Helga: Out of Hedgelands - Rick Johnson (a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT) 📗

her long unhappiness to fade. Somehow she felt that meeting Ola was helping her to find peace with the loss of her parent. She wondered if he had survived the treachery of the Cougar Bandits. Perhaps he had been able to escape in the boat. If he had, he might be alive and looking for her. Her father was a powerful Wood Cow and armed with his fishing line. Unless he was surprised or ambushed, Helga knew that he would be a formidable foe for the Cougars. Yet, she herself was strong and quick-witted...and she had been overwhelmed by the treachery and brutality of her attackers. What if they had used the same tactics on her Papa? She did not want to think of it. Yet somehow, the spirit of the Gateless Wolf brought peace to her mind.

As they walked, leaving the highlands behind, the edge of the vast wetlands stretched away before them, seemingly without end.

“I’ll be paddling into the Drownlands, Misst Helgy,” Ola said. “It’s the season for the trading people to be migrating. There’s need to help the lost and trooubled traveling beasts.”

 “I’ll be coming with you, Ola, if you’ll have me,” Helga replied. “I’ll not stay behind to wander aimlessly. At least you wander with a purpose of helping lost beasts.  Maybe I will find Papa’s path, and maybe I won’t, but at least I’ll be trying to help those who are lost and hurting. That will be more to Papa’s spirit than wandering without purpose.”

“Aiean, Helgy, that be the path,” Ola smiled. “That be’in the path...”

 

King Stuppy’s Trading Post

Ola and Helga paddled slowly into the small settlement Ola called “King Stuppy Marit’s Tradin’ Poost.” Ola knew the place. He’d visited many times in his years of roaming through the Drownlands as a wandering monk. He especially liked the Drownlands, in spite of the fact it “drew a bad-bad lot” as he said.

“The Drownlands are wilder than anythin’ nor any placin’,” Ola said. “Cuoog’er Bandits and thievin’ creatures of every kind. They all are at home at Stuppy’s.”

As they paddled into the Drownlands wilderness—a vast, uncharted wilderness of lakes, marshes and bogs—Helga hoped the trip might help her find her missing father. Ola told her that, “There’s only one spot that’s goot any beasts that might be goin’ to know anythin’...that’s goin’ to be King Stuppy’s, that’s goin’ to be the crossroads of all the travelers and spies.”

Helga trusted Ola completely, but she wondered how they would ever find anyone in the vast wilderness. They had been paddling for more than a week in Ola’s dugout canoe, following endless bayous and channels that he seemed to know well. They had met no other creatures, although they had seen several shanties that Ola said were used by itinerate Bayou Dogs who fished and collected wild marsh honey. “The Bauyoo Dogs never stay put. They’re always floatin’ and movin’,” Ola explained. No beast ‘stayed put’ in the Drownlands, Ola said. Everyone kept moving, following the best fishing, finding the marsh honey, collecting the berries and mushrooms in their seasons. Ola explained that there were “loo’ts of the creatures” around, but they were an independent lot that valued their freedom. Many of them were either sent to the Drownlands instead of jail, or escaped there to hide out. “But they all be comin’ to King Stuppy’s at the tradin’ time.”

Ola came to the Drownlands each spring and autumn, during the great trading seasons. He always found travelers in need of help at trading time. “The creatures are always in troouble with the bandits and getting’ lost,” Ola explained. “There’s always a need for Ola.” Wandering the Drownlands, he meditated, played his flute, and rescued travelers in trouble.

Among the maze of bayous and lakes, time seemed to stand still. The sheer isolation and vastness of the Drownlands seemed to make yesterday, today, and tomorrow useless ideas. Underground springs created a lush wetlands. Expanses of grass and reeds were interspersed with groves of giant trees that towered above the wetlands in places. Here and there were snaking runs of lesser trees and scrub bushes along bayous. Any effort to leave the canoe seemed pointless—there was little solid ground, much quicksand, and the grass was impenetrably thick. The streams, lakes and bayous were the only ‘roads.’

Helga could understand why Ola said this was a land of hideouts. A bandit could easily lose himself here and never be found.

Finally, after seven days, Helga noticed signs of commerce. Other canoes, small boats, and large flat-bottom barges pushed with poles gradually became more and more frequent. All were filled to overflowing with creatures and goods, many loaded so heavily that they seemed in danger of capsizing. Where there had been hardly a sign of life, now there seemed to be boats of every description coming from every direction.

King Stuppy Marit’s Trading Post was the only permanently inhabited outpost in the Drownlands. The nearest trading center other than King Stuppy’s was more than a week distant by canoe. If it had to do with commerce or trade, it came to King Stuppy—including assorted ‘bad goods’ from theft and banditry. Stuppy’s sign said it plainly: “KING STUPPY MARIT’S TRADING POST—We Buys It All, And Sells It All; Keep Your Questions To Yourself!”

As their canoe nosed up to the dock, Helga did not feel good about what she saw. Surely there were a great number of honest traders here, but the sly and sinister face was everywhere. Boats, so loaded with passengers that they hung off the sides, also bristled with machetes, cutlasses and pikes. Apparently a safe voyage was not always assured. One large, flat-bottomed boat loaded with Jackrabbits, Muskrats, Beavers, Geese, Raccoons and Coyotes—and every space between them crammed with bags of cornmeal, oats, pinenuts, and barrels of pickled fish—flipped over with a huge ‘SPOOLSH!’ sending passengers and goods into the water. Quickly, small pirogues of King Stuppy’s Dock Squirrels rowed out to help the unfortunate creatures and rescue what could be saved of the cargo. Helga thought it was a miracle that more boats did not swamp, so amazingly overloaded were they.

Creatures came down out of the isolated bayous and lakes twice a year, loaded with all the things they had grown, made, stolen, or caught. King Stuppy operated ferryboats that he sent up some of the largest bayous—to the North in the Spring and to the south in the Fall—picking up passengers along the way, bringing them to his trading post. Since there was only one ferryboat trip, out and back, each year, they packed every possible passenger aboard. And the cargo! Piles of ornately woven grass mats, hats, and bags. Sacks of meal and grains. Barrels of candied berries and ciders. Finely-made and rustic furniture. Crates of dried mushrooms. Cases of pickled roaches and beetles. Baskets of turtle eggs. Vendors hawking brightly colored pants and shirts from the boat—small canoes coming out to buy as the boat moved along. Sometimes, the ferries would have racks of huge catfish hanging, drying by the dozens in the sun, as Barge Goats poled the vessel along.

The smells and sights were so intense that it made Helga woozy. Although she’d lived a hard life and endured great hardships, she still could not comprehend the dirt and filth at King Stuppy Marit’s. Drooping moss overhung everywhere, giving the place a damp, half-rotted feeling. Inside the public house, the walls and ceiling were caked with layer upon layer of residue from cooking fires and pipe-smoke. Rough tables were smeared with spilled food and littered with dirty tin plates piled high with gnawed bones and gristle, crusts of coarse bread, and the scooped-out skins of baked lizards. The floor was wet and slippery from many spilled tankards of Drownlands Grog. Piles of filthy burlap sacks were scattered here and there with creatures lounging on them smoking long clay pipes and drinking Ale.  King Stuppy’s establishment did not impress her.

Though she had been raised from age five by Roundies—and had seen many different kinds of life—Helga retained the cleanly manners of her native Wood Cow folk and found King Stuppy’s Trading Post revolting.  She was a Wood Cow at heart. Although she would never forget the Roundies who had rescued her, loved her, and cared for her, she did not expect to ever see them again.

 

A Certain Cantankerous Wood Cow

So many urgent problems pressed on Helga’s mind now, that the Rounds were only a distant, but fond, memory. A stronger memory was the vicious attack she had suffered from the Cougar bandits. The edge of this memory cut through any musing Helga might have had about the Rounds as they tied up their canoe at King Stuppy Marit’s dock—it was crawling with Cougars!

Helga felt that everything about the place was like a bad dream. The Trading Post was a series of dilapidated, cobbled-together sheds and docks. Made of scraps of lumber, rotting logs, dirty rope, and molding canvas, the Trading Post did not look promising—it smelled of long-dead fish and dreadful carvings of hideous faces were hung everywhere, leering down from walls and posts. “Trees were tortured to make those carvings,” Helga muttered darkly to Ola, “those faces show the frozen screams of trees...” Wood Cows made their life among the trees and, over generations, had found ways to know what trees were thinking and feeling.

“Aiean, Misst Helgy,” Ola replied, “the Cuoog’ers that run the post are a bad-bad lot!”

“Cougars run this trading post?” she asked, looking urgently at Ola.

“Aiean, Misst Helgy,” Ola affirmed. “King Stuppy is a Cuoog’er that is only free because he was sentenced to the Drownlands instead of bein’ hanged by the Grizzlies! The Grizzlies allow Stuppy to run his Tradin’ Poost if he stays out of trouble—and remains in the Drownlands.”

As Ola and Helga climbed the rickety wooden ladder from the dock up to the Trading Post, suddenly a cutlass was sticking in Helga’s face! There was wild, screeching laughter; then many cutlasses, swords and pikes bristled in front of them. Soon, the short, extremely fat Cougar that had been holding his cutlass in Helga’s face lowered it and looked at her with his fierce, red eyes.

“So, cow, get up here and welcome!” From then on, Ola and Helga were never alone. Being led into the Trading Post, they entered a dark gloom where it was hard to see anything distinctly, but it always seemed that there was some beast in the shadows with a cutlass at the ready.

Ola explained quietly that there was “nothin’ to be wooried aboot.” Helga found this hard to believe but soon realized that Ola was right. Despite King Stuppy’s terrifying look and the foul collection of riff-raff that constantly watched them, they were not harmed. Ola explained that the ‘cutlass in the face’ greeting was the customary welcome that King Stuppy gave to every unknown visitor. “Aiean, Misst Helgy,” Ola said, “that’s his warnin’ that he’ll be watchin’ yor. Yor tooch his stuff, and yor be loosin’ yorn fingers!”

In such a desolate, isolated spot, Helga would not have expected such traffic, but there were constantly arriving canoes and boats carrying all kinds of trading goods. “And a good bit of stoof that yor don’t want to be askin’ aboot!” Ola confided. Stuppy was “on to the shadowed work” Ola observed, with a knowing wink at Helga. “Just yorn not be askin’ questions,” Ola directed, “and we’ll be livin’ to go on.”

Thus warned, Helga silently observed the frenzied buying and selling. Even before the boats and ferries reached dock, buyers were throwing pieces of their clothing on to the goods they wished to trade for or buy. She saw one large Otter throw his sweat-soaked shirt onto a basket of corn he wished to claim,