Helga- Out of Hedgelands

by Rick Johnson

  Helga’s head was spinning. It was too astonishing to comprehend.

  “O.K...Well, let’s see...” Helga looked at Burwell in bewilderment. For once, Helga was speechless.

  “What about the ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still?’” he asked. “Where is it and why does it have such a strange name?”

  JanWoo-Corriboo was silent. Thinking that perhaps she had not heard him, Burwell repeated the question. “Where is the ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still’?”

  “I cannot tell you,” JanWoo-Corriboo said.

  “What?” Burwell said. “But you said you know where it is!”

  “I do know where it is,” JanWoo-Corriboo replied, “but I can’t tell you where it is—it is the WooSheep law that no one talks about it. All contact with the WooPeace clan is forbidden. They are a dead people to us. And besides, they have Venom Bats guarding the entrance to the ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still.’ No one goes there, it is too dangerous.” JanWoo-Corriboo smiled happily, as if she were excited about something.

  Burwell, Bwellina, and Helga looked at one another. They knew why she was excited. “And that’s exactly why you’re so happy and excited to take us there!” Burwell sighed, looking at JanWoo-Corriboo. She smiled back, nodding her head happily.

  “Ohhh...Woe is us!” Burwell moaned. “No Rattlesnakes, but now we’ve got Venom Bats. What an improvement! Yep! Yep! Yep!”

  We’re Getting Out of Here!

  “Shoo-moo-loo...Shoo-moo-loo..La-ba-ta-da...La-ba-ba-ta-de...Shoo-moo-loo..La-ba-ta-doh...” The sound of a soft melodious humming caused Breister to nearly bite off the mouthpiece of the pronghorn flute! Jumping up, he and Annie peered through the darkness, looking for any clue to who could be there. The fish-oil candle flickered faintly, casting weird shadows of stalactites, stalagmites and other rocks.

  “Shoo-moo-loo...Shoo-moo-loo...La-ba-ta-da...La-ba-ba-ta-de...Shoo-moo-loo...” A paint-spattered Owl stepped from behind a rubble pile. The Owl, his grizzled feathers salt-n-pepper gray, wore a loose-fitting smock. Long shaggy feathers hung out around the smock in disheveled, wild tangles. He wore a baggy beret that drooped down on the left side of his head, and a large brass ring through his lower beak.

  “Shoooo-moooo-loooooo, troots!” The Owl said in a soft, mellow, and barely audible voice. “Ya speckin las Kinshy?”

  Breister and Annie just stared stupidly at the Owl, not comprehending a word he had said.

  “O.K. then, you airyheads, I’ll try again,” the Owl said, changing voice tone and volume. “What I said was, ‘Welcome, guests! Do you speak Kinshy?’ But you have already answered my question with your silence. Obviously, you don’t know Kinshy. Dadrot! And I was so hoping that I might at last have someone else who speaks Kinshy.”

  The Owl looked so sad and dejected that Breister said, “Now, don’t take it hard, friend. We’d be glad to learn some Kinshy if you could help us get out of here.”

  Perking up, the Owl said happily, “Loooste meooon minder, dast wiffert!”

  Breister, thinking the Owl was giving him something to practice, tried to repeat the same phrase. “Looooostemo nminerd astwiffter!”

  The Owl broke into uproarious laughter. “Hooo, Hooo, Hooo, Ha-ha-ha! Do you know what you just said...Hoooo, Hoooo, Hooo, Haa-ha...You said...Hh, Hoooo, Hooo...I can’t stand it...you said, ‘Eat my toenail phlegm balls!’ Hooo, Hooo, Hooo...oh, that’s great! I like you already! Hooo, Hooo, Hoooo!” The Owl fell to the ground and rolled in laughter, kicking his feet high in the air, and flapping his wings in all directions.

  Breister and Annie, feeling relieved to have met another apparently harmless creature, and infected by the Owl’s silly laughter, laughed too.

  Gradually, the Owl calmed down again. He stood up and adjusted his beret, which had fallen down over his eyes.

  “Well, we’ll have to practice that a bit!” he observed, chuckling. “But for now, tell me who you are and what you want.”

  Breister responded quickly. “We’re lost and trying to find our way out of the caves. We want to get to the outside world. Do you know the way?”

  The Owl pulled an artist’s paintbrush from a pocket of his smock. He swished it through the air in a wild series of lightning fast strokes—almost like a sword fighter. “Did you get that? I just drew you a map to the outside!” The Owl chuckled again. “You see, I do know the way and I just showed it to you!”

  “Now you wait just a minute, you wacko bag of feathers!” Annie stormed in fury. “If you know the way out of here, you’ve got to show us. You can’t just stab at the air and expect us to know where to go!”

  “Why not?” the Owl asked. “You already know the way out of here, or you wouldn’t be standing here talking to me.”

  “What?” Breister and Annie said, almost in the same breath. “What do you mean we already know the way out?”

  “You have come from the WooPeace. You have found a way to get out of there and come here. That is all you need. The only reason creatures don’t leave the WooPeace is they believe they can’t. They allow an illusion to control them. Break the power of the illusion and you’re out of there!”

  Breister and Annie were excited. “You mean we’re almost out of here? You mean it’s not much further? You mean it’s easy to get out of here?”

  The Owl shook his head. “I didn’t say it was easy. I only said that you knew the way out. The way out is to want to get out more than anything else and to use your mind to find the way. There are many, many ways out of the caves. But you have to look for them to find them. You want out and you’re using your minds—that’s the way out.” The Owl turned around and began to walk off.

  Breister and Annie followed. “No more clues, eh?” Breister asked hopefully.

  “No more clues,” the Owl replied. “But I will give you some food and some work to do while you figure out your next step. Come on to my place.”

  Breister and Annie followed the Owl, feeling dejected and angry. “I’d like to jump on him and stomp him!” Annie fumed. “He’s got a lot of nerve!”

  “Now, now, Annie, keep a lid on it. Stomping him won’t do any good. We’re in our own tombs remember? If we don’t get out of here, we’re dead beasts. At least we’re getting some help and encouragement from the old bird, even if he is a bit daft!” Annie, realizing Breister was right, subdued her anger into a sulking slow burn, which she kept to herself.

  Breister moved up to climb over the rough rocks beside the Owl. “So, you must live down here, eh?” Breister asked, panting, as they climbed up through an intricate series of stalactites and stalagmites.

  “No, I don’t live here,” the Owl replied. “I’ve got a little cabin in the woods. My art studio is down here, but I don’t live down here.” He gave Breister a whimsical look. “What do you think I am, daft?”

  “You live outside?” Breister again felt a surge of joy and hope. “How far is it? Which way do we go?”

  The Owl sighed, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  “What do you mean, I don’t get it?” Breister howled, almost giving in to angry frustration. Then, seeing that the Owl was neither walking nor speaking, Breister calmed down again. “O.K., you win. I get the picture. We know the way out of here and can find it on our own.” Breister realized that his anger and frustration were wasted on the Owl, who was not going to help them beyond what he had already promised to do.

  “So,” Breister went on, “what’s this about Kinshy?”

  The Owl brightened up as they continued to scramble through passages. “Kinshy is an ancient, long-unused language,” he related. “I grew up among the WooSheep—first as a Woonyak in the WooPeace, and then among the WooSheep at the Bottoms. But I got so tired of the two clans hating each other that I decided to live alone. I built a little cabin in the woods, where I study Kinshy, play Tosht with an Otter friend that lives nearby, and paint in my studio.”

  “You play Tosht?” Breister exclaimed. “It’s my favorite game!”

&nbs
p; “They don’t call me Toshty for nothing!” the Owl grinned. “My real name is Pitinemon Asphodetalus T. Billpip—you can see why I prefer to be called Toshty.” Breister agreed that he also preferred the nickname.

  Turning and twisting over mineralized passages, climbing over a sea of fissures, and scrambling through seeming mountain ranges of stalactites and stalagmites, finally Toshty stopped and said, “Shoooo-moooo-loooo, fraggnob billmwee, troots!...Welcome to my studio, friends!”

  They had entered a large chamber lit with small lamps that glowed rather than burned. “I use a special kind of coal in my lamps,” Toshty explained. “I treat lumps of coal with a mineral bath and they glow brightly, but give off almost no smoke. It protects my work.” As he said this, he extended his wing to show off his work.

  And what a work it was! Breister and Annie gazed in astonished admiration. Bears, Deer, Sheep, Cows, Badgers, Otters, Ducks...All kinds of creatures were powerfully and beautifully painted on the smooth walls of the chamber. It was gigantic and astonishingly beautiful. The painting went on and on and on. It was perhaps 100 feet long altogether, counting all the different patches of wall that were used.

  “I’ve never seen anything so stunning! It’s gargantuously magnificent!” Breister stammered.

  “Yes, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” Annie agreed.

  “This is the entire history of the WooSheep,” Toshty explained. “It’s my story of the WooSheep from the beginning of time to the present. Way at that end you see I’ve painted the Ancient Ones. That’s where we all came from, you know...” The Owl paused, gazing with contented eyes at his vast life’s work. My art makes me happy. The WooSheep are fools to hate each other. They can be fools if they want, but I don’t have to be. I have my art.”

  “Has anyone else seen your art, Toshty?” Breister asked. “Such a magnificent work ought to be seen by everyone, especially the WooSheep.”

  Toshty sighed. “No...No one else has seen it. Years ago, I tried to tell the WooSheep, both those at the Bottoms and at WooPeace, about my art and the story it tells. But those at WooPeace shunned me and the clan at the Bottoms treated me like a mental case. I finally just gave up and retreated to my cabin in the woods. Shweng, my Otter friend, would come, but he’s blind.”

  “Shweng plays Tosht, and he’s blind?” Breister asked. “Tosht is a very visual game. How in the world does he play if he’s blind?”

  “Shweng has very good sight in his heart,” Toshty replied. “He knows he can trust me, so he tells me how he thinks about his Tosht moves and I make them for him. He usually beats me soundly!” Toshty concluded with a smile. “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about friendship. That’s also the way I am with him about my art. I tell him what I’m doing in my studio and he sees it in his heart. He often has good suggestions.”

  “Well,” Toshty continued, “as they say in Kinshy: Snethboodt matav lis mavert trooven! Roughly translated, that means, ‘Let’s eat!’—here, have some eggs and honeycomb.” Toshty reached into a crevice in the rock and pulled out two pots. One was filled with raw honeycomb and the other had many small blue-green speckled eggs.

  “So, go ahead and eat,” Toshty directed. “It is all fresh. I gathered the honey and eggs just today. There are many places where bees have hives and small birds make their nests.” Toshty smeared an egg with honeycomb and popped it into his mouth.

  Annie and Breister looked at Toshty doubtfully. “Er, uh, Toshty,” Annie began, “you eat these things raw? Shell and all?” Breister felt less hungry than he had a few moments before.

  “Surely do! And it’s a top of the day meal, too, I’ll be warning you! Now, you just go ahead and smear some honeycomb on an egg and pop it in your mouth! It’s delicious!” Toshty was not bashful about showing what he meant. He polished off a half dozen eggs in a short time.

  Seeing that Breister and Annie still hesitated, Toshty commented, “You’re letting your old way of seeing things blind you to a new reality, my friends. Let go of the old way of thinking and you’ll be surprised at what you can see.”

  Breister looked solemnly at Toshty. “So, this is a ‘top of the day meal,’ eh,” he chuckled. “Well, here goes the ‘new way of seeing things!’” Smearing an egg with honeycomb, Breister closed his eyes, slightly grimaced, and popped the strange food in his mouth. Crunching the egg slowly, a smile spread across his face and his eyes opened wide.

  “That is marvelous! It’s truly delicious!” Breister burst out. “Why, who would have believed it? It’s entirely different than I expected.”

  Seeing Breister’s reaction, Annie tried one too. She also was enthusiastic about the new food. “Why, it’s...well, it’s...sweet in a spicy sort of way...or spicy in a crunchy, saucy sort of way...or, well, I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but I like it!”

  In a short time, the three polished off almost the entire stock of honeycomb and eggs. Toshty did not seem concerned. “I’ll be gathering some more tomorrow, not to worry,” he assured his friends when they noticed the provisions were gone.

  “I’m hoping that you’ll spend a few days gathering honeycomb and eggs with me,” Toshty said. “It’s hard and dangerous work. The bees don’t like to be disturbed and the birds are small and nest in the most difficult to reach places. One has to climb to some very precarious places. But, as you can see, it’s worth it!”

  Breister had been thoughtful for several minutes. Then he said, “Toshty, I have a question. If there are bees and birds, that might mean that they come and go from the cave. Is that what it means? Do the bees and birds come and go?”

  Toshty gazed at Breister with a warm and friendly look. “I’m proud of you, Breister. You are using your mind, my friend. You’re right. The bees and birds do come and go, but not in the way you think. To protect themselves, they use only the smallest openings in the rock. None are large enough for any of us. That is not a way out, as you are perhaps thinking.”

  Breister sighed and settled down with his head resting on his arms. Toshty could see that he was not discouraged, but thinking. “Breister,” Toshty said, “just because you were wrong about following the bees and birds out doesn’t mean they can’t help you find the way. It just takes...”

  Before Toshty could finish, Breister completed the thought, “It just takes a new way of seeing.”

  Toshty smiled at Breister. “Yes, my friend, yes...”

  The next morning, Toshty announced that he was going on a several day journey to gather honeycomb and cave bird eggs. “You are invited to come with me, if you would like, but I can do it by myself if you wish to do something else.” He looked at Breister and Annie with a loving smile. “I really do understand if you have something more important to do—don’t mind me.”

  Breister looked at his feet and shuffled from foot to foot, as if getting ready to say something difficult. “Well, Toshty, I really want to get out of here. I want to search for a way out of here. I’d love to help you climb around to all sorts of incredibly dangerous places where I could easily fall to my death, but I really want to get out of here...Which is exactly why I’ve decided to come with you! Somehow, I’ve learned a lot from you since yesterday...” Breister paused and looked at Annie. “I don’t know what this mangy Cougar wants to do, but speaking for myself, I think I’d love to learn how to risk my life to get some more of that delicious honeycomb and eggs!...I feel like helping you is the least I can do, even if it delays me a few days in getting out of here. There’s always time to help out a friend. Like you’ve been saying, it just takes a new way of seeing things.”

  “Count me in, too,” Annie added. “I can’t wait to see how agile a big, pot-bellied Wood Cow is climbing after bees and itsy-bitsy bird eggs! It should be a hoot to watch!...And besides, I like you, Toshty...You are, without a doubt, one of the weirdest birds I’ve ever met, but I like you. It’s a new way of looking at things, I guess.”

  “Well, my friends, let’s go get the bladder-canoe and be on ou
r way,” Toshty said. Breister and Annie looked puzzled.

  “Oh, yes,” he told his surprised friends, “we will definitely need my bladder-canoe. The bees and birds are found all along the Deep Springs River, which runs from here straight down into the Rounds of Deep Springs. It’s the fastest way out of here. We’ll stop along the way and gather honeycomb and eggs enough to fill the canoe. When we get to the Rounds, I’ll trade some for artist paints, other supplies, and a ride on a running-wagon back to the Drownlands Cutoff, then I either go to my cabin for a while, or come back to the studio.”

  “Bladder-canoe?” Annie repeated dubiously.

  “It’s an inflatable canoe,” Toshty explained. The one bad thing about the Deep Springs River is that it runs too fast to paddle against, so you can only ride it one way. So, I ride my bladder-canoe down to the Rounds, then deflate it so it’s easier to carry back. When I get to the Drownlands Cutoff, I reinflate it and paddle to my cabin. My cabin is near the place where there’s an entrance to the cave system that leads to the Deep Springs River. I stay at my cabin as long as I like, then I ride the river back to my studio, gathering some more honeycomb and eggs along the way to eat while I’m at my studio. When I’m ready to leave my studio, I complete the circuit again.”

  “Mighty thunder!” Breister exclaimed. “That’s more than I would have ever dreamed when you invited me to help you collect a little honeycomb and some eggs! That is some system. ‘Seeing in a new way’ has taken on a whole different meaning! We’re getting out of here!”

  “Works for me,” Toshty grinned.

  Sailing the Ocean of Dreams

  Toshty led Breister and Annie through a series of chambers in the cave system. Leading the way with a fish-oil lantern, the eccentric Owl showed them that the path they were traveling was well-worn. “I’ve made this trip dozens of times,” he assured them. “It’s easy as pie. Just a few things to know, a few things to do, and few things to avoid, and we’ll be in the Rounds!”