Dobro gave another slap at his bare arm and launched into a story meant to educate his fellow travelers and keep his own mind off his troubles.

"Mr. Wildcat and Mr. Alligator got to argufying about who was the boss of the forest. Up and down they had it, back and forth, who should and who shouldn't. They got so aggravated till Mr. Wildcat finally reached back with his off-paw and fetched one across Mr. Alligator's snout. Ker-blip! "

Dobro reenacted the blow, swinging his open hand in a sweeping, roundhouse motion.

"Well now, Mr. Alligator was astonished that his old friend Mr. Wildcat would strike a blow against him. His eyes filled up with tears. He turned tail like he was headed back into the water, and Mr. Wildcat figured he'd made his point. He sat down on his hunkers and mewed out a song: None of you critters better give me sauce.

I am the champeen, I am the boss.

Boss of this river, boss of these trees.

All of you critters better ask me please.

"But Mr. Alligator's tearfulness was just a trick he learnt from Cousin Crocodile. He didn't even feel that cat's furry paw against his bony snout. And he sure didn't have it in his mind to skedaddle from such a fight as that. Naw, he turnt tail so he could reach that sa.s.sy wildcat better.

"Mr. Wildcat was strokin' his chin whiskers and feelin' mighty b.u.mptious when Mr. Alligator's tail come whippin' 'round like a harrycane. That poor cat was flung nearbout to the other side of the river. And by the time he'd paddled to the far bank, lookin' droopy and bedraggled, Mr. Wildcat decided not to pursue the question no further with Mr. Alligator.

"Wasn't too much longer before Mr. Bear come by and seen Mr. Alligator looking biggety. He asked him, 'What makes you hold your head so high, Mr. Alligator?'

"Alligator given him one of them long smiles of his, and then he sings out, None of you critters better give me sauce.

I am the champeen, I am the boss.

Boss of this river, boss of these trees.

All of you critters better ask me please.

"Mr. Bear figured on that a while, and then he suggested maybe Mr. Alligator weren't the boss after all, and they commenced to argufyin'. Up and down they had it, back and forth, who can and who can't, who is and who isn't. They got so aggravated that Mr. Alligator reached way back with his tail and frammed Mr. Bear across the hunkers.

"That hurted Mr. Bear, you know. But mostly it made him mad. Mr. Bear's a big feller and don't fling so easy as a wildcat. He reached up high with his near paw and kerflunked it right down betwixt Mr. Alligator's k.n.o.bbly eyes just like he was swingin' a hammer. Knocked all the bubbles out'n him. Sunk him all the way to the river mud. Mr. Alligator figured he'd had about all he wanted, and he moseyed a good piece down the river afore he k.n.o.bbed his nose out'n the water again.

"Mr. Bear couldn't help bloviatin' a little bit. He stood up on his behind legs and grumbled and growled so as to get his pitch, then he sung out: None of you critters better give me sauce.

I am the champeen, I am the boss.

Boss of this river, boss of these trees.

All of you critters better ask me please.

"Then Mr. Bear figured that if he was going to be the boss of the forest he better go ahead and start bossin' some folks. So he gathered up all the critters in a clearing where he could give everybody their 'signments. The critters didn't like it very much, and they all was grumblin' in their goozlums, but they'd seen what Mr. Bear done to Mr. Alligator, and them what didn't see it had heard about it. n.o.body figured he'd be the first person to backchat Mr. Bear.

"Mr. Bear said, 'You folks probably heard already, I'm the boss of this here forest.' That made the critters feel uneasy in their minds, but n.o.body said nothin'. They just kind of shuffled their paws around a little bit.

"Then, when Mr. Bear was about to start with the 'signments, somebody hollered out, 'I don't reckon you the boss of me, old Bear.'

"Mr. Bear's brow went wrinkly and he stared from critter to critter. He asked, 'Which one of you folks is givin' me sauce?' All the critters just looked down at their paws, afraid Mr. Bear would think it was them what said he weren't the boss. Mr. Bear said a little louder, 'Which one of you critters is givin' me sauce?'

"The voice hollered out again, 'I'm the one what's givin' you sauce, Bear. That's the way I like my bear meat-with a little sauce.'

"Mr. Bear ain't grumblin' no more. Now he's roaring: 'Who said that?!'

"The voice hollered out a third time: 'It's me, it's Mr. Flea. And I don't mind saying, I'm a better man than you, Mr. Bear.'

"Mr. Bear squinched up his eyes and soodled down close to the ground and sure enough, he seen Mr. Flea standing on the top of a daisy flower with his chest poked out and his fists balled up. Mr. Bear give a snort, then he commenced to hee-hawing.

"That just made Mr. Flea mad. 'I ain't a man to be laughed at,' he told him. 'You better 'pologize to me, and in a hurry too.'

"But Mr. Bear'd done flopped down on the ground and was tee-heein' and haw-hawin' like he just couldn't help hisself.

"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 s...o...b..r 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 n.o.body 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."

Chapter Ten.

Into 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 c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sageway 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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.tresses 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."

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 pa.s.sword.

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-b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.ting. 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.