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

As the small fire flamed, Mianney’s deep brown eyes darted here and there gleefully. Her bubbling wild intensity frightened some superstitious people, who said she was a demon in disguise. Mianney did seem to do things that were supernatural. The flames that burned so furiously for a few moments, suddenly died down, leaving a dense pungent cloud of smoke. Still without speaking, with lightning quickness Mianney lifted Helga to her arms and ascended the ladder to her shack. In the blink of an eye she and Helga were gone. A wisp of pungent smoke, swirling where Mianney had stood, was all that assured Pickles and Lupes that she had actually been with them a moment before...

As Mianney held Helga close through that long-ago night, flute music, rising and falling from a more distant cabin—belonging to Edna Note—was a safe and soothing sound in the dark.

That flute music—so comforting, such a balm on her terror—was, for Helga, a symbol of her deliverance. The peaceful imprint of the flute melody wafting to her during the darkest part of the night struck Helga in the heart as powerfully as the shafts of yellow sunlight that illumined Mianney Mayoyo’s shack the next morning. It was as if her mother’s promise to return soon had been fulfilled.

~ ~ ~

Now, as the memories from ten years before faded, the sight of Miss Note, graying and bent, sent shivers down Helga’s spine. A powerful instinct of the heart urged Helga to quickly push through the crowd, hurrying to see Miss Note. The stooped old Badger, her face still hearty and strong, greeted Helga gleefully.

“Helga, Helga, Helga...Look at you,” Edna smiled, her eyes tearing with joy, clasping Helga in a tight embrace. “Even my eyes that are not what they used to be can see that you are changed. You are no longer the wild rapscallion that aged me beyond my years.” The elderly music teacher laughed, continuing to hold Helga by the shoulders, gazing intently at her as if seeing something in Helga that eyes were not needed to see.

“Miss Note, I’m truly sorry...”Helga began. “I never meant...”

“...Never meant to put mice in my longhornphone...or to smear my flute with snake grease...or to call me ‘Old Lady Sqawkbeak’?” Edna smiled. “You know, of course, that now I laugh about all those old torments..I’m so happy you’ve returned while I can still greet you.” Travelers have brought us news of you. Everyone is so excited. Sareth and Elbin are waiting for you over by the Perquat’s wagon, and there are lots of other folk over at the Commons. I couldn’t wait to see you, so Neppy helped me get through the crowd. We’ve heard some amazing stories...can it all be true? There must be time for you to tell us everything.”

Helga stepped back and looked at Miss Note fondly. “It seems strange, as I think about it, Miss Note,” she began. “I’ve seen unbelievable things and been terrified for my life. I can hardly believe what has happened to me. But, as strange as it seems, my greatest adventures were within myself.”

Helga paused, looking embarrassed. “I was going through some confusing times when I used to torment you. Somehow, although everyone was kind, I didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. I felt so strange. That’s why I left the Rounds. When I met the Lynx who knew my father, I just had to go.”

“You’ve changed since I last saw you, Helga,” Edna observed.

Helga paused, looking off into the distance as if again seeing something there. “My story is not my own, Miss Note,” she said. “In my mind I see so many friends who are not here and able to tell the part they had in my adventures. My story is actually many stories. As I tell it, it may sound like one story, but it is really many stories that cross each other. Creatures that I will never know have had a hand in my story and I in theirs. So, you’ll have to forgive me as I tell my story...I don’t know it all myself.”

The elderly Badger smiled. She bent down and picked up a tuft of grass and some dirt. Giving some to Helga, she put some in her own pocket also. The rest she tossed up in the wind. “That’s the way our stories are, Helga—many people have a piece of it, and the story carries on in directions we never know.”

Bad Storm Breakin’

 A few months before Helga’s triumphant return to the Rounds, her brother, Emil, went on a journey which was to have profound consequences for her story…

“Bad storm breakin’,” Emil thought, as dark purple clouds swept down off the mountains and spatters of rain began to fall. The storm came up so quickly that Emil had not even noticed the piles of clouds gathering in the distance. Now the flying clouds were overhead and thunder rumbled. CRAAACK! A fork of lightning flashed, striking a towering tree along the path just ahead. Splitting down the trunk, the largest part of the tree fell across the path, forcing him to climb clumsily through the wreckage as the branches lashed in the wind.

“Crutt!” he grunted into the rising wind. “Worse than bad, this storm’s goin’ to tear things up before it’s done!” Holding his hat tightly on his head, he leaned forward against the powerful gusts tearing at his coat. Caught in the open, with no hope of immediate relief, Emil battled a sense of dismal foreboding.

“Yar!” he muttered after a few moments of self-pity. “Whether bad or not, you only find it in the end—so I better keep going! Struggling to pick up his pace, he knew the worst was yet to come. Everything beyond the line of low-hanging clouds was disappearing behind sheets of rain. Grimly determined, Emil pushed forward. When the full force of the storm hit, however, he was completely unprepared for the blinding chaos that engulfed him.

A howling north wind sent blinding sheets of rain whirling around him like a curtain. Briefly considering the possibility of seeking shelter, he decided against it. “No, there’s no good stopping place. Nothing to do but keep moving, I’ll not be ruined by water and it will soon pass.” Splashing forward through the deepening puddles on the road, Emil pulled at his hat brim trying to keep the rain from his eyes. The wild, swirling downpour made it nearly impossible to find his way. His shoulders bobbed up and down as he trudged on along the road, moving more by the feel of the path beneath his feet than by sight. Ear-splitting thunder and searing bolts of lightning would have sent most beasts flying under any available cover, but Emil did not fear or falter.

With a pocket full of coins earned from delivering his family’s goods to market, he could not dally. “If there’s to be pike and biscuits on the table tonight, I’ve got to stop at the grocer’s on the way home—there’s been enough of potatoes and greens this week!” Beyond the desire to leave off the hated greens, he’d also promised Helga he would buy some of their father’s favorite peppermints for his birthday. “Got to keep going—dawdling in pity won’t keep me any drier.”

In spite of this resolve, however, Emil had to struggle mightily as he pushed on through the desolate, rain-swept landscape. He still had a long way to go. The journey to the Z-House was a long day’s trip even under the best conditions. The Wood Cow settlement at O’Fallon’s Bluff was far removed from the other Hedgie villages. No respectable Hedgie wanted to live near the despicable outcasts.

Although practically every Hedgie owned a finely-made oaken chest, ash-handled tool, willow bow, pine bed, or other Wood Cow-made item, Hedgies would not trade directly with the Wood Cows. “Keep the Wood Cows off a bit, but their products near” was the Hedgie view of things. That meant a long journey to the Z-House for the Wood Cows, where a Z-Tax collector distributed the goods they made. Wood Cow tools and furniture sold well. Sometimes Emil and other young Wood Cows took several wagonloads a week to the Z-House. Yet, because of the fearsome taxes on everything they sold, Wood Cows sold much, but earned little.

On this particular day, which so changed Emil’s life, he had made an extra trip to the Z-House to deliver a stave made especially for one of the High One’s officers. The few extra coins from the special sale meant the difference between pike and greens for dinner, and would put sweet peppermints in his Papa’s mouth. The trip had been worth it.

But now he was caught on a lonely stretch of road far from home, in the worst storm he had ever seen. Worse, the road to O’Fallon’s Bluff was a no-beast’s-land. For a long way, there was no hope of a friendly face or a warm hearth, and his situation was getting worse. When he reached Overmutt Hollow, the road was completely flooded and he was forced to find a detour. It was going to be a long and difficult journey home.

As he headed off the road to circle around the flooding, he tried to remember the times he and his sister had picked blueberries in the Hollow. “Somewhere there’s a turn,” he thought, squinting his eyes against the blinding rain. “Where is that old path—there’s a place where you slip down a slope and you’re at Overmutt Bridge. It seems to me there was a big cracked boulder that marked the way.” Emil looked here and there as he struggled along, hoping at each step he’d find the landmark showing where to return to the main road. Slogging on through the fierce storm, the miserable young Wood Cow wandered along, hoping to see something familiar.

Blundering in the driving rain, however, Emil passed by the anticipated landmark and wandered further and further into unfamiliar territory. Soon he was seriously lost. As the afternoon dragged on with no change in his situation, he decided to seek help. The Hedgelands air always carried a mountain chill and the rain felt like an icy bath. Soaked to the bone, the young Wood Cow clenched his jaws against the growing urge to tremble with cold.

He was angry with himself: “Crutt! How stupid I have been. Running here and there like a leaf blown by the wind! Bah—well, I’m completely lost, that much is clear. My first task is to find out where I am. After that, it will be a long backtrack to get on course again. Surely there must be somewhere to ask directions!” he thought.

With renewed resolve, the beleaguered young beast slogged forward with a sense of increasing urgency. He could no longer afford to wander aimlessly through unknown country, hoping to find his way. With night soon to fall, shelter was essential. He no longer hoped to make it home before dark. The dream of a dinner of pike and biscuits was now a distant, forgotten hope. With dismal prospects before him, it would be extremely dangerous to stay outdoors much longer.

Holding his pack over his head to shield his face from the driving rain, Emil marched on for perhaps an hour. Then, above the endlessly drumming rain, something new caught his attention. First, there was a sound of lively music, mingled with loud laughter and cursing, and then a building gradually emerged from the rain.

His wandering had at last cut across a main road. A wide path opened just a bit ahead of him. Although the pathway was soundly made with stone, as Emil approached it he had to cross a sea of mud. Hurrying toward the first sign of