Hopskotch and the Golden Cicada

by Martin Vine

  Those of a sceptical mind (like Dobbin) argued Bartrem did this deliberately, to make everyone feel honoured when he actually did show up. It was certainly not down to shyness, for Bartrem was, in truth, a charismatic and charming fellow who seemed to enjoy the company of others almost as much as he liked the sound of his own voice. Possessing an over-developed sense of curiosity, coupled with an even more over-developed imagination, Bartrem only left the cramped, book-laden, slightly off-smelling sanctuary of his sleeping chamber with great reluctance. And he was canny enough to play his mother into letting him get away with it.

  There was no question as to who had the worst attendance record at Bridgetown South Elementary. For as long as Hopskotch could remember, Bartrem was unchallenged on that front.

  Even Slade and Ninness didn’t come close.

  Hopskotch was upright, one knee pressed into the bow, by the time Bartrem staggered into earshot. Red-faced and sweating, the unexpected newcomer kept on coming all the way to the waterline, finally collapsing against the starboard rail, huffing and puffing like the Blighted themselves were on his tail.

  “Ooh, a glide-boat. Special!” he panted, eyeing the vessel up and down. “Hello, lads. Hello, back there, umm, sir.” He spared a quick wave for Grandpa Rand, who was sitting at the stern, trying to figure out the best way to keep his packs dry.

  “You’re going to Witherness,” he gasped, between drawn-out breaths, “aren’t you?”

  Hopskotch traded a nervous glance with Dobbin, but did not reply. He was so taken aback by the arrival of his odd friend, the simple task of forming words proved temporarily beyond him.

  Dobbin had less trouble finding his voice. “What the mittens are you doing all the way up here?” he barked.

  “Hunting cicadas!” replied Bartrem earnestly. He paused just long enough to scratch the end of his nose. “Witherness borderlands is where you find the rarer breeds, and you know me, lads,” – a broad grin split his face – “I’m all about quality, not quantity.”

  “I’ve never seen you bring back a cicada,” Dobbin countered, keeping his rump stubbornly planted on the bench. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen you at the hunt at all.” He eyed Bartrem up and down with a suspicious sneer. “And what would you do if you did find cicadas? You don’t even have a net to catch ’em, less a pouch to hold ’em in.”

  Bartrem patted the side of his shoulder bag. “I travel light. Easier to traverse the hinterlands that way.”

  Hopskotch knew Dobbin hated the way Bartrem spoke, said he was always using big words that nobody knew the meaning of, and older words that normal folk had stopped using centuries ago. This was his way of appearing better than everyone else, according to Dobbin. Even Hopskotch had to admit, he did come off sounding a little pompous at times.

  But he still enjoyed Bartrem’s company, and having had enough of Dobbin’s bossiness for one day, Hopskotch decided to intervene on the newcomer’s behalf. “Don’t mind grouchy pants,” he joked, leaning forward on the paddle. “We’re not going to Witherness, but Saddleslip Gorge, which is close enough: walking distance, even!”

  Hopskotch could almost feel the hot glow of Dobbin’s death stare pressing into the back of his neck. “Jump in,” he offered, glancing down nervously at Bartrem’s oversized feet. “We’ll squeeze you in, err, somewhere in the middle.”

  “Well, if you’re headed to Saddleslip Gorge, I’d rather go there if it’s all the same with you?” Bartrem’s amber eyes twinkled in excitement. Allowing Dobbin no opportunity to overrule the invitation, let alone answer his question, which was rhetorical, besides, Bartrem waded into the water. Gripping the rail with both hands, he rocked the boat gently to port till it floated free of the pebbles.

  With Dobbin looking on in horror, Bartrem swung his body over the side and plonked himself down on the middle bench seat, splashing streams of cool lake water all over the packs as he landed.

  For a few uncomfortable seconds, it seemed the skiff would never stop rocking, but eventually the hull stabilised. Hopskotch deliberately avoided Dobbin’s venomous glare. He swore he could hear teeth grinding.

  “Alderhilt’s whiskers, that water’s cold!” yelped Bartrem, shaking out the chill. The glide-boat began rocking all over again. “So, who gets to paddle?”

  Upon the Lake

  Before they could embark for Saddleslip Gorge, Dobbin insisted on moving all Team SnapTalon gear stern-side of the middle bench, safely out of Bartrem’s drip zone. He proceeded to rearrange the crew with Grandpa Rand facing backward from the bow, Hopskotch in the middle (port side), and Bartrem to his right, both youngsters facing forward. As captain and commander, Dobbin took the stern bench – now significantly lower to the waterline – to best steer the glide-boat (and keep an eye on Bartrem).

  It turned out to be more challenging than he’d anticipated.

  Dobbin began by shifting his stroke from side to side in order to counterbalance the other paddlers who had foolishly decided to share the chore. It was never going to work, so Dobbin ordered Bartrem removed altogether from the paddling roster. The newcomer had no idea of timing and technique, and showed no noticeable improvement in either for the entire time he had paddle in hand.

  Bartrem Thanesborough was bigger and stronger than Hopskotch and Dobbin, which served only to exaggerate his clumsiness. Hopskotch had once overheard the gym teacher encouraging him to join the athletic squad, for he had the build for it. Of course, Bartrem had no such inclination, and the body that routine exercise would have moulded to a steely hardness was instead as soft as marshmallow. It was one thing to be blessed with the strength of an athlete, but quite another when basic coordination was not part of the package.

  So it was left to Hopskotch and Dobbin to get the glide-boat moving, but it was not getting any easier for the ‘captain’. Despite the considerable effort he’d put into explaining Team SnapTalon’s command structure to a bemused Bartrem, Dobbin lacked the authority of the Basalt Thundergull of his adventure books, and Hopskotch’s mind simply wasn’t on the job. To the restless youngster, boating on the lake quickly lost its novelty.

  He could think of little else but cicadas.

  A magic brooch, Hopskotch thought to himself, a dreamy grin settling upon his face. I have a magic brooch and it will lead us to the Golden Dukes. His faith in the jewelled disc weighing down his inside pocket was absolute. It was no wonder he struggled to find focus in the here and now.

  Surprisingly, it was Grandpa Rand who intervened on the glide-boat’s behalf, breaking suddenly into song. It was a bawdy tavern ditty Hopskotch had often heard his grandfather sing (the old fellow was always whistling or humming something under his breath), some nonsense about a white gull who’d become drunk on sour juniper.

  Of course, the words weren’t important. Without really thinking about it, Hopskotch allowed the steady tap of Grandpa Rand’s gnarled finger on the lip of the hull to time his downstroke. Dobbin was likewise swept up in its rhythm. The bow steadied with the increase in speed, no longer lurching from side to side like a turned-on-its-shell tortoise.

  By the time Grandpa Rand reached the second chorus, the glide-boat’s hull was cutting through the water as straight and true as an arrow from a bow.

  Apart from the rhythmic slap of water on wood, and Grandpa Rand’s inappropriate ditties, the world around the glide-boat was silent and still. The soothing appeal of being out on the lake seemed to have taken some of the thunder from the storm cloud hanging over Dobbin’s head.

  Even the normally chatty Bartrem had lost his voice. The large Syltling sat awkwardly short of leg-room, ankles crossed and knees high, following the shoreline with deep, thoughtful eyes. His right hand was carefully nursed in his left, both resting upon his lap as if he’d been wounded in some small way. It was impossible to tell what was going through his mind.

  Hopskotch’s legs were still aching from having walked so far, and his ribs smarted to touch. Bellows, he recalled, adjusting his paddling technique to take
the edge off the pain. The hobo had hit him hard off the sloop lever back in Parchmond. Now it seemed his body was playing a game of catch-up, delivering with interest the pain he’d been withholding.

  Pushing it aside, Hopskotch shifted his focus to the surrounding country.

  To his left, the lake’s western reaches remained shrouded by a floating fog that poured down from the highland gorges like curdled porridge. On the opposite side of the glide-boat’s bow, the pine forests framing Witherness turned the hilltops a shade of green almost to black. Lonely peaks punctured the mist in blunt triangles. Visibility was not as bad as he’d expected, but Hopskotch would still not have liked to lose sight of land completely.

  Not on a lake as large and as deep and as shrouded in mystery as old Whispermere.

  Its true expanse was unmapped, the west and southwest boundaries covered in permanent fog so thick even seasoned Withernessian fishermen avoided them. Naturally, this proved a fertile breeding ground for all kinds of rumours as to what might exist beneath the dark, brooding waters.

  Unable to help himself, Hopskotch returned his gaze toward the misty western shore, then immediately wished he hadn’t. Bartrem’s far-fetched tales about the lake replayed one after the other inside his head: fish so large they could swallow a Syltling whole; giant air bubbles that would rise from the depths to capsize fishing boats; sunken cities; water wraiths; selkies and monster eels!

  A shiver ran down Hopskotch’s spine.

  Follow the shoreline past Witherness to Saddleslip, he thought to himself sensibly, plunging his paddle back into the black with newfound enthusiasm. Find those Golden Dukes, then we leg it back to Bridgetown.

  Grandpa Rand had meanwhile stopped singing, his memory coming unstuck somewhere between the fifth and sixth verses of his third tavern ditty. He turned his attention to the lake, showing a specific interest in the shoreline to the glide-boat’s right (which was actually his left, as he was sitting on the bow bench seat facing backward).

  “She’s sitting a bit low,” he announced suddenly.

  Hopskotch shot his grandfather an alarmed look.

  “Err, the lake I mean,” Grandpa Rand quickly clarified. “Not the boat, um, vessel,” he added with a nod to Dobbin.

  The old Sylt pointed to the large timber mill that had just appeared from behind a tree-lined peninsula, a convenient way of changing subject. At the edge of a shallow cove, the factory rose from the banks like a giant log cabin, all dark timber beams stacked horizontally beneath sloping sheets of rusted corrugated iron. On the water, between their skiff and the building, a large bed of pine trunks floated, bound within a rope boom that made a large half-circle from the mill’s stone ramp to a wharf at the south end of the cove.

  Dobbin snorted his disapproval for the structure (and thereby, those who’d built it).

  Hopskotch was of a different mind. He found something beautiful in the unusual mix of wood and metal, and it took some strength of will to finally remove his eyes from it.

  A little further on, a maze of meandering wharves and gangplanks appeared through the fog in the near distance beyond the bow. Hopskotch let his shoulder relax a little, slowing his stroke to let Dobbin’s steer them around the obstacle. He had not expected they would reach Witherness in such short time.

  Clinging to hills that plunged steep and deep into the northern boundary of Lake Whispermere, the highland village of Witherness was at least three quarters fishermen and carpenters, the majority of whom were of a different blood entirely to the Bridgetown natives.

  With a reputation for being blunt and unfriendly, they were widely regarded as a little bit odd, and a whole lot backward, a little too ‘close to nature’. The less prejudiced opinion among meadowlanders was that they were simply an earthy breed of Sylt: strong, no-nonsense types who weren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty, and had little time for fancy city ways.

  Whichever point of view one subscribed to, there was no question that the lifeblood of Witherness pumped through the lake and the timber mill. Their economy was built not just on fish and timber, but the cottage industries that processed them into products of such quality they were prized the length and breadth of Broken Meadow. Cultural differences aside, even the snobbiest Bridgetowner never lost their appreciation for Witherness’s finest: pickled trout, smoked eel and country-style pine furniture, to name a few.

  But it was still a community unique in many ways. In contrast to the solid granite foundations common to Bridgetown, all Withernessian dwellings were raised on wooden piers. Not a single piece of flooring came within ballyhoo of touching the ground.

  It was one of the few things Hopskotch remembered from his last trip to Witherness, part of a weekend school excursion where they overnighted in a converted boat shed on the lake. Manoeuvring the glide-boat beneath the shadow of the wharves, he took a moment to scan the nearby banks for any sign of the building.

  Can’t have been more than two or three years ago, could it have?

  The memory eluded his grasp, but he continued wrestling for it regardless.

  Bartrem meanwhile had unrolled a sheet of parchment from his shoulder pack. He began drawing upon it with a fine charcoal stick, a look of intense concentration upon his face.

  Hopskotch redirected his focus to the shoreline, eyes finally coming to rest on a familiar-looking structure. He stopped paddling and pointed past Bartrem’s head to the shed with the ramp leading down to the water. “That’s it!” he said, turning his shoulder to the stern. “That’s the one we stayed in that time, remember, Dob?”

  Dobbin adjusted his stroke, carefully guiding the skiff – now unassisted – out from the shadow of the final wharf. Beyond the raised gangways, a creepy mist blanketed the town foreshore, obscuring almost everything below the steep, shingled rooves further uphill. There was not a Sylt in sight. It may well have been the middle of the day, but to all appearances, the town seemed to be asleep.

  “What are you on about?” Dobbin answered finally. “We’ve never been to Witherness!” He took another look at the shed and harrumphed.

  “Hang on. Maybe we did,” he mumbled. “But not there, surely. I think we stayed someplace similar is all.”

  To Hopskotch’s ear, it sounded like Dobbin was trying to convince everyone on the boat, himself especially.

  “No, couldn’t have been there,” he continued, characteristically stubborn. “I would’ve remembered a place like that.”

  Dobbin began rubbing his forehead as if trying to coax the memory right out through his skull. “I know we all bunked in a big hall, but it wasn’t that one. Ours sat right on the water’s edge. Cal wanted to throw a fishing line out the window and you slept with your pack, you were so worried the lake would rise and visit us in the night. That, I definitely remember!”

  Now Hopskotch was confused. Dobbin was right. The place they’d bunked on that excursion was right on the water, which didn’t leave too many options in all of Broken Meadow.

  Unless it was Leveetown? he wondered. Snippets of memory flitted within his grasp, then darted away again like swallows skimming the grass of the school playing fields.

  “Told you she was sitting low,” Grandpa Rand said.

  Hopskotch missed the significance of his grandfather’s words, distracted by a familiar smell, like cooking fires in the near distance. It was something different to the smoke he smelled earlier coming from the Shanties, and was unlike anything he remembered from back home.

  They burn different wood up here! he realised. Hopskotch shut his eyes and inhaled. Burrowing deep into his subconscious, the smell unlocked a door.

  “No, it was Witherness,” Hopskotch insisted. “Has to have been!” Still holding the paddle out of the water, he turned to Dobbin. “Don’t you remember, you were grumbling about every little thing? You called the Withernessians Withernosians. HA, that was it!”

  Bartrem turned his head, leaving his drawing for the moment to cast Dobbin a disapproving look.

  Hopskotch sla
pped his thigh, delighted that he was able to dredge the excursion from memory. “And more to boot. Now what was it? Oh yeah: uncivilised, unwashed barbarians! Or something like that. Then, on the last day they showed us through some of their houses. You complained about having to climb all those steps. Then we saw the carvings, remember?”

  Finally, a look of recognition crossed Dobbin’s face. He blinked twice, then stared at the mist-shrouded shed one last time. Dobbin wrinkled his nose again and sniffed the air.

  Hopskotch wondered if the smell that jolted his memory might do likewise for Dobbin.

  Bartrem took another pause from his sketching and followed their eyes, as if curious to see how the mystery would unravel. But he did not include himself in the conversation. Like most school excursions, he’d missed that weekender.

  “They were amazing,” explained Hopskotch. “All the wood in their houses was turned to sculpture: scenes from the old histories mostly, but also stuff from everyday life. Really made us think. Both of us, I mean.” He paused, staring at the town’s distant rooftops. “Guess some folks don’t always turn out the way you expect, eh?”

  Grandpa Rand smiled at the statement, but Dobbin looked more troubled than ever. Removing the paddle from the water, he wedged it against the inner hull next to him and bent forward to his gear.

  A little puzzled, Hopskotch resumed his work guiding the skiff, pausing every third stroke to check on Dobbin, who was rummaging through his overstuffed rucksack as if his life depended on it.

  From the shore to their right, the grating sound of a wooden barrow on cobblestones was the first sign of life they’d heard. Bartrem seemed particularly interested to see who it was, but the fog had Witherness’s town square hidden behind a wall of impenetrable grey.