“You ain’t comin’ back!” Black nose and whiskers were inches from his face and tears were pouring down fuzzy cheeks. “I know you ain’t. Once you get back to your own world through that bloody ’ole in the ground you’ll be back in familiar surroudin’s, back among your own kind, an’ you’ll forget all about us. About poor ol’ Mudge, an’ Weegee, and that senile ’ardshell Clothahump who needs you to look after ’im in ’is old age, and even about Talea. You’ll get back to where everythin’s comfortable an’ safe an’ relaxin’ an’ you won’t be comin’ back ’ere.” He grabbed the vee of Jon-Tom’s indigo shirt and shook him.
“Are you listenin’ to me, you ugly, ignorant, naive bald-faced monkey? Wot am I goin’ to do if I never see you again?”
“Take it easy, Mudge.” Feeling a little teary-eyed himself, Jon-Tom disengaged the otter’s fingers from his shirt. “I wouldn’t run out permanent on my best friend, even if he is a liar, a cheat, a thief, a drunk and an incorrigible wencher.”
Mudge wiped at his eyes and nose. “It does me ’eart good to ’ear you talk like that, mate.” He stepped back. “Maybe you will come back, but I ain’t goin’ to ’old me breath. I’ve seen wot ’appens to folks when they gets back to where they belong. I sure as ’ell ain’t goin’ to take any bets on you returnin’.”
“If for some reason I don’t, I don’t want you lying around moping and moaning about it all the time.”
“Wot, me?” The otter forced a cheery smile. “Not a bleedin’ chance!”
Jon-Tom looked at the entrance to the cave. “We had ourselves an interesting time, didn’t we? Set some evil back on its heels, met some special folks, spread some goodwill and generally shook up the status quo. No reason for regrets.” He dropped to his knees and lit the first torch, crawled toward the opening beneath the ledge.
“I’ll be back, you’ll see. Tell Talea not to fret. I’ll be coming for her.”
“Sure you will, mate.” Mudge stood next to Weegee. Cautious waved farewell along with the otters while Teyva pawed the earth. The only thing absent from Mudge’s goodbyes was a feeling of conviction.
Jon-Tom stumbled down the familiar tunnel until he could stand. Shouldering his backpack he held the torch close to the floor, following the damp footprints he and his friends had left on their previous subterranean excursion as well as those of the pirates who had pursued them. Within an hour he was following the crumbling wire back to the cleft in the rocks that led to his own world.
Halfway through the narrow passage he extinguished his torch. Light and voices reached him from the other side. He was able to use the distant glow to guide him the rest of the way through the defile.
Soon after he emerged, a voice yelled at him.
“Hey, you there!” He blinked as his eyes received the full force of a multicell flashlight, put up a hand to shield them as he tried to locate the speaker.
“What is it?”
The light was lowered along with the voice. “Don’t lag back there. This cave’s full of dangerous dropoffs and unexplored dead ends. We ain’t lost anybody yet and I don’t want to start today.”
“Sorry.” As his eyes adjusted he found a dozen people staring at him. A couple of families, some young couples, one or two younger people traveling on their own. One shouldered a backpack as grungy as his own.
The guide resumed his well-worn spiel. “Now over here, folks, we have a formation called the bashful elephant.”
The faces turned away. Children oohed and aahed. No one questioned Jon-Tom’s sudden appearance. Those in the front of the guided party assumed Jon-Tom had been in the back, and those in the back assumed he’d entered with the guide. He simply fell in step with the tour and followed it back out into the bright warm sunshine of a Texas afternoon. There was the old building where he and his companions had battled Kamaulk’s pirates and then drug runners, behind him the stone entrance to the cavern below, at the end of the dirt road the sign identifying this as the location of the Cave-With-No-Name, and off in the distance the highway where a passing eighteen-wheeler had startled his friends. South of the highway lay San Antonio. Twelve hundred odd miles to the west was the megalopolis of Los Angeles, his home.
He turned to watch the old guide latch the gates which sealed the cave entry. Not too many yards below lay a small twist in space-time. Through that inexplicable, tenuous passage could be found a land where otters talked and a certain turtle practiced at sorcery, where he had battled armies of intelligent insects, ferocious ferrets and parrot pirates.
As Mudge would say, it was bloody unreal.
The tourists were filing back into their cars. Jon-Tom made several hopeful inquiries before one of the young couples agreed to give him a lift into San Antonio. Comfortably ensconced in the back seat of their Volvo he was removing his backpack when he happened to notice the elaborate digital clock set in the dash. In addition to the time of day it also provided full date information.
He knew he’d been gone more than a year, but it was one thing to view time in the abstract, quite something else to see it solid and irrefutable in the form of cool blue LED letters and numbers. How would his parents react when he turned up after a silence of more than a year? Fortunately he wasn’t one of those clinging absentee college students who called in once a week. They were used to long silences from their distant, hard studying son. But a year?
What was his counselor at UCLA going to say? And his friends, and semi-regular dates like Suzanne and Mariel?
They and everyone else were going to have to buy the story he’d carefully worked out.
A unique opportunity had arisen (and that part of it was certainly no lie, he told himself) for him to go to work for the government. When the inevitable question arose as to what sort of work that entailed, he was going to smile knowingly and explain that he wasn’t at liberty to go into details just now. Then his parents and friends and everyone else would (hopefully) nod knowingly in turn and let the matter drop.
It wouldn’t go over as well with the university administration. There would be classes abruptly abandoned he would have to make up, professors to mollify. He was confident, though, that he could get his life back on track.
The Volvo had turned out onto the highway, heading southeast toward the interstate. Trucks and cars zipped past, belching fumes that reminded him of the swamplands. At first he thought there was a funny smell in the air. Then he realized it was the air itself. There were no industries, no internal combustion engines in the other world. The air there, if not the inhabitants, was pure.
Of course he was going back. Talea, the love of his life, was back there. The love of his life in that world, anyway. What was Mariel doing these days? And Suzanne? What would they think of his exotic gone-to-work-for-some-secret-government-agency story? Would it score points for him?
The young wife turned the radio to the local rock station and the Volvo was filled with the mellifluous sounds of a Ronald McDonald clone hawking the opening of three new San Antonio area burger Xanadus. Ads for Po Folks, underarm deodorant and used-cars-se-habla-espanol followed. The Cowboys were on their way to the playoffs again. Nothing had changed since he’d been gone.
Nothing much at all.
-A Great Deal Later-
The giant came trudging up the river road. He was impossibly tall and gaunt. A scraggly seaweed-like growth clung to his face and there was a wild gleam in his eyes.
The observer of this approaching apparition did not panic, did not flee. She stood her ground.
The giant saw her. Across his back was slung a thick wooden staff, knobbed at one end. Tied to and around it were a number of bulging sacks. Perhaps he was a pedlar, the observer thought.
“Hello there.” The giant did not have a threatening voice. He sounded tired. “What have we here?”
By way of reply the observer darted forward and sank her teeth into the giant’s leg midway between knee and ankle. Letting out a yelp of pain, he began hopping about on one leg, trying to balance his precarious load as he attempted to shake his attacker free. The third kick of that long limb sent her sprawling.
Rolling to her feet, she began spitting ostentatiously while rubbing at her mouth. “Phooey, phooey, phooey! Stink!”
Regaining his balance the giant felt of his not-too-severely injured leg and eyed the young otter warily, ready to dodge or defend against another attack.
“I can’t say much for the resemblance, but the attitude is unmistakable. Will you go and tell your father that an old friend is here to see him?”
The young otter’s brows drew together. She wore a frilly pair of short pants and a flowery necklace. “See Dada? Stinkman want to see Dada?”
“Yes.” Jon-Tom couldn’t repress a smile. When she wasn’t trying to amputate his leg the little furball was damn cute. “See Dada.”
The cub considered, then turned and scampered up the road. “Come wid me.”
As he followed, Jon-Tom drank in his surroundings. The forest appeared unchanged, eternal. The belltrees tinkled melodiously at the merest hint of a breeze. Already the young otter was almost out of sight. She would stop and turn to wait impatiently for him to catch up, then take off with another burst of speed.
“Quick-quick, stinkman! You too slow.”
He would smile and try to lengthen his stride.
She led him to the bank of a large stream. Several homes were built on the gentle slope and as many more in the sides of the banks themselves. His guide led him to one underground domicile which boasted broad windows looking out over the water and a large oval doorway. As they drew near another trio of youngsters materialized to cluster questioningly around him. Thankfully none of them decided to find out what he tasted like.
His guide vanished inside. While he waited for her to return he set his burden down one sack at a time. This did not allow him to relax, since he had to repeatedly but gently slap tiny paws away from straps and seals.
“You’re your father’s cubs, all right.”
“Whose father’s cubs?” snapped a demanding voice. Jon-Tom spun to confront the speaker. Eyes locked.
For a moment Mudge was speechless, in itself sufficient indication of the shock he felt. Then he rushed to greet his old friend. “’Tis a ghost.” Hand met paw. “No, ’tis too solid to be a ghost. I never thought you’d come back, mate. We’d sort o’ given up ’ope, wot?”
