Woodlock (3 page)

Riffle Sike's Version

I had a task to perform here at this when in the long ago. I was determined to perform it. Such was so. If I failed, all the future would be as it isn't. So said Shendra Nenas. I like the future as it is. I like being the Chronicler. I like the hedges and my hut by the Well of Shells and Kar and everything all about it. I had to formulate a plan. I had to! True, so said, it would be a plan without proper foundation and not nearly enough instruction or information. Thrown through time unprepared and abandoned by a probably negligent shifter, I was on my own. I would do the best I could in my own simple bendo dreen fashion. I can't so such say why I told the youngling waterwizard Riffle Sike I was the Teller. It seemed to be a need for him, so I said it. I can't so such say why I didn't tell him I was from the future and had been sent by a shifter and had a crucial task to perform. I guessed revealing so such would be disastrous. I don't know why. I just felt it.

“I am ready to hear your tale, Riffle Sike,” I said, folding my arms across my chest in an effort to appear as authoritarian as I imagined a Teller should or might be.

“I trusted the dream vision. I be glad that I did so,” said Riffle Sike. “Well, Teller, after the graduation celebration at the Fountains of Knowledge, we retreated to ebb before erupting above the Wide Great Sea to search out our own particular beckoning pools. As for me, when I dripped at last into an exhausted stupor, I was visited in dream vision by a silver waterwizard, ancient as ancient, his beard a rippling crystal silver flow twisting away behind him as far as I could see. He fixed on me his silver glint eyes and recited while plucking a shimmering harp this chant:

‘These be the things that ye shall see

A teller with boots up past the knee

A chalky woodlock in a tree.

‘Your brother's salvation shall ye be

Stick by him closely, do not flee

Til ye find a pool by a tall sort of tree.

‘Chant to invisible when ye see

The gray flitting beauty in the tree.

‘Hide and wait by a white Woods stream

What ye be seeing be not a dream.

‘Tell the Teller all!'

“Then did the silver waterwizard float away, a finger at his silver lips to keep me from asking a single question. I blinked alert and nudged Runner Rill. I kept my vision dream to myself. I asked my brother if he had decided where to search for his beckoning pool. He said Woods Beyond the Wood. I begged to go with him, splashing a tantrum. He ranted and raved, as he always does, then gave way, as he always does. We floated high above the Wide Great Sea in freedom. I was thrilled brim over to at last be on my way to find a beckoning pool of my own after the long tedious drip and drip of schooling. I be not the finest of scholars, not like Runner Rill. But I HAD graduated! I WAS a waterwizard! Empowered I was to find my own beckoning pool!

“We approached these Woods over Bloggum's Bluff, cascading from the heights. Upon arriving, Runner Rill tried to branch off and go his own way. I begged and pleaded again, splashing for all I was worth. The silver waterwizard dream vision stood solid like a boulder in the pool of my mind. I had seen no beckoning pool, no tall tree, no woodlock. Runner Rill ranted and raved and relented, as always. Teller, I say to ye that we soon found a tricklestream and followed it to a fine round pool. I saw right away the tall, tall tree. I examined its lush white branches, low to high. And near the tip top I saw her! I muttered nonsense to Runner Rill, something like ‘This be written as a beginning'. I then quickly clutched the cracked crystal amulet and chanted myself to invisible. I fled to here and waited. I have passed the time by practicing potions. Now ye have arrived with boots up over your knees, and I have told ye what I should.

“Ye know, Teller, as waters tumble, I had planned to claim for myself a beckoning pool near the Falls of Horn. I have altered my current. I find that these Woods be saucy. I will make my likely home somewhere here. Good-bye, Teller.”

He reached into his pouchbag. His lips moved. He disappeared.

Winter White To Summer Green

“Wait! I want…!” I screamed at the patch of trampled white reeds where Riffle Sike was no more to be seen. I splashed angry circles in the tricklestream. I stomped as hard as I could with my highboots. Then I threw myself down among the reeds and flailed my arms and legs. Kar would have laughed. Her laughter would have made me smile. Thinking so such caused me to see how silly I looked. I might have blushed green splotches. Truth, I felt ‘em, the splotches burning my cheeks. There I was alone again. I sat up to settle myself into some sort of dignity.

“I have seen the brothers, both of ‘em. That must mean something. And here I go talking to myself again. I'll pretend I'm talking to you, Kar, and it won't seem so such…odd,” I reasoned. “They told me same, but different, stories about that pool with the tall tree and the woodlock, probably Delia Branch, I bet. My idea to find that pool was a good one, wasn't it, Kar? Riffle Sike, so it seems to me, isn't the lackwit that Runner Rill believes him to be. Such. So. That silver waterwizard in his dream vision was of course Shendra Nenas, don't you think? I believe that. It helps to make some sort of sense out of all this…everything. I saw the tall tree from back up on the top of that ridge. This tricklestream, true as true so to seem, flows just such in its direction. You could fly me there if you were here, Kar. As Dragon, not jrabe. No more bony arms. Ah, well, no thorns in that cup, are there? You aren't here. I'm alone, which means I'll have to—Ohhh!”

Why did I gasp so such just then there? Something enchanted happened. It is a truth that for half the year the Woods Beyond the Wood are warm winter white, every leaf, petal, root and stem. It is a truth that for the other half year the Woods Beyond the Wood boast the richest varieties of green groves and all the glorious rainbow colors in various bush blossoms and hedge blooms. And more to say, the change from summer green to winter white or from winter white to summer green takes place in a fair short enchanting span of minutes. Such is so! Such I knew from Gwer drollek stories! Such I was seeing before my very eyes! Green fingers of color climbed the white reeds Green seeped up from the base of each feather fern. All the trees around me, twist oak, shragnut, and others unknown, blushed in shiver white to green. Blooms unnoticed by me before, white lost among white, spattered the banks of the tricklestream, yellow specks nodding in a magic breath of breeze. An orange blossom vine popped into view wreathed around the suddenly ruddy rust trunk of a shragnut tree.

“Winter to summer,” I murmured in awe, eyes wide, and a surge of happiness shot up my spine.

Yes, maybe I had been placed in a when without proper guidance. Yes, of the important task I was to perform maybe I had only the vaguest of notions. Such was so. And yet, and yet, as the racketous garl says so often in many a Gwer drollek story, I witnessed a famed marvel of wonder! Winter to summer! Kar would be jealous. Oh, I would have such a tale to tell her! Such a tale…if…if…if I could perform an unknown task which would hold the future together as I knew it.

“I'll do it. Whatever it is, I'll do it!” I said, boosted with a confidence unearned, but nevertheless gained, brought to me by the magical change of winter to summer in the Woods Beyond the Wood.

I strode briskly beside the tricklestream, certain I would find myself sooner than later standing by a pool and staring up at a tall, tall tree. What would be next? Next would take care of itself.

Orb

My mood swerved close to happy. While humming likely tunes, I sometimes skipped, other times hopped along the tricklestream surrounded by the lush green forest. I stilled myself to listen from time to time. For what? I didn't know. Anything, I suppose. Such was so.

“Hello! Riffle Sike! Runner Rill! Shendra Nenas!” I called out routinely after counting off silently every hundred paces or skips or hops I traveled.

Never expecting and never receiving any answer dimmed my brightness of mood not a nince. The Woods were green and lush, spattered with blooms. Beautiful. I had seen ‘em transform.
A pity
, I thought,
the Woods will dry to dusty and brittle in a future deep in my past. A pity, yes, but the Woods will be saved, replenished by the watery woodlock, Rindle Mer
. Such I knew from a wonderful Gwer drollek story heard countless times in the hedge.
Rindle Mer, yes, daughter of…Runner Rill and Delia Branch! What if? What if… Runner Rill and Delia Branch… What if I fail in my task of bringing ‘em together? That is my task, isn't it?
Such thoughts boiled in the soup of my bendo dreen brain. I raced forward, no more hopping or skipping, so such idling. I leaped the stream and spun under low hanging branches until I fairly skidded into a clearing.

I'd arrived at my destination. Tall tree. Round pool. I carefully paced a path around the pool, peering into its depths. I stood beneath the tree, searching its leafy greenness. All wrapped in silence, I studied the oddly brownish blue creamy limbs of the tree. So such an unusual tree. It was a one of one. Its trunk felt cool and smooth, almost slick. Its lowest limb jutted out high above my head. Truth, there existed not the least slice of a chance I could climb up into its green leafy heights. Instead, I sat myself down next to the pool on a thick carpet of green grass

sprinkled with tiny lavender flowers.

“Here are the pool and the tree,” I said aloud.

The day sank orange with the sun. I felt peaceful. The pool was a mirror. I gazed at myself. Seeing my chonka attached to my belt made me shrug and raise my eyebrows. Why? To bring my chonka remained truly the one solid instruction I'd received from Shendra Nenas. I decided to sing the softest Lullaby I knew to match the peace of the orange sunsink by the pool in the Woods Beyond the Wood. Lightly I brushed my fingers across the chonka's membrane as I sang. I rose and slowly circled the pool, pace, pace, pace. I moved in so such a sort of rhythmic trance. The Woods darkened around me. The moons floated up full, and I saw ‘em first reflected in the pool. On I paced, my eyes now captured by the moons on the surface of the water. Moons. Moons. Glimmer. Shimmer. Pace. Fingers caress the chonka's membrane. Sing. Slower and slower I moved until I no longer moved. Motionless I stood, chonka held out in front of me. No longer did I sing. The moons in the pool approached its edge. The moons. A glimmer. A shimmer. I knelt. What lurked there below the feather ferns between the moons? A glimmer. I hooked my chonka to my belt, and reached a hand into the water. Refreshing chill. A touch of smooth and solid. Round. In the palm of my hand I held it. I drew it up, shattering moons. A gleaming orb it was. Such an orb! So such! The instant I raised it close to my face, shafts of yellow light shot from it. Eight of ‘em! Yellow shafts shooting from eight elongated oval openings evenly spaced around the orb! Metallic orb! Coppery! I knew what it was! I knew!
It's Rindle Mer's orb! Rindle Mer's! She doesn't exist yet! It's hers to be! My path is true! I'm stumbling in the right direction!
I held the orb high over my head.

“Look here! The orb! Runner Rill! Shendra Nenas! Riffle Sike! Delia Branch?” I shouted.

Silence. The moons in the pool quivered.

Thinking

Nobody nowhere. Me shouting is all,
I thought.
I'm holding in my hand Rindle Mer's orb. Such. I can't remember if it did anything in the story. I don't think it did much. It soothed Rindle Mer, I recall. She talked to it at night. It kept her company. Yes, but what else? It looks so such…magical. Is it merely a night lantern?

I examined the orb more closely, where possible, which was between and over and under the shafts of light. Coppery metallic gleaming so such, it was a fair color match for my own bendo dreen hair.

It has to be magical,
I thought.
Otherwise, how is it lit? It must belong to the woodlock. In the near future deep in the past, she will be Rindle Mer's mother. She will leave this orb I am holding with Rindle Mer on that day when she abandons her youngling daughter by Riffle Sike's beckoning pool. That will happen. That will happen. Yes, I remember what will happen. Now what? I'm involved. A task. Is this the pool where Rindle Mer will be abandoned?

The night's advance had made of the pool a black slab of smoothness, orb lit. The moons had dipped behind the trees. I felt a sudden exhaustion weaving into my limbs. I decided to curl down and sleep. Pursuing my task, whatever it was, would wait until morning. I slipped the orb into the pocket of my jacket. The pool remained a black slab, but now star lit. I looked at the black crown of the tall, tall tree silhouetted against the starry sky. With a yawn I curled down to sleep, making a pillow of my arms.

She was in that tree,
I mused.
Runner Rill saw her disappear in a puff of sparkles, he said. He thinks Riffle Sike spelled her. But Riffle Sike didn't spell her. He chanted himself invisible, following instructions received in a dream vision from a silver wizard, probably Shendra Nenas. Such.

So. He didn't spell her. And yet, she disappeared in a puff of sparkles.

I bolted up, like lightning, to my feet. Puff of sparkles! A hundred thoughts crowded into my head. I banished ‘em all save one. Nimble Missst was the thought I held clear. Why Nimble Missst? Nimble Missst was a short drollek story, not Gwer drollek, merely drollek. Nimble Missst, a youngling known for her snapjaw mind, could change herself into a cloud of green mist. Maybe she looked like a puff of green sparkles when she did it. Such might have been so. I couldn't recall it for certain from the parts of the story I clearly knew. But I did remember one very lively dancing fact. Nimble Missst was Rindle Mer's daughter, and therefore the granddaughter of the woodlock, Delia Branch!

The woodlock shifted to a sparkling mist. I bet it was green! Such has to be so! I know more. I'm learning more. I have to find her! I must speak to her!
I thought. I pulled the orb from my pocket and walked straightaway to the tall, tall tree. I walked a slow circle around its trunk while peering up into its branches.

“Delia Branch,” I called out softly. “Delia Branch, look. I have your orb. Are you there, Delia Branch?”

“That am mine. Will you give it back? How do you know my name?” a tiny voice from behind me whispered.

I whirled and caught her in a yellow shaft of orb light. Deep dark luminous eyes and satin black hair. Skin chalky gray. A tunic of gray ferns and a sash, chainbraided, covered her slender form. Her hands, which she held out palms up to me, had webs between the delicate gray fingers. I stared at a someone from a Gwer drollek story of the long ago, a story which took place eons before I was born.

Now what do I do?
I thought.