Blue Hills (3 page)

Monuments

I placed highboot in front of highboot. That was all. Nothing so such other. Boot. Boot. Time was gone. My eyes, though open, saw nothing. Stealthy stiff silence invaded my mind, creeping to fill it with empty gloom. Boot… Boo… B………..

“Bek!” a shriek shattered me to shards.

I jumped. Of a sudden, sky, river, shore, bushes, oat fields, and distant Clover hills all slammed at me with vivid clarity. I blinked. I shook my head.

“Bek! You froze! You froze, Bek. I couldn't wake you. It's been hours! You stopped mid-step. Like the witch. Like the witch!” babbled ridiculous Kar, fluttering in front of my face.

“I … what?” I said, fuddled dizzy. I had to sit down. “How long?”

“Hours! Hours! I don't know. Hours! I was perched on your arm napping. I woke and you were a statue, boot raised, mid-stride. I don't know. Hours!” said Kar in a panic.

“Let's swim,” I was shocked to hear myself say.

I thought I slumped to the ground in a faint. So such I thought. I was wrong. A curtain of strangeness surrounded me. I fought through it and swam toward consciousness. I found myself seated on the bank of the Greenwilla River. My hair was sopping wet. I held my right boot in my hands. I pulled it on. I felt refreshed. The gloom of stillness had vapored away.

“That was a good idea, Bek. I feel springier. These webbed feet make for a fun swim. They're strong paddlers, even if they are backward. At least one part of me isn't useless,” said Kar, shuddering her feathers and waddling around me.

I knew something so such odd was happening to me. I'm not the sort who likes odd things to happen to her. I do like to see new things and to tell stories, true, but I am bendo dreen timid as well. The stiff silence played strange games. I determined to push it off and away.

“Let's sing as we go on, Kar. We'll set up a barrier of sound against the silence,” I suggested.

And we did. With Kar perched on my arm, I marched along the bank of the river, and we sang out loud all the songs of the hedge we could remember. Our voices grew croakier and croakier as time passed. And somewhere along about sometime in the afternoon, we arrived at the Monuments. Legendary Monuments. Gwer drollek stone statues. Awed, we dropped our voices to whispers. Truth, such felt better to our song-strained throats.

“Remember when we flew over ‘em, Bek, on our way to break the Danken Wood Barrier?” whispered Kar.

“But we never saw ‘em up close like … this,” I answered in a hush.

I carefully sat on one of the carven marble benches, and Kar hopped from my arm to sit beside me. We were blessed in fortune to have arrived in time to witness the great stone Monuments bathed in the glory of sunsink. Ah, Lovey. There she was. Oh, Gwer drollek! As a Princess she stood posed, one foot wearing a splendid hopping boot, the other wrapped in a flow of scarves. Lovey's father, King Harold the Tooth, standing proud, holding one of his beloved lorgnettes. Oh, Gwer drollek! His Queen, Lovey's mother, Lorelei Lo, raised by the River Dragon. And Prince Chef Larry, a Chalky Gray who left the Villcom Wood, became husband to Lovey, father to their daughter Ambergold, great grandfather of the Triplet Princesses Three. The Monuments. Oh, Gwer drollek! The stories! The Gwer drollek stories!

I tingled fairly with pleasure. The sun sank in the stiff silence. I babbled about the stories. My tongue could not wag quickly enough. Words spilled. I was thrilled. The thrill was there. This time the thrill was there, not like as in the grotto. Something truly had happened to me. Had I really bathed in the Greenwilla River without truly knowing so such that I had? I was the Chronicler. I was on my way to retrieve the witch from the Blue Hills. I was certain I could and would do it. In the company of the Monuments, sleep that night was filled with wonderful dreams.

Labbimist

Fog was thick all around when I awoke the next morning. I stretched my arm out. My hand was engulfed, hidden by gray. Truth, the extremities of my long-stockinged limbs, ankles and feet, were lost in the dense squatting mist. Quickly I drew my knees to my chest to make certain I was all there. I felt around crawling to find my highboots, succeeded, and pulled ‘em on. Stiff silence. Motionless cloud. I thought of Kar.

“Kar,” I whispered.

No response. I crept along the grassy ground and discovered one of the marble benches. I rubbed my hand across its slick wet smoothness. I moistened my lips.

“Kar?” I called a little louder.

“Hmmmf,” came a muffled sigh from off to my left, followed by a frantic fluttering of feathers and a “Bek, where are you?”

“Right here. Listen. Follow my voice. I'll keep talking until you … oof!”

Kar crashed into me and fell clutching at my jacket in a flapping heap of red webbed feet, yellow tuft wings, single blue plume feather on lavender mallet head, and shimmery shuddering green feather body. She secured herself, pressed her mallet head to my nose and began to spout.

“It's the Labbimist! We're captured! We'll never get out! It held the Babba Ja Harick for SEVEN years! Such! The Gwer drollek of Lorelei Lo and the Dragon. Remember? They escaped when they found the wand. We have no wand! We have no magic! You need magic to escape the dreaded Labbimist. Oh, why did we sleep? Why did I let you talk and be happy? We knew the Labbimist roamed here and near. We knew it! Why didn't we know it? We should have known.

Now I'm stuck ridiculous, and I'm trapped in the Labbimist. Forever! No magic! Bek! Bek! Why do you sit here smiling? Such? So? Bek!”

Early on near the beginning of Kar's rant, a pleasant thought entered my head and shooed away all fears, all uneasiness. Such was truly why I wore a smile of contentment.

“Kar,” I said, “settle. We have nothing to fear from the … Labbimist. Oh, truth, I am so such certain that some of what you say is too … true. But not all. Not all. No doubt we have been … engulfed … by the legendary Labbimist. No doubt. Oh, yes, that's it. We surely would be … doomed … to stumble time and again and again … upon this … shapely … marble bench no matter what direction away from … it … we chose to attempt our … escape. No doubt. If! If …”

I tilted my head close to one of Kar's blinking pink eyes. I felt the desire to impress her. Heightening the drama, I allowed the pause to fill with stiff silence.

“If what?” said Kar at long last, as I'd hoped she would.

I heard the ember of hope in her voice. I heard the faith in me. Satisfied, I brought the ember to flame.

“We are trapped and doomed to wander, dear Kar, if … if the Labbimist is the only creature in All Fidd and Leee Combined on Boad, the only … the one … and only, to have retained its magic when the witch crossed over into … the Blue … Hills. Kar, now you know why I smile, don't you? Hop onto my arm. I will walk us out of this … density.”

Kar believed in me. She always has. Such is so. She released the grip she had on my collar and hopped onto my arm. I adjusted the dead dry wooden tube Jo Bree in my belt, stood, chose a direction I thought might be east, and walked off so such with confidence. In no time at all, the mist thinned and we left it behind us. I turned in triumph to stare at the thick blanket of gray cloud. It writhed in seeming frustration.

“Bek, you're smart. When you're right, you are fair truly right,” praised Kar.

“To the Blue Hills! Yes! That's it!” I announced, bursting with self-importance.

To the Danken Wood

Why was I spirited with so such a lively fire? I was happy enough to hop. Why? Two days earlier hadn't I been pounded low to gloom by the weight of the stiff silence? Such. Something had happened. I swam? Memory before and memory after are clear. I was wet. I was pulling on my highboot. Before that? A span of blankness. Before the span of blankness? Clarity of memory. I said “Let's swim” for no known reason, surprising myself. Then span of blank. I'm pulling on my highboot. Clothes dry. Hair wet. Confident. Not gloomy. Such. So.

I pondered thusly and strode out strong along the grassy bank of the stiffly silent Greenwilla River. Kar studied me from her perch on my arm. Her lavender mallet head was cocked to the left. Her pink eyes stared unblinking.

“Bek, you are … different,” she observed.

“How different? I'm not different. I am the Chronicler of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. Chosen. I have been to the Realm Beyond … Realms. I earned the honor to possess the Carven Flute. I, a bendo dreen, dared to … leave the hedge. I have traveled in time alone back into the legendary past to … to … arrange the proper path for Delia Branch and … and … Runner Rill. Yes! That's it! How can such as I fail to … to … bring Babba Ja Harick home to her … her … cottage?” I boasted.

“What happened to my Silent Bekka? Such you were called. Remember? I was jark dweg bendo dreen Karro, and you were timid Bekka. We were the oddments in the hedge. Known so such truly. Look at me. Am I not jark dweg in this silly feathered form? I'm still a cracked melon at heart, besides being Kar and the first and only jrabe jroon Rakara and Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns. But who is this bold strider carrying me through a land of lost magic? Can it be Bek? Where is the timid and doubtful?” said Kar.

“Banished,” I announced. “Listen closely, Kar. Here is my plan. We'll abandon the river and take a little … detour when we reach the Danken … Wood. Such. We will visit the witch's cottage and … and … examine it for clues. Yes! Clues to help me determine why … why … she left. Let's swim.”

My hair was wet. I was pulling on my highboot. The skin of my hands was wrinkled like as if I had been swimming for hours. Kar waddled backward, fluffing and shuddering her feathers.

“Bek, that was amazing. How did you do it?” she said.

“Do what?” I tossed out carelessly, not knowing what I had done.

“Swimming underwater all the way over to Clover and back three times! That's what! Something is oddly strange. Not only stiff silence and no magic. But such else, too. With you. I've lost powers. Seems so such like you've gained ‘em,” answered Kar, and she flew around my head in little circles before adding, “But you can't do this.”

“No, I can't … fly,” I admitted, though I almost half felt like giving it a try. “You can fly. And what's more, I'll get you the … the … rest of your powers back, too.”

I jumped to my feet, snatched a few blamberries from a nearby low thicket, jammed ‘em in my mouth, and slapped my shoulder, an order for Kar to settle there. She did. I strode firmly a ways by the river's edge, scrunching with my boots on the gravel sandy shore. I pushed off the stiff silence with loud bendo dreen songs of the forge, of the shop, of Festivals, of story. I was the stubborn boulder around which flowed the stiff silence. Across the river to my right I saw the bright patch colors of Sadlar's Garden in Clover. Many a Gwer drollek passed by or through that place. No time now to tarry. No time for a visit. I was on an important mission. Such was truly so. In the distance to my left and beyond the oat fields of the Boad, the tall pointy trees of the Danken Wood stabbed the sky. No time to visit the hutter conical cottage I noticed some distance off in the fields. Such.

“There. The witch's edible cottage in the … the … Wood. We're going there,” I said.

Late afternoon brought us to the edge of the Danken Wood where it pressed down close to the river. I paused. Kar fluttered low beside me.

“There's the boulder where we broke through the Barrier on the Carven Flute adventure,” said Kar.

The boulder stood in the river surrounded by stiff frozen churn. I remembered. I touched the dead wooden tube of Jo Bree in my belt. It was on that very so such adventure I had won the right to possess it. I vowed silently to return to the Carven Flute its powers.

“To the … the … cottage,” I commanded.

To the Abandoned Cottage

With a purpose I walked the edge of the Wood by a tricklestream. Wood on my right, fields on my left, I moved in the darkening orange of dusk. Kar perched on my shoulder, flew off in a flutter, perched on my shoulder, flew off. She overflowed too full jumpy with nervousness to remain settled. Such was so.

“It's going to be dark. We'll lose our way. I wish I could shift to jrabe Rakara and sense us along,” she complained after completing one of her nervous flights.

“Clouds are scattered. Moons will guide us,” I answered shortly.

So such seemingly satisfied, she sat for a spell, ridiculous silly with her blue plume feather. From the corner of my eye I could see her preening the tip feathers of her right wing tuft.

“Ha! Feather habits,” I commented.

“Well, it's one thing I can do,” she sulked.

The moons, Jeth and Jith, arrived in the sky, both of ‘em three-quarters fat. Plenty of blue light lit the tricklestream and made long black shadows in the Danken Wood.

“The witch walked this very … path before she … she … conjured her cottage,” I thought and then said aloud to slice through the stiffness of silence.

“Gwer drollek. After she collected the rings and her sister flew down the Well,” mumbled Kar, who, in truth, had been napping, mallet head under wing.

“A path … runs from this … tricklestream up the … the … hill to her … clearing,” I said, slowing down and surveying the wall of trees to my right.

I brushed Kar from my shoulder, fell to my knees, and dunked my head through a screen of feather ferns and into the cold stillness of the tricklestream. A chill surge of happy slapped me, and I drank, gulping with glugs. I sat back laughing and shook my full wet head of coppery hair.

“What are you doing? What was that?” screamed an upset, so such angered Kar.

“Settle,” I giggled. “Watch. I will close … close … my eyes and count one … one hundred paces. I will count. Yes! That's it! One hundred … paces with my … my … eyes closed. Then I will turn to the right and march up the … the … the …hill and enter the cottage clearing. Yes!”

I sprang up, slapped my shoulder, and waited for Kar to settle there. Without a word, she did. I was so such that impressive, commanding and strange. Off I went, eyes closed, counting. I stayed on track by the feel of the tricklestream ferns brushing against my left highboot. I stopped short at one hundred, pivoted right, and opened my eyes. The moons lit the way up a hill through a rising corridor of tall, black-shadowed, stiff standing trees.

“How did you …?” Kar began.

She snapped her mallet mouth closed when I rushed stumbling up the slope and into the clearing atop it. The witch's cottage hid blackly there in the shadows. I felt for its lemony doorknob, found it, turned it and pushed open the door. The silence was stiffer than ever, and I heard my heart pounding. In I went, feeling the clutch of Kar's webbed feet digging into my shoulder.

“Buckletar and … and a … flint. Yes. That's it,” I whispered gleefully, finding first a lamp, then a flint.

I struck the lamp live, and yellow light made shadows jump. Kar fluttered to the table where the crystal ball of Babba Ja Harick usually rested. The table was bare. I broke off and ate a corner of it. Kar stared at me, amazed.

“What?” I laughed. “It will be whole in the morning.”

“No magic,” she gasped.

Stricken momentarily empty with guilt, I saw what she meant. The edible table would not be whole in the morning. Magic was gone. I waved a hand.

“No matter,” I blustered. “I'll get it back.”