The Lost Rainforest #2

by Eliot Schrefer

  Mez shakes her head. “Some shadowwalker!”

  “My mind’s buzzing, so I’ll take first watch,” Gogi says. “Assuming you think you can fall asleep anytime soon, Mez.”

  She yawns. “Yeah, I think I’ll be able to manage that.”

  They pull their sleeping friends into the cover of the ferns, and then Mez, too, falls asleep.

  As daytime begins, Gogi feels his mood lifting. It had just been a moment of weakness before: of course he would never jeopardize the future of all of Caldera by trying the sap early. Even if it’s supposed to be the greatest-tasting thing that’s ever existed.

  He doesn’t suppose there would be any harm in just touching it, though. Gogi examines the seedpod. It’s knobby, green, hairy, and sticky. It would be disgusting, actually, if it weren’t for the absolutely delicious smell wafting up from it. Both tart and sugary, somehow, and slightly toasty.

  Gogi taps his fingers along it.

  He runs the pod under his nose. “Nice bouquet,” he whispers to himself. “Very nice indeed. Almost like a peanut.”

  If only Alzo were here. Alzo would really enjoy this. The nutty palm back home has nothing on lyre sap.

  Slowly, deliberately, Gogi lifts the fragrant juicy snack to his lips.

  Then he pulls it away and places it between sleeping Mez and Chumba. He leans back, crosses his arms grumpily, and settles in to his watch.

  Come the dropping of the Veil, Gogi awakens to panther licks. The first time he ever woke up to panther slobber he thought it was gross, but now Gogi finds it the best way to wake up. Panthers know what they’re doing about some things.

  Chumba’s expression brightens when she sees Gogi is awake. “There you are! Help me tie these seedpods to my side, would you?”

  Gogi yanks some fronds from the fern, and bands them around and around Chumba’s midsection, tucking the seedpods underneath before knotting the fronds smartly. “Snug?” Gogi asks.

  “Perfect. Off to the Dismal Bog!”

  “Sounds great,” Gogi says. “Well, actually, sounds terrible. But let’s get going anyway!”

  “It’s not far as the bat flies,” Lima says, stretching her wings out to pick up some heat from the last rays of the sunset.

  “What does that mean?” Gogi asks.

  “South to north it’s not far. You wouldn’t know it, but we’re at the top of a hill in the rainforest right now. You should have seen the view. It’s very pretty. All misty and rolling. It’s a loooong way down to the bog, though. It’s passable for you guys, but it will take a while.”

  “That’s too bad. It’s not like we really have a while to spare,” Gogi says.

  “Agreed,” Lima says. “Which is why I’m so glad that I found another way!”

  “Why didn’t you tell us that right away?” Gogi asks.

  “Can’t a bat build a little suspense?” Lima asks. “Come on, follow me up this rise.”

  Lima zooms into the air and off into the green.

  “She’s gotten a little theatrical over the past year, hasn’t she?” Mez mutters as she heads off after Lima.

  “Maybe a little too theatrical,” Gogi says. “I blame living with panthers.”

  When they reach Lima, they find she’s landed on an especially large monguba tree and is proudly pointing to one of the seedpods. It’s pendulous and thick and hairy, larger than the group of friends all put together.

  “More seeds?” Gogi asks.

  “Not just any seeds!” Lima says. “Come on, help me get it down and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  It’s usually easier with Lima just to let things happen and see the result than to ask for any explanation ahead of time. Gogi climbs up the tree and scampers out over the seedpod’s branch. “Watch out below!” he cries as he digs his fingernails into the smooth wood, twisting and yanking until the pod thunders to the jungle floor.

  The shaking branches block Gogi’s friends from view. “Did you watch out?” No answer. His stomach twists. “Guys, are you okay?”

  “Yes, we’re fine,” Mez calls up. “Sorry, we were just surprised a bit there. Wow, this thing is enormous!”

  Gogi scampers down—branch to branch, whip around with the tail, plummet, whee! At the bottom he finds Mez and Chumba slitting the pod open with their foreclaws, then using their teeth to peel back the rubbery casing. Inside, unsurprisingly enough, are giant seeds—puffball tops leading down to nutty bottoms. They’re sleek and narrow when they’re lined up in the pod, but once Mez drags one out, it balloons, catching even the slight breezes that roll along the rainforest floor.

  “Don’t let them get away!” Lima cries as her friends scamper around the clearing, picking up more and more of the errant seeds as they tumble out of the pod.

  “Now, what do we do with them?” Chumba asks once they have most of the seeds reassembled and stuffed back into the husk.

  “I guess we should have waited to open this until we were at the top of the tree,” Lima says, tapping her lips with the tip of her wing.

  “Top of the tree why?” Gogi asks, scratching his head.

  “You’ll see!” Lima says as she soars to the highest branches of the monguba.

  Huffing and struggling, teeth gnashing and muscles straining, Gogi, Mez, and Chumba manage to drag the seedpod to the top with most of its contents intact. Up there, Lima is waiting with a grin on her face. “This is going to be amazing!” she says. “You guys will finally know what it’s like to be a bat!”

  “I knew I had a bad feeling about this,” Mez mutters.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure I ever wanted to know what being a bat felt like,” Chumba says.

  Lima shakes her head. “I refuse to be crestfallen. Feel these air currents?” She basks in them, wings open wide. “How lovely are those?” She points, a big grin on her face. “And there, at the very bottom of those lovely air currents, is the Dismal Bog!”

  Gogi follows her gaze. The rainforest continues unbroken, until it turns a sickly blue-gray color. Bent, tortured trees rise up from the earth only to bend back down, strangled by strands of mucus-like lichen. The sickly trees bow lower and lower as the bog continues, until they disappear entirely into the dank and soupy terrain. Only a few bent bits of vegetation survive. Crows wheel above the bog.

  “That looks . . . grim,” Chumba says.

  “Are we sure we want to go in there?” Gogi asks, swallowing against the sour taste in his throat.

  “Oh, come on, guys,” Lima says. “It’s just a bog.”

  “A dismal bog,” Mez says. “It’s in the name.”

  “Where we face our greatest fears,” Chumba adds.

  “Well, we have to do it, and we only have, what, eleven days until the lunar eclipse now, so we might as well get it over with,” Lima says, chin jutting forward.

  “You’re right,” Gogi says, closing his eyes and girding himself. “If we have to go, we have to go. We’ll find out what’s keeping the ants away down there, and get out as soon as we can.”

  “At least we have the lyre sap,” Mez says.

  “It won’t help us against something like quicksand,” Lima points out.

  “Hey!” Mez says. “I thought you were supposed to be the one cheering us up.”

  “Right, sorry,” Lima says. She gets a manic grin on her face and gesticulates wildly with her wings. “IT WON’T HELP US AGAINST SOMETHING LIKE QUICKSAND!”

  Gogi forcibly ignores her. “You’re right, Mez. It’s very good we have the lyre sap.”

  “You realize that you’re licking your lips, right?” Mez asks him.

  Gogi crosses his eyes as he tries to look at his own lips. “Oh, whoops. I won’t eat it ahead of time—have a little faith!”

  “You will wait until we’ve actually landed,” Mez commands, narrowing her eyes.

  “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of, of not being able to delay gratification. I have never been so insulted in my life.” Gogi tries to get the most severe expression he can on his face as he looks
at each of his companions in turn.

  “Riiiight,” Mez says.

  Chumba tenderly takes one of the monguba seeds into her mouth and starts batting it back and forth in the air. Her head moves slowly, air resistance catching the seed’s fluffy sprigs. “Lima,” she says, voice muffled, “this just might work!”

  “Of course it just might work!” Lima sniffs.

  “Well, I guess I’ll go first,” Chumba announces, easing toward the edge of the branch. The breezes catch the seed; they are already lifting her slightly off the tree.

  “Are you sure, Chumba?” Mez asks. “Maybe I should—”

  Chumba steps off the edge. Mez gasps, and Gogi throws his arms around her for comfort. He looks down by instinct, but as the draft catches the fluffy seed, it lifts Chumba up instead. She soars on the wind currents above them, twirling in the air. The breezes carry her off to the side and then back toward them, so she’s at eye level. She says something, but the stalk in her mouth and the wind currents make the words go lost. Her eyes are streaming tears of joy.

  “I’ll go last,” Lima says. “Since I have wings, I can direct where I go more, so it’s easier for me to track all of you down. But you two should head out as soon as possible, because the air currents might shift. We don’t want to all be scattered across Caldera, right?”

  Mez needs no more encouraging. She works her jaws around another seed’s stalk, then shakes her head sharply to unfurl it. That makes her catch a gust by accident, and she lifts into the air. Her eyes widen in surprise, and then she zooms up and off to the side, just like Chumba did, before she slowly floats down over the landscape, in the general direction of the Dismal Bog.

  Gogi takes one of the seeds between his hands and holds it in front of him. “Wish me luck!” Gogi says, doing his best to keep his words even despite the fear rising in his throat.

  “Better hurry before the air currents change,” Lima says.

  “Yep,” Gogi says, tightening his fingers over the stalk. “I’d better get going.” He doesn’t move.

  “Are you ready or not?” Lima asks.

  “Yep, totally ready to go,” Gogi says, still not moving.

  “So . . . ,” Lima says.

  Gogi scrunches his eyes shut and takes a step forward into thin air.

  He’s motionless for a moment, and then there’s a sharp tug upward on the monguba seed. Even though he saw the very same thing happen to Chumba and Mez, he’s caught by surprise, and the sudden upward drag wrenches one of his hands free. He opens his eyes and sees the ground hundreds of feet below, monkeysplat distance. He flails his hand through the air until it’s back on the stalk. Once it’s securely in his grip again, he allows himself to take in more of the view.

  He can understand why Mez and Chumba had such glee on their faces. Panther jaws must be a lot stronger than monkey hands, though—Gogi is too worried about keeping his grip to really enjoy himself. But still, he’ll probably never have a chance to get a view like this again. The rainforest greens combine and swirl in his view, banded with grays and blues of lagoons and streams, slick tan lines of muddy rivers, misty whites throughout.

  Beautiful as it may be, he’s plenty ready for the trip to be over. For one thing, his little woven bag with its twelve pebbles is flapping and fluttering in the breezes, thwacking Gogi on the nose and ears and slapping his butt. He can’t spare a hand to restrain it, since he has to hold on to the slippery stalk with all his fingers.

  Except . . . his tail! How could he not have thought of that? Gogi brings his tail to the woven sack and presses it against his side. His tail doesn’t contact just woven fibers, though; instead, most of what it touches is . . . sticky! The sap is falling out of the bag! Gogi looks down and sees the tendril of lyre sap has nearly fallen completely out.

  He lets go of the bag and uses his tail to hold the tendril of sap instead. As the seed continues to carry him gently toward the earth, Gogi holds the sap closer to his face. Its tangy fragrance surrounds him.

  What if he hits a strong gust? What if he suddenly needs his tail to help him hold on? He’d have to drop the tendril if that happened, and then he’d have no sap to protect him in the Dismal Bog. Maybe the safest thing to do would be to eat some now, while he’s still in the air. He’s just a few minutes from landing anyway. The sap will still be in his system for a long time! Probably!

  Gogi reaches the sap forward with his tail and, as the wind gusts over him, takes a chew.

  It tastes so impossibly good. It’s sunbeams of fizzy radiance, the scent of a morning river, heating and cooling his tongue at the same time. It’s the warm underside of a rock on a cool day, or a hand in chill waters when the air is humid and sweltering. That taste! He immediately bites more, and then takes all the sap into his mouth at once.

  “You promised!” shrieks a familiar voice, and then Lima is soaring past, arrowing down toward the Dismal Bog, where Gogi can see Chumba and Mez, their furry calico shapes tiny against the colorless swamp, but quickly growing in size.

  Guilt complicates the amazing tastes in Gogi’s mouth, sends sour currents into his joy. More and more of the sap drains down his throat, and as it does the joy fades entirely. The guilt does, too. All that’s left is a glassy sort of calmness. He looks up at his own hands, holding on so tightly to the stalk. Do I need to be holding on so tightly? he asks himself. Why don’t I just let go! I feel so light—I bet I’ll still float.

  He doesn’t have to face what would have happened to him if he let go, because before he expects it—long before he expects it—his feet are touching the ground. He releases the puffy seed and rolls, soon covered in goopy mud. He comes to rest against the base of a tree, the world tumbling over itself as his head spins.

  Gogi looks around, blinking.

  What a pretty swamp! There are delightful dragonflies buzzing about, and the mosquitoes and flies have a lovely plumpness about them. The mud has a definite odor to it, sure, but it’s also silky smooth under Gogi’s feet. He breathes in the sulfurous air—who knew that rotten eggs could smell so delicious?

  Gogi shakes his feet to rid his ankles of the pins-and-needles feeling, noticing as he does that he’s got scrapes all along his soles. They don’t hurt at all, though. Lucky! Whistling, he turns around in a circle, hands on his furry hips. Where are Mez and Chumba and Lima?

  Hmm. Maybe the wind currents changed, or acted differently on him because of his size. Maybe he’s very far away from his friends!

  He knows he should be worried, but all Gogi really feels is the blinding adventure of it all. Completely lost in an unknown swamp, with no idea of where to go, or what dangers await. What an escapade!

  Still whistling, Gogi picks a direction and starts wandering.

  He runs his tongue over his molars, trying to get every last bit of the tangy lyre sap flavor. Soon there won’t be any of it left, just the memory of having once tasted it. How sad. Oh well. As the capuchin monkeys always say: Better to have tasted and finished than never to have tasted at all! Or maybe that’s not a capuchin saying. He’s not too sure, all of a sudden. La-di-da.

  “Hello there, Mr. Spider!” Gogi says as he walks right into a web, plucking the giant, thrashing insect from his face and peering into its many eyes before placing it delicately on the ground, poison sac bobbing.

  “And hello, viper! What pretty red-and-black-and-yellow stripes you have!

  “Poor little bush. Why are your leaves so droopy and moldy? Let me fluff them up for you.

  “Hey there, giant moth. Have you ever tried to get together with the other creatures around here and see if you could get the bog’s name changed? Because it’s really not so dismal at all, I don’t think.

  “Oh, hello there! Wait—Alzo?!”

  Gogi stops in his tracks. How is Alzo here? And why is he not moving?

  He makes his way through rotting, putrid vegetation until he’s beside his friend. Alzo is curled up on a blackened stump, looking very small indeed. Gogi throws his arms around him, then st
artles and draws back. Alzo is cold!

  Now, why would Alzo be cold?

  As soon as he gets warmed up, Alzo will feel better; Gogi’s sure of it. Whistling just a little slower now, he picks up Alzo’s motionless form and carries it farther into the bog. “Oof, Alzo, you’re so heavy!” Gogi says, huffing. “Too bad you’re not awake to help me carry you. Wait, can someone help someone else carry them? Is that physically possible? Let me figure this out.”

  Gogi tenderly sets Alzo down, and then tries to lift himself up into the air. As soon as he gets one foot off the ground, though, the other sinks deeper into the mud. “Nope,” he reports sadly as he picks Alzo back up. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work. That’s too bad. I guess I’ll just have to keep carrying—wait, what’s that?”

  Gogi freezes. Someone’s rummaging through his bag! He drops Alzo into the cold mud, and then whirls to confront the thief.

  It’s a strange capuchin, one that Gogi doesn’t remember seeing before. It leaps away, its hand full of something that tinkles and clinks.

  His pebbles. This strange capuchin has stolen his pebbles.

  “Give those back!” Gogi shouts.

  In response, the capuchin cocks its—her—head. She drops one of the pebbles into the mud.

  “Those have sentimental value,” Gogi says. “Stop it right now.” He goes to pick up the pebble, the capuchin bounding away as he does. He replaces it in his pouch.

  The capuchin flits between trees in the distance. She drops another pebble. Then she heads deeper into the bog.

  Gogi is shaking. Those pebbles. The symbol of his rank and of the loss of his mother. How dare this stranger take them?

  “I’ll be back to warm you up as soon as I can,” Gogi tells Alzo’s motionless form. Then he starts scampering through the bog, heedless of the muck and rotting debris that soon cover his arms and legs. “Wait up, strange capuchin! Give those pebbles back! You don’t understand!”

  As soon as he’s retrieved the next pebble, she drops another one, then disappears into the mist. It’s all very confusing why that unfamiliar monkey won’t simply explain herself to him, but Gogi assumes that by the time he reaches her he’ll have figured out what’s going on. There’s always some solution!