The Chameleon Shop

A small boy, barefoot and brown skinned, ran like the blazes through the trees and up to the Shaman. He tugged on her tunic urgently. She turned patiently, ‘what is it child? Something wrong?’

‘Come, there’s a sick chog in the garden. Mother say’s it might die.’ The old woman could see by the way he was hopping from foot to foot, that he was anxious to be off running, so she sent him on ahead of her, pausing only to grab her medicine bag and a shawl.

The village had one big communal vegetable and herb garden, which they fenced off with sapling logs to keep out deer and rabbits. Hedgehogs, however, helped the garden by keeping the numbers of snails and slugs low, so they were welcome guests in the garden. The villagers even made them cosy little shelters of branches and leaves to sleep in during the cooler winter months when they hibernated.

The Shaman bent stiffly, knees popping and crouched down beside the very still little hedgehog.

‘Mother thinks it might be poison. Do you think he ate the orange fungus?’ Said the little boy crouched beside her, mimicking her.

‘I can’t be sure. There is no foaming at his mouth; could be possible though. Maybe some horrid person has kicked him. I’ll take him back to the village and see what we can do to help him.’ She wrapped him in her shawl, careful of his spikes and cradled him as they wandered back to the village.

‘This mother of yours ... what is her name?’

‘Mother?’ he answered frowning as though she were a bit slow.

The Shaman laughed at his honesty, ’Yes, that is also true. I mean her other name. She is the one they call Cherish, is she not?’

‘Yes.’ He said, feeling a little foolish when he realised his goofy mistake.

‘Tell her I wish her to go to the Masquerade Ball at the castle, in my place. She can take whoever she wishes as her partner.’

‘You do not wish to go to the party then?’

‘No. I have little tolerance for idiots and a bigger idiot than Wilfrey Hobbs you will not find in the whole of the Five Realms. Crowds of noisy people tend to get on my foo foo’s a bit. I feel my mouth might say things that my backside has to answer for, if I’m forced to be in that man’s company.’ She smiled at the boy, tweaking his nose and he laughed at the thought of the elderly woman getting her bum smacked for mouthing off.

Deep in the Caverns of the Earth Realm ...

Kaylee took the down-road as suggested by Ricky. She tried to ignore the tiny glowing eyes she saw now and again on the cave walls, as well as the far off roars from large creatures unseen and hopefully, inaccessible to her.

She was giving herself little encouraging pep talks as she walked along in the dark. She had grabbed the last lantern she came across. She was certainly not brave enough, nor stupid enough, to keep walking in this place in the pitch darkness.

‘I can do this. Piece of cake! Tree of Life said I can do this, so do this, I shall. I’ll be home again by tomorrow sometime and ... Well, maybe not tomorrow, possibly the next day, but still ...’ She walked steadily and bravely through the dark damp creepy tunnels for around half an hour, with only the light from her lantern for company.

She began to get excited when up ahead she saw another two doors. It wasn’t until she got close enough to recognise it was the exact same doors she’d already been to, that she became incredibly ticked off. The down-road had actually taken her on a wild-goose-chase, only to wind up straight back at the doors where the biker-gnomes were.

One toad remained there, guarding the doors. The previous toad might possibly have been blown up, from what a little bird had told her.

The toad said, ‘oh no, not you again! I’ll save you za trouble, its za door on za right...’

‘I know, I know.’ She couldn’t be bothered arguing with it, impatient to be on the correct path this time. However, as she stepped through the right door expecting a solid road, this time for some magical reason unknown to her, she dropped straight down and kept on falling.

As she raised her arms, her green cloak flew upwards and stayed up there for a time floating on the air like a kite.

She fell and fell, through the cold dark, her fingers clawing at the dirt walls, thinking that this is the end of Kaylee Browne. I’m actually plummeting to my death. The nerd part of her brain was working double time, this must be an Oubliette, I think; she had learned about them in History at school. A place for forgetting.

Which in plain kid talk, is a dark hole in the ground where you can’t see your hand in front of your face, let alone anything else creepy hiding in the dark, waiting to devour you and leave your bones in a huge heap on the floor!

‘Mind you,’ the rude little toad called from way above her, laughing as she continued her long fall, ‘I could be ze one who tells lies.’

She looked up at him and a hot stream of rage gushed up into her head. She swore to herself he was in BIG trouble IF she made it out of here alive. She knew she must hit the bottom soon and braced her arms over her head as school had taught them to do for earthquakes, not knowing what she was supposed to do when heading towards the bottom of an Oubliette at breakneck speed. They did not teach that in disaster training at school, unfortunately.

Unexpectedly, her momentum suddenly changed directions as her bum thumped an extremely hard surface and she began a rapid and horizontal slide to the left. It whooshed her round and round, like a water tunnel at an amusement park. It was not as smooth as she would have liked, but was very wet which helped some with combating the friction.

With her increasing speed, her hair trailed behind her and the water occasionally found its way up her nose. It was so dark she couldn’t have seen her hand in front of her face, had she been able to raise it ... which she wasn’t, hooting along on her back like a tobogganist ─ minus the toboggan.

Another unwelcome scary thought had just occurred to her. She hoped that there was not something large with sharp teeth waiting to catch her at the other end of this, like a cat outside a mouse hole.

She was sure she must have screamed but was moving so fast she must have left the panicked scream floating about lost, somewhere back up the slide. Suddenly the tunnel ended and daylight blinded her as she became temporarily airborne. She shot out into nothingness, doggy paddling the air.

Once she could focus, again she saw the sea below her, approaching at a terrifying speed. Kaylee dropped bum first, covering her face with her arms just before landing with a huge splash into a polluted bay, filled with rubbish such as plastic bags and Styrofoam cups. If she hadn’t been so concerned with the immediate possibility of drowning, she might have wondered what on earth man-made plastic was doing in this realm. But then again, that stuff hangs around a very long time, so... go figure?

She went under the water and cold slapped her brutally, everywhere at once. The sudden shock of it stole her breath away. Her nostrils filled with water again. While floating about down there in a daze, amongst the floating plastic bags and rubbish, she saw in front of her the sad face of a trapped turtle. The poor creature had unfortunately gotten plastic fishing line stuck round its flipper, cutting painfully into the delicate skin. Unable to free itself, it had grown too weak to fight it anymore and had a sad look of desperate resignation on its face.

It knew it was going to die.

Kaylee could not let that happen! She was getting dizzy, seeing spots before her eyes and her lungs were bursting, but she pulled and unraveled and pulled on the fishing line until finally, it came free. The turtle, sensing freedom, got a second wind and tried to join in the fight to save its life.

Kaylee was unbelievably overjoyed to have freed the beautiful turtle, but realised with regret that she’d left herself too weak and dizzy to swim to the surface. Her backpack and wet jeans dragged her down and the darkness and stream of tiny bubbles took her.