The Mount
Chapter Two
Finally it’s dawn. Little Master and I come out and look around. This is the first either of us has seen the forest up close in daylight. We sit on a knob and look. Excellent Excellency’s eyes seem even bigger than usual. I suppose mine are that way, too. Mostly the ground is a mess, leaves and bark and sticks all over. Nobody’s been raking. There are little blue flowers, lots. Yellow ones, too. Lots. We’ve been stepping on them. Trees, as if out of picture books, bushes that scratched my legs as I ran last night, roots that tripped me. And here, the river. It looks scary.
“Look,” the Little Excellent Excellency says. He’s pointing here and there and there. “Look, look.” Does he know what was happening back home? I guess he does, because he was shaking so and wet us both, but now he’s too surprised to think about it.
He reaches to hold my hand with his big one. And then gives it a sloppy lick. (Odd how their hands are so much bigger and stronger than ours while everything else about them is weaker.)
“I love you,” he says. “I love you more than our trainer. I only love him a little tiny bit.”
He always talks better when he talks to me. I think the others scare him. They’re always yelling at him.
Then, “You may speak,” he says. As if he’s suddenly turned into our trainer himself. Even the same tone of voice.
I don’t. Partly because he told me I could. It doesn’t seem right for him to say that after I saved him. Besides, he’s just a baby.
But I do like him holding my hand and I know he needs to. There’s a lot going on with Hoots and their hands that we don’t understand. We like to hold hands, too, but I don’t think it’s the same.
We sit a long time just looking. Pretty soon I wonder if my Little Master is hungry, but I don’t ask him. I don’t want him thinking about it if he is. I wonder what they eat? I know they don’t like ice cream. They don’t like cold things even when it’s a hot day.
I hear rustling in the forest. I think wild animals. I wasn’t scared before, except of the river, but now I move us back under our bushes and we look out. Little Master’s ears prick up, one towards the back and one towards the front. Little Master sees them first, of course. It’s some of us going by—back into the mountains. Carrying things. Poles mostly, but silver surcingles, old books (they used to be ours, anyway), new shoes…. Every Sam or Sue that I get a good look at has a Hoot rain hat. This is all wrong. Those of us up here in the forest are savages. All the Hoots say that, and this stealing proves it.
I should get His Excellent Excellency to a safer place, but I don’t think we should go back to our home. At least not yet. Those Sams and Sues don’t look as if they’d pay attention to us. They’re too busy stealing things. Besides, I may not be fullgrown, but I’m a big Seattle—already big as most Sues or any Tennessee. I can defend him against them.
“Let’s go,” I say, “Let’s get out of here.”
He says, “I’m scared.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
“You’re not a grownup.”
“Besides, we have to find something to eat.” I know there isn’t anything, but I say that to make him come. “Anyway, let’s go see more things. I’m a Sam, too, remember? These Sams and Sues won’t hurt me.”
“I’m scared anyway. I want my doll.”
“Later.”
I help him mount. After, I lean over so he can pick some flowers to put behind his ears and mine, too. That makes him feel better. And then we go… up along the river. I don’t dare cross it.
Every now and then we hear Sues and Sams rustling and whistling signals not far from us. Once in a while there’s a part of a song. I wish Sunrise had taught me more, but she didn’t think I’d need to know these things so soon. Whenever they’re close, I squat down behind something. I don’t have to tell him to keep still, he just knows. I can tell how scared he is by how hard he holds on. I depend on him. I wish I could hear things and smell things and see the way he does. But we make a good team just like the Hoots always say, us the legs and them the senses.
One time we hunker down and then we see there’s this wild animal with big branching horns. I know from books that it’s a deer, but the books didn’t say if it’s something that would eat us or not. I wonder which one of us is more edible. Little Master is all head. If they like to eat brains, he’d be first. Or maybe they’d save the best for last like I always do.
