The Bekka Chornicles
Book Two
The Carven Flute
by
Steve Shilstone
Wild Child Publishing.com
Culver City, California
The Carven Flute Copyright © 2011 by Steve Shilstone
Cover illustration by Wild Child Publishing © 2011
For information on the cover art, please contact Posh Gosh.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Editor: Jackelynn Woolley
ISBN: 978-1-936222-76-6
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Chapter One
Jo Bree
Many were the mornings I listened content to the Gwer drollek story of the Carven Flute. Gwer drollek is how we bendo dreen say Once Upon A Time. Such is so, a truth. Once Upon A Time stories are the most important of the bendo dreen tales. Bendo dreen is what we call ourselves. In the language from the world down the Well -perhaps yours? we are bramble dwarves. We dwell in the boundary hedge on the edge of the Woeful Wanderers’ Wasteland by the Boad, all Fidd and Leee Combined, where I, Bekka of Thorns, have earned the title of Chronicler. Thus and so, I write in purple ink on oat parchment paper this new tale of Jo Bree, the Carven Flute. The old time Gwer drollek story of Jo Bree thrilled us. We never tired of its wrinkles and thrusts. My best friend Kar and I ever hung entranced at the troubles and adventures of the lavender witch and her evil sister in the Chack Tree Forest and at the Falls of Horn and in the Meadow of Shells where the Well was formed. Such is why it shocked us to discover the story’s ending was a warm deception, so such a specially woven patterned carpet to cover a fearsome truth. The flute was not stolen, as ever we had heard in the story. No. Something other happened. Such. Now I write the truth in the strange language from the world down the Well. The beginning is the best place to start.
My cherished friend Kar, sorceress shapeshifter raised as a bendo dreen, and I planned a visit to the Danken Wood Barrier to make an attempt to break through and see the lavender witch, the Harick, the Babba Ja. Why was such our goal? A truth. Kar’s mother, a jrabe shapeshifter in secret so such like as Kar, took the form bar years ago of Zinna, bendo dreen shopkeeper, repairer of chonkas, or tambourines, as is said in this language from down the Well. She told us she possessed a secret concerning the Jo Bree, the Carven Flute, and she would share it with us only after we returned from successfully conquering the Danken Wood Barrier and visiting the lavender witch in her edible cottage. We bendo dreen possess great curiosity about stories and adventures of any kind or sort. Kar, too, raised bendo dreen as she was, collects tales eagerly. We are a team. We collect. I write in your strange language, mine alone to use and read on this world. Such is so and how it has ever been for the Chroniclers. I have a second secret. I alone know your language -if truth you who read this are a creature of the strange world -and I know that Zinna and Kar are jrabe shapeshifters. If I could tell their story at Assembly Bower on a Purple Day, what a Gwer drollek sensation that would be! But I won’t. I promised to guard their secret until ever if such is their wish. Silent Bekka I am called by all. Such is so. Kar and I are celebrated throughout the hedge as known adventurers, bendo dreen who dared to travel under open skies far from the bower lanes and nests. Adventurers are rare among bendo dreen. Such is the why that my announcement of our quest to visit the witch was accepted with murmurs of disbelief, shakings of heads, and hidden admiration. I could see the admiration in darting glances when I strode the hedge corridors in my best highboots.
On the morning that we left to adventure, Zinna winked and nodded, calling after us, “Bring back a Gwer drollek!”
Other bendo dreen raised their chonkas, tambourines, so said as before, and tapped a good fortune chonka chankle. When I heard the salute, I rested my hand on my newly ribboned chonka, which hung from my belt. I missed having it with me on our first adventure. This time when I needed to shake it, it would be there.
“I’m glad I’ve got my chonka this time, Kar,” I said as we walked across the meadow and away from the hedge, heading east.
“As soon as we’re out of sight, I’m going to be the first jrabe sorceress to shift shape to a chonka! I’ll hang on your other belt hook. You’ll carry me!” enthused Kar.
“I can’t wait to see my first hutter in the Boad. I wonder if FiddLeeeBoad Castle is like in the stories,” I replied, like we do, such and so many times ignoring each the other’s comments.
“The witch! The Barrier! How will we get through? The secret of Jo Bree! I have to know. We’ll be the first to know!” bubbled Kar.
“You’re right! I know! Jo Bree! The Barrier!” I bubbled back at her.
Chapter Two
Outer Orchard
We conversed, Kar and I, bubbling back, then forth, at each the other the whole day through. Kar, true to her word, shifted to chonka and hung from my belt. Her green ribbons fluttered when she spoke, and her taut membrane quivered. To any and all the sorts of creatures that might have seen us, it probably looked quite stark bold odd to watch me arguing loudly with a tambourine. Truth, we encountered no audience, such was so, until late in the afternoon when we approached and saw for the first time the Outerest of the Outer Orchards.
“Look!” I cried.
Kar shimmered from my belt and clouded to jrabe with long green mantle, curls of orange hair, milky white unseeing eyes, and enormous lavender ears. She stood in the air head over feet, uncommon for a jrabe, so we believed. Kar, raised bendo dreen, never got used to the upside down floating in the air position of a jrabe. Her mother, the lone jrabe we had ever met, always hung thus. Such was so.
“Ah, I hear how beautiful the gold and silver of the gadapple trees be,” she said in jrabe before shimmering and shifting to my own familiar Kar, clad in bendo dreen gray garb and blinking her bright yellow green eyes. “And now I SEE how beautiful they are. Bek, there is something other. See there?”
I saw. Emerging from the orchard of silvery branched and trunked, thickly golden blossomed trees, was a great shaggy purple creature. I could see its eight yellow eyes arranged in a circle around its long tube snout.
“Ponderous bollidore!” we shouted at one and the very same time, remembering as we did the Gwer drollek story of the Creely Crown when Princess Wun met a ponderous bollidore during the legendary race to find the Crown.
“Let’s ask it about Princess Wun. Let’s see how slowly it talks!” said Kar.
We raced forward to meet the bollidore.
“Look at its whampers! Six, just like in the story,” continued Kar. “Bollidore! Are you such as spoke to the Princess Wun so long ago? Are you able to have so many hundreds and hundreds, a thousand even, of bar years? Am I the first bendo dreen jrabe to speak to you?”
The bollidore regarded us with its eight yellow eyes. Its tube snout wiggled slightly. Its shaggy purple coat of hair shuddered.
“If it’s like in the story, we’ll have to wait until dark before it answers you,” I said.
“Look how big it is. I wonder why it’s in the gadapple orchard. I thought ponderous bollidores ate palmpear fronds. I thought you ate palmpear fronds! Are you returning
from the palmpear orchard? Is it beyond? Then the oat fields?” said and shouted Kar to me and the bollidore.
“It might…,” I began to comment, but stopped.
Why did I stop? Because the ponderous bollidore clamped its whampers with a whoosh, tucked its head away, formed itself into a giant hairy purple ball, and rolled away from us with lightning bolt speed! Such was so!
“Did you see that? Did you see that? No one knows that! No one! We are the first to know that bollidores roll with speed!” sang Kar joyfully, dancing with delight.
“But we didn’t get to hear it say ‘g..r..o..k..’,” I complained, one half of a nince disappointed.
“No matter, Bek! Everyone knows they say ‘g..r..o..k..’, but we’re the first to know they roll! Rolling bollidores have never been in any story, Gwer drollek or not!”
It was a truth, and we slept a pleasant night in the orchard, satisfied with the wonderful taste of gadapple blossoms and content with new knowledge of a bollidore behavior shared by no other bendo dreen. Kar fairly thrills at having secrets. I do, too.
Chapter Three
Guidance form a Hutter
We started off early the following morning, hoping to reach the oat fields and find a hutter’s conical cottage as soon as possible. Our plan, so said, was to undertake an interview with a hutter in order to gain knowledge about the shortest route to the Danken Wood Barrier. Such was so. We knew of hutters from the Gwer drollek tales, but never had we met one. Truth, most hutters stick to their fields and orchards as tightly as most bendo dreen stick to the hedge. Kar and I, well, I suppose not Kar, but I, am a rare bendo dreen, bramble dwarf, who has unstuck herself from the hedge.
Kar traveled as a green cloud with white feathered wings, one of her favorite shifts. I plodded along in my highboots, while she swooped ahead and circled back again and again and again, yelling down at me what I was about to see and how she was the first to do this and that and the other. We moved from the golden blossomed, silver branched beauty of the Outer Orchard gadapple trees to the Inner Orchards of majestic palmpears with their high fringe fronds which I recognized at once from the stories.
“Here, a palmpear nub,” said Kar, shifting to bendo dreen and dropping a hard round dark purple nub into my hand. “I flew up and picked it. I bet I’m the first jrabe to do such. Princess Thrii used palmpear pits to dye her hair.”
“I think they need to be ripe before the pit can be ground up into the startling violet paste,” I said.
We fall into such conversations more than often, the likes of which can be understood only by us or by other bendo dreen. It’s about the stories, you see. We know all of ’em from backward to forth, do we bendo dreen. Such is so. The Princess Thrii dyed her hair startling violet with palmpear pits in one of ’em.
We began to recite our favorite parts of the Creely Crown Gwer drollek tale, the one with the Princess Thrii and her dyed startling violet hair. She dyed it to match her eyes. Such. I was reciting Princess Wun’s adventures in the slidery maze. Of a sudden, the vision of a hutter maiden jumped up stark bore close in front of us! She carried a basket. I knew at once that I looked upon a hutter. Her sky blue skin, her simple tunic, her pleasant welcoming smile, all these and everything else about her sang straight from the Gwer drollek tales.
“Are you a hutter? I won’t ask your name. I know enough about that. Your name is for you alone to know. We are bendo dreen from the hedge at the edge of the Woeful Wanderers’ Wasteland. We are on our way to the Danken Wood Barrier. We mean to pass through it! Such is so! I am Karro of Thorns. This is Bekka of Thorns. Your name, of course, is properly known only to yourself. I greet you as ‘hutter.’ Do you know the quickest route to the Barrier?” jabbered Kar.
“Well met, bendo dreen,” said the hutter in a humble hutter way. “I have brought to you a gadapple blossom pie with an oat and figcoal crust of my own invention. I so admire to see your lovely ripe yellow green skin and your healthy orange hair! I am struck amazed to meet bendo dreen. Won’t you please follow me to the hut and share a brew of oats while I tell you what you need to know? For a pair of days now, we have been expecting you. We were visited in our hut by a jrabe who alerted us to await you! Such ears she had! And so upside down!”
Kar grinned and winked at me. Of course it had been Zinna, Kar’s own sorceress mother. Such had to have been so. Of course we found ourselves truly on the proper path.
“We would be glad for you to lead us to your conical cottage. Honored,” said Kar, bowing.
The hutter gently urged us before we took another step to honor her by eating great wedges of the pie she carried in her basket. I’ve never tasted anything better, and told the hutter so. She blushed deep blue and led us through the palmpear orchard out into the vast grain fields. Oats. From the grassy grains a yellow and red striped conical cottage rose impressively. In we went. Down we sat. Served we were hot oat tea in simple clay bowls. We sipped, while the hutter spoke.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked, and we nodded. “Good. My brother and sisters and mother and father are all out working in the fields. I was chosen to meet you. We all together have prepared a song of welcome. The afternoon shadows will lengthen soon. We hope you will stay to supper and hear it if you aren’t in too great a rush to be off to the Barrier. I must tell you that the jrabe was an upside down marvel when she was so kind to visit us! She told us what to tell you, and this is it. It’s a rhyme I don’t understand, but you might. This is it. I learned it the fastest. That’s why I was chosen to greet you. This is it… ‘Hanging runes, By the by, Chronicle’s tunes, Prophesy.’ That was it. Does it help?”
Chapter Four
A Dragon Flies
Before I could say, “Not in the least”, Kar sprang to her feet and sang out, “Such a clarity! It was so! I should have known! Hurry, Bek! We must be gone!”
“But…,” I began.
“No time!” snapped Kar, and she grabbed me by the arm.
“Won’t you stay to hear our song?” asked the disappointed hutter.
“No time! Jo bree story! To the Barrier!” said the agitated Kar as she dragged me to the door.
“But I want to hear the song,” I pleaded, resisting the drag.
Kar glared at me. Her yellow green eyes flashed red for the briefest flick of time. Seeing such, I gave up resistance.
“At least take a pouch of dake for snacking. I slivered the nuts myself,” urged the hutter, thrusting a woven straw pouch at us.
“Thank you, hutter,” said Kar, snatching the pouch. “You have delivered the message we needed. We will hear your family’s song another time. This I pledge. But for now, the rhyme of the jrabe sets us to hasten. Such is so.”
Within the next blink of a nince, Kar flung us out the door and into the oat fields. She ran, pulling me after her. I could see a storm in the sky brewing to break. Lightning zagged. Thunder crashed. A sprinkle of rain fell. The fields of oats swayed in wind gusts. I screamed, “Hey!” seven or eight or more times, and Kar finally stopped running.
“What are you…?” I gasped.
She slapped a hand over my mouth, and we stood quietly, breathing heavily. Rain, not gushering, but in light windy spatters sprayed us. Kar lowered her hand. Far across the oats standing framed in the doorway of the conical cottage was the hutter.
“Let’s give her another wonder to share with her family,” said Kar. “I have a surprise for you, Bek. I’ve been secretly practicing in the W’s Three with Zinna. I will be the first jrabe to do this standing in an oat field during a rain storm. I’m warning you, Bek. Sit down or you might fall down. This is going to be good.”
I sat down. I waited for my best friend from ever to do what she would do. Such was so. She was a puzzle, and had always been one, a jark dweg, a cracked melon. She was happily odd and precious to me before either the one of us knew she was a shapeshifting jrabe. Truth, I expected a shift of some or other sort. I suffered no disappointment. Instead, I experienced thrill. She threw her ar
ms wide, and they stretched into great green dragon wings. Her body snaked. Her neck lengthened and glimmered with green scales. Her eyes sparked red ruby glints, and two curving ivory green horns grew above her disappearing ears. She dropped her head low and hissed at me to climb aboard her neck and take hold of the horns. There was I, a bendo dreen from the hedge about to ride the sky on a dragon. Such was so. From a fear of venturing from the hedge to an eagerness to fly the sky I had moved in the shortness of two bar years. I swung my highboot over Kar’s neck and grabbed the smooth cool ivory green horns. I heard the thwuff! thwuff! thwuff! of her beating wings. I heard thunder rumbling. I felt gusts of rain in my face. I heard more of the thwuff! thwuff! thwuff! I heard more of the distant thunder. I felt wind, but no rain. Thwuff! Thwuff! Thwuff! I saw nothing. My eyes were clenched tight shut.
Chapter Five
On the Barrier
“Open your eyes, Bek! The Danken Wood! I’m going down there.”
“Not yet! I get too dizzy in high places. You know that. I’ll open ’em when we land.”
“So said. I’m going to swoop…!” BLOING!
“What was that? Are we down, Kar? I don’t hear your wings. What’s happening?”
“Bek, we aren’t down, so to say, but we are there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Open your eyes! See for yourself!”
“Oh… I… Is this the…?”
“Such has got to be so. Clearly! I am standing on TOP of the Barrier! I bet I’m the first!”
“It’s a flat invisible roof? I’m not getting off your neck. I won’t step on invisible. Bendo dreen should never be hanging this high in the sky. Kar, you fly us over the edge and down right now! Why did you land here at all?”
“Hanging runes, By the by, Chronicler’s tunes, Prophesy.”
“The hutter’s message? What about it? What do you know? We’re supposed to share our secrets. I’m the Chronicler.”
Carven Flute Page 1