The Wicked Small People of Whiskey Bridge

Copyright © 2011 by Jon Oplinger & Elizabeth Cooke.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-4947-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4948-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4976-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 09/22/2011

Contents

Chapter 1

The Crater and the Land Beyond

Chapter 2

The Little People Ask the Geese for Help

Chapter 3

Sulphurland Is Discovered to be Strangely Inhabited; A Great Favor Is Asked of the Snow Geese

Chapter 4

A Desperate Flight; Chan Chan Falls But is Rescued

Chapter 5

A Home Is Made by the Magical Means of Cardboard; Further Explorations

Chapter 6

Xandre Makes a Discovery, but Tells No One

Chapter 7

Chan Chan and Rudy Become Friends

Chapter 8

Bad Tomcat Is Taught a Lesson; Quiz Quiz is Nearly Megawashed through Excessive Pride

Chapter 9

Xandre and Timothy Are Observed at the Computer; The Little People are Discovered and Found to be Americans

Chapter 10

The Footprint Game; Difficult Questions about Sulphurland; A Gift of New Clothes

Chapter 11

Winter Comes To Whiskey Bridge

Chapter 12

A Computer Is Acquired; Much Is Learned; The Little People Are Betrayed by Video Games

Chapter 13

SCRUBCRUD Is Forestalled by Grandma Arsenault

Chapter 14

SCRUBSCUD Made Sick; Bob Battenschaper Departs to Pulltrouser Hollow

Chapter 15

Chan Chan is Discovered and Thought to be Disco Ken

Chapter 16

A Matter of Great Importance Is Decided upon at the Town Meeting

Chapter 17

No Longer From Away; Chan Chan Keeps a Promise

For:

Christina, Ting, Logan, and Julia

Chapter 1

The Crater and the Land Beyond

I know a place. It is small and it has never been found. Or, rather, I should say that it has never been found by Big People; the Little People know just where it is because it was once their home.

Hoo hee—it is far to the north if you are south, and far to the south if you are north, the Little People say.

You can tell that the Little People miss the life they lived there when the volcano blessed the land with sulfur and fumes. For it was in a volcanic crater that they lived, warm and happy next to the fumaroles. They slept to soft volcanic gurgles and the hiss of escaping steam and vapor. Their robust children played among the sulfur pillars. They breathed the sweet sulfuric air. Their skin glowed greenish-yellow.

Great winds blew seeds, some on whirligig wings and some with silken strands, over the crest of the volcano’s crater to settle and be stored until they acquired a delicate sulfur taste. The long fibers of milkweed were woven into the finest cloth you can imagine by the tiny fingers of the Little People. Their braided rope was as thin as thread but tremendously strong.

Sometimes the Little People would travel beyond the crest of the Crater where the air was thin and hard to breathe because it lacked sulphur. The Little People went there to gather mushrooms or pick berries, or to find seeds that were too heavy to sail upon the wind. Just one of these seeds would make a meal for a little person for the Little People are very small indeed—only about eleven or twelve inches tall.

If I were only eleven inches tall, I would be very frightened in the forest and the Little People have told me that, yes!, their ancestors were very frightened until they had learned about the animals that lived upon the green slopes beyond the Crater, in the hard to breathe air that made the Little People pant and gave them headaches if they stayed too long. They came to know the dangerous animals that had eaten Little People until they learned to defend themselves with long spears tipped with porcupine quills. Even fox and bobcat will think twice about eating a little person if it means a porcupine quill in the nose, which it always does.

Eagle was always overhead, his flight feathers fanning this way and that, his tail canting from side to side. Eagle looked down upon the tiny figures in the Crater with little curiosity. Eagle much preferred fish to any other food and a tiny, sulfur-tasting person was not to his liking at all. But the hawks were always dangerous, especially the brown skinny-legged hawks that would dart, their wings swept back, between the tree branches so fast that their talons will have sunk into the back of a little person almost before he heard the sound of Hawk’s wings.

As the story goes, one evening a little person was heading back to the Crater just as fast as he could go because the Little People do not like to be in the forest at night. Suddenly he heard the hiss of racing wings. Hawk! But the final clutch of talons did not come! Then the little person noticed on a branch just above him the huge round eyes and jutting beak of a little owl.

This is what scared the hawk, thought the little person, and if a little owl will scare a hawk, what will a big owl do?

Well, the Little People do love a debate. Were all hawks scared of all owls or just some? Should we dress up like owls?

Perhaps, said one little girl, if we only looked a bit like an owl.

So the grown-up Little People, who really do listen to their children, decided to fashion the first of their wonderful owl-face capes. A hawk would spy a tiny caped figure moving along the forest floor. Down swoops the hawk and, just as it is about to strike, out pops from the cape the beak and huge-pupiled eyes of a great horned owl! This happened long ago in the Year of the Owl Queries.

The Little People were on the best of terms with the birds of the forest floor. There was the shy wood thrush, and friendly partridge families that traveled the forest in stately single-file. More than once, the Little People had been warned by mother partridge’s squawk of alarm and noisy leaf scattering flight which meant that fox was about. If a little person stayed too long in the forest, he just might hear the soft whistle of Woodcock in flight and look up to see the long-billed bird flapping by moon haze toward those wet forest places that woodcock favor. Woodcock liked these places because they are full of worms and you know they have been there because they leave hundreds and hundreds of little holes in the ground. Woodcock are all the colors of brown leaves and when a woodcock is sitting on brown leaves they look like nothing at all. Sometimes not even a little person can see them from only a step away—a little person step, which is very close. Then Woodcock will fly straight up in the air in a confusion of brown leaves. Ha! Woodcock thinks it is a joke. But after they have stopped laughing, Woodcock will gravely say, It is an important joke.

In winter the cold air wreathed the Little People’s Crater in fog and the windswept snow often confined them. When they did go beyond the Crater they were bundled up in layer upon layer of clothes that had to be especially woven of milkweed and spider’s thread. A spider’s thread cloak is very warm, but a bit sticky until broken in. I wish I had one, but for me a spider’s thread cloak would require far too many spiders.

Spring brought general rejoicing. Without fail, each spring and each fall geese, some grey and white throated, some snow white, could be seen over the mountains or high overhead. When the Crater was shrouded in fog, the Little People loved to hear the honking and belling of geese through the mists. The geese were not to be found in the forest except far down in the dark valley where the Little People did not go. But the time would come, as I shall tell, when the Little People came to know the geese very well.

Friendships are renewed in the spring. The Little People had long been the best of friends with the ground sparrows whose spun-grass nests were much appreciated because they made perfect baskets, just the size to hold nuts. Often a little person would talk to Sparrow as she sat on her eggs and it must be said that ground sparrows are great talkers and the most cheerful of optimists. Sparrows know all the bird languages—even that of shy Thrush who seldom speaks at all.

It happened in the late spring that a little person who had gathered all the mushrooms that he could possibly carry and finding that the sulfur wind was blowing fresh from the Crater decided to pass a pleasant hour with Sparrow who at that time of year was sitting on her nest of eggs. A visit by a little person is most welcome even if the conversation did run to mushrooms and wild onions.

With his climbing rope in one hand and his spear in the other, Quiz Quiz—that was his name and he was, like his father, short and on the greenish side—silently twisted and turned his way through the bramble that surrounded Mrs. Sparrow’s nesting bush. Stuck on Quiz Quiz’s porcupine quill spear were several mushrooms and Quiz Quiz was thinking of how good they were going to taste after a few days curing over the fumaroles. Then he spied the tail of a great snake!

Snake, thick and strong, was draped over the branch of a hawthorn bush, the one in which Mrs. Sparrow had made her nest! Quiz Quiz could see Snake’s tongue flickering in and out. Snake was searching for Mrs. Sparrow who was just a little ball of brown feathers from which tiny bright eyes gleamed in fear.

Quiz Quiz dropped his spear and climbed onto a low branch very near to Snake. Snake could feel the vibrations. Quiz Quiz knew he must be very still. When, finally, ripples of muscle carried Snake even closer to Mrs. Sparrow, Quiz Quiz took his rope, which as I have told you, is as strong as anything and looped it around Snake’s tail. He did not at first pull the loop tight. Instead he threw the other end of his rope over a branch and, protecting his hands with the bottom of his cape, he slid down the rope to the ground. As fast as he could he tied off the rope.

Snake’s head wavered. Snake was confused. In that slow way of snakes, it took Snake some time to realize that he was caught. If Snake had been able to fill his long belly with Mrs. Sparrow and four eggs, Snake would have been content to digest and digest with no thought to his predicament. But now, hungry and tied up, Snake went into a great rage of coils. From a short distance Quiz Quiz watched with satisfaction. He knew the rope would never break.

Then, picking up his spear, he shouted up to Mrs. Sparrow that he must go and, still with his mushrooms, Quiz Quiz soon arrived at the crater. He was anxious to tell his story, for all the Little People are great storytellers. Quiz Quiz told of how he had come upon Snake, and of how big it was, and of how he had thought to tie Snake up. The Little People all said that tying Snake up was no more than Snake deserved. The Crater was a very happy place that night. The Little People looked back on all the challenges they had squarely faced over the long centuries and were filled with pride. They looked upon their world and felt triumphant.

It was during the Spring of the Great Serpent that the hiss of steam came less and less, and softer and softer, and the fumaroles stopped, all but a few, and the air no longer smelled so sweetly of sulfur. The Little People were filled with fear because soon, and maybe very soon, their beloved Crater would grow cold and bleak and deadly.

Chapter 2

The Little People Ask the Geese for Help

Truly, the Little People once made the most beautiful tapestries in the world. All that was important to the Little People and all the stories that make up their long history were recorded in these woven pictures. There is a tapestry about how they learned to use the owl face capes and there is a tapestry of how Quiz Quiz killed the Great Snake and one about Woodcock’s important joke. One tapestry told of how the Little People first came to the Crater long ago. It was to this tapestry that the Little People turned.

When the Little People realized that the Crater was dying they did not know what to do. The Little People talked and talked and argued and argued. They became very cross with one another and said that the bad air had scrambled their brains. A few of the Little People said nothing and instead puzzled over an old tapestry. On it there seemed to be a strange, angular world pictured from high above. Off to one side, in bold pattern, was a great creature, a person of tremendous size it seemed. How the Little People laughed at the curious being’s small head and big bottom.

You see, scoffed some of the Little People, it is too fantastic too believe.

On another part of the tapestry there seemed to be a picture of a strangely dressed little person riding on the back of a white-throated goose.

Perhaps, said some of the Little People, our ancestors came to the Crater riding on the backs of geese; and perhaps we could leave the same way.

Could this be true?

More and more the Little People began to wonder and to hope. Could they all fly high and far away, beyond the mountains to a place where they could live? Such thoughts made the Little People happy for a little while.

Then they could only think of problems. Where would they go? Could one actually ride on the back of a goose? The Little People spoke almost no goose at all, having little opportunity for practice, and even if they did speak goose, how would they get close enough to ask? And if asked, would the geese agree? And, and…

When alone, the Little People thought about these problems and worried. When in groups the Little People scolded and worried aloud. At the edge of one of these loud groups was a little girl whose name was Ollantay.

Sparrow speaks all the bird languages; Sparrow can talk to the geese, Ollantay kept saying.

Finally one of the grown-up Little People heard Ollantay and he said, Sparrow can talk to the geese. All the other Little People scoffed.

They said: Sparrow has never flown so high or as fast as the geese fly; Sparrow might as well try to catch the moon.

Sparrow can talk to Eagle and Eagle can fly as high and as fast as anything, piped Ollantay who was Quiz Quiz’s little sister.

And so the first part of the plan was made. But it