Woodlock (5 page)

Trofle?

I awoke in a bright flood of sunshine. So such it seemed I had slept away a night and all of a morning. A truth. Too much sleep makes me groggy. I was groggy. I rolled to the stream and doused my head, submerging it completely in the shocking cold water. I sat and let sliding dribble drips drop down onto my jacket and shirt. I blinked my bleary eyes. I raked my fingers through my drenched hair, and such when I did so, I recalled the Gwer drollek story of the Ledgemoon. In that tale, the creature Sill has the habit of raking her fingers through her hair.
Sill has blue fire hair and pale green skin. She's a twin.
Such thoughts as these drifted slowly through my foggy mind. I stared at the stream. I was barely half awake and remained clouded a long distance removed from my situation.

“Speak softly or Badge will faint,” said a low trembly voice.

I lifted my gaze from the water and found myself looking at a trofle posed between two tree trunks on the other side of the stream. I'd never seen a trofle, but truly did I know about ‘em from listening to such and so many a Gwer drollek tale. I thought,
A trofle called Madge held a part in the Rindle Mer tale. Rindle Mer tale! My task! Will she be born?
Instantly alert, fully awake, I regarded the trofle. She regarded me with her green glow eyes. A night blue head with ivory bone purple spikes meant she was a she, not a he. Such I remembered. Her tail whips, both of ‘em golden, waved wildly above the clattering purple spikes which covered her plump lump of a body. I couldn't see her waddlers, though I was certain she had ‘em.

“Trofle?” I said softly, aware that trofles faint when overly excited. The cloud of gloom weighing on me lifted slightly.
A creature. A something. Maybe…?

“Badge is a trofle. Cho dett. You are not a woodlock. Have you seen one? Mek tor?” said the trofle in her low trembly voice.

I blazed indignant, insulted, angry, and happy all at once instantly together. Why? I am Bekka of Thorns, Chronicler of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. I have wits. I am known for ‘em. I knew in a flash I was staring at Shendra Nenas. She couldn't hide the shifter phrases peppering her speech.
So such a lackwit shifter is she,
I thought. Yet, she WAS there.

“Go ahead and faint, Badge. You aren't Badge. You're Shendra Nenas, and you put me here without proper instruction. How do I know what I'm supposed to do when I don't know what I'm supposed to do? What am I supposed to do!?” I ranted, waving my arms dramatically.

“Settle, Bekka of Thorns. Char ten. Hatch! I am here to evaluate your progress. Tell me what you have done so far,” said Shendra Nenas, the shifter, not Badge, the trofle, though she still yet appeared as trofle.

“I figured out when this is. I met Runner Rill, then Riffle Sike, then Delia Branch. Is that right?” I said, eager to know if I'd been treading the proper path on the way to my task.

“It's one of the possibilities. Bel tok. What else?” said the shifter.

“They all of ‘em told me about when they met. Each one had a different story. There was a beckoning pool and a tall, tall tree. That was where they met,” I informed her.

“What else?” asked Shendra Nenas.

“Else? Runner Rill is prickly. He was smitten when he saw the woodlock. Riffle Sike was told by…by YOU, I bet. Was that you in his vision dream? Were you the silver wizard?” I challenged.

“What else have you done?” said the shifter as trofle, ignoring my question and clattering her spikes I knew not why. Maybe because I was right!

“Else? The woodlock Delia Branch was smitten, too. I could tell. Her shyness made her shift to mist and race off. That's why she dropped her orb into the pool. I found the orb. That was right, wasn't it? I had it. I got her to talk to me because I had it. I gave it back to her, and she told me her story.”

“What! You gave it back! Hatch! Oh, oh, dol ter,” shrieked the shifter. She followed the shriek with moans.

I flushed green with shame.
I should have kept the orb. I should have kept it! Why should I have kept it? How could I possibly know?

“What can you do so such to help me?” I asked meekly.

“You have made it much more difficult than it might have been. You have but one week more to complete your task. Deg win,” she said, shimmering to disappear.

“It's all your fault!” I screamed. “You should have told me! NOT! ENOUGH! INSTRUCTION!”

Runner Rill by The Stream

I threw myself into the stream and splashed a raging tizzy. I flung myself onto the bank, tore at tufts of grass with my teeth, and imagined Kar falling down laughing at me. Such was enough to make me feel ridiculous. Also, I noticed my chonka floating away. I dove in to retrieve it. Smiling like a lackwit, I waded back to the bank. Anger can never hold me for long. I look so such silly. I feel so such a fool.

Well,
I thought.
I have one week to do whatever it is that I am to do. Such. So. I might as well enjoy myself. Walk along this stream. Nice stream. Nice trees. Pretty flowers. I won't think about…No! I won't!

I banished all dark thoughts from my mind, and instead, sang out loudly tune after tune while banging, rattling and tapping my chonka. So such occupied after drying my clothes, I followed the stream until dark. I bedded down below a fine prickly hedge next to a small waterfall and allowed the falling water's song to soothe me to sleep. I awoke refreshed. Dark thoughts attacked, but I warded ‘em off by flopping into the stream under the falls and turning my face up into the cascade.

“There,” I croaked in a raspy whisper when I had regained the shore.

Too much singing yesterday,
I thought, holding a hand to my throat.
Rest your voice today, Bekka. Follow the stream. Don't think. Follow the stream. But first, you drenched your clothes again, lackwit. Dry ‘em.

That I did, spreading ‘em out in the sun on the highest branches of an easily climbed tree. The double weaves of my jacket and pantaloons took the longest to dry. While perched up there waiting, I looked out over the vastness of the Woods Beyond the Wood. I saw where the stream ran and made a turn behind a low hill opposite a grassy meadow. Strange purple grass filled the meadow and a single tuft of orange grew in its midst. But wait. I squinted and shielded my eyes with my hands. Not a tuft, but an orange mop of hair! It was one of the brothers! Which one? I snatched my clothes and threw ‘em on, at the same time leaping and falling my way down the tree. Kar would have laughed. She would have laughed harder at seeing me up and hopping along the stream while struggling into my second highboot. A nince later, I was running. Rumpled and panting, I reached the meadow. His back was turned. I knew he knew I was there. A deaf wobbler would have heard my approach.

“I'm from the future,” I croak whispered with my damaged voice.

The youngling waterwizard slowly spun a turn to stare at me. I knew by the scowl he was Runner Rill. I was held by his fiery orange eyes.

“Ye be from the future?” he snorted. “Be that what ye have been paid to tell me? Ye look more to be from the trash heap. Why whisper? Speak up. No one be here save me.”

“No one paid me anything,” I hissed on, though it really was so such painful to speak. “I have been sent by a shifter to do something. I think that if I fail, you won't have a daughter. Rindle Mer will not be. And more. No watery woodlock. No Nimble Missst!”

He looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted gadapples and thorns all over my body. He raised a hand, silencing me.

“Save your stagnant puddles of lies,” he snarled. “I be leaving these Woods to my lackwit brother soon enough. Was the final treachery at the second beckoning pool yesterday not enough for him? Did he send ye to make certain that I go? Tell him not to fear. After yesterday, it all be clear. It all be most liquid clear.”

“What yesterday?” I asked. “I don't know about yesterday. What happened yesterday?”

He glared at me with those fiery orange eyes. I felt rumpled and desperate. Something wrong was happening.

“One day I will be a river,” sighed Runner Rill. “Oh, to be a river.”

“You will! You will! I know you will!” I hissed. “Tell me about yesterday. Tell me. I can help!”

He studied me from boot toe to the top of my coppery haired head. He looked deep into my eyes. In his gaze I could see he wanted to believe me. His shoulders slumped.

“I will tell ye,” he said.

Runner Rill Describes Another Incident

To encourage him, I sat on the purple grass and pasted what I hoped was a sympathetic smile on my face. Runner Rill lifted his purple starred pouchbag up from the grass and hugged it to his chest. His gaze no longer focused on me. He looked at the stream. So such he seemed fairly enchanted. Time passed. Was it a trance? I fidgeted. He remained motionless. Was he even aware of my presence? What was I to do? What was my task? I needed more information. I followed his gaze to where it rested on the rippling bend of the stream.

“To be a river would be a glory,” I whispered. “What happened yesterday at the second beckoning pool?”

He sighed, but otherwise stayed as he was, enchanted by the stream. I made ready to nudge him again with words, but the need to do so such passed. He began to speak.

“When I returned to the tall tree where I first saw…her, no one was there,” he said dreamily, eyes ever on the water. “I submerged to the bottom of the beckoning pool in search of Riffle Sike. He was not there. I floated up to the top of the tree and sailed aimlessly in circles for a time, waiting. Then I settled on the branch where…I couldn't stay. I left to be…to be flowing like a river, not still like a pond. I searched out tiny tumble cascades, rested at night under low hush falls. Yesterday I found…”

Runner Rill ceased speaking and broke off his stream gaze. He turned his mist green face to me. I nodded. I hoped the smile pasted below my nose showed sympathy and encouragement. He frowned.

“Ye do have ears to hear. Ye have a greeny yellow face and eyes to match. Bendo dreen, ye said before. What games be ye playing at? Ye denied sorcery, but now claim time travel. If ye can shift, do so! Prove yourself!” he snapped.

“To be a river would be a glory,” I repeated, hoping to deflect him back to his tale. “Such can and will be so. What happened at the second beckoning pool? What did you find yesterday?”

He gathered my soothing whisper in and blinked his fiery orange eyes. He returned his gaze to the flowing stream, and his face regained the look of dreams.

“I found,” he said softly, “the perfect beckoning pool. It had on one side a gentle tricklestream flow, and on the other an open cave beneath a rocky hill. I determined to claim the pool for mine. But my tide be lower than low, drained dry. There was in the cave already a mark. I was too late. My lackwit brother's pouchbag was jammed into a crevice, a break in the cave's smooth wall. I reeled back, stricken, and there he came, drifting up from the bottom of the pool. Oh, he pretended joy to see me. ‘Where be the woodlock? What did ye do with her?' I demanded. ‘I did nothing. I spelled myself invisible be what I did. I did nothing with the woodlock. What woodlock?' he lied. ‘Ye and she disappeared together. I saw. I saw. I have eyes,' I said. Riffle Sike foamed innocence and begged me to take the first beckoning pool for myself. He preferred this smaller one, he said. I told him to get out. I said, ‘This be my pool. Mine. Yours be next to the tall tree. This has been settled.'”

As Runner Rill spoke, his voice never changed from the dreamy softness, though the words so such seemed to call for passion.

“I went to tear Riffle Sike's pouchbag from the crevice in the cave,” he continued. “I meant to throw it at him. But I didn't. I never got that far. I…I saw her…standing on the rocks above the cave…The flash of her dark eyes…The gleam. Riffle Sike bolted past me into the cave. I was ice frozen staring at her. She disappeared in green sparkles. Riffle Sike had done it to me again. Yes, he was gone. His pouchbag was gone. And I knew…I knew…I floated here and have been here ever since dreaming of one day becoming a river. His pouchbag was gone and I knew…she was his.”

“No, that's not right!” I scraped with my raspy voice. I jumped to my feet.

Too late! He'd plunged both hands into his pouchbag, and he must have conjured some wizardy spell, because in a nince he was a purple streak blazing a trail through the sky.

Frustration

I went hollow, not with anger, but with frustration and despair. I didn't want to be a bendo dreen alone again. And yet, and yet, I was.

“Arrange your thoughts, Chronicler,” I muttered to myself. “Arrange ‘em.”

To do so such, I gripped my chonka and tapped it on my leg. I paced back and then forth across the meadow. I spoke silently to the absent Kar, who was way far off in the future doing I wondered what.

Kar, I have seven days to do something I don't know. Where are the answers? Why aren't you here? I think better when you are looking at me. You expect me to be smart. So such I try harder. The shifter Shendra Nenas told me I should have kept the orb. Am I a mind reader? No, I am not. I am a timid bendo dreen from the hedge. I have no powers. Well, you say, what about the Carven Flute, the Jo Bree? What about it? I don't have it! I didn't bring it! Lackwit? Yes! So such simple it would have been to slip it under my belt while I was picking up my chonka. It was right there on the shelf! Pah! All right, Kar, I can hear you say, ‘Settle, Bek.' I'm listening. I can settle. There. Now about Runner Rill. He's wrong, you know. He's confused, and I failed to untangle him. How could I? I was given no time! He might be gone forever. All might be as it isn't off in the future with you, Kar. I do have a week left to complete the unknown task. A week unless…unless the shifter is a complete lackwit and wrong about that, too! She could be. She might be. She probably is! Lackwit. All right, Kar, I'll settle. I'll pretend I have a week to…what?

I paced faster and began to wave my arms about. I'd reattached my chonka to my belt. So such, waving wildly and pacing faster seemed to help organize the babble in my brain.

I recognized Riffle Sike's beckoning pool from Runner Rill's description. The cave and all. The Gwer drollek story of Rindle Mer starts at that pool, dried to dust. So such. Riffle Sike HAS found his beckoning pool. One future fact is unveiled. He will raise his niece, Rindle Mer, in and around that very pool and cave. If! If! Oh, what did happen there yesterday? Where did Riffle Sike go when he spelled himself invisible? I should hunt for his beckoning pool. It is his! It will be his then in the future! He'll return there. I need to talk to him. Did he have another visit from Shendra Nenas as a silver wizard in a dream vision? Such might be so. Such could be so. But wait, you muddled lackwit! Kar, why didn't you remind me? It's the orb! I should have kept the woodlock's orb!

I was struck still by that last thought. My arms dropped to my sides. Standing in purple grass, I stared at the stream.

“I have to steal her orb,” I said aloud evenly, though my voice remained a nince raspy. “I have to find Delia Branch. Where to start? Where?”

After the thinnest span of time, I made a decision. I trailed off east, away from the stream. Why? I didn't know. I felt it. It was a guess. I knew I'd been moving south along the stream. West I calculated would take me to the high cobbled road and on to Danken Wood. Such I felt was wrong. North I'd already been. South would mean meeting the Greenwilla River. I went east. East, I hoped, would somehow lead me to the beckoning pool of Riffle Sike.