The Bark of the Bog Owl Page 3

  “Good work,” Aidan laughed. He was starting to like this fellow, in spite of his boorish behavior. “But I’m surprised you’d make fun of my looks. You look like you were fished up from the river mud. And I may smell like sheep, but you smell like a … like a … well, you smell like you brush your teeth with mashed garlic. You smell like you use a rotten catfish for a pillow.” Aidan was only warming up. “You smell like you slick your hair with eel slime.”

  Aidan had meant for his remarks to be friendly ribbing, the way a boy might make fun of a friend’s new haircut or his too-clean tunic. He had no way of knowing he had just completed the ceremonial rudeswap that usually precedes a feechie fight. If there had been a slim hope of Dobro leaving without a fight, that hope just got slimmer.

  The wild boy creased his brow into the fiercest scowl he could manage and pulled down the corners of his mouth until his bottom lip poked out farther than his nose. His pointed ears showed red, even through the mud, and he began to hop circles around Aidan, his knuckled fists flying in wild gyrations around his head.

  “You done it now. Dobro Turtlebane’s going to bust your flapper. Raise them turkey wings to a defensive posture. I won’t strike a man who ain’t defending hisself. So come on. Put ’em up.”

  Despite his slight build, Dobro Turtlebane did cut a fearsome figure. What he lacked in size, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. He seemed fully capable of whipping a man twice his size. And yet, in spite of the looming danger, Aidan was still more amused than frightened. He chuckled at this river wasp, who continued to buzz around him, bobbing and darting and dodging, impatient for Aidan to assume a fighting stance.

  “Now come on,” barked Dobro. “Let’s get this here tussle started.”

  Aidan stood his ground but didn’t raise his fists. “There’s not going to be any tussle. If you’re mad at me for throwing rocks at you, I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else. And besides,” he added, rubbing the knot on his head, “you got the better of that deal already. You seem decent enough. I’d rather make friends than fight.”

  “You’re kind to say so,” answered Dobro, who continued to weave and dance. “I like you too. But that’s got nothing to do with it. Stop changing the subject, and let’s proceed to the fisticuffs.”

  Aidan was not at all sure how he was going to get out of this mess. The feechie boy seemed determined to fight him, with or without a good reason. “I’ve got no cause. And besides,” he added in a quieter tone, for now he got closer to the heart of the matter, “I’m not much of a fighter.”

  At this, Dobro stood still. He stared in disbelief, his shoulders slightly slumped, “Hold on, hold on, hold on,” he began. “I know you a tough one. You said so yourself.”

  “No, I didn’t!” said Aidan indignantly. He was convinced that the river boy was picking a fight on false premises.

  “Sure you did,” the wild boy answered. “You said you are not afraid of beasts or strangers and you fight for the kingdom with a bow and arrow.”

  Aidan looked perplexedly at Dobro.

  “Now don’t go denying it,” said the river boy impatiently. “You stood right there on that stump for me and all creation to see, and you said you was young and your arm was strong, and you liked to fight.”

  It dawned on Aidan that Dobro was talking about the song he had sung while still under the emboldening influence of the bark of the bog owl.

  “But that was just a song. It was make-believe. I’ve never even been in a real fight.”

  Dobro whistled. His fierceness was mostly gone now, and there was a touch of pity in his voice. “Well, maybe we could have just a short little fight? I won’t disfigure you very much.”

  “No. I don’t want to fight.” Aidan’s adventurous spirit had ebbed away, and he felt the burn of embarrassment on his cheeks.

  “Well, if you’ve never tried it,” answered Dobro, trying to sound like he was the sensible one, “how can you say you don’t want to?”

  Aidan turned and walked toward the middle of the pasture. “I need to tend to my sheep.”

  Dobro hopped to catch up with him. “Maybe we could just box.”

  “No.”

  “Want to rassle?”

  “You got the wrong person. I’m just a shepherd boy. Climb your tree and leave me alone.”

  Aidan continued stalking off toward his sheep. But he was stopped by a wailing cry behind him. “Aaaaaawwww haaawwww haaawwww haaawwww! Aaaaaawwww haaawwww haaawwww haaawwww!” He turned around and saw Dobro dropped to his knees, his face contorted into a sobbing grimace.

  He rushed to the wild boy’s side. “What happened? Are you snakebit? Did you twist your ankle?”

  “Aaaaaawwww haaawwww haaawwww haaawwww!”

  “Are you hurt? What’s the matter?”

  Dobro continued to howl. His attempts to answer were choked out by loud sobs. Finally he spoke: “Ev-evever since my brothers gone downriver, I got nobody to fight with.” He broke off and sniffed loud and long. “It’s just so lo-ho-ho-honesome. Aaaaawwwww!”

  “You are trying to pick a fight because you are lonesome?”

  Dobro nodded his head. “I just needed a friend. That’s all.”

  “That’s how you make friends?”

  “You got any better ideas?”

  “Well, I…”

  “I see you chunking rocks with that slinger and cutting and jobbing that whacker stick. I hear you singing that song about fighting and carrying on, and I says to myself, ‘Dobro, there’s a civilizer with some spirit and gumption. We got all the same hobbies.’ So I clumb down to introduce myself and make friends.”

  Dobro looked like he was about to start crying again, but he managed to go on. “And you go making me feel lower than a mud turtle. Mama’s right about your kind of people.”

  “What’s my kind of people?” asked Aidan.

  “Civilizers. I’m not supposed to go near a civilizer. Mama says you folks’ll civilize us all to sorrow and misery. If she finds out about this, I’m in the deep mud.”

  Dobro turned back toward the forest. “You probably right. It’s time for me to go back up the tree.”

  Aidan felt rotten for having rejected Dobro’s friendly gestures, even if they were the most unusual offer of friendship he had ever received. He didn’t want to see the feechie boy go. As Dobro reached the beech tree, Aidan spoke up: “Before you leave, can I ask you one thing?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “Do you want to wrestle?”

  Chapter Four

  A Wrestling Match

  Dobro’s muddy face brightened at Aidan’s challenge. “Do I want to rassle?” he squealed. “Of course I do!”

  Before Aidan knew what was happening, the feechie boy had dashed over, knocked him to the ground, and attached himself to Aidan’s head with a wrenching headlock.

  “Wait, Dobro, wait,” sputtered Aidan. “I wasn’t ready yet. Let go a minute. We need to discuss the ground rules.”

  Dobro released him. “I already know the ground rules. We throw each other on the ground. Them’s the rules.”

  “I mean we have to agree on what’s allowed and what’s not allowed—tackling, tripping, choke holds—things like that.”

  Dobro looked bewildered. Was the civilizer teasing him? He couldn’t imagine any sort of wrestling that didn’t involve tackling, tripping, and choke holds. As a matter of fact, most feechie dance steps involved at least one or two of those things.

  “Next thing,” said Dobro, “you’ll say there’s no biting or head-butting or eye-poking. I thought we was having a rassling match not a sewing party.” Actually, this was a bad example; biting and head-butting were quite common at feechie sewing parties.

  After a long negotiation, Aidan and Dobro settled on a hybrid sort of wrestling—half-civilized, half-feechie— in which tripping, tackling, hair-pulling, and head-butting were legal, eye-poking was prohibited, and biting was allowed only as a last resort.

  When the wrestling began, it was a fr
antic affair. The opponents rolled and tumbled and careened across the pasture like two wildcats, one cannoning through the air, then the other. Arms and legs flailed in every direction as the two boys struggled. Aidan was an experienced wrestler, but he had not seen anything like Dobro. The feechie boy was extremely strong for his size and impossibly quick. He twisted and spun like a tornado, yet never seemed to lose control of his limbs. He clearly knew what he was doing.

  Nevertheless, Aidan held his own well enough. He had a significant advantage in both height and weight, and being the youngest of five brothers had taught him to be resourceful against superior opponents. Also, he was tougher than he looked. Still, Aidan suspected that the feechie boy could finish him off anytime he wanted. Dobro was toying with him a little. He didn’t want to cut short such an excellent wrestling match; he was having too much fun. For that matter, so was Aidan.

  Dobro had just thrown Aidan into the little creek and was grinding his face in the mud when they heard a stampede of hooves behind them, and the frantic bleats of the sheep: “Baaaaaaaaaah! Baaaaaaaaah! Baaaaaaaaaah!”

  Aidan and Dobro scanned the pasture to see what had troubled the sheep. At first, Aidan saw nothing, but Dobro elbowed him and pointed toward a brush pile at the forest’s edge. There crouched a panther ready to spring—not an imaginary predator this time but a real panther, with tan fur and big, meaty paws, about six feet long with another three feet of tail. He had fierce golden eyes, black twitchy ears, sharp white teeth, and a long pink tongue, which at that moment was licking his chops. He seemed unable to decide which of the pretty lambs would be tastiest.

  Aidan fumbled for his sling, hoping to get a stone off before the big cat pounced. But Dobro scrambled up the creek bank. “What fun!” he shouted. “I ain’t never fought a panther before!” He snatched up Aidan’s staff from under the beech tree and charged recklessly toward the panther.

  From the corner of his golden eye, the cat saw Dobro coming and twisted around to face him. It bared its fangs and wailed a deep, rumbling moan that became a piercing scream. Still, the wild boy came on, answering the panther’s cry with the exuberant, singsong battle yell of the feechiefolk: “Haaaaaaa-wwwwwweeeeeeee!”

  The panther was back on its haunches, its ears flat against its head, when Dobro thwacked Aidan’s staff sharply between its eyes. Aidan had never seen such fearlessness—or foolhardiness, as it turned out. A full-grown panther was not easily intimidated, even by a staff-wielding lizard boy. In fact, a blow from a shepherd’s staff was just enough to make a panther good and angry. The cat reared up on its hind legs to make a lunge. Dobro gave it one more whack in the ribs, then dropped the staff and tore out across the pasture, back the way he came.

  By this time, Aidan had his sling and stone at the ready. He raised the sling and whirled it around his head. Dobro’s eyes were wild, but he wore a foolish grin. The panther was gaining on him.

  The sling whistled around Aidan’s head, but he didn’t have a shot. Dobro was between Aidan and the panther, directly in the stone’s path. The panther was closer still. Dobro still had that insane grin as he pumped his arms and legs as hard as he could.

  Aidan summoned all his powers of concentration. He would get only one shot at the panther, one chance to rescue his new friend. Having reached its full speed, the cat was a tan blur; it would be on Dobro in a blink. At the tiniest opening, Aidan would have to release the stone.

  Just when the panther got close enough to strike, Dobro threw himself to the ground in a flying somersault. The panther leaped to pounce on him. This was the opening Aidan was looking for. He let fly. The stone whistled through the air and cracked into the panther’s skull just below the ear. The cat screamed a sharp shriek of pain, then thudded heavily on top of Dobro’s crouching form. The panther was dead.

  Aidan’s legs felt like rubber as he staggered over to the motionless heap of panther and feechie boy. The cat moved, and Aidan instinctively reached for another stone. But he quickly realized that Dobro was trying to hoist the panther off his back. Aidan pulled the big cat off and helped Dobro to his feet. “Wooo!” said Dobro. “That rascal’s heavy.” He was still grinning that same grin.

  “Y-y-you all right, Dobro?”

  Dobro looked puzzled. “Course I’m all right. I ain’t the one got hit with a rock.” He was dusting off his gatorskin tunic. “Yes sir, Aidan of the Tam, I’d say we make a good panther-killing team. Dobro draws him out, Aidan knocks him down.”

  “You don’t mean you were trying to make the panther chase you?”

  “Sure I was. I seen you hit them stumps from a hundred yards away, but I figured if you was going to hit a moving target, we’d need to draw it a little closer.”

  “But what if I had missed?”

  “You wasn’t going to miss. You got what it takes, that’s easy to see. Even if you are a civilizer.”

  A distant voice was calling from beyond the next pasture. “Aidan! Aidan!” One of the house servants was running toward them. “Aidan! Run home at once!”

  “That’s just Ebbe,” said Aidan, turning toward Dobro. “You’ll like him.” But the feechie boy had disappeared. One civilizer at a time was more than enough for Dobro.

  Aidan turned around, looking for Dobro in all directions. Not seeing him, he shrugged his shoulders and trotted toward the manor house.

  When Aidan met Ebbe in the next pasture, the old servant gave him a perplexed stare. The tussle with Dobro had left Aidan a mess. His face was scratched and streaked with mud, his hair was in muddy disarray, and one eye was swollen. His wet tunic was ripped, and his knees and elbows were skinned. Ebbe looked him over from head to toe, then back up again. “Aidan,” he said at last, “what happened to you?”

  “Well, first there was a bog owl,” Aidan began excitedly. “Then Dobro jumped out of the tree, and we had a wrestling match, but a panther came out of the woods and—”

  “Ah, forget I asked,” the grouchy old servant interrupted. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Your father is waiting for you at the big house. It sounded important, so you’d better run along, young flibbertigibbet. I’ll look after the sheep.”

  Aidan ran along, stung by Ebbe’s insult. “Flibbertigibbet!” he muttered to himself. “We’ll see who’s a flibbertigibbet when Ebbe sees the panther I killed in the bottom pasture!”

  Chapter Five

  Hail to the Wilderking

  When Aidan entered the manor house, the door to the great hall was open, and he could hear his brothers speaking in low tones within. He stood outside the door to listen.

  The first voice Aidan could make out was that of Brennus. “You’re being ridiculous. None of us is the Wilderking.”

  “Yes, but what if one of us were …” It was Percy.

  “He’s going to come from the wild places,” said Jasper. “From the swamps and the marshes and the forests. That’s why he’s called the Wilderking.”

  Maynard interrupted. “Look around, brother. You live on a great estate. You have a dozen house servants. You’re no Wilderking.”

  “I didn’t say I was the Wilderking, Maynard. I just said what if one of us was. Besides, doesn’t the prophecy say the Wilderking guards his lambs with a staff? We’ve all done that.”

  “So has every ten-year-old in Corenwald,” shot back Maynard. “The prophecy also says the Wilderking will slay a panther with a stone. When did any of us do that?” Out in the hallway, Aidan gasped.

  Jasper, a great student of the Wilderking prophecy, spoke in the authoritative tone he reserved for his little lectures. “You’re being too literal anyway, Percy. Most scholars say those lines are figurative.” One of the brothers groaned. This was a common reaction when Jasper started talking. Jasper seemed not to notice. “When it says, He will guard his dear lambs with the staff of his hand, that means he takes care of his subjects the way a shepherd takes care of his lambs. And when it says, With a stone he shall quell the panther fell, that means he defeats the kingdom’s enem
ies with a small fighting force. There’s no real panther or real stone.”

  Brennus interrupted him. “Why are we even having this conversation? Can’t you see that the old man is—”

  His father’s warning voice broke in. “Brennus!”

  “Father, I mean no disrespect. You love him because you’ve known him for fifty years, and you’re right to do so. But even you must know that he’s not sane. Let us honor the memory of the great prophet, but we can’t let the ravings of a madman throw our household into turmoil.”

  A heavy silence followed. Aidan crept into the great hall as silently as possible, not wishing to draw attention to himself. His four brothers were huddled in the middle of the room with their backs to him. They were whispering now. His father was gazing out the window that overlooked the grape arbor. No one had noticed Aidan come in.

  At the far end of the hall, by the great stone fireplace, an old man sat asleep in a chair, his arms folded, his head nodding forward against his chest. And what a head it was! White hair sprayed out in every direction; his face was buried in an enormous beard that reached down to his folded arms and sprouted out just as far to the left and right. On the floor beside him slept two goats. This must be the lunatic Brennus had spoken of.

  Aidan didn’t quite know what to do. He had been summoned here, yet he felt as if he were interrupting. Suddenly, the white head lurched up. The old man’s big green eyes searched around the room, as if he had heard a voice and was trying to figure out where it came from. When they passed over Aidan, his eyes locked in. They seemed to see more in Aidan than any eyes had ever seen before.

  The old man spoke. “Hail to the Wilderking!”

  Silence. Then a little snort of laughter. Aidan heard someone say, “This is just too much.” He thought the voice was Maynard’s, but it was hard to say. The words sounded as if they were coming to him from underwater.

  Only the old man’s voice sounded clear. “Hail to the Wilderking, Corenwald’s deliverer.” Aidan could hear his brothers laughing. He thought they must have been laughing at him, but he didn’t care. He was transfixed by the eyes of the old stranger. They shone with tears of gladness. Still the brothers laughed.