The metallic, hollow sound was proof to him that one of his worst nightmares was about to be revealed. That he was about to unearth something that he'd always hoped would remain buried. Something he'd prayed he'd never have to come back for. But there was no doubt, what was in the metal coffin Russell's shovel had scraped was the only thing that would give him even the hint of a prayer against the Ursa Theodora-Saura.
While Russell had visions of buried treasure dancing around in his head and excitedly worked at unburying the metal box, Buster B. Bayliss, without realizing what he was doing, let his shovel slip from his hands, closed his eyes and drew in three deep breaths.
When his nerves had been steeled, another great change came over him. It was a change brought about by the acceptance that he'd done all he could do, that the years of preparation, both physical and emotional, were finally over and that those years of getting ready for what was about to occur would soon prove to be enough … and he'd live, or they would be not enough … and he would become one with the forest. He would die.
He knew that one way or the other the end was at hand. And that knowledge brought on a final change. A change that made his back even straighter and his shoulders even broader. A change that brought the great outdoors-man peace.
Steeling your nerves, getting a bunch of knowledge and finding peace takes a lot longer than you might think it would, and by the time Mr. Bayliss finally got to that point, Russell had completely dug out the metal coffin and knocked off the lock. Before he threw the box open, he shouted, “Treasure! Rich! Yahoo!”
Inside there was a jumble of cables and wires, pieces of strangely shaped metal, small wheels, a fancy ink pen, two dimes, a cool sword in a leather sheath, a small leather pouch with a beautiful purple drawstring holding it closed, a little telescope-looking thing, and a locked, long, narrow wooden box that rattled when it was shaken.
Russell looked at Mr. B. and said, “Disappointed. Am. I. No. Bling. Bling.”
Buster B. Bayliss might have found peace, but he was still Buster B. Bayliss and Russell had worn out the man's last nerve days ago.
PA-THWOK!
He said, “Look, if you don't cut out that annoying way of talking, I don't know what I'm going to do.”
Russell almost said, “Sorry. Am. I,” but he had sense enough to put his hand over his mouth and just say, “Oops!”
Without even looking inside, Mr. Bayliss closed the lid and said, “Take one end, I'll take the other. We need to get back to the cabin before nightfall, when the mosquitoes get thick. Then we must prepare for the final chapter. For the end.”
Russell wasn't listening too closely to the outdoorsman's words. All he could think was “Nightfall. Skeeters. Yum!”
I hate being a party pooper, but if Russell doesn't start paying closer attention, it's not going to be long before instead of him eating mosquitoes, something's going to be eating him!
The Final Omen!
NIGHTFALL WAS STILL a good two hours away when they placed the coffin-shaped box on the table outside the cabin.
Russell was starving! He'd had his hands full the whole way and hadn't been able to eat any mosquitoes.
He ran to the smoked-food box and had eaten two whole pounds of the dried fish before Buster B. Bayliss, sounding an awful lot like a certain former president of the Flint Future Detectives, said, “Huh? I don't get it. Why do you not eat anything for days, then allow yourself to get so hungry you eat like a bear?”
Russell wasn't about to let Mr. B. know that the mosquitoes had been ruining his appetite, so he said, “Mummy says I've got a real strange metal-brawlic rate.”
“You've definitely got a real strange something, but wehaven't got time to figure out what.” He paused and added, “We've got to put this together.”
The sorrow was back in his voice.
“And I have to practice using it.”
The crinkle was back in his eyes.
Yowch!
Mr. B. almost whispered, “I hope I haven't lost the touch.”
Both of the woodsguys' eyes were drawn up as a single cloud passed over the sun.
Russell laughed and said, “That cloud looks like Porky Pig eating a bag of pork rinds.”
Buster B. Bayliss froze. “What did you say?”
Russell pointed. “That one there. It looks like Porky Pig's eating from a bag of pork rinds.”
“The Cannibal Cloud of Kenjiro,” Mr. Bayliss whispered, “the next-to-last omen of this part of the Chronicles of Zornea-Hu!”
He studied the cloud but couldn't see what Russell had seen. But that wasn't important, Russell had seen it.
Buster B. Bayliss said:
“A sign shall come and few will see, within two days the fight shall be.
The beast shall shift from cold to hot, and soon the Three are in the spot.
The fight's at hand, the tale nearly through, when one little piggy on his cousin does chew.”
Mr. Bayliss stared off into the woods.
Russell gulped and said, “What does that mean?”
“It foretells that the Ursa Theodora-Saura has moved from the cold land into summer land.”
He knelt and pulled a piece of grass from the earth.
“Two days.”
He tossed the grass back down and stood.
“We'll meet within the next two days.”
Another GULP! jumped out of Russ's throat.
Mr. B. carefully took all of the contents out of the coffin and put them on the table.
He separated everything into two piles. In the first pile he put the two dimes, the sword, the small leather bag with the purple drawstring, the long, narrow box and the ink pen. All of the weirdly shaped metal wheels and gadgets and the little telescope thingy were set in the second pile.
He wasted no time in getting to work putting together the equipment from the second pile. What had looked to Russell like a bunch of pulleys and cables and wheels and metal elbows and arms soon turned into a mighty-looking weapon.
A bow.
A bow powerful enough to hurl an arrow into the Man in the Moon's left eye.
Buster B. Bayliss reached into the first pile and picked up the small leather pouch that was held shut by a purple drawstring. He pulled gently on one end of the string and, to Russell's amazement, it turned into a lovely, delicatepurple dragonfly! The whole string was a series of dragon-flies holding on to one another's tails!
Mr. B. said, “The Lacy Guardian Flies of Umchumba.”
Russell couldn't help wondering if they'd be as tasty as the mosquitoes.
Once they'd flown off, Buster B. Bayliss reached into the leather pouch and removed a long, thin piece of cord. It was bright yellow and seemed to glow with a life of its own.
“The finest hide string ever, wrestled from one of the tentacles of a—”
Russell laughed, slapped his hand over his mouth and said, “You said ‘tentacles.’ ”
Buster B. Bayliss picked up the fake-bearskin mitten and popped the back of Russell's head again.
PA-THWOK!
“Wrestled from one of the tentacles of a giant sea squid by the evil Borinquen warrior queen Serrot Ettevizil.”
Mr. B. worked for nearly three-quarters of an hour threading the bowstring through the complicated machinery. Sweat dripped from his dreadlocks and eyebrows as he struggled to pull the cord this way, then that.
When he'd finally finished, he extended the bow over his head and said, “It feels the same as it did when I buried it thirty years ago. Now, if only the years have been as kind to my skills and my eye.”
He put the bow in his left hand and began to draw the string back with his right.
“Step aside,” he said to Russell.
Russell took three giant steps backward. Even though there wasn't an arrow in the bow, he'd learned that when Mr. B. made a suggestion, it was pretty wise to follow it.
Buster B. Bayliss drew the string halfway back and released it.
The thrum sound that c
ame from the bow was as pure as angels singing or, as Steven's dad would say, as beautiful as the Boys Choir of Harlem harmonizing on a Roberta Flack album.
The air immediately around the vibrating string shimmered as if a blast of heat had been produced by Mr. B.'s plucking.
“Wow!” Russell cried. “Now, that's too coo…” Then he noticed the look of pain on his new friend's face.
The outdoorsman/author set the bow on the table and looked down at the inside of his left forearm. It was blistered, almost as if it had been burned.
That old sadness crept into his voice when he said, “It still has the power.”
Russell pointed at Mr. B.'s arm and said, “Does that happen every time you shoot it?”
Buster B. Bayliss nodded.
“Then why don't you wear something over your arm so you don't get burned?”
“The bowstring is so powerful that it would ignite anything that I used. Only thing it doesn't completely incinerate is human flesh. If I were to cover my arm with something, it would only catch afire. Cause much worse burns.”
He reached back into the first pile and pulled the long, slender wooden box from it.
He opened the lock, lifted the lid and removed a narrow, midnight blue, velvet-covered package from inside.
He peeled the velvet to the side and revealed three arrows. He gently, almost lovingly, took one of the arrows in his hand.
He stroked the reddish brown wood.
“Wood from the third-highest branch of the second-oldest cedar of Lebanon.”
Russell said, “Wow!”
Mr. B. tenderly riffled the feathers at one end of the arrow.
“Feathers plucked from an in-flight, southward-migrating bald eagle that had eaten nothing but northward-migrating chinook salmon.”
“Wow!”
He held the arrow's shaft so that the fading sunlight seemed to explode and dance off of the arrowhead. Russell had never seen anything like it. It looked like it was made of liquid mercury, but it held its form like a solid.
“Metal forged from the northwest end of the Lambykins meteorite of 1926.”
“Wow!”
A mosquito that had been buzzing the table made the mistake of landing on one edge of the arrowhead. The edge was so sharp that the mosquito's own weight was enough to cause it to be sliced cleanly in two!
The perfectly dissected halves floated gently to the table.
Russell's eyes lit up.
He pointed behind Mr. Bayliss, gasped and said, “Is that the Ursa Theodora-Saura?”
Buster B. Bayliss whipped his head around and Russell quickly wet his fingertip, tapped the mosquito halves, then licked them into his mouth.
Mr. B. might have been able to read all the signs of the wilderness, but it seemed he'd forgotten the second-oldest city-boy trick in the world.
Buster B. Bayliss looked back at Russell and said, “No distractions! This must be done. And done the right way.”
“Mr. Bayliss, I bet I know where you got these special, magical arrows. I bet you had to trade a wizard some gold coins and a secret map for these arrows. I bet he made you swim through a ocean full of sharks and whales to get them. I bet you had to kill a—”
Buster B. Bayliss said, “Wrong. Got 'em at Kmart. Bluelight special.”
He looked to the east, to the setting sun, and said, “Still time to practice. Attack may be as early as sunrise. Come. To the river.”
Buster B. Bayliss reached back into the first pile. He put the two dimes in his blue jeans pocket. He handed Russell the ink pen and the box of arrows. He started to hand him the sword but hesitated.
“You've grown a lot in the last week, but please, please, please be careful with this.”
He handed Russell the sword. Russell hooked the sheath onto his belt.
The great woodsman and the not-yet-so-great woodsboy walked toward the far end of the river, toward where the waterfalls crashed into a jumble of boulders and rocks. Russell carried the box with the three arrows, and Mr. Bayliss carried the bow and a water pitcher.
Russell had another million questions, but it was nearing sunset and the mosquitoes were starting to get rambunctious again. Before he and Mr. B. had walked twenty feet, he had a serious mouthful of the little critters.
The author set everything down and dug into his left pocket. He pulled one of the dimes out and, reaching his hand toward Russell, said, “For the past week you've been reminding me of a cow chewing cud. Let me have some of that gum you've been chewing, I need to stick this dime on one of those boulders.”
Uh-oh!
Russ reached in his mouth and pulled out the lump of half-chewed mosquitoes. He set the damp, wriggling, wetly buzzing wad in Buster B. Bayliss's hand.
Mr. B. looked at it and said, “Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
But the mess of skeeters did seem fairly sticky and one of the rules of the woods was to make do with whatever you had, so Mr. B. walked the dime, the pitcher and the bug ball a hundred feet away to one of the boulders near the base of the waterfall.
He reached two feet over his head and stuck the dime to a spot near the top of the boulder. Then he knelt and filled the pitcher with water.
When he'd walked back, he handed Russ the pitcher, picked up the bow and said, “That's approximately how high the Ursa Theodora-Saura's heart is when he's standing on his rear legs. Arrow.”
Russell removed one of the mystical arrows.
Mr. B. fit the notch of the arrow into the bowstring.
He raised the bow to shoulder height, drew the string back as far as he could, closed his left eye, looked through the sight, breathed in once, waited between heartbeats and finally released.
THRU-U-U-U-U-M-M-M!
Russell clapped his hands over his ears.
The arrow hissed like a steaming kettle as it flew at the dime, going in a line as straight as a laser beam.
When the arrow and the dime met, there was the briefest ping sound, then a blinding flash of light followed by a tremendous roar.
Both of them grimaced, shut their eyes and turned their heads.
Russell blinked several times, then looked toward the waterfall. He had to blink a few more times to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
The boulder was gone!
Where it had once stood there was nothing, not a rock, not a stone, not a pebble.
Russell turned to Mr. B. to say, “Man! That was so coo …,” but the woodsman's face was wracked with pain and he was holding his left arm.
Russell understood what the pitcher of water was for. He picked it up and quickly poured the cooling water over the burns on his friend's forearm.
“Thanks, kid.”
“No,” Russell said, “thank you! That was the coolest thing I ever saw! You hit the dime right on that dead president's nose! That was the greatest shot ever! I'm starting to feel sorry for that Ursa monster! He's gonna be toast!”
Through clenched teeth Mr. B. said, “Not going to be that easy. That was a stable target, the bear moves. And while the Ursa Theodora-Saura acts heartless, he does have one. Unfortunately it's the size of a dime. If I don't hit him directly in it, the upper right-hand quadrant of his heart, he'll die slowly, but he'll live long enough to kill me….”
Russell went, GULP! then said, “Whew! It sure is good we've got two arrows left and you'll be able to shoot at him again if you miss.”
Buster B. Bayliss looked to the slowly darkening sky.
He said, “I'll get one shot. If I miss … I'm dead, buckaroo.”
Gulp!
Russell said, “You think if you miss with the second arrow, they'd give me your money back for the third one at Kmart?”
Buster B. Bayliss said, “If I miss, there won't be anyoneto take the arrow back. Once the Ursa is done killing me, he's going to be so upset that he'll kill anything or anyone that he thinks is with me.”
Russell went, GULP-GULP!
Mr. B. said, “Besides, there won't be an
extra arrow. Two are for practice. One's for the actual attack.”
“You mean you've got to shoot another one tonight?”
“Yes, but it's got to be a moving target.”
Russell scratched his head and said, “Since you're a vegetarian, I guess that means you can't practice by shooting any animals, huh?”
“Of course I wouldn't. I wouldn't kill anything unless it was my only source of food.”
Buster B. Bayliss scratched at his beard and said, “I've still got that one other dime left, but I suppose with you being the pampered little city boy that you are, you wouldn't be too happy about holding it over your head and running with it to let me practice firing at something moving, would you?”
Russell said, “Boy, Mr. Bayliss, Daddy's always saying, ‘T'ank goodness the boy's a lot smarter than he looks.’ Running with a target over my head is out.”
Buster B. Bayliss said, “Then what to do? What to do?”
Russell said, “I've got it! The waterfall! Look at how there are leaves coming over the waterfall. All you have to do is pick one out, aim at it while it's falling and let it rip!”
Mr. B. said, “Kid, your dad's my kind of man. You really are a lot smarter than you look!”
He said, “Arrow.”
Russell handed him the second arrow. He nocked it into the bow.
“All right, kid, you've got young eyes and can see a lot clearer than I can, but I've got this scope. You describe to me which leaf I'm supposed to shoot, then I'll aim at a dime-sized piece of it as it comes down the falls. Got it?”
“Got it!”
Buster B. Bayliss steeled his nerves, went through his prefiring routine and finally pulled the bowstring back. He nodded at Russell and waited for him to describe the leaf that he would try to pick off.
And he waited.
And he waited.
And he waited even more.
Finally he had to let go of his breath and, huffing and puffing, said to Russell, “What on”—huff-puff—“the dark side”—puff-huff—“of the Ourside moon”—puff-puff-huff-huff—“are you waiting for?”
Russell said, “I was waiting for the right leaf.”
“The what?”
“You know how clouds have shapes that look like other things? So do leaves, and a couple of those leaves looked like some of my favorite things. Things like puppy dogs, raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, so I was waiting for a leaf to come over that had a real mean face on it, that way when you blew it to smithereenos, I wouldn't have nightmares about puppy guts.”
Mr. Chickee's Messy Mission Page 13