by Tuttle, Dan;
“I’m feeling kind of energized,” said she,
“and not so sure I want to go to bed,”
with ring on BLING she felt like escapee
who feared discovery, and so she fled.
Abu, his system too endorphin-filled,
was eager to accept recourse from rest.
“Let’s rid ourselves of unearned fortune. Skilled
maneuvers in the air, with some finesse
are all we need to put back Gumi’s ring
and free our conscience.” “Dog, this just might sting…”
156.
Their little world had spun from big one’s speed,
unknowingly toward darker parts concealed.
As Pioneers, they’d had to intercede,
in doing so found others wrongly steal.
It’s fortunate that Stella hadn’t got
the ring five years from then, perspectives changed.
Her wish for cash would complicate the plot
and find her from her other half estranged.
Decision still remained: how to conclude
their perilous possession of the ring
and whether gallant act would leave them viewed
as criminals for backyard bushwhacking.
In later retrospective to be made
they’d realize that they had both been played.
CHAPTER 4
157.
Contraption scheming gave kids welcome break
involving lasso mastery and knot.
BLING had to undergo a minor ache,
since ring was now immobile in its spot.
At such an hour dead early in the morn,
they didn’t need to worry they’d be seen,
quite helpful when they’d send BLING on airborne
brisk escapade above the mezzanine.
From bushes at the base of Gumi’s wall,
they threw an end of rope up toward the grate
that covered upstairs window, each shortfall
was followed by new toss until line draped
through square atop the metal casing which
would be the topmost point of their rope hitch.
158.
Each having their equipment on their back,
the precious still-packed items from the trip,
they lightened load by finishing the snacks
and checked that BLING’s equipage wasn’t ripped.
The length of rope they’d threaded up above
was threaded then again through three belt loops
sewed onto dog vest’s spine, replica of
the safety harness from bird’s branch-bound swoops.
A second cord of greatly smaller girth,
its thickness thin, akin to but a thread
was woven through the narrowest of berths:
forced channel between fur and ring where bled
a half day’s worth of chafing doggy stride.
Ring ground right through the fur and into hide.
159.
The plan was thus: they’d each take one of two
ropes strung to dog, the longer one to hoist,
the second to release with derring-do
the ring with gravity, (they’d made it moist
with little bits of suds they’d mixed atop
Lux bar soap with saliva), hoping force
of weight, applied tangentially, could pop
the ring from paw, and leave it at its source
while freeing BLING to then be lowered down,
belayed by kids who’d slowly loose the rope.
They’d be ringleaders (felt a bit like clowns)
for acrobat untrained in this ‘tightrope’.
They knew the jerk at apogee’d renew
sharp pain, so prior to lift they gave him food.
160.
With heave and ho, their torpid, groggy beast
was hoisted in the air by one long line,
and after two rotations BLING had pieced
together that no struggle would align
his body back to standard angles, so
he slackened, making easy their belay.
At top, they readied ring-looped rope to tow,
and hoped to with a tug cause ring to stay
and hang upon the grate, while dog nosedives
from battle lost to gravity. In print,
a diagram of force would propose lives
were not at risk if they stayed penitent.
So rush they made most sure to then avoid,
and with affair’s success were overjoyed.
161.
Success came as a tranquilizing surf,
a balm to consciences disquieted,
that washed from window downward toward the turf,
upon return of ring. “This tie, it slid
straight off directly on our first strong yank!”
said Stella with incredulous esteem.
Abu’s entire thin stature raised with thanks,
his back more straight and eyes like Stel’s agleam.
Their day had been so tirelessly packed
with reactivity that compliments
were first to, from the schedule, subtract,
as minds reacted to the romp’s events.
Through smile upon his face rose great fatigue,
all justified through praise from his colleague.
162.
“I’m tired,” Stella said, “now that it’s done,”
her body in a wilt that showed the hour,
and so they packed their things to go. “Wait, one
more thing is left before home, bucket shower,”
replied Abu, who quickly cut the patch
from off his rucksack’s side, the elephant
on pogo stick, and left it on the latch,
explaining, “now they’ll likely tell it meant
behind the ruse were some anonymous
do-gooders. Needn’t know we’re Pioneers.”
“I guess that pogo sticks aren’t ominous,
okay.” “We’ll build our brand!” “Fine, do it.” Fears
they’d be found out were still inside her head;
Ab’s obstinance made Stel give in instead.
163.
Since night had long since turned to dawn’s sunrise
they snuck their ways back home and into bed,
pretending that was true what would surmise
a parent: that they’d slept at their homesteads.
The energy the trek to banyan grove
had taken from their bodies took recharge.
So both kids huddled near the hearth and stove
until through calm of homeliness did barge
the hunger to again breathe deeply air
that circulates so freely out of doors,
by walls and vents and windows unimpaired,
that vim and zeal to bodies oft restores.
In all, they passed three days reclusively
before they felt themselves conclusively.
164.
The break had given each some time to think,
or rather, to let percolate upstairs
the musings taking longer time to sink
from memory clouds to conscious thoroughfares.
A hundred flashes, tedium to thrill,
swept through young Stella’s hibernating mind,
from wonder at the wealth of chlorophyll
to fears that ants outnumbered humankind.
The edge of thought she hadn’t quite yet grasped
attempted to decrypt gist of past week,
a soapstone mystery that logic rasped
in vain attempts to find its real physique.
All conscious tries were clumsy stabs to hew
the stone to form intrinsically untrue.
165.
Hiatus long between when Stella talked
with Abu, she discovered something odd:
they’d yet to
figure out how ring had walked
from Gumi’s walled-in, yarded esplanade
to deep inside a forest, up a tree,
and out a branch, and into nest. “The thief !”
she cried, as if no other nominee
could possibly have caused such complex grief.
When under tree they subsequently met,
she voiced to Ab her theory, bulletproof,
that figure camo-clad hopped parapet
at Gumi’s, scaled the wall to nearly roof,
then reached with evil hand through metal grille
and took the ring from off the windowsill.
166.
“You’re right, I think, that there’s a chance it went
exactly as described, but I’m still mixed
on why he wouldn’t, after the ascent,
have jetted to a pawn shop, right then fixed
the worry of his seizure and arrest
and made his money straightaway,” Abu
replied. Then Stella saw she had suppressed
(as typical when in the truth’s pursuit)
the thought she might be wrong. She’d advocate
exclusively for how the facts fit her
hypothesized reality. Dictate
it wasn’t, simply first try to infer
the real: until all facts aligned to prove
veracity, some healthy doubt behooved.
167.
“So what,” she said, “do you propose went on
to move the ring from Gumi’s to the nest?”
their dedication to the dénouement
like alchemists who seek their alkahest.
“Let’s take the things we know and build a case,
with only all the pieces that we’ve sensed
ourselves,” Abu proposed, “so we’ll retrace
exclusively the facts that have defense.”
And so they laid out facts, as were perceived
throughout the journey, from the day the globe
began the Pioneers, their preconceived
ideas on days’ undertones disrobed.
Through airing only what they’d seen and when,
they cut through falsities of minds of men.
168.
Ten minutes passed, then thirty, fifty, more,
the sun crept forth two-thirds one radian,
the facts and facts alone to air outpoured
at speed eclipsing pace circadian.
With recollected records, self-contained,
they orally arranged the token bits
in clumps that left yet fewer unexplained
loose ends. From time to time they’d stand, stage skits
to dis or prove contentious points, pretend
that they were the antagonist, with props,
they laughed as shirt-stuffed leaves caused to distend
Abu’s fake Anton belly, threw fake chalks
of sand to foil the bird, each spoof but guess
to make a might more sense of story’s mess.
169.
“We’ve looked at seven stories,” Stella summed,
“disproven four, and doubt another two.”
They’d undeniably with gusto plumbed
all caverns of experience and clue.
“The one that’s left,” Abu said, “doesn’t make
a lot of sense unless you think that birds
are subject to, as beasts, human heartache
and have, at least,” he paused to unmince words,
“a mild ability to reason.” “Why
would such a thing surprise you in the least?
It’s obvious people oversupply
opinions creatures are just food for feasts,
atop rich checkered tablecloths.” “Yeah, this
whole act was bird’s is my hypothesis!
170.
The bird we’ve noticed cruising ’round the town,
I’ve seen it roost,” Abu began, “near school.
At least, I saw a bit of colored down
that looked a fit: long, striped with minuscule
metallic flecks.” With this, his listener
leaned forward, curious to hear what’s next.
“It must have sat on grate, where glistened, per
Miss Gumi’s recollection, ring. Perplexed,
the bird from there would see both shiny loop
and one domestic basketful, right there,
of eggs, its very own! From its own coop!
It would have been enraged, the sight unfair
of mother’s eyes through ornate iron rung
there gawking at her own imprisoned young.
171.
Its talons, as you saw, were small enough
to squeeze through hollows in the lattices.
This theory isn’t purely off-the-cuff,
I’ve thought a while,” he said, on status his
quick mind was dwelling, wond’ring if he’d solved
their ever-overarching quandary,
if nature-centric narrative resolved
their riddle. Stel as statue pondering
looked like Rodin’s, her Thinker brow furrowed
in thorny thought. Then eyes flipped up toward sky.
Retreats into her mind looked thus, her code
to onlookers to not preoccupy
themselves with her, for outwardly her freeze
belied a mind expanding boundaries.
172.
Hiatus in the conversation was
a momentary, welcomed break. Abu’s
two temples damped with anxious sweat. (Because
he hoped his logic wouldn’t be refused?)
The air was tranquil, windless, waveless, still,
the jostling of its million molecules
too small to cause evaporative chill
of forehead perspiration’s tiny pools.
He noticed, soon, a shift in Stella’s stance,
a weight rebalanced on a single hip
away from posed at-ease. She looked, perchance,
prepared to speak, with twitching upper lip.
“It’s odd, and wouldn’t happen everyday.
Let’s spin it in the chronicles that way.”
173.
The shroud of doubt that hung between them, fog
that cut them off from outer world while hung
in heated back-and-forth of dialogue,
dispersed when Stella’s words rolled off her tongue.
Uncertainty, as was perceived to cease,
left ghost of an unwished-for visitor:
conclusion where before lived just caprice,
two bailiffs where once stood inquisitors.
The pulse of joy at twisting thread of truth
was sharp, and both kids felt upwelling pride.
And yet, their verve to find, unearth and sleuth
was now, without a known demand, supplied.
Just then, once truth revealed its pyrite sheen,
could they find meaning in their ends and means.
174.
Maturing, for each kid, took different form.
While Stella had Grandmum once evenings came,
Abu was back as one of eight, in swarm
of family’s flock he once again was name
and nothing more, a mouth to feed, who left
for stretches at a time without account.
He felt amid his family bit bereft
of own identity, sense tantamount
to anonymity he’d felt at school.
He segregated self away from peers,
kept public actions sized to minuscule.
He hoped that life would pay him in arrears
in future gains from studying today,
between adventures showing better way.
175.
That’s not to say that Abu walked as ghost,
as haunted, surveying with discontent.
He rather took his strengt
h from his repose,
accepted rather than misrepresent
himself. No bitter edge enclosed his view,
he more began to know he much preferred
to keep his dear companions close, but few.
This shift from sinking socially as nerd
at school uplifted his relationships
with other children, who could tell the fun
they poked at him in pure predation, quips
and taunts had dropped from great effect to none.
Alongside Stella he desired to shift
toward Pioneers from school, toward life adrift.
176.
His willful separation, like a match
transmits its fire to brethren in the book,
crept into Stella, who slowly detached
as well from mates’ historic dirty looks.
They stayed as separated from the crowd
as any outside observations past
or present would have seen. But now endowed
with self-reliance, they’d upgraded caste.
They went from lowest on the totem pole
to missing from the pole entirely,
absent from all the cool kids’ mind control
that turned their toady classmates liars. Free,
they sought only discovery and mirth,
and had to prove to only selves their worth.
177.
“Miss Gumi never said a thing,” Abu
lamented once near first-found precipice.
“That’s good, though. Single mark of our debut
was pogo patch, no names. The rest of this
is nothing we want out.” “Think fairytales
were ever narratives begun like this?
A man’s experience on hairy trails
that spins up orally to bigger fish?”
“Nah. People turn to print now. That stuff’s lost.”
They watched a dragonfly buzz off the cliff,
against the breeze, in paths that crissed and crossed,
to trace it would reveal a hieroglyph
reminding Ab of home and history—
at least, the points that weren’t still mystery.
178.
“I know when I was four, I thought I’d be
atop the world when finally I reached eight,”
said Stella, legs hung off extremity,
“and now I’m there. Will I now overrate
the possibilities of twelve? I don’t
exactly have command of this whole town,
but maybe what I want has changed.” “Mine won’t,”
replied Abu with certainty. “Renown
befits a sheikh, and sheikh I’ll someday be.”
Not knowing what to say, she looked instead
into his face and saw a galaxy,
its far-flung stars stampeded straight ahead,
propelled by detonation since their birth,
