Changing the Prophecy Chapter Six Episode 1

 

Chapter 6 Wolf Circle -- Episode 1

With Maia playing her timber flute and Denzel jamming along on Maia’s travel drum, they walked at a fast pace in rhythm to the music. Denzel glanced upward frequently at the phosphorescent markings on the roof of the tunnel to make sure they continued heading in the right direction. After a few minutes of walking, Elena timidly began to hum along to Maia’s tune and before long she had started singing a jazzy, wordless scat. The beauty of Elena’s voice surprised Denzel. He didn’t know anything much about Maia’s little friend beside the fact that she had an annoying crush on him.

After the travelers had walked in the caves for an hour, their music became inspired. They surrendered to its flow and let it sweep them along. As they lost themselves in the beat, the tune that unfolded spontaneously became like a living creature of its own.

The trio could not risk pausing for fear that the fatally jolly geebachings would discover them if they fell silent. The year before, the geebachings captured Denzel and Maia along with their fellow travelers and had nearly caused them to laugh themselves to death. To save them, Maia played an extraordinarily haunting tune on a water organ (an instrument made of bowls filled with water) and the music turned the geebachings into bright orange birds that flew out of the caves and disappeared in the forest beyond. Turning into a bird didn’t seem like a bad fate for a geebaching, especially considering how unrepentant they were about murdering people. Their morbid sense of humor was horrifying. The strange creatures looked like large orange monkeys and had a ruthless obsession with making people laugh. They were intolerably funny and their infectious laughter had the power to go viral among vulnerable humans within seconds. They lived deep in the mountains and scouted the tunnels for prey, often venturing to the surface in search of victims.

After more than two hours of making music and walking, Denzel, Maia, and Elena emerged from a tunnel opening into the late afternoon light of a glorious golden-green day in a forest in the Amber Mountains. Elena was exhausted from the walk, but she didn’t want to admit it to the others. She was glad she hadn’t confessed to being worn out when Maia said, “That was fast. Last time it took so much longer.”

“We must have come through a narrower part of the mountains this time,” Denzel suggested. “Now we have to find the Wolf Circle.” Denzel’s forehead puckered with concentration. He did not know for sure which way to go. Jasper would have had his bearings in an instant and Denzel wished again that his friend was with them. “Which direction do you think…?” The sound of snuffling emerging from a nearby bush stopped him abruptly in mid-sentence. He whirled around, prepared to defend himself and the girls. “Who’s there? Show yourself,” he demanded, throwing his backpack to the ground in preparation for a fight.

A small, stunted, rusty-orange geebaching, no more than three feet tall, crept out from under the bush. His over-sized floppy ears hung dejectedly onto his shoulders. He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hairy arm.

“Ewww,” Elena exclaimed. “Use a Kleenex.”

He wiped his nose with his other hairy arm and mumbled, “Wassa Kleenex?”

Elena produced a Kleenex from her pocket and handed it to the geebaching, who promptly ate it. Elena giggled. The geebaching smiled faintly.

“Don’t start,” Denzel warned the geebaching, pointing his finger at him threateningly. “Don’t even think about it. If you do or say anything the least bit funny I’ll knock you out.”

Elena patted the bedraggled creature on the head and turned a reproachful face to Denzel. “Can’t you see he’s sad and alone. Don’t yell at him.” Behind her, the geebaching held up two fingers in back of her head like horns, the way people sometimes do to be silly in a photograph. The corners of the geebaching’s mouth twitched.

“Elena, come away from that thing. You have no idea,” Maia warned. She lifted the flute to show the geebaching. “If you so much as giggle, I’ll play the flute, so help me.”

“Won’t work on me,” the geebaching informed her glumly. “I’m a dud.” He commenced to sniffle again.

“Explain,” Denzel demanded.

“I’m tone deaf. Can’t hear music. It sounds like rattle and jammer to me. Been that way all my life. That’s why I have no friends. That and the fact that I don’t want to cause any harm. No laugh-to-death stuff. That’s why I ran away. I’m a freak of nature.”

“What is your name?” Elena asked kindly.

“Guhblorin. Remember it. Remember me as the first geebaching to give up the laugh-to-death. I can vouch it’s a lonely choice.”

“So you aren’t funny?” Maia asked curiously.

“Oh, I’m funny,” Guhblorin boasted, puffing out his chest. “I’m funnier than a cat with the hiccups. I’m the funniest. But I have vowed not to use it on humans. I’m careful. I contain it. Most of the time I do, anyway. I try.” He screwed his face up, “I try really, really, really hard.”

“So let me get this straight; you want me to believe that you’re a geebaching that has decided not to make people laugh because you get that it’s wrong to do that?” Denzel couldn’t quite swallow Guhblorin’s story. The geebaching nodded solemnly.

“You’re not a freak of nature,” Maia assured him, as she lowered her timber flute, “you’re a mutation, an evolutionary improvement. I’m pleased to meet you.” She held her hand out to the geebaching, who took it, and they shook.

“Don’t get too excited,” Guhblorin warned. “I’m a work in progress. If I’m naughty and make a funny, pull on my ear and I’ll serious-up.”

Denzel peered at the geebaching skeptically as he asked, “Do you happen to know the way to the Wolf Circle from here?”

“You betcha,” Guhblorin replied brightly. “Been trying to work up the courage to go there. If I take you there, will you protect me long enough for me to explain myself to the Wolf Circle people so they don’t kill me?”

“Absolutely,” Elena promised.

“Happy, happy, happy,” Guhblorin exclaimed as he hugged himself and shivered with delight. He planted one foot on the ground and started flapping his arms wildly while he spun in a circle around the unmoving foot. He looked like a demented bird. Elena started to laugh. Maia knew better. She stepped forward and grabbed Guhblorin’s ear and yanked.

“Sorry, sorry,” Guhblorin said sheepishly. “We go this way.” He hung his head remorsefully and led the group onto a path into the woods.

Maia and Denzel fell in behind Guhblorin as they exchanged a look of concern, both of them worried about hooking up with a geebaching. Elena bent and picked a large white flower and put it in her hair.

“I wish I knew where Sonjay and Doshmisi landed,” Denzel said quietly to Maia.

“I hope they’re together,” she replied.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Denzel said. “What do you think we should do when we arrive at the Wolf Circle?”

“Princess Honeydew is probably there and she’ll have some ideas. Hopefully Goldenrod will help us figure things out too,” Maia suggested. They had lagged behind the others and they noticed that Guhblorin was talking to Elena, who giggled.

“We better catch up,” Denzel noted. “Your little friend has no clue how dangerous he is so she has no reason not to tempt him to break his vow of seriousness.”

They had not walked for long when they came to a clearing on the edge of the Wolf Circle. The sun had begun to dip behind the trees for the evening and Maia gazed up at it with affection. It was an old sun and not as intensely bright as the sun at Manzanita Ranch. It was orange and yellow with a greenish tint around the edges. Maia knew from experience that no moon would appear to brighten the night sky, only the many very bright stars in all different colors.

Four huge white wolves trotted into the clearing and stood at attention, watching the small group of travelers. Guhblorin jumped up onto Denzel’s shoulders where he wrapped his arms around Denzel’s head, covering Denzel’s eyes. At the same moment Elena, quivering in terror, ducked behind Denzel and grabbed his upper arms with her hands in a viselike grip that he couldn’t shake. “C’mon, man,” Denzel complained in exasperation.

Maia held her hands out to the enormous wolves so they could identify her scent. “We’re friends. Remember us from last year?” she said gently. After the wolves had sniffed her hands, she scratched them each under the chin and behind the ears. They licked her fingers and then went to sniff the others. When Maia glanced back and saw Guhblorin and Elena wrapped around her brother, she burst out laughing.

“Oh shut up!” Denzel shouted at Maia, as he extricated one of the geebaching’s fingers from his mouth. “Let go,” he demanded.

The wolves trotted back to Maia, who assured Guhblorin and Elena, “They won’t hurt you. They live here. Why do you think they call it the Wolf Circle?”

Elena let go of Denzel, who swatted at Guhblorin and twisted back and forth trying to dislodge the terrified geebaching. Maia extricated Guhblorin from Denzel’s shoulders and put him on the ground where he rolled himself up into a furry ball. The wolves nudged the rolled-up geebaching between them like a soccer ball, taking care not to injure him with their teeth or claws.

“Take it easy with him,” Maia called after the wolves, as they proceeded to roll Guhblorin down a path that led into the heart of the circle. Denzel, Maia, and Elena followed close behind.

“Do any people live here, or just wolves?” Elena asked Maia quietly.

“People and wolves live here together,” Maia replied.

As they entered the circle, one of the wolves pointed his nose at the sky and howled. Immediately, people poked their heads out of houses and emerged to investigate. In the jumble of onlookers, Maia saw Princess Honeydew and shouted to her joyfully. The crowd parted for Honeydew to make her way to Maia and the cousins hugged each other excitedly. Then, to Denzel’s embarrassment, Honeydew threw her arms around his neck and gave him a hug as well. He hugged her back tentatively, while noticing the look of jealousy that crossed Elena’s face out of the corner of his eye. When she released him, Honeydew demanded, “Where are Doshmisi and Sonjay?”

“We don’t know,” Maia answered regretfully. “We think they arrived in Faracadar when we did, but we got separated during the passage, so we don’t know where they are.” Elena looked down at her feet self-consciously because she felt partly responsible for the fact that Doshmisi and Sonjay had not arrived in the same place as the rest of them. But Maia would not allow her friend to feel bad about it. It may not have had anything to do with her. They didn’t know one way or another. She put her arm around Elena’s shoulders and made introductions. “This is my best friend, Elena, who came with us from the Farland. Elena, this is my cousin, the daughter of High Chief Hyacinth and Chieftess Saffron, heir to the throne of Faracadar, the Princess Honeydew.”

“Why so formal?” Honeydew complained humbly.

“Well, that’s your title, isn’t it?” Maia pointed out.

“Your cousin?” Elena asked with surprise (and a bit of relief as she thought about the hug Honeydew had given to Denzel).

“Our mother came from this land,” Denzel explained simply. “We’re royalty here. Like our cousin.”

Just then Honeydew’s uncle, Goldenrod, appeared and interrupted the conversation so that he, too, could give everyone a hug and exclaim again about their arrival and ask about Doshmisi and Sonjay, and the news was repeated and introductions made again. In the excitement of the reunion, everyone forgot about Guhblorin, who had cautiously uncurled himself from the ball of fur he had become to protect himself from the wolves. A small child noticed Guhblorin and pointed at the geebaching while shouting, “What’s that?”

The people of the Wolf Circle, who remained crowded around the visitors, shifted their focus from Denzel, Maia, and Elena to the geebaching. They stepped back and away from Guhblorin, staring, while Goldenrod answered the child in a deep guttural voice that sounded like a growl. “That is a mountain geebaching. One of the most dangerous and deadly of creatures,” Goldenrod informed.