Woodlock (4 page)

Delia Branch

Her hands trembled. She was terrified. In the orb's light I saw it clear, felt it strong. She was terrified of ME! Me, a bendo dreen scarcely two slices more than half her size! I can't think of anything less dangerous than a me, a bendo dreen hedge dweller. I decided in a nince to try and reassure her, comfort her with a spill of soothing words while I otherwise remained motionless.

“I am Bekka of Thorns, bendo dreen from the hedge near the Villcom Wood,” I began. “I am peacefully timid, known to be so such! I am therefore called Silent Bekka by all in the hedge. A truth. I know many Chalky Grays. They are my neighbors. I have been told that they are distant relatives of the mysterious woodlocks dwelling here in the Woods Beyond the Wood. I can see boldly clear that you must be one of ‘em, the woodlocks. You do appear so such to be a Chalky Gray save for the finger web arrangement of your hands. No Chalky Grays I have ever met are webbed. I may be mysterious to you, but I am harmless. You are mysterious to me! This orb, you say, is yours. Oh, I believe you. I intend to give it back.”

If I gave it back to her, she would be quick flash gone. Such was obviously so. The manner and flow of my speech had calmed the tremble of her hands. Still she remained poised, ready to fly, or maybe to explode into green sparkles! The orb in my possession was the single strand holding her near.

“When I return it to you, will you tell me something?” I bargained.

“How do you know my name? Why did you call my name?” she whispered, taking a step back and beginning again to tremble.

“No, no, no. Settle yourself. I am no thief. I say I will give you the orb. It is yours. Such is so. No argument. Your name?

How do I know your name? I…was told by…,” I fumbled searching for a likely lie, “by…another woodlock.”

“Who? Where?” she asked in her tiny whisper of a voice.

“It was way over on the other side near the Danken Wood. She didn't tell me her name. She said I might find Delia Branch over here. She said if I wanted to know about shifting to mist, I should find you. That's what she said, whoever she was,” I lied, but truly with a probing purpose. “She said you owned an orb. This is it, I suppose. Naturally, when I found it under the water at the edge of that pool, I guessed what it was and to whom it belonged. I tucked it safely in my pocket and decided to search for you in the morning. But, such was so, I couldn't get to sleep. Why not get up and hunt Delia Branch by the light of the orb? Such I said to myself. So that is what I did and have done. Won't you please allow me to hold it for a little span longer while you tell me how you lost it? How did it fall into the pool? Does this tall, tall tree have a part in the story? You see, I'm a collector of stories. I happen to be the chosen Chronicler of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. Won't you share this one little story with Silent Bekka? I'm not being very silent, am I?”

“No,” agreed or refused the woodlock quickly.

“No, what? No, I'm not silent, or no, you won't tell me the story?” I asked.

“No, you amn't silent,” she said.

Would she stay? Would she go? I decided to show her a trust I truly felt. I placed the orb in her hand. Our gazes locked. I suddenly remembered from the Gwer drollek story how the woodlock could be held by a forceful gaze. I smiled and broke the gaze lock, turning my face away. I wanted her to make the choice to stay and tell me how she lost the orb. I wanted her to do so freely. I hoped and believed that Runner Rill and Riffle Sike and the meeting at the beckoning pool were all elements of the tale. I wanted her to trust me. I had a task. The shafts of yellow light shooting from the orb flicked off, doused.

“I will tell it in darkness. I will stand behind the tree,” announced the tiny voice of Delia Branch.

I nodded and sat down quietly, thorned with relief.

The Story According to Delia Branch

I glanced at the black star-spattered sky. It seemed so such like the magic cloth of a waterwizard's robe. Time moved. A seed of doubt began to sprout in the thorny briar of my mind. I clutched at my chonka. I turned to look at the tall, tall tree. Had the woodlock fled? Would a lullaby lure her back?
I should have kept the orb. What a lackwit I am. A dull thorn. I'll play…
I scolded myself. But before I could tap my chonka, the tiny whisper voice of Delia Branch floated out from where she was hidden behind the tall, tall tree.

“These Woods have become far too crowded,” she said softly. “It are enough to make a woodlock nervous. You am from near the Villcom Wood, you say, where Chalky Grays live in horrible masses and am, in spite of that wretchedness, known to be content. We, we woodlocks as I are, am abandoned, and rightfully so, to dwell alone in forests, the more dense, the better we like it. Peacefully content I have lived here for all twelve of my full bar years. I have a cave, and I like this tree. I practice my spells here. I swim in the pool. I are a fine swimmer.”

She seemed to spill the words reluctantly and took long pauses at the end, and sometimes in the middle, of each sentence. I inched closer to the tree, straining to hear the tiny soft voice.

“The orb holds my secrets,” she continued. “It am mine. I lost it a time ago. I didn't know where until today when I saw you. Now I can guess what must have happened. There was a day when I came to swim in that pool like all the other days, but different. I swam. Then, as I ever do, I flitted up this tree to relax while I dried off in the sun warmth. There, barely settled, was when I first heard the commotion. I looked down and saw two youngling waterwizards shouting at each the other. I never before saw mist green wizards with hair like fire!”

Her voice changed. In it I could hear something more than excitement. The pauses disappeared. She rushed on.

“I was standing up there high looking down. They had not seen me. Then they looked up. He saw me! Orange eyes! Oh! I sparkled to green mist and escaped. I ranged far to the river, swerving between tree trunks up hill and down. I rested as fog on the river for days. Fiery eyes and hair! Mist green skin! In time I calmed. I shaped to woodlock, swam and swam, thinking all the while about how my Woods had been invaded.”

Now her voice slowed again. The pauses returned.

“When I had swum myself beyond the edge of exhaustion, I sparkled home to my cave. I shaped to woodlock and sat on my red roamer woven carpet. I felt the need to consult my orb. I reached under my sash to retrieve it from the fern pouch. The fern pouch was flat, empty. My orb was missing. My eyes flashed to the dug out ledge shelf on the cave wall where I sometimes rested my orb. It wasn't there. In a panic of nervousness I left the cave and sparkled to everywhere I might have dropped it until I came to here today. I saw you take it from the pool. I can guess how it got there. When the one with the most glorious fiery eyes saw me, I must have had the orb in my hand. I sparkled so quickly that I failed to return the orb to the spell sparkle pouch. Out of the pouch, it cannot sparkle. So it fell when I raced away in panic at being seen. Now I have it back, and I have done as I promised.”

My cry of “Wait!” was ignored, and a sparkling cloud of green mist whooshed by me and fled to be lost in the darkness of the surrounding Woods Beyond the Wood.

Following A Tricklestream

Still seated, I kicked the ground with the heels of my highboots. I clenched my fists in frustration. Such was so until I was struck by a pleasant thought.

Maybe that was my task,
I mused.
She lost her orb. I found it. I gave it to her. That's so such a task of sorts, isn't it? Well, now. So. I'll go to sleep. Yes, I'll sleep, and when I wake up I'll be back in my future and sitting in my hut by the Well of Shells. Such should most certainly probably be so, maybe.

Not truly firmly believing that such would be so, nevertheless I curled down and allowed simple weariness to sink me into a thick honey of sleep. In a slow dream I sat trying to write at my table in my hut, but the inkpot avoided the dip of my quill and the oat parchment page sprouted red wings and flew out the door. “Kar, is that you?” I cried. “No,” answered the table before giggling and shifting to bendo dreen Kar. “Fooled you, didn't we?” laughed Shendra Nenas, who had shifted from inkpot to blue bool, moon dweller. “Who is the parchment page then?” I asked logically, not in the least fuddled in any manner by their jest pranks. “Guess,” urged Kar, poking me in the ribs with her elbow. “Ow!” I said, waking up.

I had rolled my ribs onto a hump of root under the tall, tall tree. It was morning enough to see that I remained in the when of long ago there in the Woods Beyond the Wood. I sat up, looked at the pool. Not a ripple, calm and flat.

“All right. Giving her the orb wasn't it,” I grumbled.

I washed my face in the pool, drank. I decided not to stay there. Delia Branch had mentioned a river and a cave. Such I remembered from her behind-the-tree murmurs. I would look for one or the other of ‘em, the river or the cave. I didn't care which. I pulled up some feather ferns and nibbled the roots. They weren't dreadful, and the green beauty of the Woods was pleasing.
Which way should I go?
I asked myself. I answered by striding off true on the line of direction where the green sparkle mist of Delia Branch had fled in the night.

She probably headed for her cave or the river,
I thought.
I have not completed my task, whatever it is. I wonder when it will be too late. Why do I have to be stuck here alone and uninformed? Well, mostly uninformed. Oh, here's a tricklestream to follow. Such. I'll follow it. What do I know? How much? I know what when this is. I know that. I know some whos. Runner Rill I met. What about him? He's prickly like his daughter will be…if she will be. At the pool he saw Delia Branch high in the tall, tall tree. His first sight of her. He was smitten. Such was so, a fact. SHE was smitten! She, too. That's right. That has to be. But what else? Riffle Sike. Riffle Sike had a dream vision. He was instructed by the so-seen silver wizard, I say Shendra Nenas, to come here. He was told to disappear when he saw the woodlock. He did so. Where is he now, I wonder? Is he important to my task? So such probably not. Runner Rill and Delia Branch are a future. Rindle Mer will be their daughter, or will she? What if I fail to complete my unknown task? Such there might not be a Rindle Mer, which means so such much other will not be!

I stopped walking in order to imagine my possible failure allowing mounds and mounds of ugly consequences.
No Rindle Mer means no Woods replenished. Means no Nimble Missst! Means Blossom Castle burned! And means all else other sorts of disasters and disasters and disasters!
I doubled the length of my strides along the tricklestream, going I knew not where to do what I did not know.

Gloom

The tricklestream meandered. It curved under banks below hedges. It cut through meadows where I walked ankle deep in lush green clover. Could the clover blanketing the green hills of Clover be any deeper or thicker? I doubted it, but I could not be certain. I had but one time seen the Clover hills, and such was a view from high in the sky while riding the Dragon serpent neck of my shifted jrabe jroon best friend Kar. We hadn't had time to land on ‘em. We were on our way somewhere to do something. I forgot what. What did it matter? That was then in the future. Here was now, me following a tricklestream eons before I was born. I stopped to bang on my chonka. I stopped to shout for Shendra Nenas. I shouted for Riffle Sike, Runner Rill, Delia Branch. I searched the tops of every sort of tree, straight or twisted, short or tall, leafy or merely leaved. I scrambled up boulders and down. I traversed ravines and hollows. I passed bursts of bright wildflowers, red, yellow, pink. I sampled petals and nectars. The tricklestream was joined by another and ran swifter, wider. It tumbled a hill, a short cascade, and leveled off lazily to flow through a density of forest. I was forced to fairly squeeze my way between tree trunks and to bat branches out of my face. With bendo dreen skill I slipped my way along, keeping close to the stream on my left.

“Anybody!” I cried.

A few flutters whirred and a few rustles stirred, followed by silence. I felt abandoned. I wished I was in the Assembly Bower listening to Zobba or even to Old Danno reciting a Gwer drollek tale. I wished I was hearing a tale in the safety of the hedge, not living one alone and deep in the past. I felt ripely sorry for myself. I pushed aside a tangle of branches and sat on the bank of the stream. I broke off bits of twig, tossed ‘em in one after another, and watched ‘em flow away.

I can't find any of ‘em,
I moped to myself.
I found the woodlock's orb. That should have been the task. Such! Why was I put here alone without instruction? I bet Shendra Nenas is the biggest lackwit shifter there is. Or ever was! Why didn't I get Zom Falbu or Scong Lodd? Theirs was a Gwer drollek shifter story that made some sense. This one is silly. How can I know what I don't know?

I sat there, stubbornly glum, for the rest of the day. I hung my head. I WAS that low. Such was so. When the stream and the trees grew dark, I sighed and gathered leafy branches, snapping ‘em off, to build a sleep nest. I curled down and vowed not to move from that spot until…until…until I didn't know what.

A bendo dreen should not be all completely totally alone,
I complained.
Adventure may be well and good, but not alone. I wish Shendra Nenas would send Kar to help me. I can't fly or shift or do anything useful but think. I wish I had Jo Bree with me. It's the only magical thing I have. If I had my Carven Flute, my Jo Bree, it might float in the air and pulse me a rainbow tune clue. But you don't have the Carven Flute. You have the chonka instead. Shendra Nenas suggested that you bring the chonka. I bet she was supposed to tell me to bring Jo Bree. You should have brought it anyway, lackwit Bekka! When you grabbed the chonka, the Flute was right there. You should have grabbed it, too! You know it's the only magic you possess.

I continued berating myself so such until I fell asleep.