Potlendh

by David J. Wallis

  “We need a machete,” Carl said, noting that they were essentially trapped inside a small clearing. He was thinking of a long and wide, sharp blade that can chop easily through the underbrush and clear a path for walking.

  “I’m not sure even that would help,” his sister rejoined. “More like a logging crew to start cutting down all of these trees to make a path.”

  “You don’t want to start cutting down trees,” Uniqua quickly advised. “That’s the fastest way I know of making the trees angry, and you don’t want the trees against you.”

  “Are you telling me they are alive?” Carl asked skeptically.

  “Of course they are,” she rebuked, as if everyone knew that trees were not only alive but could think and feel. “Haven’t you ever heard of a stand of trees? I’m not talking about several trees in one area. I’m talking about trees getting together to make a stand against an enemy. Believe me: when they get aroused and angry, you don’t want to be on the receiving side.”

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Cassandra complained bitterly, looking side to side and up into the leaf cluttered sky.

  “Well, if you weren’t so afraid of heights, you could fly us out of here,” Uniqua chided.

  “Or, if you had studied more,” the Rabbits chorused, “you could start burning down the trees, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm.”

  “How dare you!” boomed a deep and sonorous voice.

  To say that the Group jumped at the sound of the voice is no exaggeration, because they all looked around in fear to find the source of the voice, which seemed to come from all around them.

  “How dare you suggest to cut down and burn my children!” the voice continued.

  “We meant no harm,” Karen spoke. “Really. We’re just trying to figure out a way how to get out of this clearing.”

  “Did you ever think to ask?” the voice accused her.

  “Ask who?” Carl asked.

  “The Old Man cannot help you here,” the voice warned Carl in a rather derisive tone, which means that the voice did not have any regard or respect for Mr. Who. “I am the lord and master of this forest.”

  “No,” Carl sort of whined. “Not the Old Man Who. The generic who, as in who are you?”

  “That is not my name.”

  “Not this again,” Carl muttered under his breath. Then changing his tactics a bit, he asked, “Okay, then, what is your name?”

  “Have you no manners?”

  “What is your name, please?” Karen repeated, trying to sound both polite and sorry for her brother’s ill manners.

  “Why.”

  “Well, we would like to address you in a proper way,” Karen explained.

  “No. That is my name: Why.”

  “Why are you named Why?” Carl could not stop himself from asking the question.

  “Because, that is my name. You have not told me your names—which has been very impolite—and I have not asked you why you are named thusly.”

  “I’m Carl,” he said quickly, “and this is my twin sister Karen. These are our companions: Uniqua the Unicorn, Cassandra the Dragon, and the three Rabbit triplets Runny, Bunny, and Hunny.”

  “Ah, pleasantries. Then I am glad to meet you on one hand, but I have not forgotten how you have thought to burn and cut my precious trees.”

  “So, what are you anyway?” Carl pressed.

  “Why do you address my sister?” Why asked suddenly, seemingly surprised. “Have you met her?”

  The twins looked at each other in an amazed sort of way, and there seemed to be some kind of communication passing between them.

  “No, we haven’t seen your sister,” Karen answered, “but then because we do not know you at all, like who you are or what kind of a person you are, we wouldn’t know what your sister looked like either.”

  “I see,” Why declared.

  “Well, we don’t, if you understand my meaning,” Karen continued. “We can’t see you at all.”

  “Ah. Word play,” Why commented. “You humans have a very interesting language. It is no wonder that you are all confused all of the time. When I said, “I see,” I meant that I understand your situation. It is true that I can see you, and now I understand that you cannot see me.”

  “So, where are you right now?” Carl asked. “You sound like you are all around us.”

  “I am all around you,” Why answered. “And the reason why you can’t see me is because I am the very air that surrounds you. I don’t suppose you have ever seen air, have you?”

  “Well, we’ve seen what air can do, especially when it is moving,” Karen ventured.

  “Then watch what I can do when I move,” Why told them, and a moment later they all felt something move between them and away from them. The large trees that stood before them suddenly parted, revealing a small pathway deeper into the forest. “Come quickly. My children do not like to be bent so for very long.”

  “Thank you,” Karen said to Why after all the members of the Group had passed through the makeshift door that Why had made.

  “Where are you going?” Why asked them after he allowed the trees to stand upright again.

  “We are on our way to the top of the Mountain of Power,” Uniqua answered for all of them, taking the role of leader again.

  “Ooh,” Why sighed. “That is a long adventure awaiting you all. I would advise that you find another way, for this forest is not safe.”

  “There is no other way,” wailed Cassandra. “Don’t you know that all the other ways to the mountain are blocked?”

  “I have not left my forest since the time I was born. That was when a big storm once passed over this Island a long time ago. I found myself trapped here, but I made the best of it when I discovered I could be the shepherd and protector of all these trees, most of whom were mere saplings when I started. Now, I do not want to leave this forest and venture out into the world. Here I am needed, and here I feel important. Out there in the real world, I would just be another puff of wind in a big wide world, where I might just be swallowed up by a bigger wind or just die out and exist no more.”

  “Your sister is a puff of air, too?” Carl asked.

  “Oh, no.” Here Why laughed. “She is more like what you call a cloud or a mist. Together, my sister and I have watched over this forest for a long time. I suspect that she had tired herself out again and is sleeping in the ground. When she awakens, she’ll rise up again to be a cloud and start watering the forest until she is completely drained of her energy.”

  “Sounds like she does most of the work,” Karen observed.

  “Oh, not at all. Are you implying that I do no work at all? Who do you think has to carry all the pollen between all of these trees, keep nasty insects from destroying my beautiful trees, sings to them by swaying through the branches, and—most important of all—and this is important because I almost forgot about them—keeping the Guerrillas from bothering my trees.”

  “Gorillas?” Carl repeated the sound of the word. “You mean there are monkeys in this forest?”

  “No, no, no. Not gorillas. Guerrillas.” Why emphasized the accent of the two words. “Haven’t you studied about Guerrillas in school? They think they are kind of like an army, but they are really nothing more than a bunch of hooligans. I’d watch out for them, if I were you. Don’t let them catch you.

  “Now, I am tired. I feel a low pressure coming on, and I must rest. Just follow this path before you, and hopefully you will reach the other end of the forest without them catching you. You want to reach Submarine Lake, but beware of the Submarians. They cannot be trusted either.” The Group heard the tiniest sound of rustling. “I’m going to sleep now. Goodbye.”

  That was the last time the Group had an encounter with Why. I suppose that is just the way it is when you meet a puff of wind: here today, gone tomorrow. And since Why had no brothers to meet them later on in their journey, and since Why was more preoccupied with taking care of his trees, it should not be surprising to us that we will not be discussin
g Why any more.

  As the Group trooped down the trail through the trees, a trail that was faintly marked (meaning that very few people or creatures used the trail) but the only way to navigate through the thick forest, they were not very quiet about it. They did not heed Why’s warning, and they were very noisy. First, their feet made a lot of noise, tramping and stomping through the thick grass. Then, there was a lot of conversation. And, at one point, the triplets decided to entertain the Group with a song. After all, under the tall and thick canopy of the trees, it was kind of hot and sticky; since Why had stopped moving and he had no brothers, there was no breeze within the forest, and soon all of them were rather uncomfortable and sweaty and dirty from all their walking.

  Because of their indiscretions, which means they were not paying attention and being careful, their little adventure was about to take another turn for the worse. For you see, the Guerrillas that Why had warned them about had long heard the Group moving about on the trail and began to plan a trap for them.

  These Guerrillas preferred to live nearer the tops of the trees, where they made their nests. Now, before we get to the part where the Group will be captured, I should give some description about these creatures. In one way, they resembled a kind of monkey that has long disappeared from the rest of the world. Their faces were, in fact, very human in appearance, and they had developed a form of language that would seem to you and I to be rather primitive, kind of like the way babies talk when they are learning the language of their mothers and fathers. As for the rest of their bodies, they were covered in thick camouflage-colored hair (to be able to blend in with the colors of the forest) that often matted and needed grooming often. Thus, their social life consisted of congregating together for long periods of time to give each other a good combing and cleaning while exchanging old gossip about each other. When they were not grooming or gossiping, they roamed the forest tops looking for fun—at least to them it would be fun; to the rest of us their concept of fun would be more of a nuisance. And lastly, all of them had these fine, slender, nubile tails that acted as a fifth hand for grasping, especially branches, and they were all very proud of these tails. They would often decorate their tails with flowers just like you and I might wear jewelry, and, of course, more often than not, these flowers would flaunt their social position, causing more than a bit of jealousy among them.

  So, now that we have an idea of what these creatures looked like, you will soon discover that their minds were fairly simple if not a bit selfish. Once a roving band pinpointed the location of the Group, they began to make a strange cawing sound to alert other roving bands. These Guerrillas were not exactly the bravest creatures one might meet on this Island. Individually, you would never see one or know that it was watching you. But when more of their kind gathered, the braver they felt in creating some mischief. In other words, five Guerrillas might be afraid of just one of the members of the Group and leave him or her alone. But since the Group was made up of seven members, the Guerrillas thought that even if they numbered a hundred or so, they still might not be able to capture the Group. Even more frightening was the prospect of getting hurt.

  Once a considerable number of Guerrillas—like around four hundred—had positioned themselves above the Group, they had to decide on the best plan for capturing the Group. The Bunnies they recognized, having heard about them from their parents and grandparents and seen some rather crude drawings of them. I mean to say that the Guerrillas were not totally without culture. They liked to make pictures by scratching rudimentary pictures in mud and then baking the mud portraits, if you will, over the hot sulfur pits that had erupted from the ground close to the marshland west of the forest. And then they would hang these pictures as decorations in their homes just like you and I might hang expensive pictures and portraits of our family members on the walls in our own homes.

  They had never seen a Dragon or a Unicorn before: so, they didn’t have any pictures of a Dragon or a Unicorn. But they had seen chickens and dogs, so they thought that maybe Cassandra was just a big chicken—and therefore harmless—and Uniqua a large dog with a funny horn in the middle of her forehead. They knew dogs bite, so they had to worry about Uniqua biting them. But as far as the twins were concerned, they did not know what to make of them, as they had never run into small humans before. They discounted the idea of the children as trees, because they were walking on their roots. They were too tall to be Rabbits, and their ears were way to tiny, and, besides, they didn’t have fluffy tails. They were almost like Guerrillas, but then if they were, why didn’t they have any tails?

  In the meantime, while the Guerrillas argued and discussed details on how to capture the invaders—for that is what they began to call the Group—among themselves, our friends trooped through the forest single file, blind to the danger above them. Uniqua lead the way, followed by Carl, then Karen, then Cassandra, and finally the triplets. So, the Guerrillas decided that the Rabbits were probably the easiest to capture since these three were at the tail end of the procession. They decided to grab each Rabbit, one by one, and quickly haul them up into the treetops where the Rabbits would be so frightened that they would not be able to cry out. And, that is just about the way it happened.

  Three Guerrillas noiselessly crept down the trees—suddenly the thought of Ninjas come to mind—until they were very close to the ground, hanging by their tails from the lowest branches, and blending into the foliage so well that the Group did not see them as they passed underneath them. Hunny, who was bringing up the rear, was so suddenly snatched, a hand placed over her mouth, lifted up off the ground, and quickly passed upwards to other waiting hands, which bound her and gagged her and carried her far up into the trees. Runny was next, and not one of the remaining Group members missed her. Bunny managed to let out a little squeak just as she was grabbed and even managed to bite her kidnapper on the hand. It was her sound of warning that caused Cassandra to stop dead in her tracks and turn around.

  “Just a minute,” she said. “Where are the triplets? Hello! Runny, Bunny, Hunny, where are you?”

  Because she had stopped and turned around, the other three continuing to walk a few paces ahead, Cassandra was now isolated and an easy target. A net suddenly appeared above her, and in a blink of an eye she was captured and raised up into the trees before she really knew what was happening. Then the Guerrillas bound her tight, especially her wings—because they thought she could fly away—and her snout—because they thought she might bite or peck at them. Little did they know that Cassandra was afraid of flying, and her fire-breathing skills were less than adequate for a Dragon.

  That left the twins and the Unicorn. The Guerrillas were now feeling much braver, since there were only three members of the Group left, and their own numbers had continued to grow as word spread throughout the forest that there was going to be a bit of fun later. The best way they thought to catch a dog is to try and put a rope around its neck. The problem with this idea is that if a dog sees a loop of rope dangling in front of it, and if the dog is fairly smart, it is not likely it will volunteer to stick its head and neck through the loop. So, the Guerrillas had a short meeting among the bandleaders, and they decided that they would have to do something rather bold. One of them was going to have to risk injury by confronting, and thereby distracting the dog, so the others could catch her. But who was going to risk getting hurt? None of the Guerrillas wanted to volunteer. As it happened, there was a lot of pointing at each other. Then came the shoving. And, finally, one of the Guerrillas—I guess you call him the unlucky one—lost his balance on the branch where he was sitting and tumbled right down in front of Uniqua!

  “Help!” the poor creature yelled before landing with a big thump that shook the ground under Uniqua’s feet.

  Uniqua stopped short, naturally. “Hello,” she greeted the funny looking monkey, now lying unconscious in the middle of the trail. “What in the world is this?” But before she could even think up a name for the guerrilla, his comrades seized the
moment and lowered two ropes through the leaves and swiftly snagged both her tail and her head. “Hey! Watch the tail!” she screamed as she was unceremoniously hauled up into the treetops.

  “Karen!” Carl warned. But Karen was already alert for danger, and the two of them stood back to back, looking up and all around them, waiting for an attack. But nothing immediately happened, for while the Guerrillas were very good at surprising their victims, they were not prepared to deal with creatures who might fight back and hurt them.

  “You-ga give-em-up,” the more experienced roving bandleader called down.

  “Who are you?” Carl yelled out, trying to sound a whole lot braver than he felt. “Show yourselves.”

  “Hands up,” the bandleader called out again. “No hurt.”

  “Where are our friends?” Karen yelled.

  “No hurt. Hands up.”

  “You don’t return our friends, we’re gonna hurt you,” Carl threatened, sounding braver than he felt at the moment.

  “We no hurt. You no hurt.”

  “Then show yourselves, and we won’t hurt you,” Carl told them.

  Three Guerrillas suddenly appeared in front of Carl, hanging upside down. “Peek-a-boo,” the middle one greeted and slapped Carl in the face. And just as suddenly, they sprang back up into the forest.

  “Why you—” Carl was unable to finish his sentence as three other Guerrillas dangled in front of Karen and slapped her, too, before disappearing into the trees.

  “Tag. You it,” the bandleader called down. “You-ga give-em-up. No hurt.”

  Carl started looking on the ground for something he could use as a weapon and found a fairly stout stick, an old branch really, that had died a long time ago and looked bleached out. So, when the Guerrillas tried their game again, it was like “batter up” time for Carl, and he swung the stick so that it caught all three noses of the Guerrillas. So, you can imagine the pain, if you have ever been hit in the nose. The three Guerrillas lost their tail grip on the branch, fell heavily to the ground, clutched their noses with both hands, and began to bawl like little babies, rolling over and over on the ground as if they were dying.