Episode 178: Conquering Corn (Soren)

“Soren,” Nim said from the middle of a cornfield that was in the middle of a cornfield that was in the middle of infinite cornfields.

They were going to die of corn. He’d always known he was cursed by corn, but this was unreal. Who, seriously who, would have ever seen this coming?

What twisted comic book had the storyline of “To become king, you must outsmart the corn?”

And then, just for added bonus, what twisted comic book had the main character unable to outsmart the corn?

It was tricking him. Them, because Nim couldn’t outsmart it either.

He decided this was proof that he and Nim weren’t the main characters of their own story. Obviously Meldrey was. He knew it was Meldrey because Meldrey got to sleep, and none of the rest of them did.

“Yah?” he asked. He stopped in front of a cornstalk. It was golden yellow and tall and had corn and raspy leaves and looked exactly the same as every other cornstalk here.

“Are you as tired as me?”

No, because he wasn’t producing breast milk while the corn conquered their souls. “Probably not. But I’m tired.”

There, he’d admitted it.

“Okay,” she said. “So. Here’s what we do: One of us sucks it up and stays awake and carries the other. Maybe on a corn bed, to be easier.”

She was insane.

He carried buckets up a hill. Not a hill, a cliff. He was insane.

“On a corn bed?” he teased. He lifted her with air magic until she was lying flat. “Go to sleep, I’ll move you around like a creepy sarcophagus.”

Sarcophanim? Nimcophagus?

She laughed, giggled from exhaustion. “But I don’t have water magic,” she laughed.

He leaned down and kissed her, which was a little more than a kiss because he was hungry for her and he wondered how well he could focus on keeping them a few feet above the ground while he kept her body and mind busy.

But they were in a trial. Not time for fun. They would never have time for fun again, they’d just get screamed at by babies until they died in a corn row and decomposed and became one with the corn.

He resurfaced from the kiss. “Good night, future queen,” he told her. The little minifigure of himself inside his head got into a wrestling match with the reality that most of their family was probably dead, or they wouldn’t be here.

He couldn’t deal with that right now. The minifigure locked all that angst inside a really sturdy treasure chest and sat on it, and then gazed at the corn in annoyance.

Shoot. Before they’d kissed, Soren knew which way they’d come from, but he’d turned around and shifted Nim and…were they going forward or backwards? Did it matter?

“When you slow down,” Nim murmured. “It’s my turn. We have a time limit.”

She closed her eyes and was just about asleep at the exact same second.

Soren looked at the cornstalk.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Are you the one I was looking at before? Or are you the one that’s laughing at me?”

Not technically laughing laughing, because it was corn. But the little minifigure in his head was laughing.

Soren looked back at the cornstalk. “I’d like to see you try to find your way around a shopping mall full of people who all look the same.”

The corn looked pretty ominous. He bet it was thinking things.

He was thinking things too. Tired things. He wanted this over with.

Left, right, or straight ahead? So many options, so few answers. So little care. Except he had to care, because they had to get out of here and figure out what happened to their family and rule the kingdom.

Center, because left and right looked more like haunted corn than real corn.

Ruling the kingdom. Nim could do it. She was amazing. She could do anything, with a little determination and a little body and a huge smile. He loved her body.

Left.

He loved her smile more than her body, because he loved the thoughts that made her smile and he especially loved being the one to make her smile. Or laugh. Laughing was better.

Left again. He probably was walking in circles. Corn circles. Corcles?

“I’m walking in corcles,” he told the minifigure in his head.

The corn rustled.

He wished they’d given him a map, a little bird’s eye view image of the whole maze, to work through. Or clues to puzzle out like they did in other realms.

Wait a minute…bird’s eye view?

He wondered if it counted as passing the trial if Nim was asleep for the grand finale.

Not worth the risk.

“Nim?” he asked.

She didn’t even twitch.

“Nim!”

“Yeah?” No eyes open, but mentally thereish enough to come off as mentally thereish.

“We’re in a maze,” he thought out loud, “which is basically two-dimensional plus it’s too tall to see over.”

Her eyes opened. “Want to lift me up and I’ll look around?”

He shook his head. “Why don’t we just fly out. Why didn’t we hours ago?”

She stretched on her sarcophanim and he righted her so she could stand up and not look like a little Nim mummy. A Nimmy. Queen Nimmy, cursed to a life of corn and babies.

“Maybe this is testing our mental strength,” she said. “My mom has twins and…she rules at the same time.” He heard the change in her voice, the sadness. Had twins, apparently, since she was dead. Nim took a deep breath. “Okay. Fly out. Can we fall back in a turn way and walk out?”

Could they what? Clearly she hadn’t gotten enough sleep yet.

“Good idea,” he said, because he hadn’t either and he didn’t think an unreasonable Soren should be having unreasonable discussions with an unreasonable Nim.

He lifted them into the air so they could look around. All he saw was corn in every direction, forever. An enormous bowl of corn. They would never walk out, within the time limit.

They were going to fail their trial. Let the kingdom down. Who was next? Terren was missing, so it would have to be Endy. He’d do okay, Soren guessed.

No, Soren wasn’t giving up yet. If walking out was impossible, that meant it wasn’t about walking out. It was about solving a puzzle. Recognizing that he didn’t need to carry buckets up a cliff.

“So,” Nim said. She seemed like she was drowning in the same panic he was. “Look at me.”

He did. She was gorgeous. Exhausted and perfect.

“This is a game,” she stated. “We can go west – because I’m from the sea too. We can go east because of Dragonsback. We can go south because you’re Lower Dell, or North because that’s the one direction we don’t have things in common with and we can’t forget it.”

He laughed. “Nim, I love you, but what are you talking about.”

“The exit,” she said, like it was obvious. “Which way it is.”

What did that have to do with Dragonsback or cliffs of bucketwater or any of this except corn?

“We can go west,” he suggested, “because that’s which way my favorite candy shop is, or we can go north because that’s where Nell keeps his popcorn machine, or we can just go tell Rhoda off for not warning us about this.”

Rhoda. It felt important. Something there, and it wasn’t about how ugly her teeth were or how dentists had nightmares about her ever deciding to stop by their office.

Nim laughed. “Okay,” she agreed. “So, what matters?”

Rhoda mattered, but he didn’t know why, and he didn’t know if she mattered in a stupid way like which direction Dragonsback was or in a smart way like thinking about her would solve all their corn problems forever.

“As king and queen,” Nim said, and Soren silently corrected with queen and king in his head – no way was he going first, “we have to make decisions like this. Pull useful from useless.”

“Well it’s a game,” Soren agreed. “You’re right about that.” Just like she was always right, about everything. About them, about him, before he even knew for sure that he was into her, she’d known.

He watched her hair sway while she talked. It swayed kind of like a cornstalk. An upside down cornstalk. Like stalactites for cornstalk stalagmites. Corkstalks?

He needed sleep.

He rubbed his eyes. “And I said the 2-D thing. What if it isn’t? What if we can’t see a way out because there’s no edge? What if there’s just a hole somewhere…”

It was depressing. Find a hole in a corn maze.

“So, there is corn, for you. But I don’t love hate corn,” Nim summarized. Soren gaped at her.

Hate. He hated corn. There was no love. Even if she did have sexy corkstalk dreadlocks.

“But,” Nim went on, like they shouldn’t accept their fate of being trapped in the corn maze forever, and sleep together while they still could. “I love my twin. And my twin is missing. And the exit is missing. And…”

And their minds were missing.

“So a hole,” Nim concluded. Soren liked holes, as long as they were Nim’s. He needed more sleep. “And the hole is somewhere in the maze.”

“If there’s even a hole,” he reminded her, mostly because the hole he wanted wasn’t available. “But you said Raqqa said he was safe. So…” he looked around at the amber insanity of the maze in every direction. “Maybe the maze is a map of the Dells, or the world, or whatever, from a dragon’s view, and maybe the hole is where Terren is.”

It was without a doubt the most beautifully logical thought he’d had since he started talking to the corn.

“That’s useless,” Nim said.

Yeah, it was. He deflated a little. Maybe they should just ask the corn.

“Ask Raqqa?” he suggested.

“Okay,” Nim closed her eyes.

While she did, Soren whispered down to the corn, “How do we get out?”

To no one’s surprise, least of all the mini Soren sitting on the treasure chest of bad in Soren’s head, the corn did not reply.

“She is unresponsive,” Nim announced. “We’re too far, wherever we are.”

Who knew that dragons and corn had something in common? Useless and unresponsive and, deep down, just terribly indifferent to their plight.

Plus corn was evil.

So were selkies. He said so.

Nim laughed. “Useful from useless,” she insisted. “We’re using air. What if we flood the corn! Wherever the waterfall is, the hole is! We can listen for it.”

Yeah, actually. That was an amazing idea. He hugged her. “You’re a genius!”

“Only with you helping,” she said. Ha, right, because corn-talking was helpful. Corn-stalking. Cornstalking.

Nim held her hands out and let water pour out of her body onto the field below. Soren started helping too. “Let me see if I can find some buckets,” he teased. “A lake to carry the water from.”

She laughed, and then her face fell. “Whatever happened at home…I have you.”

“Same.” He leaned and kissed her, and let the water flow onto the earth below them.

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