Fifteen

Soma and Squee scurried back with the news before the troop had even made it five miles. Somehow the two little ones were able to fly through the roof of the forest as if distance were merely illusion. It was their little known secret. Squee had stumbled across it by accident one morning when swinging on vines playing a game he called 'caveman'. The boy's made a hat out of leaves that resembled a brigadier general's, and carried with him an assortment of hollowed out sticks through which he could blow different notes. He'd swing and he'd whistle, lift his cap up and holler, and doing all this he was able to keep himself entertained. Most of the time he didn't even notice the trees that he swung from, or where he was going, but one day he slipped and he fell quite a distance and realized, when he landed, he was not anywhere near where he'd factually fallen from. "Factually" was one of his top secret words.
"Factually," he related to Soma when her made her acquaintance, "there are keyholes sprinkled throughout here." He gestured at the forest around them.
"Keyholes?" Soma asked, understandably confused. She hadn't yet learned about Squee's sense of language, that words could mean whatever he wanted them to, even those words that did not exist.
"Phantalooms," he confided. "Nestled about."
"Okay," Soma told him, "when you want to speak normal I'm listening, okay?"
"Oh, all right," he relented, and explained himself better. "Air pockets," he said, "or something like that. You go through them and come out somewhere else. Sometimes they're sideways, like this," he said, gesturing horizontally. "And sometimes they go up and down," he added with appropriate hand motions.
"You might have to be small to fit through," he suggested, though he wasn't quite certain of this. "It's why you can never get out. They're invisible, you see? No one knows that they're there."
"But you do," Soma was dubious. She hadn't known him long, but what she did know wasn't terribly impressive. Oh, he was certainly fun to play with, but science? That was clearly out of his range.
"I'll prove it to you," he asserted, and challenged her to join him. She did. Nothing was too risky for Soma, not even when they climbed up to the top of one of the highest trees in the forest, and Squee stood up straight, spread his arms out, and dropped. Soma gasped as she watched him go down. She hesitated, frightened, then followed. A bet was a bet after all and he'd dared her. Down, down she went, somehow evading all branches and vines, and then, for a moment, before she passed out, she felt the air change, felt the temperature plummet, saw the color of the breeze shift in front of her eyes, and then she knew where she was and it was far away.
"We were days from here!" she shouted as they landed quite softly on thickets of clover.
"Days on foot," he corrected her. "But only moments when you go through the keyhole."
"Can you go anywhere?" she asked him, excited.
"I've found maybe twenty," he counted out, unfurling nine fingers. "And I know where they are."
"Did you tell anybody?"
"Nobody but you," he replied. "And Bumbarta, but I don't think he believes me."
"Why wouldn't he?" Soma wanted to know.
"He thinks I'm an idiot," Squee confessed. "And maybe he's right, but I know what I know."
"He'd have to believe you," she said, "if you showed him."
"He won't leave the lake," Squee informed her. "He never goes anywhere. It's why he has Watchers. We go places for him. Listen and see."
Listen and see's what they did, and they dropped straight through one of the keyholes that led near the lake. Bumbarta was waiting for news, and the words that they brought were intriguing.
"The sisters?" he mused. "They're not here. Haven't been here for days. Sure, they wanted to go naming my lake but I told them it's already named. Lake Bumbarta!" he laughed a grim laugh, and his whole body shook with a joy.
"Lake Bumbarta!" Soma cried shrilly. "I love it. I love it."
"Me too!" echoed Squee.
"So the group's coming here," Bumbarta repeated, rubbing his cold hands together. "Then I'll ask them myself what they're after and why, and who sent them. So far I don't know enough."
"We've told you all we know," Squee reported dejectedly.
"Yes, yes," Bumbarta looked down at him cooly. "You've done very well, my good Watchers. Very well. I am pleased. No, sometimes you have to do more than just watch. Sometimes you have to ask questions, and that's what I'll do when they get here. Now go, and post yourselves in a good place so I can know when they arrive. Send for others as well. We might as well gather our forces."
Bumbarta watched the two running off and took himself outside of the hut to stand by his lake. He gazed over the water as if admiring its allegiance to him. He certainly did feel he owned it. After all, it was named after him.