Chapter Twenty-Four

Motty’s Suggestion

Nimble Missst whirled away from Motty and snapped, “No time to waste!”

She jerked her head this way and that, took a false step here, a false step there. She flew off to the left, returned, flew off to the right, returned. She mumbled something about the underground river Motty couldn’t quite hear. She transformed with a shimmer to cloud and disappeared into the ground. All during this while of Nimby’s frantic activity, Motty sat waiting, calling out that she had a suggestion each and every time Nimby flitted by. A full and complete day passed in this manner. Finally, a defeated Nimble Missst oozed up from the green grass carpet and jelled into a forlorn Princess.

“Ridiculous. My mind is broken. It doesn’t work,” said Nimble Missst with a strange quivery wobble in her voice.

“I have a suggestion. May I now make it?” repeated Motty in her singing way for perhaps the fortieth time.

“The Chack Tree Forest means nothing. The golden underground river Sharumin flowing beneath us right here now means nothing. I thought … useless. Nothing means nothing. Ridiculous. My mind is broken,” mumbled Nimble Missst, a single glistening tear tracing its way down her ash green cheek.

“Nimby Nim, my own little Nim, listen to old Motty. Do you remember the cool compress? I do have a silly suggestion,” crooned Motty.

The cool compress was Motty’s yellow-gloved hand resting on Nimble Missst’s forehead. Such had always been the one and only single how that Nimble Missst’s snapjaw headaches could be made to lift away. The princess suffered from ‘em frequently when she was quite a small youngling. Now Motty’s yellow-gloved hand reached to rest on Nimble Missst’s forehead. Nimble Missst made no move of protest. Motty’s hand rested. The two, Princess and hollowite, stood there thusly on the green grass carpet in the halls of fire white pillar tree trunks and under the dense green branching overgrowth of the Chack Tree Forest. Nimby was silent. She closed her eyes.

“Motty is a simple thing. Simple things are simple,” sang Motty in a lullaby manner. “Simple is simply simple. Is ‘witch’s cottage’ simply witch’s cottage?”

Nimble Missst thought about muttering “Ridiculous”, but instead, she stiffened and slapped Motty’s hand from her forehead.

“Of course! Of course! True true truth! Why didn’t I? I should have …,” crowed Nimble Missst, and she took Motty’s hands and danced her around on the carpet of grass.

Motty delighted to see Nimby reignited, and she continued dancing on even after Nimble Missst suddenly ceased.

“Stop that ridiculous dancing!” shouted Nimble Missst. “We’ll fly all night. No other way. Treacherous waterwizard. I’ll deal him a lash of snapjaw tongue!”

“Flying all night to the witch’s cottage?” sang the grinning proud Motty.

“What? Witch’s cottage? Of course not! Ridiculous!” scoffed Nimble Missst. “The cape! The cape! Take it out! Give it to me! How could I have forgotten the cape? I forgot the cape.”

Nimble Missst was fairly giddy as she drew the silver cape about her and fastened it. Why? Whenever she wore the silver cape she felt her snapjaw powers boosted. Whether or not this was truth is unknown. However, she felt it so such. The cape snugly secured around her, she melted to brightly green sparkling cloud and began to drift in curling wisps out of the Chack Tree Forest and into the descending night. She drifted up the Falls of Horn as mist, the better to think. She drifted low creeping through the Villcom Wood, low through the oat fields, low through the Danken Wood. In the Woods Beyond the Wood, she churned in a great sparkling ball, roiling, to greet the dawn at Riffle Sike’s beckoning pond. She jelled to stand wrapped in the silver cape at the edge of the glassy smooth pond. Motty fluttered to a clumsy landing nearby and sagged exhausted, unable to keep her eyes open. She rolled her tongue, long and limp, across the ground. She snored. She dreamed.