The Walrus's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The Walrus woke on his throne at dawn and pushed open the stone door of his fortress. He stepped into the wet grass to inspect his army. The egg men were marching. They were marching badly. Two hundred smooth white bodies wobbled in loose circles, bumping tusk-first into pine trunks and each other. He shouted, "Goo goo gajoob!" and pointed east. Half of them turned east. The other half sat down. One walked into the pond and did not come out. The Walrus dragged a flipper down his face. A soldier who scattered at a shout would scatter at a spear. His fifth campaign would end before it began. He waddled back inside, climbed onto the throne, and thought. He needed three things. He needed to make the egg men harder to break. He needed to make them braver. And he needed a commander they could not disobey, because he himself planned to nap through most of the marching. He started with the shells. He hauled his egg men one by one to the pile of scrap tin behind the fortress and hammered curved plates around each smooth body until they gleamed like polished eggs in armor. The plates covered belly, back, and crown, with slits for eyes and a rim for the little arms. When he was done, two hundred egg men stood in the clearing wearing bright tin shells that clanked when they breathed. Next came the courage. From under the throne he pulled a heavy glass flask he had been saving for a worse day. The liquid inside swirled pink and green and gold. He uncorked it and walked the line, tipping a single drop onto each armored head. The egg men shivered. Their small eyes went wide. One of them punched a tree. Another shouted a word the Walrus had never taught him. Good enough. The last piece was the hardest. The Walrus spent the afternoon dragging stones from the fortress wall into the center of the clearing and stacking them into the shape he knew best: himself. He piled boulders for the body, wedged two long white stones for tusks, and set two round river rocks for eyes. He climbed onto its shoulder and pressed his forehead to the stone snout. "Goo," he whispered. "Goo goo gajoob." The rocks shuddered. The eyes rolled open. The golem stood up on thick stone legs, twice the Walrus's height, and looked down at the army below. The Walrus pointed at the golem and then at the egg men. "March," he said. The golem raised one arm. Two hundred tin shells snapped into a line behind it and held. No one wobbled. No one sat. The Walrus grinned around his tusks and climbed down. He had a commander, an armored army, and the whole afternoon left for a nap. The campaign could start tomorrow. Something in the trees, unseen, had already started watching.