Further Aerial Developments

 

            Ralph had two things on his mind. The first was how to acquire more coffee beans for Ramona. The other thing that seemed like an open question to him was that flying machine which Ramona had smashed, and he had put in the dumpster down at the parking lot.
            He wasn’t sure of its means of communication. Had it been sending messages the whole time, starting from when Maeve captured it? Or were its pictures and sound recordings truly onboard the thing? He knew about sim cards and the memory chip in his phone, but he didn’t know how the thing was made.
            If it had been blabbing the whole time, who was getting the message. It bothered him. He didn’t say anything to Ramona about it. Maybe nothing would come of it!
            He was sitting on his big cedar log, deep in thought when Maeve arrived as suddenly as usual.
            “Hey, Ralph,” quoth the bird in question.
            “What’s up, Birdy,” answered himself.
            “I’ve been thinking about coffee,” said Maeve.
            “So have I,” admitted Ralph.
            “What are you going to do, Ralph,” she asked rather pointedly.
            “I’m going to send you to see Millicent, for one thing, Black Leg. I want you to tell her that we have discovered that we need a regular source of coffee beans. Find out if she has an idea of how we can pull this off,” instructed Ralph.
            Maeve ducked her head and regarded him with her bright black eyes. She chuckled, “Millicent is likely to be pretty surprised.” Then she shot off in the direction of downtown Milltown, where Millicent would be typing away in her office.
            He went back to thinking deeply. He was wondering how to apply his ancient, archaic skills to this new problem, if it turned out to be a problem. He thought of his various songs. He thought about the whole vanishing thing. He wondered if he could make the whole Home Clearing vanish. It was true that it was hard to locate anyhow, but sometimes various people had wandered into it without warning.
            Still thinking about coffee, however, Ralph decided to go see his old friend Ranger Rick, just to see if maybe he could trade some firewood or something with him for the occasional bag of coffee beans.
            The Ranger Station was a little jaunt past the parking lot, so he was on his way there when he began to notice that something had changed in the forest. He felt a sort of anxious chill run up his back and into his scalp. He stopped right where he was and listened intently. He opened his mouth wide so that he could hear and smell better. He shut his eyes and listened. It wasn’t a noise that would have been audible to Millicent or Rick, or maybe even Ooog or Thaga. But Ralph sort of felt it. It was not good news.
            He sensed a direction. It came from over the water near Milltown. It was a particulate sort of sound or vibration. Many sources, not one.
            “Oh no,” Ralph thought. “That thing did get its distress call out!” He needed to think fast.
            He stood there just open to the deep wisdom of the universe, and he got an idea. It seemed like what he needed was a song for reversal, and he thought of an old human song he had heard once while invisibly visiting some campsite while the radio was playing old 60s stuff.
            The song was called “Take It Back.” He had to laugh.
            He waited there until he saw some approaching machines, just a couple of them, far off in the sky over the direction of town. They carried assorted colored lights, and did not travel in straight lines. They sort of quested here and there nastily!
            Ralph faced the flying things, whatever they were. He raised both of his arms. He began to sing a song of Reversals, sung in ancient Saslingua, but aimed in a new direction. His song roared and echoed off of the trees and even out to the hillsides, then it tumbled downhill toward the very water, and it spread and was magnified.
            It worked. The subliminal sound retreated. The flying things stopped in midair and flew backwards in the direction they had come from. It was comical actually. He saw a couple of them do it.
            “That’s pretty cool,” though Ralph, “I’ll have to remember that one. Might come in handy for Squatch hunter expeditions.”
            “I bet they won’t try that again!” he thought happily. “I also bet they’ve forgotten what the whole thing was about.”
            He gazed around the great forest happily and decided to go home as it was getting a little late and he was thinking about dinner suddenly. Turning all those gizmos around had made him hungry.
            “What’cha been up to, Baby,” said Ramona when he got home.
            “Oh, you know. Checking it out. I figured out a new song,” said Ralph.
            “What kind of a song,” asked Ramona, while dishing up some stewed turkey.
            “One for turning bad things around and sending them back,” he said.
            “That sounds very useful!” said she.
            “I think so!” agreed Ralph.
            “Hey, look what Maeve brought,” said Ramona. “Millicent sent it back with her!”
            It was a two pound bag of roasted and ground coffee from the Bargreen’s roaster in downtown Milltown!
            “I owe her one, that’s for sure,” said Ralph to Ramona.
            The kids and cats had already had their dinners and were tucked into bed in the cave. So Ralph and Ramona sat out by the fire until it was truly dark and a few stars looked down at them from up in the canopy of Douglas firs.