by Steve Vernon
All I could see was a high cliff shooting up, with trees and rocks and maybe a few birds drifting overhead – most likely wishing that they had flown to somewhere interesting.
“Big freaking deal,” I said. “It looks a whole lot like Cape Breton to me – or any other part of Canada that has rocks and trees instead of a city in it.I don’t know about you but I think we haven’t really gone anywhere at all.”
“That’s the problem with you city boys,” Bigfoot said. “You were born with a pair of eyes that you just don’t know how to use. You look around and all you see are rock and trees and the same blah-blah-blah, when the actual truth is that every single part of Canada looks and smells and sounds different.”
“It’s all in the way that you squint,” Coyote said – which made about as much sense as a pickle flavored ice cream sundae – but I forgot all about how foolish their words were to me when Nanna Bijou – the Sleeping Giant suddenly sat up.
Have you ever seen anyone buried in the sand on a beach?
You know how some people like to be covered in sand with just their head and their nose sticking up out of the dirt. That particular pastime never did make all that much sense to me – or maybe I just wasn’t squinting properly at it – but seeing the Sleeping Giant sit up from out of the rocks and the trees of Thunder Cape looked almost exactly like watching someone sit up on a beach and shake the sand from out of their ears.
“Hey Old Man,” Bigfoot said.
“Hey Little Fuzzy,” the Sleeping Giant said. “How have you been doing?”
I had to giggle a bit at that.
“Little Fuzzy?” I asked Bigfoot.
Bigfoot looked down at me a little like the very same exact way that I would look down at an ant crawling across my boot laces.
“Maybe I might be little to him,” Bigfoot said. “but not half as much as you look little, standing next to me.”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m short?”
“What I’m trying to say,” Bigfoot replied. “Is that whenever you are standing next to me you look as if you are standing barefoot in a very deep hole.”
Well, I might have argued that particular mathematical formula with him but I couldn’t see all of that much of a future in debating arithmetic with an eight foot tall Sasquatch Bigfoot who could talk to a mountain.
“Hey Nanny Bozo Long Socks,” Bigfoot said, deliberately getting Nanna Bijou’s name wrong just to bug him a bit. “How the heck are you doing?”
“I’m not doing too bad at all, Mister Short and Fuzzy and Funky-Smelling,” Nanna Bijou replied. “How are things going for you?”
“Shorty, eh?” Bigfoot replied. “Do you know what the Russian Cossacks say about dwarves fighting giants?”
“How would I know?” Nanna Bijou asked. “I’ve never learned to speak Russian.”
“Well, let me tell it to you,” Bigfoot said. “According to the Russian Cossacks a dwarf will beat a giant every time. All that the dwarf has to do is to reach straight up as high as he can reach and yank down hard twice.”
I had to laugh out loud at that – being a keen appreciator of the grosser forms of pelvic humour.
“Shh,” Coyote hushed me gently. “It is very bad manners to laugh in front of a mountain.”
I took his word for that and stopped laughing.
“I have come to ask you a favor,” Bigfoot said to Nanna Bijou.
“I didn’t think you’d come all this way to talk about the weather,” Nanna Bijou replied. “So what exactly all are you looking to know?”
“I brought you this to look at,” Bigfoot said, holding the skin of the spirit bear up towards Nanna Bijou. “What do you think of it?”
Nanna Bijou reached down one hand.
As big as Bigfoot was, seeing him next to Nanna Bijou was a little like watching a ten year old playing with an action figure. I just had the feeling that old Nanna Bijou could have just as easily have snatched up all three of us and thrown us clear across the country.
Still – looking at that great mountain giant didn’t give me too much of a sense of fear whatsoever. He looked calm, almost peaceful, like somebody’s favorite grandfather – only not quite so funny smelling. His eyes were like deep calm pools and I swear to you that I could see trout jumping in them and I was likewise sure that if I had managed to get close enough I would have seen frogs kick-swimming through those deep calm eye pools of old Nanna Bijou.
His face was cracked and creased like he was about a billion years old – but he still had the ghost-memory of a smile creased and cracked about the corners of his mouth. I was pretty sure that Old Nanna Bijou still thought of the world as being a very cool and neat and wonderful place – kind of the very same way that a two year old kid will look at a playground.
He took that funky old spirit bearskin from Bigfoot’s extended hand like it was nothing more than a scrap of tissue for blowing his nose on. He held his palm up to his face carefully, like the palm of it was full of salt and vinegar potato chips, and then he waved his other great hand over his upraised palm, wafting the scent of the spirit bearskin up to his mighty great nostrils.
We need a better nose, Bigfoot had said.
Looking up from my perspective I had to admit that I had never seen a set of nostrils as large as Old Nanna Bijou’s were. They were like weird great teepees full of mystery and boogers the size of small downhill boulders. I had the feeling as if there might have been great colonies of bright green booger-bats hiding up in the caves of those huge and mighty nostrils – and a weird freaky part of me wondered what they looked like inside.
If ANYBODY could tell us where the Spirit Bear had come from – this guy could.
“Do you recognize the scent?” Bigfoot asked.
A thundercloud passed over the features of Nanna Bijou. Just for an instant I could see some of that strong dark power that Old Nanna Bijou – the Spirit of the Deep Sea Water – must have still possessed.
“It is not a good smell, that is for sure,” Nanna Bijou said. “It is a very bad smell and it belongs to this one’s brother.”
Nanna Bijou pointed down at Coyote who sort of looked like he was trying to hide in the shadow of a nearby tree. I wasn’t certain if Coyote was feeling embarrassed or afraid – or maybe even a little of both.
“I was pretty certain that the Spirit Bear had been called by Raven,” Bigfoot said. “I just wanted to be good and sure, is all.”
“Do you really plan to hunt down Raven?” Nanna Bijou asked.
“Now what do you think we are planning to do?” Bigfoot replied with a slow sly grin – which told me that Bigfoot didn’t quite trust Nanna Bijou – not any farther than he could throw the big old mountain giant.
“I think you might better off finding yourselves a deep dark cave to hide down in for maybe about the next hundred years or so,” Nanna Bijou said. “Raven won’t be all that easy to take down.”
“First I’ve got to find him,” Bigfoot said. “I’ll let the taking-down part figure itself out once we get there.”
Nanna Bijou thought about that.
“You will need a good tracker,” Nanna Bijou said.
“I can track,” Coyote replied. “Coyotes are actually natural born hunters.”
“No offence – but I know that you couldn’t find the wrong end of your tail if you used both of your paws and your teeth,” Nanna Bijou said to Coyote. “No, I think you folks really ought to look up the Ku Sidhee.”
“Old Shuck?” Bigfoot asked. “The Death Dog?”
“That is the one,” Nanna Bijou said. “You will need to go back to Cape Breton – back to where you came from.”
“You’ve been watching us?” Bigfoot asked. “You must have been if you know where we have come from.”
“I sleep with one eye open,” Nanna Bijou said. “But who is this with you? I have been watching him but do not recognize his story.”
“My name is Adam Rooker,” I said. “I am very pleased to mee
t you Mister Mountain, sir.”
All right – so you tell me just exactly how you would go about addressing a mountain?
Old Nanna Bijou, he seemed to like that though. He chuckled a little, turning loose a couple of small scale avalanches.
“Sir, is it?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “I mean, your mountainship sir.”
Bigfoot put his hand over his mouth trying unsuccessfully to hold back his laughter and Coyote was rolled over and giggling out loud but Old Nanna Bijou just looked down at me and smiled.
“This one has been raised properly,” Nanna Bijou said. “You two lug-nuts could learn a thing or two about respect from this little Adam story.”
Now Bigfoot started laughing as well.
I ignored their shared hilarity.
“Can you keep care of him while we hunt for Raven?” Bigfoot asked.
“I don’t need anybody to take care of me,” I argued. “Let alone a mountain.”
Nanna Bijou laughed at that, too.
“This little Adam story has been marked by the Raven,” Nanna Bijou said. “You know what that means now don’t you?”
Bigfoot nodded.
“It means that I am stuck with him,” Bigfoot said. “Until we fix things right.”
“Hey,” I argued. “Don’t I get any kind of a say in this?”
“He has got a point,” Coyote said. “It is his life that we are talking about after all.”
At that point I was getting awfully tired of standing there and being talked about like I had about as much to say about my own fate as the last pork chop on a fat man’s plate.
“So what’s it like being a mountain?” I asked, butting into the conversation just as hard as I could manage.
“It isn’t so bad, little Adam story,” Nanna Bijou said. “But the days can get awfully long. I grow tired of listening to the birds and the wind. There’s only so many times you can listen to some red-bellied robin telling you how big of a worm he just caught.”
I thought about that.
I guess I could understand what he was telling me. It wasn’t all that hard to imagine just how boring it could be just sitting there on the end of an island at the edge of a lake and listening to a whole lot of nothing worth listening to.
And then I did something completely unexpected.
“Here,” I said, handing him my i-pod and headphones. “They’re a little small – but maybe you ought to try wearing these.”
Old Nanna Bijou reached down and he carefully plucked the i-pod and headphones from my hand. It felt a little like feeding a shelled peanut to a fully grown elephant – but as he picked up the i-pod the wires seemed to grow and stretch as long as telephone pole wires – which I guess was magic. The headphones enlarged – I could see them swelling up bigger and bigger the closer he got them to his big old mountain-god ears.
Then he popped them right over his ears and I almost at seeing just how big he was smiling at the sound of the Squealing Sacred Sea Monkeys screeching out Misunderstood #23.
“Hey,” Nanna Bijou said. “This is even better than that Johnny Cash tone-deaf hoedown hoohaw that Little Fuzzy listens to all of the time.”
Seeing Bigfoot scowl the way he did at that last comment made the whole thing worthwhile.
“Go ahead and keep them,” I said. “They look good on you.”
Nanna Bijou smiled at that.
I guess he was feeling pretty happy with the gift I had given him.
“Nice one, kid,” the Coyote said. “You’re a natural.”
“Beginner’s luck,” Bigfoot growled softly.
Old Nanna Bijou looked down at me earnestly.
“You have done me a great kindness,” Nanna Bijou said. “And I would like to return the favor. What gift can I give to you in return?”
“He’s offering you a wish, kid,” Coyote explained. “It’s like a favor – only bigger.”
“Why?” I asked, suddenly a little nervous.
“You paid him due homage,” Coyote said. “Which means that you gave him a gift. That’s a sign of politeness to the old people. Which means that he has to give you a gift back – only it needs to be even bigger than your gift was.”
All right.
A freaking wish.
That had be cooler than an iceberg in a deep freeze.
Now I have got to admit that the very first thing I thought of wishing for was a pot full of shiny gold.
I mean, here was this mythical magic mountain giant standing in front of me like a genie out of a lamp and asking me to make a wish.
So that’s the first thing ANYONE thinks of – isn’t it?
A million dollars.
A pot of gold.
All of the freaking money in the whole freaking world.
But then I thought about what I’d do with that money and I thought of how easy money was to spend and I thought about just how fast money vanishes once you started spending it and then I thought to myself why not wish for what you REALLY want.
So then I said it.
I said what I really wanted to wish for.
“If I tell you what I wish for that means you have to give it to me, right?” I asked.
Nanna Bijou nodded.
“Think carefully, kid,” Bigfoot warned. “You might not like getting whatever you try wishing for.”
Says you, was what I thought.
I was DONE listening to Bigfoot.
“No matter what I say,” I went on. “You have to give it to me.”
Nanna Bijou nodded.
“Careful,” Coyote warned nervously. “Be very careful.”
But I already knew what I was going to say before I even said it.
“I want to see my Dad,” I said. “I want to see my real Dad – before he found that baby carriage and went and died.”
And then Nanna Bijou nodded for the third and final time.
And then all at once I was gone.
I had the distinct feeling I was going to feel deeply sorry for what I had wished for.
Chapter Twelve – Shaking Hands With the Raven
It happened fast.
It was like a cloud had somehow got in the way of the sun. Everything blurred just a little and I worried for a moment that maybe I was going to faint from an overexposure to one too many outbursts of unbelievable stupidity. Maybe I was having some sort of a seizure and maybe I was going to die right here on the shores of Cape Thunder.
Maybe I’d even get to see Dad.
My real Dad.
Maybe this was how Old Nanna Bijou was going to grant my wish. Maybe he had just struck me dead with magic and I was going to finally get to see my real Dad.
Oddly enough the possibility of me actually being dead wasn’t terrifying me half as much as it probably ought to have.
Only I wasn’t dying.
Things were just getting darker, was all.
I had seen a YouTube video of a squid shooting ink once. It looked a little bit like what was happening to me right now. It was as if the entire world was growing darker but just in the spot around me as if I had somehow stepped into a state of permanent shadow.
I glanced back over my shoulder. Bigfoot and Coyote were standing right where I had left them, still looking away from me and up at that walking mountain, Old Nanna Bijou. I could see the sun was shining on the two of them but it was as if I were looking at the sunlight through a half a dozen pairs of dirt-stained dark glasses.
Only Bigfoot and Coyote weren’t moving at all. They were both standing perfectly still as if they were nothing but a cartoon on television that somebody had paused. I could see a bird flying over Coyote’s left shoulder only the bird wasn’t moving, either. It was hung there like it had been thumb tacked to the sky.
“I was wondering just how long it would take you to get here,” said a voice about as dark as the shadow in the bottom of a two hundred foot well-hole. “Usually what I leave my mark on come
s back to me a whole lot quicker than this.”
The voice I heard was a voice that sounded about as dark as the darkest of dark bitter chocolate bar, if chocolate could sing – only it did not sound not half as sweet as that.
I looked up to see just who was talking to me.
I think he would have probably stepped dramatically out of the shadows except I think he was made completely out of shadow. He was tall and lean and wore a magician’s top hat that smoked like the old tin chimney that sat on the roof of my real Dad’s summer cabin. As the shadow man stepped towards me he kind of shimmered as if he were made out of shadow, smoke and road tar. It looked to me as if every black Crayola crayon and last-forever Sharpee marker had been smeared and smudged across his soul.
Now what?
Where had Old Nanna Bijou sent me?
“Pleased to meet you,” the shadow man said – reaching out and shaking my hand.
I just stood there and I said nothing – repressing the sudden urge to count my fingers to make certain they were all intact after he had shaken them.
“Can’t you speak?” the shadow man asked. “Did the crow steal your tongue?”
Don’t say anything, I thought to myself.
Don’t you dare answer this freaking weird shadow man.
Don’t you dare say a single freaking word.
“Crows will do that, if you are not careful,” the shadow man said. “They will steal your tongue right out by the roots.”
Not a word.
Whatever happens please don’t say anything to me. I’m just a kid on a summer vacation. I’m in Cape Breton and you are not Darth Vader and this is NOT the twilight zone. I am just bonding with my dorky stepdad, Warren.
No more of this freaky weirdness, please.
“Do you believe in monsters, Teller-boy?” the shadow man asked me.
He reached out to me just the same way a shadow will reach out as the day grows longer. I felt a passing coolness and a heat, like I was standing in the shade of a hot and breezeless August afternoon. I smelled attic dust and wind-blown feathers and the kind of crispy ash that sticks to freshly-burned marshmallows.
I suppose I should have said something.
I shouldn’t have been as scared as I was.
After all, I had lived through my Dad being blown up by a baby carriage. A little thing like a man made out of shadow and ash should not have terrified me like it was doing.