Hopskotch and the Golden Cicada

by Martin Vine

  Grandpa Rand pointed at the grass-covered verge with a mad look in his eye. “There, look. What do you see?”

  Hopskotch opened his mouth but no words came out.

  “Stumps!” Grandpa Rand blasted in disgust, spraying spittle. “Nothing left but measly stumps! It’s the same all the way back past the dam, and I’ll wager it’s the same all the way to the mill.” He paused for a minute, staring into the distant clouds. “I bet he harvested all the way to Witherness.”

  It took Hopskotch only a few seconds to pry the rest of the story out of Grandpa Rand. As it went, his grandfather’s archenemy Georges Stoutflank had taken all the silver chives, a rare herb that grew along the east bank of Lake Whispermere. It was the most crucial, the most secret ingredient of his grandfather’s festival speciality: five-cheese fondue.

  With no harvestable sprigs, Grandpa Rand was faced with the grim reality he might have to forfeit his fry-barn at Market Square come Elronsday’s festival finale (a tradition he’d honoured since before Hopskotch had been born).

  Responding to Grandpa Rand’s personal tragedy, Dobbin rediscovered his voice. “Yes, silver chives all gone. What a rotten act. Never really liked him anyway.” It came out sounding every bit as insincere as it was. Dobbin had no idea who Stoutflank was, and cared even less.

  “Do you mind very much if I—”

  Letting the sentence hang, Dobbin stuffed the recipe scroll into Grandpa Rand’s slack palm before diving shamelessly into the old man’s luggage – still lying on the ground – in search of Mr Calpepper’s map.

  “This what you’re looking for?” asked Grandpa Rand, retrieving a bound scroll from his jacket.

  Dobbin’s head spun, zeroing in on the rolled parchment with the white-silk tie. “That’s it!” he squeaked, springing to his feet.

  Hopskotch was similarly awestruck. The map that might lead Team SnapTalon to glory was mere inches from his nose. Too excited to mobilise his limbs, he nodded to Dobbin to go ahead and take it.

  “Well, well,” chuckled Grandpa Rand. “I thought you pair might follow me. Wasn’t certain, mind, but, well, roundabout seventy-five percent so. Ha! Isn’t that just like me to pick up the wrong scroll. Why, there was this one time—”

  And so, Grandpa Rand began recounting the events surrounding an unrelated mishap he’d inadvertently caused in his youth (involving tulip bulbs, a lost caravan and a sunken island with a map of the whole world in the middle of it).

  Hopskotch didn’t hear a word of it. The second his eyes found the map, all surrounding sounds – the cry of quivertail gulls, the lapping of lake water against pebbles, the droning voice of Grandpa Rand – faded to a background hum of distant importance. For that singular moment there existed only Team SnapTalon and the map.

  Dobbin took it in his left hand and yanked the silk tie off with his right, carefully unrolling the parchment. Holding it firmly at both ends, he exposed the surface to the glare of midday light.

  Hopskotch leaned close over his shoulder, scanning the map with ferocious intensity. He could clearly see all the familiar landmarks: Curmudgeon’s Gulch; Finches Forest; the city of Bridgetown and the Artery sweeping downhill before turning a sharp right to become the Shallowfrond River. Woodland trails, deep gulleys and high bluffs were all rendered with the utmost attention to detail, right down to the type of tree, shrub and undergrowth native to each location.

  But there was no golden mark.

  “No way!” cried Dobbin in despair and disbelief. “Not possible!”

  Grandpa Rand halted his story and looked down his nose at Dobbin, as if annoyed at the interruption.

  Hopskotch’s mouth had gone completely dry. His thoughts grasped for an explanation, anything that would explain the absence of the mark.

  Mr Calpepper had said every map had one—didn’t he?

  Taking the parchment off Dobbin, Hopskotch turned it this way and that, holding it right up to his eye, then far away, trying every possible angle to find the missing symbol.

  The reality was inescapable. There was no X, no indication at all that this map was ever even touched by Lisalle’s golden quill. It seemed beastly unfair to Hopskotch.

  Dobbin was similarly affected. A noise halfway between a cry and a groan passed his lips. Divesting himself of pack and pouches, the visibly deflated Syltling dropped them in a pile and planted his rump upon it, hands cupping his downcast head.

  Hopskotch had not seen a more miserable sight in his entire life.

  “Somebody got to that map, you know.”

  Dobbin raised his head.

  Hopskotch turned to his grandfather. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

  “Scribbled something near the edge,” explained Grandpa Rand. “Think it was an X, or maybe an L, hard to tell you know, the way you young ’uns write nowadays.”

  Snatching the map from his grandson’s hand, Grandpa Rand swept past the astonished Syltling and plonked himself down on the pebbles alongside Dobbin.

  “Well,” the old Sylt began, exhaling deeply. He appeared suddenly quite lost. “I can’t see a thing on this wretched paper.”

  Hopskotch leaned across and flicked the lens up on his grandfather’s eyepiece.

  “Oh, thanks, much better,” he said, turning his attention back to the parchment. “Now there was something added to the map, in one of the corners, something in a different ink. The style was a bit like that graffiti you see on the city streets sometimes. Wretched stuff it is too, let me tell you,” he added, as if daring anyone to challenge him on the subject.

  “So there was a mark?” Dobbin squeaked. “What happened to it?”

  “Getting to that, getting to that,” replied Grandpa Rand in a huff. “But firstly, the map. See, I figured it must be yours. Never noticed my recipe was gone, least till I saw that it was. That musta been by Market Square, I reckon.”

  “Mrs Firthwhystle!” Dobbin blurted. “We saw her – both of us – right beneath the cherry trees! She told us we’d just missed you!”

  “Oh, yes. Dear old Elsa.”

  “Err, I think it’s Elois, Grandpa,” Hopskotch corrected.

  “Of course. Isn’t that what I said?”

  Hopskotch rolled his eyes. Dobbin looked like he was about to snatch the map right back off Grandpa Rand.

  “Well, I bumped into her by Market Square,” the old Sylt went on. “That’s when I realised my mistake. Probably should’ve waited for you both but ol’ Stoutflank just had me so fired up, the guttersnipe! Couldn’t help myself: had to hightail it for the lake and see for myself.”

  “Grandpa, the golden mark?” Hopskotch pleaded. “It should’ve been on the map.”

  “Yes, yes, coming to that. Keep your hat on, Skotchie.” Grandpa Rand took another deep breath. “Well, once I got to the lake I was quite spent, you know. So I had a wee rest near Cotteslope Dam over yonder and decided to have a proper look at your scroll.”

  “And—?” Dobbin asked, bobbing his head up and down in frustration.

  “Well, it didn’t make much sense to me,” Grandpa Rand replied with complete sincerity. “I mean, why would anyone mess up such a lovely map by scrawling all over it, eh?”

  A nasty feeling crept up Hopskotch’s spine.

  “So I rubbed it out with this!” From a hidden pocket inside his fishing jacket, Grandpa Rand produced a prune-sized ball of sticky, black goo. “Jellysoy putty!” he explained, proudly. “Not much it can’t do.”

  Discord

  Dobbin felt like he’d been kicked in the guts, then stomped on a little, then just as he’d found the strength and will to rise, kicked in the guts some more. He’d seen it happen to other boys in the schoolyard. It had even happened to him on a few occasions.

  But nothing had ever felt this bad.

  “Chin up, Dob,” his mother would say. “We Butterfelds have thick skin.”

  And so he did. He really had no choice. Always picked last for flyball, ignored by just about everyone, Dobbin Butterfeld had grown accus
tomed to life at the bottom of the food chain. And sometimes he wondered if Bindy Sandstep knew he even existed, which was by far the worst of it.

  He rose to his feet with a deep sigh. Nobody can even remember my name. I bet even Bellows has forgotten it by now.

  Immersed in self-pity, Dobbin plodded down to the lakeshore until the cool water kissed his toes. Though he could still hear the argument, the Syltling resisted the temptation to turn his head, deliberately keeping his eyes locked on the blurred horizon separating lake and mist. Unlike his teammate, Dobbin now accepted that the day was lost. He’d known it the moment Grandpa Rand flashed the sticky ball covered with flecks of goldleaf.

  Jellysoy putty! Dobbin recalled the time his father had used it to plug a leaky downpipe. Who would have known the sticky stuff worked as an eraser?

  Dobbin let the background bickering fade to white noise and allowed the reflections rippling across the water surface take him out of the scene. The pinch in his neck steered his gaze back to the north shore. It took a few blinks, and a slight shift to the right for Dobbin’s eye to settle upon something bobbing behind the rocks at the far end of the beach.

  To distance himself from the escalating drama by the embankment, and driven by no small dose of curiosity, the Syltling followed the water’s edge north, stretching the ache out of his shoulders as he walked. As Hopskotch’s voice faded into the distance, Dobbin couldn’t help but wonder where he’d be right now if he’d just tagged along with Pommeroy’s team, after all.

  Hopskotch’s voice was beginning to crack. “But here, just take one more look,” he pleaded, waving the map in his grandfather’s face for what seemed like the twentieth time.

  “Well, righto, then; just one last look and that really is it!”

  Taking the map in hand, Grandpa Rand tilted it slowly to the right, not stopping till it was rotated almost a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. “Now, I’m pretty certain it was in the bottom corner somewhere,” he declared, tapping his index finger on the parchment. “Roundabouts here!”

  “Grandpa, you’ve got it upside down,” Hopskotch whined. “You have to remember where the mark was drawn. I mean, was it Finches Forest? Peatsleak Plateau? Was it north or south of the Gulch? You must know that, at least!”

  Grandpa Rand squinted again at the map. “Well, sure—err, I think it might’ve been that spot there. Look, see there, is that gold leaf?”

  Hopskotch rustled the parchment, scattering the tiny flecks. “Ginger cake crumbs!” he groaned.

  Initially unnoticed by his grandson, Grandpa Rand had taken advantage of Dobbin’s absence, opening the side flap of the youngster’s abandoned rucksack (upon which he was now sitting) to quietly help himself to Team SnapTalon’s rations.

  It took an awful lot for Hopskotch to lose his cool, but the events of the morning were beginning to push the Syltling past his tipping point. His hope of snaring a Golden Duke had sunk beneath the deep, dark waters of Grandpa Rand’s muddled mind. Now Hopskotch’s frustration had opened a gaping hole in his own sense of logic.

  There was no foundation to it, but he couldn’t escape the notion that their map had been the map. At some point in the long journey uphill, he had convinced himself of it. All the glory Lisalle had known from that day on could have been theirs. Should have been theirs. The sound of Dobbin’s earlier tirade echoed at the back of his mind. It felt like the walls of his skull were closing in.

  Something dark snapped inside him. The interrogation devolved into a squabble; then a ruckus; then cranked up a notch to a screaming match of alarming volume. When Hopskotch all but accused Grandpa Rand of ruining his life deliberately, things really heated up.

  So consumed with yelling at each other were the worked-up pair, they failed to notice a slender wooden skiff approaching from across the water. With a jarring creak of wood on stone, the vessel’s bow met the beach.

  “C’mon, you crackers,” a shrill voice sounded. “Express ride to Saddleslip Gorge: leaving right now!”

  Hopskotch and Grandpa Rand broke off their verbal stoush and turned as one. Sitting at the back of a wooden glide-boat, waving a paddle almost as long as his body was Dobbin Butterfeld.

  Hopskotch was drowning in misery and self-loathing. The anger was beginning to fade but it only made him feel emptier inside, like all the good stuff had spilled right out of him, all the stuff that made him him. He thought of his father, and what he might say about his behaviour. The shame was overwhelming.

  But we were so sodding close! he reasoned, and knew straight away it was no excuse.

  Carrying Dobbin’s gear along with his own, Hopskotch dragged his feet all the way to the waterline. It was a relief to put some distance between Grandpa Rand and himself, but he couldn’t escape the guilt. It welled from some unmentionable place in the pit of his stomach all the way up to his throat. Hopskotch felt like vomiting. A horrifying thought appeared somewhere in the back of his brain: I sounded just like my mother!

  Kicking at the pebbles by the shoreline, Hopskotch cast his eyes over the wooden skiff, deliberately avoiding his teammate’s gaze.

  Dobbin scurried forward over the bench seats to the small wooden V-shaped platform over the high bow. “Pull us in, ye scurvy fish offal,” he joked in the most unconvincing Withernessian accent Hopskotch had ever heard. “I don’t wanna lose this here schooner to the black!”

  Hopskotch had to quickly sidestep to avoid the waterlogged mooring line thrown out by his teammate. A cold spray lashed Hopskotch’s bare feet as the rope hit the beach, but he paid it no mind. The miserable Syltling dropped his own gear alongside Dobbin’s and, wrapping the line around his forearm, set his feet wide apart and pulled.

  A horrible grinding noise filled the air as Hopskotch heaved the vessel up the beach. Once satisfied it was not going to float off, he dropped the mooring line by his toes, but did not get in.

  “What’s the point, Dob,” Hopskotch sighed, staring out at the lake. “It’s got us beat.”

  “Is it one of those headaches?” Dobbin asked, inching forward on his haunches.

  Hopskotch eyes flashed wide. There was genuine sympathy written into his best friend’s face, but bringing up that was the last thing he wanted right now.

  “I—err, well no, it’s not a headache. I just feel—I don’t know—” Hopskotch paused for breath, searching for the right word, “Finished. Just plain tired, like someone’s sucked all the fun out of me.” Dropping his head, he resumed kicking at the pebbles by his feet. “It just hasn’t turned out, none of it. Every turn has taken us in the wrong direction; and I thought we had a shot this year, I really did.”

  “You really thought we had a shot?” Flashing a sly grin, Dobbin shifted his rump to the very edge of the bow till both feet dangled over the side. Tapping his forefinger upon the hard wood, he added, “Well, before you rush off home with your tail between ya legs, you really oughta have a look at this!”

  Excerpt From The Secrets Of The Ancients

  by Tulloch Greighspan

  Immortals 3.1

  The Other God

  In the latter years of the first century of the second millennium, in the reign of King Feldspur Delgard, the Empire was in the midst of a golden age. Aethelron was at the height of his power, a true god reigning over a world forged by the strength of his divine will.

  But his works had not gone unnoticed. From the empty void beyond Dellreigh’s blue skies arrived unexpectedly another: one whose power rivalled his own.

  For she was kin to Aethelron.

  At the behest of the great Goddess Laethanielle, the Other was under orders to seek out the younger brother who had fled their realm so many aeons ago. And that search did bring her eventually to Dellreigh.

  And initially did Belzeel’s arrival bring great joy to the God of Small Things, and he hesitated not in welcoming his sister to share the wonders of his creation, in such enthusiasm of a child showing off a new toy. Aethelron’s heart was gladdened for the company of family, and yet,
even before the majesty of his kingdom, and the greatness of his works therein, did he find himself back in the place he had started, longing for the respect and recognition of his elders.

  And far too long did it take Aethelron to realise the danger, for the Other God did conceal her thoughts, and likewise showed no emotion toward either the blue-green orb of Dellreigh, or the race of men who dwelled therein.

  And far better would it have been if the God of Small Things had taken council with the Ardentii tribes in this time, who above all things are known for their wisdom and foresight.

  Much sooner would he have seen the danger at his back.

  For Belzeel was a spiteful goddess, and ill-disposed toward any who would stray from the rigid scriptures of Laethenielle. And for good reason did she hold her tongue as she surveyed the works of her younger brother, for it gave her much time to think upon all that he had wrought, and what it meant for their family and the future thereof.

  And the longer did she contemplate, and the longer did she spend in silent observation, the greater her anger became at the foolishness of Aethelron, and the dangerous precedent he had set in playing God to those she deemed unworthy.

  Casting her gaze far and wide across the world of Dellreigh, the thoughts of Belzeel did align into a single purpose. There was no question in her mind as to what must happen.

  A dark curtain was about to be drawn upon the world of Sylt.[2]

  The Magic Brooch

  Etched into the wood behind the pointy end of the glide-boat’s bow was what appeared to be a rune. Leaning across, Hopskotch cupped a hand over it to block the glare of cloud light and waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadow. When the image took form, he could clearly make out a circle surrounded by lines that looked like spokes, only they were on the outside of the wheel instead of inside. Hopskotch couldn’t figure out why it looked so familiar.