“Then what good is he?” asked Bandit from behind us. “Why all this fuss to take him to the meeting, when he’s not even any use?”
“Quiet!” Prowler ordered his brother, kicking snow in his direction.
I looked around at the animals. Barkrunner was perched on a branch, safely away from the owl. Prowler and Twitch both stood just behind me on either side. Ginny stood unflinchingly at my side, her shoulder close to my side, her head out before me. I rested my hand on her neck.
“Is this t-t-t-true?” asked Talon “Do you speak only in your mind, as seldom do, and not with your mouth, as most others often do? Woo-hoo!”
Slowly I lowered my eyes from the strong gaze of the owl’s eyes. As was my custom, when I felt insecure or uncomfortable, I looked to Ginny for help and a sense of direction.
“Go on,” she said, looking up at me with her kind brown eyes. “Don’t be frightened. Answer the owl as best you can.”
I could feel my cold cheeks warming against the cold air, due to the mild embarrassment of being the center of attention. It’s true, I told him. I don’t talk much.
“True-hoo! For what r-r-r-r-reason?”
I searched for an answer. After a few moments, and a few failed attempts to speak, it became clear to everyone that I had no explanation for my ways, no explanation for myself. That heavy feeling made me feel even less capable of communicating with anyone.
“The boy is shy,” Ginny said at last, speaking for me when I could not manage to speak for myself. She was always sticking up for me like that. “But the problem goes beyond that,” she expounded. “I could explain it in terms that would make sense to you, but to do so will take some time. Then, once the meeting ensues, I will only have to explain it again before the Earthkeepers. It would be best, I think, to subject the boy to only one such examination.”
“True-hoo,” hooted Talon with a bob of his head. He never took his eyes from me. “Too true, indeed. Let it be so, Ginny. A wise judge you are, for a non-owl. Wise and shrewd. And good you are to serve this small boy as you do.”
“You misunderstand,” Ginny replied. “I am no passive servant. Our relationship is not a matter of transactions of food and shelter for company as many might think. Nor is it a pompous guardianship on my part. It is an equal friendship of free choice. The boy loves me as I love him—that is, unconditionally. I am too proud of a dog to have it any other way.”
The old owl opened his wings, shuffled his feet on the stump, and closed his wings once more. His head tipped and bobbed, while his eyes remained fixed on Ginny. “A gaffe, woo-hoo, I have made,” he hooted. “A blunder of both word and beak. I meant not to imply servitude, no. Loyalty and dedication are the qualities I observed and admired. M-m-my humble apologies.”
“There is no offense taken,” Ginny said. “I only spoke to be clear. Now, shall we move on? Something stirs in me—the hint of a scent, or the sensation of a strange presence. The visitors, I am guessing, are not far from us now.”
“Yes, yes. Into the northern corner of the valley their company crept not an hour ago,” said talon. “The chickadees and crows have sent ahead this message through the trees. I received it shortly before I received you all. To the beaver dam at the valley’s center they will go. There we, woo-hoo, will soon find them.”
“Are you warm enough?” Ginny asked, looking up at me.
Yes, I told her.
“Let’s be on our way then.”
I felt a nudge against my leg as soon as I began walking. I looked down to see Prowler’s face staring up at me as he walked along near my feet.
“Whether you speak out loud or not makes no difference to me,” he said. “You are a kind and generous boy, and that’s what counts to regular folks like me.”
Chapter 5
I had never ventured so far into the woods before. Walking along without the convenience of a set trail, I found that I had to be cautious of my every step. Not only were my pack boots clumsy and a little heavy for serious walking, but also I had to keep watch for the many obstacles, to keep from tripping on an unseen root or small stone, or to keep from stepping into a hole obscured by frozen leaves and the dusting of snow. Now and then I would slow down just long enough to take in my surroundings, but then just as quickly I’d speed up again, to keep Ginny from fretting over me. It took nearly all of my focus to keep myself moving ahead safely, and so for the time being I kept my questions to myself.
As we descended into the valley, we seemed to acquire new friends to our group every few minutes. Because time was an issue, we no longer stopped to visit with each new animal that joined us, but I kept track of the newcomers as best as I could. Crows cawed from the treetops, chickadees and nuthatches darted between the tree trunks like little black and white missiles, chirping their regards as they passed over and by us. A few rabbits thumped along behind us, and two extremely high-strung chipmunks made even Barkrunner seem mild and mellow.
After a steady descent the trees began to thin as we approached the lowest point of the valley at the back side of Raccoon Hill. In the distance I could see a pond in the moonlight and the flat, rough swamp lands surrounding it. And just as Ginny began to speak to me—something about watching to keep my feet dry amid the many little streams funneling into the swamp—a sudden crashing drew my attention elsewhere.
“Stand very still,” Ginny warned me then.
What is it? I asked.
“That, by the sounds of it, would be a bull,” said Prowler. “And I can guess who.”
You mean, a male moose?
“That’s right.”
With big antlers?
“No, no. Not big antlers. Massive,” answered the raccoon, holding out his forelegs. “He’ll be showing them off too, you can bet. Hoping to see a cow—that’s a female moose—to make a good impression on. Haw-haw.”
“Hush,” Ginny said. “I’ve heard it said that this is a dangerous time of year to meet a bull. They can be very aggressive and potentially dangerous when trying to impress the females.”
“That’s not untrue,” Prowler said. “And it’s a good thing to keep in mind when meeting him. But, where tonight is a meeting night, and Ethan is so small in comparison to the bull, I can’t imagine him acting aggressively, or even unkindly.”
The crashing got louder and louder as the raccoon spoke, until the massive shadow of the bull’s form became evident as he lumbered downhill some distance from us, weaving between large trees, and mowing over the smaller ones from his path like a bulldozer. Into the open swamplands he finally stepped, standing nearly as tall as a Clydesdale with antler’s fanning out like large tree branches from each side of his head. He blew his nose, sending up plumes of steam, and then swaying his heavy head in slow twists, he moved almost as if he had a sore neck and was trying to loosen his great muscles. Even to untrained eyes like mine, he was a bull of legendary proportions.
Talon proceeded toward him while the rest of us held back. He swooped over the great moose, circled above his head, and then alighted at the top of a large rock nearby.
“Hmm-hoom,” grunted the huge bull, his breath sounding like little earthquakes rising up from his huge belly. And his words that followed, though nothing like a shout, boomed deeper than the moo of the largest milk cow you can imagine—so deeply you could feel his words as much as hear them. “Talon,” he said, “is that you I see?”
“Woo-hoo! It is, it is,” answered the old owl.
“The meeting,” said the moose in his slow and deliberate manner of speech. “Hmm, have I missed it?”
“No, no. It is s-s-set to begin,” said Talon. “And with me I have brought two-hoo guests. The boy and the dog from the hilltop inn.”
“Boy?” exhaled the moose, swinging his head around in a wide turn. His nostrils flared as he snorted in deep breaths of air to pick up a scent.
“Yes, a human boy,” Ginny said in a loud voice to draw the bull’s attention. “Be mindfully cautious of him. Though you might not intend t
o harm him, in your great size and strength, you could mistakenly trample him.”
“Hmm, now I see the little one,” said the moose, holding his head steady. “I wish no harm to a human calf. Bring him closer. I will stand still, so as not to trample him. M-hmm. Let us meet one another, that we may better understand each other. Then I will remember his size and scent.”
At Ginny’s word I stepped toward the bull with my hand resting on her shoulder. There were saplings and clumps of frozen grass and weeds for me to navigate—obstacles the big bull would barely have felt against his legs. The nearer we got to the moose, the larger and more ominous he appeared. When we were a few yards from his massive head with its sprawling rack of antlers—which were wider than two of me would be tall—I realized I could have almost walked under his belly without him knowing I was there.
When Ginny halted, I did likewise. Standing silently at her side, my eyes were fixed in amazement on the massive creature towering over us. In a confident tone Ginny introduced herself to the bull. He acknowledged her and gave a slow nod. Then she introduced me.
Hello, I said with a small wave of my hand. I’m Ethan.
Lowering his head further, so as to look me straight on, the great bull regarded me with his large horse-like eye and said, “What, hmm, is an E-e-e-than?”
“This is Ethan,” Ginny replied. “It is a human name for a human child. Unlike wild animals, humans are given their names at birth. They do not acquire them in time or by reputation.”
“E-e-e-than,” said the moose thoughtfully. Being a name he had never before put to words, he uttered it with even slower concentration than his typically slow speech.
Hello, I said again, and then just stood there awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to say or do. There are no set guidelines for meeting moose that I had ever heard of.
“Hmm, hello, small E-e-e-than,” he rumbled. “You, I now understand, are one of the rare peoples. Most of the two-legged ones speak by loud cracks and by blaring horns. But you, hmm, are different. You speak by the mind. That I like.”
Yes, I said, staring at him in awe. I do.
“Ethan,” he said, this time with more ease, seemingly getting a firm grasp on my name. “If you have not already heard of my prowess, let me make myself known. I am called Clodstomper, or simply, Stomper. In this valley, on the hill, the mountainside, and the valleys beyond on either side, all young bulls bow their heads before me. I am the largest and strongest of all, and so to them I am as a king. And if they do not bow to acknowledge my kingship (here he swayed his head slowly to show off his massive antlers) I bow my own head to them, and run them off under threat of great hurt. M-hmm. I do.”
“Wow,” I gasped aloud. You sure are big, Stomper.
“I am,” he agreed. “But you, Ethan, are not a bull of the same kind as me. So, you need not bow your little head to me. Very low it stands now, as it is. M-hmm. And, it is without antlers, or even the stubby beginnings of them.”
That was his way of saying that he considers you a friend, not a rival or a threat, Ginny whispered.
Thank you, I said to the moose. For a split second I considered offering him a peanut, but I caught myself in time. Moose, I knew for sure, preferred apples and leaves and shoots and weeds. It’s nice to meet you, Stomper, I resumed with little delay. I would be glad to be your friend.
“Then friends we are,” Stomper declared with a deep grunt and a blow of his nose. “And since we are now friends, hmm, I will keep you in mind, so that I may not cause you injury of body, or fear of mind. I am, as we have mentioned, much larger than you. And being so large, I am prone to neglecting many of the smaller folks at my hooves. M-hmm. But now that you are known to me, and we are indeed friends, I would not wish to acquire the reputation of an Ethan-stomper. Hmm. No.”
“I thank you kindly, Stomper,” Ginny said. “You are a great and considerate bull.”
Yes, thank you, I agreed.
Stomper gave a slow nod to Ginny, then said to me, “And you, little Ethan, are a welcome friend to these woods. As I understand it, a two-legged helper such as you, we have not had in these parts. Hmm, no, not for many years. Since before even I was but a little calf.”
“Woo-hoo,” hooted Talon, unfolding his wings. “Very well,” he said triumphantly. “It is t-t-true, no doubt, that we have in our midst a good candidate to bring before the Earthkeepers, who, now after long travel, await our arrival. Let us not test their patience.”
With that the owl took to the air, leaving us all to follow the path of his flight. Stomper gave his neck a shake and roll, then started off stomping toward the pond. Ginny began leading me once the moose was half a dozen of his long strides ahead of us. And behind us, the smaller animals followed.
***
It soon became clear that even though the terrain we were crossing was open and easier to see in, it was not an easy place for me to travel. The pond was not yet completely frozen over. The shorelines and puddles had thin layers of ice that I could break through simply by stepping on them, but the center of the pond was glossy and open under the moon. This made traveling across it in a straight line impossible. To walk around the pond to reach the beaver dam was our only option—one that would add a great many extra steps to reach our destination, and take us through much difficult terrain.
The going was very tricky. In addition to the many fallen trees, half-rotted stumps and the mazes of brush, reeds and tangled weeds, there were also dozens of tiny streams to contend with. They trickled into the swamp from all sides of the valley, making more half-hidden holes, deep puddles covered with ice, and windy ditches than there were places of flat ground to walk on. As a result of all these obstacles, and the clunky boots required to keep my feet warm, I soon found myself tripping and stumbling along the way.
Ginny tried her best to keep me from falling once she realized my struggles, but it seemed the harder I tried to push forward, the more I ended up falling, and so the more discouraged we both became. Stomper and Talon were long gone when Ginny finally halted our slow march.
“Rest,” she said to me after my most recent fall. “You’re trying too hard.”
I eased myself down on a felled tree trunk. The top had caught on the exposed roots of another fallen tree, making the trunk somewhat level, and the nearest thing to a chair I could find. Barkrunner ran up the log, up my coat, and rested on my shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Yeah, just tired, I told him. And my feet are getting a little sore.
“It’s no use,” Ginny said to Prowler. “I’ll have to take him up into the woods again and lead him around the longest way.”
“Sure, sure,” said the raccoon. “That would help his footing, I’d say. But as for time …”
“Yes, time,” agreed Ginny. “I suppose I should have gotten us off to an earlier start. Oh, but it was difficult enough as it was. His parents were awake later than usual.”
“It all seems silly to me,” said Bandit, standing impatiently off to one side. “If the boy can move no faster than a slug, why not let the Earthkeepers come to him?”
“We’ve not yet met them,” Ginny reminded him with a subtle growl. “And after the great distances they have traveled to meet us, we are in no position to make demands of them. They may not understand the difficulty a small boy would have traversing these grounds.”
“Huh,” puffed the raccoon. He tapped his paw impatiently but said nothing more.
“Look,” said Twitch, who had by then come to sit near me on the fallen log. “I see the owl. He’s coming back.”
In fact the owl was flying in our direction. To me he resembled a stretched letter M gliding toward us in the moonlight. In a matter of seconds he landed a few yards from me on the log. Twitch and the chipmunks edged closer to me as Talon landed. The two chipmunks, I’d since learned, were called Twighopper and Leafpeeker.
“W-w-what, is the hold up?” asked Talon as he glanced from me to Ginny with his haunting eyes.<
br />
“This is very difficult ground for the boy to cross,” Ginny explained. “He has fallen many times and needed to rest.”
“R-r-r-rest,” said the owl. “Can he not rest, woo-hoo, after the meeting?”
“You don’t understand,” Ginny said. “He is tired and liable to hurt himself. If he sprains his ankle this far from home, this night will quickly become a disaster.”
“Imagine flying with an injured wing,” said Prowler. “Or flying into a mighty wind storm. It’s just not possible for the boy to go any faster. I’ve watched him try his very best.”
Talon bobbed his head and ruffled his feathers. “This surely won’t do-hoo,” he replied. “It is a fix, we are in. A fix, I tell you. Ah, but a resolution, I now have in mind. The wits of the woods, yes, we owls are. Woo-hoo. Wait, young Ethan. Rest. I shall return.”
We watched him lift off and fly away again. I was more than a little bit jealous at that point of his wings and the ease with which he used them. Such long distances he could cover with a few flaps and a concentrated glide.
I’m sorry, I told Ginny, turning back to her. I thought I could do it. It wasn’t so bad until we got down here in this swamp.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she assured me. “We are asking too much of you.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed the others in a chorus of chirpy voices. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
“There’s no shame,” said Leafpeeker the chipmunk in a chattering little voice. With a quick hop he landed on my leg and stood up straight to look at me. “Why, with such funny-looking, unbending feet as you have, it’s a wonder you can walk at all! Haw-haw-haw-haw-haw!”
Those are boots, not feet, I told him. My feet are inside the boots. They’re much smaller than what you can see.
The next instant Twighopper, the other chipmunk, leapt onto one of my boots and began sniffing and scratching at it. “Boots, boots,” he squeaked, mimicking my words as he pawed at my boots with his tiny claws. “What’s a boots? And why are they hiding your feet?”
The Earthkeepers Page 5