Gilbert Guttlebocker,

Defender of Dragons

6. Wooden Howdahs

As the three new Connecticut academy students followed their guide into the overgrown underbrush, Gilbert and Bernice both marveled at the gargantuan banyan trees surrounding them. Playful brown macaque monkeys examined the strangers from the safety of their trees' prolific, vine-like branches.

“It's like we're in a movie,” Bernice breathed in awe.

“Or the most amazing book ever written,” Gilbert added.

I am telling the truth, dear reader. He really said that. I wouldn't make something like that up.

“You guys should check out this cool sword I found,” Barkley boasted, holding out the carbon-coated piece of metal, distracting the two others from their admiration of the new environment.

“Oh, look Gilbert! It's that sword I wanted! It's beautiful, isn't it?”

Gilbert looked at the sword, but as he did he remembered the black, skeletal hand of the man who had held it before Barkley. Gilbert winced and looked away.

They entered a small, green clearing, where a thin waterfall cascaded down a steep cliff to their right into a glistening pool of water before them.

“It's like a fairy tale, Gilbert! Oh, I love it! This is where we'll build our house!”

Barkley guffawed.

The little man with the knife approached the edge of the pool, stopping and standing on a large rock at the very edge of the water.

“We aren't going to swim, are we?” Gilbert asked.

“I wasn't prepared to swim,” Bernice insisted. “Especially with this dress on, though I suppose my Gilbert ruined it already. And what about our luggage? I had several pieces of luggage in the luggage compartment. What happened to our luggage? Do we have to go back for it?”

Gilbert remembered his wooden chest, also in the rocket's luggage compartment. But he was not going back for it. He would not return to that deathly clearing under any circumstances whatsoever.

“Your luggage will be waiting for you at the academy,” the little man told them. Then he turned to face the pool and placed his thumb and forefinger into his mouth. After whistling louder than Gilbert thought possible, the man then stood still and stared at the water.

A large, dark shape became visible in the center of the pool, and suddenly a colossal beast with a small howdah, or harnessed carrying platform, emerged from under the water, lumbering out of the pool toward them.

Gesturing toward the immense mammal, the native announced, “Here is your limousine, madame. It is gray, I am afraid, not pink.”

“Oh,” she said, stunned. “It's an elephant.”

The elephant stepped up to the little man, putting its head right in front of him, trunk hanging down almost to the ground, where its tip raised playfully. The man confidently grabbed the lower part of the elephant's enormous ears, one ear in each hand, and placed a bare, calloused foot on the elephant's trunk. As the elephant raised his trunk, the little man casually walked up it, all the way to the top of the beast's head. Climbing onto and straddling the great animal's neck, he gestured for them to climb up as he had. “Come,” he said, waving them toward the elephant's trunk.

Gilbert glanced at Bernice, who stood frozen, staring at the magnificent animal. The boy reluctantly walked over to the elephant, deciding someone had to go first. Like their guide before them, he reached up and grabbed ahold of the elephant's floppy ears and lifted a booted foot toward the long nose of their new ride.

“No, no, no, sir — please, remove your boots first.”

He sat down in the dirt, unbuckled his boots, and struggled to pull them off his feet. Gilbert then tied them to his backpack and tried again. This time, their guide did not stop him but merely watched and waited.

It seemed to Gilbert that the elephant must have been very well trained. The beast raised its head at exactly the right time for the young man to maintain his balance as he strode up the animal's nose. In seconds he had gone from the dirt below to upon the elephant's back, where he sat down skeptically on one of the two howdah benches.

“I think you're next,” Barkley pressed Bernice.

The delighted girl danced over to the elephant, tore off her boots, and tossed them up to Gilbert, shouting, “Catch, my beloved!” as they flew through the air. However, Gilbert was not expecting to be pelted by shoes. Ducking, they landed inside the howdah without his help.

Spinning with joy, she leapt onto the elephant's trunk. The colossal creature, seemingly unconcerned with her sudden movements, casually lifted her up as it had previously lifted both Gilbert and their native guide. Laughing, Bernice bounded past the half-naked man on the elephant's neck and landed directly beside Gilbert, wrapping her arms around him in a romantic embrace.

“Oh, that was delightful! Wasn't that exhilarating? I feel so close to you right now, honey bunny!”

“You... you are close to me… Bernice. Really… too close,” Gilbert told her, sliding his bottom as far down the bench as he could to put as much space between himself and her. But the two-and-a-half inches he was able to gain made no difference to Bernice. As much as he tried to escape her, she simply moved suffocatingly closer to him.

“Hey, Twerp! Catch this for me!” Barkley threw his scavenged broadsword into the air, spinning on its axis. But Gilbert was held captive by the girl's loving embrace and was utterly unable to move his arms. The sword fell back down to the earth near Barkley's feet, where its tip slid six inches into the ground before coming to a stop, quivering in the quiet forest glade.

Barkley shook his head. “Loser.”

The large boy sat down and pulled off his boots, tying them together. As he then stood beside the mammoth pachyderm, staring at his boots in hand and the sword stuck in the ground beside him, wondering how to get these items into the howdah above, the elephant slid its trunk between the boots where his hand was holding the laces that were tied together. Surprised, Barkley lurched backward, collapsing to the ground, his boots falling onto the waiting nose of the giant animal. Casually, the four-legged-limousine tossed the boy's boots into the air, over its head, where they clunked onto the floor of the howdah upon its back.

As the stunned boy sprawled on the ground, watching, mouth agape and eyes big, the amazing creature wrapped the end of its trunk around the handle of his broadsword, withdrawing it easily from the dirt. Instead of tossing the sword in with the boots though, the intelligent animal placed it gently into the waiting hands of the native guide, who sat patiently on its neck.

“This is a very nice broadsword,” the guide observed, holding it delicately in both palms.

“That's my very nice broadsword,” the boy informed him.

The guide looked down at Barkley, his face utterly devoid of expression.

“I certainly hope the fate of its new owner does not match the fate of its previous owner.”

The two matched each other's stares for a few seconds, and then the guide turned and slid the sword onto the floor of the howdah.

Barkley stood up and brushed the dirt off his bottom. He walked over to the elephant and, mimicking what the other three had already done, managed to clumsily climb up the giant beast and into the howdah, where he snatched up his scavenged black trophy and sat down alone on the empty bench.

Clicking his tongue twice, the guide signaled for the elephant to begin their trek. The creature casually lumbered around the pool of water, crossing over a small stream where the water exited the pool as it traveled gradually downward on its way to the sea.

Barkley glared at Gilbert as Bernice, only one arm around our hero now, chattered incoherently, apparently fully capable of maintaining the conversation by herself without any sign of feedback, response, or even acknowledgment from those around her.

Why, Gilbert wondered, does Barkley hate me so much? What did I do that was so terrible?

He quickly decided that whatever it was, there was no way he could change it now. The other boy's attitude seemed to be one that was simply determined to hate him.

He tried to put Barkley, and the boy's pervasive sneer, entirely out of his mind.

The howdah was surprisingly comfortable for a wooden-frame box perched atop a moving elephant's back. The benches were modestly cushioned, and the animal was so large that its gait was broad and rhythmic rather than jolting and jostling. In contrast to the constant, terrifying rattling and shaking of the dilapidated rocketship, the slow, rocking pace of the elephant calmed and soothed Gilbert's exhausted nerves.

While humid, as one would expect in Siberia, it was not stiflingly so, the warm moisture in the air providing a perfect climate for the abundant growth of robust vegetation. They were surrounded by plants of all shapes and sizes, though the colors, as Gilbert expected, were almost entirely brown and green. Massive leaves provided a punctured canopy above them, while moss and grasses, vining plants, and wild shrubs alternated beneath them, with the rocky dirt path they traveled on the only barren exception to the carpet of green. Trunks and branches surrounded them in every direction, some broad and others narrow, some straight as a toy soldier and others windingly convoluted, twisting this way and that with no apparent order or discipline.

White langur monkeys danced through the trees above them to their right, while a family of black gibbon apes sat some distance off to their left, picking lice off one another for supper. A smiling three-toed sloth hung from a branch in front of them, barely moving as they passed beneath him. A flock of some kind of sizable bird, too far away for Gilbert to identify, flew above the trees, silently pounding their wings as they rose together into the darkening heavens.

As they passed through their strange new world, Bernice chattered, Barkley glared, and Gilbert fell asleep.