“I know.”
“So?”
“Eat some of the hutter’s dake. You’ll feel better. Then I’ll tell you.”
“You brought the dake?”
“Clutched in my talons. Don’t you like my talons? And I didn’t even shred the pouch. You have to be careful with talons. Reach down and get it. I can’t balance for long on one leg. So be quick.”
“Got it. Go ahead. Talk.”
“When I was practicing dragon shift in the W’s Three with Zinna, I… Oh, I’m tired of
hissing. I’ll shift to Kar and continue.”
“No you won’t! I’m not standing on invisible! I told you! If you want to shift, fly us over the edge and down first.”
“All right, all right. Stop squeezing. See where the clouds are breaking apart? There’s a stream by that oat field. We’ll go there… Simple… Up… Over……….. And gliiiiiiiiide…… down!”
“That’s much better. Much better. I like to have my boots on the ground, both of ’em. Go ahead, Kar. Shift. Then talk.”
“Ahh… Such a comfort to be bendo dreen again. And now I’ll tell you what Zinna told me. She said I would have to perfect my green dragon shift before you and I could search in the Danken Wood for the Jo Bree tale. I asked, ‘why so such?’ She said I would have to fly the Chronicler to the Barrier as soon as I heard a hutter rhyme. I asked, ‘why such so?’ She said the runes on the invisible wall would fade in the night after the storm, and fading with ’em would be the secret of breaking through the Danken Wood Barrier.”
“The sun is sinking now! What runes?! Where runes?!”
“Turn around, Bek. Turn around.”
Chapter Six
Through the Barrier
I spun around and was amazed to observe at the edge of the Wood six huge red words strung in the air as if across an invisible wall. They called directly to me. Such was a clarity. Why? I am the Chronicler. I alone possess the ability to read the strange language of the world down the Well, the language flowing right now in purple ink from the tip of my beeket bird quill. As I gaped at ’em, the words faded. The sun sank below the horizon.
“Well, Bek, don’t stand there like a hedge root. What did it say?” said Kar, bumping me alive from a kind of a sort of a trance.
“BY THE GREENWILLA A BOULDER SPLIT,” I chanted.
“It did?” asked Kar.
“I don’t know. That’s what the words said. The Chronicler language… The world down the Well. The words say to go to the Greenwilla and look for a split boulder. That’s what I think. It means we can somehow get through there,” I reasoned.
“Jo Bree! Jo Bree! Jo Bree!” sang Kar, and she jumped around.
“It’s getting too dark. We’ll have to wait for morning. I don’t want to wait for morning, though,” I said.
“We won’t have to wait! Let’s go! Watch!” bubbled Kar.
Kar fairly expanded by burst into a green dragon with flashing ruby eyes. She glowed so such like a lantern. Brightly excited, I leaped to her neck and grasped her horns. With powerful thwuffs of her membraned wings she raised us up into the falling night. This time, I forced myself to keep my eyes open. We sailed along the edge of the Wood, keeping it to our left. We tilted awkwardly a few times when the tip of Kar’s left wing brushed the Barrier. After a time, I could see both moons rising on the black horizon.
“Look! The Greenwilla!” I shouted.
Truth, moonslight glimmered on the long wide ribbon of water. Kar swooped to a landing. Such and so many Gwer drollek tales weave around and about the Greenwilla River. Such and so many legends. More truth. A tumble of thoughts served to keep me in silent awe.
“How can we find a split boulder in the dark?” hissed Kar, returning me to the moment.
“It’s probably someplace where the Barrier meets the river,” I guessed. “Let’s feel along the Barrier. Maybe the moonslight will be enough. Or you could shift to jrabe and sense for it.”
Kar decided it would be more fun to search as bendo dreen. She shifted to my familiar Kar, and we trudged up to the Barrier, bumping against it with our outstretched hands. We felt along it down to the bank of the river. The moons were both halves, and they made the river water dance shimmers around a black lump of a shape.
“There’s a boulder,” I said.
“Is it split?” asked Kar, and before I could say that I didn’t know, she sprouted wings and flew out to see for herself.
“Well?” I called.
“I can feel the Barrier! It cuts right over the middle of the rock! And there is a split! It seems wide enough! We could wedge through!” shouted Kar.
She flew back to me as full dragon. Without a word, I climbed aboard her snaky neck and she returned to the boulder. After she set us down, she shifted quickly to bendo dreen Kar, and I almost slipped and fell into the river. I did scrape my knee. I balanced myself with one hand against the Barrier. I could see where the boulder was split. I made my way into the cleft and shoved through. I reached up and put a hand on the Barrier, but now from the other side!
Chapter Seven
What Next?
“I’m sorry I went through first, Kar. I should have let you go, but I was too fizzed,” I apologized as Kar shoved through, wearing a sour look on her round yellow green face.
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’re the first bendo dreen through the Barrier. I’m the first jrabe, and besides, I was the one who found the split, and you notice I came through feet first holding my nose. I was the first to do that.”
She did care. Such was so. But we were through!
“Can you find the witch’s cottage in such and so a darkness? The moons won’t be much help away from the river,” I said, turning to our task, and, more to the sharpest thorn point, trying to steer Kar away from the disappointment of not being the first. She likes to be first with a jark dweg fierceness.
“I can find it. I’ll find it. You wait here. I’ll come back and get you after I find it. It’s too dangerous to carry you. I might accidentally bump the Barrier ceiling and you might get knocked off. It’s best if I get familiar with the limits of Barrier containment.”
Truth, she was angry that I had scrambled through the Barrier first. I knew such was surely so when she said ‘limits of Barrier containment’ in such a haughty manner. I agreed in a nince. I knew she would be lured back to excitement with the first flap of her dragon or whatever sort of other wing she decided to sprout. I was mistaken. She buzzed with an eagerness before the first flap.
“Oh, Bek! I’ll be small! A bee like the witch did in the Gwer drollek story of Donkie Ledger, Prince Hal, and Lorelei Lo! I’ll be the first jrabe to fly as a lavender bee under the Danken Wood Barrier! Watch this!”
I watched. She poofed into spangles and circled my head, zizzing loudly. She zuzzed off toward the Wood. I listened to the river’s hush run, which truly made a pleasant comfort. I unhitched my chonka from my belt and tapped out a quiet chankle. Thin clouds drifted, escorting the moons across the sky. The river sang me down to sleep. When I dreamed of Kar standing beside me shouting, I knew it was time to awaken.
“Is this a dream?” I said, sitting up.
Dawn streaks painted the sky. Kar, as Kar, not bee or dragon, stood with her hands on hips staring at me. The boulder, the river and the Wood surrounded me.
“No dream, Bek. I found it. The troll’s house is a pile of ruins, but the witch’s cottage is… delicious! I ate a lemon doorknob! I went in! She isn’t there. Everything abandoned. I saw the tricklestream down the hill! I’m the first to do all those things under the Barrier! Now I’ll take you,” boasted Kar.
“She isn’t there?” I said, still foggy with sleep.
“No, but she’ll come back. Won’t she?” asked Kar.
“She will if we’re going to learn the Jo Bree story. Oh, Kar! The crystal ball! Did you see it?!” I said, snapping full awake and jumping to my feet.
“Crystal ball? Crystal ball. I didn’t see it,” said Kar.
“I didn’t really look. I was busy eating window panes and hinges. It’s probably there in all the clutter. It’s messy in the cottage. Let’s go see! Let’s go!”
She inflated to green dragon, and I climbed aboard.
“Can’t you make your neck scales softer?” I asked.
“No, of course not, I’m a dragon,” she hissed.
She flew low above the treetops. I could see the tip of the tallest tree far off to the east. I knew it was the Redgalla. Other stories, such and so, Gwer drollek all, popped into my head.
“Redgalla!” I shouted at Kar’s dragon ear pit.
She undulated her neck in a nod. A scant moment later, she turned her head and pointed with her snout. “The cottage,” she hissed.
Below I saw the circular clearing in the Wood. I thrilled at the sight of the most very famous cottage made of candies and cakes and cookies. Bright in the morning it sat, solid and real, the home of the lavender witch, the Babba Ja Harick herself!
Chapter Eight
At the Cottage
“Oh, I see it! I see it! It looks…like it should! Kar! Kar! Take us down!”
“I was first to be here already, remember. I touched everything.”
“I know. You were the first. Put us down!”
“Such. See? Just like in all the Gwer drollek stories. But she’s not here yet. Only us.”
“Such is…so.”
“What’s wrong, Bek? Why aren’t you getting off? I’m going to shift to bendo dreen now, and I don’t want you sitting on my neck. You’ll break it.”
“You should stay dragon. Why don’t you stay dragon?”
“I don’t want to. The hissing tickles my throat. Go ahead, Bek. Get down. Don’t be timid. There. Go and break off a bit of shingle. It tastes… What are you doing? That’s the troll’s old….”
“I know. Gorge’s house. I wonder if all of the basements are still there under this rubble. The Creely Crown story… It… Kar, this looks worse than the Roamer hut before we fixed it up. Such is… sadly so. Do you think that Gorge traveled the rainbow? When did he disappear from the stories? Can you remember?”
“It was long before the Barrier, I think. Didn’t he go to live in Sadlar’s Gardens?”
“That’s right. I think you’re right. It was after the portals to the strange world sealed. Kar, just think, Gorge, the 3-toed troll of Gwer drollek legend, lived exactly here. He was with the witch in such and so many of the tales… Princess Lovey under the mountains….”
“And Prince Chef Larry. Remember ‘Niceness am good’?”
“Yes. Niceness am good… But that was later. It started right here… The wildness of weather and time… What a wonderful Gwer drollek story that is….”
“Bek, what’s wrong? Why are you ignoring the cottage? The cottage of
the Harick, the Babba Ja! The witch’s cottage! There it is! Look at it! Take a bite!”
“It’s too much. I can’t.”
“You stay there. I’ll bring you a piece. Taste it. Come on. It’s a crunchy sweet. I was the first to eat some.”
“Should we eat her house when she isn’t here? Maybe we should leave and come back later. She is the Harick, the Babba Ja. Let’s go down by the tricklestream and wait. Let’s….”
“Bek! We are here to discover a Gwer drollek story! The truth about the Carven Flute, Jo Bree! We have penetrated the Barrier. We were the first! There were red runes hanging in the air that only you could read! You read ’em! Such was so! Here we are!”
“I know, but….”
“But what?”
“There’s a feeling of sadness here.”
“Sadness?”
“Yoss, yoss, a gladness of sadness, a madness it is for me to…treat?…no…greet…yoss…the two younglings from the… the…hedge. The Prophesy has spoken. The Praw… fuh… sigh. Now must I… spill… from these ancient drips…no…lips… a booth…no…a truth! Bekka of Thorns, sadness so sensed… You prove yourself to be the proper Chronicler to…to…bite … no…fight…no…record!…the blue…true…story of my Carven Flute, my Jo Bree.”
Chapter Nine
The Lavender Witch
The Harick, the Babba Ja, the lavender witch wrapped in her famous blackest purple cloak, stared at us from behind the green and white striped candy chimney of her cottage. Her white hair hung down lank. Its so said whiteness brought springing to my mind an image from the oldest of the Gwer drollek stories. Babba Ja Harick, a tiny witchlet no more than three bar years old, while wandering through snow with her sister, fell and rolled down a hill and into the Chack Tree Forest so such long ago before the Well of Shells even existed. I don’t know why that image in particular flashed through my head. I do know her quivery old voice in its famed stumbling manner rooted me and Kar to motionless. She squinted at us through spectacles perched on her long bumpy nose. The pale purple skin of her face flushed livelier on her cheeks. A legendary buckle gleamed on the one scuffed black shoe not hidden by the chimney. A breeze fluttered her cloak and wisps of her stringy hair. She was not wearing her pointy hat. Such was so.
“Where is your pointy hat?” called out Kar, recovering her jark dweg boldness.
“Aha, Ragaba’s daughter leaks… speaks! Yoss, I suppose,” mumbled the witch, and she pulled her broom from beneath her cloak and dove down, riding the broom to the door of the cottage. “Enter, and… and… glisten… no… listen. Yoss. Listen.”
Before the witch had fully disappeared into the cottage, Kar strode with confident purpose after her. I, truth to tell, remained too struck to move. In a moment’s time, I was left alone to gather my wits in the clearing surrounded by tall pointy trees. The cottage sat solid bright in front of me, a touchable reality, not a legend, not a myth. Down the hill I could see where the tricklestream flowed by. My mind was flooded with Gwer drollek tales. Though my eyes remained captive of the moving tricklestream, to my right I felt the tumbled ruin of the troll’s house. More strands of Gwer drollek threads to weave. Kar was inside the cottage with the Babba Ja Harick. Such was so. Kar was inside with the Babba Ja Harick. I rolled those words around twice to rebuild a reality. We had broken through the Barrier to hear the true story of Jo Bree, the Carven Flute. I had seen the Babba Ja Harick! She had spoken my name, called me ‘the proper Chronicler’! I had seen her! She had been standing by the chimney of the edible cottage. Edible cottage! There it was! I was there! What else? She had called Kar ‘Ragaba’s daughter.’ A truth. The link. Ragaba was Zinna’s sorceress jrabe name. Such was so and known only to Kar and to me. So I had thought.
“Bek! Get in here!”
Kar’s voice jolted me to jump. I hurried inside the cottage. The witch paced back and forth on a hearth in front of a cauldron. Kar sat on one of a pair of wickery chairs. She motioned me to sit on the other one. I stepped around a table mounded with clutter and did so.
“I was the first to be seated. You were second. Now listen. The Harick is going to tell us the true Gwer drollek story of the Jo Bree. You have to remember every word so you can write the story down in the strange language. Don’t worry, Bek. The Harick told me she would cast a spell to sharpen your memory. Don’t say anything yet because she’s pacing. She needs to pace to get ready. It might take her days to tell it. She told me lots of things we might need to know, but not any of the story yet. She needed you in the chair. When she stops pacing, you shouldn’t talk anymore.”
“I’m not talking! I didn’t say anything yet. I don’t even know…,” I whispered.
“Sssshhhh, she stopped!” hissed Kar, even though she was not shifted to dragon.
“Chronicler, when I twist twice the emerald pearl wing… ring… when twice I twist it… twice… then will each bird…
no… word! Yoss!… of the story fall in sequence unsmudged by… by… confusion… unjumbled with… claws?… no… jaws?… no… flaws! Yoss! That’s it! You will place it word for word, stumble free, in purple ink… on boat… oat parchment pages. Yoss. Behold.”
So
said, the witch wrenched at one of her ring bedecked fingers. So done, she dropped her hands to her sides. My mind felt swept alert, and the words that fell without hesitation or error from the witch’s lips right then and there will spill from my pen in purple ink on the following pages.
Chapter Ten
Gwer Drollek
“I missed my sister. She was all I had. Yoss, she tried to throw me down the Well. Yoss, she was cruel and selfish. Yoss, all truth. But after she was gone, I missed her. After the excitement of gathering the twenty-two rings with the help of my Jo Bree, after wandering the lands and discovering this clearing, after the conjuring of this cottage, after, after, after, the empty was always there. Yoss. I remembered the good times. A truth, there was a good time. One day, we swam all morning in the pool below the Falls of Horn. We splashed. We floated up the roaring cascade in bubbles! We changed frogs into different sorts of frogs. She did not play even one trick on me. No. It was but a single day, yet I am still able to live every second of it inside my ancient fuddled head. Yoss.
“But now two younglings, one of them jrabe, one of them bendo dreen, have found the way through my Barrier. The first part of the crystal ball Prophesy is fulfilled. Now I am forced to complete the unpleasantness, to share the true story of how I lost my Jo Bree, my Carven Flute. I must face it. I will face it. Chronicler, hear my words. Ragaba’s daughter, hear my words.”
(Here she paced for a sparse level of time, wringing together her bony hands under her lavender chin. Following such, she planted herself facing us in front of the cauldron and sighed.)
“Jo Bree. My Jo Bree. I found it there in the Chack Tree Forest when I was so young so long ago, and I kept it a secret from Semma. I hid it in the hem of my blackest purple cloak. This was long before the Well of Shells existed. Such, hedge dwellers, was so. I remember my Flute.”
(Here she closed her eyes. Kar and I waited in silence, a pair of statues.)
Carven Flute Page 2