Bekka of Thorns

by Steve Shilstone

  “I am the first bendo dreen with a pack on my head to talk to a muddy wanderer. Woeful, are you?” asked Kar calmly after unspooling the ear glove like a red floppy tongue out of her mouth.

  “EVERYWHERRRRRRRRRR!” roared the mad creature, our first wanderer, truth.

  I stayed low in place. I trusted in Kar.

  “It’s a riddle? It’s an answer to a question?” wondered Kar, and she smeared her face and hair with mud.

  “EVERYWHERRRRRRRRRR!” repeated the screamer, and it jumped up and down, splashing and tearing at the razor reeds. It growled and shook its face.

  The yellow green fire blazed up in Kar’s ember eyes. Such so! She was challenged! Never in the hedge had anyone ever been odder than Karro of Thorns. She was the cracked melon, the jark dweg. The straight stiffness of her back told me she would not allow any such woeful wanderer to surpass her oddness, to douse her pride. She jammed the ear glove up her nose. She ran in little circles, flapping her arms and scrawking like a hedge hen. She tore up razor reeds and stuffed ’em down her shirt. She ate mud and drooled it down her chin. She leaped at the woeful wanderer and screamed, “NOWHERRRRRRRRRRRR!”

  The creature left the bog rapidly. It departed, racing off as if on fire, waving its arms and yelping. We watched until it disappeared in the distance.

  “I wonder what it meant by ‘everywherrrrrr’?” mused Kar in a voice of triumph.

  Chapter Nine

  A Hedge to Walk In

  A few days later, we trudged along a barren ridge while being lashed front and back by whipping winds. Kar of a sudden sat down, removed the pack from the top of her head, tossed it aside, ignored it, and rested her chin on the thumbs of both hands.

  “We should do something other,” she said, her ear sock flapping in the breeze.

  “What other? Why? We haven’t had to eat the nasty magic thorns yet,” I stated with forced brightness.

  “No, it’s not the food. The weeds and rotted roots are good enough. Not food. Not such,” she said. “It’s the wind. It’s the sky too open. We need a hedge.”

  “You want to give up the adventure? Go back to the hedge?” I asked in disbelief. I couldn’t believe it, that Kar would lose heart so soon after finding it. I felt my lips trembling.

  “No, no, no, Bek. I said we need A hedge, not THE hedge,” she told me, bringing my own heart quickly back from a dark place. “We need a hedge to WALK in. Look around. Brittle sticks. Tough grass. Look at your hat! It’s a start! We’ll expand it. Make it a hedge to walk in! We will be the first bendo dreen to carry our own hedge with us!”

  Saying so such, she jumped to her feet and grabbed my arms. A thorny mad energy passed from Kar to me. It shuddered me. It was a good idea! We laughed in each the other’s face. I wriggled free of my pack, dropping it to the ground. With no other word exchanged, we raced up, over and down, collecting dry sticks and grasses. We snapped ’em off or tugged ’em free, roots and all. The roots were sticky. They made great ties. We stacked a gathered mound below a bend in the ridge where the winds didn’t whip so freely. We collected enough, a stack as high as our necks. Beads of sweat washed our eyes, stinging ’em salty.

  “Your hat. It’s the base. Give it to me,” said Kar.

  I loosened the chin ties and took off the braided hat I’d built on the day we saw the wanderer. I handed it to Kar.

  “You see here. This is the what that we’ll do,” she began. “We’ll expand it out, and after a proper length, we’ll work another bowl to fit my head, and then we’ll droop it all around to just above the ground. There’s enough for double braiding. With double braided twining, the wind will not enter, and better than that, we’ll have a barrier against the open!”

  It was such a good idea. I wished the others could see how Kar wasn’t always and ever a cracked melon, a jark dweg. We went to work with a measured fierceness. Braid and tie. Coil the roots. Slide and attach. Double the knots. It took us the length of an afternoon to finish. Finally complete to our satisfaction, a miniature hedge of twining sticks and grass, precisely domed and knotted, sat on a weedy meadow below a ridge. We lifted it over us and sat, grinning. Glory! Success! It felt so much like home.

  “We are the first bendo dreen to build a walking hedge in the W’s Three,” announced Kar, her eyes fired as brightly as when she had frightened the wanderer.

  “We are,” I agreed.

  Without much effort or bother at all, we walked up the ridge in our hedge. We collected our packs and watched through woven grass the sinking of the sun. It brought to us a familiar comfort. We chose a spot to spend the night sheltered between a monstrous boulder and a low running hill of smaller stones. Our walking hedge made a cozy nest bower. Our packs made unpleasant pillows, but not lumpy enough to keep us from deep sleep earned by a long day’s work.

  Chapter Ten

  Second Wanderer

  The following weeks we spent wandering aimlessly. For us, the land no longer fit its name. We wandered, yes, but woeful we were not. Instead, we were joyful wanderers! Truth, we almost forgot the goal of our adventure. The underground city of golden mirrors, Rumin, rarely broke the surface of my thoughts and never bothered Kar. Each morning I began my day with study. I lost myself in Roamer Harpo’s purple books, learning this way of writing and memorizing the ink and paper recipes. I read in solitude under our wonderful hedge. Back before we made the traveling bower, I never once removed the purple books from the outpocket of my pack. After, I felt more like studying. The hedge felt so such nesty. Each day for a length of time after dawn I studied alone while Kar wandered around being the first bendo dreen to do something or some other thing. After she returned, I put the books away and listened to Kar gabble while we lifted the hedge and marched off in a random direction. She told me the list of silly things she’d been the first to do. I forget most of ’em. She did sorts of things like hop with her left eye closed, hop with her right eye closed, spin in circles while hopping and counting out loud until she fell down dizzy. The highest she counted was to 46, I think. Silly things. After she completed her list, we traded parts of favorite stories. We still hadn’t eaten any of the nasty magic thorns. Such was so. We found plentiful ropes of lug vine to crunch on whenever we came across half-frozen mud bogs. The footing through those bogs was gloopy and slick. Kar made us be the first bendo dreen to slog through a bog barefoot wearing our highboots as arms. Truth. Shoulder to fingertips, we buried our arms in highboots. At night we took turns telling tales. Such became the time we felt most heavily the weight of regret at leaving our chonkas at home. I observed Kar reaching for her belt, stopping, falling silent, her tale interrupted. She observed the same of me. Whenever this happened, we shrugged and continued, making do without chonka chankling.

  One night the moons were double fat round, and we rested quietly under our hedge. We gazed in contented daze through twining sticks and dry grasses at the starry sky. Kar dreamily brushed her cheek with her patch of white satin. She carried her precious little patch of white satin in her pack. It was a ribbon scrap from the shop. I dabbed idly at my nose with the tip of my forefinger, a habit of mine, a something I did and still do.

  “Kar,” I said. “We should try to find Rumin. That’s the why that we came here.”

  “We can’t find Rumin. We have no glimmerglass,” said Kar. “And I don’t care. Rumin can’t be funner than here. Such.”

  “But what we have done so far is not a Gwer drollek story. I want to live a Gwer drollek adventure. I want ’em to gasp when we tell ’em. We can be the first to find Rumin without a glimmerglass. You could be the first bendo dreen to talk to the racketous garl! We should try,” I argued.

  Kar sat up straighter. I knew what to say to her. I knew how to guide her where I wanted us to go. Always has it been ever so such since nursery bower days.

  “Without a glimmerglass,” mused Kar. “A cold pool. The story has a cold pool. A cold dark pool with a nearby boulder. We haven’t yet seen such a sight. And if we did, how would we
roll the boulder without a glimmerglass? There’s a glimmerglass in the Gwer drollek of Rumin.”

  “SAFETY!”

  A sudden screech pinned us to the ground, and something tore the hedge and flung it away. We huddled on the raw scrabble under the wild moons. A raving bearded tattered wanderer danced around us.

  “FOLLOW! SAFETY! UP!”

  I lay limply helpless. Kar sprang up. She answered the wanderer scream for scream, leap for leap.

  “FOLLOW!”

  The creature raced off, stopped, turned, waved at us to follow. Back it came. It shook its fists, danced in a fury. And there and right then, it screeched the word that stood me on my feet to clutch Kar close.

  “RUMIN!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rumin

  “RUMIN!” shrieked the creature again, and it loped off in a staggering gallop, beckoning wildly for us to follow.

  “Wait! We have to put on our highboots!” I, not Kar, shouted.

  The wanderer halted. It dropped its arms and became a slim black shadow in the moonslight. My words had subdued the creature. It waited. I nudged Kar, not removing my gaze from the figure of the wanderer.

  “Put on your highboots, Kar. Pick up your pack,” I instructed in a whisper.

  “Why?” Kar whispered back.

  “It said ‘Rumin’, didn’t it?” I reasoned. “The adventure could be lifting now to Gwer drollek heights.”

  “What about the walking hedge?” such was so whined Kar.

  “No bendo dreen has ever seen Rumin. Who will be the first?” I snapped.

  “We’ll be right there! We have to put on our highboots!” shouted Kar, such as I knew she would.

  We booted quickly, picked up our packs, and headed across the moonslit bleakness to join the wanderer. At our approach, the mad creature turned and raced off, not at a staggering gallop this time, but swiftly on the run.

  “Wait! We can’t go that fast!” I called after it.

  The creature slowed and allowed us to gain on it. Away it raced again. Such it did so and again for a goodly long while. Whenever we got close, off it ran. We plodded steady, Kar and I, reeling it in when it allowed, watching it run away. Across the flatness of desolation we traveled, run and reel, while the moons dropped to disappear, taking with ’em their silvery shadow light.

  “Where are you? We can’t…,” I began before breaking off.

  I broke off because I saw. A yellow glow pushed against the night behind a low run of jagged hill. I grabbed Kar’s jacket by the sleeve and hurried forward. The hill was crunchy, hard to climb. Our highboots sank to the ankles in pebbles and sand. We struggled up, grasping spikes of frigid rock for balance. The spikes were thorn sharp, but we knew how to handle ’em, being bendo dreen. We topped the hill. So such it seemed like a sort of dune blown across a rind of spiky rocks.

  “Look. Glow of gold,” I said in hushed awe.

  “Glow of gold,” repeated Kar, equally struck.

  The tattered wanderer danced in the yellow glow below us. Down it went, disappearing under the glow. The golden light poured out of a hole in the ground. Such had to be so! I looked at Kar. She looked at me. I think we wore the same little smile after we both swallowed hard.

  “Gwer drollek,” I said.

  “Gwer drollek,” she agreed.

  Heels digging in, balancing by catching hold of stone spikes, we descended the dune. In not too much time, we reached the edge of the opening in the ground. Steps spiraled down.

  “Chopped steps, carven, like in the story, but I don’t see sapphires, and the light wasn’t so, was it?” said Kar.

  I said nothing. I stepped into the golden light and down the winding stairs. Kar trailed me, too struck to want to go first, I suppose. She gripped the hem of my jacket. Surrounded by golden yellow light, dawn daylight gold, not too bright even for us bendo dreen, we moved forward. The stairs took one turn and ended at an opened door, a golden door, gilt and carven. We passed through into a narrow hall, a long corridor with doors and doors on either side, all of ’em gilt and carven. At the end of the hall we came to a taller door, not only gilt, not only carven, but jeweled with sapphires and emeralds! It stood swung open wide. Beyond it the light shone brighter. I squinted, but still saw clear. We passed by the tall door and found ourselves on a ledge jutting out from high on the wall of an immense cavern. Below us a sea of tilted golden mirrors reflected heaps of gold.

  “Rumin,” gasped Kar.

  I was too thrilled to gasp.

  Chapter Twelve

  Med of the East

  We knew where we were. We knew! We knew from countless times hearing our favorite Gwer drollek story spun out in the Assembly Bower. We could recite almost word for word the tale of Bodgy and Blinky and the witch and the racketous garl. The racketous garl! We perched, and we knew it for truth, on the Most High Ledge, the Royal Ledge of Rumin in the Cavern of the West! We babbly bubbled at each other.

  “Look, Kar. It’s the Royal Ledge where Blinky returned to his family!”

  “Most High Ledge! Most High Ledge it’s called! Look at the heaps of gold and the tilted mirrors!”

  “I know, I know, I know! Look at ’em!”

  “Oh, the Gong! Bek, the Gong! See it? Down at that end! See it?”

  “Yes, yes! The Gong Gallery! The Thrice Rung Gong! There it is just like the story says. The racketous garl rang it! Let’s go there! Let’s go there!”

  “Where are the emerald greenwings?”

  Kar asked the fair and proper question to nudge my brain. Yes, the cavern rolled out vast and magnificent, shining daylight bright underground in the night. Vast, magnificent, empty and silent, too, after the echo of our eager bubbling died away. Yes, I saw hundreds of ledges, tiers of ’em, all empty. There were billows of shining gold, a seeming sea tossing gold framed mirrors atilt on the floor of the cavern, the mirrors and billows frozen in time stop. Such was so as I saw it. Truth, my legs felt hollow, and I sank back. Kar of a sudden stepped to the brink of the ledge and balanced on one highboot, sticking the other out over the empty.

  “Get back!”

  “I am the first bendo dreen to balance like this.”

  “You’ll be the first to fall! Don’t be it!”

  “What if I dance on the edge?”

  “Don’t dance! I want to talk about the emerald greenwings. Where do you think they are?”

  Kar likes to ponder. That’s why it is good to ask her what she thinks about something whenever I want her to stop being a jark dweg, a cracked melon. And more than that, then and there, I had other questions. How could we get from the Most High Ledge to the Gong Gallery? Such was so, we weren’t winged. And where WERE the greenwings of Rumin? And a question, which should have been first, but wasn’t, popped into my head.

  “Where’s that woeful wanderer?” I said.

  I leaned on the wall by the doorway at the back of the ledge. Kar faced me. A peculiar expression, mouth open, eyes wide, appeared on her face. She stared to my left. She pointed at something there. I turned.

  “We’re bendo dreen,” said Kar. “Who are you?”

  I looked at an emerald greenwing, no doubt, such was so. Fine black leggers striped gold hugged her long legs. Gold sandals twined about her emerald green feet. Embroidered gold on black, her vest glittered. Her ash blue eyes reflected gold. The smile on her emerald green lips was reassuring. The tops of her membraned green wings jutted above her shoulders. The thin wispy beard on her chin narrowed to a softly green point. Her hair, softly green purple and black, hung in curls on her forehead, over her ears, down her neck. A large gold hoop earring dangled from her right ear. She held in her emerald green hands a tattered gray cloak.

  “I am that woeful wanderer. I led you here,” she said in a voice that twinkled. “You are of the hedge. Carroty hair, yellow green skin. A fine sight long awaited. I am of the East. I am Med of the East.”

  So saying, she tossed the tattered cloak beyond the ledge, and we all watched it flutter and swe
rve to a silent landing far below on a tilted gleaming mirror.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Med’s Story

  “Sit to ledge, younglings. I will tell you a tale that yet unfolds, a tale with an ending unknown. Highboots black, clothing gray, carroty hair, yellow green skin, I have been trailing after you for a week of days.”

  I have written here often enough how we bendo dreen live to hear stories, and such to be heard straight and true from the lips of an actual emerald greenwing dropped us bang bo, that means instantly, to be seated and hugging our knees on the Most High Ledge.

  “Ah, the water wizard shapeshifter gave me truth. Eager for stories are bendo dreen. You with the round face are Kar, so spoken. What is your name, little sharp chin?”

  “I am Bek, Bekka of Thorns. She is really Karro of Thorns, Kar is,” I replied, wishing that my chin was not quite so sharp and thinking, Greenwing talking to me! Water wizard shapeshifter! What water wizard shapeshifter?!

  “Listen to Med of the East, then, Bekka and Karro of Thorns. Hear what I have to say before I ask to join you.”

  Join us?! A water wizard shapeshifter is going to ask to jojn us! This story is Gwer drollek for such certain sure! I thought.

  “In times ago when first I was pushed from my home ledge to fly in the Cavern of the East, Rumin was filled with the echo cry of song and conversation, and with the flap slap of hundreds of wings. The mirrors were polished. The gold was heaped. In the ever daylight we flew and played to exhaustion, then retreated behind ledge doors to rest and reflect and dine on the orange tenderness of carrots. Oh, what a dark spired thrill it was to gather at the booming echo of the Thrice Rung Gong! We raced the tunnel twists and turns, swerving and diving and soaring to gather on the heaps of gold and mirrors below this Most High Ledge to hear the Daily Thought from the King or the Queen or sometimes the Princess. On the best of days, the very peak of reflection days, the racketous garl would writhe up two tentacles to bow a stringed half-lute to accompany the singing of the chorus. The Chorus of Throats, I was a member, rang the walls with chanting tone and melodic harmonies to build a bath of perfect reflection. Times those were of reflection, yes. I remember. I reflect.”