Food Fight

“Hey! It’s stew again, with acorn, squash, some green things, a stick, and some sort of orange thing that’s not a carrot, orange, or tangerine.” Cubby put his lips tentatively to the gourd he was using as a bowl and took a taste. There was nothing tentative about the return of the taste to the gourd. “That’s gross!”

Aw, c’mon Furball, that’s the second time this week,” Tigger said as he wiped the stew from his face and then flung a gourdful at Cubby. It was more dumb luck than skill that caused him to duck his head causing the clump of stew to fly over his head and make a direct hit on Red’s chest.

“What’d I do?” Red demanded right before picking up an orange that was just this side of being totally rotten and throwing it at Tigger. This time luck wasn’t nearly as forgiving and Cubby anti-ducked as the orange crossed above him, causing it to explode in a spray of juice and pulp in his hair and covering Stumble, Surefoot and Leo as well. With a roar that was equal parts feigned and joyful, Cubby stood up causing the bench he was sitting on to tumble backwards, carrying Tigger and Red to the ground with it. Before Cubby could reach the pitcher of milk, a concoction he strongly suspected of being water mixed with white clay, Surefoot grabbed it and dashed the contents over Cubby’s head. Cubby stepped back and tripped over the bench causing him to hit the floor. At least most of him did. A yell from Tig indicated that part of him hit the tiger-pelted Lost Boy as well.

“See? This always happens. It’s fun until someone gets hurt.” Roo stood there looking like some sort of half-sized avenging angel, his look severe as his eyes moved from face-to-face. For a moment every other Lost Boy froze along with the noise they’d been creating. That lasted for less than a second before stew, milk and dirty paw-mocs pelted Roo from all sides. He retaliated with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of pinecones and acorns from his pelt pocket. Someone found a bucket of strawberries to throw and Surefoot had gone from combatant to trained seal as he tried to snap up each one thrown with his mouth.

Hostilities came to an abrupt end when Cubby climbed a bookcase, and for reasons not even known by him, made a leap to the wooden circle that held torches about the common room table to light the room. He got the distance but didn’t have the grip and succeeded in causing the circle to do a complete flip, extinguishing all the torches. Cubby’s fingers slipped and he landed on his stomach on the table. The table creaked and shuddered in protest but held. “What the heck happened?” a voice asked from the darkness.

Roo had flint and tinder in his pocket, along with the acorns and pinecones, and quickly succeeded in getting a torch lit. Each Lost Boy wore stew, milk and fruit that had a distinct used look to it. Cubby’s hair was sticking straight up from the orange shampoo he’d received. “My stomach hurts,” he said in a slightly slurred voice.

“Well duh. What do you expect? You landed on it from ten feet. That’ll bruise even your stomach,” Roo said in a particularly unsympathetic voice.

“Ha! I bet that’s not the reason it hurts. He ate some of the stew before this whole thing began. I know the real reason it hurts. Roo better get ready to induce hurling.”

“Don’t blame me,” Stumble said with a sour look at Tigger. “You’re the one who gathers this stuff. What’s this orange stuff anyway?”

“Orange stuff? We didn’t bring back any orange stuff,” Tigger said grabbing a handful of blackberries from Surefoot’s hood and placing them in his mouth. “At least I didn’t. Did you?”

“Heck no, I learned my lesson. The last time I brought back something orange it turned out to be toadstools. I thought Roo was going to kill me.”

“I would have if the toadstools hadn’t almost done it. What were you thinking of? You can’t just pick up anything off the ground and figure it’s going to be safe to eat.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Surefoot tried to explain. “Greenie was with me and you know how he could be. He was probably too busy talking to birds when I picked it up and I didn’t know any better back then.”

Roo sighed. “Yeah, I miss Greenie. We survived a lot of raids because of those birds he could talk to.”

“Lost birds,” Leo said. “They used to pull the hair out of my pelt mane to build their stupid nests.”

“You remember the night the raven tried to snack on Tink?”

“Are you kidding? Who knew that sprinkling pixie dust on a bird would make them sink like a stone,” Leo reminded his twin.

“Yeah, and who knew that a raven missing all its feathers could look so ugly?”

“Why was he called Greenie?” Cubby asked, pausing a moment from trying to extricate himself from the table he was glued to with stew. Stumble’s stew dried quickly and worked as a patch for rafts in a pinch.

“Because he always got airsick when he used pixie dust. Every time he flew he got a wonderful shade of green and after he landed, he’d toss his cookies.”

“Not always,” Tigger pointed out to his twin. “Ain’t that right?” he asked with a big grin at Stumble.

“Ha, ha, very funny, Stripes. It took me almost a month to get the smell out of my pelt and it still smells like birdseed when it gets wet. Not to mention that when Birdbrain barfed all over me it caused me to crash into a tree. I could have put out an eye or something worse.” Roo ignored the badly done imitation.

“You can’t really blame him. It was your stew that he’d been eating before he hurled.” Stumble stuck his tongue out at Red, but didn’t get any more aggressive than that. Today’s stew seemed to have taken the fight out of him.

As Red and Stumble discussed their differences concerning stew, Leo, Tigger and Surefoot tried to figure out how to get the table to release its grip on Cubby. They’d tried rocking him back and forth, but they’d only succeeded in moving the table a few inches. “What the heck were you trying to do anyway?” Leo asked, glancing up at the fixture that now had a distinct tilt to it.

“I dunno. It seemed like a really good idea at the time. It’d have been cool if I hadn’t fallen.”

“Are you kidding? I think it was still cool. They’ll be talking about this for ages, just like they did with Moose.”

“Moose? Who’s Moose?” Cubby asked as he managed to pry his left hand from the table. “Did he wear a moose pelt with antlers? Or are they called horns?” Everyone turned towards Stumble, who put on his fiercest scowl.

“What do you care for, Teddy Bear? It’s not like you’re going to meet him and need to know what sort of headgear he’s got so you can recognize him.” Leo gently nudged Stumble who made another face but looked a bit pleased to be the center of attention at the moment. “Whatever. Moose wasn’t a moose…”

“Well, duh. He was a Lost Boy, same as the rest of us. Tell us something we don’t know.”

“You want to step outside Bottle Brush? You’ll be wearing that fox tail knotted in your hair if you keep interrupting.” Red grinned and motioned for Stumble to continue. “Moose didn’t wear a moose pelt, he wore a gopher pelt. He wasn’t called moose because he was your size either, Teddy Bear. He got his name because he was always trumpeting like a moose. No matter what, he always trumpeted.”

Cubby paused in his endeavor to get free of the table. “What’d he trumpet for? Did he do it all the time?” He tried doing a push-up to see if he could get off the table that way, but he’d never had much luck with doing those even when he wasn’t stuck to a table.

“He trumpeted when the rest of us were in danger,” Stumble said as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world for anyone to know. The fact that Stumble was having trouble keeping a straight face from watching Cubby’s efforts ruined the effect a bit.

“So it was like a pirate warning?” Cubby had given up trying to get free from the table and looked at Stumble, his eyes shining as they always did when he got to hear about prior Lost Boys.

“No, that was what Greenie was for. Aren’t you listening?” It was Stumble’s lecture tone. “When Moose trumpeted he got a response, usually a very big response. There used to be meeses in these woods…”

“Meeses?’ Roo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Who’s telling this?” Stumble asked, moving towards Roo but deciding against that action and instead walking over to Cubby and tweaking his nose.

“Ow.”

“As I was saying before someone started questioning me, there used to be a bunch of meeses who roamed these woods. Whenever Moose bellowed, they’d stampede to wherever he was.”

“You mean they fighted for us?”

“No, Teddy Bear, they stampeded. You’re still not listening. They didn’t have to fight. You get six or seven meeses running at you and you sort of turn tail and run away.”

“What about pirate raids on The Jolly Roger?”

“Are you asking if the meeses swam out to the ship and climbed abord?”

Cubby thought about that and shook his head as much to indicate he wasn’t asking that as to try and keep his sore nose out of reach of Stumble’s fingers again. “No, that would be silly, wouldn’t it?”

“Almost as silly as a clumsy Lost Boy getting stuck to a table,” Leo said, agreeing with a grin. “We didn’t need and moose on the ship when Moose was around. All he had to do was spin around and the tail of his beaver pelt could take out a ton of pirates if they got too close. Now, as for you, we gotta get you off the table. You’re way too lumpy to have dinner on, even if it is stew. All the gourds would turn over. C’mon, men.” The rest of the Lost Boys formed up and split themselves equally between each of Cubby’s legs. “On three. One, two, three!”

“Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww,” Cubby howled as they pulled on his legs. The common room moved a couple of inches and there was a slight ripping sound from the bear pelt, but other than that there was no effect from the tug-of-war.

“You know, it might have helped if we’d been pulling in the same direction,” Red noted.

“Ya think?” Cubby indignantly demanded from the table top.

“We could always cut him off the table. He might not be so teddy bearish that way.” Stumble moved towards the hapless Lost Boy with a grin and a dagger. “Aw, don’t worry, I was only kidding,” he said when Tig stepped towards him.

“Wait a second.” Roo said, turning and waling to one of the cubbies that led off the common room. He rummaged through one of them before bringing out a jar.

“Pixie dust ain’t powerful enough to budge Furball,’ Stumble said.

“Nope, but this stuff is,” Roo said as he tried to unscrew the top. It took him a couple of times before he managed to get it off. He moved to the table and poured the contents of the jar around Cubby’s body.

“What is that stuff?” Red asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He was pretty sure that stinkweed mixed with skunk wouldn’t come close to smelling as bad as this stuff did.

“Just wait,” Roo advised as Cubby started squirming.

“But it’s burning,” the biggest Lost Boy said, squirming even harder.

“Don’t worry, it won’t get any worse. I think.”

“You think?” Tig asked, looking a tiny bit alarmed at the expression on Cubby’s face.

Whatever Roo had been waiting for apparently happened. “Okay, guys, try again. This time try pulling his legs in the same direction too.” With a few sheepish expressions, the boys grabbed Cubby’s legs once more and pulled. “Heave guys,” Roo demanded. There was a slurping sound and everyone went flying as the stew suddenly released its grip on Cubby.

“Get off me you big Furball,” Cubby heard from under him. “You’re crushing me.” As carefully as he could, Cubby rolled off Stumble but not before he tweaked the raccoon-pelted boy’s nose for him.

“I owed you that,” Cubby announced as everyone slowly got to their feet.

“See if you get any blueberries forever,” Stumble said, exaggerating a limp as he stood up and walked around.

“What was that stuff anyway?” Surefoot asked, looking suspiciously at the goop on the common room table.

“Stumble stew from last week. It ate a hole in one of the gourds so I figured it might be a good idea to keep some in case we needed it.”

“We ate that stuff?” Red asked, looking slightly nauseous.

Roo shrugged. “It’s not like it’s different from any other day.

“I guess not, but…”

“Don’t say a word or no one will get fed for a week,” Stumble snapped. “Unless of course any one of you think you can do better.”

“Uh, we should get the table cleaned off,” Leo decided before that particular discussion could go any further.

A few moments later, as Cubby was scrapping stew off the table, he turned to Tig. “Ya think they’ll ever tell stories about me after I’ve gone on to the next adventure?”

Tig stopped and wiped one of his hands on Cubby’s pelt. “Are you kidding? Just this thing alone will guarantee that,” he said, gesturing to the remains of the stew on table, benches, floor and walls.

Cubby sighed and nodded. It wasn’t quite the story he’d been thinking of, but he knew it’d probably make a good one.

The Rescue of Red 3

I stood there staring at Red, through the cell door, who looked more dead than alive, and at the pirate laying on the deck. “Did you kill him?” I whispered. Neither one of them gave an answer. I walked over to where the pirate lay and dragged him away from the door. Moving to the cell door, I tried banging on it. It wasn’t impressed. “Where’s the key?” I asked Red. He just stood there, swaying on his feet. The red of his fox pelt was stained and it was as ripped and messed up as mine normally was which meant that things weren’t good at all. I asked Red if he knew where the key was in a louder voice, but that just made him cringe and back away from the door. I checked the walls to see if there was a nail or something that it might be hanging on, but didn’t see anything. The pirate let out a low groan, but didn’t move from where I’d dragged him. A thought rose in my muddled mind and I checked around his neck. Sure enough there was a leather thong tied around it with a key on it. I pulled the thong off his neck and tried to put the key in the keyhole of the cell door.

I was so nervous, I was babbling to myself and it took me a moment to realize that the reason the key wouldn’t fit was because I was trying to put it in upside down. “Way to go. It’s a wonder you can find your hands at the ends of your arms,” I muttered to myself as I slotted the key in the lock, this time in the right direction. I turned the lock and then removed the key and placed it in my pocket. I was pretty sure it might come in useful later. The door screeched as I pulled it open and I held my breath again, waiting for someone to come and demand what was going on. I looked down the passage towards the galley, but didn’t see anyone in that direction. The light was still bad enough that half The Jolly Roger’s crew could have been hidden beyond the dim light, but some things ya just have to take on faith. I entered the cell and looked down at where Red had collapsed on the floor. “Are you okay?” I asked which was probably something that would get me the dumbest question in the world award.

“Cubby? It is you, right? I thought I was dreamin.”

“It must’ve been a nightmare, then. Can you stand up?”

He looked around the cell as if he was seeing it for the first time and then looked up at me. “Yeah, I think so. They wanted to make sure I could walk the plank I guess. Give me a hand.” I held out my hand and pulled him carefully to his feet. He stood there swaying for a minute before steadying himself. “You got anything to eat?” I started digging through pockets before remembering that I was wearing pirate garb and not my own pelt.

“No, but maybe I could find something,” I said doubtfully. The last thing I wanted to do was to try and find something to eat even though I knew where the galley was.

Red gave a weak chuckle. “We should probably skip it for now, Furball.” He squinted an eye at me as he looked at me. “Have you gained weight?”

“What?” I demanded as quietly as possible. “I come to rescue you and you ask if I’ve gained weight? What kind of a dumb question is that?”

Red smirked as much as was possible. “I owed you that for the bedbug incident.” He stared at me another moment and looked as though he was either crying or laughing. “What happened to your hair?” I knew when he asked, it was laughter he was trying to cover.”

“Shouldn’t we be trying to get out of here before someone figures out what’s going on?” I wasn’t in any mood to discuss my lack of hair. I was pretty sure that Leo was going to have to pay for that somehow since it didn’t really need to have been done.

Red’s smirk vanished, and for a moment I wished I hadn’t brought it up, but he recovered quickly. “Right you are, Cubbs.” He took a step, faltered and then took another, stronger one. I breathed a sigh of relief as he made it through the doorway, more steady than not.

“Here, take this,” I said as I pulled the cutlass from its scabbard and managed to cut one of my fingers with it as I handed it to him. Red took it and shook his head at my clumsiness, but the grin he gave was worth it. “When I came on board everyone was at the front of the ship. We can leave from the stern and be gone before anyone notices.”

He nodded. “Is that where the rowboat’s at?”

“We ain’t got one because Leo figured they’d be expecting that. We’re going to fly. I got some pixie dust.” I left out that it had taken me a lot more than it was supposed to and that I didn’t know if we had enough to get back. Red gave a shrug.

“That’ll work. Be lots quieter than trying to drop into a rowboat. I’m not sure I could climb down a rope anyway.” He turned and started towards the hatch ladder with me behind. I hadn’t made it more than a few steps when something grabbed the arm I was holding the wooden sword with. I’m ashamed to say I let out a yelp as I turned to see what had grabbed me. It was the pirate that was supposed to have been unconscious. I heard Red turn around as I tried to yank my arm away from the pirate. I didn’t want him and the pirate tangling and tried yanking harder. That didn’t have any effect and I saw the pirate raising his other arm. I didn’t know if he had the dagger or anything else in it,but I really didn’t want to find out the hard way. I grabbed my held arm with my other and pulled it to my mouth and bit the pirate. Those who don’t think I bathe enough should discuss pirates. I was pretty sure he hadn’t bathed in a couple of years.

The pirate let go of my arm and let out a roar. I swung the wooden sword at his head and managed to connect. The pirate’s eyes rolled back up into his head and he collapsed to the deck once more. He was still breathing, so I didn’t think the wound would kill him.

“Good job, Furball. Now let’s get the heck out of here.” There was nothing I wanted to do more and followed him to the deck above. The mist that had been around when I’d gone below was fading away and it looked as though the horizon was getting lighter.

“We gotta hurry,” I said as we approached the stern rail. We both skidded to a stop. From above us there was a yell. “Prisoner at the stern.”

“That can’t be good,” I muttered.

“Maybe they’ll think you’re a pirate and you’re taking me somewhere.”

“He’s escaping,” the pirate from above decided to add.

“Maybe they won’t,” I said, fumbling through my pockets trying to get the rest of the pixie dust out. I couldn’t get the first bag open and ended up ripping it with my teeth. I accidentally swallowed a little of the pixie dust and immediately started burping. “Here,” I said, as I flung the dust over him. Behind us the murmur of angry voices was growing. I got the next bag open without resorting to my teeth and flung the contents over him. He sneezed, covering me in spit. “Think of a happy thought,” I yelled. The sound of slapping feet were approaching quickly.

“I’m trying. I’m trying. It ain’t easy.” I was panicked because Red was panicked. I remembered what Stumble had told me.

“Pie fight,” I yelled at Red. “Naw, food fight!” There was no reaction. “Food fight!” I yelled again at the top of my voice. I almost laughed out loud at the looks of confusion from the pirates as they slowed to a stop, suspecting some sort of trap. Red’s feet rose an inch off the deck and came to a full and complete stop. “Aw, c’mon.” The pirates, seeing that I hadn’t unleashed some sort of terrible weapon, had started moving forward again but slowly as if suspecting some sort of trap.

Red shook his head, the humor going out of his face. “It ain’t no good. You go on, I’ll catch up.”

“Yeah, that’s going to happen after all this,” I said to myself. I shredded the last bag and dumped it over Red then took a step forward making sure one paw was in front of the other causing me to go sprawling on deck. I could see the gold ring around a pirate’s toe it was so close.

Behind me Red burst out in renewed laughter. “It’s working, it’s working You did it.”

“Blueberries, blueberries, blueberries,” I yelled. I rose from the deck sluggishly and came close to crying with relief. I felt the whistle of wind as one of the pirates took a swing at where my head had been with his sword. I heard a solid thunk as the sword hit the deck. I was halfway over the rail as I started sinking. I didn’t have enough pixie dust to get me flying again. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel a ton of pain when I was suddenly yanked into the air. I opened my eyes and looked up to see Red above me. “Out to sea and then head around so they can’t shoot cannon at us,” I said as we headed out into the lightening dark.

Red followed my instructions and we quickly left The Jolly Roger behind. I was just above the water and was getting my face slapped about every third wave. I kept thinking my happy thought as hard as I could and suddenly thought of something. “You’re holding me up by my pelt tail, aint’ you?” I asked.

“It’s the only way I can keep us both in the air.”

“Aw, great. I’m never going to hear the end of this. Stumble is going to have a field day when he finds this out.” The wind was favorable and we made excellent time as we headed towards the horizon that was just becoming the faintest of light around the edge where sky met sea. As The Jolly Roger disappeared behind us, the wind changed and drifted us around in a huge curve before blowing back towards the Island. The way the wind acted, it would have been impossible for us not to have lost our way this time. Not that the attempt wasn’t made, but the breeze was insistent on carrying us in the right direction for which I was extremely thankful. The sea below us became sand and then dirt as we were gently deposited on the Island by the breeze. It sounds corny to put it that way, but it’s the only way to describe it. Even stranger was the fact that as Red and I approached the tree line, the rest of the guys popped up. Red let go of my pelt tail and I belly-flopped onto the ground. At least I didn’t have to worry about landing this time.

“The trees told us where to find you,” Roo answered distractedly when I asked aloud how they’d found us. “He’s been beat up pretty bad,” he continued after examining Red, “but he shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked, spitting sand out of my mouth.

“How should I know? Probably, but for all I know a tree could fall on him on our way back or a bunch of bees could sting him to death. If you mean will he be okay from the beatings he got, then yeah. Maybe.”

“Maybe? But what if he’s not?” I asked, almost pleading. It wasn’t something I normally did.

“Forget it, Dragonbait. Even you should know by now you can’t ask that question. It’d be helpful if you had something other than sawdust in your head.”

I nodded at Stumble in agreement and grinned since the fact he was insulting me meant that everything was okay for now.

The Rescue of Red 2

Walking down the beach while staying in the trees to keep from being seen by anyone looking from The Jolly Roger wasn’t easy, but the tree trunks were far enough apart that it wasn’t insanely difficult either. I started out walking but got so worried about the time it was taking that I ended up trying to gallop in the woods. Big mistake. I don’t know how many scrapes and bruises I ended up with on my knees from tripping over everything from branches and holes to my own paws. After what seemed forever, I finally made it to where the water formed a small inlet into the woods. I crept carefully out from the woods to see if I could see anything of The Jolly Roger. There was no sign of the ship or anything else because a mist had sprung up and was beginning to cover everything. I tried to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I walked across the beach to the water, expecting a yell from somewhere as I took each step. Nothing happened and I reached the water’s edge without incident. The waves looked weird, as though it was chore for them to reach the sand from wherever they were coming from. I didn’t think it was possible for a wave to be lethargic, but these managed quite nicely. The waves breaking on the beach did make a sound, thank goodness, but it was muted as though my ears were stuffed with cotton. Knowing it was the Island and strange stuff happened all the time made it a tiny bit easier to bear, but not much.

I stood on the sand, the waves soaking my paws, and snagged my happy thought, playing follow-the-leader with Ember. It might not sound like much, but if you’ve ever played that game with a wolf you know it can get interesting really fast. I opened one of the pouches of pixie dust and sprinkled it over myself. I concentrated on my happy thought, lifted to tiptoe height, and came to a stop. “C’mon,” I said to myself in disgust. I tried jumping up and down and flapping my arms as hard as I could but every time I tried, I settled back down to tiptoe height. It took four more bags of pixie dust to get me airborne which left me three. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I started flying out to sea while frequently turning around to see how far away from the Island I was. Even with constant checking and worrying, I managed to get lost. I managed to lose sight of ship, fog bank and even the Island all at once. I started zigzagging back and forth in the direction that I thought I needed to go and it was only through the luck of hearing a pirate yelling an oath at someone that I was able to figure out where I needed to be. I zipped into the fog and almost immediately saw the side of The Jolly Rogerin front of me. It’s not possible to come to a screeching halt when you’re flying, or any other type of quick stop. I hit the side of the ship hard enough that my teeth rattled and I saw stars. The collision knocked me back a few feet, but I did come to a stop and hovered in the air. I listened, but no one seemed to be concerned over the fact that a body had hit the side of the ship. I whispered a prayer of thanks to whoever the patron of Lost Boys might be if there was one, and circled the ship. I found a place midships that was dark enough that no one should notice me. I lined myself up, dropped my happy thought, and landed on the deck.

Using pixie dust to fly is something I’ve gotten sort of used to and have even managed to have fun doing. The bad part is the landing. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I practice, no matter how many times I’m shown how, I can’t land. Well, I can land, but it’s normally a two-step process in which my feet hit the ground followed by my face. This time was no different, except that instead of digging a furrow in the ground, I ended up with splinters in my nose. I turned over on my back and looked up to see a pirate in the rigging facing the Island. There wasn’t any sign that he’d seen me or was paying any attention to what was happening on deck, so I ignored him and stood up.

I moved as quietly as I could and thought that even Surefoot would have been, not impressed, but approving of my performance. The ship was as noisy as the Island had been silent. The sound of the water against the hull, the creak of the wood, and the murmur of voices forward was almost deafening to me even as low as they were. The ship stank of unwashed bodies, tar, vomit, urine, rum and powder. It was impossible that an open deck could smell bad enough to come close to gagging someone, but it pulled it off in magnificent fashion. I couldn’t ever remember it smelling so bad the few other times I’d been on board. As I got closer to the bow of the ship, it became easier to make things out, even through the fog that was drifting around. There was a group of pirates gathered around something near the rail on the Island side of the ship and I knew that’s where Red had to be. Remembering Leo’s advice, I stopped sneaking as I came to the end of the cabin that had been hiding me. I took a deep breath and started out across the deck as if I’d been walking it all my life. I was almost positive no one could tell my legs were quivering. My self confident manner lasted exactly eight steps before I tripped over a coil of rope.

I’d been noticed the moment I left the shadow of the cabin but no one had said anything, even when I tripped over the rope. Most of them were busy along the rail, staring at the Island, or were paying attention to whatever it was they were crowded around. There were guffaws and one of the pirates used an expletive to start a very long description of one of his fellows that ended with drunken sot. I got back up to my feet and continued on towards the bow where everyone was gathered. I was still a good 15 meters or so away when I realized that the only ones there were pirates. They were all grown-ups and there was no sign of anything even vaguely resembling a fox-pelt at all. I came to a sudden halt and started patting myself as though I was trying to locate something in a pocket. I gave a dramatic sigh and turned back towards the cabin shadows.

“Where ya think you be going, ye lubber?” a voice called from the group at the rail. It was a voice that didn’t seem to have much experience with vowels, which all came out sounding as though they’d been dipped in gravel before being released by his mouth.

“I fergot jug thing,” I called back in as garbled a voice as I could come up with. Being scared to death helps you garble your voice a lot whether you’re trying to or not. Someone repeated the drunken sot comment, although now I was the one it was directed to.

“Yeah, well same to you.” I could always come up with the best comeback lines. No one else seemed interested in me and I quickly made my way back to the shadows, collapsing on the deck when I’d reached them. Red obviously wasn’t on the bow and there wasn’t any activity on the stern. That meant he had to be somewhere below deck. I stopped and wracked my muddled mind trying to figure out where he might be below deck before I remembered my most recent trip to The Jolly Roger.

We’d been on a raid and I’d managed to take a wrong turn and somehow ended up near Hook’s cabin at the stern of the ship. There hadn’t been anything to see as far as the cabin door went. It was what was a short distance down the companionway or corridor or whatever it was called that I’d noticed. It was a small cell with a barred door. It had been empty and I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it as I was more concerned about getting the heck back on deck with both skin and pelt intact. I’d asked Red about it later and he’d said that was Hook’s cell for ‘special guests’. He’d looked as though he’d seen a ghost when I’d asked him about it and I’d let it go. As soon as the memory of the cell wandered to the surface of my mind, I knew that’s where Red was. I stood back up and headed aft, trying to remember how I’d stumbled into the place the first time I’d seen it.

Predictably nothing looked familiar except in a twisted, backwards sort of way. I tried cocking my head to the left side and to the right while both squinting and non-squinting. It didn’t make things any clearer as it sometimes did. I opened one hatch and went through only to find myself in one of the sleeping quarters. There was a lot of snoring, muttering, and the occasional evil laughter. Fortunately everyone appeared to be asleep and I backed out as quietly as I could. I wrapped a piece of stray cord around the hatch knob and tied it to some sort of bracket or brace hoping that if something happened later, that might keep them from joining in for a little bit.

I walked all the way to the stern of the ship and looked forward trying to make sense of anything I might recognize from earlier raids. I started back towards the bow, carefully scanning the deck for any hatches that might lead below. The first one was locked and I had feeling that was probably the one I was looking for. I moved a few feet ahead and came across another hatch, this one unlocked. I started opening it and grimaced as it made a horrible squealing noise. I gently let it fall closed and, not having brought any oil with me, spat all over the hinges. It didn’t solve the problem entirely, but it quieted the screeching enough that I wasn’t worried my heart was going to jump out of my mouth any longer. I went through the hatch to the deck below, once more gently closing the hatch. I made sure I could reopen it before I moved on. There had been way too many times I’d forgotten to do that in other situations to forget to do it this time.

I found myself in a dimly lit hallway. There were shadows all over the place from the one dim lantern hung from a wall a couple of yards towards the bow. The passage also ran towards the stern, but I decided to go forward since that was where the lantern was. Pirate disguise or not, I sneaked on tiptoe trying to look in all directions, not breathe, and listen to everything all at once. There was a doorway on the left from which a bit more light was shining from. I peeked around the doorway and discovered I’d found the galley. It smelled rancid and sour and I was fairly certain that not even I would eat anything I might discover in it. I didn’t have to worry about exploring, though. Mr. Smee sat at a table facing away from me and talking to an enormous brown skinned man who was stirring something on a stove also facing away from me. I took a quick look up and down the passage I was in, but didn’t see anyone in either direction. Not that it would have been easy to see someone towards the stern end of the passage, but I didn’t hear anyone either.

“I don’t like it,” Smee was saying, just barely loud enough for me to hear. It seemed pretty obvious that he was worried about someone overhearing him but fortunately he didn’t bother to check to see if anyone was in the doorway to the galley.

“What’s not to like?” the pirate that I decided must be the ship’s cook said in a voice not nearly as quiet as Smee’s. “One of them brats walks and that’s one less of ‘em we haveta worry about. It be one of the most straight-forward plans the Cap’n come up with.”

Smee tossed back a cup of something, banging the empty metal container on the table. “Oh, aye. We be the most feared crew this side of the Locker and we be killing children. That be what I signed up for as did the rest of these swabs.” He shook his head and refilled the cup from a bottle. “The boy, now the boy be different. I think…”

Whatever it was that Smee was thinking was left unsaid as a scream broke the quiet of the deck. It scared me at first and I pulled my head back so quickly that I managed to hit the door frame and once more saw stars. The scream was repeated once and then the quiet returned. I risked a quick look in the galley, but the sound hadn’t caused either grown-up to move an inch. Once I was sure they wouldn’t be following in my wake, I headed back as quickly as I could towards the stern, breaking into a gallop. I knew who was screaming and my cowardice had retreated a little on hearing it. For a moment I wanted to howl out a challenge to whoever was causing Red to scream like that, but even though my courage had moved up a quarter-notch, I was still craven enough that I wasn’t about to announce my arrival.

I passed by the ladder that led to the hatchway I’d used and kept galloping. Ahead of me was where the passage ended at Hook’s cabin door. It was the doorway off to the right before his cabin door that I was after now because I finally managed to remember that it was a small cell that Hook kept for ‘special’ guests of his. I was positive that was where Red was. Something big reared up between myself and the cell and I attempted to bowl over it. Normally I’m good at that for obvious reasons, but whoever it was took exception to me running over them and grabbed my ankle and brought me to a halt. I don’t know how I managed to keep myself falling except that it must have been my luck. Fortunately the pirate had grabbed my right ankle, so I was able to draw the wooden sword without any more trouble than getting a few more splinters in my leg. I could have drawn the cutlass, but every time I pulled a sharp metal weapon, either I or one of my friends ended up losing blood. Leo hadn’t been joking when he’d warned me against using it.

The pirate still had a death grip on my ankle, even though I was kicking as hard as I could at the hand holding onto it with my other foot. I heard a howl and guessed that not cutting my toenails in awhile had paid off. “I’m going to tear you apart,” the pirate growled releasing my ankle and standing up. “I dunno what ye be up to, but I’m going to…” He took a swing at me with his fist which I managed to duck more by accident than any plan when I briefly lost my balance while trying to duck. “So ye be thinking you be hornin’ in on the fun?” He pulled a dagger and made a wide, lazy swing at my head. I tried to become a turtle, but didn’t have the neck for it. Still it was enough that the dagger only grabbed the bandana, pulling it off, and nicked my head. The pirate stopped battling for a moment and stared at me before a slow malicious grin grew on his face. “Oh ho, another brat to gut.”

I realized that in the dim light he must have thought that I’d been another pirate that had had too much rum. I wasn’t sure why the removal of the stupid bandana revealed I was a Lost Boy but a tiny part of my mind got a bit irritated that it probably hadn’t been necessary to cut off all my hair after all. The pirate, deciding that it was an enemy and not a shipmate he was fighting with, got serious and came at me with the dagger. I swung the wooden sword back and forth as rapidly as he could and it and the dagger managed to collide. The pirate’s thrust and my swing were both hard enough that the dagger’s blade bit into the side of the wooden blade and got caught. The pirate started tugging at the dagger, trying to get it free, but the sword wouldn’t give up it’s grip on the blade. I may be fat but I’m also strong, so the pirate wasn’t having much success moving me or breaking my grip on the handle of the wooden sword. He punched me in the chest with his other hand and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to breathe again, but kept my grip on the sword. The pirate started bellowing. I couldn’t tell if it was rage at not being able to get his dagger from me or if it was for help. Red must have figured out what was going on, though, because he started yelling again. It was loud enough to compete with the pirate’s bellows but was something that those around were used to hearing, so no one came to investigate.

The pirate decided to stop pulling and bellowing at the same time and instead dropped the dagger and rammed forward into me, slamming me against the wall across from the cell. I felt pain all over and lost any stew I’d had left in my stomach. The pirate began pounding me against the wall and I was sure that the next adventure was going to be pretty quick in occurring. I tried to yank myself from the pirate’s grip and one of my feet slid in the recycled stew on the deck causing me to lunge forward. My weight carried both of us across the passage and against the cell door. I had my eyes closed and couldn’t tell what happened, but the next thing I knew, I heard choking sounds from the pirate who was still grabbing my tunic. None of us moved for what seemed like forever, then the choking sounds grew a bit louder and the hands gripping my tunic released it. I opened my eyes to see the pirate being supported by his neck which had a set of arms wrapped around it coming from between the bars of the cell door. The arms unwrapped themselves from the pirates neck and he fell bonelessly to the deck.

The Rescue of Red 1

“This has got to be the worst idea ever,” I said as Leo and Tigger grabbed each of my arms and propelled me into a chair in front of the common room table. “Why me?” I demanded, my voice quivering just a little. “Can you think of anyone on earth who’d do a worse job?”

“Of course I can, Furball. Lots of people. Anyone of us here would do a worse job. They’ve seen all of us a lot but they’ve only seen you a couple of times. You can do this, don’t worry.” Leo threw back the hood of my bear pelt, grabbed a straight razor, and started shearing my hair in great clumps.

“What’re you… Ow! What’re you doing?”

“We gotta hurry, we don’t got much time,” Stumble said as he rummaged through a chest he’d dragged from somewhere.

“This is going to hurt, but it’s got to be done,” Tig said as he pulled a stiletto from one of the pockets of his pelt. “Hold on a sec,” he told his twin. Before I had a chance to object, wince, or even understand what was getting ready to happen, he thrust the thin blade through my left ear lobe and also managed to nick my neck as well. I bellowed in pain as Tig dropped the knife and put a gold earring through the hole he’d carved in the lobe. “Whatcha think?” he asked his brother.

“It looks like you were drunk when ya did it, so it’s perfect,” Leo said as he started hacking away at my mane again. “You know you got fleas?” he asked me.

“Hold still, Furball,” Stumble said as he pulled a nasty looking mustache from the chest he’d been digging through. He dumped a bunch of evil smelling liquid from a bottle onto the mustache and stuck it on my face, below my nose. “Well?”

“It’ll do, it’s dark.”

“Time?” Leo demanded.

“We gotta be out of here in the next half turn if we’re going to have a prayer of a chance for this foolishness to work,” Surefoot said. “Strip,” he told me as Leo finished cutting the rest of my hair off.

“Are you nuts? Do you really think this is going to work?”

Leo gave me a gentle shove. “Course it is. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be doing it, would we?”

“That’s the same thing you told me when I almost drowned.”

“That was different, that involved water.”

“Involved water?” I asked, my voice rising just a little. “What the heck do you think this is going to involve?”

“You’ll just be on the water. You won’t be in the water.”

“Hopefully,” Surefoot muttered under his breath. I ignored that.

“Okay,” I said with a resigned shrug. I stood up and shed the bear pelt. Surefoot threw me a bunch of rags and I put them on in record time. The rags fit surprisingly well and I wondered where they’d come from but decided I didn’t want to go there.

“What about his head? You can tell the top of it ain’t been in the sun much.”

“Ta-dah,” Stumble said, handing me a bandana that reeked. “Wrap this around your head, Furball.”

“Nah, let me do it,” Tig said, snatching it from me. “You’ll mess it up.”

“Sword?” Surefoot asked.

“Cutlass, and for goodness sakes, don’t draw it unless you have to. You’d cut your foot off, Cub.” Leo handed me the cutlass and I strapped it on, the weight on my hip feeling strange.

“Shoes?”

“Nope.”

“Sling-shot?”

Tig thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah, it’s the only thing he can use that he won’t manage to kill himself with,” Tig said as he finished wrapping the bandana around my head.

“Did you forget that time he tried to shoot the orc? He couldn’t sit down for a week.”

“Not helping,” I told Surefoot.

“Don’t worry, you’ve gotten better since then.” Four sets of eyes rolled in unison including my own. “Just hide it under your shirt or something.”

“Eye-patch?”

“No way, it’ll itch.”

Tig gave another thoughtful pause and nodded. “Roo’s right. If we put an eye-patch on him, it’ll hide at least one of those puppy-dog eyes of his.”

“Forget it,” Stumble advised, holding up a pink patch covered in sequins. “This is the only one we got.” I didn’t even want to consider where it had come from or why.”

“You’re up for this, right?” Leo asked as he gave me a once over. Of course I wasn’t up to it. I wanted to lose the stew I’d had a few hours earlier and not just cause it had tasted like mud.

“It’s for Red, ain’t it?” Every Lost Boy there nodded. I swallowed, a gulp I’m sure they could have heard all over the Island. “Lost Boys forever,” I said and tried to swagger as I walked towards my trapdoor. I tripped over the cutlass as it found its way between my legs.

“We’re doomed,” someone said in a whisper that carried.

Leo walked over to the common room table. “Here’s Tink’s contribution,” he said grabbing several small sacks of pixie dust and tossing them at me. The stuff I was wearing didn’t have nearly as many pockets as my pelt, but the pockets it did have weren’t full of holes like mine were so I was able to get them all put away.

“Is that enough?” Stumble asked, worriedly. I waited for the punchline about my weight that he’d have normally made, but he was genuinely concerned. I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It took a lot for Stumble not to be insulting everyone around him. “Remember, we don’t know what kind of shape Red’s going to be in.”

“What was he thinking, anyway?” Roo suddenly erupted. “He knew that they were hunting and he knew they were around here. It’s not like Peter didn’t warn us and there ain’t nothing important enough that he had to go out there for. It was just stupid and now we’re sending Cubby out and it’s not like he’s had a bunch of experience doing stuff like this.” He caught the look on my face. “Not that you can’t handle it, it’s just that the whole thing is stupid. He shouldn’t have gone out.”

“At least he didn’t lead ‘em back to the tree,” Leo said. “That’s how he got caught. He wanted to make sure they were following him away from here.” Roo snorted, but didn’t say anything. I knew the only reason he was so upset was because he was worried about him. Leo turned back to me. “You know what to do, right?”

I did and I didn’t. “How come I can’t just take a rowboat and bring him back in it? How come we all can’t do it like we do on a raid.”

“Because they’ll be expecting that,” Leo explained patiently. “You can get closer on your own than all of us could cause they won’t be expecting just one of us. It’ll be… Naw, it won’t be, but you can do it. We could all go if there was enough pixie dust, but there ain’t and we just gotta do what we can. It’d be different if Peter was here, but…” he shrugged. “They should be holding Red near the bow because they’ll be waiting for sunrise to have him walk the plank. They’ll be expecting us… you to come from the Island so you’re going to have to fly out to sea a bit and then come back from that direction. You gotta do it ‘fore the sun starts to rise or they’ll be able to see you and no matter how much like a pirate you look, it’s not going to fool them if they see you flying.” I glanced at Stumble, almost wishing he’d make some comment that I’d be impossible to miss but he continued being silent and anxious-looking. “Try to land somewhere on deck where there ain’t a lot of the scum around. You shouldn’t have to worry ’bout those aloft since they’ll be looking towards the Island. Once ya get on deck, don’t sneak around, but walk like you own the place, cause you do. Go towards where they’ll have him at the bow. You’ll be able to get pretty close to Red before they figure out they ain’t ever seen you before. Heck, depending on how much they celebrated after they caught him, they may never even notice you ain’t you. Dowse him with pixie dust and make good your escape. Head back out to sea and then make a big loop again since if they have anything nasty ready, it’ll be pointed towards the Island and not seaward.”

“So he’s just going to be sitting on the deck waiting for me to come and rescue him?” I asked, a little skeptical that it would be near as easy as Leo was making it out to be.

“They’ll have his hands and feet tied up, but they probably won’t have him tied to anything. They might have him gagged, but probably not.” He looked down at the floor. “They think they’ll hear us cry for mercy.” He spat on the floor. “Ready?”

I wanted to yell that there was no way a coward like me could ever be ready for something like this. That I was just a kid and how the heck could anyone expect anyone like me to be ready for something like this. The whole thing was insane just thinking about it, much less acting it out. I was going to get myself killed, which didn’t bother me that much as long as it didn’t involve a lot of pain. I was more worried about the fact that I was going to end up failing in trying to rescue Red and I’d cause him to be killed too. I swallowed all those thoughts. “Sure,” I said with a grin that I had to twist sideways before I could force it on my face.

“Cubby, there’s something you gotta remember,” Stumble said in the most earnest voice I’d ever heard him use. “You gotta keep your happy thoughts close, and you gotta keep one for Red too. He won’t be able to make his own happy thought, so you’re going to have to do it for him. It’s… yeah.” He grabbed the wooden sword that I usually used and handed it to me. “Here, stuff this down your breeches so it can’t be seen. You may need it.”

I took the sword and carefully placed it down inside my left pants leg and immediately picked up three splinters in my leg. There wasn’t enough room between my ankle and the bottom of the pants leg for it to slip out, but it meant I couldn’t bend my left knee at all. Maybe anyone who saw me hobbling that way would figure I had a peg leg or something. I walked to the spot under my trapdoor, looked around, and jumped. It was idiocy to think I’d be able to make it, especially with my left leg, but I grabbed the edge on my first attempt and pulled myself through. I tumbled outside and hit the ground. It felt weird as though the Island I was used to wandering had been replaced with something else. The stars weren’t warm like I was used to, but gave off the harsh sparkle of broken glass. There were none of the night noises that I was either used to or terrified of. The trees around the clearing were quiet and it seemed like they were listening to something that only they could hear. Even the night air, normally perfumed with what seemed like a hundred scents and odors, had a flat odor too it as if it had hung around too long. “What’s happening?” I asked Roo in a whisper as we fell into a single-file line and started for Pirate’s Cove.

“It knows,” he whispered back, shrugging. “The Island always knows when something like this happens.” As explanations go, that was probably one of the least helpful ones I’d ever heard as well as the most complete one. The trip from Hangman’s Tree to the cove was surreal, even for the Island. Not a breath of air moved and not a sound disturbed the untranquil quiet. This was a quiet that didn’t belong anywhere and the fact that it had come to rest over the Island scared me. There was no downhill or uphill to the path as it wound through the trees that gave the impression of grudgingly giving way to the trail. At one point I had to stop and finally got rid of the stew I’d eaten what seemed like a century ago when things had been normal and the only thing that had worried me was latrine duty the next day. No one said a word.

The trail ended all too quickly at the trees surrounding the cove. We came to a stop and looked out across the water at The Jolly Roger. It didn’t look any different from every other time I’d seen it in the early morning except that there were a couple more lanterns at the bow than normal. There was no moon or clouds and the stars that had turned strange didn’t provide enough light to get rid of the shadows that had gathered all over the place on the beach, the sea, and the hull and deck of the ship. Leo pulled out Pan’s spyglass and examined the ship. “Pan’ll banish you if he finds out you have that,” his twin warned.

Leo closed the spyglass with a snap. “Ain’t no good. All it does is bring the darkness closer. He’s gotta be there, though.” He looked at me. “Ready?” he asked again.

“Quit asking me that,” I snapped. “You think I’m going to suddenly say ‘no’ and run and hide?”

He grinned, his teeth managing to shine in the sickly starlight. “Lost Boys forever,” he whispered to which all of us whispered it back in response. “Head down the beach about a half-mile or so, fly out to sea and then come around and fly to the ship from the water-side and rescue Red. We’ll be right here. If you get in trouble, give a yell and we’ll have your back.”

I didn’t ask how they figured they were going to have my back when they’d have to swim a few hundred yards to the ship if I did yell since I had all the pixie dust and there wasn’t any convenient rowboats around this time. It didn’t matter. I was too awed by someone telling me they had my back. It was an unusual and a weird feeling. I made a conscious effort to quit repeating the phrase to myself. I turned and started to walk away when I felt someone grab my shoulder. I turned to see Stumble staring at me with that unnerving earnest look he’d been wearing all night. “Don’t forget the happy thoughts. Two of them. Even three if you can. He’s going to need it. Promise.” I promised I wouldn’t forget and started off down the beach.

One Winter’s Day

“Aw, c’mon.  You said you’d do it.  You can’t back out now,” Red jeered at me.

“He’s right.  You didn’t just say you wanted to do it, but you said you had to do it.  You know it’s going to be stupendous.  In fact, I bet that a million years from now that this tale gets told.  I’d give anything to be the one to be doing this.”

“Hey,” I said, taking a step back and gesturing to the slope that looked like it was at about a 65-degree angle heading down, “knock yourself out, Tig.  I won’t be upset.  I’m not the glory seeking type no way.”

Tig peered down the slope and shook his head.  “You’re due some glory, Furball, and you did say you’d be the first one down.”

“Chicken?” I asked, surprising myself that I’d say such a thing since I knew I was.

“Nope, I’m just a bit too fond of this adventure to be going downhill.”

“Downhill?  You’d be better off saying downcliff,” Roo advised.

“You think I’m going to die?  You’re the one who said how safe it’d be.”

“I didn’t say you were going to die, I just said that I was fond of my life.  I mean, c’mon.  You’re all the time falling out of trees and falling into pits and…” he paused.  “You’re pretty clumsy, aren’t you?”

“Are you seriously asking me that question?  Seriously?”  Tig responded to my question by looking a bit sheepish.

“Naw.  I know you get tangled in your paws a lot, but I didn’t really think about how many different places you manage to get tangled in.”

“Or stuck in,’ Red added helpfully.

“So are we going to do this or what?” Tig asked, looking at me expectantly.  I don’t know why we even bothered playing this game cause everyone present on the mountain top knew that I was going to go down on the toboggan the moment we’d arrived at the top of the mini-mountain.  The snow on the slope was a good foot deep and didn’t have a single print on it anywhere.  A belt of trees bordered each side of the slope and halfway down narrowed the cleared path to a couple of feet before the trees retreated after a few yards leaving a large area the rest of the way down, a very long distance.  I figured that the whole thing was probably close to a mile, even if I took off the distance I knew I was exaggerating.

The toboggan had been Tig’s idea.  Made with pieces of wooden ships that had washed ashore during a century of storms, it was long, heavy and unwieldy.  It was easier to drag than carry, and it had taken all four of us to drag it up the ‘hill’.  The back of the hill wasn’t nearly as long, steep or snow covered as the front of it was, so it hadn’t been too horrible.  I’d asked how we’d ever get the thing to the top of the hill again, but Tig said that he knew a couple of polar bears who owed him a favor.  I’d badgered him for the entire trip asking him how one managed to get polar bears to owe them favors.  His response was to tell me that he’d tell me when it was necessary.  Tig was always saying stuff like that.  It probably went hand-in-hand with his ability to create 218 different rules for tic-tac-toe.

“If I do this, I want…” I’d been ready to mention blueberries or chocolate or something else, but caught Roo looking at me, “…broccoli.”

“Yeah sure, that won’t be a problem… huh?  What?”

“Broccoli,” I repeated to answer Red’s question.  “What’s so strange about that?”  Red, Roo and Tig looked at each other.

“It’s okay, we’ll get you some broccoli,” Tig said in a placating voice as he held up a hand that I guess was supposed to soothe me or something.  I’d have preferred chocolate to broccoli, but their reactions sort of made up for it.  I wondered what they’d have done if I’d asked for beets.

“You know, there’s no way to steer this thing,” I said as I examined a rope that appeared to be on there for decorative purposes only.

“You lean,” Tig said, confidently.  “You’ll pick it up in no time.  Besides, it’s not like you’re going to need to steer.  When we start you off, we’ll make sure you’re aimed straight down the center.”  I wasn’t impressed, but that wasn’t something I was going to share with anyone.

“Whatever, I guess we might as well do this.”

“Told ya,” Tig told Red smugly.

I helped the other three carefully aim the toboggan in the right direction, Tigger carefully having us move it an inch one way and a couple of inches the other until it was lined up to his satisfaction.  “Hop on,” he directed me.

“Do we need pixie dust?” Red asked as I got on the device.  I glared back at him.  “I meant because the sled was so heavy.”

“It’s not a sled, it’s a toboggan.  There’s a huge difference,” Tig advised.

“Yeah, you can steer a sled.”

“But you can’t steer a cardboard box.”  We all stared at Red for a moment.  “You can’t.  Try it and see.”  There was no answer to that statement at all, so I grabbed the rope the way I figured cowboys did when they were riding broncos.  I was seated in about the middle of the toboggan and waited while Tigger dusted the contraption with a bit of pixie dust, sneezing when he sprinkled some of it on me.

“Ready, steady, go!” Red called out as the three started pushing the toboggan.  In spite of the weight, it started off quickly.  I heard a thump from behind me and threw a look behind my shoulder to see Roo kneeling behind me.

“What happened?” I yelled, figuring he’d slipped or something even though that wasn’t like him at all.”

“Nothing,” he yelled back at me.  “This looked too cool not to try.”  That was the second statement in less than a minute that there wasn’t any answer to, but it brought a grin to my face.  That is until I noticed that Tig’s careful alignment had us whizzing towards the trees.  “Lean!  Lean!  Lean!  Lean!” I yelled leaning towards the left although there was probably a good third of a mile until that would become a problem.  Through some quirk, the sled angled to the right, did a couple of 360s and a partial and ended up still angled towards the trees, but now going backwards.

“That was unexpected,’ Roo said before dissolving into laughter.

“They though I was crazy,” I muttered to myself, as I leaned to the left this time so far that the right side of the toboggan threatened to leave the ground.  We completed another couple of spins and wound up heading forward again, although still angled towards the trees.

“Wolf!” Roo yelled.  For a moment, I wondered what the heck that was supposed to mean until there was a thump in front of me as a snow wolf suddenly appeared on the toboggan.  It looked as though it had been running across the slope and had managed to intersect our course.  It gave me a look of surprised disgust (which is hard for a lupine face to express) causing Roo to break out in renewed laughter.  That in turn caused the snow wolf’s expression to look even more disgusted before he turned to face forward and sit on his haunches, ignoring both of us.  In the meantime the trees continued to loom in front of us as we got closer.

“You really ought to do something about not running into those trees,” Roo suggested.  At the rate we were eating up ground, we had a couple of minutes before that event would occur.  As if in agreement, the wolf’s tail thumped a couple of times against both the toboggan and my face.  As wolf tails go, his was pretty long.

“I’m open to suggestions,” I retorted as I attempted to lean in either direction.  The wolf wasn’t small and his weight, combined with that of Roo was enough to keep me from having any effect on anything.  I tried moving from side-to-side in an attempt to get something to happen causing Roo to comment that I was acting as though I needed to go to the bathroom.  “I’m not heavy enough,” I said, fairly positive that it was the first time those words had ever been strung together in a sentence describing myself.  “You need to lean too.  To the right on three.”  I counted to three and Roo and I leaned towards the right.  We might have gotten shifted more than we did, but the wolf leaned to the left at the same time.  “Seriously?” I asked in his direction.  He gave a yip and I counted to three again.  This time all of us leaned to the right in concert and the toboggan smoothly moved to the right.  “Stop!” I yelled, moments too late.  We were now perfectly aimed at the tree belt on the other side of the clearway.  The wolf’s tail thumping increased in momentum and I was getting fur in my eyes.

“What’d ya do that for?” Roo demanded from the back.  “Now we’re going to crash into the other side.”  He wasn’t laughing as he had been before, but there was a definite note of excitement in his voice that I hadn’t heard for awhile.

“If you think you can do better, feel free.”

“Like I could get past you and your friend to be able to steer.”

“You can’t steer, it’s a toboggan.”  I figured he already knew the rope was just for… whatever Tig had put it on for.  It sure wasn’t for steering anything.  Before Roo could make a comment back I felt a weight on my left shoulder and turned to see that a raven had landed on it.  It stared at me with bright black eyes and gave a caw before ignoring me and facing forward.  “I don’t think that’s a good sign.”

“What?  The raven?  I don’t think they’re bad luck.  At least not too much.  I think it’s some other bird that’s supposed to be bad luck and only if they’re following a ship or a boat or something like that.  If it was a skunk that landed on your shoulder, then that would definitely be bad luck.”

I declined to point out the fact that, fortunately, there weren’t any flying skunks on the Island that I knew about.  The trees were now close enough that I could see individual branches.  I wondered for a second if all the branches really were pointed towards us or if it was just my imagination.  The wolf let out a howl, but declined to leave the toboggan.  The raven didn’t either, although it spread its wings, cawed, and did something that both myself and my pelt wished it hadn’t.  The light dimmed as the toboggan entered the small forested area between two tree trunks.  “I can’t see the forest anymore, there are too many trees,” Roo sang out.  I started to wonder if he’d somehow managed to get some pirate rum.  We generally didn’t grab that on raids, but there had been mistakes made in the past.

“We’re going to die,” I sang out in counterpoint.  The wolf yipped and Roo laughed.  “Not with your luck,” he said.  “If I were on this thing with anyone else, I might be concerned but with your luck there’s no way they’re going to let you die riding a toboggan in the middle of a forest.”

“Lean!” I yelled as a tree trunk loomed in front of us.  We all leaned to the left, including the stupid raven, and there was a buzzing sound as the toboggan scraped the tree trunk as it flashed by.

“That was fantastic,” Roo decided.  The wolf howled with what could have been agreement, disagreement, or a prelude to getting ready to rip my head off.  The way things were going, I sort of figured it was probably the first one.

“Are you crazy?” I demanded but quietly enough so he couldn’t hear me.  There was something good going on behind me and I didn’t want to take a chance of ruining it or having it end too soon.  The toboggan sped over a root mound and became airborne for several moments before crashing back to the ground with a teeth-rattling thump.  I ended up falling backwards and found my head in Roo’s lap.  The raven had let out a caw and had leaped from my shoulder as I went backwards.  I looked up to see him grinning so wide, it looked as though his face would split.  What really got me, however, was the quick look I had of his eyes.  They were a kid’s eyes, at least for now.

“Get up,” he said.  “Someone’s got to be in charge and it ain’t me.”  I grinned back and struggled back up to a sitting position.  We were still moving rapidly through the tree belt and I saw that the raven was no perched on the wolf’s head.  Neither one of them seemed concerned about events.  The trees thinned briefly and we were racing across a pond or small lake.  There was a distinct cracking sound under us, but by the time I’d even figured out what words were appropriate, we were back on land again.  A branch slapped my chest as we went past it and there was suddenly a pear in my lap.  Anywhere else, that wouldn’t have been possible, but on the Island…  I liked pears almost as much as blueberries, but was pretty sure I knew what this one was for.  I picked it up and held it behind my back, letting Roo grab it.  I’m pretty sure it was thanks he offered me, but it was hard to tell through his mouthful of pear pulp.

“Left,” I screamed as I started paying attention to what was in front of us again.  For something that hadn’t looked real big from the summit, this belt of trees was taking forever to get through.  Everyone leaned left as the raven directed things with a spreading of wings and insistent cawing.  Once more we didn’t quite make it and sideswiped the tree leaving behind part of the ride side of the toboggan which was now vibrating.  I felt something new thump into my lap and looked down to see a raccoon taking a look around.  I tensed, since racoons aren’t that fond of surprises such as these, and waited to feel teeth and claws against me.  Instead the raccoon finished looking around, lay down in my lap and closed its eyes.  I’d thought about closing my eyes as well, but there were just too many trees around for that.  Sometimes closing one’s eyes wasn’t the best solution.  Actually it wasn’t the best solution most times, but it was really not the best one when you were zipping past trees.
“Don’t even think about bringing it back to the Tree,” Roo advised.  “There’s no telling what reaction Stumble might have to a real raccoon hanging out.”  There wasn’t any time to ponder on that particular train of thought because we zipped out of the trees and were on bare slope again.  As if overjoyed to be cleared of the trees, the toboggan started picking up speed.  I’d closed my eyes as the sun shone full upon us without the tree branches to block it any longer.  Roo let out a cheer.
“Uh, Roo, we got a problem.”  Ahead of us the ground did something unexpected.
“No we don’t, not with your luck.  Anyway, even if we did, it’d be your problem since your the leader of this wonderful expedition.”  The raven showed its superior intelligence by giving a caw and winging off the wolf’s head and into the sky.
“There’s a cliff,” I pointed out.  “It’s right in front of us and there’s no way we’re going to be able to stop in time.”  It wasn’t so much a cliff as a crevice.  The snow covering both sides had made it all but invisible from the top of the summit.  The distance between the two crevice sides was only about three yards or so.  Even I could have probably jumped it on a good day, with the wind at my back and my eyes tightly screwed shut.  None of that applied at the moment.
I felt Roo shift and look over my shoulder at the approaching topography.  “That’s not good.”  The wolf apparently had the same idea because it gave a yip and sprung off the toboggan and loped away.  The raccoon continued to sleep.  “Show off,” Roo called after it, a smile in his voice.  “Well Furball, it’s a good thing at least one of us is prepared.”
“Maybe if we roll off…”  I had to stop to let a huge sneeze out.  It was big enough that I’m pretty sure the toboggan slowed a little from the force.  It was caused by something that Roo had sprinkled over my head which had gotten into my nose.
“Steady, Furball.  Be sure and grab the raccoon and think about blueberries.”
“Blueberries?” I asked as I grabbed the raccoon in a bear hug which seemed to concern it not at all.
“Happy thoughts,” he said as the bottom dropped out from under us when we ran out of ground.  The toboggan continued forward where it smashed into the opposite wall and pretty much became bits of driftwood and sawdust that rained on whatever was below.  Violating pretty much a whole slew of physical laws, Roo and I came to a stop over the middle of the crevice.  I was thinking of happy thoughts as fast as I could, but I was slowly sinking.  I was jerked to a stop as Roo grabbed my hair and pulled me up.  The raccoon forced it’s head out of my arms and was staring around as though raccoons didn’t normally find themselves a couple hundred feet above nothing.  “I should have brought more pixie dust,” Roo sighed.
“It’s because of the raccoon.  It weighs a ton.”  I wasn’t even convincing myself with that comment and the raccoon gave a squawk of indignation.  I’d never known that raccoons could squawk.
Roo didn’t say anything, but pulled me by the mane to the edge of the crevice and above solid ground again.  A few yards beyond the edge, the pixie dust went wherever used pixie dust goes to and we both tumbled to the snow.  I lay there catching my breath while the raccoon crawled to my chest and gave me a good chewing out in raccooneese before turning tail and running off.  I carefully moved various pieces of my body, but didn’t feel anything that would indicate I’d broken, sprained, punctured, or slashed anything.  Roo was already on his feet and was giving me a crooked grin.
“That was fantastic,” he exclaimed.  His face was bright red from the cold and excitement and the grin on his face was contagious and I found myself grinning back at him like an idiot.  His eyes were still young which was all that counted to me at the moment.  “Can we do it again?”
I almost choked, but found myself nodding in agreement.  “All we need to do is get back up this hill.”  I sighed as I contemplated the journey back to where the others might or might not be waiting for us.  I wished we had some more pixie dust, but figured I could probably make it without tumbling down the hill after a misstep and ending up rolling into a snowball.
We’d climbed about 100 feet and I’d already broken a sweat and was huffing when Roo turned around and looked at me.  “Thanks.”  He turned around and continued climbing.  I was still struggling, but after that I knew I could probably, somehow, climb a mountain three times this one after that.

Nibbler’s Tale

I trudged up the hill, a bunch of carrots in one hand.  It was twilight and I hadn’t thought it would take so long to gather carrots.  Unfortunately the gardens were being guarded by the elves a lot more thoroughly than they had in the past and I definitely wasn’t built for stealth or tiptoeing.  I normally wouldn’t have been pleased by the appearance of a griffin, but it did draw off the elves long enough that I was able to snatch some carrots.

Eventually I got to the top of the hill.  Even though I knew in my head it wasn’t true, my legs and lungs were pretty sure that when I went up this hill it was longer than when any of the others climbed it.  I stood at the top for a moment to catch my breath and watched a couple of bats play chase with each other in the gathering gloom.  It only took me a couple more minutes of walking when the huge oak tree guarding Lost Boys’ Field came into view.  Underneath it I was just able to make out a figure that would be Nibbler.  I should probably be more cautious when I make my approach to the graveyard, but it wasn’t like it was a graveyard like most graveyards were and there wasn’t a pirate alive who would come around here.  Still, that didn’t mean there weren’t any dead pirates who wouldn’t come around, although I’d never seen any pirate ghosts before.  I wondered if that was something I should be concerned about and what sort of weaponry, at least weaponry I was capable of using without killing myself, would be useful.

By the time those thoughts had chased themselves around my skull; I’d arrived at the oak tree to discover the figure I’d seen seated below the oak was indeed that of Nibbler.  The rabbit pelt he was wearing looked as though it had been recently washed but was as faded as ever.  I couldn’t quite see through Nibbler, but it seemed like it was prevented by only the barest margin.  He grinned at me, although it might have been the carrots just as easily, and nodded.  “Ready to play?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said, handing him the carrots.  “I figure you’re going to wipe the board up with me but that’s okay.”

“You never know.  I’ll take my rooks and knights from the board, how ‘bout that?”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider giving up your queen and a bishop or two, would you?”

Nibbler laughed, something that was extremely rare and made the clobbering I was about to get totally worthwhile.  “I may be crazy, but not when it comes to giving an advantage like that.”  He reached behind him and pulled out the chess set I had gotten very familiar with.  The board itself was a basic wooden tiled board but it was populated by figures carved in what appeared to be clear and black glass.  The pieces looked as though they should have weighed a ton but were delicate in weight alone.  I was never sure where the set came from.  Nibbler always reached behind him and when his hand reappeared, it was holding the set.  He placed it between us and, as promised, proceeded to remove his rooks and knights from the board.  I didn’t have any illusions that it would make any difference to how the game would end, but I appreciated the thought.  “Just a second,” he said as he got up.

I sat there and watched as he went behind the oak and a moment later reappeared carrying a fair quantity of wood.  “It’s not oak,” he’d reassured me on more than one occasion, and it wasn’t hard to believe since when he lit it, all it put out was light without any smoke or heat.  Nibbler had mentioned that light was all he needed and only when one of us came around.  He didn’t get cold and could see in the dark like a wolf.  He carefully arranged the wood into a small pile, lit it with a match he pulled out of his pelt and lit on the bottom of his pawmoc, and then sat down across from me again.  I always had the clear pieces, so I got to make the first move.

Twenty-seven moves later I tipped my king over in defeat.  “Told ya,” I said not unhappily.  It was always cool to see the way he methodically went about destroying my field.  Equally cool was that he never gloated or did it in a superior way even though I knew I wasn’t much of a challenge at all.  Surprisingly, Tig was the only Lost Boy who could give Nibbler a run for his money and he’d won more than a few games, but hated to play because he said it took too long and he didn’t like that he couldn’t change the rules.  Why he didn’t feel he could change those rules when he changed the rules for every other game on earth remained a mystery.

“You did better this time.  I didn’t expect that move you did with your knight at all.”

“Neither did I.  I probably wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t sneezed when I was moving it.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.  You probably knew what you were doing only you didn’t know so you could tell.  It happens to me all the time.”  Somehow I doubted that, but thought it was nice of him to say so.  “Another game?”

“Naw.  I probably shouldn’t suffer multiple defeats in under a half hour,” I said with a grin.  I thought back to the pondering I’d been doing earlier.  “I have a question for ya concerning the next adventure.”

Nibbler had put all the chess pieces on the board and was in the act of putting it behind him.  That done, he turned to me and started chewing on a carrot.  “Which would be?” he asked spraying me with carrot specs in the process.

“I know that you don’t know about the next adventure and all that,” he nodded, “but I was wondering about pirates.  What happens to them?”

“Why would I know about those?”  His tone was more curious than accusatory.

“I dunno.  I don’t want to know where they end up but I was just sort of curious to know if I had to worry about pirate ghosts.”

Nibbler gave me a fond smile that looked as though it belonged to someone a lot older than a kid of 14.  “Don’t you have enough stuff to worry about, Furball?  Why add ‘pirate ghosts’ to that list?”

“I’m not really adding it since I worry about everything.  It’s more like subtracting something from it.”

“Have you ever seen a pirate ghost?”

“No,” I admitted hesitantly, knowing where he was going with this.  “But I’ve never seen a firebird but have seen that huge burned area in the North Wood.  I’ve never died before either but worry about where I’m going to end up at on the next adventure.”

The look Nibbler gave me was skeptical.  “You don’t mean the ol’ heaven and hell thing, do you?”

“Kinda.  I know I’m nowhere near the best thing and probably more towards the bottom of that whole heap.  What if my next adventure ends up being somewhere very hot?”

Nibbler sighed.  “I don’t believe in all that stuff.  I really don’t think you gotta put that on your list to worry about and if it’s already on there, throw it away.”

“Really?  So what’s the whole ‘next adventure’ thing all about?”

“Just because you’re going on a next adventure doesn’t mean it’s the one that’s been force-fed to you.  I know there’s a next adventure and it’s probably one without pirates or others who get their thrills tormenting you, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the one that all the grown-ups would have you believe.”

“So you don’t believe in, umm, God?”  Religion was something I gave absolutely very little thought about most of the time.  I believed in God, most of the other Lost Boys did too to one degree or another even though according to most references we’d be on the express lane to the area below ground since we also had a great deal of faith in pixie dust, Pan, magic, and a lot of other unauthorized things.  The elves had their own religion, along with the dwarves, trolls and even unicorns.  We didn’t fight about it, there was too many other things to get maimed over.  I’d also never heard a pirate talk about his abiding belief in anything either.

Nibbler’s face took on a sad and serious cast.  “Why would I?  That whole thing made my life a cesspit.  If it hadn’t been for Peter…”  That was a mantra that every Lost Boy carried with him.  I knew what would have happened to me if it hadn’t been for him.  I didn’t say anything, but gazed at the small fire snapping silently away.  It had gotten dark and the crickets were in full voice.  A herd of fireflies were busy playing in the branches of the oak tree and everything gave off a feeling of well-being and safety, at least as safe as a place could be that you shared with things that occasionally tried to rend you to bits.

“When I was in the ‘real’ world I didn’t have a mother and father like most people do.  I mean I had them, but we lived in this place with a bunch of other people.  They called it the Spiritual House of the Rod and the Crown.  It was sort of like a commune but without the fun stuff.  I don’t remember a whole lot when I was young.  I had a couple of friends

when I was real young, but they vanished, probably ‘cause their folks wised up and left.  Anyway, like I said, I don’t remember a whole bunch about the early part so it couldn’t have been too bad or too good.  It was after they moved that things got freaky.  We went from this place that I guess was in a large town or a small city, I don’t even remember the name of it, to this place in the middle of nowhere.  Someone had this great idea that we should grow our own wheat and make bread like it would be more natural and get us back to nature and because it sounded biblical somehow.”  While he’d been talking, he had pulled some grass out of the ground and had started twisting it into different figures.  So far he had a group of five people he’d made.

“That must have been quite a change,” I ventured softly.

“Not so much as you’d think.  Even in the city we didn’t get out much.  If we left the house we might be influenced by the devil.  Same if we watched tv or talked on the phone, or had friends who didn’t believe in the things the House did.  All I ended up noticing was that instead of hearing traffic noises I heard nothing at all except for a bunch of insects.”   He stopped talking and finished up the last person he’d been making out of twisted grass before starting on building a miniature hut from twigs.  “So there we all are, like twenty or thirty adults and kids living in this huge house that’s falling apart.  There weren’t enough room for everyone, of course, so most of us kids end up in this barn that’s falling apart even faster than the house.  One of the girls ended up falling through the floor of the loft and killing herself.  ‘God’s will’ all the adults kept saying and even some of the kids.  It wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t made sure things were cool, it was all God’s fault.  No, not fault, but reason or design or something else to make you feel better about things because there’s no way it could be your fault no matter how stupid you were.”  His hands were shaking and he accidentally knocked over the wall he was working on.  He sighed and started rebuilding it.

“So things went along as dumb as usual.  No one knew how to plant, plow or anything else and nothing ever got planted there.  Some of the men and women went to some city nearby to get work or something and sent back whatever so everyone could survive.  I guess the rest were on welfare or something like that.  Every now and then some government looking woman would show up to look things over.  The week before that we had to clean everything up and all this other junk.  I don’t think anyone else ever knew about the girl that died, they just had us bury a big hole in the middle of one of the fields and put her in there and cover her back up.  She looked so tiny and lonely in the middle of that huge hole and they wouldn’t let us put anything in there with her.  He just told us that was the way it was going to be because it was supposed to be that way.  I always wonder if she ever blames me for not putting something in with her to keep her company.”

“She doesn’t blame you, Nibbler.  I know she doesn’t.  She knows the type person you are and what you do for us Lost Boys and that you don’t let anyone ever go by themselves when they start the next adventure.  You couldn’t do anything about it then, they wouldn’t let you.  Don’t you dare beat yourself up over anything that you couldn’t do nothing about.”  I said that last with a lot of heat because I knew what that was like.  I didn’t have any problem handling it, but it wasn’t fair that anyone else would have to.

Nibbler looked at me, surprise showing.  I don’t think he’d ever heard me raise my voice before, at least not when it didn’t involve having icy water dumped down my back or having a bee’s nest thrown at me (a totally different story).  “How do you know what she thinks, Furball?”  The hopeful tone behind it was unmistakable.

“Because if she didn’t know then you wouldn’t be doing what you do and there wouldn’t be no Lost Boys and… and… there sure wouldn’t be things like that,” I said, pointing up into the tree where the fireflies were playing.

Nibbler looked at where I was pointing and nodded after watching the ballet for a bit.  “You could be right.  It doesn’t make any kind of sense, but then a lot of what you say doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to begin with.  You’re one crazy dude sometimes.”

“Um… thanks?”  I wasn’t entirely certain what to make of Nibbler’s words, but the tone sounded good so I figured it was a compliment.  The wall had been rebuilt and a roof added to the hut, and now Nibbler was working on a tiny fence.

“So anyway, that was bad but it gets worse.  I used to cut up a lot.  What else was I supposed to do?  Then we started spending most of the morning studying this crazy weird Bible stuff and most of the afternoon trying to plow a field.  I figure you know how much luck we had with that.  I used to get beat a lot because I’d be horsing around instead of doing something that wasn’t possible to begin with.  The other kids’d laugh but before I let them get in trouble I’d do something dumb to make him look at me and beat me instead.  I got a pretty thick hide, so the beatings didn’t bother me all that much.  It was the questions that did me in.”

“What sort of questions?” I asked after a couple of minutes of silence.

“Questions about God.  Like if he were so powerful how come Nellie died?  Why was there crime and hate?”  He must have caught my look in the firelight.  “Oh, just ‘cause we weren’t allowed out didn’t mean we didn’t know some of the stuff that was going on in the outside world.  He seemed to get some sort of joy in letting us know how bad things could be outside and how honored we should consider ourselves that they tolerated us enough to protect us.  It was a regular lovefest.  Then I’d mention stuff about how some of the stuff they told us didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  That went over real big.  I dunno why I kept bringing it up, but it was like I had to.  Maybe that was His plan for me,” he added with a sardonic grin. “For about a month after they start this new program of teaching us, I’m still asking questions that I shouldn’t be and still cutting up as well just to make sure the others get a laugh. You can’t believe how grim that place was. There was only one purpose far as they were concerned and it weren’t to have fun. My own folks, if you could still call them that, pretty much disowned me. Not that it was unusual for that to happen for a long shot. He was in charge of us and the parents didn’t care one way or the other that I saw. You might see a kid with his folks every now and then but it wasn’t usual for it to happen.

“So one night I’m asleep and he comes in and yanks me out of the hay I’m sleeping in.  None of the other kids say a word, and I’m glad they didn’t.  He drags me out of the barn and tells me that my questions show I’m an unbeliever and that I obviously need reeducation.  Seriously, that’s the word he used, ‘reeducation’.  He strips me to my skivvies and then throws me into this blockhouse looking thing.  It’s got a cement floor and walls that are more solid than anything else on the whole place.  So keep in mind it’s October and on the plains it gets cold as hell even then at night but still can swelter during the day.  He tells me to think about my faults and my beliefs and when I’ve repented, I will be allowed to return to the society.”

I knew the chess game had taken mere minutes and it didn’t seem like it had taken very long for Nibbler to relate his tale up to this point, but it was full dark outside and one of the few nights in which there was no moon rising anywhere.  The fireflies had gone home and the only sound I heard was the occasional hooting of an owl and a few members of Ember’s pack talking to one another.  Nibbler looked up at me, his eyes reflecting a sort of orange-gold from the fire that showed no sign of going out, and continued.

“I can be sort of stubborn sometimes,” he allowed with a small grin, “and I was determined that I wasn’t going to let anyone get the best of me for something that I hadn’t done.  Heck, I kind of believed that I’d be watched over by a certain deity since there was no way I thought He’d allow this to happen.  Yeah, sure.  I spent two days on a freezing, undressed concrete slab in a windowless blockhouse with a roof that had holes in it.  I kept thinking about what happened to Nellie and if I was going to end up in some hole in the ground like she did.  That bugged me more than anything because I knew it’d mean I’d be alone forever and ever if I ever had that happen.”  He stopped building the fence and stared at me full on.  “What about that, is she scared to death because she’s all alone?”

“Course not.  If she were, she wouldn’t know about how you help us.  Since she does, then it just proves she ain’t there any more.”

He pondered on that for a moment and then nodded and continued on the fence.  “Anywho, after the second day of burning and freezing and having nothing to eat but moldy bread and muddy water, something he said was part of scripture for ‘realignment’ although I don’t remember ever reading nothing like that, I decided I’d had enough.  It took me most of a day and a night, but after a bunch of scratching and punching and stuff I found a weak spot in one of the walls, nothing more than a lose board, really.  It took a lot of pounding before I managed to get it out.”

“Weren’t you scared that they’d hear you?”

“Nope, remember I told ya ‘bout that woman that used to show up?  This was far enough away from everything that she wouldn’t find it I reckon.  Plus I didn’t do any of the real pounding ‘til it was late at night.  They never came out after the coyotes started yelping at night.  So I finally got the board out and managed to squeeze through it, sort of like the way that I hear you manage to get out through your trapdoor.”  I figured I was going to have to talk to Tig about spreading that story around; it was bad enough that the rest of the guys knew it.  He didn’t have to tell the Island about it.  “So I’m all scraped up and bleeding and I realize that I’m standing in the middle of a plains night with it freezing and the wind blowing in my underwear.  Do you have any clue how hard it is to wrap up in wheat?  Especially wheat that don’t exist?”  I shook my head no.  “I thought about trying to sneak back in the barn, but didn’t figure I’d get too far doing that.  So I decided the only way to keep warm was to run.  I started off across the field, having no clue where I was headed for, but knowing only that I would be headed away.  Almost worked too.”

“What happened?”  I couldn’t help it, I had to ask even though we weren’t supposed to.

“After I’d run across that field and a couple of others, I saw some light so I headed towards it.  Turned out to be another farmhouse.  Probably the only farmhouse in the world that didn’t have a clothesline outside that had clothes hanging from it.  I stood in back of the house not sure what to do since there weren’t any lights on.  I was sol cold I couldn’t stop shivering and the way the sky looked, it was going to dump a whole bunch of rain or something worse pretty soon.  I tried to get in the barn, but it was locked up tight.  I finally decided to pound on the backdoor figuring anything was better than freezing to death.  After a few minutes the door opens and this guy is standing there with a shotgun pointing at me.”  Nibbler gave a tiny grin.  “Reckon I’d have done the same thing if I’d been in his shoes.”  The grin vanished almost instantly.  “He heard me out and lowered the gun and brought me inside.  They gave me a blanket to wear and some cereal and then the guy looks at me sort of sad and tells me that he’s sorry as he can be but he gotta take me back.  I tried to get away, but some other guy grabs my arm and well, long and short of it is they take me back.  Never did find out why either, that bugs me almost as much as everything else.”

“When I got back, he beat me so bad I could barely stand.  They put me in the basement of the farmhouse for a few hours and then he took me back to the blockhouse.  Only this time they have these chains or whatever bolted into the wall with these manacles attached to them.  Not exactly sure where that’s listed in the Bible either, but it was ‘necessary’ according to him.  I couldn’t reform and stronger steps were needed.  Yeah, right.  I got pretty loopy for awhile, he still only gave me stale or moldy bread and muddy water to drink, and I kept thinking someone was watching over me and was going to help me. Didn’t happen, though. After a couple days I decided that I wasn’t ever going to be protected, saved, looked after, or anything else. There was only one thing I could figure out to do and that was end it all. Everything. The shackles were bolted up towards the roof, I guess they figured that would keep me from miraculously unscrewing the chains from the wall or something. Since they were so high up, there was a lot of excess chain and so I started wrapping it around my neck. I knew it would take long for me to go somewhere else. I was scared to death about ending up in a hole by myself with never anyone else to ever talk to again but even that didn’t seem important by that time.”

I sat there listening to Nibbler. My eyes were leaking like they always do but it didn’t bother me near as much as it normally does. Even though these things had happened who knows how long ago, I wanted to strike out and do something to make things right because in Nibbler’s case they had been so wrong. We’d all been wronged, but this was a new level of horror that I hadn’t even been able to imagine.

“That’s when Peter showed up. I still don’t know how he got into the blockhouse. Maybe he didn’t, I don’t know. All I knew was he asked if I wanted to escape and I said yes. There ain’t a whole lot to tell after that.” He populated the homestead he’d made with the twisted grass people, spreading them among the hut and outbuildings and fences he’d created. “Faith, trust and pixie dust is what saved me, but it wasn’t faith and trust in what the ‘real’ world was offering, it was what Pan offered. He ain’t got no halo on his head, but he’s the most angelic thing I ever run across in my life.” He flashed a quick grin, “You don’t necessarily need to let him know I said that, either. He thought I was crazy, cuz I wouldn’t let him take me anywhere ’til he took me to a payphone and I called the state mounties and told them about that place. Don’t know if it did any good or not, I sure wasn’t going to stick around to find out, but I figured it gave them a chance.” He swept the little homestead he’d made away with his hand.

“So I got here and figured as messed up as most of the ones who end up here are, that the last thing they need to do is go onto the next adventure by themselves and the rest is history… or current affairs I guess.” He stopped and looked a little confused for a moment. “I don’t know why I told you that story, Furball. It’s one that really don’t need telling at all and half the time I don’t even remember it, least that’s what I tell myself.” The confused look became puzzled. “What was it you asked me anyway?” I thought about it and then shrugged. I couldn’t remember either, but it didn’t seem important whatever it was.

“I’m tired, Cubby,” he said with a huge yawn.

“So lie down and go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.” I sliced the air with the wooden sword and put a mock expression of fierceness on my face. I’m sure neither one fooled him at all

“That would be groovy, Cub. I think I’d like that a lot. If any of them wander by,” he said pointing towards the field, “just tell ‘em everything’s okay. They’ll understand.” He curled up to the base of the tree and within a few minutes I heard the sound of his regular breathing. I stood watch for the rest of the night and wasn’t even scared when I was joined by a bunch of less substantial watchers.

Troll Raid 7-The Ending

I lay there and actually thought about it for several minutes, trying to remember what had happened.  I gently shook my head, afraid that if I did it too hard, the headache would come back.  “No fun,” I said quietly thinking about Ursa and whatever had been in my head.  “Is Ursa okay?”

Her smile didn’t diminish a bit, which was a good sign.  “Back,” she declared, got to her feet as though she were a gymnast, and skipped out the flap of the tent.  The sight of seeing a troll skipping was one that would always be strange to me, but I was glad they did.  It made things better, somehow.  I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of the bits and pieces I remembered from the river.  I must have fallen asleep once more because when I opened my eyes again, it was Odin who was sitting next to the pallet.  She gave me one of those wise, smirking looks that I had gotten used to from trolls.

“Back awake from there?”

“I guess,” I said.

“Paining?”

“My side stings a little, but that’s it.”  I didn’t feel the need to check things out yet, but it felt as though Roo had done some messing with my injuries.  I suddenly wanted to start bawling.  Not because of what had happened to me, or even Ursa, but because of the stuff Roo went through.  Neverland was the best place anywhere, even with the pirates, but it was just as unfair as a lot of other places were.  “Ursa?”

“Small bear do good. Happy-sad but not before like same.  Make feeling worth and see that forgiven happens, littermate safe not lone.”

My mind spun as I tried to get it around what Odin said, but after a couple of false starts I thought I understood what she was saying.  “That other voice, the one in my mind…?”

“Death closing, thing mixed up easy when mind looking for escape.  Self talk outside, do same in.  Happen?  Matter you?”

I closed my eyes again, as I wondered how the heck she had found out that I talked to myself.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t been doing that in the troll camp, but remembering stuff wasn’t my strong point.  As she said, it didn’t matter all that much as long as Ursa felt better about things.  “What about you guys?  I mean, I lost the flag and now…”  I wondered if coming close to drowning caused everyone to suddenly stop completing sentences.

“Like that lot why?”

“Huh?”

“Fault you for bad, not good.  Think what when happen?  Bad thought self even true not?”

“Forty-seven,” I said, nodding wisely.  I was too tired to try and untangle what she’d said but figured I could play with it later when I couldn’t sleep one night.

She looked at me and did her own wise nod.  “Mix.  Gone flag lost us so out tossed.  Bad not happen.  Tribe of you become.  Pirate fight maybe but not fuzzy like same.”  It wasn’t quite as hard to unknot the fact that having lost the ‘game’ by not capturing the flag, they had been declared misfits and were now on their own.  It sounded as though they were going to become sort of like us Lost Boys, but without the animal pelts.  I was sure tat they wouldn’t have any problem but I still thought it was another version of ‘unfair’.  “Sleep eat.”  So I did.

A week later, we went home.  It took that long for me to be able to walk on my own and not have to listen to Stumble complain about the possibility of having to carry me.  To be fair, he said the same about Tigger who’d ended up with a concussion during the last battle.  He and his twin went through Tig’s decisions about a zillion times and Leo finally told him he couldn’t have done any better.  Tig’s grin was so bright that it threatened to drown out the sun.  I was still trying to figure Ursa out.  I never told him about the voice that may or may not have been sharing my skull with me while I was trying to breathe water, but did thank him for saving me.  Predictably, he didn’t take any credit for it, but something had changed within him.  He wasn’t as hesitant about things like he had been and was a lot more laid back than he had been.  He still built his old house in the sand, but nearly as frequently as he had been and he let the waves take it now instead of destroying it himself.  I hoped it was a good sign.  The tiny bit of pixie dust remaining went to the trolls who supposedly took up with some of the Punk Unicorns in the North Wood.  I hope at least one of them is still skipping.

Troll Raid 6

I looked at the troll laying there on the ground with her eyes closed.  Her skin was a sickly gray and there was blood all over the place but she was still breathing.  “Fix her, Cubby,” Ursa demanded as he came to stand next to me.  “You need to do something.”

“But don’t…” I started to ask if the trolls didn’t have their own healers.  I was scared enough when Roo had me work on one of the boys.  The thought of working on a troll and doing something wrong terrified me.

“No healer for thing like this and not here if did,” Odin said, apparently figuring out what I was going to say.  “Not way thing happen if done.”

I looked down at the troll.  Her eyes were still closed but she’d started to whimper very softly.  My eye fell upon the ribbon that was still wrapped up in her hair and I dropped to my knees next to her.  I rolled the sleeve of my pelt down and started wiping the blood away with my arm.  The pelt arm became crimson almost instantly but wiping the blood away revealed that things might not be as bad as they originally looked.  Tig ran up with my backpack and I was able to dig through it to use something other than my arm to finish wiping the blood up.  There was a ragged cut running down here side from which most of the blood had come from.  I stared at it, watching it ooze blood, and froze once again.  “You can do it, Roo says you’re one of the best,” Tig said as he gave me a light shake.

Looking at Odin, I asked if it would violate some sort of taboo and she shook her head.  “If can do, grateful.”

Mentioning Roo’s name had brought everything together.  I started asking for stuff and Ursa, Tig and Odin brought me stuff.  I did what I could before sitting back on my heels and sighing.  “That’s the best I can do,” I said to no one in particular.  I’d had to stitch up the cut but had ended up having to use a needle that was for sail work rather than skin stitching.  I’d had a couple of regular needles with me, but they just wouldn’t work.  The sail needle had done the job, but in a very ugly way.  Ursa had ended up taking the ribbon out of her hair and dismantling it to threads that were heavy enough to hold.

“She wake up?” Odin asked, examining my handiwork carefully.

“I hope so.  I just don’t know.  I think everything should be okay.”  She was still breathing and all her wounds had been closed or bandaged.  Somewhere along the way she had gotten a huge lump on the back of her head, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it except keep my paws crossed that her skull was as thick as mine.

“How come that vermin hit her after she crossed the marker?” Tig yelled.  “She got past it.  She was supposed to be safe.”

Odin didn’t quite shrug.  “Not happen to hit after pass but do occur,” she said darkly.

“So who do we complain to?”  Tig seemed a little surprised that there wasn’t already a delegation getting ready to head to whoever oversaw this ‘game’ we were playing.

Odin looked confused.  “To complain?  No.  If happen, happen.  Deal with self way to go from cub.”

“But it’s not fair,” Tig wailed.  “How can they be allowed to do that?  If the marker means they can’t hit on the other side, why do they?”

Odin stood there as if trying to figure out how to answer Tigger.  It wasn’t because she was slow or didn’t understand what he was asking, I think it was because she didn’t understand the concept of complaining to someone else about what had happened.  I don’t know if anyone was watching what was going on or if the other team would be punished for what they had done, but it was apparent no one else would interfere.  “They know not right,” she finally answered.  “Pack gets hurt for it beyond maybe but risk take if do what not right.”  It was obvious she wasn’t happy, but she accepted what had happened as something that did occur.

Tig looked as though he wanted to yell, protest or take his club and destroy something.  It was seldom that I’d seen such a furious expression on his face.  He stood there practically quivering in indignation before he calmed himself.  A slow smile formed on his face that was almost as bad as the fury that he’d shown just a moment ago.  “Okay, if that’s the way they want to play, I’m sure I can come up with something they’ll have fun with.”

No one was paying any attention to me, so I stood up and wandered a little way into the woods.  When I figured I was far enough away, I threw up behind a tree and then moved over to another one, sat down and shed a few tears.  I wouldn’t say it was actually crying, but the circumstances behind what had happened along with the glimpse of the ribbon in the troll’s hair had affected me a little.

There was a rustling of leaves and brush and I looked up, wiping my eyes, to see Odin approaching.  “It is okay?” she asked me.

“I dunno,” I said, sounding a bit frustrated.  “She should be, but there won’t be any way to tell ‘til she wakes up.”  If she wakes up, I silently added to myself.

“Droista, no.  You be right?”

I looked down at the ground.  I wasn’t, but there wasn’t anything that could really be done about it.  I could say how unfair things were, but saying it wouldn’t change anything.  “I’m okay.”

She sat down right next to me.  “Think no okay.  Believable worry things today and past and next.”  I had to puzzle through that one for a moment before shaking my head.  She patted my leg with her hand.  “Not other sad.  Worry over all.”

“It’s just that she, and you, shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that.  I mean it’s bad enough worrying about pirates gutting us Lost Boys.  I’d hate to think that I’d have to worry one day about Leo and Tig trying to kill me cuz that’s how they were supposed to move forward or something.  You should be playing tag or follow the leader or something like that.”  I scrubbed furiously at my eyes that were threatening to overflow.

Odin shrugged her massive shoulders and grinned at me.  “Thing different for different ones.  We play but not long.  Not even you play ever after even if stay young.  Right?”  I had to admit there were a lot of times that we did stuff that was totally opposite of playing, but it still bothered me a lot.  “You do lot stuff from here,” she said as she pointed to her chest.  “Too we do but also know stuff be hard and follow as well.  You stay way, survive good, help them.  Everything work way supposed to.  Promise.”  She patted my leg again before getting up as gracefully as Ursa does and starting to walk away again.  She paused, turned back and said, “If talk, let know,” before continuing on.

It wasn’t too long that I sat there before Ursa and Tig came to find me.  They both were aware of what normally happened to me after I did first aid stuff involving a lot of blood or fighting pirates.  I let them know I was okay and that nothing unusual was going on, but Ursa kept giving me weird looks.  Not like he was upset or something, but like he was trying to figure something out.  They led me back to the camp where everyone was discussing what had happened.  I was pleased to see that the troll who’d been flattened was walking around as though nothing had happened, although I felt a little guilty that I had bailed before she woke up.  When she caught sight of me, she grinned as she skipped (yes she was skipping) over to me and caught me up in a huge hug that caused my ribs to creak and my face to get very warm.

“You fix,” she declared as she released me.  “Thank!”  I told her that she was more than welcome while trying not to get too choked up about it.  It seemed like everything was causing that lately.  She gave me another rib-crushing hug before going off to rejoin the group she had been with.

“You did good, Furball,” Tig told me.  “I have a feeling things may be different between us and trolls from now on for a whole lot of reasons.”  I shrugged since I would have helped regardless, but was still pleased to catch praise from Tigger.  I liked the trolls, so I was hoping his words turned out to be true.  Sometimes Peter could be sort of strange about such things, though.  I figured it would probably be worth a shooting star wish to help things along.

For the next three days we tried various strategies of Tigger to attempt to capture the ‘flag’ of the other team.  There wasn’t a whole lot he could do, because Odin demanded strict adherence to the troll’s tradition, even though the other team wasn’t coming close according to her.  Most of the trolls had bumps, scrapes and cuts.  I’d had to stitch up Tig’s arm twice, was pretty sure that Ursa had a cracked rib or two, and I was limping.  All of us were covered in bruises of various shades of yellow, green and blue. 

Tig had gone halfway across the bridge and met Leo once and let him know what was going on.  They weren’t doing much on the other side, but apparently had had several rousing games of tag with the wolves while they waited for us to be finished.  Tig was in a jolly mood when he came back, so it appeared he’d received his twin’s approval for what he’d been doing so far.

Living with the trolls was pretty interesting too.  Tig learned a bunch of new games that he was able to bend, trample, and reconstruct the rules for.  Odin told us a lot about some of their customs and beliefs as well as their history that she remembered.  Trolls were fearsome, but mainly just wanted to be left alone to do their thing.  The few times that trolls and Lost Boys had clashed in the past were considered more of a game to the trolls than it had to us.  I’d finally gotten up enough nerve to join the troll pile at night and found it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be.  I even managed to forget blueberries for a few minutes while eating the trolls’ waybread.  It was also pretty cool not eating stew every single day.

It was obvious on the final day of the trial that Odin and Tigger had decided to pull out all the stops.  The previous day we hadn’t made an attempt on the ‘flag’ but instead spent it sort of licking our wounds.  My leg hadn’t gotten any worse, but it wasn’t any better either and I wouldn’t be doing any galloping anytime soon.  Tigger looked as though he’d been run through a drum with a bunch of rocks.  Ursa had a black eye and I’d ended up putting some stitches in his foot, of all places.  Fortunately it was on the top of it so it didn’t affect his movement much.  The trolls were in even worse shape.  There wasn’t one who didn’t have a ton of bruises, scrapes, cuts, and tears.  I’d had to remove three fingers from one of them and had been having nightmares about it every night since then.

The final day was cloudy and rainy causing the path that led to the other camp to become a sheet of mud.  Ursa and I were talking about nothing in particular when Tig and Odin came up.  “There’s a new plan,” Tigger declared, squatting next to where we were sitting.  Odin remained standing and kept looking around as if she thought someone might be spying on us or something.  “We’re going to blow the trombone in a few minutes.”  Odin grunted at Tig’s word for the horn but remained silent on the subject of disrespect.  She’d dressed him down before with no result.  “After we sound it, we’re going to wait here for a few turnings of the glass.  Everyone except you two and Belrhonda.  You’re going to go through the woods and approach the enemy and then wait.  The rest of us are going to go up the path after awhile and meet the enemy head on.”

“Then what happens?” Ursa asked.

“The other trolls should end up meeting us about halfway towards their camp.  We’re going to feint into the woods so they’ll think we’re trying to get around them and follow.  We’ll lead them far enough off the trail that you three will be able to drag the ‘flag’ back to our camp.  It shouldn’t be too bad since it’ll slide in the mud and both of you are the strongest of us, so once you get it moving, it should be okay.”  He held out a harness that looked as though it was equal parts hide, rope, and some other unidentifiable materials.  “This will help you drag it.  Easy, right?”

“Sure,” I declared.  “Easy as pie, but not blueberry.  More like peach.”  I shook out the harness.  There was what I assumed were straps for Ursa and me to put over our shoulders and around our middles.  Those straps merged into a large circle made of straps that must go over the ‘flag’.  Yeah, real easy.  I collapsed it and stuffed it in my backpack.

Tig looked at me as thought I’d lost my mind.  I seemed to get that look a lot.

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

“Blueberry pie is a lot easier than peach pie.  You just pour the blueberries in and it’s done.  With peach pie you gotta peel them and then get rid of that thing in the middle and cut them up.  Apple pie is even harder because the skin isn’t fuzzy so you can’t get a grip on it.  I thought everyone knew that.”

“Only a furball like you,” he said, grinning and giving me a punch in the arm.  It landed on a bruise and I winced.

Odin turned towards Ursa, her face even more serious than normal.  “Chore for you to keep small bear undamaged even over all.  Make sure not broken.”

“Hey, I can take care of myself,” I said, a little upset that this person I respected thought I needed a babysitter.  She completely ignored me as if I hadn’t said a word.

“Most task important happen you do.  Belrhonda do some help as you order but your task main.”

Ursa looked as though he wanted to say something and I knew he was remembering the last time someone had given him such a chore.  It sounds like a cliché to say his expression was ‘haunted’, but that’s the only way to really describe it.  He shook his head, looked down at his feet and mumbled something that I couldn’t make out.  I opened my mouth to say something and it was Tig who stopped me.

“Don’t even think it, Furball.  There’s a reason for everything that’s going to happen today,” he looked at Odin, “or so I’m told.  Ursa will be in charge and you follow everything he tells you.  Okay?”

I nodded, a sullen expression on my face.  I didn’t care that Ursa was in charge.  Heck, I sure didn’t want me to be in charge.  I was more concerned about this task he’d been given.  I jumped as the horn sounded behind us, signaling our start to attempt to grab the ‘flag’ once more.

“You’re up,” Tig said.  “All you’ll need is your clubs and the harness so you won’t have to take anything else.  Be as stealthy as possible,” I’m sure he was looking at me when he said that, “and good luck.  We’ll do everything we can to throw them off your trail.”

Ursa and I grabbed our clubs and I put my backpack on and we started into the woods.  We were joined by Belrhonda who turned out to be the troll I’d stitched up on the first day.  She grinned at seeing me, gave me a crushing hug and demanded, “Fun, yes?”  She didn’t seem to expect an answer as we started to make our way through the woods.  I pondered on the plan that Tig had come up with.  It was wonderfully simple, but at the same time I couldn’t help but wonder if it was too simple.  Trolls were definitely creatures of habit and the other team was way overconfident, but did that mean that they wouldn’t leave anyone to guard the ‘flag’ when they took off down the trail towards our opposing force?  I asked Ursa about it and from what he’d gathered from his conversations with Ursa and the trolls’ ways he thought there was a good chance no one would be there when we arrived.

“Ya know, you don’t have to take care of me?” I hesitantly mentioned as we bulled our way through the woods.  We were far enough from the trail that we couldn’t see it and it was obvious no one had wandered to the other camp off the trail this way before.  We’d had to backtrack a few times and all of us had added a few scratches to our collection.  I wondered if I’d have to replace the bear pelt by the time this whole thing was done.  It was looking decidedly ragged even by my standards.

Ursa looked at me and I took a step back, tripping over a fallen log, at his expression.  A piece of the harness dug into my back through the backpack.  “You think that would be perfect, don’t you?”  The gentleness in his voice was at complete odds with the furious expression on his face.  “You just wave your arms and say ‘don’t worry about anything’ and that’s going to make everything okay no matter what happens.  Is that it?”  He was standing over me and I wondered if I could learn the ability to sink into the ground in a few seconds.  Belrhonda was looking at both of us frowning, but didn’t do anything else.  Trolls didn’t get involved in discussions between other trolls unless it was a pack issue, which this clearly wasn’t.

“I didn’t mean that at all, Ursa.  It’s just that I don’t want…” My words came to a dead stop.  What I wanted to say was that I didn’t want to bring back old memories or have him beat himself over the head if something happened to me that he couldn’t do anything about.  I also knew there was no way I could say anything like that.  “What I mean is that you’re always looking out for me.  You have since you got here.  I just meant that ya don’t gotta do anything special.  We’ll take care of each other just like all of us do.”

“It’s not that easy,” Ursa said.  His words were still soft and his expression angry, but not the fury of before.  I tried to figure out what I could do or say to try and make things better but was interrupted by a growling roar from somewhere in the woods.

Belrhonda looked into the woods, away from the direction of the river.  “Fast go now. Lemur pay not attention to troll, devour small bear whole.”

The change of expression on Ursa’s face was so sudden and confused that I came close to bursting out laughing.  “Lemurs?” he asked me.

“Don’t ask me.  Maybe it doesn’t translate the way it should.”  The growling roar came from the woods again and Ursa helped me up to my feet.

“We need to talk about this later.  It’s not going to go away.”  He brushed the leaves off my backpack as I wondered what wasn’t going to go away.  He was a lot more confident since we’d begun this whole thing than he had been before, but he was also angrier and sadder seeming.  I wondered if the trade-off was worth it or if I was concerned for reasons that had to do with him and not with me.  My head started to hurt a little.

Whatever a lemur on this part of the Island was, it didn’t show itself and we didn’t hear anymore sounds from it.  We pressed on and after forever reached the outskirts of the other team’s camp.  “There’s no one around,” Ursa whispered.  All three of us stood there waiting for something that didn’t occur.  The ‘flag’ was in the middle of a bunch of tent looking things, just sitting there.  The sides of the tents were raised, so it was easy to see nothing was hidden in them.  There wasn’t anything else in the camp big enough to hide a troll.

“Do ya think it’s a trap?” I whispered back.  We both turned to look at Belrhonda.  She sniffed the air and looked around again.  The woods came around the camp, but with the exception of the trail and a smaller path by the river, it didn’t look like anything had forced their way through the trees and brush surrounding the place.

“May yes, may no,” Belrhonda said after a few more checks.  “Not usual but happen once.”  This time it was Ursa who got stared at.

He looked at us, back to the camp, and back at us again.  “You cover us,” he told Belrhonda.  “We’ll get the thing hooked up and started moving.  You watch to see if anything comes out and give a yell.  Stay hidden for now and come out after we get moving.  Belrhonda nodded and watched as we emerged, our clubs in the ‘guard position’ if such a thing existed.

The ‘flag’ was a major disappointment for something that people had died over.  It was about up to my chest, vaguely triangular in shape and looked like a zillion other smaller boulders I’d seen in my life, both in the ‘real’ world and on the Island.  I dropped the pack off my back and grabbed the harness out of it.  It fit the ‘flag’ as if it had been tailored to it.  I gave Ursa one set of pulling straps and I took the other.  Ursa’s was snug.  I felt like I was being cut in two, mine was so tight.  I swore for the millionth time that I’d cut down on blueberries, waybread, even stew.  Ursa glanced over at me and grinned.  That made me inordinately happy.  He counted to three and we struggled to move.  Nothing happened.  Belrhonda came out of the woods, continuing to look everywhere, and joined us.  We tried again with the troll pushing and moved the ‘flag’ a few inches.

“Hang on a second,” I said.  “Move back towards the rock with me,” I told Ursa as I started towards it.  There wasn’t enough give in the harness that I’d have been able to get all the way back to the rock without moving Ursa, and that wasn’t going to happen.  He complied and I rummaged through my pelt pocket looking for leftover pixie dust.  I pulled together about a thimbleful and dumped it on top of the ‘flag’.

“Aw, c’mon Cub.  Do you think it’s going to have happy thoughts and take off through the air or something?”

I shrugged as I moved back into position.  “I dunno.  If I were a rock, I’d probably have happy thoughts that no one was trying to gut me.  It’s worth a shot.”  Ursa grinned again and took up the slack on his side.  With Belrhonda pulling, we began to move the rock.  I don’t know if it was the pixie dust or just the thought of it, but the rock slid easier.  It wasn’t ‘flying’ type easier, but it didn’t feel like we were pulling all its weight this time.  We were able to move forward at a steady walk.  We tried running, but that seemed to cause it to bog down and make it both harder to pull and slower, so we resigned ourselves to the walking pace.

You can only be scared to death of things for so long, especially when pulling a rock.  I started to get bored by the time we were out of sight of the camp and was stupidly letting my mind begin to wander; trying to figure out what to do about Ursa, about the time I figured we were almost halfway between the two camps.  There wasn’t any yelling or screaming or any other warning.  In an instant three trolls I’d never seen before came rushing from the woods.  Two were wielding clubs that were about as big around as a small tree trunk.  The third was slashing with a sword.  It wasn’t a wooden one either.

Naturally the two wooden club wielding trolls went after Belrhonda and Ursa.  I’m not sure why they thought I was the one who needed subduing with a sword, but he was racing towards me at full speed.  I managed to grab my club and got it up just in time to block a swing that would have probably taken my arm off if it’d connected.  The block threw him, or possibly her, off balance and I glanced around to see how the others were faring.  Ursa had managed to slip out of his half of the harness and was doing well defensively and offensively with his troll.  Belrhonda ‘unzipped’ the latest ribbon from her hair and used it to trip her troll with it before jumping on top of him and swinging with her club.  It looked as though she was using her teeth too.  The troll I was facing made two more lightning-fast swings towards my throat and my thighs with the sword, both of which I managed to block, the last one barely.  I noted as I blocked the second time that the sword made a weird sort of buzzing sound as the troll swung it.  He swung again and my left arm went numb as I held the club in both hands to block it.  It was only sheer luck that I was able to hold the club with my right hand

I tried to get out of the harness while blocking the blows, but it was too tight and spending the time to get out of it would mean I’d lose a body part or two.  I blocked another mighty swing towards my head and ended up holding two pieces of wood that suddenly seemed extremely small.  The troll grinned at me and spat on the front of my pelt.  I was panting and he wasn’t even winded.  I threw one of the pieces of wood at him and it bounced off his snout not appearing to do any harm to him.  The grin grew wider and he swung at my side as I tried to back away from him as much as possible.

I was trying to move to the side as much as I could, but being tethered to the ‘flag’ didn’t help any.  As I was scrabbling backwards, my paw hit the piece of club that had bounced off the troll’s face, and I stumbled backwards.  The sword swing still caught the harness, my pelt, my arm and my side, but instead of being a killing swing, it was only a severe one.  I didn’t appreciate the difference at the time, I guess.  I was still pulling backwards when the harness was cut and I went heels-over-head backwards.  I saw a bunch of red that I was pretty sure was coming from me before I tumbled over the river bank and into the river.

Normally when you put me in a body of water, I float.  It’s just the way it is.  This time, though, I started sinking towards the bottom.  My left arm didn’t hurt but I couldn’t move it either.  My left side, on the other hand, felt as though it was on fire.  With the pelt as soaked as it was, I knew there was no way I was going to get back to the surface.  The thought saddened me, but didn’t terrify me for some reason.  I wondered if anyone would miss me.  I felt my heart pounding as I continued holding my breath.  There was no sound at all, which I thought was really strange, but didn’t care enough to wonder why.  I hit the bottom of the river and sat there, my useless arm hanging by my side.  A few moments later a huge object gently dropped next to me that I recognized as the flag.  I wondered what was going on up there, but again didn’t really care that much.  I began seeing spots of darkness in the water and decided it was probably time to breathe water since the next adventure was beginning to look better and better than a prolonged contest to see how long I could hold my breath.  It might also help the killer headache I seemed to have developed since I fell into the river.

*Please don’t do that.  He’ll be along in just a very short time,* a voice said in my head.  It could have been me talking to myself except it was a very young voice.

“Who are you?” I asked aloud, forgetting that probably wasn’t a good idea and watching bubbles float in front of me towards the surface.

*I’m Bubba’s brother.  He needs my help and I need his.*

*Bubba?  Ursa?*

*Yes!  That’s what I call him.  This will help but make sure he’s okay, okay?*

I should have replied, but I wasn’t thinking real well and the thoughts that usually careen through the caverns of my mind seemed more interested in going to sleep.  I wanted to join them until something grabbed my hair and started yanking upwards.  That was mildly interesting to me and I remember waving goodbye to the ‘flag’ as it vanished from view.

Whoever it was pulling my hair managed to get my head above water.  They let go of my hair and grabbed my pelt to tow me to shore.  For a moment I panicked because I couldn’t remember how to breathe.  Nothing happened when I tried to inhale.  I vaguely wondered if trolls could give mouth-to-mouth with their tusks in the way.  Before I got too far with that thought, I coughed and starting breathing again.  Ursa, and somehow I knew it was going to be him, carefully dragged me up on the riverbank making sure my injured arm and side didn’t connect with the gravel.  Ursa’s face was worried and grave, expressions that I knew didn’t belong on it.  Very carefully I told him, “I’m not thirsty anymore.”  I also noticed the headache was gone.  Everything went black after that.

I opened my eyes and saw a roof above me.  It wasn’t so much a roof as the top of a tent, which was strange since we didn’t use tents and I don’t think the trolls did either.  I looked around and saw Belrhonda sitting next to me.  She saw my eyes open, grinned, and said, “Fun, no?”

Troll Raid 5

“Capture the flag,” Leo said quietly as Surefoot nodded agreement.

“Okay, so they grabbed a bunch of pixie dust so we’d come looking for it and they could force us to play a game.  That makes as much sense as anything I guess.  It sounds like something Tig would come up with.”

“Not me,” he told Roo.  “My rules only start once the game does.”  He turned to his twin.  “C’mon, are you really serious?  Did they do all this just so we’d play Capture the Flag?”

“Yeah, seriously, but it’s not a game.  It’s how they…” Leo thought about it for a moment.  “It’s how they sort of rank them in the pack or tribe or whatever they call it.  It’s a pretty big deal for them.  It can determine the rest of their life it sounds like.  They get put together as a team and how well they do is how they are looked at by the elders.  This is their third time trying and it’s sort of their last chance before whatever happens, happens.”

“What do ya mean by that?” I asked.  It had the sound of being something not very good at all and caused the hair on the back of my neck to rise.

“She wouldn’t say what it meant, but I got the feeling it was something like we’d be familiar with and there ain’t no lost trolls that I know about.”

“So they’re considered misfits just like us, then.”

“What’s this ‘us’, Teddybear?  The only thing I misfit is latrine duty.”

Leo ignored Stumble.  “Yeah, pretty much.  The whole group has been like disowned by their tribe.”

Roo puzzled on that for a moment.  “So where do we come in?  Even if we do play, we’re not trolls.  Wouldn’t that be considered cheating if we helped them?”

“Naw.  She, her name is Odin…”

“Odin?” Red interrupted.  “Isn’t that like a Viking god or goddess?”

“It’s a god, but she’s a different Odin.”  Leo rolled his eyes.  “Now if I can continue, Odin said that every team is allowed to use up to three helpes.  Most don’t use anyone, but it’s considered a mark of cunning or planning or something like that if you can force someone to help your team.  That’s why they just couldn’t ask us.  They had to steal the pixie dust so they could ransom our help for it.”

“Three?”  Roo questioned.

“That’s all that are allowed.  The rest will sort of have to stay here until the competition is done.  Odin said that no one would mess with us here and she’s going to leave two trolls with us to keep us company.”

“And make sure we don’t take off with the box?” Stumble suggested with a sneer.

“I don’t think so.  I got the impression it was just to make sure nothing happened to us while we were waiting around.”  Stumble snorted at Surefoot’s suggestion but didn’t dispute it.  I thought it sounded right, but I tended to want to look at a lot of things that way.

“And who won’t be waiting with us?” Roo asked.

“Ursa said he’d go and of course I’m going and,” he gave me an apologetic look, “I said I thought Furball would go because you and Ursa are kind of closer to troll size than the other guys.”

“No problem.  If I can help, I’m in,” I said before my head could stifle my heart.  I figured I would be nauseous in a little bit but could get some faux courage gathered up by then.  Plus I was irritated by the trolls’ outcast status.

Surefoot broke out in laughter.  “Troll size for sure.  Odin said she thought Ursa would make an excellent troll and asked if he wanted to become a troll.  She seems to think he has a lot of troll potential.”  Ursa glared at Surefoot before pursing his lips and staring at the ground.  It was almost as though he didn’t know what to say.

“You’re not going, I am,” Tig quietly told is brother.  “I’m better in the woods and do planning during battle better than you do.  Plus if something happens, you’re the leader.”

“Aw, what’s going to happen.  It’s only a game,” Red said.  “You’re making too big a deal out of it.  Yeah, maybe Cub gets a few more lumps on his head and Ursa gets a bruise or two while pulling trees out of the ground, but big deal.  It’s just another game.”

“Naw.  I told ya, they take this stuff really seriously.  Odin says she’s had three of her team killed during these things.  They figure if someone dies, they weren’t ready yet and they’re returned to the afterlife to be strengthened before being returned here.”

“It can’t be any worse than Stumble’s stew,” I said trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.  No one had said anything about possible death and I was glad I’d made my prior speech before learning about it.”

Before Stumble could start yelling, Tig grabbed his brother and pulled him back into the trees.  We looked away as an argument broke out between the two.  We couldn’t really hear what they were saying, but we definitely got the gist of what was being said.  There was a lot of yelling and arguing before the two returned.  Tig was wearing an expression that could be called grim satisfaction, although he didn’t look as though he’d won anything.  It was hard to tell if Leo’s expression was one of anger or sadness.  He looked at his twin before turning to us.  “Tig has volunteered to go with you guys and I’ve decided to accept.  It’ll be an opportunity for him to find out what really happens instead of thinking it’s all glory and fun.”  It was definitely an explanation for something that didn’t need explaining and we all went along with it.

Tig looked at me.  “You sure you’re okay with doing this, Cub?  You don’t have to, ya know.  It’s not that I don’t think you can do it,” he quickly added.  “It’s just that I want to make sure ya want to since me and Ursa sort of volunteered and you were kind of picked for it.”

“Hey!  I didn’t say he had to do it,” Leo erupted.  “All he had to say was he didn’t want to and I’d have asked someone else to do it.  I don’t make anyone…”

“It’s okay, Leo.  I know what was happening and I’d have volunteered anyway.  I’m in Tig, no worries.”

Tig nodded and grinned.  “I knew you were, Furball, just making sure.  I’ve got the biggest, meanest Lost Boys with me now.  How could I lose?  We’re going to show those trolls what it is to be messing with Pan’s crew.”  He looked around and took a breath.  For a moment he looked as lost as I felt most of the time.  “Okay guys, let’s go and see what’s what.”  He clapped his brother on the back who responded by giving him a hug and telling him he’d kill him if he didn’t come back alive.  Ursa and I grabbed our stuff and fell in behind Tig as he led us across the bridge.

Odin, followed by the rest of the trolls, walked over to us as we stepped off the bridge.  It was obvious who was in charge as the rest of the trolls hung back a little to watch what she was going to do.  It was equally obvious that they were ready to tear us limb-from-limb if we looked as though we were going to do anything they didn’t like.  Odin walked up to Ursa, poked him in the chest, and gave him a warm grin.  “I knew you would be back,” she said, causing Ursa to turn bright red.  She moved to me and tweaked my nose while looking me up and down.  “You will likely do, although you be sort of runtish for big as you be.”  I was a bit startled that her fingers were warm and smooth, relatively speaking.  Troll skin looked as though it would be hard as rock and about as warm too.  She took the wooden sword, hefted it and frowned but didn’t say anything as she gave it back.  She moved to stand in front of Tig.  “What happened to Lionheart?  His heart not ready to ‘play’?” she asked with a not unkindly smirk.

“It was too,” Tig said heatedly.  “I just thought it would be better if I came because Leo is the leader of us Lost Boys and he’s responsible for them that are still over there just like I’m responsible for these guys.”

Odin nodded approvingly.  “That be good.  Are the skills you have as good as he?”

Tig hesitated.  “Almost,” he finally said, surprising me.  “He’s my twin and we’ve been through most everything together and he’s taught me a lot.  More than a lot.”

Odin nodded again.  “That will serve, although you need be careful to keep from reach of paws and clubs.  I be thinking it would not take but a single blow to kill you.  You need to eat more like your comrades here.”

Tig ignored that, although he did shoot a grin in my direction, and got down to business.  “So Ursa and Leo told me that we’re going to help you play capture the flag but in a deadly sort of way?”

“Yes.  It is how we show we are…” she thought about it a moment, “coming of age.  It is the way we go from being cubs to being trolls.”  She looked down at the ground and frowned.  “We are those who do not fit and this is our last chance to grow.  That is why we look for ways to accomplish, why we take magic dust so we can get help for you.”

“From you,” Tig corrected.  “Ya know, all you had to do was ask us.  We’re always up for a good battle.”

The troll shook her head.  “Cannot ask, must force or help not true and consider cheat.”  She looked as though she was waiting for Tig to make some sort of sarcastic comment.

“I can believe that.  How come they consider you misfits, because you didn’t pass before?’  The troll looked confused.  “Um, because you didn’t grow before?”

“Just so,” Odin agreed.  “We be runts and look upon with bad honor from elder and other cub.  Say we hold back and prove because we not grow first time.”

“But I thought children… uh, cubs, were considered precious?  Why would they want to try and kill you?”  ‘Precious’ wasn’t the word I was looking for, but was understood.  Odin sighed and gestured us to sit as she dropped to the ground.  Around us the trolls followed her example and sat where they’d been standing.  They didn’t look as though they were quite as ready to tear us apart as they had earlier.  Taking a look to the other side of the river, I saw the rest of the guys setting up camp with a couple of trolls who’d appeared from somewhere.  Every now and then one of them glanced in our direction, but they didn’t appear to be overly concerned with what was happening on this side of the river.

When we had all settled down, Odin started talking.  “Troll and boy be different.  When we born we carry spirit inside us,” she thumped herself.  “Body only thing to carry it, not very important as inside.  Inside we also carry other spirit.  One who show us how do things and way.  When we become grow, it leaves.  If we die when trying to grow, both spirit return to Loktefenar.  The one because it did not teach that one well and the other because it needs someone else to teach.”  She paused, considering her words.  “When you are a cub you do not die you go for elsewhere but it is not as good as being grown because it is very lonely and you do not see comrades.”

“Do you know who the other spirit is?” Ursa asked.

“No.  It is like it is there in your head but is not.  It is sort of like your mind nudges you but not so you know it.  You think of things you would not think before, plan in ways unfamiliar, have ideas that come from an other.”

“You don’t know what’s happening when you’re in Lok…, Loktef…”

“Loktenfenar.  No, we are aware there but usually the memories do not come with us when we come here.”

Ursa stared down at his own feet and I wondered what he was thinking about.  He looked as though he wanted to say more, but Tig cut him off.  “Okay, so will they try to kill us?”

“They are not supposed to do that,” Odin finally said, although she didn’t seem too sure of it.  “A lot of accidents have happened with my pack.  More than should be but there is not a way to protest.  They are said of being careless and unsure causing not good defense.”  She paused as if to form words.  “Understand not a bad thing if cub killed during test, more not fortunate, considered way thing should be.  Not something I think but convenient.”  She shrugged.  “Not change I make though.”

“That goes for us too?” Tig asked.

There was another shrug.  “May be harder for you, little tiger.  Bears survive better,” she flashed a grin at Ursa, “but still danger to them.”

For the next hour or two Odin went on to describe what would happen for the next week or until we captured the flag, whichever came first.  If we failed to capture the flag, all the trolls would be outcast from their tribe, pack, or whatever it was.  It didn’t translate but wasn’t the same as Odin’s pack of cubs.  She didn’t go into any detail as to what happened to outcast trolls, but she really didn’t have to.  ‘Flag’ was another thing that didn’t translate well.  The flag, we were told, was actually a large rock type thing that apparently weighed a great deal.  It wasn’t a problem for trolls to carry it, but it might be a problem for me, Tig and Ursa.  Capturing the flag wasn’t enough, though, once gotten, it had to be carried about a mile to where we were at by the river.  We didn’t have a flag, so we could concentrate on capturing theirs.  Odin also told us that our camp was considered something of a base.  Once we left it, we were subject to attack but by tradition attacks would cease once we crossed the boundary.  I could see Tig just itching to make up new rules, but he actually did pretty well and didn’t say a word.

Odin went on to tell us that the way trolls normally captured the flag was through brute force.  There wasn’t a lot of strategy or subtlety used, but that usually straight-forward attacks were used.  There was a lot of teamwork which was considered the most important part of being a troll.  Ursa asked exactly who the other team consisted of and Odin told him it was made up of first years.  “They who were cub but no longer most recent.  They be those who think they need prove things,” she added in a bitter voice, her tusks practically quivering as she spoke.

As it started to become twilight, Odin and Tig discussed various ways to approach retrieving the flag.  It was pretty much decided that the trolls would provide the obvious, brute force misdirection approach while we would provide the stealth portion of things.  Odin said we’d make an attempt tomorrow so we could get a feel for what we were up against.  “We’ll just do the normal approach so it won’t be too bad and won’t try to get too far to begin with.”  That sounded like a good plan, but I wondered how the definition of ‘won’t be too bad’ differed between trolls and Lost Boys.  I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a good difference.

One of the smaller trolls had started a small campfire during the discussion and was busy cooking stew over it.  I stifled a sigh, wondering if I was going to be destined to eat stew the rest of my life.  The trolls didn’t use gourds but a sort of lumpy clay bowl to hold their stew.  Ursa and I were given huge bowls of the stuff while Tig got a much smaller one.  “Troll size portion for troll appetite,” the cook informed us as he gave us our rations.  It was highly spiced and was pretty good.  You could even identify most of the stuff in it, although I had no clue what the meat was.  It tasted good too and I decided not wonder too much what type of meat it was.  After everyone had finished and gotten things washed up and put away, something I wouldn’t have thought trolls would do—but then I hadn’t thought Lost Boys would either, a few of the trolls practiced fighting in groups.  Ursa waded in after the first scrimmage, joining Odin’s team along with a couple of other trolls.  He got a black eye for his efforts, but pretty much held his own.  Tig sat next to me and watched.  By the time I’d gotten rid of enough self-consciousness and doubt, they’d ended.  Trolls played rough but not to maim.  A few groups got together and I found myself sitting alone.  I wasn’t sure where Ursa had gotten off to.  Tig was talking to a couple of trolls, making exaggerated motions with his arms as he tried to explain something.  No one was paying any attention to me, so I wandered to a tall pine tree and started climbing.

Climbing pine trees might seem weird, especially with how often I managed to fall out of them, but it was something that usually calmed me down.  I climbed about halfway up the tree and gazed around.  There wasn’t a lot to see.  It was dark enough that the stars were starting to appear.  I could see a small portion of the river from where I was at, but couldn’t see what the other Lost Boys were doing because of the lack of light.  The North Wood was a shadowy form that stretched out in all directions as far as I could see.  I closed my eyes and listened to some frogs talking to each other over the sound of the river.  Below me there was the sound of rustling but I didn’t bother to look down.  I was pretty sure if it was pirates or an enraged orc, the camp would be in an uproar even if it had gotten darker.

“What brings you here, big bear?” a voice asked.  For a moment I thought it was Odin speaking to me before I heard Ursa answer.

“Getting the pixie dust back.”

“That bring you here, but what bring you to this place?  This location?  Everyone like you have a history.  I think you be still troubled by what that be.”

Silence greeted Odin’s statement as I figured it would.  It had taken awhile before Ursa had even hinted to me what had gone on and I was his best friend on the Island.  That was why I almost fell out of the tree when I heard Ursa start talking.  “I killed my brother.”  I almost tumbled out of the tree, this time on purpose, to start yelling that he hadn’t done anything of the sort.  He hadn’t killed his brother.  It wasn’t even his fault.  He’d just been a kid then and the whole thing was unfair.  I managed not to spring out of the tree or say anything, though.  I did wish I were someplace far away.

“And you did yourself?” Odin asked, sounding neither accusatory or shocked.

“No.  It was because I didn’t do something,” Ursa said, his voice conveying all the misery possible within him.  “I should have saved him but I couldn’t.  I wasn’t able to pull him out.  Then everyone yelled and screamed and… it was horrible.”

I sat there feeling a branch sticking in my back.  I’d heard the story before, but I didn’t dare move because I didn’t want Ursa to know I was up here.  “You try to save?”

“Of course,” Ursa said as though shocked that someone would even ask such a question.

“Then how be your fault?  How you know someone plan it so it happen that way and he die?”

“But that’s stupid.  Everyone loved him.  I know my parents wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to him.  If they did, why’d they send me away?  That’s just dumb.”  Ursa’s voice was on the verge of cracking and once again I had to stifle an impulse to end up at the bottom of the tree telling him it was nowhere near his fault.

“Stupid like blaming self for what not own fault?”  Odin asked.

“That’s different.  You don’t understand.”

“Or I understand that you don’t and you not admit?  Stop blaming self. Not what you did or didn’t do.  Sometime happens without reason.”

“I’m cursed forever,” Ursa said.  He started sniffling and then broke out crying.  I was stunned because he’d never really cried about it before that I knew of.  I was glad that he was crying but was just a tiny bit envious and jealous of Odin’s ability.  I sighed, but was careful to keep it inside of me.  Below I heard Odin comforting Ursa until the crying became hiccup type noises.  It wasn’t much longer until I heard them get up and wander away.

I stayed in the tree awhile longer, listening to the night noises and just thinking about stuff in general.  It wasn’t until I was buzzed a third time by an owl, or what I hoped was an owl, that I decided to climb down.  I was so distracted by stuff, that I managed to reach the ground without falling.  The trolls had an interesting way of sleeping.  They were all dog piled on top of each other by the campfire.  I watched as two more and Odin flopped on top of the trolls already there.  Ursa appeared and I watched as he hesitated before joining in.  Tig and I looked at each other.  “I don’t think so,” he said.  “You and Ursa might survive ending up on the bottom of that heap but all my bones’d be broke.”

Tig and I set up our sleeping spots by the fire, but far enough away that we wouldn’t be crushed by falling trolls.  It took me forever to fall asleep because I was too busy pondering what I’d overheard between Ursa and Odin as well as worrying about what would happen on tomorrow’s trial.

I woke up the next morning to find one of the trolls poking me.  She was one of the smaller ones, which meant she was bigger than me, and had a ribbon of some sort wound through her long hair.  “Up small bear, journey being and wait no one.”  I sat up, blinking the sleep out of my eyes, to find that everyone else was already awake and about.  She gave me a grin when she saw I wasn’t going to curl back up to sleep and skipped towards where the others were.  It was sort of odd seeing a troll skip but cool as well.  It was hard to tell what time of day it was since the sun was behind a solid layer of cloud.  It was also a lot chillier than it had been yesterday and I wished I’d brought something wrap up in while I slept.  I figured I might have to join the sleeping pile in the evening if it didn’t warm up any.

Following the skipping troll, I joined Ursa and Tigger who were talking to Odin and the big troll that had been by her side yesterday.  I gathered he was her lieutenant, sort of like Tig was to Leo.  They looked as though they could have been brother and sister, but then all the trolls had looked that way to me in the beginning.  I was starting to notice differences, other than size, between them now.  A couple had crooked tusks that looked awesome when they grinned.  Some had short hair and others long.  One’s face was decorated with some sort of dye or clay in lighting looking designs.  Ribbons were popular with male and female trolls.  They also laughed a lot.  Ursa handed me a piece of what looked suspiciously like waybread but tasted of honey when I hesitantly bit into it.  I wondered how the elves had managed to bleach all the taste out of theirs.

“Today be trial of seeing what things be for you,” Odin said as I devoured the piece of bread.  “It not be hard attempt to do capture but give you chance to see how things going.  You small tiger stay back of pack, look find things to plan, not become damaged.  You two little bear stay by Blenthirin, he make sure no one bash too badly.”

“How bad is not too badly?” I couldn’t help asking.  I had a feeling that being not too badly bashed had different meanings for trolls and for Lost Boys.

Odin burst out laughing and handed me another piece of the bread.  “Worry not as you would.  It be first time going this beginning and all know it test and real for first.  You be bruise possible but not bone snap.  You and other bear sturdy to take blow.  This one mak sure you safe too,” she told me, gesturing with her chin at Ursa.  He didn’t look at all happy with that statement, but didn’t say anything.  Blenthirin gave a yowl of deafening proportions that must have been a call to gather around, because within a moment the rest of the trolls surrounded us.  Odin spent a few moments chanting something that might have been a prayer, a morning greeting to her pack, or simply some sort of pep rally.  I couldn’t understand the words, but when she came to the end, everyone spoke the same line simultaneously and stamped on the ground.  Ursa hadn’t said the words, but he stamped as well.  For the next several minutes, Odin outlined what was going to happen.  She told us about the route that we’d take to the ‘enemy’ camp but emphasized that this was only a trial run to see what the opposing trolls would do and that it was being done so us Lost Boys could see what was going on.  I got the impression the first run was always this way as some sort of traditional thing.  The ‘flag’ was located what I guessed to be about five miles downriver from where we were.  A trail ran along the river between the two camps, but it wasn’t required that we use it.  We would this time, since we were just testing the defenses.

“First time run straight down path, see how far get,” Odin said with a toothy grin.  “Watch make sure that bears and tiger not get taken.  They be good luck for us believe it.”  She reached over and scrubbed the top of Ursa’s pelt flattening the pelt ears.

“Sword not allowed,” Blenthirin said as he pointed at my wooden sword and frowned.

“Wood, not steel,” Odin replied.

“Not allowed,” Blenthirin repeated stubbornly.  “Different. Need club or log.  You switch?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to, but it seemed like everyone had heard the conversation and they were all looking to see what I was going to do.  There was a reason I was going to regret doing it, I was sure, but I’d used a wooden club before at Leo’s urging so it wasn’t like it was anything new.  I nodded and went over to put the sword under my backpack.  When I got back, Blenthirin handed me what wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to call a small log.  It was only about a yard long, but it was very wide and I came close to dropping it, fooled by the way he handled it as though it weighed nothing.  I hefted it a few times and decided I would be better off trying to use it to deflect someone else swinging it at me rather than trying to swing it myself.

The mood of the group slowly changed from the almost picnic atmosphere of before to one that seemed a lot grimmer.  No one said anything, but the laughter and conversations were dying out and the trolls were gathering their clubs and looking down the trail.  They didn’t seem scared, or even nervous, but seemed more as if they were a little concerned about what was getting ready to happen.  A few mismatched pieces of armor were worn by some of the smaller trolls and there were a few shields.  I saw the girl that had woken me up, pick up a huge shield, with a storm cloud painted on it, as easily as I would pick up a gourd of stew.  I briefly wondered where the chainmail came from but the thought escaped as Odin picked up and blew some sort of horn.  It sent a shrill note crashing through the woods that echoed back at us several times.

“What’s that for?” Tig asked.

“Let know coming,” Odin responded as she tossed the horn towards a pile of trollish belongings.  “Sound first beginning day.”

“What if you didn’t blow it?”

The troll looked shocked.  “Have to.  Always do be fair.”

“Doesn’t sound like they’ve been real fair to you,” Tig said, getting that speculative look on his face that normally meant he was going to try and change the rules in some way.  He squelched the effort this time and stood waiting with the rest of us.

“We go,” Odin sang out and as a group we started down the trail.  I stuck close by Ursa and we were both shadowed by Blenthirin.  There were three or four trolls in front of us, along with Odin.  Several more were behind.  I had to chuckle at Tig.  A couple of times he tried to join us, but somehow found himself back in the last row of trolls each time.  They didn’t exactly pull him back or push him towards the rear; it was more a shifting in the flow of marchers that caused him to always end up where he’d started from.  It was the first time I’d ever seen Tig look confounded before.

The trail was all dirt and fairly wide, enough that five or six trolls could walk side-by-side on it.  The North Wood crowed in from the left side and the river bank was just beyond the right side of the trail.  We hadn’t gone but maybe 300 yards when Odin stopped us. She gestured for Ursa, Tig and I to join her and then pointed to a stone cairn that stood right next to the trail on the woods side.  “That boundary.  Beyond that can be gotten, this side no attack both ways.  All understanding?”  We let her know that we did.  “Keep remember, save your life maybe.”  I really wish she’d been grinning when she said that, but this was the most serious I’d seen her.  After she was sure we understood what she meant, she started us off again.  We hadn’t gone ten yards before Tig was at the back of the back again.

It had been perhaps close to a couple of miles, although I tend to overestimate the distance I’ve walked all the time, when Odin stopped us again.  “No sound from trees,” she explained to Ursa.  I listened and the only thing I could hear was the river next to us.  There’d been birds singing earlier, but I didn’t hear anything now.  I looked around but there was nothing to see that hadn’t been there earlier even though the hackles on my neck had started to rise.  I moved my club from resting on my shoulder to holding it in both hands.  None of the trolls looked overly concerned but you could tell they were ready for something.  After a few minutes went by, Odin shrugged.  “They think play us,” she said before starting off again.

Ahead of us the trail narrowed slightly with a lot of trees overhanging it.  Odin slowed significantly but kept moving towards it.  “Ready for battle,” she whispered in a rumble with a feral grin on her face, her broken tusk looking right at home in it.

That was all the warning we got.  One moment we were on the trail by ourselves and the next moment a wave of huge trolls was dropping from trees and streaming from the woods.  I could hardly believe that these were last year’s cubs.  The smallest one dwarfed Blenthirin.  It wasn’t their size, but the expression all of them wore on their faces that worried me, though.  It was a look of malicious glee.  They reminded me of some of the bullies I’d encountered in the ‘real’ world who lived just to hurt others and I was pretty sure they’d act the same as well.  They were dressed pretty much the same way our group was except all of them had shields and cone shaped helmets on.  None of them had armor, but they didn’t look like they really needed it either.  The clubs they were carrying looked a lot bigger than the ones we had, too.  Fair or not, I really wished I had my wooden sword.

There was a flurry of activity at the front of our group as the enemy met them.  I could hear the sound of clubs hitting other clubs, metal, and troll.  A troll from the other side lunged towards me and I just barely managed to stop the swing of his club with mine, causing both my arms to go numb instantly.  I staggered and dropped my club but fortunately, the troll had moved on to other targets.  Blenthirin moved in front of me and stopped another attack by hurling the other troll in the river.  I watched in awe as Ursa neatly disarmed another troll without using his club at all.  He moved so fast that his arms were a blur and the look of surprise on the attacking troll was priceless.  I dropped to the ground as a log came swinging past my head.  I didn’t even want to think of what would have happened if it had connected.  Lying on the ground was a lot less confusing than standing, although I was stepped on a few times.  I grabbed the club I’d dropped and managed to regain my feet in time to see Odin and Blenthirin hurl Ursa straight up in the air and watched as he landed on one of the other team’s trolls, knocking the troll to the ground and then into the river.  I turned around to see where Tigger was and saw him looking as though he were trying to get around the trolls who were supposed to keep him safe.  A few of the opposing team’s trolls were bunched back there and I noticed that Tig’s pelt hood had been pulled off his head.  Other than that, he looked like he’d managed to get through the battle unscathed so far.

A roar of sound came from the front of the battle, causing me to whirl around to see what was going on.  The sound had come from Blenthirin and apparently signaled a retreat because as one our side turned and started running back down the trail from the direction we’d come.  Tig ended up leading the pack with Ursa and I buried in the middle.  Next to me was the troll with the ribbon in her hair who’d woken me up and now trotting easily next to me.  She gave me a big grin and said, “Fun?”

“Sure,” I managed to gasp out between shuddering breaths.  For some reason I’d thought that running with a pack of trolls wouldn’t be that hard, but I could barely keep up.  The other team’s trolls were keeping up right behind us.  I couldn’t tell if we were outpacing them or they were simply hanging back.  I gave up worrying about it when, after several eternities, the cairn came into view.  The troll and I, who had ended up towards the back of the pack, behind Ursa, Odin and Blenthirin, looked at each other and laughed.  I was getting ready to say something smarmy when a shape came from behind us and tackled her.  I heard the sound of bone breaking as the bigger troll mauled her.  I froze for a moment before swinging my club as hard as I could at the troll.  He looked up and laughed as he stopped the club with one hand.

“You’ll be next,” he said as he pulled the club out of my hand and hurled it at Odin who’d turned and was starting back towards us.  He took another swipe at the troll with something that wasn’t a club and sure wasn’t made of wood before getting to his feet and flying down the trail.

Troll Raid 4

We steadily walked our way deeper into the North Wood, the trees growing thicker and blocking out even more of the light from above.  To me the woods themselves weren’t bad or evil; they were just wild and unexplored.  Whenever I could get Stumble to take a break from calling me names, he’d tell me about the Southern Forest as it existed before even Roo arrived.  He said that they’d been as wild and untamed as the North Wood was now but the arrival of the elves had supposedly settled them into what they were today.  There was still a wildness in the Southern Forest and some unpredictability, but it didn’t hold a candle to what could and did happen in the North Wood.  Red had a different opinion.  He figured that it was because more and more kids looked at the woods as a place to go around or an annoyance, rather than someplace to run wild and explore.  Since the tales said that it was their imaginations that played a large part in what the Island became, then the Island had compensated by taming the woods in the southern half of the Island and making the woods in the north end more wild and mysterious.  It was sad, but did make sense.

Now the North Wood was wilder than ever and all the dark stuff had migrated to it to take advantage of the fact.  I don’t think the wolves were scared of the wood; they just avoided it as something they didn’t need to deal with.  I don’t think we were really scared of it either, but there wasn’t a lot of reason for us to wander through it that we could normally think of.  The funny thing is that when we did enter the North Wood we always wondered why we avoided the place.  Even me, the biggest coward ever, felt sort of alive along with something else when I was in the wood.  Once we left, less than a day later we’d be avoiding the place again as someplace ominous.

“You sure this is the right way?” Surefoot asked, interrupting a discussion as to whether it was better to try and turn and stab a pirate chasing you or if it was better to try and trip them up.  My personal preference was to gallop even faster and failing that, jumping off the nearest cliff or climbing a tree.  Pirates tended to be bad at both.

“Sure I’m sure.  We wouldn’t be going this way if I wasn’t.”

“Really?  It’s just that I can’t help but noticing that the path is pretty much gone and it doesn’t look like you’re keeping track of anything.” 

Leo shrugged.  “I don’t have to.  Peter said we’d end up wherever it was we was supposed to end up at.”  Surefoot and Tig exchanged glances.  Whenever those types of directions were involved, it inevitably ended up with interesting things happening.  That would be interesting as in the way of the Chinese curse.

“I hate playing follow the leader when there ain’t no one leading,” Roo complained as he peered into the tree branches a score of feet above us. 

“Are you crazy?  That’s the best way to play it.  Then you ain’t gotta worry about if the leader is too chicken to go to neat places just begging to be looked into.”  Stumble leaned down, ripped a handful of moss from a tree trunk, and stuffed it in his mouth.  “We’d have never found this stuff if it we’d had a cowardly leader leading us.”  He took another handful of the stuff and ate it.  I looked at Red who was looking decidedly green as he watched Stumble scarf moss that was the grossest green color ever invented.  “We might have to grab a bunch of this on the way back for the stew pot.  I bet it’d do things to the flavor.”  Stumble offered some to Tig and Surefoot, both of whom declined.  I hoped that Leo would make sure we followed a different path out when we returned.

The trail vanished once more as Leo continued to lead us seemingly at random through the woods. “We’ll be where we need to be before the end of the day,” he confidently predicted whenever anyone asked him about where we were going. He admitted that he didn’t know where that place was but that it was getting closer as more time passed. I was sure he was right about that fact since I’d have been just as happy if we never reached wherever that place was.

“Did I do okay?” Ursa asked as he trudged alongside me. His earlier confidence seemed to have fled along with the unicorn herd, but I had a feeling it was just hiding under the surface.

“Course you did. Why would you think you hadn’t? I sure didn’t know you could fight like that.”

Ursa snorted. “I can’t. That was just a bunch of dumb luck and that she was way overconfident. I bet any of the others would have creamed me given half the chance. She just wanted to show off. I hope I never have to do that again.”

“How come you went up there and did that? Not that it wasn’t cool,” I added hastily at his crestfallen expression, “it’s just something I didn’t think you’d have considered.”

“You mean it’s something you wouldn’t have considered, Teddy Bear,” Stumble said, joining us. “Ursa would because ravens are a lot braver than stuffed animals. Don’t take it too hard, though. Not everyone can be an Ursa, especially when it comes to… urck!”

Stumble choked as Ursa grabbed his raccoon pelt hood and pulled him backwards. “You better take that back,” Ursa told him with a snarl, his normally placid brown eyes fierce and hard looking.

“Okay, okay, I take it back,” Stumble quickly said, although I was pretty sure he didn’t have any more clue than I did what he was supposed to be taking back. Ursa looked at him suspiciously before letting go of his hood. “Geeze, ya don’t have to get all upset. I was only kidding,” Stumble said, making a big show of rearranging the raccoon pelt. The bluster didn’t quite hide the look of concern and fear that ran across his face as he looked at Ursa. Stumble gave me a look that could almost be described as apologetic, although that would have been impossible, before dropping back to where Roo and Surefoot were intensely discussing something.

“You okay?” I asked Ursa. He was staring at the ground before his feet.

“Sometimes he goes too far,” he muttered, still staring down. “He thinks it’s funny, but it isn’t.”

I shrugged even though I knew he wasn’t looking at me. “Aw, you know, that’s the way Stumble is. He ain’t happy unless he’s getting under someone’s skin. He don’t mean nothing by it.”

Ursa looked at me and I was relieved to see the hard look had gone out of his eyes even though I wasn’t sure the wounded expression in them was much better. “He doesn’t know anything about being brave and what happens if you aren’t. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t brave because everyone knows you aren’t. Now if I’m not, something bad could happen again and it’s not fair.”

“Yeah, but…” I paused because I had no clue where to go to from there. Part of it was because I only had a hunch as to what he was talking about but was scared if I brought it up and I was wrong, I’d only make things worse. The other part of it was because while I knew I was craven, Ursa had never brought it up the way he just had and it hurt a little.

“It don’t matter. I need to go talk to Leo anyway.” He picked up his pace and left me hiking by myself. I sighed. Sure, I was being overly sensitive about it, but there were times I was overly sensitive about everything. It didn’t help that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo either. I shook my head, trying to figure out where that thought came from and exactly what that had to do with anything. It did manage to bring a half-grin to my face since it proved I was still nutsy as ever.

Nothing else of consequence happened for most of the rest of the day. My sensitivity rose to paranoia as Ursa avoided me the rest of the day. Not that he was actually avoiding me, but he never came back to talk or cut-up either. It had started to grow decidedly twilight-ish under the trees and Stumble began to ride Leo about his prediction of arriving before dark. Interestingly enough, Stumble kept an eye on Ursa as he made these pronouncements, although Ursa didn’t seem to care one way or the other about them. Leo patiently nodded and repeated that things would work out the way they were supposed to as he pointed out he’d said before the end of the day and the day hadn’t ended yet.

It was Tigger who held up a hand that caused us all to instantly freeze and go silent. Tigger move ahead out of sight for a couple of moments before returning to have a quiet discussion with his twin and Ursa. Leo waved us all forward and we quickly formed up around the three.

“The trolls are ahead where the trees open up at a river with a bridge. They’re on the other side and look like they’re waiting for us,” Tigger advised the rest of us.

“How many are there?”

Leo shrugged. “He wasn’t able to tell because there’s a lot of shadow and they keep moving around.”

“They know we’re out here,” Ursa said quietly.

“How would you know that?” Leo asked.

“They just do,” Ursa said vaguely. It wouldn’t be the first time Ursa knew something like that, but it always seemed a bit weird when he came up with stuff like that, no matter how often it had happened before.

“So what’s the plan?” Roo asked.

“If they already know we’re here and they’re on the opposite side of a river, sneaking up ain’t going to do much good. You think we can cross the river up or downstream?” Leo asked Tig.

“It’s not real wide, but it looks plenty deep and it’s flowing very fast. We might be able to find something if we search, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be nearby. I bet they chose this place for that reason.”

There were murmurs of agreement to that. Trolls looked dumb but when it came to trolls, looks were very deceiving. “I guess the best thing to do is just walk out and see what happens. We can defend a bridge as good as they can.”

“One other thing,” Tig added. “These are like dwarf trolls.”

“Dwarf trolls? What the heck does that mean?” Roo asked as he took the pack of his back.

“I couldn’t really tell,” Tig hedged. “I mean I could tell they were trolls, tusks and all. They’re big and look like they could tear your arm off, just like a normal troll, but they’re not as tall as most trolls are. They might be some new tribe we’ve never heard of before. They might even have magic.”

“If they had magic, why would they have stolen a bunch of pixie dust?”

“Why would you say they were magic anyway? Did they do anything ‘magical’?”

“Ya think that means they can fly and drop stuff on us?”

“They don’t need magic to fly, they got pixie dust.”

“But maybe they don’t know how to use it. Heck, even some of us can’t use it.”

“Even if they could, it’d probably take a lot of pixie dust to make a troll fly.”

“But they got a lot, remember? That’s what Leo said Peter said.”

“If they got magic to fly, they don’t need no stinkin’ pixie dust, do they? Or maybe they can vanish. How can we fight trolls that are invisible?”

“Are you nuts? We can fight a bunch of dumb trolls whether they can fly or they’re invisible.”

“What if they can fly and be invisible at the same time? Maybe that’s why they took the pixie dust, because they only have enough magic to make themselves invisible but not to fly. This way they can do both and drop invisible boulders on our heads when we ain’t looking.”

“That’s dumb. No one said they could make boulders invisible, just themselves. Plus they’d still need to lift them in the air when they was flying.”

“That’s what the pixie dust might be for.”

“But I thought they needed that to get invisible.”

“No pudding-head. They need that to fly.”

“I thought they could already fly without pixie dust.”

“So what would they need it for?”

“Hey!” Leo managed to attract our attention without yelling. The hubbub that was probably loud enough to hear a few miles away slowly died out. “No one said they had magic,” Leo reminded us. “And as Surefoot pointed out, it don’t matter if they do. We’re Lost Boys and we can take on anything.” Leo held up his hands to forestall the chatter of agreement that threatened to follow. “We’ll just go to our side of the bridge and see what happens.”

“This should be good,” Roo muttered as he started stuffing his pockets with bandages he pulled out of his backpack.

Each of us dropped our packs, grabbed our clubs and set out after Leo. It wasn’t long until the trees retreated and the river came into view. It was a good-sized clearing and would be a perfect place for camping if there weren’t a dozen trolls on the other side of a bridge that looked like a strong wind would blow it down. We walked to the foot of our side of the bridge and stopped to stare at the opposite end where the trolls stood around their side of the bridge watching us.

“They’re not dwarves,” Surefoot said. “They’re troll cubs.”

Calling a young troll a cub was something of an overstatement since the smallest one on the other side of the bridge was bigger than Ursa. Still, compared to a full-grown troll, they were ‘cub-sized’. The trolls were scattered across their side of the bridge, sitting and standing in three or four different groups. They were clothed in various pieces of hide and fur. A couple had shields and all of them had clubs or staffs that looked as though they’d been small tree trunks before their conversion to weaponry. Sitting about fifty yards from their end of the bridge, and unattended, was a wooden box or chest. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what it probably contained. There had been sounds of laughter and conversation that slowly died away as we’d appeared from the woods. Everyone turned to look at us, the stares curious rather than hostile, before the conversation and laughter quickly returned. Apparently, we weren’t considered a great threat.

“So now what?” Tig asked his twin in a low voice. “I think the original plan is sorta kaput now.”

Leo absently nodded as he continued to study the other side of the bridge. “They aren’t guarding that box real close, are they? I wonder if that’s a decoy or bait.” We’d seen that particular trick more than once on The Jolly Roger. After a few more moments, Leo let out a breath and shrugged. “Guess we might as well find out what’s going on. C’mon Sure, let’s see what happens, and keep your eyes peeled.”

“That expression is so dumb. It’s not like my eyes are bananas or something.”

“It ain’t as dumb as that joke,” Leo replied, as he made a big deal of dropping his staff so the trolls on the other side were sure to see it. Surefoot followed Leo’s example, dropping his own club. Tig stared daggers at his brother before retreating a few steps, hanging his head as he went. It was obvious to the rest of us that he was upset about his exclusion by his brother. Leo and Surefoot started across the bridge, causing it to shake a little. They hadn’t gotten more than a foot from the landing when Ursa suddenly dropped his staff and started across too. I looked at Red who shrugged, confused as I was. The two on the bridge turned back to look at Ursa, looks of surprise on their face, but continued across without a word as Ursa quickly caught up to them.

On the other side of the bridge, the largest troll cub, along with another guy and a girl, started towards our three causing the bridge to vibrate even more. At the same time, a couple of trolls moved towards the box as if afraid the rest of us were going to leap the river and grab it while Leo, Surefoot and Ursa acted as a diversion or something.

The two groups came face-to-face at about the midpoint of the bridge. The girl, who had one whole tusk and one shattered one, appeared to be the leader of the group on the bridge, as she was the one who started talking to Leo while the others just loomed behind her. Leo talked back, punctuated with a lot of headshaking. Every now and then Surefoot would throw in his own remark accompanied by a grin. It was hard to say whether Leo or the troll looked more annoyed. None of us left behind said anything but kept a careful watch on the trolls on the opposite bank. Even Tig, who was still obviously upset, kept watch without comment. Leo’s headshaking stopped as the discussion continued. Leo looked back at us a couple of times, not looking very happy about things. Finally the troll and Leo spat into their left hands and slapped them together, the troll looking a lot happier than

Leo did. Our group started to turn and head back when the troll leader said something, causing Leo, Ursa and Surefoot to turn back towards them. It looked like the troll leader was talking to Ursa and there was a burst of laughter from Red that we all heard. This time both groups turned back and returned to their respective ends of the bridge.

“What happened?” Tig demanded, his curiosity overcoming his desire to sulk and ‘punish’ his twin.

“Let’s move back a little,” Leo advised as he continued walking. I glanced back at the other bank, as I started to follow Leo, to see the trolls still relaxed. A few of them were playing what looked like a game of tag, although one in which Tig-type rules appeared to be being used, and I wished for a moment I could play too. We got about 100 feet away from our end of the bridge before Leo stopped. “Here’s what’s going on. None of the wild stories you guys came up with are true. The only reason they took the pixie dust is because they want us to do something and not cuz they want it to fly or do spells or any of that stuff.”

“They might be lying,” Stumble said. “They are trolls, after all, and you never know what they might be trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”

“I don’t think trolls have any shepherds, so there isn’t any sheep,” Roo said in a deadpan voice. That surprised Stumble so much he just closed his mouth without any other comment.

“He does have a point,” Leo admitted, “but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m pretty sure they’re telling the truth and trolls are as honorable as elves most times. Probably even more than the ones we deal with.” There were murmurs of agreement to that comment. The elves near Hangman’s Tree were sticklers for the letter of their laws and were quite concerned with honor and image. Unfortunately, it was their definition of honor that mattered to them. The letter of the law was more important than the spirit of the law and some of them would use any loophole possible to gain an advantage over someone who was ignorant of their ways. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of good elves, especially most of the rangers and scouts, but we always seemed to end up involved with those more concerned with creating their own advantages.

“Let me guess, all we have to do is go on some sort of suicide task and they’ll let us have the box,” Red said in a sour voice.

“Or they’ll decide we need to do one more thing,” Stumble added.

“Trolls aren’t like that, are they?” I asked a little hesitantly. I normally didn’t say a lot during these sorts of things, but while we didn’t know a whole lot about trolls, there were a few things that reputation said about them.

“Furball’s right. If they say they’re going to do something, they’ll do

it,” Surefoot declared.

“I dunno it matters all that much,” Tig grumbled. “I can hardly wait to hear what it is we’re supposed to be able to do that a clutch of trolls can’t accomplish.”