Happy Feet Two

by Paul Livingston

  “It’s just not enough,” said Mumble up above, growing more desperate.

  Sven fluttered above Mumble and settled on the head of a Chinstrap penguin.

  “Attentions, everybuddy! Mumble’s foot is hurty!”

  “But I have a song and dance from my homelands,” Sven offered with a genuine desire to help. “It is in Svenish and goes exactly like this.”

  Sven began to sing. The tune was cheesy, and his dance wasn’t any better. Still, all the penguins gave Sven’s routine a chance. What did they have to lose?

  Penguins above and below tried to follow his strange dance moves. Mumble watched with hope, but the tower still didn’t move.

  Mumble turned to Erik. “Come on, son.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Erik as he followed his father through the crowd.

  “To find us a lot more ooomph!” was all Mumble replied.

  Behind them, Sven and the others danced with all their might.

  But the tower still didn’t budge.

  Hiding in his puddle, Will was puzzled by something. The water was beginning to swirl around him, and soon it was dragging him down into the ice. As the ice melted, it drained through a tiny shaft and down into the ice shelf. Will slid down deeper and deeper into this seemingly bottomless ice tunnel.

  His heart pounded as the terror ride continued. The tunnel twisted and turned, full of sudden drops, narrow spaces, and enormous caverns. Finally, he found himself treading water in the middle of a dark, watery void. He wasn’t dropping anymore, but he couldn’t see anything, and he was very frightened.

  “Where am I? Who turned out the lights? Is this the end? If only I’d listened to Bill, none of this would have happened,” he said. “Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry …”

  “That’s okay,” came the sound of Bill’s reassuring voice.

  “You were right, Bill, I should have stayed with the swarm.”

  “No, you were right, Will.”

  Will was amazed just how real this imaginary conversation was starting to feel.

  “Oh, great! Now I’m talking to myself. That’s the first sign of madness.”

  “You’re not mad, Will,” said Bill, slowly becoming luminescent and appearing before his eyes.

  “Now I’m seeing things. I’m completely insane!” cried Will, growing hysterical.

  Bill slapped his face.

  “Ouch!” cried Will. “Bill? Is it really you?”

  “There’s only one of me in the whole world, Will. You taught me that.”

  All around them, thousands of tiny krill began to light up.

  “Hey! Quiet, you two! We’re trying to sleep,” came a cry from the swarm.

  “Hey, everyone,” shouted Bill. “It’s Will, he’s back!”

  On hearing this, millions and then billions of krill lit up, illuminating the dark waters. Will was back in the swarm, home at last! The other krill were delighted to see him. Bill had told them about their adventures, and Will was now famous.

  “Wow, it’s really him,” cried one excited krill.

  “All conquering and wise!” shouted another.

  “I thought he’d be taller,” came a more feeble voice.

  “Welcome home, Will,” said Bill, happy to have his best friend back by his side.

  “But how did you find your way back to the swarm?” asked Will.

  “They found me,” said Bill. “I was on my last five legs.”

  “I was such a fool,” said Will repentantly.

  “Will, you’re a legend.”

  “No, those days are gone. The carnivore is over,” said Will.

  “No, Will, it’s because of you that we are all here!” Bill explained. “I told them how the world really works, how there were predators and we had to adapt. I led them here, under the great ice where no one can find us.”

  “But, Bill, we’re still at the bottom of the food chain.”

  “But we all have a purpose, right, guys?” said Bill to the adoring krill around them.

  They all agreed.

  “And yours is to change the world,” Bill continued.

  “But what possible difference could one krill make?” Will asked.

  “Wait and see, Will,” Bill promised. “You just wait and see …”

  On a crowded beach, Elephant seals were in the middle of mating season. Amid the noise and chaos, two gigantic seals stared each other down. The largest of the pair was Bryan—the Beachmaster—taunting his opponent.

  “Wadda you lookin’ at?”

  “Wadda you lookin’ at?” the challenger responded.

  “Dunno,” snarled the Beachmaster. “But it sure is ugly.”

  The challenger was furious and reared up aggresively.

  “Come on, then!”

  The Beachmaster reared higher. “You come on!”

  Just as he was about to body slam his opponent, he heard a voice behind him.

  “Excuse me,” said Mumble, dwarfed by the pair of Elephant seals. The Beachmaster looked down to see Mumble and tiny Erik stuck close to his father.

  “G’day, chief. Wadda you doin’ here?” said the Beachmaster amiably.

  “I need a favor,” Mumble explained.

  “For you, champ, anything.”

  “I need you to come to Emperor Land,” Mumble asked. “And bring as many of your kind as possible with you.”

  “Why?” said the Beachmaster.

  “To dance,” said Mumble, offering a brief demonstration that drew laughs from the crowd, and particularly the challenger.

  “Now why would I want to do that?” replied the Beachmaster.

  “To free the penguin nation!” pleaded Mumble.

  “I’d love to help ya, sport,” said the Beachmaster. “Maybe after winter or some-thin’, okay?”

  “That’s too late,” Mumble insisted.

  “Right now I’ve got problems of my own. The multitudes need me to keep the peace.”

  “If you don’t come now, multitudes will die,” Mumble warned.

  “You sayin’ it’s my fault now?” said the Beachmaster, bristling. “Listen, fella, you look after your kind and I’ll look after mine.”

  Mumble was outraged.

  “If I thought like that I would have left you in that hole. I saved your life!”

  “And I’m gonna save yours?” growled the Beachmaster, losing patience. “Just take your little furball of a son and fluff off or else!”

  Mumble was stunned. He turned to Erik.

  “Come on, son, we’re wasting our time. There’s nothing for us here.”

  The Beachmaster turned back to his challenger.

  “Now where was I? Oh yeah, wadda you lookin’ at?”

  “Wadda you lookin at?”

  “Dunno …”

  Erik watched as his father limped away. It seemed that all was lost. But Erik refused to give up.

  He directed his heartfelt words at his departing father.

  “No, Pa, this is so unfair, after all you have done. Nothing makes sense in this world. It’s all a big pile of crazy … and the kings are all fools!”

  Mumble turned around, surprised. He could hardly believe his ears. Erik had never done or said anything like this before!

  Once he had his father’s attention, Erik turned and glared fiercely at the Beachmaster.

  “Where is the honor, when a solemn promise is just a pretty lie—and the mighty mock the courage of the humble?”

  The huge Elephant seal also could not believe that these poetic words were coming from such a tiny penguin.

  The Beachmaster’s pups were transfixed by Erik. This kid was really cool.

  The passion and feeling rose in Erik’s strong, clear voice.

  “Although he is just an ordinary penguin, my daddy taught me, you don’t need to be colossal to have a great heart. You don’t need to fly to be awesome … like my hero, my father.”

  Erik ran over to his father and buried his face in his feathers. All of the Elephant seals fell silent. Mumble was spe
echless, too. He wrapped his flippers around Erik, still wondering how these extraordinary thoughts and words could have emerged from his beloved, little boy. Had a father ever been so praised by a son? And had a father ever been so proud of his son?

  The Beachmaster’s pups looked up at their own father, their large, round eyes showing their shame and expectation.

  Back in Emperor Land, Sven was a lone figure at the top of the Doomberg. In utter frustration, he was trying to shift the leaning tower of ice by repeatedly throwing his body against it. But he was making no impact.

  Suddenly, he heard something that sounded like rolling thunder. Sven stopped to listen and flew into the sky to investigate. From there he saw it: thousands of huge Elephant seals coming over the rise heading to Emperor Land.

  Following them were the penguins who had given up hope of rescuing the Emperors and had been on their way back to Adelie Land!

  Down below, Gloria, Seymour, Atticus, Miss Viola, Bo, Lovelace, Ramon, and Carmen heard the strange roaring noise, too. Soon all the Emperor penguins saw what, under normal circumstances, would have terrified them. Leading the giant seals was the Beachmaster with his pups by his side … and on his back was Erik, wrapped tightly in Mumble’s flippers.

  “At the edge of disaster, here comes the Beachmaster!” Lovelace called as they arrived.

  All the trapped penguins waited with great anticipation, not sure what would happen next.

  Bryan the Beachmaster stopped at the edge of the Doomberg and surveyed the problem. The Doomberg seemed much too big to shift, even with the massive bulk of the Elephant seals.

  “Gee, matey, now I realize what you want us to do. This could be too much, even for all us big fellas put together,” Bryan confessed.

  Huge seals around him nodded their agreement. Some were already growing restless and impatient. Mumble worried that they would give up and leave without even trying. The Elephant seals were his last hope to free the trapped penguins.

  Mumble didn’t know what to do next. But Erik did.

  “Dad, show them happy feets,” Erik urged.

  Mumble smiled at Erik and began his famous tip-tap-tippity-tapping, this time adding some stomp. Erik picked up his father’s beat and danced along to the rhythm. The Beachmaster’s pups joined the chorus.

  The tip-top-tapping and the skit-scat-scatting soon infected the Beachmaster, who began shaking his large body. The other Elephant seals began to follow, flapping their large tail fins and flipping their flippers. As the gargantuan creatures threw themselves around, some of the snow began to fall over the edge, packing in behind the tower of ice.

  Everyone was singing and dancing in time to the new happy-feet beat. Tip-tap-tippity-stomp! Mumble announced it was time to kick it up a notch, and the Beachmaster responded instantly. In time to each beat, he slammed his huge belly hard onto the tightly packed snow. Thousands of Elephant seals did the same. Large pieces of snow and ice began to shift as the great weight of the Elephant seals broke up the deep layers of the Doomberg.

  Beneath the Doomberg, Will and Bill heard the rhythms coming from above them.

  “You hear that?” said Bill.

  “They’re doing it again,” said Will.

  “Doing what?”

  “This,” said Will as he began dancing upside down on the ice, his little legs tapping out a neat series of rhythms.

  “Try it!”

  Bill did his best to mirror Will’s dance moves.

  “Fascinating,” he said.

  The pair danced in tandem, tippity-tapping with all twenty-two legs.

  “What do you call it?” said Bill.

  “I have no idea,” said Will.

  All around them, billions of their fellow krill joined in, tippity-tapping underwater against the ice.

  “But what is it for?” asked Bill.

  Will couldn’t quite explain it.

  “It just brings out my … happy!”

  That was a good enough reason for the entire swarm to dance harder and faster under the ice.

  High above the billion dancing krill, penguins and Elephant seals danced and stomped. The Beachmaster backed up and then bounded forward onto the hard-packed ice.

  Thuuddddudadud!

  “Sometimes you’ve got to back up to go forward!” declared the Beachmaster.

  The other Elephant seals got the hang of it, and soon they were all backing up and slamming their bodies onto the ice. Large chunks of ice and snow flooded down behind the leaning tower of ice. It began to tip a little more, looking like it would topple.

  The trapped penguins were uplifted. Lovelace swung his air guitar in time to the rhythm, and Bo backflipped across the snow. At the top of the massive iceberg, every variety of penguin—Adelies, Chinstraps, Fairies, and Megallanics—danced in time with the Elephant seals.

  Among all this excitement, one lonely creature wasn’t dancing. But this time it wasn’t Erik—it was Sven.

  “Hey! Come on!” Mumble called to him.

  Sven pointed a flipper at himself. “Who, me?”

  “Every step counts!” said Erik.

  Sven’s eyes lit up as he began to dance alongside Erik.

  Mumble, swollen with pride, called to his mate. “Gloria! Check this out!”

  Gloria could not believe it. She had never seen Erik so involved and happy before. She sang out in time with Erik’s dancing.

  Under the combined power and weight of the penguins and seals, the entire Doomberg began to shake. Slabs of snow and ice streamed over the edge behind the leaning tower of ice until …

  It finally began to creak and shudder.

  As the ice shook above, the swarm of dancing krill beneath the ice resembled a light show. In the center, Will broke into a solo, his legs tip-tapping complex rhythms.

  Will spun around in a circle and lifted one leg before slamming it against the bottom of the iceberg. There was a moment of silence before the impact of this tiny foot was felt all the way through the lower layers of ice to the very tip of the Doomberg. In that very instant, the leaning tower of ice high above began to shift.

  Crrraaaccckkk! The tower didn’t stop moving this time and plummeted all the way down! And when all the dust settled, there it was … a ramp of ice and snow all the way from the bottom of Emperor Land up to the ice above.

  One by one, Emperor penguins began the hike up to safety. Mumble and Erik stood at the top, looking at the crowd of joyous faces coming up the ramp. The penguins thanked Mumble as they shuffled past him. Ramon and Carmen were first, followed by Seymour and Atticus, with Miss Viola and Bo not far behind.

  Soon all the penguins were walking out to freedom.

  But where was Gloria? Mumble and Erik looked at each other. They turned to check behind them, just in case they’d missed her.

  Then they heard the voice they longed to hear. “So, boys, where’s my hug?”

  Mumble and Erik spun around. It was Gloria. Erik rushed forward to hug his mother, but then stopped and turned to his father.

  “You first, Dad.”

  Mumble smiled and scooped Erik up, and they both hugged their beloved Gloria. Mumble was together again with the two creatures who meant the most to him in the world.

  From a distance, the Beachmaster watched Mumble, Erik, and Gloria huddled together.

  Mumble turned toward the Beachmaster and saluted him in wordless thanks.

  “No worries,” called the Beachmaster and headed for home, his proud pups in tow.

  Mumble drew his family closer to him.

  “No worries,” he said gently.

  “No worries,” replied Erik.

  Mumble, Gloria, and Erik took one last look at Emperor Land before joining the rest of the Emperor penguins. No matter the hardships, no matter the challenges, the Emperor penguins were one big, strong, happy nation, and they could survive anything. And there was nothing left to worry about.