Woodlock (10 page)

Kar

“Oh, there you are!” said my old friend Kar, emerging from the doorway of my hut. “They said in the hedge you were writing a new Gwer drollek. How so? You've been with me bouncing on trampolines for bars and bars of weeks. I saw pots of ink and sharpened quills in there, but the stack of pages is blank. So it should be. You haven't had time to have an adventure. I know, I know, I can tell by the look on your face. What am I doing here? I dropped you off just yesterday, and here I am back again. Well, so, being Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns is fine and fun, but tell true, I think I need a vacation, too. You had one. Why not me? Why not here? Why not now? So when I returned to the Island, I told ‘em to muddle without me for a span. They didn't care. They had plenty of pies. I set up a Clock Watch Schedule and left. I flew first to Orrun Mountain Hollow to visit Cloud Castle City, but it wasn't there. What's wrong, Bek? Of a sudden you look pale.”

“Cloud Castle City isn't there?” I said.

“It wasn't. I don't know if it is now. I did see it hanging high off in the distance over the Woeful Wanderers' Wasteland, but I decided why go there alone when I could fetch you to go with me. Shall we go?” babbled Kar.

“Are you still the only jrabe jroon? Did we go to the Realm Beyond Realms and see Violet, Lionel, Guy and Slingsby? Can you shift to Rakara?” I said, searching for the truth of my reality, things to be as they were, not weren't.

“What's wrong with you, Bek? You seem to be more than usually fuddled,” observed Kar, and she knelt down next to me.

“I think I might be fine maybe. Everything around here looks the same,” I said.

“Why shouldn't it?” asked Kar.

“Because I have just returned from the past where I was sent by a shifter from Jom named Shendra Nenas to perform a task,” I revealed.

“You what?” said Kar, so such understandably shocked.

“If I failed, things are as they weren't,” I explained lamely. “Am I all me? Are you all you? Is the hedge the hedge?”

“Bek, settle. Watch this,” said Kar, and before my eyes she shifted to Rakara with lavender skin and sightless milky eyes and wrapped in a dark green mantle. “I be Rakara now, as ye have known me. I would ask ye more questions, but I sense that ye need to be some sort of how reassured. Talk, Bek. I will listen.”

“Are you still the only jrabe jroon?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Did we visit Violet, Lionel, Guy and Slingsby?” I asked.

“We did,” she answered.

Oh, I knew what question I was avoiding. I felt a need to approach it slowly, to surround it with little comforting truths before I asked it. I realized of a very sudden the comforting truths might be new truths, not my old ones. Old truths might have been wiped away by my failure and replaced by new ones. There was only one way to discover the true truth. The question. Still I didn't ask it.

“Have you ever heard of the Urplinth?” I asked instead.

“Urplinth? No, never,” she replied, shaking her head.

I took a deep breath and released it. I took another. Then I asked THE question.

“Do you remember the Gwer drollek story of Rindle Mer?”

Rakara shimmered and shifted to my best friend from forever Kar, jark dweg bendo dreen. She nodded the simplest of nods. She followed the nod with a short spill of words which lit me with lightning joy.

“The daughter of Delia Branch, chalky woodlock, and Runner Rill, waterwizard. She was raised by her uncle, Riffle Sike, and she replenished the Woods Beyond the Wood,” she said.

Unable to contain my happiness, I leaped to my feet, grabbed Kar's hands, and spun with her a lively dance around the Well of Shells, all the while shrieking, “I did it! I did it! I did it!”

Gwer Drollek

When I had worn myself limp with happy, Kar led me into my hut. Re-energized by the sight of so such things dearly familiar to me, I hurried to touch the Carven Flute, to count my stacks of completed Chronicles, to pick up and feel my quills, to examine my pots of purple ink, to rest my hands on the pile of blank oat parchment pages.

“Kar, I have a wonderful new Gwer drollek to write,” I said.

“What is it? What happened? What did you do?” Kar pressed eagerly.

Outside I could hear the rumble of thunder.
Thunder,
I thought.
The Chalky Grays in Villcom Wood are scurrying for cover. They can't shift shape like woodlocks, and their fingers aren't webbed, though the Gwer drollek story of Rindle Mer says woodlocks and Chalky Grays are some such distant cousins. Deeply distant, I suppose.

“Bek, wake up! I asked you a question!” snapped Kar, and she poked me in the ribs.

“Oh, sorry, Kar. I was distracted by the thunder. It's going to rain. The Chalky Grays will hide,” I explained.

“What does that have to do with anything? WHAT HAPPENED? TELL ME THIS NEW GWER DROLLEK!” roared Kar in true frustration.

“That is just how I yelled at Shendra Nenas,” I said.

“WHO IS SHENDRA NENAS?” exploded Kar.

I was able to calm her by telling her she would be the first to hear my story. Kar likes to be the first to do something, to see something, to hear something, to anything something. Such has it always been so. Truth, I told her the story from start to finish as it happened to me. Almost. I changed one thing to make it better. Such. It was a special glory to tell the story while the storm rushed about outside the hut. We were safe and cosy. I lit a buckletar lamp. When I'd spoken the final words, Kar sat quietly for a short span.

“You must tell it in the Assembly Bower right now,” she said in a voice of hushed awe. “It will be a triumph. Give me your chonka. I will announce you.”

My cheeks tingled with pleasure. They were probably hedge leaf green. Kar was right. I would tell ‘em in the hedge that my Gwer drollek story was impatient to be heard, and would not submit first to being written down in the strange language from down the Well. It insisted on being told in the Assembly Bower. Then, and only then, would it allow me to write it down.

“Go ahead, Kar. I'll tell it better than I did to you,” I boasted, delivering my chonka into her hands.

She raced outside chanting and banging the Summoning Call. I allowed a likely span of time to pass, walked proudly through the rain, slipped skillfully into the hedge, marched the corridor to the Assembly Bower, and made a grand entrance. All were assembled and fell silent when I appeared. I greeted ‘em with a sweep circle spin to open the gate to my story. I spun it out from start to finish. I held ‘em enchanted, so such wove a spell. Yes, I told it all as it happened. Almost. I again changed one thing to make it better. What did I change? When I fell during the collapse of the Urplinth, I saw the sparkling green mist of Delia Branch fleeing. I didn't tell ‘em that.

Instead, I said, “And I looked up as I fell and saw the sparkling green mist of Delia Branch swirling wreaths around the blissful Runner Rill.”