sadly, Klogg’s younger brothers were afraid of him very much. They didn’t accept him and the young Hoodian became lonely. This loneliness became evil and he tried to steal my crown in order to rule them. Fortunately he failed. But it was apparent that he could not live on the Neverhood.”
Hoborg’s hand began shaking. He felt for his first son, despite his evil intentions. All Klogg wanted was to come back home. He didn’t want to destroy it, as he had told the Skullmonkeys. He wanted to dominate it and to rule it. He wanted to fulfil his right of the eldest. But the Everhood wasn’t meant for Klogg. Not as long as Hoborg was alive. For Klogg, the world was the Neverhood, a place where he could never live. No matter how much he wanted to.
“I chose my only son who wasn’t afraid of Klogg to be a guide and I sent them both away from the Neverhood. I was aware that I was sentencing them to exile. But there was no other way to keep Klogg from coming back.”
At least Hoborg was trying to convince himself of that. The son that he had chosen to accompany Klogg was the very son who had refused the crown from Klogg’s hands. He was one of Hoborg’s few children who wanted to leave the Neverhood. His wish was granted under the condition that he would watch over Klogg and not allow him to return to the Neverhood. The Neverhoodian wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed.
“I’m sure that my son will do a good job. But I am afraid that Klogg will find other ways to invade our homeland.”
The following line was something Hoborg was completely sure of.
“I know that he will always, always be trying to come back.”
(Picture by shinakazami1.)
