"So it was all for nothing," Jupe said.
The wolverine looked at him.
"Haarumph--indeed--haarumph--this comes as a heavy blow."
"Wolverine," Boston said, drawing himself up on his hind legs to his full, standing height, "Little can I tell how you know all of this--whether you found him and he told you personally, or what--but I do not see how it can hurt us to go down it and see for ourselves. We would like to examine all of the evidence. Egbert, as Lion just suggested, could easily go down it and bring us back confirmation of what you just said."
"You mock me--no more than I deserve," the wolverine said. "It will change nothing. Yet, send him up--down--if you must."
They all looked at Egbert, who quivered slightly. There was no denying it: if any of them were to go down the tree it must be him. With a sigh of resignation followed by a deep breath, the squirrel got up and went over to the tree. At its foot he paused, placing his forepaws against the trunk and looking up.
The bole rose majestically into the patch of sky opening above the clearing. At its very top the green bough spread its leaves. The squirrel looked back to the others, who were drifting slowly across the intervening grassy clearing and forming up in a ragged semi-circle, watching. The wolverine held him for a moment in a gaze of hypnotic intensity, then nodded and gestured with a claw for him to go up. Egbert scrambled quickly up the riddled tree and his upper half disappeared into the greenery at the pinnacle. He remained in this position for a moment, pulled out his head and looked down on the others; then, he stuck his head in again and disappeared.
On the ground below our solemn group maintained a respectful silence. The wolverine sat as motionless as a statue, staring into the clump of leaves where the squirrel had disappeared. The others, fully expecting a lengthy wait, assumed various positions of sitting and laying to be more comfortable. So it was with some surprise that not twenty minutes had passed when they heard the wolverine's raspy voice announce:
"He returns."
Looking up, they saw the squirrel's round head peering from the center of the bough. His lower body remained within the bole of the tree. They craned their necks, looking up at him, no one saying anything in their wonder and surprise.
"Truly," the squirrel called to them in a somewhat put out tone of voice, "There is nothing but dead wood, trash, and some old stump water inside. The tree is empty. There is no evidence of the lost boy."
45. Epilogue
On the way back out they had followed the same path they had come in by. The wolverine came along as far as the main trail. All his efforts to sooth their frustration were in vain. Their demoralization was complete. They had quickly desisted from the immediate impulse to blame the squirrel (not, however, before the Sergeant Major had inflicted with his beak a single sharp blow to the nose, backing off and glaring angrily) shifting to the shaman not so much their blame as their impatience.
"How could he not see it if it's there?" Boston asked with extreme perplexity and skepticism.
"Waste of time. I always knew it would be," growled Percy, for his part, and said no more of it.
Honorashious had left them before they even got started. "Haarumph!" the owl grunted, shaking his great claws with extreme displeasure. "If, then--haarumph--haarumph--we are to believe the Shaman, we can never recover the boy--haarumph--a sad state of affairs indeed! Though I, too, am mystified by the failure of Egbert to find this, putative, evidence to which you refer--the signs of his passing--Shaman."
"Unfortunately, our apprehension of the situation is less than universal."
"Haarumph! Well, our work is over here, for now at least, if not for good--haarumph--you were right about that much! Yet--haarumph--we will not, nor can we, so easily resign ourselves to this loss as you. Haarumph!" Turning to the others, he addressed them all generally: "Forgive me--haarumph--if I do not accompany you on your return. I have no more time or heart to devote--haarumph--to this endeavor now; Henrietta--haarumph--haarumph--has been left alone for long enough." And with those brief and final words uttered in tones which brooked no opposition the great horned owl took to the air and left them standing alone in the clearing with the tree.
They watched him rise and disappear above the canopy. Then, with a sigh Boston took the lead, the others fell in behind, and they left.
At the trail they parted with the Shaman. They stood waiting for him to speak, half expecting some final explanatory words that would reveal all at once and totally a miraculous resolution.
"I go this way," the wolverine said, indicating the direction in which the three sisters had gone earlier. He had stepped out in front of them, careful to keep off the trail in order to avoid blocking the traffic, which, as usual, was heavy. Boston, who had kept more or less silent for the duration of their walk out, now felt compelled to express himself.
"Well, good day to you then, Wolverine," he said. "Your assistance was highly valued, though in the end to no effect. Egbert ended up going down the tree anyway; and any of the evidence of the boy that you said you found was not found by Egbert, a fact which has been perplexing me, and which I expect always will, during the whole while that we have been walking out of the jungle."
The wolverine looked intently from one to the other of the group. "Naturally enough, perhaps," he said in his raspy voice. "You are inclined to place your faith in the observations of your comrade over those of the Shaman."
"You may infer what you wish, though that was not the intent," the bear said.
"Heh, heh, well...I did say that, didn't I?"
"You did, but there was nothing there," the squirrel said in a shrill and defensive tone.
"You were unable--or unwilling--"
"No!"
"--yet–that the boy is lost there can be no doubt in your minds. So be it." The wolverine stood and made ready to go.
"If you can't give us any more than that," the bear said with dissatisfaction, "then I can't see how we're any better off now than before."
The Shaman wolverine offered no answer. Instead, he stepped out into the trail. With a nod of the head and a small sigh he bid them farewell and started off at a deliberate pace. Our party too moved out into the trail and stood staring after his diminishing gray form. He had covered perhaps a hundred yards when, without a break in his stride, he called back over his shoulder: "Good luck--this is not an end. Rather, I hope to see you once again before much time has passed."
Several months later, it was after the ceremony at which even the squirrel had been cited and awarded a medal for bravery that a large number of jungle animals of every description milled about beneath the great oaks in the precincts of Hardwood Haven. Included in their numbers were even a couple of unsuspecting warthogs who happened to be passing through and who were highly indignant once the contents of the award citations were read. The animals circulated in a wild, swirling mixture, engaging in conversation and even some heated debate of all manner of topics of the gravest importance to the jungle and also the not so important (and even more frequently encountered) gossip and exchange of meaningless pleasantries common to such a gathering. The armadillos, bluff and hearty, beaming with their shining medals hanging from their plated sides, mixed and touched in a friendly way on everyone. The Sergeant Major held forth in reverent and solemn tones to any who would listen to their exploits. Egbert paced the ground some distance away, expounding to a group of skeptical crows the finer points of the philosophical implications of the secrets of the jungle, the Hollowed Tree, and other such ponderous subjects. And sitting beneath a great oak, happily surrounded by his family and a perfect swarm of lazy fruit flies, was Boston. Two bear cubs were busily absorbed in dipping honey, which had been supplied in liberal quantities from the banquet table laid in honor of the occasion. The beloved Matilda was at his side.
On the porch overlooking these festivities, Honorashious and Henrietta stood in conversation at the railing. The voice of Honorashious contained in it an uncharacteristic quiver of emotion.
"And thus it is, dear Honorashious, that all these grandiose asseverations, these self congratulatory praises, must ring hollow."
"Haarumph!" The owl's ear-like feather tufts vibrated in the most violent way, and he shook each massive claw with such vigor that he nearly lost his balance. "Haarumph! Madame! We have endured great and noble sacrifice in our pursuit of this goal!--haarumph--haarumph--the belittling of it now would ill become us all--haarumph! We were forced to enter Hawg City! The brave armadillos, the bear, Egbert--all were subjected to incarceration and the tortures of the Modifier--haarumph--not to mention the extensive litigious expertise--haarumph--the hours of grueling argument before a crowd of disrespectful, unappreciative, and unruly warthogs, in which I was forced to engage during the trial! Haarumph! Haarumph--no, Henrietta, we have much of which to be proud here today. It will not do to play it down as if it all were nothing! Haarumph!"
"Yet, you have failed."
"I am unused to hear such cold, judgmental harshness from you, my dear."
Percy was lying beneath the porch, licking a paw and listening with idle interest to the argument going on on the porch above him. He stood up, stretching his tawny back, and raised his great head to view the pair of owls. They stood with their backs to each other in disagreement.
"If we didn't find the boy, we did The Hollowed Tree," the lion said reasonably. "Surely we can take credit for that much, at any rate."
"Haarumph!"
"We hope the boy may yet, someday, be found."
###
Table of Contents
Title and Copyright Page
1. A Highly Irritable Group
2. The Meeting at the Stump
3. The Trek to Visit Owl
4. Hardwood Haven, the Estate of Honorashious Owl
5. Honorashious Owl
6. The Court is Engaged
7. Names
8. Closing Deliberations on Names
9. A Recounting of the Circumstances Surrounding the Lost Boy
10. An Impartial Investigation
11. The Hollowed Tree
12. The Shaman's Failure
13. The Inconclusive Validation of Egbert's Hypothesis
14. The Search Begins in Earnest
15. Affairs of the Heart
16. A Military Code
17. Hawg City
18. A Bourgeois Warthog
19. Young Warthogs Disporting in the Savannah
20. An Assault
21. The Criminals are Apprehended and the Case is Remanded
22. The Prisoners are Brought to Hawg City
23. The Magistrate
24. Madame DeKooncey
25.The Arrival of the Seventh Juridical and Percy Theodilious
26. The Magistrate's Intrigue is Launched – the Incarceration
27. Bartruff Receives a Visitor
28. Corporal Punishment
29. The Magistrate is Indisposed
30. The Bower of Bliss
31. Warthog Court
32. The Case of the Warthogs
33. The Case of the Bear and the Others
34. The Sentencing
35. Closing Arguments
36. The Punishment is Carried Out
37. An Untoward Event
38. A Reconciliation and Final Parting
39. The Search Resumes
40. Down from the Mountain
41. Assistance from Unexpected Quarters
42. The Three Sisters
43. Reunion
44. The Descent
45. Epilogue
The Hollowed Tree Page 29
