The Clearing (Part Two)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

“I didn't know what to do,” Pussycat continued, “but I had to do something. Maybe I should try to create a diversion, I thought, something that would lure the devil worshipping yokels away from Vince so that I could rush across the clearing and rescue him. I remembered that I had a box of matches in my pocket that I'd taken from my mother's kitchen because Vince and I often lit a little cooking fire to spit-roast the rabbits and squirrels we snared and the pheasants and partridges that we knocked out of the trees with our catapults. I recalled that beyond the ferns the forest floor was littered with dead bracken and piles of dry branches, so I crawled a fair distance away and started a row of fires and then crawled back and hid in the ferns. It was a stupid ploy and I should have known better, I suppose, but I had no idea what else to do.

As a thick pall of smoke rolled into the clearing the yokels gathered into a tight group and started mumbling and pointing, the drummer stopped drumming and the crows dropped their instruments in a panic and flew up into the overhanging branches cawing and making a series of sickening belching noises.

'Don't just stand there, you dumb, dick faced infidels!' the toad cried. 'I, Cagglewhacket, your most exalted high priest, order you to get hold of some buckets and carry water from the stream. Our beloved mother forest is tinder dry due to global warming and the wind is blowing our way, Beelzebub and all his grinning imps damn it, and if you don't put out that fire a bit sharpish we're all doomed!'

The yokels split into two groups and rushed off into the smoky forest, and the sorcerer retreated into an animal skin tent a short distance away. Now's my chance, I thought, and I ran into the clearing and tried to untie the leather thongs securing Vince's wrists to the wooden stake. 'The crows,' Vince croaked through cracked, bloody lips. 'You have to silence the crows, or they'll arouse their wicked toad master and he'll slaughter both of us – he'll bleed me out on the altar to satiate Old Horny's lust for blood while you roast alive on the fire for daring to try to cheat the devil and his foul disciples of their lunch.'

The crows were cocking their heads and watching me from a high branch, their dark beady eyes reflecting the burning forest behind us, but their fear of the conflagration stifled their tongues for the time being. Nervously I checked to see if there was any movement from the shaman's tent, then I reached down to my belt and pulled out my trusty catapult, and from my pocket I fished out four round pebbles of roughly equal size. The first missile missed the nearest crow because I was shaking and I didn't aim properly in my haste, but the second hit the creature on the breastbone with a satisfying crunch and it tumbled lifelessly to the ground. The remaining crow waddled up and down on its perch cackling malevolently, but it made nowhere near as much noise as I expected. The third pebble ricocheted off a bough behind its intended target, but the forth and final one shattered the bird's skull and the black monster tumbled down, gasping impotently earthwards.

I couldn't undo the thongs securing Vince's wrists no matter how hard I tried, my hands were too sweaty and the knots had been pulled too tight. I searched my pockets for the small folding knife I carried, but it looked like I had lost it while I was hiding in the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing. I glanced at the tent and there was still no sign of the old toad shaman so I tugged at the stake, thinking perhaps it wasn't hammered very firmly into the spongy earth beneath my feet. To my delight I was able to pull the stake out of the ground without much effort, and it came out with an odd slurping noise because beneath the leaf-mould was a layer of sodden yellow clay. As I hauled the stake out of its waterlogged socket like a rotten tooth the flaps of the tent parted and the shaman stepped into the clearing.

'You'll stay exactly where you are if you know what's good for you, boys,' he said as I pulled the heavy stake clear of Vince's wrists and let it drop to the ground. 'Keep still, or prepare to pay the consequences of disobedience, I am a powerful medicine man and I'll turn the two of you into worms and squish you underfoot!' the toad roared, his fleshy lips flapping in anger, but we ignored him and scampered off in the opposite direction of the blazing trees as swiftly as we could.

As we ducked and dived through the dense undergrowth in the unfamiliar territory we were travelling through trying to escape the raging fire behind us I heard a whistling sound that I couldn't quite place. A moment later I heard it again, and I felt an arrow's flight feathers brush past my ear before it struck the trunk of a field maple sapling about the same thickness as my wrist, the narrow flint head travelling all the way through the soft timber. 'Snap the arrow off, Eugene,' Vince said, 'we can use the head to cut this damned rope!' I did as he said, the dry hazel shaft breaking much easier than the pliable ash arrows my father made to bring down rabbits and deer for the pot, and once I had cut the leather thongs with the expertly worked flint and freed Vince's arms we moved more quickly. I kept my eyes peeled, but though I heard a few more arrows whistle past I saw no sign of the old shaman, whom I assumed was the bowman.

After what seemed like hours we reached a part of the woods that we recognised. 'I know this place!' Vince cried. 'It's only half a mile from the edge of the woods, my father cuts lengths of timber from those coppiced ashes to make furniture for his shop. We're almost home!' The wind changed direction, blowing a thick cloud of smoke towards us, and we struggled to breathe. We crawled on our hands and knees for a while coughing and spluttering, and then Vince dragged me into a deep mossy gully where the smoke wasn't so dense, so we followed that for a few hundred yards. We reached a point where the gulley twisted back and forth, and all of a sudden the heavens opened and the rain poured down so heavily we could barely see. And then, from around a sharp bend the old shaman appeared.

'I've got you now, you little whippersnappers!' the toad roared, pulling an arrow from his quiver, drawing back his bow and aiming at my rapidly beating heart. 'You two are coming with me, I'm going to make you pay slowly and exquisitely painfully for your sins. The old gods smile on us today because of the sacrifice I promised them, this rain will quench the flames and save our beloved Black Forest, but you two malefactors are long past saving.'

'I think not!' Avaricious Tiger, Vince's huge ginger father said, leaping down from the sodden, smoky forest and stepping deftly between us and our slavering enemy. He shook his head to clear the rain from his eyes, swung his dripping woodsman's axe and cleaved the shaman's bow in two, the arrow twanging comically and striking a moss covered root between my trembling feet.

'Please don't kill me,' the old shaman whimpered, dropping to his knees. 'In return for my life I will reward you with a great fortune in gold and jewels hidden in the ruins of a lost city deep in the forest. Come, I'll show you where it lies untouched, us outcasts and pariahs live off the plentiful bounty of the land that the olden gods provide, and we have no need for material wealth.'

'I'm not stupid enough to fall for that old trick, toad,' Avaricious said, swinging his axe once more, the well honed blade cleanly beheading the old shaman. The toads head landed at our feet in the rushing flood water that had gouged out the gully during countless storms, its yellow eyes glaring at us with untold hatred and the toothless jaws trying to mouth a final curse, perhaps, but all we heard was a gurgle of bubbling mucous. 'Come on, boys,' Avaricious said, 'we're going home to dry our soaking tootsies by the fire.'”

“Good golly, daddy, that was a splendid tale, I nearly wet myself,” Helen said, “but I might still have to report you to the NSPCC for frightening the living shit out of me. Night night!”

“Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite,” Pussycat completed the litany, and he switched off the light on his way out of the excitement satiated child's room.

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A couple of hours later when Owl came home from her new job at the home for retired sea lions Pussycat tried to tell her the story he had told to his not so angelic little girl in return for her silence, but to his dismay he had completely forgotten it. “You'll have to ask Helen to remind me about it in the morning,” he chuckled. He felt compelled to tell Owl what had really happened to Mr and Mrs Water Buffalo – the story doing the rounds in Hog's Bottom was that they had fled abroad to avoid a huge unpaid tax bill - but he wasn't worried about that because Owl loved her new job.

“Was it a true story, the one you told Helen?” Owl said.

“Hell, no, nothing even nearly as exciting has ever happened to me, so I lied through my teeth,” Pusscat replied, “because basically I'm a devious old pussycat.”