Lost in Bermooda
Page 5
“Of course!” Dakota shouted, snapping his fingers. “He’s the only one who could have climbed that tower! Wilhelm must have hired him to steal the recorder, and then plant it up there with his fake message!”
“And now Wilhelm has him wearing the hu’man costume!” Chuck added.
Lenny saw the Hawk gliding closer and started to run.
“Soward! How close to Lenny can you swoop this flyer?” Dakota asked.
“What are you going to do?” Chuck yelled.
“Just reach out and get ready to grab!” Dakota told him.
Pulling on the lines, Soward aimed the flyer toward the bluff. Chuck and Dakota reached out of the Hawk, ready to grab the scheming monkey. Lenny ran to the edge of the bluff, about to leap off into the treetops below.
“He’s getting away!” Dakota yelled. “Swoop, Soward! Swoop!”
Soward swooped.
Lenny leaped.
Chuck and Dakota grabbed.
Lenny noticed that even though he had leaped, he hadn’t exactly landed. He looked up to find Chuck and Dakota holding him by the scruff of his costume as the Hawk continued to glide down. The costume’s open bottom gave Lenny an easy getaway. He slipped right out and landed in the trees. He swung off into hiding, not wasting a moment of his newfound freedom.
The Hawk skirted to a landing on Cape Cud. The rain and wind had finally lightened up. Lenny had gotten away, but they still had the costume and the recorder. This would be more than enough to prove that the whole hu’man scare was a fake. As they readied themselves to show their findings, Dakota noticed that Chuck’s tail was twitching more wildly than he had ever seen. He knew what that meant.
“You have an idea, don’t you?” Dakota asked.
“I sure do,” Chuck said with a grin.
Wilhelm Wellington stood at the edge of the village and addressed the crowd gathered on Bullhorn Beach. He felt very grand and majestic standing over the crowd on the muddy beach with Mount Maverick rising behind him. “My fellow bovines,” he said, “the time of hu’man invasion shall soon be upon us. I tell you, appoint me as your unquestioned leader! I will—”
Wilhelm’s speech was broken off by a sound in the trees.
Attention Cow Island! it said.
Wilhelm raised his thick brow in confusion. This was not part of his plan. Where was this coming from?
Attention Cow Island! it repeated. We are coming!
Wilhelm looked into the trees to see a familiar, fearsome shape. A creature with a whip-like tail and spikes down its back. A monster with razorsharp teeth and long terrible claws!
“It can’t be!” Wilhelm said. “It can’t be real!” The creature’s face was lit by fire as it lurched out of the trees toward Wilhelm, repeating the same words: We are coming! We are coming! We are coming!
“Nooooooo!” Wilhelm mooed, frantically running away. This was not his hu’man! This was a real hu’man! A terrible, fire-breathing hu’man! As he chugged across the beach, a dreadful braying sound followed him:
BRRAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!!
Startled by the sound, Wilhelm stumbled and splashed face-first into the mud. His head rose from the muck to the sound of laughter from an entire beach full of cows. He wiped the mud from his eyes to see Chuck standing on Dakota’s shoulders, climbing out of the hu’man costume. Soward held the recorder behind them, which was still repeating the same hu’man message they had all heard on the chatterbox.
“Heeeey! My recorder!” Angus bellowed.
The members of the herd were all very confused. They demanded to know what was going on.
“We found this up on the bluff,” Chuck said, holding up the torn costume. “This is the ‘hu’man’ you saw.” Then, for good measure, he blew on the horn one more time.
BRRAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!!
“And this is the ‘hu’man’ you heard on the chatterbox!” Dakota said, playing the recording for everyone to hear. “It was all a fake. None of it was real!”
A murmur ran through the crowd as everyone began to cast glances at Wilhelm Wellington, the bull who insisted that hu’mans were coming to Bermooda.
“Well! It appears someone has been playing a ridiculous prank on all of us!” Wilhelm said, trying to look dignified as he wiped the mud from his clothes. “After all…we all know there’s no such thing as hu’mans!” he added with a forced laugh.
The crowd all rolled their eyes at Wilhelm.
Dakota wanted to tell everyone that Wilhelm was behind the whole thing. But there was no way to do that without revealing that they had snuck into his warehouse, or even worse, reveal that he was actually a hu’man in a terrible cow costume. For now, Wilhelm would have to get away with his plans.
“It seems we all owe you calves a debt of gratitude,” Wilhelm said. Even though he was smiling, his yellow eyes glared at them. He looked at Dakota suspiciously. “I recognize you from the radio station,” he said. “But I don’t recall ever seeing you before then. What is your name, little one? Who are your parents?”
Uh-oh. Dakota thought. This is it. This is where they find out what I really am. “Ummm…well…” Dakota stammered, searching for an answer.
“He doesn’t have any,” Chuck answered for him. “This is Dakota. He’s a sea cow. But his parents were lost at sea. He washed up on the shore. He’s been staying with us at the Porter House.”
Mama and Papa Porter were shocked and saddened by this news. “You poor dear!” Mama Porter said. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d lost your parents?”
Addressing the herd, Papa Porter said, “Everyone needs a family. We’d like to adopt this young one into our own kine.”
The herd agreed that this was an excellent idea, and that a branding ceremony should be performed at once. Dakota winced as he thought about how painful branding would be. Wasn’t there an easier way? Chuck lit a fire and stuck a bamboo pole into the ashes. He then used the cooled ashes to neatly print the letter P for Porter on Dakota’s forehead.
“That’s it?” Dakota whispered. “That’s branding?”
“What did you think we would do?” Chuck asked. “Press a hot piece of metal into your skin?”
They continued the Boomflower Festival until dawn. It was the longest and most joyous Boomflower Festival any cow could remember. Eventually, Wilhelm Wellington left the party in embarrassment.
“I can’t believe he’d go though all that trouble just to be the boss of everything,” Chuck said, as they watched Wilhelm sulk away. “I guess hu’mans aren’t the only ones who love power.”
“I think he recognized my name,” Dakota worried. “Remember the orange ring we found in Wilhelm’s warehouse? It didn’t come from the Hortica. It came from the Dakota. Do you think he knows I’m a human?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Chuck said. “After tonight, I don’t think anyone is going to believe anything he says for a long time.”
Chuck then realized that Dakota had never answered his question from earlier. “Hey, what is your real name?” he asked, as they walked down the beach.
Dakota closed his eyes tight and thought hard for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said at last. “Everyone just called me ‘boy’ for so long, I’d forgotten my name. I suppose from now on, it’s Dakota.”
“Not just Dakota,” Chuck said, pointing to the brand on his forehead. “Dakota Porter!”
Dakota answered Chuck with a deep and throaty “MOOOOOO.”
It sounded perfect.
Dakota smiled. Standing on the shore, he no longer felt like he was lost on Bermooda. He felt like he had been found. Perhaps there was a reason why he hadn’t been able to leave the island. For the first time in his life, he felt certain that he was home.
As the two new friends watched the tropical sun rise with the surf lapping at their feet, Chuck had to admit, “You know, Wilhelm was right about one thing.”
“What’s that?” Dakota asked.
Chuck smiled. “A new day is definitely dawning.”
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sp; All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text and pictures copyright © 2014 by Mike Litwin
978-1-4804-7485-7
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