The Merluweed Tale
By Alan Sheng | Grade 9 | Scholastic 2024 | Science Fiction and Fantasy | Gold Key
A lonely rock sits on a little hill at the edge of a clear, lazy lake. Dried scarlet stains dot the barren dirt around the stone. You peer a little closer, and you can barely make out the scribbles of a tiny hand. A year is etched into the bottom right corner of the rock, 879. Nearly two thousand years ago. Yet you feel a familiar sensation flowing through your stalk, all the way down to your roots and through your chlorophyll. A strange voice rings in your head.
Come see this mount,
Come walk this trail,
For to you, I recount,
The Merluweed tale.
We, the Merluweeds were one of many tribes who had arisen from the great Civilized Age, in which Mother Gaea gave intelligence and mobility to all plants far and wide across the continents. In the first decades of age in our history, we prospered, our banks stuffed and overflowing with the nutritious rewards of extensive trade. Abundant resources opened the way for good cheer on our tribe’s travels; we had no fear of starvation or trouble. The days were long and warm, the nights bright and young. However, one dark sunset, we received troubling news via birdsong: an enormous flood was approaching our lush domain.
Thus, our people said their goodbyes, then unfurled our dusty sails and brought out our weathered hiking twigs, leaving at the next sunrise. We traversed fearsome rivers, monstrous hills, and ravenous wild beasts. It was in this period, the Long Travels, that the Merluweed Tribe became revered among weeds for their undying perseverance. There was Merle the VIII, who engineered a complex catapult to pave a way through the narrow canyon in our way. Without her ingenuity, we would have been stuck for years trying to go around. Then we had Merl the XI, who took 100 brave weeds to defend our tribe from a ferocious ant squadron while the tribe escaped across the river. He was my grandfather’s father, and Grandpa tells me he still remembers his father’s salute and smile against the dying red sun as he was taken by the ants’ pincers. What a cool guy. But alas, the end of the Long Travels had come, and I, Merl the XIV, would be the one to lead the people to a new home. We had just crossed the threshold of a new town: 1453 Markwood Circle which boasted unbridled open space and robust soil to plant our roots in. In addition, the steep hills and shady groves around the village provided a natural defense against the hot eye of Helios.
The setting sun, plummeting beneath the skyline, lit up my already eager face as I turned to the Merluweed Council with a grin. Tilana, the head of the council, smiled back as she trudged along the rich dark brown earth, looking toward the horizon. After many months of searching for a home, we weed people had finally completed our journey.
We initially approached the grass, the locals of the town, in friendship, bringing gifts of fresh runoff and decomposed material. But the grass people spat at our nutrients, showering us with stones and sharp leaves. We had observed them for a few days before approaching and saw how they executed unyielding orders, exiling those who didn’t fit into their standard tall green smooth appearance in shanty, shoddy settlements. While we were selfless, offering them the best dirt, they were selfish, spreading throughout the vast land and pushing us to the rocky, thin ground. While we were a close-knit family, helping each other grow taller and enjoy the fresh dew of every sunrise, they were all about themselves: cold, indifferent, hostile. We Merluweeds learned to keep to ourselves and avoid the grass, attempting to prevent their dismal personality from affecting us.
A few days after we settled in, bright and early, before the dew on our cuticles had dried, we heard a crunch, a shuddering rip, and then a muffled cry. The unfamiliar sounds roused all of us from our sleep, some still hungover from a tasty brew of starch. It was a foreign sound, striking terror into the hearts of many a weed. We had known death, but only from old age as weeds returned peacefully to Gaea. I looked up to identify the murderer and saw a petrifying shadow, looming over me, belonging to a figure at least a thousand times as tall as the greatest of our tribe.
Us weeds had heard only rumors and scattered tales of these fearsome beasts. They were called “hoo-muns”. According to the elders, Tartarus himself forged these unnatural creatures to wreak havoc on Gaea’s children. These entities utilized their gifts of intelligence and might for their selfish gain, reaping nature of its life to satisfy their desire: to dominate the whole world. It was said that they rode the darkness and slayed the sunrise. As the hoomun tread right past the grass to begin methodically, carelessly, cruelly ripping out my fellow companions I realized the vicious truth: while we slept peacefully, our foes, the abominable grass, called up divine intervention to wipe us off the face of the earth! For days, we mourned our losses. I nearly stepped on the crushed body of Sophia, an elderly weed who was a celebrity among the children for her entertaining tricks. There was clumsy Idris, who delivered letters from the people to the council. I would miss his dramatic entrances, sliding through the door with a ballooning face and frantically calling my name. But I stopped walking when I came to the remains of Tilana. Her silhouette shuddered under a leafy shroud, forever trapped in agony. The memories of the moment we shared when reaching the town were still as new as dew. I remembered the smiles we wore after finally realizing that we had fulfilled our childhood dream of leading the Merluweeds to a home. A smile she would never don again, and so neither would I. From that day onward, since the Massacre of Rocky Hill, our tribe, and I especially, vowed never again to give mercy to the grass and their gods of war.
Picking up our fallen comrades, the Merluweed Tribe moved to a lush area of the town, driving out stubborn grass along the way. We set up a new home there, surrounded by ten–foot dirt walls. With flimsy leaves, every weed of our tribe put forth their best effort to establish a small fortress piece by piece. We trained our young ones in agility and explosive strength, to withstand arduous conditions like the blazing midday sun and tumultuous storms common in this area. We traded in the starch vitamins for carbohydrate-packed glucose drinks. But most of all, we taught the children the humiliation we had experienced from the grass and their gods: something we would never allow again. We would not go back to generations of wandering. The peaceful, nomadic weeds were ready for war.
The first skirmish we held our ground. The grass laughed at us as their hoomuns attacked, but we held fast to the dirt and used new innovative, terrorizing techniques to make up for our lack of size. While they didn’t defeat the creatures, the hoomuns turned away with hundreds of leaf thorns embedded in their skin to painstakingly pick out. The grass heard the agonizing sound of hoomun groans while we embraced the triumphant melodies of stringed banjoaks and vibrant trumproots. That day the sunset glowed orange, with the warmth of a victory in our hands. For a brief night, we returned to the old ways and celebrated with banter and a few drinks.
The next day, the grass did not meet us at the battle line. Confused for a moment, we glanced around only to see not one, not two, and not three, but a squadron of four war beasts to bring us to our roots. It was time for reinforcements. We sent a signal into the sky, prompting the dandelions to release some of their fuzzy sticks in unison to bring in our friends, the wasps. We held for hours — each inch surrendered was defended with sap and tears — until the wasps finally came in with fresh stingers to fend off the threat. We survived the battle at a tremendous cost, about seventy of our three-hundred weed fighting force, but every new sunrise meant new hope for the Merluweeds. We would bring honor to our fallen weeds and I would obtain vengeance.
For the following weeks, neither side could gain an advantage. But as we continued our vengeance against the grass, we were running low on nutrients and our army grew thin. As we fought, the hoomuns remained rejuvenated, always retreating to their enormous castle in the center of the town. We could do nothing to fend them off. Exhausted and desperate, the Merluweed Council prepared the fortress for a battle that would go down in plant history: the Siege of Fort Merl.
That very night, instead of relying on their gods alone, the grass came with their hoomuns, meeting us on the battlefield, finally, like real plants. They formed phalanxes and stood by the walls of our meager fortress. I surveyed the landscape from atop the north watchtower. Suddenly, I jumped as a shadow came up behind me. It was a young soldier, with a helmet draping over his eyes. He adjusted the metal.
“Mister General, I-” He swallowed.
“-I think they’re coming.”
I shuddered under the moonlight, then turned to face him.
“Don’t worry. We’re Merluweeds. We won’t lose to some puny grass,” I chuckled.
“Besides, it’ll make an epic story.”
He gave an uneasy smile and disappeared down the stairs.
No weed would sleep tonight, yet some would not wake up. The ground shook as the grass armies charged. They wielded battle bark ripped off the sides of trees, impenetrable magnolia leaf shields, and lengthy bush branch spears. Then, the gods assailed us with biological weapons from the sky like thunder, harmless to the grass but deadly to us weeds with a mere touch. The young ones hidden inside the fortress thought it was colored rain, sticking out their tongues to taste the strange white powder as it dropped down. Weeds that came into contact with the substance dropped instantly. The fortress was penetrated, and we had nowhere to run. This was not a siege; it was a massacre. With all the strength I could put forth, I gathered some surviving weeds around me and made for the exit of the town.
“For glory!” I cried, charging through the grass with the mythical nightshade battle axes of Merl the III. Nature lent us speed and vigor, and we trampled the ranks of the grass to escape the bloody battlefield behind.
Only a few of our people made it through the night. The young soldier who I had reassured was not among them. I had disappointed thirteen generations of Merluweeds and even worse, my best friend. It seemed that Mother Gaea had intended for us weeds to die out, defeated by hoomun technology and the cruel grass. But even as we held a quiet funeral to commemorate the lives of our people, I smiled once again. For we were Merluweeds: brave, persevering, resilient. While we would remember each loss, their legacy–the seeds they left behind–would travel on the wind to form a new generation of weed folk. By the time the rain had washed away the blood and bodies into the depths of the sunlit lake, and the funeral pyre smoked out, the Merluweed Tribe was gone.
You shudder and sigh as the words leave your mind. As you look at the rock, you feel an eerie sensation, almost as if it was talking to you. But that’s ridiculous. If that rock is alive, then I’m a stalk of grass, you snort. As the clouds stumble along, it’s time for you to go. And behind, the stone waits, for another traveler to hear its legendary tale.
