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I’ve got to admit that Bigfoot almost looked weirdly pretty and maybe even just a little bit graceful hung out there in thin mid-air with his arms spread wide like a giant furry sky-diving wanna-be-paratrooper Wookie.
Mind you, I am not really sure just what Bigfoot was actually thinking, jumping out of the safety of The Prophet like that.
I mean, Raven had a whole lot more options when it came to aerial maneuverability.
Raven could turn to the left or the right. He could fly straight up or he could spiral downwards or he could just flap his wings and hover there for a little while.
As a bird – when it came to sky – Raven had a whole lot of possible options.
Bigfoot – on the other hand – had one single undeniable choice, and that one choice was to fall straight down - which is why it kind of surprised me when Raven banked and turned in such a way as to meet Bigfoot in a perfect mid-air collision.
Which was about the time that The Prophet tilted and spun and I almost lost my grip upon the slippery goop of the Warren-cocoon one more time – which almost slid and fell out of the side door of the mystic pink Winnebago, yet again.
Sometimes it seems as if life is nothing more than a whole lot of doing the same thing over and over and over again until something finally works.
“DAD!” I shouted, nearly jumping out of the Winnebago myself.
Yeah, I know.
I went and I said the “D-word”, directly in Warren’s direction.
It didn’t matter that Warren hadn’t actually heard me yelling that “D-word” – what with him being covered by that mystical pine needle cocoon of his.
It was still the “D-word”.
Meaning, Dad.
And I had said it at Warren.
I almost jumped, too. I don’t really know what I thought I could accomplish by jumping but I still felt that knee-jerk of reflex galvanizing through the calves of my legs and the only thing that stopped me from hurtling out of that door towards certain death was Coyote hanging onto me for dear sweet life.
Raven kept on coming towards Bigfoot and Bigfoot was primed and ready.
I watched as Bigfoot grabbed a fistful of midnight black feathers with his big left hand as he hurtled past Raven, bringing his big right fist hooking upwards into a wonderfully beautiful right hook.
“POW!!!” Bigfoot yelled – just as his right fist hit home.
I’m not really sure if yelling pow made him hit any harder – but Raven shook the right hook off and handed Bigfoot a hook of his own – namely he drove that giant heavy beak of his deep down into Bigfoot’s shoulder meat.
I saw something red spilling down Bigfoot’s shoulder – and it didn’t look like ketchup to me at all.
“OW!!!” Bigfoot yelled.
Meanwhile, the Warren-cocoon slipped a little further out the door and the Prophet kept on falling and the Labrador dirt was coming up fast.
“Do something!” I shouted – not sure if I was talking to Coyote, the Prophet, to Warren, or even possibly to myself.
Gravity is funny, that way.
It works awfully quick, whenever you don’t want it to.
“I am falling just as fast as I can,” the Prophet yelled back. “Maybe if I am careful I can land on top of Bigfoot and break my fall – once the Raven decides to let go of him.”
At the same time Raven ripped upwards with his heavy talons, slashing and tearing deep vicious gouges out of Bigfoot’s big furry belly.
I saw more red not-ketchup spilling out of Bigfoot’s belly-fur.
Bigfoot didn’t seem to be bothered by that not-ketchup. He took another solid swing – only this punch had about half as much of the “POW!!!” of his first swing.
“Pow!” Bigfoot weakly yelled.
Maybe he should have yelled just a little bit louder – because Raven easily dodged Bigfoot’s second punch. Raven banked to the left, shaking his head so that Bigfoot swung like the world’s largest and fuzziest set of dog tags you had ever seen - and then Raven twisted his head down and caught hold of one of the feathers that Bigfoot was hanging onto.
At which point Raven pulled that vital feather loose and then he reached down and yanked out another of the feathers that Bigfoot was hanging onto.
This feather-yanking didn’t seem to be hurting Raven one bit – any more than it would hurt you or me to pluck a hair out of our head – but it was making it awfully hard for Bigfoot to hang on. Each feather yanked meant one less feather for him to hang onto.
And then he dropped.
Meanwhile the Labrador landscape was getting a whole lot closer.
By now it was becoming a bit of a guessing-match as to which of us was going to hit first.
The Warren-cocoon, Bigfoot or the Prophet.
With us inside.
“Hang on, Adam,” Coyote gravel-whispered in my ear. “Think about feathers in a soft summer updraft.”
I felt myself being wrapped up in a gray fuzzy crash blanket as Coyote wrapped himself entirely about me and the Warren-cocoon and then we jumped out of The Prophet’s door.
It was a cool and wonderful kind of experience. I’m not quite sure how he did it. According to every rule of gravity that existed we should have been falling at the exact same rate of speed that the Prophet had been falling at the time that Coyote had jumped.
Only we didn’t fall.
It felt as if Coyote was made out of nothing but dandelion dandruff and dust motes. We sort of hovered – not really flying – just lofting a little upwards and then sort of floating gently down to the dirt. I could see out of the corner of my eye Coyote’s big pink tongue lolling happily in the breeze all the while him grinning a big old happy Coyote grin.
I guess he was feeling pretty pleased with himself.
Which was right about when I noticed that Coyote had those two freshly-plucked Raven feathers sticking out of his big Coyote grin. I don’t know how he managed to catch those feathers and if Bigfoot had actually MEANT to drift them Coyote’s way, but Coyote was sure feeling pretty happy and more than a little bit smug about catching those magic Raven feathers and using them to float the way that he did.
And I guess I couldn’t blame him one little bit.
We landed as if we had been falling through water. I almost felt as if someone were filming me in slow motion – like I was falling in some kind of a dream space.
Just try and think about feathers, he had said – and that’s exactly what I was trying hard to think about.
I was thinking about feathers and I was thinking about freshly-blown soap bubbles on a hot summer evening and I was thinking about moon-walking astronauts, dandelion fluff and bright billowy cotton candy parachutes.
And whether it was my soft-headed thinking or Raven’s magic feathers or just plain dumb luck we landed and we stood there in the Labrador dirt and watched as Bigfoot and the Prophet crashed to the ground like a giant Geronimo free fall pancake.
I’m not saying it was pretty.
“WE’VE GOT TO SAVE HIM!” I screamed. “HE’S GOING TO FREAKING CRASH AND DIE!”
“I’m open for any sort of suggestions you can think of,” Coyote said. “But as far as I can see we are REALLY short on options.”
I reached down and I laid my hand upon the Warren-cocoon and I could feel a sort of warm comforting tingle as if someone were reaching up through the pine and swamp grass sides of the big funky sticky cocoon and holding onto my hand saying there, there, everything is going to be all right.
Namely, Warren.
And then all at once I saw The Prophet soaring down in a sort of semi-controlled crash dive. He seemed to be almost aiming himself towards the plummeting Bigfoot.
Bigfoot kept on falling.
The Prophet moved a little closer.
The ground came closer too.
And then all of a sudden everything got WAY too close.