Blue Hills (10 page)

Babba Ja Harick

A cottage, yellow and white, nestled at the end of the flat white stone path where Kar and I stood, both of us trembling. Sprays of yellow and white blooms on creamy gold hedges surrounded the cottage. White trees, a pair of ‘em, heavy with fat globe lemons, flanked the probably edible probably witch's dwelling. At the delicious looking sight of my probable destination, I recalled the very true stark reason why I'd so such journeyed far from my home by the Well of Shells. The waterwizards were depending on me. The fate of Janellia Spurl frozen up a tree in Villcom Wood rested in my bendo dreen hands, as did the fates of a certain beeketbird stuck midair above my hut, all the bendo dreen in the hedge, and so such every other creature, frozen or magicless, spread across the vastness of All Fidd and Leee Combined on Boad, not to mention the Wide Great Sea and who knew where else. The witch would be in the lemony cottage. Such I believed. It was my task to fetch her. Squaring my shoulders, I strode forward to the cottage door. I raised my fist to rap on its yellowness, but before my knuckles could tap, a voice of calm sounded from inside.

“Come in, Bekka, and bring your shapeshifting friend with you,” it said.

I peered back over my shoulder at Kar. She shrugged like we do. I opened the door and entered the cottage. A surprising neatness greeted my eye. Not at all like the witch's cottage in Danken Wood. No disarray. No mounds of clothes and clutter. No. Instead, a clean round yellow table sat in the center of the room. On it rested a golden bowl of the white and yellow lemony berries Kar and I had so recently tasted. A gleaming white bowl of lemons, so such probably plucked from the trees just outside, shared the table. Rocking gently on a yellow rocker swirled with carven scrollwork was the witch, the Babba Ja Harick. She smiled at us with a most pleasant sweetness. In her lavender hands with their crooked ring-bedecked fingers she held a glowing blue crystal ball, a very twin to the one I patted to make sure it was still in my pocket. She was the witch, and yet she was different. She was dressed in white satins with gold thread stitching, not in black. No bent black pointy hat. No buckle shoes. No blackest purple cloak. Never had she ever been seen in so such an array of finery.

“And now,” she said softly, “I am content. You, Bekka, have willingly surrendered Jo Bree to accomplish your task of unfreezing and returning magic to your homeland.”

Kar stepped forward and bluntly asked, “Where is your witch speak? Why aren't you addled? Why isn't this cottage a mess?”

With a chuckle, not a cackle, the witch replied, “I see that Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns has a bold and quick curiosity. It is well, Bekka. You will need such a friend to help you carry your burden. In answer, jrabe jroon, I will explain to you that I have retired to bliss. Truth. My mind no longer races with colliding thoughts of Prophesy and duty. I am here now in lemony bliss, and here I will stay.”

“But,” I said uneasily, so such with a level of alarm that had been rising from the instant I'd heard the witch mention my needing a friend to help carry my burden, “Bid ... Fidd … and Tea ... Leee. I must bake ... lake ... take you back ... back ... to ... to ... return the ... the ... magic.”

“Listen to yourself, Bekka. Is it not yet clear to you? Who will return magic to All Fidd and Leee Combined on Boad? Who?” said Babba Ja Harick, and the question dangled in silence.

“Bekka?” whispered Kar in disbelief after a lengthy pause.

“Bekka,” confirmed the witch with a nod. “Go, Bekka. Open that cupboard there.”

I followed her pointing finger to the tallest yellow door in a wall of yellow doors and drawers. My legs were jelly. I managed a step and pulled the round white knob to open the cupboard. Jelly became syrup when I heard what the witch said while I stared at a pointy black hat on a shelf above, at black shoes with silver buckles below, at neatly hanging black purple cloak, white cambric shirt, black skirt, black and purple striped stockings, and black overshirt with long sleeves.

“Climb into your new clothes, Bekka Ja Harick!” is what she said.

The Box of Blue Sand

“Bekka Ja Harick?” gasped Kar once before bouncing around the room shouting gleefully, “Bekka Ja Harick! Bekka Ja Harick! Bekka Ja Harick!”

“Settle, daughter of Rakara, the jrabe, and of Dak, the jroon. Allow the new Harick a moment to comprehend.”

A moment! A moment to comprehend! I was numbed to witless. More like as it would take ten bar years even so such to begin to comprehend. A hundred! The witch must have read the great confusion, the bafflement, the helpless surprise in my eyes. Such seemed so because she reached out to me both of her lavender hands.

“Step here to me, Bekka. I can brush away some of your fuddlement,” she said. “You, too, Karro of Thorns. Listen.”

The witch clasped my hands, and I felt the power of her rings, some cool, some warm, some of ‘em pulsing, some twisting, some turning. Such I felt also a surge of serenity. Truth. Kar studied us with wide eyes, a wild grin stretched across her face.

“Open that drawer, jrabe jroon, the lowest one there,” continued the lavender witch. “Bring out Jo Bree.”

My heart fluttered. Kar obeyed and pulled Jo Bree from the drawer. My heart nearly stopped when Jo Bree slipped free from Kar's grasp to float in the air, pulse rainbow, and sing:

“Prophesied pale purple daughter,

Returned to her lemon nook home,

Has discovered her wished for replacement,

A bendo dreen couraged to roam.”

While the last note lingered, Jo Bree flushed yellow pink and fell into the drawer. So such the drawer swiftly slid closed.

“Yoss. The blue snave of Unnek returned Jo Bree to me a fair few moments before you arrived. I often enter the Blue Hills through a passage behind the cottage in the wall of the nook. Snaves visit me through the same passage. They regularly invite me to view their recitations. I do enjoy nonsense. Many discussions have we had concerning your quest. Oh, yoss. They looked so forward to your visit. And they were impressed, truly, by your dignity and bearing,” said Babba Ja Harick.

“Dignity? Bearing? Us?” said Kar. “But why is Bekka ...”

“Because,” interrupted the witch, “because she left the hedge. Because she broke through the Barrier. Because she descended the Levels beyond O'Tan's Gate. Because she traveled alone through time to perform an unknown task. Because she gave up Jo Bree.”

Had I done all of those things? I had, and all but one of ‘em with Kar beside me. I couldn't have done ‘em without Kar, except the time travel, which I did. I sifted through my life, searching for clues to somehow so such help me cope with standing before the witch, her hands holding mine, as her chosen successor. Is that what I was? Chosen successor? I looked down at my hands in her hands. What was I seeing? Did I see what I saw? I blinked hard twice and looked again. The witch's rings, all twenty-two of ‘em, were now adorning my fingers and thumbs! How had that happened? And there was more. More! I watched the yellow green skin of my hands turn to pale purple, so such exactly matching the color of the witch. Kar and I together fairly gasped as one. My knees felt weak, but I gritted my teeth and stood strong.

“There now, not so bad, is it?” said the witch. “Kar, please open the drawer above that of the Carven Flute.”

Kar without delay did as she was told. More than eager was she. She brought out a little wooden box, a perfect cube.

I recognized it flash that quickly. It was the box of blue sand I'd first seen in the witch's cottage on the adventure when Kar and I broke the Barrier surrounding Danken Wood and listened to the witch recite the sad tale of her sister. Blue sand.

“Blue ... sand! Yoss! That's it,” I cried, fizzing with thrills for no reason I knew.

“Blue sand, a very truth. Why do you need it? I will say,” offered the Babba Ja Harick. “There are mountainous dunes of blue sand east of the nook. I, truth to tell, am a witch of the Blue Sand. So, too, was my sister, Semma. She never knew. I didn't either, until ... ah, until what does it matter? To be short, I had a visitor who brought to me in my Danken Wood cottage that box of blue sand. A pink windwhirl from the Blue Dunes. You have met, Bekka. It resides now forever in the blue crystal ball you've got tucked in your jacket. It is your crystal ball of Prophesy, Bekka Ja Harick.”

My stomach fluttered when she so such said my new name.

“You, however, are of the hedge, not of the Blue Sand,” she continued. “In this box, which now passes into your care, rests blue sand from the Blue Dunes. When you take it and fly across the lake to the Charborr Forest on your new broom, you will be taking with you the restoration of magic and movement in the blue grains of sand. Where something or someone of the Blue Sand is, there, too, will be magic. Where there is nothing of the Blue Sand, magic is absent and stiff silence reigns. And now, Bekka Ja Harick, I will tell you what not to do with the rings. I wish I had had someone to tell me. A lot of silliness would have been avoided. But first, slough off your bendo dreen identity and climb into your new witchly garb.”

Flight to the Cottage

In a daze, fascinated by my new lavender skin, I exchanged bendo dreen garb for witchly. Kar, unable to remain subdued, shifted to Acrotwist Clown and flipped back and forth from wall to wall across the room screaming. She was that so such happily fizzed. I, still dazed, but now dressed as witch from pointy hat to buckle shoes, looked in wonder at my pale purple hands adorned with twenty-two magic rings. Babba Ja Harick's soothing voice droned instructions into my ear. So happened the drifting of knowledge, heard but not truly noticed, to catch hold on its own in the caves of my mind. A broom somehow appeared in my hands. I stared at it dreamily. The witch no longer spoke. Kar no longer flipped and screamed. I'd been lost in reverie, unaware. Now I looked up and saw Kar. Shifted to Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns, she beamed at me.

“What are you staring at, Bek? Didn't you hear?” she bubbled.

“Beer? Beer ... what?” I said with witchly fuddlement.

Kar laughed merrily.

“Such!” she said. “The Babba Ja Harick has granted us permission to leave. She said ‘Good-bye'. Didn't you hear her? She has gone to inform all of the snaves about you. You! Bekka Ja Harick! Such a Dragon I'll be to accompany the new Harick. Let's go!”

Kar shimmered to a sheet of glimmers and rushed like a breeze out the open door. The door was open. The witch was gone. How had I missed that? Dazed, I gazed at the broom in my hands, my lavender hands. I took one step. My buckle shoes were seemingly so such nearly weightless. I paused to admire ‘em. I put a hand up to touch the point of my hat. I drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of wonder. My blackest purple cloak had two inner pockets. In one of ‘em, my fingers felt the sharp corners of the wooden box. Blue sand. In the other, I touched the crystal globe's glassy smooth surface. Pink windwhirl. I took another step, clutching the broom in both hands.

“Come on, Bek! The waterwizards are waiting!” hissed Kar in a Dragony roar.

I leaped to the door and shouted, “Awaaaaaay!”

To the sky I sped straight up. I veered off in swoops and dives, cackling wildly. Such was amazingly so! Kar flew as a golden Dragon with emerald eyes, no surprise to me. It has always ever been the favorite of her Dragon shifts. We played tag and follow-the-leader. We traced rune figures above the Blue Hills. Side by side, Dragon and witch -Dragon and witch! -we raced. I pointed with my strange new lavender hand at the Charborr Forest and leaned a turn which would have made me dizzy one day earlier. Now I thrilled to it. Over the lake we sped. Up the heights. Over the Forest. I looked for movement below. I listened for sounds other than the flapping of my cloak and the whistling of the wind. Riding low to the treetops, I reached down to give ‘em a touch.

“Bek, the river!” hissed Kar with flame-spouting glee.

Yoss. The river. I veered left and dove down to watch it flow, to watch it rush over boulders, to hear it! Stiff silence gone.

“Where, Bek? Where do we go?” asked Kar.

“To ... to ... the ... to the ...,” I struggled to release the word.

“The Well of Shells?” suggested Kar, trying to help.

“No. Not the bell. To ... the ... the ..., no, not the ... my! Yoss! That's it! ... my! ... my ...,” I said.

“Your cottage!” cried Kar in triumph.

“Yoss! That's it!” I screeched.

Close above the Greenwilla River we sped. I skimmed its surface with the toes of my buckle shoes. Kar flapped hard her membraned gold wings to keep pace with me. Wildly I rode, cackling madly. I never knew before how joyous it is to cackle. Sharply I turned at Danken Wood and headed north to the clearing where the witch's cottage -mine! -sat waiting. I landed on a run, heading straight for the edible dwelling. Kar settled on its roof. She shimmered to Queen Jebb and sprang down beside me at the door, where I'd stopped to collect my thoughts, my breath, my entire self.

“What now?” said Kar, shifting to bendo dreen.

In the Cottage

“We ... we ... go in.”

“Me first! Such. This messy clutter is all yours now, Bekka Ja Harick. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Try the rings! Do something with the rings!”

“Settle! ... Worst ... Burst ... First! Yoss! That's it! ... First ... I ... I ... will ... bean up this guess.”

“Clean up this mess! Easy! I took your meaning so such right away. Same Bek, witch or no. You'll want your oat pages here, your ink pots there, everything proper and in its place. You'll be a Harick who won't stand a mess. Try a ring! A ring! A twist or a turn of the proper one will whisk all this clutter away, won't it?”

“Kar, settle. Yoss, a sting ... ring. Now which bun? This ... Oh!”

“What? What happened?”

“Kar, it sparked me a lock ... shock. If it larks ... sparks, wrong ring.”

“How do you know? Is that something of what the Babba Ja Harick was whispering to you for all that time?”

“Yoss. Drink ... hmmmm ... Think as you touch the ... the ... these, and the long ... wrong rings ... block ... shock. The light ... right fling is ... is ... cool to the hutch ... touch. Yoss! This is it! This one. This.”

“Can I turn it? Let me try it. Will it work for me if I ...”

“Settle! I must butter ... mutter a rant ... chant.”

“A chant? How do you know a chant? You don't know any chants.”

“I didn't. Now I do. I am ... Bekka Ja Harick! ... mumble mutter ... Such!”

“...Oooh, where did you send ‘em, Bek, the mounds? The cottage is sparkle clean, better than we kept the shop in the hedge. What about the closet? That was the ... oh, clean and neat, too Bek ... ahhh, the crystal ball.”

“Yoss. I place it near ... here ... in the center of the ... the ... the ...”

“Table. It's so such clear and blue. That means everything is fine, doesn't it? Such was so in all the Gwer drollek stories. And Bek, think on it. The pink windwhirl is in there. Think on it. Pink windwhirl ... in there ...”

“Yoss.”

“Ahhh, the little wooden box. Where will you put that? Can I have a look at the blue sand? Give me a peek. Who could suppose that blue sand is so such important. Let me see it, Bek.”

“You may book ... look once.”

“Will you spill a little on my hand?”

“No.”

“One grain?”

“No. Enough. I will ... will ... put it ... here.”

“It would look better on the window sill, but I suppose you are after all the new Harick and know best. Bekka Ja Harick! Do something other with the rings. Oh, I know, make tiny cottage cakes like as the witch did when the weather went wild.”

“I'll buy ... try. Hmmmm ... no ... no ... no ...yoss, this one, Kar. Now ... hmmmm ... mutter mumble ... Such!”

“It's perfect! Look. A tiny lemon doorknob.”

“Flake ... Take it, Kar. Baste it.”

“You mean taste it, and I will ... Mmmmm, better than good, Bek. Make me another. Then let's ... What was that?”

“A clock on the floor.”

“A knock on the door? Did you do that with a ring?”

“No.”

“Should I open it? I'll open it.”