I have received many letters and emails from readers asking whether there would be a third book in the Very, Very Far North series. There wasn’t supposed to be a third book, but because of the interest, I started exploring the possibility. Unfortunately, as of August 2023, I know officially that the publisher has passed on the idea.
However, I do have another Duane & friends story to offer interested readers, and it is long enough to be broken up into two parts. So without further introduction here is:
one of duane’s friends misbehaves – part 1
This story involves one of Duane’s friends engaging in behaviour not typical of who they are. In other words, and perhaps it is an expression you have heard, this friend “acted out of character”. It began on a Monday. All stories involving characters acting out of character start on a Monday.
For those of you who have gotten to know the residents of the Very, Very Far North over the course of the previous books, you would likely agree that Major Puff marching or C.C. researching or Duane napping and snoring would be behaviour very in character to who they are. And if I told you that one of Duane’s friends was playing tricks on the others, no doubt, your mind would go immediately to Magic. Playing tricks is kind of Magic’s thing, yes? Certainly that was who C.C. thought was behind the pranks. And like her, if you thought it was Magic, you would be wrong.
In fact, it was Magic who was first tricked when this all started. She was scampering along one of the many tunnels of her den beneath the two hills, heading towards the higher end, closest to Duane’s cave. It was morning and a proper scolding of Duane, done with dramatic flair, criticizing his sleeping-in when the day was ready to go, was something Magic liked to do on Mondays. It didn’t matter whether Duane was actually awake to hear her scolds, because it was the thought that counted. However, as Magic turned a corner into the final tunnel and neared the entranceway, she found it completely blocked by a large rock, too heavy to budge.
At this point, there was no cause for alarm. Magic assumed that the rock came loose from some spot higher up, closer to Duane’s cave, and had rolled down the path and by chance, lodged itself over her den entrance. Annoyed, Magic turned around and retraced her steps down a series of tunnels until she reached the next closest opening. Then she made her way up the path to Duane. But as she passed the den opening that should have been blocked by the rock, there was no rock to be found.
Now that was strange, she thought to herself. But Magic being Magic, the concern quickly fell from mind as other thoughts soon preoccupied her, like how she’d “borrow” some of Duane’s berries if he was too asleep to hear her reprimand.
The very next day, it happened again. Different opening, same rock.
What the … thought Magic.
Now, some of you clever readers or listeners might be thinking that this was the work of the weasel, whom we were unfortunate to have met in the second book, and who sometimes shared Magic’s tunnel system when he wasn’t busy finding joy in the misery of others. I can confirm to you that the rock was much too big for him to move either. The weasel was also put off by the inconvenience.
“Hey, what’s with the stone door, Pokey?” he snarled at her in passing. “It’s getting in my way so get rid of it!”
“Who are you again? Have we met?” replied Magic, ignoring him.
When it happened the third time, it caught Magic so off guard that she accidently walked into the rock, causing her to bruise her nose.
“Owwww,” she moaned, rubbing the tip. Magic was officially scared because this time, she had actually left through a den entrance that has been rock-free. She stood outside on the path yelling in the hopes of getting Boo’s attention who she just saw in passing. When she realized that Boo was long gone, because there was no sign of her, Magic turned around, intending to go back inside and instead, met the rock, nose first. It wasn’t there and suddenly it was. This, Magic thought, was now officially spooky.
“Duaney-Duane (poke, poke), I believe there is some magic moving about my home,” she said a few hours later, in Duane’s cave.
“Yes,” said Duane. “That would be you.”
“No, that’s not what I mean!” Then she sighed overdramatically knowing the great effort she would have to expend explaining to Duane what she did mean. “This is real magic and it has nothing to do with me.”
Duane had no answer to offer. He knew what C.C. would say about such presumptions of magic. First, she would roll her big eyes and then she would ask whether they’d consider every possible non-magic explanation, which of course, they hadn’t. Then she would stare at them for an uncomfortably long time with an expression of deep disappointment until they would slink out of her room with heads bowed.
It’s worth noting that Magic didn’t for a second consider that a prank was being played on her. From Magic’s point of view, it was inconceivable. Magic was the prankster. Everyone else were the prankettes. As it turned out, the hoopla was short-lived, because the rock-in-entranceway problem suddenly stopped, which was a big relief to the arctic fox.
What followed next was Handsome’s problem.
For many of you, it doesn’t need repeating that Handsome liked looking at his reflection. “Like” is somewhat of an understatement, I suppose, in the same way that saying you like to breathe air, or I, your narrator, like desserts. It’s much more urgent. You need to breathe air, as I need to eat desserts and Handsome needed to see his refection.
One way that Handsome pursued his interest was by holding up to his face the beautiful, ornate hand mirror that Duane had once given him as a gift. On the day in question, Handsome nearly dropped the mirror in fright, because looking back at him was a very handsome, most becoming musky ox (as was expected), but who also was sporting a thick, bushy mustache.
As far as Handsome could remember, he never attempted to grow this facial accessory. It utterly confused him, to the point of actually addressing his reflection in the mirror as if he had accidentally walked into a stranger’s field. “My apologies, sir, I seemed to have picked up your hand mirror by mistake.”
Handsome pulled his gaze away and searched around the field for the mustached musk ox whose mirror and reflection he’d obviously taken. Naturally, no one was there. Handsome paused while taking in the realization of just how absurd and silly his reaction was. I’m alone in my field, he thought. I’m always alone in my field. There is no one else here or in my hand mirror. And more importantly, that’s NOT how mirrors work!
The now fully chastised musk ox lifted up the mirror again. Again, he was greeted by the mustachioed musk ox. Using C.C.’s method of reasoning, Handsome lifted a hoof up to his face and felt around for the unpleasant hair growth. To his delight, none was there. Then he touched the glass surface of the mirror. “Ewwww!” Handsome shuddered with disgust. The thick, furry mustache – fake, to be sure – was glued to the mirror at just the right height to line up with his face’s reflection when he held the mirror at the usual distance away. Someone has been spying on me, Handsome thought.
But that was not the end of it. The pond, with its clear, reflective quality that offered Handsome an honest representation of his stunningly beautiful features, had also been tampered with.
“It was monstrous,” explained Handsome to Duane at the end of the terrible day. “I peered over the edge of the pond, where I always stand, staring at myself in good faith.”
The musk ox suddenly froze, as if the memory overtook his ability to speak. Duane came over and put a comforting paw on Handsome’s back. “Go on,” said Duane gently. “What did you see?”
Handsome looked up at his friend, his pained expression so vulnerable. He could not speak above a whisper. “Green.”
“Green?” asked Duane.
“Yes, green, like an ogre, or a troll, or an ogre-troll, if such things exist.”
“But what was green, Handsome?”
Handsome’s emotions suddenly exploded. “Haven’t you been paying attention! My fur! My luscious, beautiful, black fur had turned monster green!”
Duane was confused. His friend’s fur was currently the colour it should be. He wanted so badly to ask some questions in order to be less confused but he was worried at how Handsome might respond. Meekly, as if even his breath might set the musk ox off again, he began. “So … your fur … at the time … had it been… painted green?” Quickly, Duane stuck his paws over his ears to muffle the expected shouts of annoyance. They did not come. In fact, Handsome was now quite calm.
“Oh, no, no, no. No paint, no anything. My fur was fine, perfect as usual. It seems the prankster had weaved a wig of green grass and pinned it to pond surface so that when I looked down, it framed my head and gave the appearance of green fur.”
“Oh,” said Duane, unsure of how he was supposed to respond now. “So … that’s good, then?”
Handsome gave a low chuckle. “It was quite clever really,” he said, “I appreciate the craftiness of it.”
“But not at the time,” said Duane.
“No, definitely not at the time.”
Handsome may have eventually been amused, but that couldn’t be said for C.C., who was the next target of the prankster. How C.C. was pranked was also clever because she lived on the Shipwreck, and thus would have been more difficult to do something without her noticing. So instead, this trick was played on the Fabulous Beach, and it suggested again that the prankster knew the habits of their target.
Living so far removed from the others, with a body of water between her and her friends, C.C. would use her telescope mounted on the upper deck bow to see what everyone was up to. That way she could decide whether she was up for the chitchat that would come with joining them. She had her observing routine worked out. She’d usually start spying the Fabulous Beach and then move the telescope gradually up towards Handsome’s field, Magic’s den and Duane’s cave before pivoting across to Twitch and Major Puff’s burrow on the other side of the river. On that day, her telescope did not stray further than the beach because what she saw there was utterly shocking to her intelligent, reasonable mind. There on the beach, made of rocks arranged into large numbers and symbols was the math equation:
1 + 1 = 3
C.C. gasped. Not only was the calculation wrong, but it was just sitting there, on the beach, stating loudly its wrongness for anyone to see, especially C.C. It could have been placed in any direction but it was deliberately aimed ocean-ward for her telescope to catch.
Perhaps you or I could see the math mistake, shrug, and move on with our lives. C.C. couldn’t. It was like looking at a beautiful painting that had been vandalized by spaghetti and tomato sauce. It couldn’t be ignored without a response. So she did respond, by launching herself into the air and flew towards that beach abomination. Using her talons she tossed aside the sullied rocks that formed the number three and added new rocks in the shape of a two.
1 + 1 = 2
“That’s more like it,” she said to herself before turning around and flying back towards the Shipwreck. C.C. was about to head directly to her room at the stern, where she would continue her research for the benefit of all when she felt a nagging urge to check her work on the Fabulous Beach. Just to make sure no rocks have slipped loose, she told herself.
C.C. went over to the telescope and positioned its lens to where the math equation was sitting. Another gasp emerged from her beak, even more profound. She did not see one plus one equalling two, nor did she see one plus one equalling three. What she saw instead was something entirely new, formed by the rocks. It was a sentence.
The moon is made of cheese
Up until now, I have never given a description of what an angry C.C. looks like. To be honest, I hadn’t witnessed such an expression on her face. I can’t even say I could describe it now other than to say her angry face looked basically the same. Maybe a little more tightness in the muscles around her beak? A coldness in her eyes? Beats me. But I know she was angry because she stated as much, out loud.
“That makes me so angry,” she said in her usual voice.
C.C. flew over to the Fabulous Beach again, and was forced to spend a much longer time there because it took a lot of rocks to write out:
The moon is made of basalts that include a large quantity of potassium.
I should add that her explanation continued on for several more sentences, mentioning materials like igneous rock, feldspar and words I do not trust I will spell correctly.
Once completed, C.C. arrived back at the Shipwreck and tried really hard to resist looking through the telescope to check the beach. Unfortunately, she failed. Had she gone directly to her room to resume her research for the betterment of all, she wouldn’t have had to read:
The Earth is flat
I don’t know exactly what the rational snowy owl was experiencing when she flew over to the Fabulous Beach for the third time and began tossing rocks willy-nilly and flinging sand in the air with her wings, but I believe it was a temper tantrum.
Moreover, C.C. didn’t return to the Shipwreck afterwards but instead flew directly to Duane’s cave for reasons she couldn’t express at the time. All she knew was that is was urgent.
“Duane the polar bear, I wish to engage in chitchat, if you don’t mind.”
C.C.’s voice was tight and strained, not ideal for the breezy pursuit of chitchat. She was also pacing up and down the length of Duane’s cave very quickly. Duane didn’t pick up on any of that because he was so surprised that his friend had come for a visit. C.C. had never visited his cave before, even though she was the one who first suggested he move there.
“Yes, of course,” said Duane happily. “Let me get some berries so we can sit and-“
“No berries!” yelled C.C., her eyes wide, and her breath quick and shallow. “Chitchat! Chitchat! I wish to engage in chitchat, now!”
Poor Duane. This was the third time that one of his friends came to his home and yelled at him. He didn’t know why they kept yelling at him. He was pretty sure it wasn’t for something he did, but it stung all the same. Moving as quietly as he could, Duane pulled out a chair and sat slumped with front paws on the table, clasped together.
C.C. hopped onto the backrest of the other chair and continued her version of chitchat. “Is it reasonable to say that I am an individual who is content on her own?”
The question hung in the air until Duane realized this was a question he was expected to answer. He looked up cautiously and nodded obediently.
“And is it also fair to say that I do not go out of my way to annoy, pester or insult others?”
Duane again nodded, and quite vigorously too, as if his life depended on it.
“Then why,” demanded the red-in-the-face owl, “does Magic feel she has the right to do that to me!”
And there it was, as I mentioned at the start, the presumption that only Magic would be willing to do what C.C. was upset about. But Duane knew otherwise. He opened his mouth, intending to point out the flaw in C.C.’s reasoning, but the owl was now fully engaged in … uh, chitchat?
“Hasn’t she learned anything? How many acts of bad judgement must Magic make before she comes to her senses? From the very start, she invaded my space, touched my wings without permission, handled my scientific instruments without care, without respect, without-”
“It wasn’t Magic!” Duane interjected, realizing the danger he was putting himself in by drawing attention to himself.
C.C.’s head swivelled in the polar bear’s direction; her eyes as wide as Duane had ever seen them. Perched frozen atop the chair, her beak remained agape yet silent. But perhaps frozen isn’t accurate. If you looked closely, you would have noticed that C.C. was vibrating, as if the energy she had produced by her rage had nowhere to go now, so it just went around and around her body looking for escape. Finally, she spoke in a very quiet voice. “Not Magic?”
Duane shook his head softly. “Not Magic.”
C.C. felt as if she had awoken from a dream. A dream in which she was a warrior princess snowy owl, giving a powerful speech before an army of riled up, muscular snowy owls, and discovered that instead of a shiny sword grasped in her talons, she held a beaker or a bookmark. C.C.’s body deflated like a balloon, but before she lost balance and fell backwards, Duane steadied her with a simple statement of facts, repeating both the stories of Magic being pranked and then Handsome.
C.C. eventually regained her composure and talked to Duane in the serious, no-nonsense tone he’d grown accustomed to. “Thank you for an enjoyable afternoon of chitchat, Duane the polar bear. I must take my leave and return to my studies. Perhaps we might agree not to mention my prank theory to Magic?”
“Of course,” said Duane, and then squeezed his polar bear lips together with his paw.
C.C. gave a curt nod and then flew off in the direction of the Shipwreck.
one of duane’s friends misbehaves – part 2
In the course of these recent events, the response to the pranks had gone from annoyance to outrage. What would follow next caused deep worry, and as it was consistent with her character, this involved Twitch.
Her torment began when C.C.’s had ended, precisely when she was busy baking one or two dozen varieties of raison cookies. As your dessert-dependent narrator, I do not approve of any type of raison cookie, but that doesn’t excuse how Twitch was treated.
She heard Major Puff while in the middle of combining ingredients. His voice was coming from outside the burrow. It was faint, but as you know, the Artic hare had excellent hearing and what she heard was a desperate plea for help.
“Madame, come quickly! I have accidently marched myself into the bog and my feet are now stuck!”
Demonstrating her bravery, Twitch, with mixing bowl and spoon still in paw, shot out of their home like a bolt of summer storm lightening and hopped quickly in the direction of the Major’s voice. When she reached the peat bog, that recently came to be part of the Very, Very Far North, she searched frantically for the imperilled puffin, peering among the grass tuffs and murky puddles. Twitch feared the worst, as time went on without any sign of the orange-beaked military officer she’d grown quite fond of. She tried not to think about it, but the fear that he had drowned lodged in her stomach. Mercifully, unlike Major Puff, the fear was short-lived.
“Left, right, left, right, come on, Major, put some pepper into those steps!”
Twitch’s heart double-timed in relief, hearing the familiar voice once again, loud and clear. But not coming from the bog, she realized. She turned around and saw the Major far off in the meadow behind her, looking as carefree as a Puff of his stature could look. When he caught sight of her, he smiled and saluted, while never breaking step.
As for Twitch, her calm soured back into worry. “Glad to see the Major safe and sound, no question there,” she said to herself. “Begs the question though regarding the voice I heard earlier, crying for help. Hearing things that aren’t there isn’t a good sign, Twitch, you silly old hare. I might be losing the thread, dimming the head light, finding myself a few carrots short of a salad if I catch my meaning.”
Although we might not have understood what she meant, Twitch certainly did. She believed it was her mind that played a trick on her and that caused her great anxiety.
The next day she heard another call for help. The voice was just as faint as when she heard Major’s Puffs at the bog, but this time is came from the river and the voice belonged to Duane.
“I’m stuck! I’m stuck! My leg is caught under one of the steppingstones! Help!”
At the time, Twitch was in the middle of her cardio hopping and when she heard the polar bear’s frantic cries, she was between hops eighty-one and eighty-three. Winded as she might be, three-quarters into her exercise routine, she did not hesitate to answer the call. “Hang on, Duane, I’m coming!” Twitch shouted, making her way to the river as fast as her back legs could take her.
In the short time it took, Twitch’s imagination created all kinds of horrible scenarios in which Duane was desperately trying to keep his head above water while pinned in the rushing current, or his leg was throbbing in pain under the weight of the heavy rock. But just like when she arrived at the bog, Twitch again found no one at the river. She searched on both sides of the crossing, and when that revealed nothing, she continued looking downstream, towards the waterfall, and then below the waterfall and then further down yet. Each stage of this search created even worse imaginings in Twitch’s mind; a series of fears and then reliefs, over and over, as she expected to find Duane in terrible situations and then was grateful none of those worries proved true. Still, it wasn’t enough. She definitely heard his voice calling in anguish so Twitch needed to know that Duane was safe. Exhausted as she was, she hopped as fast as she could manage to Duane’s cave.
For his part, Duane was in his cave home, enjoying the first peaceful day in a while in which so far, no one had yelled at him. Lately, it felt a rare and pleasant sensation, and to celebrate, he decided to sit down at his table with a big, heaping bowl of delicious berries.
“You’re alive!” screamed an unexpected visitor from the mouth of his cave, just as Duane held a spoon full of delicious berries midway to his mouth.
Oh-oh, thought both Duane and his disappointed stomach.
“I heard your wails of woe, pitiful and desperate, and I came hopping as soon as I could, trying not to think of what might greet me, trying to avoid the unpleasant verbs, like your mangles, your mutilates and your twisty-mashes, just saying, but couldn’t find any sign of you!”
Duane put the spoon back into the bowl and slowly and gently stood up and walked toward the frantic hare. He braced himself for more screaming by focussing on just how unhappy Twitch looked.
“Thought I’d lost you, Duane! Don’t want a world without a pleasant polar bear in it, being so sweet and kind and maybe a bit out of it, from time to time, just saying. Couldn’t bare it, excuse the pun!”
“But look, Twitch, I’m here! I’m fine,” said Duane, giving her a big smile, with arms open.
Boo-hoo-hoo! Twitch broke into huge sobs of sadness, which was not the reaction Duane had anticipated. On the plus side, he wasn’t getting yelled at, but then his twitchy friend fell into his arms, crying truly unconsolably, because Duane didn’t know what to do or say to make things better. It took a few minutes, but eventually Twitch calmed herself enough to speak.
“First I heard the Major screaming in peril, and today it was you, clear as a bell. Well, I guess that’s it then. I’m losing my carrots. Going tea-cozy-on-my-head daft, as Handsome might say. Hearing voices now, probably seeing made-up things tomorrow.”
Ah, thought Duane, after pondering this new information. Enough was enough. He asked Twitch to go and bring Major Puff for a meeting at Handsome’s field, while Duane himself would gather everyone else. Twitch could sense that he was quite serious and hopped to it.
You see, Duane had been giving thought to whom might be responsible for all the mischief right from the moment Magic told him what happened to her. Duane had recently learned that there was such a thing as a detective. After a visit to the Shipwreck, out of simple curiosity, he’d pointed to a small book on C.C.’s shelf and asked what it taught her. C.C. responded with a snort, explaining that it taught her nothing because it was a book of fiction, of stories, of made-up stuff, which to her logical mind, was a waste of time. When Duane asked to see it anyway, C.C. grudgingly obliged by reading out loud a few pages. It was a story about a detective, a very clever one, who solved crime mysteries using logic and deduction. Duane quickly grew bored but C.C. was immediately hooked. She insisted on reading the whole book to Duane that day and well into the evening. It seemed that Duane understood enough of it to remember that detectives solve puzzling misdeeds which these pranks certainly were. And it was something about how the prank was played on Twitch that gave Duane as idea of who might be responsible. Duane, the polar bear detective, would solve the case.
“For what reason has everyone gathered in my field?” asked Handsome after all the friends suddenly showed up unannounced. “I recall neither planning such a soiree nor sending out invitations.”
“I had called them here, Handsome,” said Duane, in an important-sounding detective voice he was trying on for the occasion. “It would seem there is a prankster among us, and I plan to expose them!”
Duane’ friends let out a collective gasp, in part because Duane sounded so mature and he used the word “expose” in a sentence for the first time. They began eyeing each other suspiciously. Well, truth be told, most eyes fell upon Magic.
“It wasn’t me, I tell you! It wasn’t me!” Magic put her front paws to her cheeks very dramatically, and looked as if she were about to faint. Then she stopped and said matter of fact, “Okay, I admit it should have been me. Even I’m surprised it’s not me. But I was tricked too.”
“First Magic,” declared Duane, retaking attention, “then Handsome, then C.C. and finally Twitch. All were victims of this dastardly villain.”
“Oh, bravo, Duane, bravo,” gushed the musk ox. “Dastardly Villain? Excellent turn of phrase. I see that my eloquent speech has finally rubbed off on you.”
“Ahem! Might this rogue have feathers by any chance?” demanded Major Puff. “Black feathers, to be exact? On his back, to be precise? And have a name that rhymes with dull?”
“Speaking of dull,” Twitch interjected, while placing a gentle but firm paw on the Major’s beak, “what say we give Duane the floor, or field as it were, and let him tell us what he’s figured out?”
“Thank you, Madam,” said Duane, eliciting more gasps from his audience. “I will solve this case through the process of … um, the process of, ah …. Ah! The process of a lemon nation!”
“A lemon nation? What on earth are you babbling about?” shouted Handsome.
C.C. spoke up. “I think he meant to say the process of elimination. When one considers and rejects all possible suspects until just one is left. I approve of your method, Duane the polar bear.” C.C. then attempted a wink, for the first time in her life.
Ah, said the others, nodding in understanding.
Duane straightened himself, clasped his paws behind his back, and began a slow stroll among the group. “Magic was the first to be pranked, and her nose paid a terrible price for it.”
“I may never smell again,” she sighed, slumping her shoulders, getting quite into the drama of it all.
“Then it was Handsome,” continued Duane, “who was forced to see a version of himself he wasn’t prepared for.”
The musk ox attempted to look brave and spoke solemnly. “I carry my scars on the inside.”
“C.C. was teased with untrue facts and Twitch was made to believe she heard voices calling for help. However, there is one among you who was not pranked and that, my dear friends, was-”
“Major Puff!” everyone else yelled together.
“Me? How dare you!” the puffin shouted back, feeling cornered.
At that moment, Duane the detective polar bear realized he hadn’t quite eliminated everyone. In hindsight, he couldn’t understand how he’d forgotten about Major Puff, perhaps it was a math thing, and Duane wasn’t great at math, but in any case, now was not the time to fret about it. “No, not the Major! It wasn’t him! I’d completely forgotten about Major Puff!”
“Completely?” asked the puffin, his feelings stepped on and crushed.
Duane was looking and sounding less and less like the confident detective he intended to be. “No, I didn’t mean it like that, Major. I’m so sorry. I just meant that, ah, that a puffin of your stature, couldn’t be considered, because it would naturally be beneath you … right?”
Major Puff couldn’t argue with that. He was a Puff, from a long line of heroic Puffs, and Puffs do not prank.
“The one I was about to expose was-”
“Wait a sec,” Magic butted in. “I see where you’re going with this. Clever, clever bear, Duaney-Duane (poke poke).”
All the others turned to Magic for the explanation, because now they were completely confused.
“Listen, all of us, minus the Major, got tricked, even yours truly. So what did we all do next? Why, we all boo-hoo-hooed our way to Duane’s place, telling him our sad sob story.”
“I object to how you’ve portrayed me,” pouted Handsome. “I did not boo-hoo-hoo.”
“But guess what? The one who was bending a sympathetic ear was none other than Duaney-Duane (poke poke), the pranky-prankster!”
“What?” said Duane stunned. Yet again, simple math had got in the way of his detective work. Magic was correct and judging by their expressions, everyone else thought he was the guilty one too. “But I wasn’t!” he protested. “Who I wanted to say did it was-”
“It was me.”
Ruining Duane’s last chance to be an important sounding detective was a voice coming from the far end of the field. Everyone turned away from Duane to see who spoke.
“Boo?” asked Magic, her face scrunched up in disbelief.
Boo mimed her friend turning and bonking her nose on a rock. Then she smiled shyly.
“You’re telling us that all along you were the culprit?” said Handsome, truly astonished.
Boo mimed the musk ox lifting a hand mirror to his face and then screaming in horror. Again she smiled, with a glint of mischief in her eyes.
C.C., as expected, didn’t show as much shock as the others, but she did almost confess to what she’d wished to avoid. “Your pranks, as amusing as they might have been, could have led to angry accusations against those who were innocent.” Everyone was thinking of Major Puff and Duane, but it was Magic who C.C. glanced at.
Magic didn’t notice. She was still marvelling at Boo’s skills. “But what about the voices that Twitch heard from very far away?” Magic felt this was useful information to be shared between professional tricksters.
Obliging her, Boo demonstrated her impression of Major Puff, which they all could hear at this close distance. “Madame, come quickly! I have accidently marched myself into the bog and my feet are now stuck!”
There were again, oohs and ahs. The imitation was uncanny. Boo smiled brightly, taking in their expressions, basking in how impressed they looked, remembering how so often she is invisible to them, as proven earlier when blame was tossed around and she was standing there the whole time.
But when Twitch had her say, Boo’s smile quickly faded.
“Nothing funny about any of this,” the upset arctic hare said. “Thought the Major was in danger, I did, then I thought Duane was in danger. Imagined all sorts of mayhem. I tell you there was a garden of fears growing in the pit of my stomach!” Twitch’s paws clenched in unease but she hadn’t said everything she needed to say. “I thought I was sick, Boo, hearing things that weren’t there. It was not very nice, your prank, not very nice at all, just saying.”
Boo heard every single word that Twitch said and she understood the strong feelings within those words. She, in turn, felt regret and shame. She nodded at Twitch and bowed her head. “I’m very sorry for having upset you. I promise never to do anything like that to you again.”
Twitch, while still not herself, managed a small smile. “Apology accepted. But now, after such a day as I’ve had, I’m ready to head back to the burrow for a cup of tea and a rest.”
“Allow me to accompany you, Madame,” said Major Puff, gallantly offering her a wing to lean on.
It was a lot to take in for everybody gathered. Once Twitch and Major Puff had left, the others too, drifted to their homes without words of farewell, lost in thought. Like I said, it was a lot to take in.
Boo did not spend the night at the far end of Handsome’s field but instead decided to give the musk ox some space and went over to her secret home in the forest farther south. Boo had a lot on her mind too, events to go over, decisions to make. It is curious to why someone who usually acts one way, suddenly decides to act another way. Up until then, Boo had always been quiet and polite and had never done a single thing that was rude or hurtful. Maybe that was the reason. It’s one thing to be nice by nature, but it’s a different thing to choose to be nice. Boo never experienced what it was like to know she had hurt a friend’s feelings or caused someone distress. She had never had to apologize or consider her actions before. To Boo, playing those pranks was like putting on a costume, like Duane pretending to be an important sounding detective. But for Boo, the costume was of Magic, the true prankster, the one who acts boldly first without thinking. She just wanted to see what that would be like. As she thought it over, Boo decided it wasn’t for her, at least for now. There was too much uncertainty about how much was too much. She stepped too far with Twitch, she realized it, and the feeling of remorse in her stomach was terrible and would stay with her for the rest of her life, as a reminder and a caution.
Something you might wish to know is that when Twitch and Major Puff made their way home to the burrow, the puffin thought things over too and realized he felt somewhat hurt that Boo did not play a prank on him. He felt left out. That might sound strange, considering all the commotion the pranks caused. Twitch could sense he was not happy, and while they had their tea, she encouraged the Major to say what was furrowing his brow.
The next day, when the Major returned to the burrow from a long afternoon march, he opened the door and soon felt the cold, gooey mess of a lemon cream pie that had been set to fall on his head. Rather than be horrified and outraged, Major Puff broke out in big, hearty guffaws, as the pie contents slid down his neck. “She did include me in her shenanigans! I knew it! I was just too late to the party! Ho, ho, ho! That rascal Boo has pranked me good!”
“So she has, so she has,” agreed Twitch, smiling affectionately, but hiding her whipped-creamed covered paws behind her back.
Dan Bar-el 