by Tracey Hecht
The fox took a firm step toward it. “Who sent you here? Why are you after us?” she demanded. The fox placed a paw on its shoulder and shook it. “Can you hear me?” She looked around at the surrounding field, her amber eyes flickering across the barren ground. “Where are the flowers? Who is taking them?”
The lemur spoke in a weak voice. “I…I…”
“Yes! Yes! Enough with all this ‘you, you’ talk!” Bismark cried. He waved away one last whiff of the pangolin’s spray and sidled up next to the fox. “You, you what?” he demanded, glaring at the lemur. “Out with it!”
“I…” the lemur began. “I…can’t remember,” he said at last. He shook his head and blinked rapidly. Dawn noticed that the clarity in his eyes was returning. “After all that back and forth, my mind went completely blank.”
“Back and forth?” Dawn repeated. “Back and forth between what?” The fox clenched her jaw. This animal wasn’t making any sense. She tried once more. “Tell us who sent you here to attack us. Tell us who is taking the flowers!”
But the lemur appeared to be dizzy. His eyes looked bleary and glazed again. “Back and forth…” he repeated. His pupils were moving now, traveling slowly from left to right, left to right, across their sockets. “Back and forth.”
The Brigade stared. The lemur tottered on its hind legs. Then he lifted a finger and dangled it in front of his face.
“I…I…” he sang, his voice monotone and trance-like once more.
“You, you, nada! This is infuriating! The only ‘I’ here that deserves that much attention is I, I. Me, me. Bismark, Bismark!”
But the lemur continued his chant, as if the glider hadn’t spoken. “I… I…”
“Mon dieu, you can stop now—we heard you! At the very least, you could lower that finger of yours. It’s very strange, muy creepy. Just like that loony, Iris.” The sugar glider grimaced. Then he mussed his hair into a crazed poof on his head, lifted a finger, and screeched. “Remind you of anyone?”
“Bismark, that’s it!” cried the fox, her eyes transfixed on his paw.
“A marvelous impression, I know,” Bismark boasted. “Just one of my many talents.”
“No,” Dawn said. Her gaze brightened. “They haven’t been saying ‘I…I…’ They’ve been saying ‘aye-aye’!”
“Aye-Aye Iris!” gasped Tobin, his beady eyes widening.
At the mention of Iris’s name, the blurry-eyed lemur let out a shrill yelp then collapsed to the ground. For a brief moment, his pupils grew so wide they looked as if they might burst. Then his eyes snapped shut, and he fainted once more.
“Mon dieu!” exclaimed Bismark. “Why are they bringing that creepy muchacha into this?” The sugar glider raised a flap to his forehead.
“Oh goodness, maybe Iris sent the lemurs to find us,” Tobin suggested.
“Yes,” agreed Dawn. “It seems like she might have.” With narrowed eyes, the fox surveyed her surroundings once more. No flowers. No glower. No leads. She grunted. They needed to find the flowers but, at this point, perhaps the aye-aye was their best bet. “Let’s go find her,” said Dawn.
With that, the fox set off into the night. Tobin, stomach churning again, followed slowly behind her. And Bismark glided behind the two…but not before he snagged one of the tiny red berries from the lemur’s limp, outstretched paw.
Chapter Fourteen
PAT, PAT, PAT
“This mission is loco, I tell you! That aye-aye could be anywhere. We’re never going to find her!” The sugar glider stomped his feet then promptly flung the mud off his toes. The Brigade-mates were traveling back through the marshlands just south of the springs, and the ground had turned soggy and soft. “Not that I mind, if you want to know the glider’s truth,” Bismark continued. “I must say, that Iris is the nastiest, stinkiest-smelling amiga I have ever met. She startles the eyes! She offends the nose!”
“The nose…” mused Tobin. “Yes.”
“Thank you, mon ami. I was born to provide these kinds of valuable insights,” Bismark said. He turned to Dawn. “Hear that, my love? I speak the truth! Even our own malodorous muchacho agrees with me.”
“No, Bismark,” said the pangolin. “I meant I could use my nose to track Iris!”
Tobin eagerly began sampling the odors of the earth with his long, keen snout. “I remember her particular scent well,” he said, poking through curtains of reeds. “Kind of tangy.… A little damp.… Somewhat stale.…”
Bismark grimaced, but Dawn gave an encouraging nod.
“Let’s sniff, let’s sniff,” muttered Tobin. The pangolin picked up his pace, sending mud splashing behind him, but he quickly drew to a halt.
“Did you find something?” asked Dawn.
“Already, compadre?” asked Bismark. “Perhaps I underestimated your schnoz!”
“Oh goodness, no,” said the pangolin. “I’m sorry…I…” Tobin swallowed hard, trying to block out the terrible, burning pain that had forced him to stop.
Dawn eyed the pangolin, cradling his belly, then padded toward him. “You’ll be okay,” she whispered. The fox placed her paw on Tobin’s scales and gave him a tender pat. “Just concentrate. You can lead us to Iris. And that’s our best chance at getting you a blue flower.”
Encouraged by Dawn’s words, Tobin squeezed his eyes shut to focus on his keen sense of smell instead of the burn in his belly. Then, with a determined breath, he proceeded through the brush, extending his snout this way and that.
Dawn and Bismark followed behind him until, after several twists and turns, he paused and snapped his eyes open.
“Oh goodness!” he cried. “I think I’ve got something!”
Shuffling his legs toward a bed of moss, the pangolin furrowed his brow in concentration. He was inhaling the air faster, deeper, and louder, and his nostrils started to tingle and twitch. “Ooh! I…I think I…I think I…ah…ah…ah-choo!”
Tobin’s body rolled backward with the force of a mighty sneeze. Then, opening his eyes, he tried to spot what had tickled his nose.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going with that thing!” squeaked a thin, high-pitched voice.
Alarmed, Tobin squinted and turned his head in all directions. “Who’s … who’s there?” he asked.
“Down here!”
Tobin looked down at his claws. “Oh my!” he said with a jump. The pangolin had indeed tracked down a creature with his impressive nose. But it was not Aye-Aye Iris. It was a woylie: a tiny, furry, mouse-like marsupial, poking its head up from the moss.
“And be quiet!”
Another popped out from the grass nearby.
“You sniff like a hog!”
“You’re ruining our search!”
Two more woylies emerged from the shadows. Together, the four little creatures began to rapidly shout at the pangolin:
“Much too much noise!”
“You’re muffling the sound!”
“We need the vibrations!”
“Shhh!”
The pangolin paused. Dawn and Bismark stood at either shoulder, and he looked to them in confusion. “Vibrations?” he asked aloud.
The mice began to titter and squeak.
“Vibrations in the ground!”
“It’s how we navigate!”
“Our ears are our eyes!”
“Seismic communication!”
“Yes,” Dawn started to explain. “These woylies sense movement in the earth by picking up on vibrations. But usually it is to avoid other creatures, not to search for them.”
“That’s right! We know all the footsteps of all the animals in the forest, just like our own paws,” piped up the woylie near Tobin’s claws. “But tonight we’ve felt vibrations unlike anything we’ve ever experienced!”
At this, Dawn’s ears perked up. She gathered the four little creatures together in a huddle. “Can you tell us more about them?” she asked.
“Strange movements.”
“New sounds.”
“Scary ones!”
“We
think it’s from the thing that got good old Dewey.”
A long, whinnying sound rose from the four mice. They had suddenly burst into tears.
“What happened?” asked Tobin.
“Our friend, Dewey, the boar!” sniffled the woylies. “He’s…he’s…dead!”
The miniature marsupials lowered their eyes to the ground in sorrow. Then they looked back up.
“We’re trying to find who’s responsible.”
“The one who poisoned his pomelo.”
“That’s who must be making these sounds.”
“We must avenge Dewey’s death!”
“Pomelo!?” yelped Bismark.
“Poison?” asked Dawn.
“Death?” croaked the pangolin.
The Brigade exchanged terrified glances. The woylies seemed to be putting so much together at once: strange sounds, unusual activity, poisoned fruit. But the poisoned animals the three friends had met weren’t dying…yet.
“The poisoned animals we’ve met have only been sick,” said the fox. She paused. “Are you sure it was the pomelo that caused your friend’s death?”
The woylies looked toward the ground and nodded. “We’re sure,” they whispered.
Tobin opened his mouth to speak, but all he could do was tremble and hold his burning belly. His voice and words were failing him. At last, he swallowed hard and closed his dry lips. Perhaps there was nothing to say.
Gently, Dawn placed a paw on Tobin’s back. Bismark placed a soothing flap there, too.
“If only he’d had a blue flower,” said a woylie. “We met other sick animals, and they told us the blue flowers were the cure.”
“Just one and he’d still be here.”
“We couldn’t find any.”
“But we’re going to find the culprit!”
Then the four woylies scurried about the moss, pressing their ears to the ground, listening for the vibrations once more.
Dawn gave Tobin a comforting pat and watched the animals at work. Her mind was working through what she had just heard. Perhaps they should follow the lead of the woylies. At least they were on the trail of something.
The fox bent low to the ground, straining to pick up on the vibrations, too. Even with her keen sense of hearing and touch, she didn’t sense anything unusual coming from the ground.
“Too quiet for you to hear,” said a woylie, looking up.
“Here, we’ll show you!”
Scurrying before the Brigade, the woylies used their small claws and front teeth to burrow tiny holes in the earth. Then they stuck their whole heads underground. As they listened to the earth’s deep whispers, they began to pat their feet to the beat of the silent sensations they felt.
Pat pat pat.
Pat pat pat.
The woylies popped their heads back above ground. “Hear that? That’s what we’ve been feeling all night. And it’s getting louder and louder in this part of the forest. We think we’re getting closer.”
Pat pat pat.
Pat pat pat.
The woylies repeated the sound, patting their paws on the ground.
Bismark shuddered. “Enough of this pestering pat pat patting! That horrible sound reminds me of that hideous aye-aye’s fingernail. Pat pat pat…tap tap tap. All this creepy noise makes my flaps furl.”
Dawn’s amber hair stood up along her neck. “Iris.” She let out a long breath.
The woylies’ eyes widened. “Iris? Who is Iris? Is she the one who poisoned Dewey?”
“We can’t say that,” said the fox, “but she seems to know more about the poison than anyone else.”
“We’ve been looking for her,” added Tobin. “We’re hoping to get more information. You see, well .…” He paused and lowered his snout. “I ate the poison, too.”
The woylies gasped.
“You must find a flower!”
“Or you’ll end up like Dewey!”
Tobin felt a sharp pang in his side. Desperately, he clutched his stomach.
The fox bent her snout toward the woylies and met their wide eyes with her own. “Listen again. Do you hear the sound? Can you lead us to it?”
“Yes!”
“Of course!”
“Anything in honor of Dewey.”
“Anything for those who need help!”
At once, the four little creatures pressed their ears back to the ground. Within moments, their faces grew bright. They had picked up the sound once again.
“We’ve got it!” they cried. “Let’s go!”
And with that, the woylies raced off, the Brigade following close behind.
Chapter Fifteen
THE STARLIT CAGE
“Over here!”
“It’s getting louder!”
“Hurry up!”
“We’re almost there!”
The woylies scurried through the forest, stopping quickly and often to press their tiny ears against the ground, tracking the signals, then moving onward once more.
“Oh goodness, where are they taking us?” asked Tobin, trundling behind the group.
With a sudden swerve, the woylies led the Brigade into a thicket of tall grass. They ran this way and that, changing direction without warning or, it seemed, sense.
“Mon dieu, this is absolument absurd!” cried the sugar glider. “All this pat pat patting that no one but these nincompoops can hear? Ridiculo, I tell you!”
Dawn shot the glider a glare over her shoulder.
But Bismark continued his protests. “You must admit, my dearest, we’ve gotten nowhere! Gathered nada!” The sugar glider flapped faster, just behind the white of Dawn’s tail. “Either Iris duped us all with some sort of tricky trap, or these woylies are sending us on a wild goose chase. Or, shall I say, a wild aye-aye chase.” Bismark smirked.
But then, the woylies came to an abrupt halt atop a small, rocky hill. Dawn stopped short behind them, causing Bismark to crash against her tawny rear end before collapsing back onto the ground.
“The signal’s stopped!”
“We’ve lost the trail!”
“The sound is gone!”
“It was coming from here!”
The woylies frantically pointed through wiry, brown grass, down the hill’s opposite slope.
The Brigade tiptoed forward and peered past the rocky edge. Below them, nestled in thick blankets of shadow, was the dark looming mouth of a cave.
“Oh goodness,” gasped Tobin. The pangolin glanced nervously at the cave’s jagged outline and at the pitch-black hue of its depths. “I don’t see anything.”
“Si, where is that atrocious aye-aye? Where’s all the tap tap tapping?” Bismark asked. “Should we call for her? Shall I shake my tail to attract her attention, perhaps?” The sugar glider peered at the black stripe adorning his backside and gave a self-satisfied nod.
“Hush, Bismark,” Dawn scolded. She turned to the woylies. Their eyes were glazed and they swayed on their tiny feet. They were clearly exhausted from their long night of searching. “Can you hear anything else?” she asked them.
The little creatures pressed their ears to the ground once again, but in vain. The pat pat patting had ceased, and the night had turned eerily quiet.
“Thank you, all of you,” said the fox, bending her snout toward the group. One of the woylies yawned, then, one by one, the others did as well. “Go get some rest,” Dawn continued. “We can take it from here.”
The woylies nodded and looked gratefully at the fox. Then they retreated into the darkness, leaving the Brigade alone.
“Keep close, you two,” whispered Dawn. “If we stay hidden, we can try to see into the mouth of the cave without being detected.”
“Without being detected by quoi? Qui? Quién?” The sugar glider stood on his tiptoes and looked skeptically at the cave. “There’s nada in there. Those wimpy woylies led us astray!”
“Shhh!” Dawn yanked Bismark down by the tail. “Look!” The fox parted the brush with her front paws. Tobin and Bismark both gasped.
<
br /> The cave’s shadows were shifting. And, with the help of the full, luminous moon, the Brigade could make out a strange silhouette emerging from the mouth of the cave. It had frazzled hair, pointed ears, and two extra-long fingers protruding from its wild paws. Tobin squealed and Bismark retched. It was Iris!
“Oh my, thank goodness she’s here!” said Tobin excitedly. “We can finally ask her for help!” The pangolin straightened up and made a move toward the cave, but before he could step out of the brush, Dawn pulled him back down to his seat.
“Tobin, wait!” she said. She held a paw to her mouth, keeping her eyes locked on the aye-aye.
Iris was up to something peculiar. She was squatting down on the ground and pressing one ear to the earth, just like the woylies had. Then, with her eyes squeezed shut, she began to slowly tap the earth with one of her extra-long fingers.
Tap tap tap.
Tap tap tap.
“Oh mon dieu, it was the aye-aye making those horrific sounds after all!” Bismark cried. He stared at her long, gangly finger and shuddered. “Blech! My poor, innocent eyes cannot stand such a hideous sight! She could skewer a squirrel with that thing!”
“But what is she doing with it now?” whispered Tobin.
Iris closed her eyes. Her taps were growing faster, more persistent.
Tap tap tap!
Tap tap tap!
Suddenly, Iris’s eyes shot back open. Their bloodshot, orange glare shone in the darkness, and a wave of energy seemed to course through her frame. Then she stood up, threw her head backward, and shrieked. “Rise! Rise, my moonlight beauties! Rise!”
The aye-aye lifted her claws toward the sky. The earth beneath her hind paws began to stir as it grew dotted with tiny mounds. Tiny mounds with holes in the centers. Just like at the fallen star. And Bismark’s pomelo tree. And the flower field. Then, suddenly, as if Iris had cast some wicked spell, the earth around Iris became illuminated. Beams of pale, blue light were shooting up from the holes!
“Dios mio, what evilness is this?” Bismark gasped. “It’s the glow we saw at the flower field. Iris has summoned the star creatures from underground! She’s working with the invaders!”
The beams around Iris were brightening. For a moment, the aye-aye appeared to be enclosed in a luminous, starlit cage as dozens and dozens of glowing balls of light came streaming from the mounds around the cave.
