And then he woke up.
As he opened as eyes and collected himself, he saw Doofus standing over him, rubbing his face all over Cable’s. He was the “furry washcloth” of his dream. Well, that was a relief. Doofus had pulled the last shift, and he was waking everybody up to prepare for the new day’s journey. After rubbing Cable’s face, Doofus walked over to Jimbo and laid his 500-pound body on top of Jimbo’s belly. It didn’t take long for Jimbo sit up and bellow out, “Help! I can’t breathe! I’m gonna die!” Then Doofus got up off his belly and gave Jimbo a pig-kiss, right on the lips. Jimbo, who seemed used to the ritual, gave Doofus a hug and said, “There just ain’t no better way to start a day than with an alarm clock that makes you nearly suffocate. Thanks, pal!” Cable could only shake his head.
Within 10 minutes or so, the crew had gathered their gear and their wits and were ready to strike off. “Lead the way, Doofus!” declared Jimbo. But the wild boar didn’t budge. He just stared up at Jim, grunting and wiggling his head around a bit. Jimbo took the hint. “So, you need a little treat to get you started, eh?” he asked. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small slab of dried meat. “Here you go, champ. Now get moving!” He tossed it into the air, and somehow Doofus leaped up and snatched it in mid-air. Seemingly energized by this meager morsel, Doofus boldly began tearing his way through the dense forest. Jimbo and Cable followed, slashing their way through with their swords. Jimbo turned to Cable and whispered, “That little piece of meat I tossed to him came from his deceased brother’s big rump. I guess it did the trick, eh? I think Doofus’ brother has been a whole lot kinder to him in death than he ever was in his life. But Herc...that’s just between you and me.”
Shortly after the trio resumed their journey, Jimbo abruptly stopped and stuck his nose in the air. Doofus, hearing his master’s footsteps comes to a halt, turned around and likewise stuck his snout upward. Neither of them made a noise; they just pondered and sniffed. Cable wanted to ask what was going on, but he didn’t dare pierce the silence. Finally Jimbo turned to Doofus and said, “Did you recognize that smell, old boy?” Doofus shook his head and snorted. Then he headed back into the woods and started blazing their trail once again.
“What was that all about?” a curious Cable asked at last.
“Herc, we people that live in the woods learn to live a lot by smell,” Jimbo replied, pointing to his nose and inhaling once again. “You’ve got to trust your sniffer, you see; sometimes it’s a matter of life or death. Back there, a faint but horrible smell came floating through the air. It’s a smell that’s come to me nostrils one other time. It was the smell of our camp, burning to the ground. Those rascally creatures probably discovered it at last and figured they’d try their hand at destroying us. But we were too quick for ‘em, Herc! We took off, just like the note said. And so I guess we just keep going. No sense to go back now, eh?”
Cable shuddered. The thought of being pursued by the silent murderers was hard for his 14-year-old mind to absorb. “So tell me, Jimbo,” he said after digesting the idea that his life was in jeopardy. “What is the secret to dealing with those creatures?”
“I wish I could tell you, mate,” replied Jimbo. “They’ve been after me for many years. Whenever I see them, I’m just filled with fear. It’s like my mind can only think of two things--run away or surrender. Now I fancy myself to be a pretty brave chap, and there’s not much that I run away from. But those guys--well, I just can’t take it. If I never ever saw one again in my life, I’d consider myself a lucky boy.”
Cable was somewhat puzzled by the response. “But Jimbo,” he asked, “remember when I was about to get tossed into the mound? You didn’t run away then. You actually shot your arrow and set me free.”
“Yes, mate, that’s true,” Jimbo responded. “But that was different. That time, the critters were chasing you. I’d noticed them following you for quite awhile, and so I just kind of trailed behind and watched what was going on. The truth is, I should have grabbed you a long time before they ever got to you...but I was too afraid. So I just waited till you were just about to be plunged into the fearsome door. Then my shame overtook my fear and I let the arrow fly and I chased you over the cliff. Herc--it kills me to say it, being the manly-man that I am, but the truth is, I’m sorry it took me so long to save you.”
Cable meditated on this revelation for a moment. This was a habit of Cable’s--he often didn’t reply right away. Sometimes he just needed to think. Some people interpreted it as rudeness, but really it just took his mind awhile to process new information. Finally he clapped his hands and said, “Jimbo, that’s it! That’s the secret!”
“What are you talking about, mate?” asked Jimbo.
“The secret to dealing with those creatures is to attack! When they come after you, and all you want to do is give up, what you really need to do is attack! That’s what you did--you let the arrow fly and went on the offense, and we got away. You finally said, ‘You guys can’t just have your way!’ If we ever see them again, Jimbo, that’s what we’ve got to do--no matter what our brain tells us that we ought to do. We’ve got to fight back!”
“You’re probably right there, Herc. Of course, it’s easier said than done. I hope we never have to test your theory. But it’s probably a good one.”
With that, the journey through the dense forest continued. It was slow going and laborious. The threesome made their way through the forest, but there were no landmarks for any of them to see. They’d moved away from the river, so the noise of flowing water wasn’t there to help orient them. To Cable, it seemed like they were just getting further and further from somewhere, and closer and closer to nowhere at all.
After what must have been about 4 hours or so, Doofus came to a halt. He looked back at Jimbo and nodded his head, as though summoning him forward. Jimbo moved ahead to where Doofus stood. After looking around, he said, “Good news, Herc! We’ve come across a trail of some sort!” Cable stepped forward and looked as well. Sure enough, a faint path lay in front of them, going from left to right. Cable was skeptical that the path would get them any closer to their destination, but he was glad for the chance to put his sword away and just walk. So, without a word, he followed Jimbo and Doofus as they headed off to the right.
As they walked, Jimbo said, “Hey Herc, do you remember that song about Rachel that I sang yesterday?”
“Uhhh...sure, Jimbo,” Cable replied. “How could I forget it? You sang it about ninety-three times. And each time, the tune was a little different. It was very...memorable.”
“Well, it just so happens that I am a bit of a poet, in case you hadn’t figured that out,” said Jimbo. “That’s why the message that we received yesterday sticks out in my head so much. The man made rhymes, and I’ve got to admit they were downright clever. They were almost as clever as me own, I’d say. Hey, let me tell you another of my poems.” Before Cable could interrupt, Jimbo began singing out the following:
A guy once tried to make a limerick
But he couldn’t, because he was a dimwit
So he made a dumb poem
That made everyone moan
And say, “Jimbo, you don’t know a lick.”
After completing his recital, Jimbo again blew a kiss into the air and said, “That’s for you, girl.” Cable shook his head and bit his lip. He was afraid to say anything. He didn’t want to encourage him (lest he hear more such horrible poems), but he didn’t want to discourage him either (lest he get upset, which is never a good thing when you’re out in the woods).
Less than an hour after they had made the turn onto the path, Doofus paused again. Jimbo declared, “By gum, we’ve come to another trail! What luck!”
But as Cable looked around, he recognized something familiar about his surroundings. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It was as though the woods were so thick, they seemed to cloud his thinking somewhat. But while Jimbo was summoning him on, Cable stubbornly refused to move. Finally he blurted out, “Jimbo, we’re just going in circles!”
“What do you mean, mate?” asked Jimbo. “Do you mean to say that Doofus isn’t doing his job?”
“Look, I don’t mean to insult Doofus,” replied Cable. “But back a ways, when we came to the ‘path’, we really were just looping around to the trail that we’d slashed through earlier. And by following that ‘path’, all we did was retrace our steps back to the same crossing. We’re not getting anywhere, Jimbo! We’re lost!”
Jimbo squeezed his chin and pondered a moment. He turned to Doofus and scratched his neck for a moment. Squatting down and staring his pet boar in the eyes, he asked, “Is that right, Doofus? Are we lost?” Doofus nodded his head, then buried his face in the dirt. Clearly he was ashamed.
Jimbo patted his dear friend. “Hey, mate, don’t you worry. It’s my fault, really.” Then, turning to Cable, Jimbo said, “You see, usually I just tell Doofus to blaze a trail, and he takes off by himself. Once he finds his destination and makes a path, he comes back and gets me. But this time, we just started following him. I think it put too much pressure on the poor boy.”
Then, turning back to Doofus, Jimbo asked, “Is that right, champ?” Doofus pulled his head out of the dirt and nodded.
“Well, that settles it, then,” Jimbo declared. “Doofus, you take off and find us a path to the mound with the fearsome doors. We’ll wait for you right here. When you’ve found it and when you made the path, come and get us. Does that sound okay?”
Doofus acted like a giddy little puppy. He chased his tail and ran around in circles a couple of times and then rubbed up against Jimbo’s leg. After Jimbo petted him one last time, Doofus tore off into the woods. For a few moments, Cable could hear crackling twigs and busted branches as the beast gracelessly meandered his way through the thick forest. But soon the sounds faded away, and silence reigned once again.
Cable turned to Jimbo and asked, “Now what do we do?”
Jimbo smiled and replied, “Now we get to do my favorite thing. We get to just wait. Just relax, Herc. Doofus will get back here eventually, and we’ll be on our way. But until then, just kick back and enjoy life in the forest.” Jimbo then made a little mound of dirt into a makeshift pillow, laid down, and closed his eyes.
Desperate for answers before his friend drifted off to sleep, Cable piped up again. “What do you mean, wait?” he asked. “We’ve got to be on our way, like the note says! We’ve got to get moving! We can’t just...just...just sit around and do nothing!”
Without opening his eyes, Jimbo calmly replied, “Actually, Cable, that’s exactly what we can do. You see, mate, we did what the note commanded. We started to make our way to the mound. You were right to say that we should leave right away, and that decision may have saved our little lives. But there’s nothing else we can do right now. If we keep moving, we just keep getting more and more lost. Moving is a great idea if you know where you’re going. But let’s face it--we have no idea where we’re going. So we need to wait till our path is made more clear.
“Believe me, Herc, I’ve spent many years in the woods. Life out here has taught me that you can’t always be in a hurry. There are some things you can control, and some things you can't. When you run into a situation that you can't control, you've just got to wait. Hurrying will only make it worse. It's like hunting for a prize stag. If the stag runs right by me and leaves a trail, then it makes sense for me to chase after him with everything I've got. But once I lose his trail, it doesn't do me any good to keep running and chasing, because running without any clear direction will probably lead me further from the stag. And it'll probably get me lost. The best thing to do is wait for the next opportunity to come 'round.”
Cable pondered this wisdom from his strange companion. Cable felt an urgency to keep moving, but he had to admit that urgency without direction probably didn't get him any closer to his goal. So he sat down next to Jimbo and just stared up at the canopy of the woods. Within a few seconds, a chilling thought came to his mind. “Jimbo—what if those creatures chase us down? They've already burned down your teepee. What's to stop them from chasing us down and killing us right here?”
“No worries, old mate,” Jimbo answered. “You see, those creatures are evil. But there is one thing about evil that most people don't realize: evil is lazy. Evil just sort of wanders around and waits for victims to just sort of crumble into its path. Those abominable creatures are too lazy to weave through the woods. They always stick to the easy places, like a road or a wide path or the river. If we get to those places, that's where we'll need to be alert. But as long as we stay off the beaten path, we'll be safe. Trust me on that.”
Cable was conflicted. He felt he ought to be scared, but he also knew that Jimbo was probably right. So he laid down and just stared. His body rested, but his mind raced. And once Jimbo drifted off and started to snore, Cable knew that getting to sleep was hopeless. Cable hadn't napped since he was about 4 years old, and he wasn't about to begin now. So he got up and paced around.
After about an hour of doing laps around Jimbo, Cable had had enough. He couldn’t just stay there while some pet wild boar went traipsing through the woods, perhaps never to return! So Cable looked down at Jimbo, whispered good-bye, found the start of the trail that Doofus had started to blaze, and started to run into the woods.
Cable ran a grand total of about two yards. Then he abruptly tripped, fell on his face, and nearly went unconscious.
After he collected his wits, Cable--still lying on the ground--turned around and looked behind him. Sitting on the ground, in the middle of the path that he’d just tried to follow, was a fuzzy creature of some sort. The creature’s presence startled Cable, and he was paralyzed for a moment. But as Cable continued the stare, the creature never moved. Cable noticed that the creature was actually facing the opposite direction, back toward the small clearing where Jimbo was laying asleep. The creature didn’t move.
It didn’t take Cable long to realize just what this creature was. It was an owl. In fact, it was the owl--the one that had guided him and Andres on their journey to find Prince Dorian some four years earlier. But this time, the owl didn’t look at him at all. It just stared back toward Jimbo. It was as though the owl knew that Cable was there, but was determined not to pay any attention to him at all.
Cable realized now that, if he wished, he could continue following the trail that Doofus had started to create. The owl would not chase him, nor would he stand in his way. But Cable just couldn’t go on. A brief wave of guilt came over him. He’d ignored Jimbo’s counsel to be patient and wait, and he had even noticed the owl that had attempted to block his path. Feeling somewhat chastised, Cable tiptoed around the owl and went back next to Jimbo. As he laid down, he looked back toward the path.
The owl was gone. Cable drifted off to sleep, relaxed in the realization that he’d made the right decision.
For the next four days, Jimbo and Cable got to know each other very well. Cable got to tell Jimbo about the ten years that he spent living in the village of Corrin--the village that Jimbo had once tried to destroy. He told him about his stepfather Torey, the man who cared for him and his brother Andres while their true father, King Maximilian, was in exile. He told Jimbo that his very first memory was of seeing his father nearly die before summoning the strength to fight on against a stranger--a stranger that, as we now know, happened to be Jimbo. Jimbo marveled as the story unfolded.
While the two adventurers talked, they fished and hunted and built themselves a shelter. They ate their fill of hedgehog, of rabbit, of grouse, and of anything else that happened to wander within a bowshot of the deadly-accurate Jimbo. Every evening was the scene of a roaring campfire that roasted the day’s catch. Cable loved it. Though he’d always enjoyed Skittlechip’s cooking, there was something about eating in the wild that made the food taste richer.
But as time wore on, Cable began to feel restless again. Even Jimbo began to get worried. “Ol’ Doofus usually isn’t gone this long,” he kept muttering to himself. Finally, just after dawn on the fifth day, a crashing and crunching sound was heard. As Jimbo and Cable turned toward the sound, Doofus launched himself back into the campsite. He immediately ran toward Jimbo and jumped on his master. Jimbo fell to the ground and rolled around and wrestled his furry companion. Jimbo covered him with pats on the back and kisses on the cheek. Cable had never seen such joy on his new friend’s face. It was like a father being reunited with a long-lost son.
After the friendly wrestling match was complete, Jimbo stood up and looked sternly at Doofus. “Now tell me, mate, what has taken you so long?” Doofus seemed to wither under Jimbo’s stare. He looked down at the ground and uttered a brief grunt.
“Doofus?” Jimbo said again. “I expect an answer. Where have you been?”
After another brief pause, Doofus spit two things out of his mouth. Jimbo stooped down and grabbed them. One was a rabbit’s foot, and one was a piece of black cloth. Jimbo stared at them, as though putting together a mental puzzle. Then he stood up and said to Doofus, “I think I’ve got it, ol’ chap. Let me see if I’ve got this right. The rabbit’s foot is, obviously, from a rabbit, which you had to chase down and kill because you were hungry.”
Doofus nodded. Cable could have sworn he actually smiled a bit.
“Good,” Jimbo continued. “Cable and I have pretty much eaten everything, so we don’t have anything to give you anyway. So I’m glad you’re full. As for the piece of black cloth--well, my guess is that you ran into those miserable creatures that keep stalking us, and you’ve ripped into them just a bit. Am I right?”
Once again, Doofus nodded. He then walked over to Jimbo and rubbed against his leg. Jimbo petted him and declared, “Good boy, Doofus. You are one brave bloke. I don’t know how you dared to get close to them. You are fearless (feeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrlessssss), old friend. I’m proud that you’re my pet.”
Then, turning to Cable, he declared, “Let’s get going, mate. The trail has been discovered. It’s time for us to go.” Quickly, Jimbo and Cable gathered together their weapons, struck camp, and headed out.
As the trio wound through the woods, the sound of running water started to come back to their ears. “Are you taking us back toward the river?” asked Jimbo. Doofus stopped, turned back, looked and Jimbo, and uttered a low, guttural growl. Jimbo was chastised. “Sorry, old boy,” he said. “You go ahead, fearless leader. I’ll tell Cable to stop asking questions and just follow!” Jimbo turned around and gave Cable a wink.
Finally, the river came into view. Doofus ran ahead and planted himself at the river bank. He then looked upstream and downstream, as though looking for something. “What’s he doing?” asked Cable.
“He knows that the fearsome creatures like to stay by the water,” Jimbo replied. “He’s standing guard for us, Herc. He’s the bravest beast that I’ve ever met.”
The water was fairly shallow but rushing quite rapidly at this point in the river. Jimbo waded out into the water and stooped down to get a drink. As he did so, a metallic sound came to his ears. He stood and looked upriver. “Hey Herc, look!” he said, pointing toward the sound.
As Cable looked, he saw an object tumbling down the river. A thought then crept into his head. He ran upstream, tripping and falling a couple of times as he did so. But at last he reached the object and plunged his hand into the whitewater to grab it.
He held it up to the sun. Though it had obviously been treated roughly as it tumbled down the river, it was the most brilliant object that he had ever seen. He almost felt like kneeling as he held it in his hands.
It was a trumpet.
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