WHERE’S THE WAND
No special plan hopped into my head during the night. No new knowledge tumbled there. I did so such feel a new strength of confidence. I gazed at the twenty-two rings on my lavender hands, my Harick hands. I conjured cakes and rode the sky AFTER the blue sand was somehow whirled down the Well to this world. Truth. Such. I am caught up, yoss, in a great new test, greater even than the snows of the Charborr Forest. I must be meant to retrieve the jarbots and bring ‘em to Fan Wa’s silver sands. I wonder how. Such were my thoughts.
“Change to Rakara now!” I commanded Kar without a stumble, bold firm and standing tall, short though I am.
Kar’s face lit up merry, and with no delay she shimmered to hang floating upside down beside me. Her lavender skin matched mine. Her enormous ears protruded from her mass of orange hair. The dark green mantle she wore pooled neatly at her feet above her head. Her milky white eyes stared without sight. Her thin lips curled into a smile which was a frown from where I saw it.
“Jrabe I be now, Bek,” she said. “First ever down the Well! And I’ll go first to the jesterbeasts, too. I’ll announce ye! Teach me words. What shall I say?”
“Say ‘The Jaha approaches’,” I instructed.
“The Jaha up roaches, the Jaha up roaches. What does it mean?” said Kar, drifting up, drifting down.
“It means ‘Harick fel nor’,” I explained. “Go now.”
She floated off muttering “The Jaha up roaches” over and over again on and on. When she was out of sight, I looked into my mind so such to see if anything helpful had appeared there. Where’s the wand? I asked, hoping to prod an answer out of hiding. I walked the path through the tall trees slowly, repeating Where’s the wand? in a rhythm of Where’s step the step wand? step. No answers revealed ‘emselves. Truth, I approached the glade of nests ahead of me, each nest with a jesterbeast standing on it and staring up. I shrugged like we do and moved forward.
Kar as Rakara, of course, floated high above ‘em, swirling her mantle and singing, “The Jaha up roaches! The Jaha up roaches!” I strode strongly into view, my face as fierce with confidence as I could make it, which probably wasn’t really so very fierce, truth told.
“Jarbots!” I cried, flinging wide my arms, broom in left hand.
As one, they snapped their heads to me, and I bathed in a gaze of pale blue goggle eyes. They clacked talons and claws in excitement. Horrible tusky grins wreathed their horned and hairy scaly faces. I trusted my mouth to open and to say something so such proper. And to my amazement and relief, it did! At least it announced what was to be done next. It did not say how all of those jesterbeasts would be delivered by me up the Well to the silver sands of Fan Wa’s Island. And yet, it did say in wonderful rhyme without a single stumble:
“Before the jarbots are swept up the Well
To the silver sands of the silver shell
They have a simple task to perform
To search like a great and spreading storm
To discover the where that the wand lies resting
And beside it the crystal ball is nesting.”