Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest

by John R. Erickson

  “Uh!” said Rip.

  “Snort first dibs on big bird. Rip first dibs on little owl.”

  “UH UH!”

  “Rip and Snort share big bird, eat first. Then eat little owl.”

  “Uh.” Rip nodded on that.

  Madame Moonshine and I exchanged glances. She grinned and blinked her eyes. “It sounds as though they want you to go first.”

  “Yeah, well what they want and what they get are two different propositions. Let me talk to them. I happen to be fluent in their language.

  “It sounds like Ignorish to me.”

  “No ma’am, it’s your basic coyolect diote . . . eh, coyote dialect, that is, which is a branch off the tree of Universal Doglish.”

  “I see.”

  “And I happen to be fluent in all your Doglish dialects, plus I’ve had some dealings with these guys before. I just might be able to make a deal with ’em.”

  “If the deal is to offer me for supper, I hope you’ll decline.”

  “Well sure. I mean, I hope you don’t think . . .” Actually, I had considered . . . that is, I never would have thought of such an outrageous plan. No way. We were in this thing together.

  I turned to the brothers. “Afternoon, guys. What do you reckon this weather’s going to do?”

  “UH?” They went into a huddle and whispered back and forth. Then Snort said, “That you, Hunk?”

  “Yup, the same old charming devil you’ve done business with many times, Snort, and it’s great to see you again.”

  They held another conference. “Brother say, not so great for Hunkbird if we eat Hunkbird.”

  “That’s a good point, I hadn’t really . . . of course, you realize that I’m not actually a bird.”

  “Uh?”

  “It’s true. I’m not a bird and never was, and you’ve probably got your taste buds all tuned up for a bird dinner, so this will come as a big disappointment to you. I’m not a bird, see.”

  They talked it over. Snort shook his head. “Rip and Snort not believe big lies. Dog not hang from tree, only bird. Hunk dogbird.”

  “Yes, well, I can see how you might . . . actually, I can explain the whole thing if you’ve got a few minutes.”

  They shook their heads and stared at me with their brutish yellow eyes. “Not having few minutes. Also not give a hoot if dog or bird or bird dog. Rip and Snort eat whatsomever, not care.”

  “Well sure, but then again, you’re probably asking yourselves, ‘Gee whiz, how do you reckon old Hank climbed up in that tree?’”

  “Not wondering ‘gee whiz.’ Not care.”

  “Of course you care, Snort. Furthermore, you’re probably wishing that you and Rip could crawl up that tree over there and play Bat, just as we are here.”

  “What means, ‘play Bat’?”

  “Oh, you know, playing Bat. Remember all the warm and wonderful days of your childhood? Your ma was there, and your brothers and sisters. It was a bright, warm afternoon in the spring, just about like today, and you saw a bat hanging from a tree, and oh, how you wished that you could be a bat and hang upside-down from a tree! Remember?”

  They whispered back and forth. Then Snort said, “Bat mean like baseball bat?”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. A bat is a smallish, mouse-looking creature with long wings.”

  “Mouse not have wings. Mouse have legs.”

  “I know that, Snort. What I’m saying . . .”

  “Coyote eat many mouse. Mouse not have wings.”

  “I agree, you’re exactly right, but I was trying to steer the conversation into bats.”

  “Coyote not give hoot for baseball.”

  “These bats have nothing to do with baseball. What we’re trying to establish here . . .”

  “Coyote not give hoot for trying to establish.”

  I stared at him. “You have a closed mind, Snort, did you realize that? Here I’m trying to give you a little education and expand your . . .”

  “Coyote not give hoot for nothing! Only like eat and drink and sing, oh boy!”

  I turned to Madame Moonshine. “This isn’t working.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had begun to wonder.”

  “Those guys are so dumb, it’s like talking to a couple of stumps.”

  “Then it appears that we shall be eaten.”

  “Not yet.” I studied the two savages down below and tried to come up with a plan. They had put their heads together and appeared to be tuning up for a song. “Madame, they’re fixing to sing the Coyote Sacred Hymn and National Anthem. It’s an old coyote tradition. When they’re done singing, they eat.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “We’ve got to work fast. Now, I know it’s risky to use your backwards power, but before, when you told it to reverse the scene, it yanked me up here in the tree. Maybe . . .”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Maybe, if I try it again, it will sweep them off the ground and hang them in a tree.”

  “Exactly. And then we’ll try to work ourselves loose and get the heck out of here.”

  “What a marvelous plan!”

  I gave her a wink. “Hey, you’re running around with the Head of Ranch Security. I didn’t get this job strictly on my good looks. Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Very well.” She closed her eyes and concentrated. Then her eyes popped open. “Oh, dear!”

  “Oh dear what?”

  “I can’t remember the words!”

  “Well, make up some new ones. And hurry.”

  “I hate to experiment with incantations. Some­times they backfire.”

  “Yeah, but if we don’t do something pretty quick, we won’t have any backs left to fire.”

  “Very well. Here we go.” She squeezed her eyes shut and said the magic words:

  Topsy-turvy, rickets scurvy, barley rye and wheatly,

  Backwards power, sweet and sour, reverse this scene completely!

  Now all we had to do was wait for the power to . . .

  Well I’ll be a son of a gun. You know what the power did? Do you think it swept Rip and Snort off the ground and hung them up in a grapevine? Do you think it saved us from becoming coyote bait?

  No sir. Instead of reversing the whole entire scene, as we had hoped, it zeroed in on Rip and Snort’s song and, dern the luck, made them sing all their words backwards! Here’s how it went:

  Coyote worthless a just me,

  Moon the at howling me,

  Holler and sing to like me,

  Loon a as crazy me.

  Duties or job want not me,

  School Sunday or church no,

  Coyote worthless a just me,

  Fool nobody’s ain’t me but.

  Beat anything I ever saw. But you know what? I couldn’t see that it made much difference. The song sounded just as bad backwards as it did forwards, which is really saying something. Furthermore, I don’t think Rip and Snort even knew they had just sung their national anthem backwards.

  “Oh dear,” said Madame Moonshine. “I think I missed again.”

  “Yes, it appears that you did, Madame, which is a piece of bad luck for us.”

  “Yes, because you might have noticed that it’s begun to rain.”

  “Say, you’re right, it has started to rain. That’s okay, these pastures could use the moisture.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t think that we need the moisture.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rain is wetting my foot, and unless I’m badly mistaken, my foot is beginning to slip out of the vine.”

  HUH?

  If her foot slipped out of the vine, then she would most likely . . . and if HER foot was slipping loose, the chances were pretty good that MY foot . . .

  Holy smokes, my foot was slip
ping out of the vine! And fellers, if it pulled loose, my life expectancy could be measured by the time it would take for me to free-fall from the tree to the ground.

  Short, in other words. Real short.

  “Madame, I have one last idea.”

  “Oh my goodness, I do hope it’s not your last!”

  “Well, if it doesn’t work, it will be. We’re fixing to fall into a crocodile pit.”

  “Yes, and I’m so annoyed at my power! It was working so well last week, I just don’t understand . . .”

  I hated to butt in on a witch, but I could feel my foot slipping out of the vine. We only had a few seconds left.

  “Listen, Madame, here’s the plan. On the count of three, we’ll push ourselves out of the vine.”

  “On the count of three, yes.”

  “We have to fall at the same time, see?”

  “Same time, yes.”

  “When you hit the ground, jump to your feet so that you’re standing upright.”

  “Jump to my . . . upright, yes, go on.”

  “When you’re upright, your power ought to work again, right?”

  “One would hope so, wouldn’t one?”

  “And then you make a wish.”

  “A wish. One wish. I think I’ve got it.”

  “Okay, ready to push off?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “One! Two!”

  “Hank?”

  “Huh?”

  “Was there any particular wish I was supposed to make?”

  Holy cats, I’d almost forgotten the most impointant parnt, important point!

  “Yes, of course, I was going to wait until the last . . . never mind. Okay, the wish. You will wish that Rip and Snort be hungry for nothing but cat.”

  “Cat? I don’t think I understand.”

  “Never mind, I’ll explain it all later. Ready? One! Two! And for Pete’s sake, get it right this time! Three! Charge, bonzai!”

  I’m not going to reveal at this point whether Madame Moonshine’s power worked or if we were eaten alive in the Pit of the Hungry Crocodiles. If I did, you might not read the next chapter. But now, because I’ve withheld crucial information, you simply must go on and read it.

  Chapter Nine: Eaten Alive by Crocodiles

  A s you might have guessed by now, we were eaten alive by the hungry crocodiles.

  Beat anything I ever saw.

  Boy, were those guys hungry!

  Of course, that sure messes up the story. What do you do and where do you go after something like that happens, and the story ain’t but partway done?

  I guess we’ll just have to shut her down and find something else to do. I hate it, but I don’t know what else to tell you.

  Except that I’m sort of pulling your leg, so to speak, and playing an ornery little prank. Ho, ho, ho!

  See, I knew you’d be all worried and scared and sitting on the edge of your chair, and I thought it would be fun to . . . I guess you probably figgered it out without me.

  Where was I? Oh yes. Madame Moonshine and I had just fallen out of the tree, into the Enormous Gloomy Bottomless Pit of Hungry Crocodiles, and you were wondering if her magic power worked on the croc . . . coyotes, actually.

  Well, I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. Here’s what happened—the whole entire truth this time, no fooling around.

  We hit the ground with a thud. Two thuds, actually. THUD! THUD! Rip and Snort weren’t expecting us to drop in on them that way, don’t you see, and our sudden appearance startled them for a couple of seconds, which gave us time to get into position.

  I leaped to my feet and yelled at Madame Moonshine to leap to her feet. “Get up, Madame, feap to your leet!”

  “What?”

  “Leap to your feet!”

  “Oh yes, my feet.” She placed her wings on the ground and tried to push herself up. “Oh my goodness, I landed right on my fanny, and it hurts!”

  “Never mind your fanny. Get up and say the words before those guys make hash out of us!”

  By this time Rip and Snort had recovered from the shock, and big nasty smiles were rippling across their mouths. “Uh! Now we have big supper, oh boy!”

  “Hurry, Madame, the words!”

  She struggled to her feet and gave her head a shake. “The words, the words, oh dear, what were they?”

  “Cat.”

  “Cat, of course, how forgetful of me.”

  The coyote brothers licked their chops and started towards us. Madame Moonshine closed her eyes and started muttering:

  Power power, rain and shower, spider webs and this and that,

  Make these ruthless savages hungry for a bat.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “NOT A BAT, A CAT!”

  She stared at me and blinked her eyes. “Did I say bat?”

  “You certainly did.”

  “My goodness. I meant to say cat. I don’t work well under pressure.”

  The brothers were moving towards us, a wall of gleaming yellow eyes and long white teeth and raised hackles. “One last chance, Madame. See if you can make a correction.”

  “I don’t like this pressure! I simply hate doing spells before a crowd.”

  “Hurry!”

  “Oh, all right!” She closed her eyes. “Power, power, I said bat but I meant . . .”

  Too late. Snort grabbed her up in his jaws, but at the last second, she yelled out the right word. “Cat! Cat! Oh my goodness, cat!”

  By that time Rip had jumped into the middle of me, and before I had time to fight back, he had bedded me down and was standing astraddle of me. I’m not sure fighting back would have done much good anyway. I mean, those guys lived on the wild side, and their idea of good clean fun was to go out and beat up on badgers and get sprayed by skunks.

  You could bite ’em and kick ’em and scratch ’em, throw dirt in their eyes and chew on their ears, spit on ’em and yell at ’em and hit ’em between the eyes with a bodark club, and all it would do was make ’em a little madder.

  I could see all thirty-seven of Rip’s teeth. He had an odd number, see, because several had been knocked out in fights. Boy, they were just about the longest and sharpest teeth I’d ever seen, and I didn’t like the way they decorated his smile.

  He flicked out his tongue, swept it around the right side of his drooling lips, and then took it all the way back across his mouth and mopped up the left side.

  And then he said, “UH!” Which sounded pretty threatening to me.

  “Now Rip, don’t do anything you might . . . let’s talk this thing . . . tell you what, we might work out a . . .”

  I didn’t know how Madame Moonshine was doing, but my deal was looking worse by the second. Rip gave a yip and a howl and clamped his jaws around my throat, and fellers, I thought my lights were fixing to go out for the last time.

  But suddenly he stopped.

  He raised up and made a sour face. He spit several times and said, “Uhhhh!” I lifted my head to check on Madame Moonshine. Snort had her in his huge enormous terrible toothy mouth and seemed about ready to chew her up into small bites.

  But then he spit her out on the ground. Snort looked at Rip and Rip looked at Snort, and they both had puzzled expressions on their faces.

  “Snort not want owl.”

  “Uh,” said Rip.

  “Snort hungry for . . . BAT!”

  Oh no! Madame had messed up the spell, it wasn’t going to work, all my planning had gone to . . .

  But then Rip shook his head and said, “Uh-uh!”

  Snort stared at his brother. “Snort not want bat?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Uh. Maybeso Snort want . . . rat?”

  “Uh-uh!”

  “Uh. Then maybeso Snort want . . . cat?”

  Rip jumped
up and down. “Uh huh!”

  Good old Rip. Maybe he wasn’t too bright, but at least he knew the difference between a cat and a bat.

  Snort came lumbering over to me and stuck his long sharp nose right in my face. “Rip and Snort not want eat Hunkbird and little owl. Hunkbird and little owl taste bad. Rip and Snort want cat to eat!”

  “A cat? Well, I . . . that does sound delicious, doesn’t it?”

  “Hunkbird find cat for Rip and Snort or Rip and Snort get mad, tear up whole world, berry big madness.”

  I pushed myself up off the grass. “All right, Snort, you’ve got yourself a deal. Now you guys just back off and give us some air and we’ll see if we can find you a cat.”

  “Uh!” they said in unison.

  “Let’s see, what kind of cat are you hungry for, Snort? How about a little bitty skinny scrawny cat?” They shook their heads. “No. Well, how about one that’s medium-sized, not too big and not too little?”

  They shook their heads. “Rip and Snort want great big fat cat, greater biggest fattest cat in whole world!”

  “In the whole world, huh? That’s asking a lot, Snort, and if you ask me, you’re being a little greedy.”

  “Ha! Snort not give a hoot for asking you.”

  “All right, whatever you say. If you want a great big fat cat, we’ll see if we can find you one.”

  “Better find one or Snort put big hurt on Hunkbird.”

  I went over to Madame Moonshine. She was lying on the grass and hadn’t moved a muscle since Snort had spit her out.

  “Madame? Are you all right?”

  One eye popped open. “I have never been treated like this before! The brute, the oaf, the unspeakable wretch!”

  “I know what you mean. I had one on me too.”

  “The lout! The barbarian! The cannibal!”

  “Get up, Madame, we still have one job left to do. We’ve got to find Little Alfred.”

  “I don’t know any Little Alfreds and I’m all upset, and I’m of a mind to put a spell on those two unspeakable brutes that . . .”

  I whispered my plan in her ear. Her other eye popped open. A smile formed on her beek . . . beke . . . biek . . . beak . . . how do you spell beeke? Formed on her beak, I guess that’s how you spell it, but who cares anyway?