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

“Shoo-moo-loo...Shoo-moo-loo..La-ba-ta-da...La-ba-ba-ta-de...Shoo-moo-loo..La-ba-ta-doh...” The sound of a soft melodious humming caused Breister to nearly bite off the mouthpiece of the pronghorn flute! Jumping up, he and Annie peered through the darkness, looking for any clue to who could be there. The fish-oil candle flickered faintly, casting weird shadows of stalactites, stalagmites and other rocks.

“Shoo-moo-loo...La-ba-ta-da...” A paint-spattered Owl stepped from behind a rubble pile. The Owl, his grizzled feathers salt-n-pepper gray, wore a loose-fitting smock. Long shaggy feathers hung out around the smock in disheveled, wild tangles. He wore a baggy beret that drooped down on the left side of his head, and a large brass ring through his lower beak.

“Shoooo-moooo-loooooo, troots!” The Owl said in a soft, mellow, and barely audible voice. “Ya speckin las Kinshy?”

Breister and Annie just stared stupidly at the Owl, not comprehending a word he had said.

“O.K. then, you airyheads, I’ll try again,” the Owl said, changing voice tone and volume. “What I said was, ‘Welcome, guests! Do you speak Kinshy?’ But you have already answered my question with your silence. Obviously, you don’t know Kinshy. Dadrot! And I was so hoping that I might at last have someone else who speaks Kinshy.”

The Owl looked so sad and dejected that Breister said, “Now, don’t take it hard, friend. We’d be glad to learn some Kinshy if you could help us get out of here.”

Perking up, the Owl said happily, “Loooste meooon minder, dast wiffert!”

Breister, thinking the Owl was giving him something to practice, tried to repeat the same phrase. “Looooostemo nminerd astwiffter!”

The Owl broke into uproarious laughter. “Hooo, Hooo, Hooo, Ha-ha-ha! Do you know what you just said...Hoooo, Hoooo, Hooo, Haa-ha...You said...Hh, Hoooo, Hooo...I can’t stand it...you said, ‘Eat my toenail phlegm balls!’ Hooo, Hooo, Hooo...oh, that’s great! I like you already! Hooo, Hooo, Hoooo!” The Owl fell to the ground and rolled in laughter, kicking his feet high in the air, and flapping his wings in all directions.

Breister and Annie, feeling relieved to have met another apparently harmless creature, and infected by the Owl’s silly laughter, laughed too.

Gradually, the Owl calmed down again. He stood up and adjusted his beret, which had fallen down over his eyes.

“Well, we’ll have to practice that a bit!” he observed, chuckling. “But for now, tell me who you are and what you want.”

Breister responded quickly. “We’re lost and trying to find our way out of the caves. We want to get to the outside world. Do you know the way?”

The Owl pulled an artist’s paintbrush from a pocket of his smock. He swished it through the air in a wild series of lightning fast strokes—almost like a sword fighter. “Did you get that? I just drew you a map to the outside!” The Owl chuckled again. “You see, I do know the way and I just showed it to you!”

“Now you wait just a minute, you wacko bag of feathers!” Annie stormed in fury. “If you know the way out of here, you’ve got to show us. You can’t just stab at the air and expect us to know where to go!”

“Why not?” the Owl asked. “You already know the way out of here, or you wouldn’t be standing here talking to me.”

“What?” Breister and Annie said, almost in the same breath. “What do you mean we already know the way out?”

“You have come from the WooPeace. You have found a way to get out of there and come here. That is all you need. The only reason creatures don’t leave the WooPeace is they believe they can’t. They allow an illusion to control them. Break the power of the illusion and you’re out of there!”

Breister and Annie were excited. “You mean we’re almost out of here? You mean it’s not much further? You mean it’s easy to get out of here?”

The Owl shook his head. “I didn’t say it was easy. I only said that you knew the way out. The way out is to want to get out more than anything else and to use your mind to find the way. There are many, many ways out of the caves. But you have to look for them to find them. You want out and you’re using your minds—that’s the way out.” The Owl turned around and began to walk off.

Breister and Annie followed. “No more clues, eh?” Breister asked hopefully.

“No more clues,” the Owl replied. “But I will give you some food and some work to do while you figure out your next step. Come on to my place.”

Breister and Annie followed the Owl, feeling dejected and angry. “I’d like to jump on him and stomp him!” Annie fumed. “He’s got a lot of nerve!”

“Now, now, Annie, keep a lid on it. Stomping him won’t do any good. We’re in our own tombs remember? If we don’t get out of here, we’re dead beasts. At least we’re getting some help and encouragement from the old bird, even if he is a bit daft!” Annie, realizing Breister was right, subdued her anger into a sulking slow burn, which she kept to herself.

Breister moved up to climb over the rough rocks beside the Owl. “So, you must live down here, eh?” Breister asked, panting, as they climbed up through an intricate series of stalactites and stalagmites.

“No, I don’t live here,” the Owl replied. “I’ve got a little cabin in the woods. My art studio is down here, but I don’t live down here.” He gave Breister a whimsical look. “What do you think I am, daft?”

“You live outside?” Breister again felt a surge of joy and hope. “How far is it? Which way do we go?”

The Owl sighed, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“What do you mean, I don’t get it?” Breister howled, almost giving in to angry frustration. Then, seeing that the Owl was neither walking nor speaking, Breister calmed down again. “O.K., you win. I get the picture. We know the way out of here and can find it on our own.” Breister realized that his anger and frustration were wasted on the Owl, who was not going to help them beyond what he had already promised to do.

“So,” Breister went on, “what’s this about Kinshy?”

The Owl brightened up as they continued to scramble through passages. “Kinshy is an ancient, long-unused language,” he related. “I grew up among the WooSheep—first as a Woonyak in the WooPeace, and then among the WooSheep at the Bottoms. But I got so tired of the two clans hating each other that I decided to live alone. I built a little cabin in the woods, where I study Kinshy, play Tosht with an Otter friend that lives nearby, and paint in my studio.”

“You play Tosht?” Breister exclaimed. “It’s my favorite game!”

“They don’t call me Toshty for nothing!” the Owl grinned. “My real name is Pitinemon Asphodetalus T. Billpip—you can see why I prefer to be called Toshty.” Breister agreed that he also preferred the nickname.

Turning and twisting over mineralized passages, climbing over a sea of fissures, and scrambling through seeming mountain ranges of stalactites and stalagmites, finally Toshty stopped and said, “Shoooo-moooo-loooo, fraggnob billmwee, troots!...Welcome to my studio, friends!”

They had entered a large chamber lit with small lamps that glowed rather than burned. “I use a special kind of coal in my lamps,” Toshty explained. “I treat lumps of coal with a mineral bath and they glow brightly, but give off almost no smoke. It protects my work.” As he said this, he extended his wing to show off his work.

And what a work it was! Breister and Annie gazed in astonished admiration. Bears, Deer, Sheep, Cows, Badgers, Otters, Ducks...All kinds of creatures were powerfully and beautifully painted on the smooth walls of the chamber. It was gigantic and astonishingly beautiful. The painting went on and on and on. It was perhaps 100 feet long altogether, counting all the different patches of wall that were used.

“I’ve never seen anything so stunning! It’s gargantuously magnificent!” Breister stammered.

“Yes, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” Annie agreed.

“This is the entire history of the WooSheep,” Toshty explained. “It’s my story of the WooSheep from the beginning of time to the present. Way at that end you see I’ve painted the Ancient Ones. That’s where we all came from, you know...” The Owl paused, gazing with contented eyes at his vast life’s work. My art makes me happy. The WooSheep are fools to hate each other. They can be fools if they want, but I don’t have to be. I have my art.”

“Has anyone else seen your art, Toshty?” Breister asked. “Such a magnificent work ought to be seen by everyone, especially the WooSheep.”

Toshty sighed. “No...No one else has seen it. Years ago, I tried to tell the WooSheep, both those at the Bottoms and at WooPeace, about my art and the story it tells. But those at WooPeace shunned me and the clan at the Bottoms treated me like a mental case. I finally just gave up and retreated to my cabin in the woods. Shweng, my Otter friend, would come, but he’s blind.”

“Shweng plays Tosht, and he’s blind?” Breister asked. “Tosht is a very visual game. How in the world does he play if he’s blind?”

“Shweng has very good sight in his heart,” Toshty replied. “He knows he can trust me, so he tells me how he thinks about his Tosht moves and I make them for him. He usually beats me soundly!” Toshty concluded with a smile. “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about friendship. That’s also the way I am with him about my art. I tell him what I’m doing in my studio and he sees it in his heart. He often has good suggestions.”

“Well,” Toshty continued, “as they say in Kinshy: Snethboodt matav lis mavert trooven! Roughly translated, that means, ‘Let’s eat!’—here, have some eggs and honeycomb.” Toshty reached into a crevice in the rock and pulled out two pots. One was filled with raw honeycomb and the other had many small blue-green speckled eggs.

“So, go ahead and eat,” Toshty directed. “It is all fresh. I gathered the honey and eggs just today. There are many places where bees have hives and small birds make their nests.” Toshty smeared an egg with honeycomb and popped it into his mouth.

Annie and Breister looked at Toshty doubtfully. “Er, uh, Toshty,” Annie began, “you eat these things raw? Shell and all?” Breister felt less hungry than he had a few moments before.

“Surely do! And it’s a top of the day meal, too, I’ll be warning you! Now, you just go ahead and smear some honeycomb on an egg and pop it in your mouth! It’s delicious!” Toshty was not bashful about showing what he meant. He polished off a half dozen eggs in a short time.

Seeing that Breister and Annie still hesitated, Toshty commented, “You’re letting your old way of seeing things blind you to a new reality, my friends. Let go of the old way of thinking and you’ll be surprised at what you can see.”

Breister looked solemnly at Toshty. “So, this is a ‘top of the day meal,’ eh,” he chuckled. “Well, here goes the ‘new way of seeing things!’” Smearing an egg with honeycomb, Breister closed his eyes, slightly grimaced, and popped the strange food in his mouth. Crunching the egg slowly, a smile spread across his face and his eyes opened wide.

“That is marvelous! It’s truly delicious!” Breister burst out. “Why, who would have believed it? It’s entirely different than I expected.”

Seeing Breister’s reaction, Annie tried one too. She also was enthusiastic about the new food. “Why, it’s...well, it’s...sweet in a spicy