Puddlejumpers (8 page)

This wasn't Shawn's first visit. He was a human being learning to be a Puddlejumper and had earned lots of cuts, scrapes, twists, and bruises. While Chop anxiously watched Pav clean the cut on Shawn's foot, he noticed a dark cloud cross her face.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she answered.

After they left, Pav brooded about the disturbing break she'd seen in the Rainmaker's lifeline. She was skilled at reading the fleshy webbing of a Puddlejumper's foot, but not a sole belonging to a human. She found Greystone at the Well and told him about it. Disturbed, he hurried to Root and Runnel's den.

While Shawn slept, the Ancient Guide delicately traced his lifeline. His fingers hovered at the break. Pav, Root, and Runnel pressed close, awaiting his word. After a time of contemplation, he simply said,
“Matuba ka-lo-lo.”
Matuba was the potion that would transform Shawn into a Puddlejumper. It was a powerful concoction that required strong bones and a conscious mind. To be safe, they'd decided to wait until he was five before allowing him to “sip the acorn.”

“Once he grows small, we'll study his foot again,” Greystone promised. But even while reassuring them, he knew that whatever was inscribed on Shawn's sole, there was nothing they could do to change it. Like the river, he would find his own path.

Unsettled by what he'd seen, Greystone advanced the timetable—Shawn needed to learn to puddlejump immediately. The sooner he could get in and out of the Underneath on his own, the safer he would be. He chose Root and Runnel for the task, which surprised them. They thought the honor should go to Cully or Buck, who were both experts in the art of jumping.

The very next morning, Root and Runnel brought Shawn to a puddle deep in the timber. They began by showing him how to plant his Spiral Tattoo flush on the face of the puddle, but that was as far as they got. Each time he ran up to the puddle, he would stop short or miss his plant or skid onto his rear. Puddlejumping came naturally to Puddlejumpers, but for Shawn it seemed impossible. Root and Runnel tried to be patient. After all, he was only human.

Shawn plopped down in the puddle. “I can't do it,” he muttered, his lower lip starting to tremble.

“Keep your eye on the puddle,” reminded Runnel.

Root scaled a stump to climb onto his back. “I'll jump with you this time,” he said.

Buoyed by their encouragement, Shawn rose slowly to his feet and returned to his starting position. Straddling his neck, Root got a good grip on Shawn's ears. “We are the water,” he whispered. “And so are you.”

With a running start, Shawn sprinted toward the puddle. When Root yanked his ears, Shawn lifted off the ground, tucked his arms, hit the puddle flush, and passed through straight as an arrow. Root somersaulted off just before Shawn tumbled into a pile of leaves that had been gathered to soften his landing. He couldn't wait to go again.

For the rest of the day, Root and Runnel coached him on various techniques of jumping puddles, from the running leap to the skidding slide to the spiral plunge. That was just the beginning, as there were some Puddlejumpers who knew a hundred ways to jump a puddle.

Under their tutelage, Shawn made his first solo jump the next morning. Of course Greystone, Buck, and Cully were there to congratulate him. They wanted to put him on their shoulders, but knew they couldn't lift him.

That night Root and Runnel brought Shawn to the Well, where all the Puddlejumpers witnessed the gifting of his first Puddlejumper belt. When Greystone buckled it around his waist, the Jumpers hooted and blew their acorn whistles. After all the difficulties, Shawn had taken to life in the Kingdom as a Puddlejumper takes to water.

In the midst of the celebration, Greystone called for quiet. Everyone fell silent. If they kept absolutely still, they could hear the song of their MotherEarth rippling from the depths of the Deep Down.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Something Unspeakable

A
T THE END OF SUMMER
, the Puddlejumpers watched anxiously as large flocks of crows wreaked havoc on the wheat fields, despite the best efforts of the human beings to stop them. The big black birds were more aggressive and more brazen than ever before. Even the owls, their natural enemy, had disappeared, and Puddlejumpers feared the worst.

As autumn turned chilly, then cold, something unspeakable was whispered in the wind. Day after day, the sky hung low and flat. The air was bitter and lifeless. The trees lost their colors and their bare branches turned a deep black. The scouts reported that animals all across the plateau had retreated into their dens and the songbirds were nowhere to be found. The entire tribe was on high alert. At each hatchway, Jumpers kept watch morning, noon, and night.

When it finally happened, it was the dead of winter. Chop, now a full-fledged scout, was patrolling in deep snow on the north rim of the plateau when he caught the first telltale whiff. It was a putrid mixture of dead fish, hog puke, and skunk farts. Holding his breath against the stench, he pressed his trembling hand against his brow and peered toward the horizon.
Could it be?
He shuddered as the eight-foot beasts lumbered into view on the far ridge.

Troggs!

Even from a distance, Chop could see their bloodshot eyes, scaly faces with puss-filled warts, and coarse hair covering their misshapen bodies. They were so ugly that as he stared at them, his eyes started to burn. He splashed his face with water from the gourd on his belt to lessen the sting, then put his finger in the air and knew he was in trouble. The wind was out of the south and it wouldn't be long before they had his scent. Troggs had ten-foot-long tails with a big hairy nostril at the tip, enabling them to smell Puddlejumpers from a great distance. Suddenly the creatures lurched in his direction, their serpentine tails arched overhead, wet nostrils sniffing and snorting. He sprinted through the timber as fast as his legs would churn. He didn't look back, not once.

Although Chop could have jumped at several different puddle hatchways, he wanted to reach the waterfall at Red Moss Point. He dove through the freezing wall of water and disappeared down a whirlpool hidden in the rocks. A tunnel led to the convergence of the Seven Streams, where a large den served as the main scout headquarters.

Chop burst inside and, just as he'd hoped, found Buck and Cully. They were in the midst of planning where to locate emergency escape tunnels. Shivering, he uttered the word they hoped never to hear.

“Troggs!”

Before he could say another thing, Buck and Cully vaulted through a hatch to a secret stable, where a dozen scouts awaited orders. Dispatched to the Up Above, those Puddlejumpers rode sleek red foxes across the plateau to the far reaches of the Kingdom, alerting all to the terror. In the Underneath, swimmers were sent up the Seven Streams, and to the Cavern of Pools, and all the way to the Deep Down. The Kingdom was in complete disarray.

Although it had been a long time since anyone had last encountered a Trogg, any Puddlejumper could tell you about them. The terrifying memory was seared into their minds, a scar that never healed. Two generations before, Troggs destroyed their Great Hollow in the Smoky Mountains, wreaking a swath of destruction. The human beings thought tornadoes had uprooted the trees, but the Puddlejumpers knew better. The next attack occurred on the shores of Lake Erie. In Greystone's time, the Troggs had savaged the Tumbling Falls near the headspring of the Mississippi, pillaging their homeland and enslaving half their number. Devastated, they fled to the sanctuary of the Warbling River plateau. Here the exiles lived in peace, but Troggs never stopped looking for Puddlejumpers. They needed them.

The Rainmaker was in grave danger, as were they all. If the Troggs caught them, they would be enslaved forever in the fiery wasteland of the Most Dark. But worst of all, the Puddlejumpers knew that if the Troggs killed their chosen one, all hope would vanish and their MotherEarth would wither and die.

The Well was bursting with Puddlejumpers, yet it was eerily quiet. As Chop reported the details of his sighting, a wave of fear overwhelmed the mind of every Jumper, and there were angry voices and a growing hysteria. When Greystone's voice rose above the others, the Well again fell silent.

“Matalala, Wawaywo,”
he said.

The Jumpers dispersed without another word.

In their den, Root went from room to room frantically packing their keepsakes, while Runnel sat with Shawn. “We're going to visit our relatives on a faraway hill,” she explained. “Maybe we'll come back in the spring.” She said it mainly to reassure herself and Root, but no amount of assurances could diminish their fears.

When everything was ready, and the raft was packed with foodstuffs and warm clothes and all the necessary things for winter, the Puddlejumpers gathered at the lake's edge, bathed in the fragile light of Grandfather Oak. Shawn didn't fully understand the implications of his departure. He smiled at his friends' somber faces as those nearest touched their hearts before reaching up to touch his. It was the Puddlejumper way of keeping him in their lives, and they, in turn, in his. When Greystone placed his hand on Shawn's heart, he kept it there a very long time.

The Rainmaker was lifted into the air by dozens of little hands and passed from one to another until he was deposited next to Pav waiting on the raft. Last aboard, Runnel and Root lugged the cedar chest filled with his Puddlejumper keepsakes. As Greystone and other Jumpers pushed the raft away from the bank, Shawn finally realized that he was leaving and broke into tears. The heartsick tribe waved from shore as Root and Runnel grimly poled against the currents into a dark tunnel.

They spent the night at Red Moss Point, where Cully met them to provide maps for the unknown territories. He showed Root several different trails in case they ran into trouble, while Pav and Runnel were busy tending Shawn. They rubbed a balm over his entire body to protect him from the cold, then Pav brewed a willow-bark tea that would warm him from the inside out. That night, the Puddlejumpers barely slept.

The next morning, everyone boarded the raft and set out for the far end of the Underneath. They hadn't floated very long when Runnel realized they'd forgotten Shawn's cedar chest at Red Moss Point. She wanted to return, but Cully insisted there was no turning back.

Far beyond Turtle Head Rock, a flashing lantern summoned the raft to the bank. It was Chop and he told them the dreadful news. While Greystone was sealing the hatchway in the woods near the Frazier farm, Troggs had clawed their way into the puddle and snatched him away. Devastated by the loss of their Ancient Guide, the Puddlejumpers dove deep under the water and didn't want to surface, but Cully pleaded,
“Mataki, matak-lo.”
They needed to keep going.

Wiping his tears, Cully scrambled up the notched wall and swung upside-down to plant his Spiral Tattoo. He broke through a sheet of ice into the Up Above, where Buck, armed with a double-barreled cattail plunger carried in a birch-bark quiver on his back, was waiting with three sleds drawn by teams of harnessed raccoons. One sled was bigger than the others and had four raccoons instead of two. The other Jumpers jumped the puddle
rat-a-tat-tat,
landing softly in the snow between Buck and Cully. In their grief, the Puddlejumpers could see only one thing—the water symbols Greystone had carved on the sleds to protect them on their journey. If only they had been able to protect him.