by David Lewman
“You know,” he gasped, “I’m kinda starting to miss the stink.”
“I have an idea,” Branch said, tired of just riding along without actually doing anything. “You rest a minute in this clearing. There are trees here. I’ll swing ahead a ways and try to see how much farther we have to go before we reach Mount Gloom.”
Gristle looked doubtful. “These trees are covered in snow. Are you sure you can swing through them?”
“Absolutely!” Branch said. “Of course I can swing through them! In fact, with the branches slippery from the snow, I’ll be able to move from tree to tree even faster!” Though he wanted to reassure the king, Branch actually wasn’t at all sure he could swing through trees covered in snow. The truth was he’d never tried it before. He liked to spend snowy days snug in his underground bunker, warming his toes by the fire.
After picking out a branch that looked just the right height, Branch swung his hair around his head and shot it forward. FWOOMP! His hair slipped off the bark, knocking down a pile of snow, which fell on his head.
He shook himself off. “Just, uh, testing the slipperiness.”
“Seems pretty slippery,” Gristle said.
“Yeah,” Branch agreed. “This time I’ll take that into account. Okay, here goes.”
He whipped his blue hair around in the air several times to make sure it was going really fast, then shot it toward the branch. WHAP! His hair wrapped around and held! Branch zipped past the tree, unwrapped his hair, and aimed it at the next tree. He was off, swinging through the snowy woods.
“Hurry back!” Gristle called.
As Branch made his way through the forest, he slipped and fell to the ground several times. But he was making good progress. After a few minutes, the trees started to thin out. He could see beyond the edge of the woods. And then he spotted it.
Mount Gloom.
It rose from the edge of the forest into the clouds—a steep, dark mountain covered with ice and snow. Branch shuddered.
But he’d found it. And that meant they’d soon be up in the crystal cave, collecting the speckled savory salt. Then they could go home!
He turned and hurried back through the woods, using his long hair to swing from branch to branch. During his solo trip out, the snow had seemed to let up a little.
But as he made his way back to the spot where he’d left Gristle to rest, the snow began to fall thick and fast again, coming down even more heavily than before. Huge wet flakes slapped his face as he swept through the trees. FWAP! FWAP! FWAP!
The branches were covered with so much snow, he could no longer grab them with his hair. He kept slipping and falling to the ground. Eventually, he gave up on swinging and just walked, trudging across the top of the tightly packed snow.
Luckily, he didn’t have much farther to go. Branch recognized a tree leaning against a big red rock. He was almost there! He started to run, though it was slippery on top of the snow.
“Gristle!” he shouted. “I saw it! I saw Mount Gloom!”
He broke into the small clearing where he’d left Gristle.
No Gristle.
Where was the Bergen? Had he given up and gone home?
“GRISTLE!” Branch yelled as loudly as he could. “WHERE ARE YOU?”
Silence.
Branch looked around frantically. He saw no Bergen tracks in the fresh snow. That could mean only one of two things. Either Gristle had left so long before that his footprints had filled with snow, or…
He was still here.
But where?
Branch scanned the ground, looking closer at the blinding white snow. At first, it just looked like a smooth, blank sheet of paper.
But then he spotted something.
The tip of a gold crown was just barely sticking out of the snow. Branch ran to the crown and started digging frantically, calling, “Gristle! Gristle, are you okay?”
Soon he’d uncovered the crown and saw that it was still sitting on the Bergen king’s flat green hair. Branch grabbed the hair and tried pulling. Deep in the snow, he heard a muffled “Ouch!”
There was no way Branch could pull Gristle out of the snow by his hair. But then he got an idea. Instead of using his small hands to dig with, he pointed his head toward the hole he’d started. Then he whipped his hair around and around Gristle, blowing the snow up and out of the deepening hole. WHOOSH! In no time, Gristle was standing in a hole in the snow that was slightly deeper than he was tall.
“Branch!” he called, wiping snow off his face. “You saved me!”
“Can you climb out?” Branch asked.
“I think so,” Gristle said. “Let’s see!”
Gristle reached up and managed to pull himself out of the hole, scrambling over the edge and flopping onto the packed snow near Branch.
“Whew!” Gristle gasped. “I must have fallen asleep. The snow fell so fast, I was buried! Thank you, Branch! You saved me!”
“Don’t mention it,” Branch said. “Come on! I saw Mount Gloom! It’s not far!”
The snow had finally let up, so they were able to quickly make their way out of the Forest of Fetid Ferns. When they reached the base of the mountain, they paused for a moment, looking toward the summit.
“It’s a long way to the top,” Gristle said, sounding worried.
“If Chef could climb up there, so can we,” Branch said determinedly.
“Maybe there’s a nice stairway,” Gristle said hopefully. “With a red carpet.”
“I kind of doubt it,” said Branch. “But we can try to find a path.”
The two of them explored the bottom of the mountain, hoping to find a smooth, clear path to the crystal cave. Gristle was hoping there’d be a friendly sign saying THIS WAY TO THE CRYSTAL CAVE!
But they found no sign. And they couldn’t go all the way around the base of the mountain searching for the best path. The mountain was just too big, and they didn’t have that much time.
Gristle grew frustrated. As a king, he was used to having things done for him. He’d already trudged through woods, a desert, and a bunch of stinky ferns. He’d even been buried in snow! He felt like he’d done enough.
“I think maybe I’ll wait here,” Gristle said. “I can, um, guard the base of the mountain to make sure no one follows you.”
Branch looked confused. “Who’s going to follow me?”
“Oh, you know,” Gristle said vaguely. “Followers. Sneaks. Thieves. Bandits.” As he said these things, Gristle started to change his mind. He didn’t really want to stay alone only to be set upon by bandits and robbers! They might tie him up and steal his cape! Or his crown! “On second thought, I’ll come with you.”
He looked around desperately. “DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO GET TO THE CRYSTAL CAVE?” No one answered. All he heard was his own voice echoing off the rocks. “CAVE…cave…cave…”
“Don’t think there are too many guides around Mount Gloom,” Branch said. “Come on. This little path will have to do.”
Branch started up a narrow path blocked in spots by rocks and slick patches of ice. It was tough going. It was so steep in places, they had to crawl on all fours, pulling themselves up by whatever handholds they could find. In other spots, they had to squeeze through narrow passages between huge boulders. This was fairly easy for Branch, but Gristle had to turn sideways and force himself through.
“Oof!” he said after a particularly tight squeeze. “Good thing I’ve been dieting!”
Several times they thought they were near the top of Mount Gloom only to learn they’d been fooled. They would pull themselves up over a ledge and think they’d reached the summit, but then see that the mountain went up and up and up.
“If this mountain were in my kingdom,” Gristle grunted, pulling himself onto yet another rock shelf, “I’d have it lowered! It’s WAY too high!”
“And just how would you go about having a mountain lowered?” Branch asked. “Command it to shrink?”
Gristle leaned forward and dug his feet into the side of
the mountain as he climbed. “I’d leave the details to the experts,” he explained. “As king, first you order the experts to come to you: ‘Bring me the mountain-lowering experts!’ Then you tell the experts to get to work. If they ask you how they’re supposed to do the thing you’ve asked them to do, you just say, ‘You’re the experts! Do your best job! Now GO!’ ”
“Must be nice to be king,” Branch said.
“Oh, it is,” Gristle said. “Very nice. But it can get a little dull, sitting on the throne all day. That’s why I agreed to come along on this shopping expedition instead of sending someone to do it for me. I thought it might be interesting to get out and see a bit of the world.” He caught himself as he slipped on a stone. “I think next time I’ll let someone else go.”
They climbed in silence for a while, breathing hard, concentrating on where they put their feet. Most of the mountain was icy and slippery, so they had to keep their eyes peeled for good footholds. Neither of them wanted to tumble to the bottom.
Gristle was ahead of Branch, a little farther up the side of the steep mountain. “What’s that?” he suddenly asked.
“What’s what?” Branch said.
“There’s a dark space in the side of the rock up ahead. Could it be the cave?”
“Do you see any crystals?”
“No, but it looks like—”
BLOOOOSH! Water shot out of a hole—and when it hit the cold air, it froze solid!
“Must be some kind of geyser!” Branch said.
Gristle hurried to the frozen column and rapped on it with his knuckles. TINK! TINK! “It’s like a giant icicle! Only instead of hanging down, it’s sticking up!” He climbed farther. “I wonder if there are any more—”
BLOOOOOOSH! Another geyser shot a thick column of water into the air—with Gristle on top of it! The water froze, and the Bergen was left standing on the icy column high above the side of the mountain!
Branch squinted at him. “What are you doing up there?”
“Nothing!” Gristle yelled back. “I’m just standing! And wondering how to get down!” He peered over the side of the tower of ice. It was way too far to jump.
Branch looked up at the frozen geyser. It was too big for Gristle to wrap his arms around, but he got an idea. “Take your cape off!” he shouted to the king. “You can wrap it around the column. Hold on to both ends and slide down!”
Gristle raised his eyebrows. “Really? You think that’ll work?”
“Pretend I’m one of your experts!” Branch called up. “Just try it!”
“Okay. Here goes!”
Branch watched Gristle unclasp his fur cape. He knelt at the top of the frozen waterspout and, holding both ends of the cape, swung it like a jump rope and hooked it around the column.
“Okay, now slide! Simple!” Branch shouted, trying to sound like it was no big deal to slip down a giant tower of frozen water jutting from a mountain. “It’ll be fun!”
“If it’s so fun, YOU do it!” Gristle yelled. He took a deep breath and stepped off the top of the geyser, quickly wrapping his legs around it. He started out screaming “WHEEE!” but almost instantly changed to “WHAAAAUUUGH!” He zoomed down the column of ice, reaching the bottom with a loud THUMP! He stood up and rubbed his rear end. “Not fun,” he groaned. “Really not fun at all.”
“Um, just curious. When you were up on top of the frozen geyser, did you happen to see the crystal cave?” Branch asked.
Gristle stared at the Troll. “No, Branch, I did not see the crystal cave. I wasn’t sightseeing—I was concentrating on getting down from a giant column of ice. Sorry about that.”
“No problem,” Branch said, heading up the mountain. “We’ll find it when we find it!”
They hadn’t gone much farther when they discovered that they’d climbed so high, they were inside a cloud. It was like being in a thick fog. Branch could still hear Gristle’s feet on the slippery rocks ahead of him, but he couldn’t see the Bergen at all.
“How are we ever going to find the crystal cave in this thick cloud?” Gristle wailed.
Branch was thinking the same thing. Had they climbed all this way only to get lost?
But then, as they trudged along the icy path, they finally broke through the top of the gray cloud. The sun shone. And above them, something sparkled.
“Is that…a crystal?” Branch asked.
“The cave!” Gristle said happily.
They hurried toward the crystal cave.
Then came a horrible, earsplitting screech. CA-SCRAWW! They looked up and saw a gigantic bird with a long hooked beak flying straight toward them, its sharp talons extended.
“THE WING-DINGLE!” Gristle screamed.
Branch and Gristle dove for the ground, slamming into the rock just as the wing-dingle swooped over their heads. It flew up into the sky, preparing to dive-bomb them again.
“I TOLD you the wing-dingle was real!” Gristle hissed at Branch.
“Okay, so it’s real,” Branch admitted. “How are we going to get past it and into the cave?”
“I have no idea,” Gristle said. “BUT HERE IT COMES!”
The huge bird plummeted right at them, screeching. SCRAAAW! They crawled under rocks and hid, covering their ears. The wing-dingle soared up again.
Branch whispered to Gristle, talking fast. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll distract the wing-dingle, and you make a run for it. Get in that cave!”
Gristle looked confused. “How are you going to distra—”
Branch had already jumped up and was running across the side of the mountain. “HEY, WING-DINGLE! LOOK AT ME! I MAY BE TINY, BUT I’M DELICIOUS!”
CA-SCRAWWWW! Screeching, the wing-dingle circled around, ready to grab Branch with its talons.
Gristle jumped to his feet and scrambled across the icy rocks, slipping and sliding, making his way toward the mouth of the crystal cave.
Branch stayed out in the open, waving his arms and jumping up and down. “WHOO-HOO, WACKY WING-DINGLE! CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, YOU BIG BIRDBRAIN!”
The wing-dingle dove, screaming down out of the sky, heading straight toward Branch.
Gristle slipped into the cave.
SCRAWWWW! Branch saw sunlight glint off the enormous bird’s razor-sharp talons as it zeroed in on him.
At the last moment, Branch dove under a rock he’d spotted earlier, barely squeezing into the tight space between the stone and the earth.
CRACK! The wing-dingle slammed into the ice that Branch had been standing on a split second before. Stunned, the bird managed to flap its wings and rise into the cold air, slowly flying away.
As the wing-dingle headed off, Branch dashed toward the cave, sprinting from rock to rock until he was safely inside. “Gristle!” he whispered. “Where are you?”
“Over here!”
Branch followed the Bergen’s voice, running deeper into the cave. He found King Gristle crouched behind a large pink crystal.
“That was amazing!” Gristle said admiringly. “So brave!”
“Thanks,” Branch said modestly. “Any sign of the speckled savory salt?”
Gristle shook his head. “Nope. I was hoping there’d be some kind of shop or something.”
“You were thinking that inside this cave at the top of Mount Gloom, guarded by a ferocious wing-dingle, there’d be a nice little shop? Maybe with a clerk? And a tea counter?”
“I didn’t say ‘thinking.’ I said ‘hoping.’ ”
“Come on,” Branch said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let’s look around.”
They walked deeper into the cave. Light reflected off the facets of the huge, colorful crystals that lined the walls and ceiling. Every color imaginable was represented—from rose to purple to blue to yellow to orange to green.
“It’s beautiful,” Gristle whispered.
“Yeah,” Branch agreed. “But where’s the salt?”
“In the spice section?”
“I don’t see any sections, or aisles, or
shelves,” Branch said, secretly rolling his eyes. “It’s a cave, not a store.”
They kept searching. Everywhere they looked, they saw big crystals that were each just one color. Until Branch looked down a long tunnel and spotted…speckles!
“Look!” he cried, pointing into the narrow tunnel. “Speckles! That must be the speckled savory salt!”
“Hurray!” Gristle cheered.
There was no way any Bergen could fit in the tunnel, so it was up to the Troll.
“Chef must have brought some kind of long tool with her,” Branch said. He went into the tunnel, scraped as much salt as he could carry into his small backpack, and came up to pass the salt to Gristle. He made several trips. He wished he had a shovel and a wheelbarrow, but they would have been hard to carry all the way up Mount Gloom.
“It’s going to take a lot of salt to make all that pizza for the picnic!” Gristle said, filling his backpack. “Keep going!”
Finally, their backpacks were full of speckled savory salt. They headed past the colorful crystals and out of the cave.
“You know, I feel like we’re forgetting something,” Branch said as they walked into the sunlight.
“What could we possibly have forgotten?” Gristle asked, picking his way across the icy stones. “We’ve got the speckled savory salt, and that’s all we came for.”
Suddenly, a huge black shadow passed over them.
“THE WING-DINGLE!” Branch yelled.
“Oh, right,” Gristle said. “That!”
Without thinking, Branch and Gristle turned and ran back toward the crystal cave. But before they reached the safety of its chambers and tunnels, the wing-dingle swept down and grabbed Branch, tangling its talons in his thick blue hair!
“HELP!” he screamed as the huge bird started to fly away.
“OH, NO, YOU DON’T!” Gristle roared at the wing-dingle. Reaching up, he grabbed Branch’s feet with both hands and held on tight.
The wing-dingle was a big, strong, ferocious bird, but even with its powerful wings, it wasn’t able to lift Branch and Gristle off the ground and carry them away. The bird flapped its wings and strained, trying to pull the Troll out of the Bergen’s grasp.