Gorgorito

The music was still going full blast and the rain was drumming on the waterproof. Axel was walking faster than he’d walked in four years.

He walked for three hours without stopping, watching the little patch of path lit by his head torch and leaving everything else behind.

He stopped for a wee. And it occurred to him that, since it was night and there was nobody around, he could just go right there, in the middle of the track.

So he did.

As he pissed, with the rain pattering on his hood, he thought about the pipes in his flat again. Here it all went straight into the earth without passing through a single drain, and thinking that daft little thought gave him a strange feeling.

“Oi! You with the hosepipe!”

He froze with his hand on his zip.

The music? No. The music was doing its own thing.

He swept the head torch round at face height and there was nobody, and his heart started going a different way.

He’d been awake for twenty hours. He thought that too.

“Down here, mate!”

He lowered his head torch towards the voice and found a little figure the size of a boot looking up at him. Two pointed ears stuck out from under a red cap, and it was dressed in a muddle of coloured scraps sewn together any old how.

And it had hold of the bottom of his trouser leg with one hand.

“Hello?” It was all that came out.

“Hello, wee man, what’s the plan?”

He stared at him for a while before speaking.

“Who are you?”

“Well, my name’s Gorgorito and I’m a Magikito.”

The little brownie looked up at him, waiting to see how he’d take it, with a cheeky grin that had something of a small kid about it.

“A what?” was all Axel could come back with.

“A Magikito, mate. What’s up, you a bit hard of hearing or what?”

Axel sat on the wet ground so he could talk to it up close. There he was, about to have a chat with the thing instead of running for it.

Gorgorito was barefoot. An acorn cup hung from a cord round his neck.

“Here, Gorgorito. That thing you said, I’ve no idea what it is… a Magikito?”

The little brownie shut one eye and studied him carefully with the other.

“Well, if you didn’t know, now you do. So go on, you giving me a bit of chocolate or what?”

Axel stared at him. Yes, he had chocolate, but he still hadn’t managed to ask a single one of the three thousand questions piling up in his head.

“Yeah, I’ve got chocolate… here.”

He rummaged in his rucksack, turned the speaker down and put it to one side, then took out two little bags. He held them under the waterproof to keep them dry and found the chocolate bar in one of them.

“Chocolaaaaaaate!” the little brownie shouted, snatching the bar out of his hands.

Axel burst out laughing.

“Yeah, yeah… chocolate. You have as much as you want.”

The little creature tore into the wrapper and started taking bites that made Axel thankful he wasn’t any bigger. He watched him scoffing the dark chocolate as the rain eased off.

After a good few mouthfuls, the little figure spoke again.

“Chocolate’s a treat, you’re ever so sweet.”

“You’re welcome, Gorgorito.”

Axel had a bit of chocolate too before putting it away. A small bite, no rush. When he swallowed, his throat closed up for a second, like his body had remembered something.

Nonsense. It passed straight away.

“Here,” he said. “What are you doing out here, then?”

The little brownie wiped his mouth with the back of his tiny hand and looked at him like he’d asked what colour water is.

“Just being.”

“Yeah, but here. On a track, at night, in the middle of nowhere.”

“I go where things happen.”

Axel waited for him to say something else.

“And nothing happened at my place?”

Gorgorito chuckled under his breath, then turned his attention back to the chocolate he had left. He didn’t answer his question.

As he switched off the music and packed his things away, the twenty hours he’d spent awake caught up with him. For the first time all day, what he wanted most was to stop walking.

He shone his head torch into the woods on either side of the track, looking for a space to pitch the tent.

“Where you off to, sunshine?” the little brownie asked as the lad left the track and headed into the trees.

“I’m tired.”

It didn’t take him long to find a perfect spot for the tent. He put it up as best he could and crawled in with his rucksack.

He stuck his head out before zipping it shut. No sign of this Gorgorito. Mad… maybe he really was seeing things.

He climbed into his sleeping bag and, in the few seconds before he fell asleep, went over the day as he did every night. He waited for the usual thought to come, but this time it didn’t.

He was asleep in under a minute.