Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

A hundred strides up the canyon, Percy pointed up at a tree that dangled upside down against the canyon wall, half its roots still clinging to the red soil at the canyon’s rim. “That tree was still standing when we got here two years ago,” Percy said. “Fell in when the ground beneath it collapsed in a rainstorm last year.” He pointed at a second tree nearby whose roots snaked out of the clay and into midair. “That one is liable to go next.”

Dobro swung a few steps toward the far side of the canyon, as if he expected the tree to crash down on him any second. “Time to leave these neighborhoods,” he muttered, but neither Errolson paid him any mind. “Trees falling down,” Dobro continued under his breath, “sand walls liable to drop off and bury us alive…”

“All right, Dobro,” Aidan said, “we know: Sinking Canyons is no place for a feechie.”

“That’s what I been trying to tell you!” Dobro answered. “No vines to swing on. Nothing but scrubbified trees that ain’t hardly worth climbing. Ain’t even enough water to get the hairy part of my foot wet-” He suddenly broke off. “What was that?” he whispered, pointing at a low chimney nearby. “’Hind of that big rock.” He picked up a hardened lump of white clay about the size of his fist, and when the top of a head appeared from behind the chimney, he cut loose with the clay ball, which whistled mere inches from sandy curls that quickly disappeared again behind the chimney.

“A spy!” Dobro yelled. “I ain’t gonna tolerate a feller spyin’ on me like he was a bunny in a brush pile. It ain’t neighborly.” He had already picked up another jagged clay ball when Percy grabbed his throwing arm.

“Hold on, fireball,” Percy laughed. “It’s one of our sentries.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the chimney. “Slider Turtle!” That was the password.

A hand waved from behind the chimney. “You can come out,” Percy called. “All is clear.”

“Arliss!” Percy shouted when the sentry came out.

“Arliss?” Aidan called after him, delighted to see the young miner who once led him through the caverns under the Bonifay Plain six years earlier.

Arliss rubbed his eyes. “Aidan, is that you?”

“It’s me,” Aidan answered, and the two young men stood looking at one another, not sure what to say. “You still don’t look much like a miner,” Aidan finally said, looking up and down his old friend’s long and lanky frame.

“But I still got the miner’s head,” Arliss said, tapping his skull with a skinny finger. “And that’s worth plenty with the boys at Greasy Cave.”

“This is Dobro,” Aidan said by way of introduction. “Dobro, this is Arliss.”

Arliss extended a hand to shake with Dobro, but Dobro didn’t seem to notice as he flashed a greenish, gappy grin at the civilizer and stepped up to give him a head-butt of greeting and good fellowship, in the feechie manner.

Aidan grabbed Dobro’s arm to stop him, lest he should break the taller man’s nose with his forehead. He discreetly gestured at Arliss’s outstretched hand. After a moment of confusion, Dobro placed his clay ball in Arliss’s hand-the same clay ball he had meant to throw at Arliss’s head a few moments earlier.

“Dobro’s a…” Aidan wasn’t sure he was ready to go into the details. “Dobro’s an old friend.”

Arliss kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed the least bit, as if he were trying to figure this strange fellow out.

“From the Feechiefen,” Dobro clarified.

A spark of recognition lit Arliss’s face. “A feechie,” he said knowingly. Now he understood why Dobro looked and talked so peculiar.

“That’s right,” Dobro said. “I’m a natural-born feechie, but I figured it was time I give civilizin’ a try.”

Arliss looked at Aidan. “We been speculating whether you’d bring feechies with you when you come back.”

“Well, one feechie,” Aidan began, “and only because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

But Arliss couldn’t contain himself any longer. He was too excited to listen to Aidan’s explanation. “Wait till I tell the boys,” he said, then he turned and sprinted up the canyon.

Aidan turned to Dobro. “If you want to pass yourself off as a civilizer, you’ve got to stop talking about the Feechiefen.”

“And you need to know about shaking hands,” Percy added.

“Shaky hands?” Dobro said. “No, thank you. My hands is good and steady, and I aim to keep them that way, whether I’m feechified or civilized.”

“No, Dobro, shaking hands-it’s a civilizer greeting. It’s what we do instead of head butting. If somebody reaches a hand out like this”-Percy extended his right hand-“you grip it nice and firm and give it a shake. Try it.”

Dobro grabbed Percy’s hand and began to shake it violently back and forth, like a terrier shaking a rat.

“No, Dobro, not that way,” Percy yelled, wrenching his hand out of Dobro’s powerful grip. “You’re not supposed to shake the other fellow’s armbone to jelly. Watch how Aidan and I do it.”

But Aidan and Percy never gave their handshaking demonstration. Just then Errol appeared from around the nearest bend in the canyon.

He was running toward the three travelers, and running surprisingly well for a white-haired man in his sixties. Just behind him were Jasper and Brennus. Aidan ran to embrace his father. The old man’s cheeks were wet with joyful tears, and he could barely speak-couldn’t, in fact, say anything but Aidan’s name over and over.

Aidan embraced Brennus and Jasper with all the affection of a long-lost brother, and there were more tears of joy all around. Dobro was so affected by the scene that he, too, began to cry sloppily and loudly.

“Father, this is Dobro Turtlebane,” Aidan began, “the feechie friend I have told you about.”

“You are very welcome to Sinking Canyons, Dobro,” Errol said, extending his right hand. Aidan was afraid for a moment that Dobro would seize his father’s hand and shake his arm out of its socket, but instead he fell on Errol’s neck and buried his face in the older man’s shoulder. “Thank you for them kind words, Mr. Errol,” he sobbed. “Any daddy of Aidan’s is a daddy of mine. And I ain’t had no daddy since the gator down at Devil’s Elbow knocked mine out’n a flatboat and et him-and me no more’n a yearling at the time.”

Percy continued the introductions. “Dobro, this is Brennus, our eldest brother, and Jasper, my twin.” Dobro seized both brothers in a single hug and cried again.

Aidan looked beyond his father and brothers and for the first time realized how many men were living in Sinking Canyons. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, all keeping their distance out of respect for the family reunion. Errol noticed the look of astonishment on Aidan’s face. “Our band of outlaws,” he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “Didn’t Percy tell you?”

Percy didn’t tell me there were so many!” Aidan recognized many of the men, but nearly half were strangers to him. “Who are they?” he asked.

Errol led his sons and Dobro to the clusters of men who had been watching them. “You remember the Greasy Cave boys,” he said.

“Of course,” Aidan answered. “We saw Arliss before. Ernest. Cedric. Clayton.” He shook hands with each in turn. “And Gustus, the foreman.” Gustus gave a toothy grin, then broke into an energetic but tuneless version of the song Aidan had composed for the miner-scouts the night they went down to the caverns beneath Bonifay Plain: Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave, They did not think it odd To make their way beneath the clay, Where human foot had never trod.