I sat up. Runner Rill floated at the rim of the Urplinth, staring at us with his angry orange eyes. I lunged and caught the woodlock’s hand.
“Runner Rill, glad you’re here. This is Delia Branch, the chalky woodlock,” I squeaked out ecstatically.
“I see who ye be, and she. Where be Riffle Sike?” he snapped.
“Riffle Sike? He’s not here. A misunderstanding. He has no claim on the woodlock. She has no claim on him. You were wrong. A misunderstanding. A misunderstanding. So such monumental that I can say in truth that Delia Branch standing here is smitten with you!” I spouted, and Delia almost crushed my hand with an unexpected forceful sudden strength of grip.
The Urplinth trembled more violently. Delia tore her hand from mine. The rolling of the massive rock knocked me off my feet and down to my hands and knees. The woodlock swept in front of me and snatched up the orb. The rainbows gushed to instant nothingness. Black was the night. Tilting, lifting, falling was the Urplinth. I held on with all of the thorn strength I had, and the last sight I saw before being knocked unconscious was a cloud of green sparkle mist rushing away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Exasperation
I heard groaning from high in the distance. Unable to move or to see, I listened. I began to rise and my limbs took life. I swam in a sort of a sleepy drift up through blackness to meet the groaning. The groaning invaded my throat like honey sliding, and I realized I was awake and the groaning was mine. I batted my eyes in blinks. I discovered myself nested, hidden in a comfort of branches and thorns. I twisted and elbowed my way out to see revealed before me a wide flat circle of rubble, broken black rocks, obsidian, the shattered remains of the Urplinth.
“No more Urplinth,” I muttered, my mind thickly clouded.
“Tel fen. How true,” sounded the unmistakable voice of the shifter, Shendra Nenas.
“Shendra Nenas,” I said dully, turning my head to see her emerge as trofle from the thorny thicket a scant space of distance down from where I rested.
She clamped flat smooth with a clatter the ivory bone purple spikes covering her body and head. Both of her golden whip tails she snapped out straight. ‘Pop’ went one. ‘Pop’ went the other. So such.
“Did I fail?” I mumbled, certain that I had. “I have one more day. Help me. I need better instructions!”
“You have no more days. Lo ten. The week was all used up three days ago. You have been sleeping peacefully since the collapse of the Urplinth. I have been watching you. Deg wun,” said the shifter, and she regarded me with her expressionless green glow eyes.
Hope dissolved. I had failed. It was over. I had failed. Hadn’t I?
“You could send me back four days and let me try again,” I said, rising to stand and embering hope. “You are a time traveling shifter! Send me back! Give me another chance!”
“Why?” said Shendra Nenas, cocking her trofle head to one side.
“When I go home, I want things to be as they were, not as they weren’t!” I shouted, fists clenched.
“What has that to do with me? Kep lit?” asked Shendra Nenas.
I spluttered, speechless with rage. She was playing with me. She was so such amused!
“You never gave me enough information! How can I be expected to perform a task with a blinded brain?! I thought shifters were supposed to help! That’s what they do in all of the Gwer drollek stories I know, and I know all of ‘em! You never gave me enough information. You never gave me…ENOUGH! INFORMATION!”
I stamped my highboots. I breathed like a bellows in the forge.
“Settle, Bekka of Thorns. Char ten. Hatch! I admire you. You DO plod ever forward. I see no surrender in you, and what is more, I have not heard it said that you failed,” said Shendra Nenas.
“What?” I said, flames of despair subsiding, wave of hope rising.
“How are you so sure that you failed?” asked the shifter with a smooth writhe of her tails.
“Delia… She sparkled… I saw her rush off as I fell… Too shy… She gripped my hand when I… Did I succeed?” I stumble spoke.
“It is one of the possibilities,” answered Shendra Nenas.
“Can’t you just say it out loud? Did I fail, or did I not fail? So such! Like that!” I said, forced by frustration to tug on my hair.
“Why don’t you play your chonka?” suggested Shendra Nenas, maddening me further.
“My chonka?”
My voice was a high angry squeak. I sat down and beat on the ground with my fists. Why? The shifter trofle had shimmered a final empty smile at me before disappearing in a puff of pale blue smoke.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Home to the Hedge
All right, settle, I thought, composing myself. Maybe you didn’t fail. But if I didn’t fail, why am I still here? Why didn’t the maddening shifter send me back home? Why did…?
The final words Shendra Nenas spoke doused my musings. I looked to my chonka. It hung peacefully on my belt. I plucked it up, gave it a shake, and sang, so such brayed, a hedge home song about thorns and jellies and capp melon crescents. I allowed the final notes to fall away in a warble, and I braced myself for…something. So such perhaps a sight of Delia Branch and Runner Rill blissfully floating by, or maybe me plucked up to whirl through time, or something other magical. But no. Nothing. I stood staring at the silent field of black shattered Urplinth.
Of course nothing happened. Why should anything happen? Tell me, Kar, why should I believe anything she said? Her trofle wasn’t even so very such impressive, I thought, grumping. Truth, the Urplinth is no more. And in our when, Kar, there is no Urplinth that we ever heard about. Well, such, there is no more an Urplinth right now here in this when, is there? If there is no Urplinth, have I succeeded? But listen, wait. Delia Branch fled. I saw her. And what’s more, I’m still here. Oh…never enough information. Maybe… the chonk ... It matters WHERE I play it! Delia’s clearing! Or cave! What about that, Kar?
“It’s worth a try,” I announced to the field of obsidian rubble.
I moved around the open meadow of broken rocks and descended the slope to the gray and green Woods. I passed by once more scattered shocks of pink blooms. The way was familiar, and I moved swiftly. The deeper into the Woods I went, the more enchantment I sensed in the air. I hesitated as I drew near my destination.
Should I cry out? Warn ‘em I’m approaching? I asked myself. What ‘em would that be? Why do you think there’s an ‘em? If you successfully completed your task, Bek, the woodlock and the waterwizard might be in the cave. Maybe it is meant for you to greet ‘em. Maybe your way home is to play a chonka chant for ‘em.
“Delia Branch! Runner Rill! I am here!” I shouted in triumph as I burst into the clearing.
Abandoned. So such. I drooped. Disappointment. The ground was mud red, yes. To the left of the cave there were five rough stone steps leading up into the Woods, yes. The pink marble top table was there, yes. But…the lantern? Gone. The gray washtub? Gone. The red finely woven roamer carpet on the floor of the cave? Gone. The gold cord draped across the cave’s mouth from one gray tree limb to another? Gone.
“Shendra Nenas! Give me a clue!” I roared.
My chonka fell from my belt to the ground and rolled a short rattle until it settled, membrane side up.
Is that a clue, or am I clumsy? I asked myself.
“All right,” I announced, turning a full circle with outstretched arms. “I will now shake and tap for your enjoyment the Evening Silence Chant.”
I picked the chonka from the mud red ground and shuddered my wrist to produce the proper opening rattle. At the sound of the first chankachonk I was thrown highboots over head and swept to a crushing oomph of a landing flat on my back. Gasping for air, dizzy dazed, I struggled to sit up. Before my eyes was…home. My hut! The Well of Shells! The Villcom Wood! The hedge!
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kar
“Oh, there you are!” said my old friend Kar, emerging from the doorway of my hut. �
�They said in the hedge you were writing a new Gwer drollek. How so? You’ve been with me bouncing on trampolines for bars and bars of weeks. I saw pots of ink and sharpened quills in there, but the stack of pages is blank. So it should be. You haven’t had time to have an adventure. I know, I know, I can tell by the look on your face. What am I doing here? I dropped you off just yesterday, and here I am back again. Well, so, being Queen Jebb of the Acrotwist Clowns is fine and fun, but tell true, I think I need a vacation, too. You had one. Why not me? Why not here? Why not now? So when I returned to the Island, I told ‘em to muddle without me for a span. They didn’t care. They had plenty of pies. I set up a Clock Watch Schedule and left. I flew first to Orrun Mountain Hollow to visit Cloud Castle City, but it wasn’t there. What’s wrong, Bek? Of a sudden you look pale.”
“Cloud Castle City isn’t there?” I said.
“It wasn’t. I don’t know if it is now. I did see it hanging high off in the distance over the Woeful Wanderers’ Wasteland, but I decided why go there alone when I could fetch you to go with me. Shall we go?” babbled Kar.
“Are you still the only jrabe jroon? Did we go to the Realm Beyond Realms and see Violet, Lionel, Guy and Slingsby? Can you shift to Rakara?” I said, searching for the truth of my reality, things to be as they were, not weren’t.
“What’s wrong with you, Bek? You seem to be more than usually fuddled,” observed Kar, and she knelt down next to me.
“I think I might be fine maybe. Everything around here looks the same,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t it?” asked Kar.
“Because I have just returned from the past where I was sent by a shifter from Jom named Shendra Nenas to perform a task,” I revealed.
“You what?” said Kar, so such understandably shocked.
“If I failed, things are as they weren’t,” I explained lamely. “Am I all me? Are you all you? Is the hedge the hedge?”
“Bek, settle. Watch this,” said Kar, and before my eyes she shifted to Rakara with lavender skin and sightless milky eyes and wrapped in a dark green mantle. “I be Rakara now, as ye have known me. I would ask ye more questions, but I sense that ye need to be some sort of how reassured. Talk, Bek. I will listen.”
“Are you still the only jrabe jroon?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Did we visit Violet, Lionel, Guy and Slingsby?” I asked.
“We did,” she answered.
Oh, I knew what question I was avoiding. I felt a need to approach it slowly, to surround it with little comforting truths before I asked it. I realized of a very sudden the comforting truths might be new truths, not my old ones. Old truths might have been wiped away by my failure and replaced by new ones. There was only one way to discover the true truth. The question. Still I didn’t ask it.
“Have you ever heard of the Urplinth?” I asked instead.
“Urplinth? No, never,” she replied, shaking her head.
I took a deep breath and released it. I took another. Then I asked THE question.
“Do you remember the Gwer drollek story of Rindle Mer?”
Rakara shimmered and shifted to my best friend from forever Kar, jark dweg bendo dreen. She nodded the simplest of nods. She followed the nod with a short spill of words which lit me with lightning joy.
“The daughter of Delia Branch, chalky woodlock, and Runner Rill, waterwizard. She was raised by her uncle, Riffle Sike, and she replenished the Woods Beyond the Wood,” she said.
Unable to contain my happiness, I leaped to my feet, grabbed Kar’s hands, and spun with her a lively dance around the Well of Shells, all the while shrieking, “I did it! I did it! I did it!”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Gwer Drollek
When I had worn myself limp with happy, Kar led me into my hut. Re-energized by the sight of so such things dearly familiar to me, I hurried to touch the Carven Flute, to count my stacks of completed Chronicles, to pick up and feel my quills, to examine my pots of purple ink, to rest my hands on the pile of blank oat parchment pages.
“Kar, I have a wonderful new Gwer drollek to write,” I said.
“What is it? What happened? What did you do?” Kar pressed eagerly.
Outside I could hear the rumble of thunder. Thunder, I thought. The Chalky Grays in Villcom Wood are scurrying for cover. They can’t shift shape like woodlocks, and their fingers aren’t webbed, though the Gwer drollek story of Rindle Mer says woodlocks and Chalky Grays are some such distant cousins. Deeply distant, I suppose.
“Bek, wake up! I asked you a question!” snapped Kar, and she poked me in the ribs.
“Oh, sorry, Kar. I was distracted by the thunder. It’s going to rain. The Chalky Grays will hide,” I explained.
“What does that have to do with anything? WHAT HAPPENED? TELL ME THIS NEW GWER DROLLEK!” roared Kar in true frustration.
“That is just how I yelled at Shendra Nenas,” I said.
“WHO IS SHENDRA NENAS?” exploded Kar.
I was able to calm her by telling her she would be the first to hear my story. Kar likes to be the first to do something, to see something, to hear something, to anything something. Such has it always been so. Truth, I told her the story from start to finish as it happened to me. Almost. I changed one thing to make it better. Such. It was a special glory to tell the story while the storm rushed about outside the hut. We were safe and cosy. I lit a buckletar lamp. When I’d spoken the final words, Kar sat quietly for a short span.
“You must tell it in the Assembly Bower right now,” she said in a voice of hushed awe. “It will be a triumph. Give me your chonka. I will announce you.”
My cheeks tingled with pleasure. They were probably hedge leaf green. Kar was right. I would tell ‘em in the hedge that my Gwer drollek story was impatient to be heard, and would not submit first to being written down in the strange language from down the Well. It insisted on being told in the Assembly Bower. Then, and only then, would it allow me to write it down.
“Go ahead, Kar. I’ll tell it better than I did to you,” I boasted, delivering my chonka into her hands.
She raced outside chanting and banging the Summoning Call. I allowed a likely span of time to pass, walked proudly through the rain, slipped skillfully into the hedge, marched the corridor to the Assembly Bower, and made a grand entrance. All were assembled and fell silent when I appeared. I greeted ‘em with a sweep circle spin to open the gate to my story. I spun it out from start to finish. I held ‘em enchanted, so such wove a spell. Yes, I told it all as it happened. Almost. I again changed one thing to make it better. What did I change? When I fell during the collapse of the Urplinth, I saw the sparkling green mist of Delia Branch fleeing. I didn’t tell ‘em that.
Instead, I said, “And I looked up as I fell and saw the sparkling green mist of Delia Branch swirling wreaths around the blissful Runner Rill.”
* * *
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