"Haarumph---cheer up, good bear. We're not lost yet, merely disquieted and a bit mystified."
With that, the bear got up on all fours again and the group turned and proceeded back along the path. This time they swapped sides to get the benefit of a second look. They moved even more slowly, if that were possible, examining every knoll and whorl on every trunk. The owl ascended again and swooped as close to the canopy as was possible without clipping the very branches themselves, and Egbert exhausted himself with climbing to the tops of even the most unpropitious appearing of trees. Despite all of these concerted efforts, however, some distance past the creek they halted again without having gained their objective.
"What now?" Percy said with exasperation.
The bear scratched his head. His bewilderment was extreme. After looking so hard it defied belief that they could have failed to find the Hollowed Tree. As he saw it, there were only three other possibilities, none of which was in the least favorable to their designs: the simplest of these was that the three sisters had mislead them, either intentionally or unintentionally. This possibility, though the bear resisted intuitively any questions either of veracity or malicious intent on the part of the good sisters, must be considered, nevertheless, if all else failed; if it came to such a misfortunate state of affairs, they were likely to be searching a lot longer than they had anticipated. The next possibility was equally pernicious in its effect on their mission, if not as morally disquieting. This was that the location which they had marked on the chart was inaccurate. In this case, the area of their search could increase even more than in the latter. Finally, worst of all, would be a combination of these two, in which case the scope of their task could quickly expand to hopeless proportions.
The consequences that would ensue in the event of the truth of any of these possibilities were so grave that the bear decided to keep them to himself. He would broach them to the others only when all hope was lost. In the meantime, they would just have to take more care in their examinations.
"We'll just have to look harder," he said gruffly in an attempt to shore up the others' spines. "This has got to be the place. Go slower," he ordered patiently. "And look for woodpecker holes in the sides---its got a lot of woodpecker holes in it."
"We've already looked for the stupid woodpecker holes," Jupe retorted with surly disgust. "You need something else. We're not going to find it by walking back down that path."
But the bear ignored these disrespectful remarks and led the way back down the path, retracing their steps for yet a third time. This time they proceeded, truly, at the pace of a snail. Boston stood staring interminably at the rising trunk of any tree which exhibited any of the telltale signs of woodpecker activity at all. So careful and slow was his progress that the Lion soon became fed up.
"Get on with it, Bear! You can't make one merely by wishing. Move on."
The bear largely succeeded in ignoring these proddings, though his good nature was sorely tried. And they did make progress after all. They re-crossed the creek, but still no signs of the tree.
"Dang it!" the Sergeant Major cried wrathfully, venting his frustration. "There ain't no Hollowed tree here! We done looked three times! How many more times we going to go by it?"
The bear, who had begun to be truly discouraged now that the end of their third traversal of the same series of tree trunks approached with no result, stopped and glared irritably at the sparrow.
"Sergeant Major," he said in measured tones. "We will go on looking for the tree until we find it."
"AAAAAWWWWWK!" the sparrow screeched.
The bear started in surprise at this entirely inappropriate reaction. Though firm with the bird, he hadn't been nearly so harsh as to elicit such a strong reaction. He frowned and was about to light into the sparrow with uncharacteristic severity, when he noted that the bird was looking elsewhere than at his self. The others, too, were staring past him, as if the object of their attention were located somewhere at his back. Boston turned and looked.
At first he saw only the jungle, the tangled vines and soaring boles of trees receding into a greenish gloom, interpenetrating, monstrous, touched here and there by a thread of light which filtered thinly through the canopy. The jungle opened a bit here beside the path, forming a very small, cavernous break in the otherwise unbroken vegetation. Ten yards or so away the growth began again, forming an impenetrable wall. As the bear watched, a gray, thickly furred shape appeared among the roots at the foot of an enormous tree, materializing suddenly from the surrounding background. The fur stirred. Two reddened eyes opened and stared out intensely.
"Thet wolverine!" gasped the Sergeant Major. "Aint seen 'im in years, but I'd know 'im anywhere!"
And all at once like stone carvings from a sculpture the jungle fell away in disintegrating pieces. The tree stood out in sharp relief, rising solely into the canopy above. Their apprehension was synchronous.
"This might be it," Boston said, craning his neck to see the top. Branches grew at alternating intervals up the tree, stunted though they were, with clusters of green leaves on their ends. At the very top a branch grew out and upwards, spreading its foliage over the pinnacle like a small umbrella. Woodpecker holes riddled the sides of the trunk.
As they watched, the owl appeared and flew immediately to the object of their attention, soaring upwards with a single backward glance of nearly awed surprise and recognition at the stocky, furred body making its way across the small clearing towards the others. Reaching the top, the owl could find no adequate perch on which to alight and so attempted to peer through the leaves as he made slow passes above it. After making several passes he came down to join the group on the ground.
"Haarumph!" he grunted as he landed heavily upon the earth. He gave a good shake to each massive, yellowed claw and shifted the great wings on his shoulders.
The wolverine had approached to within a few feet of the others by now, where he stopped. The armadillos and the squirrel bristled tensely. Despite their numbers and the great and steadfast courage of the armadillos, they were suspicious of his blood thirsty disposition and moved closer in beside their bigger comrades in order to present a united front. The lion and the bear waited with a polite hesitation, uncertain as to how to proceed and deferring to the owl, now that he was here, to take the initiative.
"I'd know ye anywheres," the Sergeant Major said suddenly with shrewd and uninhibited boldness. "Ye're thet shaman wolverine what come up to the courtroom years back, and then hightailed it out 'thout so much as a 'thanks' and 'nice to meet ye!'"
The wolverine regarded the sparrow without reflecting in his countenance any traces of recognition whatsoever that he understood or was related in any way to these statements, which were tendered in the tone of accusations. A suggestion of contempt played about the slightly visible row of fangs lining his snout. Impervious to the sparrow's narrowed gaze of scrutiny, he turned to face the owl, who grunted and advanced a few paces.
"Haarumph!" the owl grunted and stopped at a somewhat awkward distance.
And no one spoke. The sparrow, after his initial outburst, had become suddenly as inhibited as the others. The owl, who by all rights should be the first to come forward–and the others fully expected him to do so–could only watch his old acquaintance warily, finding himself suddenly and unaccountably incapable of uttering a single word. They all were held in a mysterious abeyance, as if by some invisible power exuding like an aura over that animal's despondent form. He peered intently at the great horned owl, who noted with a shock the same ineffable air of despair and loss that had been present at their last meeting. His glittering black eyes reflected a sense of flawed and desperate inadequacy. In the presence of his tortured soul the owl felt a resurgence of that embarrassment he had experienced at their parting years ago. It might have been only yesterday that he last saw him. Finally, the wolverine cast a haunted look at the others and then back to the owl.
"Come, is this the way old friends greet?" he said in a raspy
, slightly quaking voice. "After all, it is the Hollowed Tree that you have found."
44. The Descent
They maintained a few moments longer of that awkward silence, none wishing to engage the wolverine, as if by exchanging words they too could be infected with his malady. Finally, the owl grunted, shifted his wings and thrust out his chest in a presumption of boldness.
"Haarumph–to be sure, to be sure," he began in a light hearted tone so discordant with the somber atmosphere that it served only to heighten the very tension it was intended to dispel. So leaden was the effect produced in the deadened air that it nearly stifled the owl's next impulse. "Haarumph--" he grunted uncertainly; then, shaking off a feeling of dread, he became voluble and plunged recklessly forth as if to break the influence of that spell under whose power they had suddenly fallen. "Haarumph--haarumph--yes, most certainly--haarumph--it is a most welcome sight to lay eyes upon you once again. You seem fit enough," he lied. "Henrietta would be most pleased if she could be here. We spoke of you only recently..."
The owl faltered, stumbled over his words, unable to finish the sentence. He had found the intensity of the wolverine's gaze so disconcerting that he had irretrievably lost his train of thought. A horrible, gaping silence ensued as they all awaited those next words with the desperation of the condemned for the executioner's final blow. But the owl was past all recovery now, lost, the failed, empty words as inconsequential as if they had never been at all.
"I don't believe we've met," Boston said in a tone so normal in that state of surreal tension that it had a more pronounced effect at that moment than would have the most outrageous declaration. The bear took a step in the direction of the wolverine and halted. "Boston Excalibur," he said and proffered a great paw. The wolverine, for whatever reasons, declined to touch it. "What we are all waiting to hear, Wolverine," the bear said, withdrawing the paw, a note of impatience creeping into his voice, "is how did you happen to be here at the Hollowed Tree right when we came to be here at the same time?"
"Haarumph!" the owl grunted, recovering somewhat with the help of these banalities. "Haarumph--indeed!"
The wolverine looked at the bear for a moment, hesitated, turned back to the owl. Then he sat down and with a small sigh began to speak.
"Yes, yes--of course, you would ask that. The coincidence, yes," he said defensively, as if he had no right to occupy that particular time and place. "I had heard...but I must explain." He looked at them apologetically, as if waiting for encouragement to proceed.
"Haarumph!" the owl grunted with amazement. "But surely you haven't carried that--haarumph--trivial incident with you for these years? Haarumph--haarumph."
The wolverine gave the owl a look of such tortured pain that the bird immediately regretted his words. He brooded for a moment, then calmed and began:
"When I departed Hardwood Haven on that day several years past, I traveled far and wide throughout the jungle, following all of my normal routes, attempting to carry on as before, as if nothing had changed. I buried myself in my work. I performed my duties flawlessly. To observe any of the ceremonies and rituals I conducted during this period was to stand in the presence of perfection. No detail was so small as to escape my attention. The slightest irregularity caused me endless nights of sleeplessness, twisting and turning in an agony of regret. I sought to control the very wind itself and would fly into an unspeakable rage if a mote of dust came to rest upon one of my sacred arrangements."
"My attendants soon quit. Once word got out, none could be found anywhere who would work for me. My reputation for making unreasonable demands had become so widely known that wherever I went a general evacuation of qualified personnel occurred well in advance of my arrival. I made do--either enlisting the aid of whatever bum or vagabond-ish material happened to be at hand, or going it alone. The end result was to hone my work to even greater heights, since now I attended personally to every aspect. Those who enlisted my services were in awe. I was in great demand throughout the jungle. Even so, few desired my company socially, and I was shunned as soon as my job was done. No matter. I had no interest whatsoever in their lives and petty concerns. I was totally absorbed in my work, deriving from it some justification; it was a validation of my otherwise meaningless and inadequate existence.
"Yet, all of this perfection was unable to mend or even mask the painful gap within, which my discovery of this tree had opened like a fissure in my soul. A time came when I could keep up the sham no longer. My work fell off. I lost interest in that as well as in life itself. I drifted, in a miserable existence. Finally, like dross, I settled to the bottom with the very dregs of life. I ended up in the Router section of Hawg City, from which I have only just emerged."
"Hawg City!" Boston said with a frown. "We just come from Hawg City."
"I knew, from the very beginning, of your arrival, of the Seventh Juridical, and of your approach even before that. Later, the objective of your journey became common knowledge--I have no idea how--even at that mean level of society which I inhabited. I was suddenly inspired to bring to a head the failures of my life thus far. It was obvious that you would be unable to find the tree yourselves without assistance, an assumption which was borne out by events. I knew that you were coming, and I resolved to make a successful descent of it or to perish in the effort. I left immediately, arriving here only last night, a day in your advance."
"Yet," Percy said, "to the sisters it was the commonest thing in the world. They acted as if there were nothing so boring in all the world as a visit to it."
"Ah, yes, the sisters!" rasped the wolverine and his eyes flickered with electricity. "You have met, then. On the main trail?--yes, no other. The sisters sped you well on your way. And whom else did you encounter?"
"None in particular," said Boston. "Those sisters seemed to know just about everybody on the road, though. They just kept on coming. The traffic was pretty heavy."
"Haarumph!" the owl grunted. "There was the Promonitory Gander!"
"Heh, heh," the wolverine giggled grotesquely. "A delightful dish, the Promonitory Gander." Seeing the look of horrified alarm on Egbert's face, he added hastily: "Only to look at, only to look at. I could never harm the Promonitory Gander!" Then, resuming his somber mien. "But, yes, it is true--I had sunk so low," he continued, as if he were not ready just then to address the subject broached by Percy. "I had come to rest in perhaps the vilest area of all that stinking, filthy town; I soon lost any initiative to leave. I should have died there, finally, if you hadn't appeared." The wolverine did not change his expression as he related this, and it was impossible to tell by mere observation whether he considered his avoidance of this result at all propitious. He looked away wistfully, and fell silent.
"Well, we have found it," the lion said shortly, "and now we must go down it." Though he was, like the others, mystified and somewhat intrigued by the whole problem of the wolverine, he considered these sentiments and the general disheartened disposition of the animal as unseemly puling. "Egbert should do it."
"Oh, priceless!" Egbert exclaimed. "Send the squirrel down it--yes, yes."
"Ye skeered?" the Sergeant Major said nastily.
"Hold on now," Boston said. "Before we go sending anybody down the Hollowed Tree--and I take Wolverine's word for it that that is indeed what we are looking at here--even though apparently nobody else has seen fit to examine in any way why they think this is it--before we take any action, we need to study this a bit."
"Hogwash!" the lion said.
"We need–“ the bear repeated in measured tones “–to study it. We believe that the boy went down it. Now, how are we going to find him?"
"Please--don't be obtuse," Percy said with disgust. "How can we find him unless we go down it and look?"
"Nobody says we don't need to go down it," the bear said.
"I can tell you that," the wolverine said softly.
They all started in surprise and turned to the utterer of this statement. The wolverine returned their stares a
nd suddenly, intermingled with the tortured anguish in that visage, they noted signs of a newly born, unflinching conviction, obscured until now beneath his unassuming manner.
"Haarumph!" the owl grunted and his ear-like tufts vibrated like twin tuning forks.
"I must tell you--," the wolverine rasped, "--it will not further your cause to go down the Hollowed Tree."
They stared at him in amazement.
"So--you have, then?" the owl said.
The wolverine nodded his head. He dragged himself erect and composed his features.
"Evidence of him is everywhere," he said. "It is as I thought. He will not be back." Their shock and disappointment was palpable. "Your serious demeanor and distress are, however, inappropriate to the conclusion."
"I would beg to differ with that," Percy said with a frown. "We have just spent a considerable amount of time looking for this tree, and now you tell us it is no good! We must find the lost boy!"
"Your preoccupation with his loss is understandable--yet...."
"You have gone down it, then?" Percy said idiotically, as if he could not get over this astonishing fact.
The wolverine calmly returned their stares.
"Yes. I have gone down it."
"Haarumph!" Honorashious grunted. As can well be imagined, this interchange had thrust him into an extreme state of agitation. "Of course! You were here the day before us--haarumph! We would--haarumph--assume from your demeanor that you had failed again--haarumph--haarumph--yet...," the owl shrank with embarrassment. "But, forgive me."
"No, no, no. Your lack of confidence is justified," the wolverine said with humility. "I had little confidence myself when I came here. I fully never expected to leave here alive. Yet my resolve to follow it to that end--to the very grave--was as impervious as granite. I made many attempts. As you can see if you examine the ground at the foot of the tree, I walked the grass away to dirt in the space of a single night's struggle with it."
They all looked over to the tree where they could see, sure enough, that the bare earth had been exposed in a narrow track around its base.
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