“Rrarhf!” said Shep now. It was exactly as if he had snapped, “Get back here at once!”
“Shep,” said Rolf slowly, “I’m in no mood for that today. Do you hear me?”
“Huroof!” said Shep.
“What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
“Rharf! Rharf rharuff!”
“Listen, I’m going down this trail whether you like it or not.”
“Rruff!”
“Then I’ll go by myself!”
“Rrarhr!”
“Suit yourself,” said Rolf, turning around and getting the bike started again. “Just go on and suit yourself!”
He rode off. After a few minutes, and a couple of bends of the trail, he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced down to see Shep once more pacing beside him.
“Mrrmp,” muttered Shep darkly, deep in his woolly throat. But he kept moving alongside the bike. Rolf felt a small twinge of guilt.
“I do things you want to do sometimes, don’t I?” Rolf demanded.
Shep was silent now. He trotted along with his black nose in the air. Rolf shrugged and gave up. Shep’s reluctance to go down the trail was making Rolf all the more curious to see where it led. He must have been down this trail before, because he had roamed all over the trails in the Playalinda Beach area at one time or another. But just now he couldn’t remember when, or which way this particular trail led.
They were mounting a small rise to a sandy top. Nothing could be seen beyond the top of the rise except the hot blue sky. Under Rolf’s hard-pumping legs, the bicycle mounted to the crest and then pitched steeply down into a long dip.
Never saw this spot before! Rolf thought.
And it was just as the bike nosed downward that Shep reached up, clamped his teeth firmly on the ragged edge of the cut-off jeans just above Rolf’s knee, and dug all four paws solidly into the ground, putting on the brakes.
It was Rolf’s weak leg, the one he had hurt at the pool. The bike skidded wildly, crosswise off the path and started to fall over. Even so, it shouldn’t have fallen all the way, since Rolf was an experienced rider. He stuck out his leg to prop up the bike and stop the fall.
But his foot slipped on the sandy soil, his leg buckled, the bike fell, and Rolf went tumbling down the rest of the slope to the bottom of the dip.
“Shep!” he yelled—or tried to yell. Oddly, his voice came out as a small squeak. Furious, Rolf tried to sit up, but he didn’t make it even halfway. The dip around him seemed to fill up with a pearly white mist. It was impossible for him to see anything an arm’s length away. His head buzzed with a wild dizziness that made it feel as though he were spinning madly.
Rolf collapsed back onto the sand and everything blanked out.
2
Rolf gradually drifted back to consciousness.
The hot brilliance of the sun made everything seem red through his closed eyelids. Slowly, the buzz in his head eased off, and in its place he could hear two voices arguing. One voice was very deep-toned and very British in accent. The other was a high-pitched, very Irish tenor.
“…beastly fellows!” the deep voice was snorting.
“Ah, there you go again now,” retorted the Irish-sounding voice. “Don’t you know there’s no one speaks like that, these days? Indeed, it’s exactly like Dr. Watson with Sherlock Holmes, you sound, and out of a hundred years ago.”
“Well you are beastly fellows,” growled the other voice. “Pack of blackguards! Besides, what d’you mean—talk like a hundred years ago? Speak like any well-brought-up individual of good breeding, if I say it myself.”
“That you don’t,” said the Irish voice, teasingly, “as I’ve no doubt you well know. It’s an entirely artificial way of speech you’ve got there, copied out of th’ late movies you’ve been watchin’ on the TV… yikes!”
The deep voice growled again, but this time it was a real growl.
“Now, now—no need to be hasty,” cried the Irish voice, suddenly seeming to come from a position higher up. “Indeed, no offense meant. None whatsoever, Mr. Sheperton.”
Rolf cracked an eyelid open to see what was going on. And immediately wished he hadn’t.
He saw Shep, with bared teeth and curled upper lip, staring up at a small bush. Floating slightly above the bush, in midair, was an impossible little man no more than a foot tall, with large pointed ears and big white eyebrows, like wings. He was dressed in a close-fitting, long-sleeved green jacket and tight green pants that ended in small black boots with pointed, curled toes.
And Shep was talking? “TV? Blasted impertinence! Talk the way I do because I am what I am. What if it’s a bit old-fashioned? No harm in that.”
“None whatsoever, Mr. Sheperton. None at all!” said the little man, still floating above the bush. “It’s a darling way of speaking you have, indeed it is, when all’s said and done. And if they speak the same way in old movies on the TV, now, why sure it must be that they’re trying to catch the proper grand manner of speech belonging to gentlemen such as yourself.”
Shep backed off from the bush. His lip uncurled.
Rolf closed his eyes again. It couldn’t be—what he thought he was seeing and hearing. Shep talking like a human being and a little man in green answering him? He must have hit his head on a rock when he fell off the bike… There, the voices had stopped. No doubt when he opened his eyes again he would see no one but good old Shep whining like an ordinary dog and trying to lick his face.
But—
“Let’s put it out of mind then,” said the Irish voice, quite clearly. “Sure and we’ve much more important matters to discuss, haven’t we now?”
Rolf opened both eyes this time. The little man was floating down to the ground at the foot of the bush. Shep had seated himself on his haunches.
“If you mean the boy,” Shep said gruffly, “there’s nothing for us to discuss. He’s my ward, you know. I’ll not have him associating with blackguards, will-o-the-wisps— or gremlins. And it’s a gremlin that you are, in spite of your green suit and green accent… Speaking of the way I talk, how about you?”
“Now Mr. Sheperton, now,” said the gremlin, or whatever he was, soothingly. “Let’s not dig up old bones to pick…”
“Don’t know why not,” muttered Shep—or Mr. Sheperton, as the gremlin called him. “Many a happy hour I’ve spent digging…”
“I meant only that there’s no need for us to argue further on the matter of speech,” said the gremlin. “It’s the boy we should be talking about. A fine lad—”
“Naturally. Educated him myself,” said Mr. Sheperton.
“And indeed it shows. Indeed it does,” said the gremlin hastily. “But the point is, the lad’s been troubled—there’s no denying that.”
“Life’s not a bed of roses,” gruffed Mr. Sheperton. “Have to take the rough with the smooth.”
“To be sure. But why take the rough at all, if you may go smooth all the way ’round?”
“Builds character, that’s why!” snapped Mr. Sheperton. “See here—whatever you call yourself nowadays—”
“Baneen,” said the gremlin.
“See here, Baneen. These are human matters. You keep your gremlin nose out of them!” Mr. Sheperton went on. “The boy’s had a rough summer. All this interest of his in wild animals made him feel different from his friends to begin with. Then, when he tried to get social again, early this summer, he had the bad luck to crack his leg going off a diving board—showing off, of course, but what’s the harm in that—and had to spend several weeks in a cast. Mother busy with an infant sister. Father all tied up with his work. Left him feeling all on his own, just when he got all involved in this ecology business and wanted to start doing something with his life. Very well. He’ll work his way through his problems one way or another, and I’ll thank you not to interfere.”