Woodlock

Book Four

Woodlock

by

Steve Shilstone

Wild Child Publishing.com

Culver City, California

I Feel Guilty

I bustled about, preparing pots of purple ink, sharpening quills, mixing, pouring, drying and peeling fine new sheets of oat parchment to be used in writing a new Chronicle. Such was so. My energy had been lightning buzzed by guilt. Too long had I neglected my duty as Chronicler of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. Too much time had I wasted romping on Fan Wa's Island with my best friend, the jrabe jroon shapeshiftress Kar, now shifted to be known as Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns. Bar weeks stretched into bar months spent bouncing on the trampolines, flying on the trapeze, flinging pies, dancing, juggling, swimming in the Bay, and eating frosting and gumdrops. Too many weeks. Too many months. Guilt. Duty neglected.

Truth, when Kar, as Striped Racing Dragon, carried me home to the hedge, guilt was nowhere in sight until I stepped into the Assembly Bower and all eyes turned to me. In those yellow bendo dreen eyes I saw an eagerness of expectation. I was the bendo dreen who'd left the hedge freely and had many times traveled to adventure. They were the bendo dreen who told stories and banged tambourines, chonkas so said, and who in truth never dared to leave the security of the hedge. I was the one who brought new Gwer drollek, the most treasured of bendo dreen tales.

“Bekka of Thorns, greetings. You have been gone a stretch of time quite long enough for to collect a new Gwer drollek. Will you share it with us now? I gladly give way,” said Old Bozza, whose tale my entrance interrupted.

There, right there, was exactly when I got suddenly buckled with guilt. I hadn't been on an adventure to collect a new Gwer drollek story. I'd been playing at pleasure. I hadn't been bound to my duty as Chronicler. I'd forgotten that duty more than entirely. I searched for something to say, an excuse, an explanation, or better yet, a lie.

“Oh, yes, magnificent,” I began lamely. “If ever there was a belief by all bendo dreen that the Carven Flute and the Realm Beyond Realms were so such marvel Gwer drollek, you will rest flattened when I bring my new story to companion ‘em.”

Yes, the words came out that awkwardly, not in any worthwhile flow. Such is ever so when I lie.

“But I am under colossal instruction so not to tell it yet.” I continued stupidly. “I need the cleansing rest of a sleep. I am weak with fatigue. I must write it out first in the strange language from down the Well. Then thereafter will I relate in voice here in the Bower to all of you gathered.”

In short, I promised ‘em a new Gwer drollek I didn't possess. I accepted a cup of candied thorns and two jellies before leaving the gathered bendo dreen with that empty promise. I hurried from the hedge to my hut by the Well of Shells and began the bustle of preparation. What would I write? Truth, the answer came when the sudden spire of a blazing idea lit my mind as I moved from shelf to table clutching a brimming pot of purple ink. I would MAKE UP a story. Invent it! It would be all LIES! But exciting!

The Shifter from Jom

I sat deep in thought, elbows on the table, quill between fingers, chin on the palms of my hands. I stared at the creamy emptiness of the oat parchment page neatly laid out before me and at the efficient fatness of the inkpot waiting for the dip of my quill.

“Mek fan wull, Bekka of Thorns,” breathed a voice softly behind me.

I spun to see a creature leaning in the doorway and silhouetted against the day outside. A doubleblink of my eyes made the creature step into focus. Powdery pale blue from boots to feathered cap it was. Startling violet eyes set in an otherwise powdery pale blue face regarded me. Wisps of powdery pale blue hair sprouted in curls from under its cap. Never had I seen or heard of so such a creature. Truth. It spoke again.

“Ah, your page is blank, I note. Dek sho. I am here arrived at this when to help you fill it. Is your mind snapjaw? Can you make a guess at who I am?” said the creature, tilting its head, regarding me as so said before with its startling violet eyes all twinkle bright.

“Time traveler?” I guessed, fair clued by the creature's manner of speech, so such clearly recalled by me from a Gwer drollek story I heard as a youngling, a story collected and written long eons ago by the Chronicler Lace, a story of the time-traveling shapeshiftress Zom Falbu.

“Bo ken! You ARE the Chronicler I expected to meet! I am Shendra Nenas, a shifter from Jom. Friends call me Shen. Do you admire this shift? I surmise that you have never seen the like of it before,” said the shifter, posing and slowly, slowly turning. “I am guised as a bool, dweller in the moon caverns of Jeth.”

“Jeth?” I mumbled, the gates of my mind having opened and my wits fled.

“A thousand short years in the future, to be sure. The moon caverns are quite nice then. The pools are warm. Cho dett. Of course, not as nice as Jom where we shifters gather and chat. No sort. Not at all …”

The shifter fell silent, nodding its head, seemingly lost so such in pleasant thought. I waited, but not too long. I cleared my throat loudly, an open effort to bring the shifter out of the dreamy trance.

“Hatch! Oh, yes. This when. Here. The bendo dreen to be sent. Cor ban. Bekka of Thorns, you are the bendo dreen Chronicler. Do you know I was summoned from Jom a scant flick of time after I placed my egg in the care of a chosen hutkeeper one hundred bar years ago? I am yet left to wonder if it got safely to Mara Ko. I won't know until …”

The shifter fell silent again. I possessed more information, but not enough. The shifter was a she, like Zom Falbu of the Gwer drollek story. What was she doing here? Why did she know my name and other more about me? Again I cleared my throat as loudly as I could to nudge her from wherever her mind had drifted.

“Hatch! Oh, yes. This when. Here. Very. Ki dak. Where is your tambourine? You should bring it. One thousand years ahead in the moon caverns of Jeth she said so, did the Harick.”

“Babba Ja Harick!” I interrupted, livened. “You were sent to me by the lavender witch herself one thousand years in the future on the moon Jeth? Why?”

“Not on the moon, Bekka of Thorns. For accuracy's sake, in the moon caverns. Yes, I have been sent to take you to a when in the ago. You have a task to perform. Nar ved. If you do it, all will be as it is. If you don't, all will be as it isn't,” said Shendra Nenas, shapeshiftress from Jom, traveler in time, so called Shen by her friends.

“What task do I have to perform?” I asked.

“You might figure it out,” she replied, and reached out with her powdery pale blue hands. She took my chonka, so said tambourine, from the shelf and attached it to my belt. Those pale blue hands rose slowly and brushed with slender fingers a timely march across my yellow green bendo dreen lips. Tingle explode, I whirled to gone.

Travel To When?

Flash I sat in a tangle bush. All white it was, twig, branch and leaf. On hands and knees I pushed my way out and onto a path. White grass grew along its edges. Trees, white trunked, limbed and leaved, stood in a thickness of density all around, a forest. I recognized shragnuts and twist oaks among many others.

“Shendra Nenas,” I called weakly.

No response. The shifter was not to be seen. Was she one of the branches, or perhaps a cluster of shragnuts? I got up onto my feet and brushed the dirt from my highboots.

“Shendra Nenas, Shen! What should I do?” I called with a good two levels more of urgency.

Oh, I knew where I was. That was not my worry. My worry was, fair and true, that I was a bendo dreen alone away from the hedge. Such was so. Oh, yes, I WAS the bendo dreen who left the hedge happily time and again for adventure. But never alone! Never without Kar, my best friend, now Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns. Never without Kar. I hadn't expected to be so suddenly launched through time and left all alone. Where was the shifter from Jom? Wasn't she going to help me? Wasn't that what time travelers were meant to do? Help? So I'd been led to believe from more than a few Gwer drollek stories. She simply touched my lips, and flash I was here, but alone. Was it really proper to be sent hurled through time with no preparation? I doubted such.

“I must do something,” I said to myself.

The something I did was walk along the path. I knew I'd been transported to the Woods Beyond the Wood. The warm winter whiteness told me so such. I knew somewhere in some direction I would find the high cobbled road. The high cobbled road led to Blossom Castle. Kar as Dragon flew me there once. Yes, I knew where I was, but I didn't know when!

Perhaps I was at a when before Blossom Castle or the high cobbled road existed! I sat down on a thick white twist of root beside the path. I had some fat mounds of thinking to work on.

“I am in the Woods Beyond the Wood,” I told myself in a calm, reasoning manner. “But when? I have a task to perform. But what? How will I know? I should recite all I have learned about these Woods from Gwer drollek stories. Such. Blossom Castle, terraces, Summer to Winter, Quing and Quang … Hmmm … nesters, leaftrimmers, jesterbeasts! Fleckrunners! Oh, maybe … but hmmm … other … waterwizards … Waterwizard! Ripple Bight! He should know. He might help. If I can find his beckoning pool, perhaps I can somehow summon him!”

I sprang to the path with a fresh cup of purpose, so such to seek and find the waterwizard Ripple Bight. Kar and I met with him on our most recent adventure. He sent us through O'Tan's Gate. A powerful waterwizard like Ripple Bight might surely possibly know something about my task. He might …but wait. Struck puzzled, I stopped in my tracks. A solid spire of truth pressed forward in my mind. Yes, true, these were the Woods Beyond the Wood. No doubt. No doubt at all. I knew my where, but I did not know my when! Might Ripple Bight not be here at this when? Doubts, heaps of ‘em. I stared down at the path. I made a decision to empty my mind, follow the path, and find what would be found.

The path bent in curves, plunged into gullies, moved along ravines, but ever always remained in the unending forest of winter white trees, the Woods Beyond the Wood. It crossed tricklestreams fringed with white feather ferns. It dipped and climbed, and all the time not a single creature did I see. Truth, a few rustlings and twig snaps I heard. But something to see? No. After hours of walking I climbed a tree with an easy welcoming ladder of branches. I got high enough to peer all around. Horizon to horizon stretched the seemingly endless sea of white Woods. The sun was sinking.

Soon darkness would blanket the day, and still I did not know what when I was now a part of. Down the tree I scrambled and dropped onto the path. I vowed to follow the path until darkness hid it. It so happened, and soon, that the path did not need the night to hide it. It narrowed and disappeared at its very next turn. No more path. One day wasted. Darkness falling. At least there were shragnuts. True, they wore a white winter garb, but I recognized ‘em anyway. I plucked enough from one of the trees, cracked ‘em, shelled ‘em, ate ‘em. I shrugged. What else could I do?

Second Day

I burrowed into a hedge and shaped an adequate bower for sleeping.
I don't know when or why,
I thought,
but truly I do know where. Tomorrow I'll follow a tricklestream. I jumped enough of ‘em today. Stay near water. That's… where waterwizards… are…
Thus that quickly I drifted off to dream, so such tired by the day's long march.

In the morning it took me a yawn and two stretches to come to my senses. I crawled from my nest and brushed bits of white twig and leaf and shragnut shell from my jacket, pantaloons, and chonka. An idea penetrated my morning daze as my fingers flicked the chonka clean. The shifter from Jom, Shendra Nenas, insisted I bring my chonka, so said tambourine in this language from down the Well. Why? Perhaps I could in truth discover why. I unhitched the chonka from my belt, shook it, tapped its membrane, and sang in croaky voice the bendo dreen wake-up chant. I paused to listen and look. Silence. White bushes, white trees, white patches of grass. I stood. No changes. I hung the chonka back on my belt.

“I'll try the tricklestream idea. It might lead to a pool. If it does, I'll try my chonka there,” I said loudly, hoping that the shifter listened somewhere nearby, shaped perhaps as a plant, rock or tree. I decided there then to believe that she WAS with me. It helped push away the bendo dreen dread of being all totally so such alone.

Back along the path I went until I came to a tricklestream running along a ravine. I'd hopped over it the day before. Such I remembered.
Should I travel with or against its gentle flow?
I picked white berries growing in clumps behind the white feather ferns on the tricklestream's bank. I popped ‘em in my mouth one at a time. They tasted much like sour thorn compote. Pleasant. I mused that some streams flow into ponds or pools, whereas others of ‘em flow out. I asked the stream, “Are you coming or going?” I scooped some of its water and drank. I felt completely happy. Such was so. I don't know why. Maybe I do. I was certain as certain that the shifter was with me. I felt it so such that strong. And in addition, let it be said that the Woods Beyond the Wood in winter white are truly gaspably beautiful. So said.

I worked my way along the tricklestream with the current down the ravine. Such was my decision. In hardly a space of time at all it skirted the flank of a low white wooded hill and straightened to run a little faster down a corridor of twist oaks. I liked the look of it. A promising development. The corridor seemed to announce that it led to an important where. I hurried.

After a long span of minutes stretched truly to hours the corridor opened onto a glade. The glade held a large rounded pool with two boulders poking up from its center. The tricklestream flowed into the pool with a tumble of burbling and fell out of it on the other side with a sliding smoothness. I ran forward eagerly to make a Fool of myself.

“What's my task?” I shouted.

Silence. Burble of tricklestream. Sliding smoothness.

“Oh, of course, I mean…I'll play my chonka!” I enthused, and I banged it and rattled it and danced around like a lackwit.

Silence. Burble of tricklestream. Sliding smoothness.

“Where is anybody? Shendra Nenas, Shen! Waterwizard! Ripple Bight? Anybody? Why am I here? Tell me! When? When is it? How can I do something if I don't know what to do? Babba Ja Harick! Shendra! ANYBODY!”

Silence. Burble of tricklestream. Sliding smoothness.