Blue Hills

by Steve Shilstone

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  On the Stairway and the Slide

  “Come on, Bek. Things are changing to different. Wrinkled snaves? Only eight of ‘em? Stairs instead of funnel slide? We have to be getting so such closer to the witch, don’t you think? Truth, when you picked up that gleam … oh, lens. I see … When you picked it up, I fell to here. No more stage. Lens. It must be important, don’t you think? Should you bring it? Or not?”

  “I’ll tie candy to my boots. I’ll glue oats to my eyebrows. I’ll bring it.”

  “Bek, your nonsense is giving me some good ideas. When we return so such to the hedge and enter the Assembly Bower, I’ll be the first ever to appear there with candy tied to my boots and oats glued to my eyebrows.”

  “Sing. Dance. Walk.”

  “Why don’t I shift to Dragon and fly us down these stairs? I didn’t get a chance to shift for those gloomy snaves of Onnek. They did chant nicely, though. Truth. What’s next, Bek? Are there more snaves? I forget what Jo Bree sang.”

  “The vest is shredded, not churned. The clouds don’t matter on odd-numbered days. There are snaves of Unnek, then no more.”

  “Should I shift?”

  “Sunflare. Ragroot. No.”

  “Let me at least get a closer look at that lens … Ah, it has a glassy sort of soothing smoothness, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, and it’s so very round, isn’t it?”

  “Bek, that was only one sentence, and it made sense. Now what?”

  “It was, wasn’t it? Where’s the nonsense? One, two, three, talk, talk, send words from brain to lips. Kar! I can say what I mean right away! Watch this. My hat has fins. Ha! I said, ‘My hat has fins.’ And it wasn’t nonsense. I meant to say it!”

  “But … you don’t have a hat … so such not even one without fins.”

  “Of course I don’t! Hat fins! Hat fins! Hat fins! My nonsense is my own. The lens! When I gave it to you, I was released from nonsense spouting. Yagooooo!”

  “Settle, Bek. You’ve traded nonsense for madness, I think.”

  “Look, Kar. The stairway ends into the slide. I’ll race you!”

  “Wait! I should be first!”

  “So such, let’s jump together. Hold onto my hand.”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “Bek, the boundary.”

  “Between fourth tier and third. Wait. Wait. Not yet … Go!”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “The next.”

  “Slow. Slow. Listen to it grind and scrape. Wait. Wait … Go!”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “I lost count, Bek. Is this the last?”

  “It is. From here to the lake where my mind will go blank and you will gather moonplums. Such will truly be so. Show me the lens. Good. Don’t lose it. Truth, it must be important. Wait. The tunnel should almost be … Go!”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  “Yaaaaaaaaa …”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Wispy Pink Windwhirl

  I swam up from a gray sort of silent gloom to feel the sun’s warmth on my face. I opened my eyes. I felt a bead of water trailing down my cheek. I sat up in my drenched clothing. Alone on the familiar slope of pale blue grass I sat. I looked across the lake to the Charborr Forest heights. My mind was dull, numb. I blinked my eyes. No thought disturbed my empty head. Blankly I stared at the lake until its smooth surface was shattered by the thrashing rise of a three-headed Dragon. It rode low through the air gliding and landed at my side. Shimmer shift. There was Kar, proudly holding out both hands filled with moonplums.

  “You woke up earlier than the other times,” she said. “I did the three-headed Dragon underwater. You saw so such. I would have flattened the snaves with it, don’t you think? Have a moonplum. Should we go right away to the Unnek? I’ve got the lens. See?”

  She dropped one handful of moonplums in my lap and reached into her jacket pocket and brought out the lens. In the palm of her yellow green hand it flashed brightly, reflecting the sun. I nodded and began to gnaw on a moonplum. My mind remained fogged. I felt the movement, the pause, and the movement back of the Blue Hill tier. So such I gripped pale blue grass tufts with both of my hands and shook my head, trying to clear my mind. Spatter drops of little diamond pearls of water were flung from my hair. Some quivered and clung to the grass. Some ran down the pale blue blades.

  “Bek? Bek?” said Kar with a level of worry in her voice.

  She looked up the slope. I followed her gaze to the top of the hill and saw what she saw. There, thin at the bottom and thickening wispily upward, was a rapidly spinning windwhirl. Pink! My mind of a sudden was swept clear of fog and replaced by a frantic scramble of thoughts. Pink windwhirl! From the oldest Gwer drollek. The Babba Ja Harick and her sister Semma in the Chack Tree Forest as younglings. The creation of the Well of Shells. Pink windwhirl! It disappeared into the Harick’s crystal ball, never more to be seen. I see it! I’m seeing it. Kar’s jaw dropped. Mine, too. Kar darted a glance at me and mouthed ‘Gwer drollek’. She knew so such as well as I what it was we saw. The windwhirl descended the hill and spoke in a whispery whooshing way.

  “Ssshheeeooo you have arrihhhhhhvved. Ssshhheeeooowww me the lensshhhh,” it said, wobbling ever closer.

  Kar quickly placed the lens on the grass and stepped back several long and respectful paces. I, too, shuffled backward, away from the lens. I felt my own silly fixed grin. I saw Kar’s.

  The windwhirl in graceful spinning dance approached the lens, and something other began to happen. The lens itself started to twitch, flip, stretch, bulge. It puffed out until it was no longer a lens. Instead, it ballooned in shape to a perfect globe, a crystal ball! Kar’s hands trembled. I saw ‘em. Mine were fisted, and thrills raced up and down my spine. The pink windwhirl swirled around the globe while crackling with white zags of brilliance. Crash of lightning! Karraakkk! Zag of blinding light! The pink windwhirl was gone. The globe nestling in the grass was no longer crystal clear. It glowed a steady blue, and in it a tiny whirl of wispy pink smoke evaporated.

  “Pink windwhirl,” said Kar in awe. “From the very truly so such first Gwer drollek story ever. It went into the crystal ball. Bek, the lens was a crystal ball. We saw the creation of a crystal ball. Bek, this is …”

  She got no further. The crystal ball lifted to float in the air, and with it, so did we! Up the hill we glided in its wake. Rise and fall, it led us above the contours of the Blue Hills.

  We passed over the boundaries, and I gazed at the blue sand churning in each of ‘em. Kar nervously babbled non-stop. I said nothing. We reached the summit of the fifth Blue Hill tier. The crystal ball settled onto the smoky blue grass there, and so did we. As Kar and I touched down, the hill opened below us, revealing a silver blue stairway. The crystal ball floated directly to me and stopped a scant smudge of a distance in front of my face. I knew what I was expected to do. I knew. I reached up and took the blue glowing globe into the palm of my hand.

  “Yoss! That’s it!” I said.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Snave of Unnek

  “Witch speak again,” said Kar like as if in a daze, overcome so such by our unexpected encounter with the legendary pink windwhirl and more so even by what had followed with the dreamy magic of the crystal ball carrying us gently to the top of the highest fifth tier Blue Hill.

  “Yoss,” I said solemnly. “Rich beak … witch speak. Listen and bark … mark well. I will recite the … the … second cart … part … of … No Fee’s … Toe Sea’s … Row Gee’s … the Flute’s! … gong … song. Yoss. That’s it. First A and E, then I, O, and … and … U! Yoss! The beers … tiers of the … the snaves must be … be … climbed. Riddle and nonsense, babble … babble and … and bargain, the … nook to be found must be timed … no … rhymed! Yoss! That’s it! Frown the stairway, Kar. Down!”

  Cradling the crystal blue globe in
both my hands, I led the way down the stairs. The silver blue light surrounding us was comfortably dim. The blue dirt walls on both sides and the blue dirt ceiling above were streaked with silver smooth wet glistening ribbons of clay. Kar, subdued to silence, held on to a pinch of the back of my jacket. The stairs were steeper and went deeper than had any of the others. The steady rhythm of our bootsteps disturbed the otherwise long silent journey. After a lengthy descent, the stairway ended, swinging left to the entrance of a cavernous theater. It seemed so such like as all of the others. Tiers of benches circled around a platform stage. The benches were empty of snaves. The stage, howsoever, was not. A single midnight blue snave waited there, regarding us with its great round eye.

  “I meant to say something else,” it called out. “Proceed.”

  “I am … here … to bind the book … find the nook … of the … the … Harick,” I announced.

  “Nook?” squeaked Kar. “How do you …?”

  I silenced her with an elbow jab.

  “I will allow yesterday’s interview,” said the snave. “Proceed.”

  “Is it … blue … true … that you … are the only, singular … wave … snave of Unnek?” I began with confidence sprouted from an unknown source.

  “They wrote it on the wall,” answered the snave, and it writhed, quivering its four tentacles. “Proceed.”

  “The portal to the hook … book … nook! … lies beneath your … cage? … no … stage! Yoss! That’s it! Isn’t it?” I pronounced with a firm, though witchly, boldness.

  “Why don’t you tell our story from the …”

  My elbow again put a stop to Kar’s urgent mutter.

  “Sometimes why is a question worth flinging,” said the snave, and it drummed on the stage with its tentacle tips.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” it answered. “Proceed. Where’s the bargain?”

  “Ah,” I said, opening my mind to more unbidden helpful thoughts and not getting ‘em. “Bargain … bargain … Hmmmmm … If I climb … grime … rhyme! … a bargain, will you open for us the … the page … stage! Yoss! That’s it! … portal?”

  “No stage. Merely steps, and only on one condition. I must have in my grip forever Jo Bree,” said the snave, raising high all of its tentacles.

  Jo Bree? Jo Bree. It wants me to give it Jo Bree! I thought in panic. Mine! Mine! Mine! My only magic! Jo Bree! Kar elbowed me in the ribs. The snave waited. It stared. I couldn’t speak, and then I could.

  “Pie? … Fly? … Cry? … High? … Shy? … Dry? … Why?” I agonized.

  “Sometimes why can open gates if greed is gone,” said the snave.

  I understood in a flash. I nodded. Kar looked astonished when I grabbed her hand and began to lead her down the aisle. We ascended the few stairs to the stage. The snave reached forth a tentacle.

  “Fold … hold this,” I instructed Kar, handing her the crystal ball.

  I pulled Jo Bree from my belt and felt its flush yellow pink coolness on my fingers for the final time. I released it from my grasp to the wiggling tentacle of the snave. I was struck with a so such certain sort of hollowness. The snave turned and slithered across the stage, down the steps and up the aisle. Kar softly placed the glowing blue globe into my cupped empty hand. The floor sagged beneath us and opened down to a tunnel, bright with yellow light.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  To the Nook

  “Bek, you did it! Look. Yellow walls. Gold, do you think? And such a path of white … They’re flat rocks, Bek. Strewn. Smooth. Something seems …”

  “Lemony.”

  “Such! That’s exact! Like as on Lemon Day in every Acrotwist kitchen. The scent of lemons smacks your face with every pie thrown. Lemons. I smell ‘em.”

  “Follow the bath, Kar.”

  “You mean the path, Bek. Bek, wasn’t it hard for you to give up Jo Bree to that snave? You had to do it, though, didn’t you?”

  “Yoss.”

  “Why?”

  “To show I was not … not … not …”

  “Not what?”

  “Not … greedy.”

  “Oh, that. You aren’t. You never were … much. Oh, there! This tunnel is so such a short one. Good. Things are moving fast, aren’t they? What’s out there, do you think? It looks like a full bright sunny day.”

  “The … nook.”

  “Nook again. You tried to break my ribs when I asked you before about the nook. I’m going to ask. Don’t jab me. What about the nook?”

  “The Babba Ja Harick is … is rare … there.”

  “And soon we’ll bring her and magic back home?”

  “Yoss … Ohhh!”

  “Bek, Bek. It’s like as winter white in the Woods Beyond the Wood, but frosted with yellow.”

  “A closed valley, deep and narrow. Lemony. Yoss. That’s it. The book … cook … nook! Yoss!”

  “A fizzy tricklestream, Bek. It’s cold … Mmmmmm.”

  “Mmmmmmm … lemony.”

  “Well so, Chronicler Bekka, which way should we go? Down that aisle of yellow-frosted white trees or along the white path we followed from the cave? Both of ‘em look so such to me like as if they’re calling us. Mmmmmm, did you try one of these yet? They’re more lemony than the stream.”

  “Mmmmm, yoss, and the white are more … lemony than the … pillow … yellow. The bath, Kar. We’ll follow the bath.”

  “You said bath again and didn’t correct yourself. Why?”

  “You knew what I bent … meant.”

  “Such. Bek, do you notice that the ground isn’t moving? Are we past the Blue Hills? Are we past ‘em?”

  “Yoss, maybe.”

  “Past the Blue Hills. We’re past a place we never even knew existed. And now we’re in a place past that.”

  “The nook.”

  “Nook. Right. The Nook. Here we are in the Nook, which is really so such to me a splendid valley of lemon and white. The Lemon White Valley! That’s what I’ll call it when I bring this Gwer drollek tale to the Acrotwist Clowns. Lemon White Valley. So such more better than the Nook, don’t you think?”

  “Kar!”

  “Yes? Oh … it’s the …”

  “Cottage of the stitch … witch.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Babba Ja Harick

  A cottage, yellow and white, nestled at the end of the flat white stone path where Kar and I stood, both of us trembling. Sprays of yellow and white blooms on creamy gold hedges surrounded the cottage. White trees, a pair of ‘em, heavy with fat globe lemons, flanked the probably edible probably witch’s dwelling. At the delicious looking sight of my probable destination, I recalled the very true stark reason why I’d so such journeyed far from my home by the Well of Shells. The waterwizards were depending on me. The fate of Janellia Spurl frozen up a tree in Villcom Wood rested in my bendo dreen hands, as did the fates of a certain beeketbird stuck midair above my hut, all the bendo dreen in the hedge, and so such every other creature, frozen or magicless, spread across the vastness of All Fidd and Leee Combined on Boad, not to mention the Wide Great Sea and who knew where else. The witch would be in the lemony cottage. Such I believed. It was my task to fetch her. Squaring my shoulders, I strode forward to the cottage door. I raised my fist to rap on its yellowness, but before my knuckles could tap, a voice of calm sounded from inside.

  “Come in, Bekka, and bring your shapeshifting friend with you,” it said.

  I peered back over my shoulder at Kar. She shrugged like we do. I opened the door and entered the cottage. A surprising neatness greeted my eye. Not at all like the witch’s cottage in Danken Wood. No disarray. No mounds of clothes and clutter. No. Instead, a clean round yellow table sat in the center of the room. On it rested a golden bowl of the white and yellow lemony berries Kar and I had so recently tasted. A gleaming white bowl of lemons, so such probably plucked from the trees just outside, shared the table. Rocking gently on a yellow rocker swirled with carven scrollwork was the witch, the Babba Ja Harick.
She smiled at us with a most pleasant sweetness. In her lavender hands with their crooked ring-bedecked fingers she held a glowing blue crystal ball, a very twin to the one I patted to make sure it was still in my pocket. She was the witch, and yet she was different. She was dressed in white satins with gold thread stitching, not in black. No bent black pointy hat. No buckle shoes. No blackest purple cloak. Never had she ever been seen in so such an array of finery.

  “And now,” she said softly, “I am content. You, Bekka, have willingly surrendered Jo Bree to accomplish your task of unfreezing and returning magic to your homeland.”

  Kar stepped forward and bluntly asked, “Where is your witch speak? Why aren’t you addled? Why isn’t this cottage a mess?”

  With a chuckle, not a cackle, the witch replied, “I see that Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns has a bold and quick curiosity. It is well, Bekka. You will need such a friend to help you carry your burden. In answer, jrabe jroon, I will explain to you that I have retired to bliss. Truth. My mind no longer races with colliding thoughts of Prophesy and duty. I am here now in lemony bliss, and here I will stay.”

  “But,” I said uneasily, so such with a level of alarm that had been rising from the instant I’d heard the witch mention my needing a friend to help carry my burden, “Bid … Fidd … and Tea … Leee. I must bake … lake … take you back … back … to … to … return the … the … magic.”

  “Listen to yourself, Bekka. Is it not yet clear to you? Who will return magic to All Fidd and Leee Combined on Boad? Who?” said Babba Ja Harick, and the question dangled in silence.

  “Bekka?” whispered Kar in disbelief after a lengthy pause.

  “Bekka,” confirmed the witch with a nod. “Go, Bekka. Open that cupboard there.”

  I followed her pointing finger to the tallest yellow door in a wall of yellow doors and drawers. My legs were jelly. I managed a step and pulled the round white knob to open the cupboard. Jelly became syrup when I heard what the witch said while I stared at a pointy black hat on a shelf above, at black shoes with silver buckles below, at neatly hanging black purple cloak, white cambric shirt, black skirt, black and purple striped stockings, and black overshirt with long sleeves.