Helga: Out of Hedgelands, Rick Johnson [suggested reading txt] 📗

him, when I find him!” With that, the commander stomped off after his troop.

A surprisingly bemused Breister rose, adjusted his clothes, and stepped outside. “O.K., Bad Bone, it’s safe to come down. But don’t tarry. We don’t have long.”

Dropping down from a tree overhanging the latrine, the Lynx emerged from his hasty hiding place. Despite the dangerous encounter, the friends laughed heartily, although nearly without sound. A few moments of levity were all they could afford, however. The situation might be ridiculous, but it was also deadly serious.

“You don’t have much time,” Breister urged. “The Patrol will be back here soon enough, once they find no trace of you down the road. You must escape quickly.” He looked at his friend fondly. “We’ll never forget that you, alone among the Hedgies, showed us kindness. Although you serve the High One, you’ve been kind—in secret, a friend. We’ll never forget you.”

Bad Bone gave a low bow, his hand sweeping the ground. “I address myself to the noblest of true friends. I will never forget what you have done. Your courage is something those thugs will never understand,” the Lynx said, his voice thick with emotion. “The High One and his legions mistake your simple ways for ignorance and weakness. But the fools do not know what true friendship is worth.”

There was a long period of silence as the two unlikely comrades gazed at each other with respect. Then, Breister said gravely, “Enough of this—there’s little time. That mob of Buzzards is crawling all over the place. You must get away.” He urgently motioned his friend to depart. “You’re the best climber there is. Now go and climb for all you’re worth—time is short.”

“I have learned the mountains well,” Bad Bone replied. “There are places that no pursuer will be able to track me. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine—it’ll be a solitary life, but I need some time to think. It will be well for me.”

As Bad Bone turned to leave, Breister said, “There’s a pair of my reed boots near the workshop door. They should fit over your chain mail and deaden the sound. You’ve got to go quietly.”

The Lynx disappeared into the darkness, leaving Breister on watch in case the Royal Patrol returned.

It was a very dark night.  With the outhouse lamp broken, Breister was left to peer through the gloom. Few beasts were stirring. A pair walked past on the way home from the tavern—singing and joking. Wisps of fog hung in depressions here and there, softening the yellow glow from the windows of houses scattered farther down the road.

As he kept watch, Breister could hear more than he could see. The large bell at Thedford’s Crossing, counting off the last hours before the Wood Cow settlement would be deserted...The babble of voices at Glad Bean’s Road House, having a final game of draughts and finishing off the last keg of Gulletwash...The mournful cry of Brigitte, the Steffes’ infant, wailing for the last time in the house where she was born...So many generations, spent in tidy houses nestled under O’Fallon’s Bluff...In a few hours, it would all be history.

 

Milky Joe

As the mid-day sun beat down, a caravan of Wood Cow carts and wagons, accompanied by a contingent of Royal Patrol soldiers, halted at Bazoot’s Store. A country store at the remote fringe of Hedgie settlements, Bazoot’s sat at a place where the Forever End crossed a wide and fairly level meadow. In the clearing in front of the general store, some fifty Digger Hogs and Axe Beavers loitered, lounging around a small, dirty fire. The campsite of dingy tents, the dirt-caked tools, the smell of new-sawn logs—all explained the large, ragged break that had been created in the Hedge.

The travelers used the stop to take on additional water and make some final adjustments to their carts and baggage. Then, one by one, wagons bumped through the crude gap in the Hedge. Skull Buzzards inspected each one to make sure no stowaways were aboard. Once through the Hedge, each family took its own bearings. Most joined a long wagon train headed west, but a few intended to settle just beyond the Hedge, and Helga’s family had its own plans.

The inspections were maddeningly slow. While they waited, parties of exiles talked in excited, but anxious tones. Before the opening stood some thirty or forty Hedge Blades—the elite battalion of Skull Buzzards assigned to guard the Forever End. Gazing grimly out from beneath their broad-brimmed, steel helmets, they crowded together, shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking advance toward the Hedge. When an inspection was complete, the line parted to allow passage, and then closed again to await the next approved party. Presenting a long line of razor-sharp swords—each 4 feet long—there would be no passing through the Hedge without their consent.

Scurrying back and forth among the émigrés, a few of Bazoot’s clerks sold items to the travelers. Breister was glad to purchase some rivets to repair a fastening that had unexpectedly popped loose. In the midst of the crowd, Bazoot himself was pushing a barrel of Strawberry Fogg, “Hey-Hetty, me bully-wats! Cold Fogg, swallers and cups—last chance for civilized drink!” The fat Woodchuck waddled merrily, long hair and apron flapping in the breeze. Here and there the jovial storekeeper stopped to turn the spigot for customers taking a last swig of Fogg before beginning their journey into the unknown.

On a bench close by the line of Hedge Blades, a Wolf sat with a heavy ledger lying across his knees.  A second Wolf—an albino, small and thick-necked, with a large bristly moustache—stood nearby flipping gold coins high in the air. Attracted by the glint of the flying coins, a crowd was gathering around him. Helga found something familiar about him—the clouded, pink eyes; the hard, chiseled jaw—somewhere she had seen him before. But his powerful voice shook her memory as he shouted out a rhyme:

Jokes ’n tricks upon the King,

A pocket full of coins

Twenty-seven rings

To every beast as joins

Milky Joe is here to take you

To live a life of ease

Line up all you nameless whos

For riches as you please

Come along with Milky Joe

Throw off your toil and woe

Let the King foam and mutter

While you eat jam and butter

The recruiting pitch succeeded, at first, in attracting a few young Wood Cows to listen curiously. But soon parents called their young ones back.  “Don’t you go listening to that hogwash peddler!” one scolded. “Keep your ears clean of that trash flim-flamer!” another parent hissed. “He’s a lying shill, he is! Why, that Milky Joe is nothing more than a slaver—hanging around troubled folk, trying to snare unsuspecting idiots and kids. Babbling against the King and talk of riches will always suck in a few down on their luck or looking for adventure. But it’s a pit of hell—mark my words!”

Helga winced as another comment reached her ears “Yah, he’s got twenty-seven rings alright, iron ones that go right around your neck! Why else do you think he can scoff at the King right under the noses of those Hedge Blades? He just signs you up, and sells you right off to the King’s own bloodsuckers!”

The touch of cold iron seemed, for a moment, to be palpable on Helga’s neck. She shuddered. Unease trickled through her heart. She’d heard stories about Milky Joe, but they had always before been almost fanciful—a “boogy beast” sort of tale. She’d never thought of him as being real, but now that he was sitting just a few feet away, she felt a deep sense of dread.  It was as if she knew Milky Joe was deeply evil, but at the same time, could not remember exactly what she knew. The chill passing through her was not fear, but a confused feeling that she had seen the white wolf with pink eyes before...heard his booming voice...knew him from somewhere...

 

“You can’t stay here, weevils!”

The inspections dragged on into the afternoon. Little by little the line of wagons and carts shortened. Being one of the last in line, Breister and Helga took time to shift gear and baggage to better balance their load.

On top of the load was Helga’s favorite family possession—the Root Teaching—a collection of Wood Cow wisdom that embodied their philosophy of life. Helga, like every Wood Cow, had her favorites:

Tossing crickets in another beast’s drink does not make a friend.

Throwing knives in the dark rarely fixes a problem.

A beast who sees for herself is not a slave to what she is told.

Justice considers small beasts before big plans.

Listen where others say there is nothing to hear, and learn.

Knowledge is bread, wisdom is coffee, and work is fire.

In the happy times before Helbara went missing amidst Wrackshee slavers ten years before, Helga’s mother had read the Root Teaching to her and Emil every night. They also talked about how the Teaching applied in this or that situation. Helga missed those wonderful times. With Emil also now lost, and the entire Wood Cow clan scattered to the winds, for Helga, the Root Teaching seemed to hold the sense of her family together.

After this precious belonging in importance, were essential practical items: fishing line and the flicker-pole. The fishing line served both to catch fish for food, and as a weapon for defense. In the hands of a skilled Wood Cow, the line weighted with a stone sinker could immobilize an attacker in a massive tangle. The flicker-pole’s flexible strength made it a very useful tool and weapon also. The most versatile tools they would have on the journey, the Wood Cows could wield both with power and skill.

Following this, several precious items of household furniture: the chest, lovingly handmade by her mother, that held the family’s woodworking tools; Breister’s reading rocker and Helga’s carving table; the woodshop tables and benches; the kitchen stools and breadbox; the clothes cabinets...and so on.

And, of course, the food: sacks of dried, pounded fish; baskets of pine nuts; dried apples and pears; rosehips for making tea; pouches of honey nut butter; and chunks of course, leathery trout jerky.

Uniquely among the exiles, Helga and Breister did not have a cart or wagon. Instead, they pulled a homemade boat behind them on a sled. A great river was said to be just beyond the Hedgewall to the east. Old stories told of a time when the Hedgeland folk had eaten fish from a great eastern river, said to be within a day’s walk. If they could make the river, they hoped to sail into the unknown lands toward the rising sun. Bad Bone’s intelligence about routes to the east had given them even more hope.

By the time Breister and Helga got through the gap in the Hedge, a long line of wagons stretched toward the western horizon. A relatively gentle slope led off in that direction around the mountainside, and virtually all the exiles headed that way.  As they turned in a different direction—almost with a sense of reassuring himself of the decision to go it alone—Breister observed, “We are a family of the rising sun! We go toward the new light, not the sunset. We may die, just as the others may die. Let us die, then, going toward the new day, not the past one.” And so, following the directions Bad Bone had provided, they headed down the mountainside.

The wild and unfamiliar terrain was far more rugged than they had expected. A confusion of creeks and ravines cut through the steep mountainside, making it difficult to tell which way to go. Breister was obliged to cut a path through tangled briar thickets and brush. Rocky hillsides shot up at sharp angles, to dizzying heights.

Several times, they slipped on the steep slopes. Other times, fallen