Helga- Out of Hedgelands

by Rick Johnson

  Roolo and Bomper, although extremely doubtful about the wisdom of being overrun by thousands of sharp-clawed lizards, remained true to their new-found friend and refused to move until Breister did. Toshty and Annie, of course, being “one for all, and all for all,” stood their ground also. So, as the mass of lizards flowed ever closer, the group on the beach remained in place.

  When the charging lizard wave hit the beach, however, the stampede suddenly stopped. The lizards scattered and scuttled across the beach in a disorganized fashion, as if each lizard were searching for something in the sand. Slowly the immense faceless herd became, one after another, individual lizards looking for the best possible nesting site. Little by little, each found spots to their liking and began digging out a sandy hollow to lay eggs.

  Coming over the brow of the hill, Helga had immediately noticed the beasts standing on the beach, and quickly recognized her father and friends! The joy of that recognition pushed the terror and tension of her recent ordeal to the back of her mind and she put on a new burst of speed as she rushed toward reunion with Breister.

  “Helgy! Helgy!” laughed Breister, grabbing his daughter and pulling her close in a joyful embrace.

  Sabre Tusk, in spite of himself, had eyes as big as saucers. Roolo and Bomper smiled broadly and Toshty and Annie slapped her on the back in welcome.

  “As I breathe, Helga,” Breister said happily, “you certainly made a dramatic entrance!”

  “Yea, verily,” Helga laughed, “it’s been quite a day—started off racing against monitors snapping at my heels, survived a Godgie stampede, and ended up finding you and the others!”

  Looking around at the other beasts, Helga’s eyes settled on Sabre Tusk. She did not need any help to assess his character. “Who’s this Hunky-Junky?” she asked.

  “H’yart, there, now,” Sabre Tusk snarled, “stop your buzzin’ like a pack of flies! There’s serious business we’re about—I’ll just call me crew back and we’ll be on with things!”

  Sabre Tusk, however, had not counted on a change in heart of his crew who had been floating some yards off shore. With the beach now endlessly covered with lizards, the keelboats began pulling hard toward the ship. Sabre Tusk called for his crew to come back, “Land, you scoundrels! Beach those boats and help me out, you scalawags, or I’ll boil your spleens in rum and feed them to you!”

  “Nay, Captain! Nay, our dear and worthy Captain!” the call came back from the keelboats. “We see you in no danger—for you, yourself, said you had nothing to fear from those ‘fools’ and ‘so-called Beasts of Fortune’ as you named them! So, since we’ve been plotting for a chance to maroon you these past weeks—seems right to us, to let those as command others like they was lizards, to stay among the lizards! We’ve elected Saltface as our new captain and we’ll be sailing off to better haunts without you!” So saying, they left Sabre Tusk raging on the beach, surrounded by Godgie lizards.

  Fuming, but unable to do anything to stop them, for an instant Sabre Tusk simply screamed after his crew, then turned on Breister again.

  “You bilge-sucking, lying Cow! You’re responsible for this! You and your lizard-loving daughter! You tricked me! I should have known!” With a roar, the Rummer Boar leaped at Breister, knocking him to the sand. As Sabre Tusk hit him, Breister’s flicker pole flew from his grasp. Breister rolled once and, pulling his hammer from his belt, bounced back up, facing Sabre Tusk.

  “I’ll slice you to shark bait,” the Rummer Boar cried, slashing his cutlass at Breister.

  “Not this time, Rummer-Sum!” Breister returned, parrying away the cutlass blow with his hammer.

  Despite Breister’s courage, a carpenter’s hammer is no match for a heavy cutlass. The enraged Rummer Boar demonstrated why he was known to be a terror in battle. Slashing with a speed that seemed to cut light itself into small bits, Helga could see no way to stop Sabre Tusk’s attack on her father. It was just a matter of time before the much more skilled Rummer Boar would overcome her father. Quickly picking up her father’s fallen flicker pole, Helga began to work it furiously. With incredible speed, Helga waved the flexible pole, making the tip a blur of motion above her head. An undulating, whisper-like song sounded across the beach.

  “Oh, Ancient Ones, help me, help me please,” Helga pleaded silently. Despite the fatigue that made her arms feel heavy and weak, she kept the pole moving furiously. The whisper-like song grew louder. Very soon, a few seabirds fishing off shore changed their direction and headed for the beach. Then, great numbers of birds, appearing from all points of the compass, began gathering in immense flocks wheeling overhead: sea birds, hawks and eagles, sparrows and jays, every kind of bird within miles! Descending en masse, the birds began settling down to roost on every available perch—as near to Helga as possible. Fluttering and flapping, cooing and cawing, chirping and squawking, pecking and pooping—the flocks covered the area around Helga.

  Sabre Tusk’s attention was no longer on Breister as the immense flock began to descend around him. Instead, he tried to escape. Running as best he could through the vast gathering of lizards, stumbling, tripping, falling, crawling, he scrabbled across the beach like a crab. The immense maze of lizards, however, left hardly a patch of sand to walk on. Soon, the Rummer Boar captain, who had made little progress through the lizards, knelt among the lizards, screaming, weeping, and blubbing like a wild beast. He was rapidly becoming splattered with black, yellow, white, and brown bird droppings.

  To Sabre Tusk’s disgust and horror, his elegant and dramatic oversized hat was nearly dripping with the slimey, smelly mess—becoming a veritable poop umbrella. Some of the birds who commonly made their livelihoods as pick-pockets and petty thieves, swooped at the Rummer Boar’s necklace of golden shark’s teeth, quickly picking him clean.

  “What a lot of ships!” he cried! “We’re being boarded! But let them come and I will squash them between my fingers!” Jumping and leaping at the swooping birds, Sabre Tusk tried in vain to capture them between his thumb and forefinger. Pinching at the wheeling birds as if he could pop them between his fingers like bugs, the Rummer Boar’s ranting grew wilder and wilder. “Shim, my mate—turn the wheel to starboard! We’re being boarded—turn away, turn! Starboard! Shim! Shim! Are ye deaf? Why don’t you turn the wheel? Shim! Where are you? Why don’t you answer me?”

  But the only answer Sabre Tusk received was a direct hit on the nose from a very sloppy bird dropping. “Yieeeah! I’m hit—” he cried, falling to his knees and crawling over and among the lizards. The once fierce Rummer Boar, now reduced to the appearance of a filthy wildman, wriggling among the lizards, broke into a crazed, delirious shrieking.

  “Oh, darlin’s, make room for me, please!” Sabre Tusk wailed, talking to the lizards. “Don’t let them poop on me! Help me, protect me hat! They’re soiling my feathers! Your kingdom is big and vast! Who is your king? Take me to him to plead my case! I’ll serve him forever if his army will protect me against all that poop falling from the sky!” The poor beast, his mind snapped, crawled senselessly among the lizards, stopping here and there to plead his cause.

  Getting little response, he turned his elegant damask coat inside out and, pulling it over himself and his precious hat, the insane sea-beast collapsed in a quivering mass, tucked tightly under his coat.

  Helbara Freed

  Katteo walked quickly to the Mis’tashe station house and entered, pushing open a heavy oaken door. She was surprised to find the place completely empty! She and Red Whale had understood that their comrades—slaves on their way to Tilk Duraow—were being held at the station. By way of the ruse Katteo and Red Whale had employed, they had succeeded in negotiating the purchase of their comrades with Milky Joe, in exchange for the plundered trallés. The ruse, however, having worked beyond the wildest hopes of Katteo and Red Whale, now seemed to offer the possibility of freeing their comrades without exchange of the valuable trallés!

  This happy possibility required that their comrades actually be present at Mi
s’tashe, however, and Katteo’s heart fell as she surveyed the silent station-house. Had Milky Joe double-crossed them? Perhaps they had been lured into a trap and they were the ones who were victims of some grand performance? These doubts and fears rushed through Katteo’s mind as she struggled to grasp what had happened to her shipmates—essential parts of their plan!

  “Who’s there?” came a voice, causing Katteo to startle. Wheeling around rapidly to view the entire room again, Katteo still saw no other creature. “Who’s there?” the voice asked again, coming from some unseen point nearby.

  Searching more closely with her gaze, Katteo realized that the voice was coming from outside the station-house, the voice filtering in through an open window. Rushing outside, she found a female Wood Cow, with white shaggy hair falling down across her neck and shoulders, chained to the wall by a rusty chain attached to a roughly-made iron collar encircling her neck. She wore a dirty, wide-brimmed had with the brim rolled up tightly on one side.

  “Dear beast!” Katteo cried, embracing the prisoner, feeling an immense bond of affection with the unknown captive. “Who are you?” Katteo asked urgently. “Are there others with you?”

  “Slow there, friend,” the Wood Cow replied, smiling broadly. “I was asking the question first!” she laughed.

  “I’m Katteo Jor’Dane, and with Captain Red Whale Gumberpott, we’ve come to free our comrades from the clutches of Milky Joe and his slavers! But, we’d expected to find them here and I’m troubled of mind that they seem to be nowhere around.”

  “Oh, they’re here, all right,” the Wood Cow said. “I’m Helbara and I make it my business to know everything about the movement of slaves, trallés, and all that nasty business. You knew the route of the trallé caravan you raided, because I passed that information on to the Borf!”

  Katteo was stunned. “You mean you—chained to the wall in this remote place—helped the raid we made?”

  “Aye,” Helbara said proudly. “Why I consider this ring around my neck a certain sort of badge of honor! The more chains they put on me and the more they send me away to distant, unheard of places, the more I know they consider me dangerous to their filthy business! But they can’t figure out what I’m doing to them—Ha-Ha-Ha-Ho! They don’t see me doing anything and they won’t let me talk to anyone, but they sense that somehow I’m the cause of a lot of their caravans being plundered! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ho!”

  “That’s pretty interesting, Helbara, but you’ll have to tell me more later,” Katteo interrupted. “We can’t count on our success lasting forever—we’ve got to find out friends and get everyone out of here!”

  “The key to my collar is hanging on the wall inside behind the counter,” Helbara said. “Release me and I’ll lead you to your friends.”

  As they were talking, Red Whale, his new friends, and their ranting prisoner arrived.

  Breister rushed ahead of the others. As soon as he had seen Helbara in the distance, a delicious, electrifying bolt of recognition raced through him. In that moment, the image that had so long so haunted his dreams and life—the remembered beauty and delightful brown eyes of his treasured wife—leaped into the vivid present! The steadiness of mind and solid calmness in emergencies, so characteristic of Breister, failed him completely now. The iron ring around Helbara’s neck, the dirty, rusty chains holding her in such a dreadful place—powerless to veil the beautiful spirit and delightful smile—made his eyes swim with tears. He staggered forward the last few steps and embraced his beloved wife, weeping uncontrollably.

  “Breister! Breister! Breister!” Hugging Breister close, Helbara happily called his name repeatedly, even as her eyes were fixed on a tall, young Wood Cow standing just behind Breister. The young beast’s frame was strong and tall, like Breister, but her large eyes were not the pale blue of her father, but the deep dark brown of her mother.

  “Helga!” gasped Helbara, realizing the tall, mature Wood Cow was the daughter she had hidden away in the river to escape Wrackshee bondage ten years earlier!

  “Mama!” Helga exclaimed.

  In another moment, mother, father, and daughter were locked in each other’s arms, with joy and happiness that cannot be adequately described.

  “What have they done to you?” sobbed Breister. “Get her out of these chains!”

  “You all know each other!” Red Whale exclaimed, incredulously.

  Breister, unable to reply, simply nodded his head from where it nestled over Helbara’s shoulder. The ironic contrast of his joyful, tearful face resting against the hard, rough iron collar around Helbara’s neck soon ended.

  Returning with the key, Katteo handed it to Helga and she released her mother from her long bondage. As the iron ring fell free from Helbara’s neck, Red Whale pushed the still ranting Sabre Tusk forward. “There now,” Red Whale laughed, “don’t let that neck iron go to waste—just clap it around the neck of this here stark, raving mad freebooter!”

  Click-Snap! As the iron ring clapped around Sabre Tusk’s neck, Helbara pulled back from her family’s embrace. “My work is not finished here,” she said firmly. “There will be much to tell and much to ask later,” she said. “But we must free the others and depart from here before trouble comes back our way—which it surely will before long!” Lifting her long-used hat from the peg where it hung, she firmly unrolled the brim as a sign that her bondage was ended, pulled the now full-brimmed hat on her head, and said, “Now we free your mates! But even that will not be easy.”

  Leading the group to the far side of the station, Helbara pointed to a large wagon parked near the building. “Push that wagon out of the way,” she directed. “It is parked there to hide the entrance to the central square where the slaves are kept—your comrades are there.”

  Toshty, Annie, and Helga fell to the task and rolled the wagon back away from the building. With the wagon removed, a large iron double-door was revealed. Helbara took the key that had opened her iron collar and fitted it to the lock on the door, smiling as the lock clicked open. “They use a single skeleton key for all their locks,” she laughed. “Not the best security plan, it seems!”

  Helbara’s good cheer faded, however, as she gave further instructions to the group. “Have every weapon you carry at the ready—there’s no telling what will meet us when I open the door. There is an immense—nay, gigantic—nay, stupendous—monitor lizard guarding the entrance to the central square. As a bit of a joke, they call her Little Puss—though she is large enough to eat a couple of us in a single gulp!”

  Slowly opening one of the doors a crack, Helbara peered to the inside. “Yech!” she coughed as a revolting odor exhaled from the passage below. “Oh, by the Ancient Ones!” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “The stink of that monitor’s breath makes me woozy!” The presence of an immense monitor just beyond the iron double-doors was unmistakable to all: vicious hissing and snorting, jaws snapping, chains grinding, claws raking across stone, and leather straining under great pressure told the story.

  Stepping forward, Red Whale opened the door a crack to get his own intelligence about the beast. The monitor was chained to a stake just inside the doorway, leaving no room to pass without coming within reach of the monitor’s jaws. Obviously fresh and vigorous, the giant lizard, seeing Red Whale peeking at it, moved into classic monitor attack mode. Dropping as close to the ground as possible, the monitor flattened its gigantic head and coiled into a crouching position, gathering itself to rush forward. Watching with a wary eye and flicking its tongue continuously, Little Puss clearly knew her plan better than Red Whale and his friends knew theirs.

  “Wait a bit,” Red Whale cautioned, closing the door again. “I have an idea I’d like to explain.”

  “It’s clear there’s no hope of moving past that dragon without a fight,” Red Whale began. “She’s determined that we won’t pass her, and there’s no way to our comrades without getting past her. That means, we need the best weapons we can muster—we’ve got to even the terms of battle or we will lose t
oo many of us in the attempt. I won’t waste my crew in a futile struggle.”

  All the other beasts agreed, but Helga asked, “So, what do you propose? All the weapons we have are either completely inadequate to defeating such a monster, or require us to go too close in our attack—why she’d rip off our arm before we could get in one lick with a cutlass!”

  “That’s right,” Red Whale replied. “But we’ve got another possibility. We’ll send our own monitor down there to battle with Little Puss first, the terms will be uneven, but I think it’s our best chance to at least wear Little Puss down a bit before we take her on.”

  Everyone agreed that Red Whale’s suggestion was a good one. But Helga had a question: “How do we know that our monitor will want to attack another monitor twice its size? Seems like the brute’s instinct for self-preservation might argue against that.”

  “Aye,” Red Whale agreed, “and that’s why I’ll be ridin’ our monitor steed into battle! I’ll back ’er up a ways and give ’er all the spurrin’ I can to get ’er goin’ fast—then, just before we reach the door, you throw it open, and I’ll ride her straight as an arrow right at Little Puss before she has a chance to skitter. Catch ’em both by surprise—that’s our best chance.”

  “But what about you, Red Whale?” all the beasts exclaimed in unison. “You’re makin’ yourself dragon bait!”

  “Now don’t you go worryin’ about Captain Gumberpott,” Red Whale replied. “I’m still captain in this here crew and I’ll be makin’ the decisions, and my decision is that I’m the one who’ll be takin’ the chances first—even if this plan works, there’ll still be plenty of chances to take before we’re past that monster. So just furl your sails for a moment—you can charge off into battle very soon—but let’s see if we can soften up the enemy a bit first.”