Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

“Mr. Flea poked out his chest farther and balled up his fists harder. ‘You stand up and show me some respect, Bear, or you gonna find out why!’

“But it weren’t no use. Mr. Bear guffawed and rolled around like somebody was ticklin’ him in the short ribs. Well, Mr. Flea weren’t one to make idle threats. He was a man of action. He hopped off that daisy flower and onto Mr. Bear’s nose. Found a nice soft spot and got hisself a whole mouthful.

“You can believe Mr. Bear stopped laughing then. He raised up a paw and swatted his snout so hard that he knocked his own slobber all over Mr. Possum. But Mr. Flea was long gone. He hopped up to Mr. Bear’s ear and got hisself another plug of bear hide. Mr. Bear ’bout knocked hisself cross-eyeded punchin’ at his own ear, but by that time Mr. Flea had done attached himself to Mr. Bear’s hindquarters.

“Mr. Bear flopped on his back and wallowed around, but Mr. Flea already commenced to chawin’ on his belly. Then he got him up under the chin, then up under his left armpit.”

Dobro paused for dramatic effect. “And do you know what that bear done then?” Percy and Aidan shook their heads, eager to hear the end of the story.

“He sat there and took it, that’s what he did. What else could he do? Mr. Flea was gnawin’ the hide off’n him, and he couldn’t do one thing to stop him.

“Finally Mr. Flea spit out a mouthful of bristle and gristle and hollered out, ‘How ’bout it, Mr. Bear? You surrender?’ And you can believe the critters perked up to hear the answer to that question.

“Mr. Bear moaned, all humble-come-tumble, ‘I surrender, Mr. Flea! Mercy!’

“Mr. Flea stood on Mr. Bear’s nose and looked him in the eye. He said, ‘I ain’t a hard man, Mr. Bear, but I ain’t gonna let nobody boss me or my people. You hear me, Bear?’

“‘I hear you, Mr. Flea.’

“And the flea sung a different song: I like my bear with a little sauce. This here forest got a brand-new boss!

“And so,” Dobro concluded, “if a flea can be a better man than a bear, I ain’t going to feel so bad about getting whupped by a whole swarm of mosquitoes.”

Dobro looked up and down his exposed arms and legs. He still couldn’t get used to them being any color but the gray of swamp mud. “I was plenty pink after you tried to scrub my skin off at the river,” he said. “But I keep gettin’ pinker by the minute. Next seep hole or stagnant pool we come to, I aim to wallow in it.”

“No, you won’t!” Aidan and Percy said in unison.

“If you want to live among civilizers, you’ve got to live like civilizers,” Aidan said. “You aren’t subjecting my family to that feechie stink. Your breath alone is going to be as much as most civilizers can stand.”

“Besides,” Percy added, “we’re almost to Sinking Canyons already. Next water we see will be the little creek that flows at the bottom of the canyons.”

The morning of the third day after leaving Hustingreen, the three travelers struck a little creek that was struggling across the plain. “This is it,” said Percy. “This is the creek that flows through Sinking Canyons.”

Aidan took another look at the muddy stream. He could easily jump across it. It wasn’t even deep enough to support fish larger than minnows and shiners. He cocked his head and looked questioningly at Percy. “This little creek cut a canyon?” Aidan had seen a canyon once in the Hill Country. Through it roared the Upper Branch of the mighty River Tam, boiling white as it leaped over rocks and plunged into pools, swirling and thundering, cutting its own path through the canyon’s granite walls on its way to the sea many leagues away. Aidan could imagine the River Tam cutting a canyon. But this little stream? It didn’t seem possible.

As they hiked up the stream, however, its banks deepened and grew farther apart. And soon the banks of the creek weren’t banks anymore, but the sides of a little valley through which the stream ran flat and wide, not even ankle deep, in muddy rivulets that crossed and recrossed one another like braided hair.

“Watch this,” said Percy as he stepped into the braided stream. The water ran over the tops of his feet and flowed cloudier a little distance before the stirred-up mud settled out again. Percy pointed where he had just stepped. “Watch my bootprints.” The clear imprint of Percy’s boots melted away as the rivulets braided themselves back together in the soft mud. “A hundred men could troop up this streambed, and a quarter hour later there would be no trace of them.” The stream was forever shifting, constantly flowing into new patterns of its own design. There, out in the open, was a secret passageway of sorts, covering tracks almost as quickly as the travelers could make them.

Before long the streambed had sunk more deeply beneath the level of the plain. The steep sides of the valley were noticeably higher than the three travelers’ heads, and Dobro was growing visibly nervous. “This ain’t no place for a feechie,” he said. “I got no business going underneath the ground.”

“You aren’t underground,” Aidan said, pointing at the mud they were slogging through. “There’s the ground, and it’s under you.”

“That ain’t the ground I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Dobro answered. He pointed up the valley wall to the grass and trees that grew well above them. “I’m talkin’ ’bout that ground.” He began moaning the warning chant that his mother had taught him about Sinking Canyons: Fallen are the feechiefolks, In a gully, down a hole. No more fistfights, no more jokes, In a gully, down a hole. To the river, to the woods, In a gully, down a hole. Time to leave these neighborhoods. In a gully, down a hole.

By now the valley had deepened into a canyon. Its sheer walls were so high that not even Dobro could heave a rock up to the canyon rim. Aidan had never seen another place like it. The midday sun reflecting off the sheer canyon walls was almost blinding. Up near the rim, at the top of the canyon wall ran a band of the same red clay that prevailed throughout much of Corenwald. But below that, and all the way down to the canyon floor, the wall was a swirl of colors ranging from white to deep pink to lavender and every combination thereof.

The farther they traveled up the canyon, the higher the walls rose above them, to fifty feet, to a hundred feet, even to a hundred fifty feet in places. On either side the walls folded themselves into fissures and crevices. In places they bulged out in rounded buttresses like the base of a swamp tree. On either hand numerous fingers, smaller canyons, connected to the main canyon like tributaries joining a river. They created a mazelike complex of caves and hidey-holes-a perfect place for lying low, an easy place to defend against a much larger force, if need be. Knife-thin ridges, some a hundred feet high, spurred out from the canyon walls. The canyon floor was dotted with great pink and white chimneys and towers, some round and boulderlike, some so high and spindly they looked as if they might topple over any minute.

“Time to leave these neighborhoods,” Dobro repeated, remembering his mother’s warnings.

But Aidan was fascinated with the place. “What is it made of?” he asked, admiring the breathtaking beauty of the scene. “Some sort of stone?”

“Not stone,” Percy answered, leading his brother to the nearest spur. He swiped his hand across the surface of the wall, and a shower of sand cascaded to the ground. Then he held his hand up to Aidan’s face, showing him the layer of slick white clay that remained. “Sand and clay,” he said, waving his hand to gesture around him. “This whole canyon is nothing but clay and tight-packed sand.”