Bekka of Thorns

by Steve Shilstone

  “I have decided to sing the riddle song again. I want both of you to listen carefully,” she said. “See if you are able to discover a clue, a key to release us from this trap. Oh, it is an enchanted trap, I feel. Hold silence, younglings. I’ll sing.”

  Out went her wings. Up went her hands to clasp at her waist. The glorious sound of her song filled the dome. Kar and I wore smiles of bliss. I saw Kar’s. I felt mine.

  “Sharumin’s golden flow, westward does it run,

  There I’ll grow my carrots deep, hiding from the sun.

  And yet, and yet, the emerald wings, will they find my lair?

  West and west, ever west, led by a youngling pair.

  In loomy bloys I’ll case my toys, bring carrots down and up,

  Black and gray and yellow green, with younglings I will sup.”

  We rode the last notes as they faded. Dreamy we sat, soothed. Med tilted her head and observed us. She folded her wings and her arms.

  “Then there, what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you sing very well,” said Kar with a sigh.

  “Of course I do. What other? Could it be a code? First letters of each word, such so, to form a jumbled message?” suggested Med with a tinge of impatience.

  “We are not Nimble Missst, daughter of Rindle Mer. We don’t have snapjaw minds to solve riddles and puzzles,” protested Kar. “Tell her, Bek.”

  “We don’t have snapjaw minds,” I murmured.

  “Nonsense! The opposite of sense! Non! Haven’t you there in your pack been studying and learning the language of the Roamer Chroniclers from Harpo’s very books?” challenged Med.

  “Such is so,” I admitted in a whisper.

  “Well then, consider the challenge!” roared Med fiercely.

  She leaped over our heads and sailed in circles around the dome. The ringlets of curls on her head began to smoke. Her wings trailed a green vapor. She stretched into a curving length of vapor flow. Mist! She coiled! She WAS mist! Shapeshifter! Green and sparkling, a low fog, she sank to the smooth of the glowing pearl floor. She ran in smoky wisps, draining away in all directions down the thin gap where the pearl circle floor nudged close to the rocky dome walls.

  “I am the first bendo dreen to…,” began Kar, but she faltered and toppled over in a true faint, not a false, silly one.

  I didn’t faint. I scuttled backwards deep into the pocket tunnel until the pack on my back pressed against the wall. My mind of a sudden became a confusion of twigs buried in fear. I talked. I knew I talked, although I couldn’t hear myself. My throat buzzed. My lips moved. I plucked at the tugs of my highboots. Shock

  subsided. I could hear what I said over and over and over again. “Wednyar, wednyar, wednyar….” That means “Abandoned, abandoned, abandoned.…”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Saved by Kar

  Kar stirred. She moaned and sat up. Her head hung like a broken tassel. She shook it, lifted it. It wobbled on her neck. Her eyes looked glazed, dull. They latched on to me and focused.

  “So that’s what a real faint is, is it?” she said slowly. “I didn’t know they were so dreamy. Bek, what happened?”

  “Abandoned. The greenwing was a shapeshifter,” I hissed. “She abandoned us. We’re trapped here. We’re doomed.”

  “Abandoned? Doomed? Why? Do you think we’re the first bendo dreen ever to see a shapeshifter shift shape? I think we’re not doomed. I think…we’re the first bendo dreen to be trapped here. We’ll be the first to escape! We’ll be the first…,” she babbled, perking up, sitting straighter.

  “HOW?” I interrupted.

  “We’ll solve the song, that’s all. That’s what she said, wasn’t it? We’ll solve the song,” she said brightly.

  “We will?” I said, buoyed a tiny bit of a nince by her flare of spirit.

  “Med gave a hint, she did. SHAPESHIFTER!! Such was so. She said that the first runes taken and gathered might be a jumble to unscramble. Remember?” continued Kar. “The runes are… Get ready, Bek. I will recite ’em.”

  “You know ’em? You memorized ’em?” I wondered.

  “Maybe I do have a snapjaw mind. The song was so pretty that I remember it.” She shrugged.

  I sloughed off my pack and brought out of it Roamer Harpo’s purple recipe book. The inside cover was a blank oat parchment page. I unwrapped one of my inkchalks from a leafbind and poised it above the page.

  “Go,” I said.

  Kar then reeled off forty-eight runes with hardly a gap of thought. The runes she recited were Boadlian, not like these alphabet letters of yours. Such in your language, the collected letters would be a useless jumble, unable to be unscrambled. In Boadlian, the language of my world, evolved from Ancient Orrunian, such was not so. I stared at the runes, looking for patterns.

  “Do you know what?” mused Kar.

  “Hmmmm?” I grunted, not raising my eyes from the list of runes.

  “There’s a little round hole way up there at the top,” she said.

  “Where?” I blurted, scooting forward, suddenly interested.

  Kar pointed. I saw it, perfectly round, in the center of the dome ceiling, such was so, but it looked too small to get through and too high to get to. Too small to squeeze through. Too high. Otherwise, Med would have… Maybe not. Such I thought.

  “It looks too small, and how would we get there?” is what I said.

  “Maybe the runes…or…,” said Kar, and she glanced from the dome’s ceiling down to the round glowing pearl platter floor.

  “Or what?” I pressed.

  She seemed to be working on some kind of an actual thought. Kar was Kar. I knew her, cracked melon, jark dweg, always a clown, but something had changed. She looked sly, clever. She wasn’t my familiar old Kar. She impressed me with a new strength. She’d recited the runes without pause. Could she get us out? Such I wanted to believe. I myself had nothing to offer except scraped highboots and pantaloons from scuttling in terror at the magnificent awful shapeshifter change.

  “If we step on the floor, it will spin,” said Kar.

  “And throw us off into a pocket,” I added.

  “What if we stay on, and it keeps spinning? Might it rise? See there? If it goes up to where the walls begin to bend inward, would we be able to reach the hole?” asked Kar.

  “Why should the platter rise? And if it does go up to the bend, the dome looks deep, not shallow. And even if we can reach the hole, it looks too small,” I doubted. “I’ll study the runes.”

  “Bek, let’s try. We’ll study the runes if it doesn’t work. We can stay on the platter if we’re balanced proper. We’ll be the first bendo dreen to stay spun on the platter! We’ll hold wrists and fling ourselves to the middle. Such! Shall we try?”

  I couldn’t resist her eagerness. For an answer to her question, I stuffed the recipe book and the rewrapped inkchalk away, swung my pack to my back, and held out my hands to Kar.

  “You fling,” I said, “as we jump. On three.”

  I counted three, we leaped, and Kar flung. We flopped and slid to the center of the platter. It spun madly. Kar and I locked gaze on gaze. I had her wrists. She had mine. In grinding buzz we whirled. Were we rising? We were! A whining shriek and a slam brought the pearl platter to an instant halt. Kar and I spun on for a nince, slowed, and released our grips. We got to our knees. The hole? How much higher? I thought.

  Neither of us had anything to say, so we didn’t say it. We stood instead. I squatted to make my knees steps for Kar. Kar stepped up, knee to shoulder, shoulder to head. The press of her weight on my head released. She lifted herself to crawl through the hole! A tight squeeze, but done! She turned, and gave to me the widest grin I’d ever seen. I gave her one of mine in return. She reached an arm down. I handed up my pack. There followed many gasps and grunts and tugs and pulls, but not one word until I, too, was through and seated next to Kar!

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Sandy Seep

  “Kar, how did you know that the
floor would spin?”

  “I didn’t. I guessed.”

  “But, Kar… You were right! They would not believe this in the hedge. They wouldn’t. You’re…different…changed…stronger. Why aren’t you wearing your jacket inside out? Why did you stop wearing your gloves on your ears?”

  “Those were just silly things. Such. Bek, I’m so glad you got me into this Gwer drollek story. We’re in it! The first bendo dreen to… Oh, everything! Greenwing was a shapeshifter! SHAPESHIFTER!! Sharumin branched! BRANCHED!! We saw! We were first. What’s next? What’s next?!”

  “Why don’t we try to find our way home? Haven’t we had enough Gwer drollek for our first time outside the hedge?”

  “No, we haven’t! No! Go home? Now? No! We have the runes to figure. We should try to find Med…if that is such and so her truly claimed name. Shapeshifter! And the garl! The Gwer drollek can’t be finished unless we find the racketous garl! And New Rumin! And real emerald greenwings! And Med! Med most of all!”

  We had changed places. Kar was the leader. I was the follower. Such was so as we sat on the dome by the shaft of pearl light. She grabbed my hand.

  “Bek! We’re the first and only! Our story will be better than Bandy’s! Well, maybe not, but it will be Gwer drollek! Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. We have a beginning. We have a middle. Where is the end? Somewhere down there.”

  She pointed into the darkness deepening down the curved span of dome. She pulled me. I went along, not resisting. We scooted away from the pearly shaft of light marking the path of our escape from the cavern trap. We felt our way along as the descent leveled and turned, depositing us into a kind of forge char blackness.

  “I’ll lead. Grab onto my pack, Bek. I’m holding one hand out and one hand up. I’ll warn you if the ceiling comes down or the wall comes over. I bet I’m the first to walk like this.”

  We shuffled slowly, inching. Boot scrape and breathing we heard when we weren’t talking, which truth, wasn’t much. Walking along in the blackness of the tunnel pleased us. It gave a sort of bendo dreen comfort. Many times we’d played in the foundry and forge tunnels under the hedge. When you walk in blackness, time disappears. So such is why I do not know how long we walked until a new gold dimness beckoned through an opening in the distance.

  “There! See? There!” shouted Kar in triumph.

  We ran. The far off leak of light lit our way. We splashed through the opening and found ourselves in a vast level seep on the floor of an enormous cavern. On crunchy wet sand we walked, our highboots sinking and slurping at each step. The watery sand glowed faintly gold.

  “Sharumin sinks away! We are the first bendo dreen to know this!” shouted Kar, raising echo from every direction as she splashed a dance in the sea of seep, presenting a more familiar picture to me of my jark dweg best friend Kar.

  “Such might be so, Kar, but which way now?” I demanded in an attempt to subdue her.

  She did not subdue. She danced livelier and pointed, jabbing both arms and grinning wildly.

  “Why not the steps? Why not the steps?” she sang out of tune like she does.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Steps

  Steps rose out of the seep away to the left and climbed the cavern wall. Kar crunch splashed to ’em and waved me to follow. I followed. Kar took up her new leader role again, subduing her jark dweg self. We chatted the whole way up.

  “Bek, who chopped these stairs, do you think? Here’s a mystery. Nowhere have we heard of this in any story. Plenty of caverns and tunnels, but none like this. Not Princess Wun or Avado or Ivah Skay in Skrabble, none. We are the first! Bendo dreen or not, probably!”

  “Probably. This is a good cavern. Such is so. And this moss tastes fresh on the tongue, doesn’t it? It would make a fine jelly, I bet… Doesn’t that make you think, Kar? It might be time for blossom harvest back home, don’t you think? Remember making jellies for the Festival of Tambourines?”

  “We made ’em good.”

  “Remember how the Five-Sided Mirror came down and we danced with our newly ribboned chonkas? Remember, Kar? Don’t you wish we had our chonkas with us now? Why don’t we go home and get ’em?! Then we’ll come right back! Wouldn’t the adventure be better with chonkas?”

  “No. It’s hard to sneak when you’re carrying a chonka. That’s the what that YOU said, Bek. We’re not going back. Let’s talk about something other. Why would these steps be here unless to climb? No, it would…shapeshifters. Let’s talk about shapeshifters.”

  “Such. Well, for one, the Roamer Lace met Zom Falbu.”

  “And delivered the egg!”

  “Yes. And there was Scong Lodd in that Gwer drollek story, too.”

  “But not as much. Bek, do you really think that Zinna is my mother? Tell me a truth.”

  “I’ll tell you the same truth I always do. It’s what I noticed about the roundness of your face and hers, and the wrinkles you both get when you scrunch your noses. You both have the roundness and the same scrunch wrinkles.”

  “But so do Jarro and Pondi and Darmi and others. I checked.”

  “But not exactly like. And none of ’em look at you the way Zinna does. I’ve seen her smile when your back was turned.”

  “You think? And do you still believe that my father is an Acrotwist Clown?”

  “How else could you be such and so a jark dweg?”

  “Such. And I still think your mother is Abble of the Foundry and your father is Old Mondo.”

  “I know. The noses. Such.”

  “Greenwings don’t need steps. Do you think that garls use steps with all their tentacles and such? Who used these? The moss says no one has walked here for a length of time. Maybe shapeshifters flow down ’em when they’re blue blobs. What do you think, Bek?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I would like to be a shapeshifter.”

  “Me, too.”

  “If we find Med, maybe she’ll do other shapes for us like Zom Falbu did for Roamer Lace. Nimble Missst could only go to mist and back. Maybe Med is like Nimble Missst, and can only do one shift.”

  “I bet not. I bet she’s like Zom Falbu. Med did smoke and mist when she started to shift, but then she had sparkles. I bet she can do any other she wants.”

  “Such is probably so I think, too.”

  “Oh, Kar! Look there!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Outward Plateau

  Gigantic roots twisted together thickly in frozen flow covering the steps ahead of us. We had fair truth nearly reached the roof of the cavern. Such was so. I kept myself pressed against the wall as I had done so such for all of the climbing. And, in addition, I never once looked down. I focused my stare ever on two red glove fingers peeking from under the flap of Kar’s pack.

  “Roots,” said Kar.

  “I know,” I replied.

  She broke off a curling runner from the mass of roots, nibbled on it, and passed me a piece. Fair juicy it was, but tough. It did give a hint of bracket leaf. Such I said. Kar agreed.

  “There’s a gap under this twist. We can crawl through. It’s a darkness,” she informed me. She pulled herself over and worked herself under thicknesses of twining roots.

  Plunging into a dark hole seemed a gladness to me when I compared it to the long fall to the seep below which ever pulled at me from the narrowest gasp of a stony width to my left. Roots thin enough to grasp I grasped with a fierceness born from the fear of falling. I hugged myself over the thick root and eased all atremble into the gap. I got there just in time to see Kar’s highboots shove away into the darkness. I followed. I struggled, squeezing through turns in cold forge blackness. I heard Kar mumbling.

  “What’s happening, Kar?” I shouted.

  “There’s an upturn. It’s…,” she replied.

  “It’s what?” I demanded.

  “Wait a minute. I think if I…,” she said.

  “You think if you what? What do you think if?” I said with more than a taste of annoyance.

&
nbsp; “Wait. I….” She grunted.

  A tumble of dirt collapsed on me. I shook my head free and coughed in a cloud of dust. Gray light streamed through an opening above. Kar’s grin appeared again, and she reached down a hand, just so such like at the dome. She hauled me up into the morning. The sky glowed a pale of lavender such as I had never seen before. It looked fair true like the flesh of a perfectly ripe capp melon.

  “Capp melon sky,” said Kar.

  I nodded. She saw it, too. Our thoughts run together many times. Such is so.

  “We are the first bendo dreen to travel beyond the W’s Three,” she whispered in a hush of joy.

  She spoke a truth. I scanned the landscape. We stood at the edge of a wood on a great plateau. Green grassy fields blanketed with tiny blooms, white and yellow, stretched off across a mighty vastness. The trees of the wood, of a such I had never seen before or heard of in any of the stories, Gwer drollek or other, grew in tight clusters, their silvery gray smooth limbs and branches intertwining. The trees’ brilliant and perfectly round red leaves fluttered.

  “Wonders,” I said.

  “A Gwer drollek story. Such. Oh, Bek, a Gwer drollek story for you to write in the language of the Roamer Chroniclers!” gushed Kar.

  I shivered with too much of everything. I had to sit down. I took Roamer Harpo’s books out of my pack and held ’em. Such. So. Just that. Kar sat down next to me. We found ourselves in a place of beauty. We WERE the first bendo dreen to be there. Capp melon lavender sky, smooth silvery gray branches, brilliant red circle leaves, green grassy fields frosted with white and yellow blooms, and far off away on the other side of the vastness, dark green stripes climbing a hill. Hedges?

  “There’s where we’re going,” said Kar, pointing at the far off hill.

  I nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bristle Thicket

  Before striding off, we sample snacked on the red circle leaves, the white blooms, the yellow blooms, and the green grasses. The leaves tasted sweet, the grasses sour, and the petal blooms, both yellow and white, tasted much like spiced mushroom pudding. Kar tasted everything first. Such, of course, was so.