by Tracey Hecht
Chapter Three
THE SEARCH BEGINS
As the river picked up in speed, so did the Brigade. Dawn stayed in the lead, matching the current’s pace. Bismark shadowed them from the treetops above, gliding from branch to branch. And Tobin trundled behind Dawn, trying his best to keep up.
“Oomph!” The pangolin winced as he stumbled over a pointy rock. Taking a seat on the long, damp grass, Tobin examined his tender foot and inspected his scales for nicks. “Oh dear,” he muttered, noticing one on his leg. But then he noticed something moving in the aldrovanda bush just a tail’s length away.
Tobin quietly rose to his feet and squinted into the brush.
“Hello?” he called, nervously coiling his tail. “Is somebody there?”
The pangolin padded closer and peered into the feathery leaves. There, tucked behind a cluster of deep scarlet blooms, he saw a quivering mound of fur and two terrified eyes.
“Oh,” said Tobin, lowering his scaly head. “Hello.”
Slowly, a fuzzy brown nose poked out of the brush. It wriggled twice and then retreated back into safety.
Suspecting the nose needed time to adjust, Tobin waited.
Sure enough, moments later, the nose reappeared. This time, a tentative paw followed. Little by little, one limb at a time, a stout, furry wombat emerged from the foliage, drenched and dripping with river water.
At once, the pangolin recognized those eyes—they were the same ones he had seen looking up from the log in terror. “Are you all right?” he asked, cocking his head.
But the wombat could not seem to reply. Despite the warmth of the night, her body trembled, from her round, fluffy cheeks to her short, stubby tail.
The pangolin scanned his surroundings for signs of Bismark or Dawn, but all he could see was the black of the night and the reflection of stars on the water. Not quite sure what to do, Tobin decided to simply introduce himself.
“My name is Tobin,” he said, his voice soft and sincere.
Finally, the wombat spoke. “My name is Cora,” she whispered. But still, she continued to shake, and her eyes remained frightened and wide.
Tobin cupped his scaled chin in his paw, searching for the right thing to say.
“When I’m afraid,” he began, taking a seat on the ground, “I spray a smell from my scent glands. It can be rather unpleasant.” Tobin bent his head in embarrassment. “And sometimes,” he added, “I do it by accident, when there’s nothing scary at all.”
Cora nodded. “When I’m afraid, my fur quivers.” She paused and drew in a deep breath. “But when I’m really afraid,” she revealed, “I quiver on the inside.” Cora wrapped her paws around her waist and looked out into the midnight sky.
Tobin looked out as well, but he was not sure for what. Then he remembered his friends. “I have a brigade,” he told Cora, showcasing his shimmering cape.
Cora tilted her head. “What’s a brigade?” she asked.
Tobin thought for a minute. “It’s company,” he proclaimed. “With matching outfits.” Satisfied with his explanation, the pangolin smoothed a bit of snakeskin that had caught on his scales. “Would you like to meet them?” he asked.
For the first time that night, Cora’s shoulders relaxed and the crease in her brow seemed to fade. She nodded.
But before Tobin could figure out which way to go, a familiar voice filled the air.
“Botanical beasts! Plants of pestilence! Villainous vines! Stand down, at once!” And then, just a short ways downstream, Bismark emerged, hacking the brush with a stick.
Tobin cleared his throat.
“Oh!” said the sugar glider, raising his chin. “It’s you, my scale-skinned chum.” Bismark pranced forward, still waving his stick through the air. “And, ooh!” he continued, spotting the wombat. “You’ve found yourself a little amiga!” He patted Tobin on the back. “I’m rubbing off on you already, I see.” But then Bismark squinted and took a step back. “Why…it is you, mademoiselle! The damsel in such distress on the log.” Bismark planted his twig machete into the ground. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Bismark, god amongst gliders. And I am here to save you.” The sugar glider graciously bowed.
Cora looked to Tobin.
“Come, these plants are not to be trusted—we must move to safety at once!” Bismark continued, wielding his twig again. “And that would be east, or west, or…I mean…” The sugar glider scratched the small patch of bald skin on the crown of his head.
“I believe we are safe right here,” Dawn announced, as she, too, emerged from the brush. “I have searched the banks in both directions. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.” The tawny fox crossed the grass to join the rest of the group.
“Dawn,” said Tobin, “this is Cora.”
“Cora,” said Dawn, eying the wet, wide-eyed wombat, “did you just come from the river?”
Cora nodded.
Noticing that Cora was trembling again, the pangolin drew close to her side.
“Was that you we heard screaming? Are you in some kind of trouble?” Dawn pressed.
The wombat looked at Tobin, who gave a reassuring tilt of his scales.
Cora drew in a deep breath. “My brother,” she cried, the words coming at last. “My brother, Joe. He’s… he’s been taken!”
Dawn narrowed her eyes. “Taken by whom?” she asked.
The wombat shook her head from side to side. “I didn’t see,” she replied. “It all happened too fast. We were just chewing on roots.” Cora gulped. “And then, all of a sudden, there was a noise…a rustling…then footsteps. My brother yelled at me to run, so I did, and…and…”
“And you didn’t see who it was,” confirmed Dawn.
Cora shook her head again. “We ran as fast as we could and jumped into the river.” The wombat gazed toward the water. “I thought we’d be safe on the logs…but when I looked back, Joe was gone!”
Bismark let out a grunt. “We’ll find the scoundrel who did this diabolical deed!” he snarled, tightening his grip on his stick.
Cora nodded in reply, but tears welled in her eyes and her brown fur continued to shake.
Tenderly, Tobin reached for her paw. “And your brother,” he said. “We’ll find him, too.”
The fox gazed into the night. The moon had reemerged from the clouds and its glow was yellow and dim. She tried to shut out the thought that Cora’s brother might have met a different, darker fate. “Yes,” she said. “We will find him.”
Chapter Four
THE NEW ARRIVALS
“It is mystifying! Stupefying! Absolutely flabbergastefying!” exclaimed Bismark, searching under a stone. “Where could your brother have gone?”
The animals were retracing their path up the river, looking for clues—footprints, torn branches, scratch marks on bark. Anything that might help them find Cora’s brother.
“If only I had been there when you were being chased,” said Bismark, stretching his flaps at full length. “I would’ve…I would’ve…” He paused, racking his brain. “Well,” he continued, “I would’ve done something courageous, something grand, something très magnifique!”
“Cora,” said Dawn, ignoring her friend, “do you think you would recognize the exact place where you jumped into the water? Or the last place you saw Joe?”
Cora was about to reply when suddenly, out of the midnight shadows, four rumpled bats barreled onto the scene, zigzagging out of control through the air.
“Look out!”
“Aye!”
“Ouch!”
“Oy vey!”
Wham! Splat! Smush! Crunch!
One after the other, the bats pummeled headfirst into the trunk of a tree, then landed in a mangled heap at its base.
“Oh goodness!” exclaimed Tobin. The pangolin cocked his head in concern at the mound of sinewy limbs and black wings.
“Excuse us!” said a bat, making his way to his feet.
“Just a small glitch in the biosonar,” said another. “Perfectly normal.”
Tobin stared with wide eyes. “Perfectly normal?” he asked.
The Brigade and the wombat eyed the bats as they rose to their feet, dusted their wings, and teetered into an unsteady line.
“Bats,” muttered the sugar glider. “Absolutely disgusting.”
The fox glared at Bismark. But upon inspecting the creatures before her, she understood what he meant. The fur on their chests was matted and mangy, and their rickety wings were covered in scrapes.
“Hmmm,” Tobin mused. Squinting, he examined the bats then turned to Bismark. At a glance, the animals looked nearly identical. They were similar in size, with furless wings and fuzzy torsos. The pangolin blinked—his vision was always a little fuzzy. “Are you all related?”
The sugar glider gasped in horror. “No!” he exclaimed. “Absolument pas!” Bismark puffed out his chest. “I am a proud marsupial, not some cave-dwelling, ceiling-hanging rodent.” The sugar glider spun on his toes, showcasing the black stripe on his back.
“Definitely a marsupial,” muttered a bat.
“No ability to fly,” said another.
Bismark’s face flamed with rage. “Of course I can fly!” he yelled, flailing his flaps through the air. “I glide through the tallest of trees. Soar through the windiest of winds. Sail through the stormiest of skies!”
“Glide? Yes.”
“Soar? Maybe.”
“Fly? No.”
The bats huddled and snickered.
Dawn quickly stepped in to ease the tension. “Maybe you can help us,” she said.
The creatures wobbled back into line.
“This is Cora,” continued the fox, “and her brother is missing. Did you see any wombats as you flew past?”
“Can’t much see,” said a bat.
“Terrible eyes,” said another.
“That’s why we use echolocation,” explained a third. “We send out a sound, it hits something, then it echoes back. That’s how we locate the object.”
“Though that’s on the fritz, too,” said the fourth. He rubbed his throat. “Larynx trouble.”
Dawn paused, a bit confused now herself. “So…you don’t know of any strange occurrences?”
“Strange occurrences?”
“We know all about those.”
“Terrible mess in the valley these days!”
“Animals disappearing faster than tsetse flies on the tongue!”
The bats all answered in turn.
“You mean, you know of others who have recently vanished?” The fur on Dawn’s back stood on end.
“Svor! Never seen these parts so empty.”
“Nor so quiet.”
“Except for the screams….”
The fox’s breath caught in her throat. The bats had confirmed her fear that Cora’s brother had not disappeared just by chance. He was one victim of many. And there would be many more if the Brigade did not intervene.
Chapter Five
THE CREATURE
“I must face the truth, feel the blow, suffer the pain!” Bismark wailed as he paced amidst the tall grass. Bismark was still agitated as he rose from his bed in time to see the first evening star. After the encounter with those four irksome creatures, he had slept terribly.
“You do not look like a bat!” insisted Tobin.
The pangolin tumbled out from the hollow eucalyptus where he had slept. He felt terrible. He had not meant to offend the small sugar glider the previous evening—not at all. But Bismark ignored the pangolin and turned instead to the fox.
“Dawn, I beg of you. The truth. I must have it!” Dramatically, the sugar glider fell to his knees, clasping his fingers as if in prayer.
“Bismark.” Dawn sighed. “You do not look like a bat.”
“Really? Do you mean it?” Bismark glanced up at the fox, his eyes full of hope.
“Goodness, no!” Tobin quickly chimed in. “Not at all!”
“Dawn, can you gaze upon my face without the image of a blood-sucking rodent entering your mind?”
“Bismark, enough,” said the fox. “You are very handsome. And you do not look like a bat.”
“Of course I don’t!” he exclaimed, bounding back to his feet. “Do you see the sheen of this fur? The elegant curve of this tail? The strong line of this jaw? A bat? Impossible!”
The little sugar glider rushed to the fox, threw his arms around her shins, and buried his face in her fur. “Oh, my beloved!” he cried. “I thank you. I thank you for your honesty and your clear vision.” Bismark gave a deep, grateful bow.
Tobin smiled. But then, as Cora emerged from the eucalyptus, his forehead creased with concern. The wombat, sweaty, sleepy, and shaky, had clearly suffered fitful dreams.
“Maybe we should get going soon,” offered the pangolin.
“Yes,” Dawn agreed. She walked over to the bats, who were just waking as well. “Make sure to have a drink before we set out. It might be a long march.”
“Good thinking, fox,” said a bat.
“The old gullet was getting a bit parched,” agreed his brother.
“Svor.”
Tobin and Cora also leaned over the bank and took a few sips of river water, but Bismark turned toward the fox. “Did you know,” he began, “that sugar gliders need less water than bats? We can survive on just a few raindrops a day.” Beaming with pride, Bismark reclined against a small rock and plucked a leaf from a fern. “True fact,” he continued, licking a droplet of dew from the plant. “That, mio amore, is just one of the many ways the sugar glider outshines the bat, though I am happy to share all the others.” He cleared his throat, stood, and mounted the rock. “Shall we begin with where it begins?” he said. “Birth.”
Bismark raised a stick in the air in preparation for his lecture. But before he could speak, the midnight sky rang with a sudden, loud scream.
“Eeeeeeeee!”
Snap!
Boom!
The forest shook, branches broke, and something heavy fell with a thud.
“Mon dieu!” cried Bismark, crouching behind his stone.
“Oh goodness!” Tobin gulped. “What was that?”
“That was the same noise I heard last night when Joe disappeared!” Cora piped up.
“Aye!”
“Svor!”
“That’s the one!” the bats confirmed. “Quick,” the fox commanded. “Follow me.” Dawn bolted upstream toward the sound. Cora, Bismark, and Tobin quickly followed, running full-speed. The bats scrambled to bring up the rear. Suddenly, the wombat called out, “Stop!”
The group came to a halt.
“Here,” Cora breathed. “It was here. I remember because of those rocks.”
Dawn, Tobin, and the wombat inspected the jagged formation jutting into the river. Bismark glided close behind.
“I detect traces of a struggle,” Dawn remarked. “Wombat hairs, nail scratches in the moss—thankfully, there are no signs that someone was eaten.”
Cora sighed with relief.
“But it’s strange,” Dawn continued. “There’s no trail leading to or away from here. It’s as if Joe simply disappeared.”
Dawn and Cora circled the rocks, searching for clues. Bismark followed Dawn, purely for the sake of it, and the bats poked around in the riverbank. Tobin lingered back near the tree line. His keen ears detected a twig snapping in the bushes behind them. With the others distracted, the pangolin decided to investigate the sound himself.
Cautiously, Tobin peered into the dense tangle of leaves. At first, he couldn’t make out much of anything besides dark branches and shadows. But then he caught a glimpse of two small points of light. He squinted, trying to see a little more clearly. Were those berries catching the moonlight? Perhaps drops of dew?
As suddenly as the lights appeared, they winked out. Tobin leaned in closer, tilting his head to the side, hoping to see them again.
There they were! But this time, they were larger, closer. Two deep, brown rings with dark dots at the centers. Eyes! Someone was watching them.<
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Chapter Six
THE SCOUTS
“Oh dear!” cried Tobin. “Everyone, come quick!”
In an instant, Dawn, Bismark, Cora, and the bats appeared at his side.
“There’s an animal in there!” Tobin whispered, pointing to the dense brush.
Together, the four friends and the bats formed a line and slowly stepped toward the bush. They craned their heads forward. Something was moving in there, but it was too fast to track.
“Tobin, what did you see?” asked Dawn.
As if in response, two large ears popped up from the grass nearby, followed by a long tail with a brush-like tuft of fur at the end. The body of the creature was hidden as it sprinted away into the forest.
Her teeth bared, the fox pounced after the creature. The hair on her back stood up in wiry spikes.
“Be careful, mia bella!” cried Bismark, clasping his heart with both hands.
But Dawn was too late. The mysterious animal had disappeared into the dark woods.
“Everyone, stay on guard,” said the fox. She had no doubt that the creature was hiding nearby, watching them still. Her eyes darted over the brush, searching for any sign of the long-tailed spy. “And if anyone sees or hears something unusual, give the following call.” Dawn raised her head and yowled a high-pitched note.
The others nodded.
“Like this?” asked Cora. “Arooo.”
“No time to be shy!” declared Bismark. “A real howl is born from the gut. Now listen and learn.” The sugar glider took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and yodeled into the night.
“Yes,” said the bats. “With chutzpah!”
“Blurghhhh,” Tobin gurgled.
“No, no, no,” said the sugar glider. “Much too much throat.”
“Blurghhhh!” The pangolin continued to gurgle. He was growing red in the face.
Cora looked at her friend with concern. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“The call!” said Tobin. “I’m making the call. Look!” The pangolin pointed toward the tree line ahead. Waddling out of the leaves were two flightless birds. With their fuzzy brown feathers and little round bodies, they resembled a pair of coconuts.