|
"What is it, brother?" Keetri said, positively bouncing
up and down with excitement, "What is it? Let me see!"
Chardiye [KAR dee] glanced, slightly irritated,
at his little sister; a tiny little ball of red feathers. You'd never know
she was a Pteri by looking at her, he thought. The green Eyrie sighed and
ruffled his feathers before digging into the dirt with one claw. "I don't know
what it is, Keetri. Just settle down and let me get it out first."
Rain was still dribbling down onto Chardiye's
and Keetri's heads, but it wasn't as hard as before. Keetri had whined after
they had gone inside at how she had accidentally dropped her doll in the mud
in the garden and insisted that Chardiye accompany her back outside because
she had thought she might drown in the rain. It was then that Chardiye had noticed
a glint of gold nestled in the soil between the soggy radishes.
"The heavy rain must have partially unburied
this," Chardiye assumed aloud. "I wonder how long it's been there." He used
a claw to scrape away a dirt clod and revealed that the glint of gold was really
a thin golden chain poking out of the ground.
"Ooh! Ooh! What's that, Chardiye?" Keetri bounded
forward and, despite her size, nearly knocked Chardiye over in her attempt to
see what was buried there. She clamped her beak on a loop of the chain and pulled
as hard as she could until her grip on the golden chain came loose and she fell
sprawling backward into the mud.
Chardiye sighed again, "Keetri, we have to pull
it out gradually. We'll need to loosen the dirt around it and dig it out slowly.
But don't worry, it won't take long." He dug is fingers down into the soil where
the chain disappeared into the ground and carefully moved the mud away. An inch
or so of golden chain came free. Slightly rejuvenated by his tiny victory, Chardiye
worked his claws deeper into the mud. A shovel! he thought bitterly,
why couldn't I have a shovel? The squelching noises and the unpleasant
feeling of too much mud under his fingernails were starting to make him edgy.
Nonetheless, within a few moments another four or five inches of the chain was
in his hand, and he was getting more and more excited to see what might be on
the end. That is, if anything was attached to the end.
Still he dug into the ground, the feeling that
this whole thing might be entirely pointless. Rain was sousing his feathers
and fur, and Keetri was still beside herself with delight. She was twittering
and bouncing and making such a racket that Chardiye wouldn't have been surprised
if she had woken up the Sillie Daisies, which had fallen asleep with their tongues
hanging out when the rain began. The Daisies kept snoozing, Keetri kept chirruping,
Chardiye kept digging, and the rain kept drizzling.
It was a good twenty minutes or so until the
thing Chardiye had been digging for finally came completely free from the dirt.
It was still covered in mud. Chardiye used a corner of his favorite black bandana
that was always tied around his neck to clean it. What he held in his paw was
a large, ornate golden pocket-watch; the kind with the little cover that protected
the face. When he had cleaned the watch of all the mud he could scrape off,
he examined the watch. Keetri let out a squeak of excitement when she saw what
Chardiye had found.
Chardiye flicked the cover open and gazed at
the face of the clock. On the inside of the hinged cover was a bunch of little
engraved markings which looked like they had been writing but were worn away
with time. He flicked open the cover to scrutinize the face. He noted that the
hands of the clock were indicating that it was twelve o'clock exactly, which
at the moment it certainly wasn't. It had to be at least four o'clock in the
afternoon. The clock wasn't ticking.
"Is it broken, Chardiye?" said Keetri, sounding
disappointed, "Do we have to fix it? How do we fix it?"
"We just have to change the battery," Chardiye
said soothingly, "Hang on, let me find the opening…"
Chardiye ran his hands lightly over the back
of the pocket-watch, then the sides, but his sensitive feathery fingers could
feel no opening, no crack, or any way at all to open the watch and change the
battery. Perplexed, he threw the chain over his neck because it was getting
in the way and turned the knob on the top. He set the clock so that the little
hand was pointing to the four and the big hand to the six, because he supposed
that it was four-thirty, and pressed down on the knob to secure the hands.
Immediately, as though a pounding wind suddenly
swept the garden, Chardiye found himself flying-flying backward. Everything
was a haze of color and rushing sounds. Amid the flurry, Chardiye thought he
could hear someone from very far away calling his name.
The rushing feeling stopped. Chardiye felt his
head meet solid ground. He opened one bleary golden eye. Wherever he was, he
wasn't in his garden.
To be continued...
| 
