Carven Flute

by Steve Shilstone

  Burdened with guilt through the years

  Losses and sorrows behind her

  Time to wash away fears

  Time to reopen two portals

  The first one has never been known

  The second a Well in a meadow

  Made of shells hardened to stone

  Fly high, ye sorceress jrabe

  With youngling and bendo dreen friend

  To the unknown portal I’ll lead ye

  From my purplest glow do not bend”

  The Carven Flute flushed yellow pink and sank into Ragaba’s hand. The echo of its final note faded. We rode the echo in silence, and then rode the silence as well for a spell.

  “What does it mean?” asked Kar, ever the first to break a mood.

  “Be it not clear? What think ye, Silent Bekka?” asked Ragaba turning her sightless milky eyes to me.

  “I… It… I think it means that the portals to the strange world of the language of the Chronicles are to be reopened. The Well of Shells second, but… an Unknown Portal first,” I answered.

  “I know! I know!” said Kar, jumping to her feet. “We turn Jo Bree until it purples, then fly in that direction! Should I shift to jrabe now, Ragaba? We’ll have to carry Bek. Dragons? Should we both be Dragons? Matching?”

  “Pause a time, Karro of Thorns. It be not yet the hour for ye to be revealed as my daughter. The patience of Orrun ye must grasp for a span of length longer. And yet, not a great length of span,” said Ragaba. “I will carry ye both on my neck. I will carry Jo Bree in my talons. Ruby Dragon! Behold!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  To the Unknown Portal

  An explosion of shimmering sparkles filled the globe. The flash of brightness hurled me back against the yellow cushions. I shielded my eyes and squinted. I would not look away. I wanted to see. The sparkles glinted to nothingness, leaving the globe fairly stuffed to bursting with an immensity of Dragon, not merely dragon. It glowed ruby red, curvy and slithery writhing. The grinning head with its shiny scales curled down in front of us. The eyes were pools of black in gold.

  “Climb ye aboard my neck, daughter. Grasp the horns. Have care of the points. Ice sharp they be. Ruby ice sharp,” hissed Ragaba, shifted to a Dragon such and so much more marvelous than had been Kar’s green OR golden. “Get ye up there behind, Silent Bekka. Hold on to Kar’s belt. Now so, have ye forgotten anything?”

  I could only shake my head no, whelmed far over the brim with Ragaba’s beauty. Kar, too, remained speechless, a rarity so such, at her mother’s glorious shift. Mute we sat.

  “And yet, and yet, I think ye be mistaken,” hissed the Dragon Ragaba.

  I smiled dumbly, lackwitted. The Dragon pointed downward with her gleaming red snout. My chonka lay on the yellow cushion where I myself had put it. I smiled dumbly, but didn’t move. I couldn’t. I don’t know why. Yes, I do. Ragaba WAS an impressive Dragon. With a snort of yellow flame, Ragaba laughed. Before I could think, my chonka was thrust up at me in a huge red taloned claw. I took it carefully and attached it to my belt.

  “Such,” hissed the Dragon.

  “Where is Jo Bree?” asked Kar, emerging from her trance of joy.

  “I grasp it thusly,” said Ragaba, shifting her weight to show us the Flute gripped in her other claw. “Hold tight!”

  Kar held on to the horns. I held on to Kar. Behind me I sensed the spread of mammoth wings. Shoof! The long neck shot up, pressing me into Kar’s back. Flump! The beating of the wings. Pressed down we were. Lifted up. Flung sideways. I held on tight. I noticed the clear globe below as swiftly it grew smaller. I looked up at the clusters above us as swiftly they grew larger. We sailed more smoothly up and up. Jrabes were out and all about, racing in every direction, wheeling among the globes. They paid us not a nince of heed. We passed ’em by. A funnel formed in the watery sky and into it we flew. The glassy whirl spat us out, and we glided above the Wide Great Sea in a long lazy circle.

  “Ah, so see?” hissed the Dragon Ragaba, and she held the Flute out where we could watch it.

  Peacefully drifting in lazy circle, Kar and I fastened our gazes on Jo Bree. Flush yellow pink it was. Then it tinged toward purple.

  “It’s purpling!” screamed Kar. “There! No. Back a little to the left. Yes! Purple purplest! Go straight!”

  We bounced up and down as Ragaba nodded, and tucked low when she zoomed off on a line at air whistle speed. Our breaths were fairly taken. Such was so. We’d spouted from the funnel at daybreak, and Ragaba flew us at star comet speed until noon. The sun straight bold overhead, she lifted her neck and settled into a drifting glide.

  “See ye?” she asked, once again holding out Jo Bree.

  The Carven Flute’s purple had faded to flush yellow pink. Ragaba turned. Flush yellow pink to purple to flush yellow pink. Ragaba turned. Flush yellow pink to purple to flush yellow pink.

  “It be directly below,” hissed the Ruby Dragon, sailing in tighter and tighter circles.

  “The Unknown Portal?” asked Kar.

  “But where are we?” I added.

  “Longthin Lake,” hissed Ragaba through her rows of crimson fangs.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I Hold Jo Bree

  I was swept hollow with thrill. Longthin Lake! Such was where Bandy of Thorns, the first and most famous bendo dreen ever to leave the hedge, had journeyed such and so eons ago with the Triplet Princesses Three and their little brother Forr and their cousin Jay Dot of Orrun! Oh, swumpogglers in the Swump of Greedge! Oh, Land of the Rainbow Giants! Many such wonderful Gwer drollek memory marvels flooded my mind. Kar’s mind flooded, too, with the legend we had heard a hundred times or more on this Orange Day or that Purple Day in Assembly Bower. Among bendo dreen, it ranked as number one favorite. Kar twisted her head to peer at me with wide smile and wider eyes.

  “Bandy of Thorns!” she gushed.

  I nodded in my familiar to all Silent Bekka manner.

  “I see a boulder. Be it moving?” hissed Ragaba from her long Dragon throat.

  “What? Where?” asked Kar, jerking forward.

  “On the western shore. Hold on. We descend,” answered Ragaba.

  From soar to glide, we rushed at the water and swooped to a bumping hop of a landing at the lake’s edge. A boulder there truly was, immense. It rocked back and then forth, slowly. Greenish gray, fat and tall, with knobs and bulges, some rough, some smooth. Was it a skrabbler?

  “Is it a skrabbler?” I gasped.

  “Such will soon to be seen. Climb down, younglings. Jo Bree be purple,” said Ragaba, lowering her neck close to the sands of the narrow strip of beach.

  “You get down first, Kar,” I said, ever knowing Kar’s desires better than I know my own.

  Kar slid to the ground. I hopped off next, my chonka chankling as my highboots crunched into the sand. The great boulder swayed. Ragaba, elegant ruby red Dragon, lifted Jo

  Bree and held it out to me.

  “Chronicler, it be for ye to grasp Jo Bree,” she hissed.

  “Me?” I gulped.

  “Prophesy decreed. Take it,” commanded the Dragon.

  I stepped forward and took it from the ice sharp red talons. It felt cool in ripples. Its carven ivy flowed in flush. Purple at first, it faded yellow pink. I almost melted in waves. The boulder swayed. Ragaba shimmered. She disappeared in glimmering mist. The mist sparkled. I was holding the Carven Flute! Babba Ja Harick’s Jo Bree! The boulder swayed. The mist sparkled. Kar looked very unhappy. Then Ragaba as Zinna appeared from the mist.

  “Couldn’t I have held Jo Bree first?” complained Kar.

  “No, daughter. Prophesy decreed. There is other for jrabes like us to do,” said Zinna, smoothing a wrinkle in the fold of Kar’s gray jacket collar.

  “What other?” grumped Kar.

  “Later. It is time for Silent Bekka to approach the boulder. This I believe. This I sense. Such is so,” said Zinna.

  I stared at Jo Bree in my green yellow hand. I blinked a time or two. I look
ed up at the boulder swaying so near to me. One step. One step toward it was so and such truly all that it took.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Breaking of the Seal

  One pace forward with my left highboot put Prophesy in motion. The Carven Flute tore itself from my grip, pulsed wildly all the colors of the rainbow, and rose to hang suspended in air above the massive rock, which ceased in a nince its swaying. Such was strangely so, but strangeness more unfolded.

  Finally at last! sounded a voice inside my head from nowhere at all. How tedious it has been to block the portal for all these bars and bars of years. A gravel crushing bore! And to listen to travelers call me ‘Wobblestone’ with me unable to protest, pledged by stars and moons not to announce myself. ‘Wobblestone’ indeed! I am Shale Dolomite of Skrabble, chosen by the Toss of Pebbles to seal this portal. Seal it I have, and with the proper sway. Wobble indeed! Pah! And so you strangers, creatures, shapeshifters?

  – what matter – you at last have brought the Flute. As lava cools, so I was beginning to doubt the very constellations! How many moons have filled and emptied as I faithfully swayed here mute? Galaxies, it seems. Your thoughts are not blocked, creatures, bendo dreen, jrabes. A mess of confusion. Most annoying! Hurry, Flute, sing me free!

  Such was how I realized the boulder WAS a skrabbler! Another Gwer drollek tale leaped and frolicked in my brain. Great Green Va. Spar Marcasite. But such and so thoughts were quickly drowned. Why? Jo Bree began to sing:

  “The first of the links to reopen Has been guarded by one living rock With patience of Orrun it waited A key to be loosed from the lock When my song ends the boulder is free To return to the river and caves Sharumin, mountains, and home

  Skrabble, a land without waves.”

  The final note of the Flute’s song had not faded fully away before the great boulder skrabbler quaked the ground, shook its bulk loose with a rumble which toppled all three of us, and lifted to float out rapidly over Longthin Lake, heading east. We sat watching it until it disappeared in a gathering of clouds.

  “We’re the first…,” mumbled Kar.

  “The first to what…,” I mumbled in a daze.

  “I…don’t know…,” mumbled Kar.

  “Stand up, younglings. The portal is reopened,” announced Zinna.

  I stood and turned to look at where the skrabbler had swayed in place. A simple clump of sandgrass grew there, quivering in the breeze. The Carven Flute sailed into my hand and flushed yellow pink. Zinna nodded with a smile.

  “It is for you alone to carry Jo Bree from now until forward,” she said.

  I couldn’t speak. With my mouth wide hanging agape, I stared at the Carven Flute.

  “The second portal. The Well of Shells,” encouraged Zinna.

  My face matched the blankness of my mind. It must have been so. Otherwise, Zinna would not have continued to explain.

  “The unknown portal is open. There it is. That is it, a clump of grass. Other than the witch and the skrabbler, we are the only three who know it’s here. Such is so. Babba Ja Harick alone knows the secret chant to make it swallow travelers into the strange world. Those who would go must learn the chant from her lavender lips. No accidental wanderers can fall through. But, Silent Bekka, not so with the second portal. The second portal is the first that ever there was. The path of the Chronicles sent down by Roamer Lace. Your Well of Shells, Bekka. Yours. You will reopen it. You and Jo Bree. Alone. The parts played by us jrabes in the Prophesy are finished. We have journeyed to the time of good-bye.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Kar Becomes Rakara

  “What do you mean by good-bye, Zinna?”

  “Such time is so, Silent Bekka.”

  “You mean we’re leaving Bekka?”

  “So said, daughter. Yes, it’s time. Shift yourself to jrabe just now.”

  “But, me alone?”

  “Here I be. Look at me, Bek! Upside down!”

  “Not so, daughter. Bekka be the one with down side up.”

  “But, about the alone.”

  “No worry, Bek. See my smile. Happiness. It was all in the plan. I just didn’t know when. Ragaba and I will fly to Fan Wa’s Bay! I’ll meet my only father and know him, Bek! An Acrotwist Clown! Imagine! A bendo dreen jrabe who knows BOTH her parents. I be the first so such!”

  “But….”

  “Daughter, float lightly. There be yet one more revelation.”

  “What? Oh, what?”

  “Your fair and true name. I would have ye know it. Your cluster jrabe name.”

  “Jrabe name? I have a cluster jrabe name? Be I not Karro of Thorns? Truly not, I realize it. You, mother, be Zinna of Thorns as bendo dreen and Ragaba as jrabe! Such I should have guessed and thought! But I didn’t. What be my jrabe name? What be it?!”

  “Ye be Rakara, daughter of Ragaba.”

  “Rakara. Rakara. Rakara. Did ye hear, Bek? I be Rakara now. Be it not a thorny bright crunch of a name, Bek?”

  “But the alone part….”

  “Silent Bekka, fortune for ye. May ye complete the Prophesy. I trust ye will. Such and so I know that ye be strong. Wipe away those tears, for ye may now reveal our secret identities to every and all of the bendo dreen. A great day for ye that surely will be in the Assembly Bower.”

  “But….”

  “Bek, don’t worry. Such an adventure I will have! A Gwer drollek tale to be told! And ye will tell it. I’ll bring it for ye to write down as a Chronicle in the strange language. And ye, too, will have an adventure to share with me. The second portal. The Well of Shells. Such will be so and soon enough.”

  “Come, Rakara.”

  “Do we travel as jrabes? Or winged clouds. I like winged clouds. Or Dragons! Could ye teach me the ruby red? Be it not….”

  “Rakara! As jrabe! Lift away. Fall down to the sky.”

  “Good-bye, Bek. Good-byeeeeee……”

  “But….”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I Walk Alone

  I sat watching the clouds long after Ragaba and Rakara sailed upside down out of sight. My Kar, my Karro of Thorns is Rakara, I thought dully, and I am left alone, a bendo dreen away from the hedge. I should have been frightened, but truth, I wasn’t. Such was so. Yes, I’d grown accustomed to the fearsome openness of the sky, but never had I been so such so far from the hedge alone on my own. A light rain drifted down. Reed. I’ll weave a… I stood and crunched along the shore to where a density of likely reeds grew in the shallows of the lake. Like we did when… I remembered back to the time Kar and I wove a hedge to walk under when first we traveled in the W’s Three. The rain continued to fall, lightly, pleasantly. I selected reeds and pulled the longest and most supple of ’em. My fingers were nimble. Skilled I was and am as a weaver. Mesh and tighten, fold and tie. Bar years of chonka repair made my fingers dexterous. Such, my task captured me complete. All else fell away. The rain fell lightly, unnoticed. The Carven Flute, ignored by me, forgotten, remained settled safely on the sandy shore where I had set it down. My chonka, if it chankled as I wove I could not tell. I did not hear. Wide enough… Make the turn… Bulge it… Bring under… I shaped the reeds, wove ’em into a basket bowl hedge. There! I balanced it on my head in triumph. The rain made a pleasing patter lightly on my hedge hat. Hanging strands left for such a purpose I tied beneath my chin. There, right then, of a sudden I was struck by a shaft of loneliness. I froze like the witch, but only for a nince. Clutching my hedge ties, I rushed to Jo Bree.

  “What now? What now? What should I do now?” I cried aloud to the flush yellow pink silent Flute.

  I fell to my knees and picked it up. Its smooth and cool calmed me a few levels. The delicate ridges of its carven ivy tingled at my fingertips. This must look strangely odd, I thought, a bendo dreen under a hedge bowl clutching the Carven Flute in the rain on the edge of Longthin Lake.

  “Jo Bree,” I said, “if you don’t pulse rainbow and sing, what am I to do? Should I sit here in the rain and wait? Or should I walk in some or
some other direction? The Swump of Greedge is that way, east, I guess. Swumpogglers might… but no. The Greenwilla River is there somewhere north beyond the hills. I should walk there. I’ll walk there. It’s in the right direction. Home. Hedge. But how will I cross the River? Get there first, Not So Silent Bekka. Then worry about crossing it. I wonder if I could find some Clover honey. These cookie shingles are crumbs. I could find a hollow with a hive. Then I….”

  By this time I found myself walking in the rain away from Longthin Lake and up a Clover hill. It had to be a Clover hill. I was in Clover. Such was so. I felt certain of it. I walked, and as I walked, I talked to keep myself company. I talked to Jo Bree, asking it questions it simply ignored with flush yellow pink silence. I found a length of pride in my wide bowl hedge hat. It kept me dry. Truth. Sometimes I talked to it. In such a manner I passed the day, wandering hills of Clover in search of the Greenwilla River. I did not find a honey hive. I ate the last of the shingle crumbs. Although alone and without Kar, I mean Rakara, who was off to find her father on Fan Wa’s Island, I felt a comfort. Jo Bree, that very comfort, rested in my hand.

  “You’ll sing me instructions when I need ’em, won’t you, Jo Bree? Of course you will,” I asked and answered with confidence.

  When the rain stopped and the clouds parted and the sunsink gushed orange and red, I stood atop a Clover hill entranced. Below me I gazed on a gaspable sight. Honeygold! Clover Castle! Can it be? Or is it? Oh, the witch’s cottage! Danken Wood? What was happening? The scene before my eyes melted and shifted, melted and shifted, melted and shifted again and again. The hedge! Well of shells! Melt to sunsink over Clover hills, blushing out, orange to gray. Nothing save hills and valleys around and below me. Green hills and valleys, darkening. Jo Bree pulsed a riot of rainbow colors.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Night of the Flute

  I opened my hand. Up floated the Flute.

  “Long I awaited the lilac