Time Enough For Ralph

 

 
            Berry had been watching the sun come up, and then go down, and how things happen one by one. So, he had a word with his wise friend, Maeve.
            “What is time,” said Berry, purring.
            “Evermore,” said Maeve.
            “But what is time really,” insisted Berry. His tail beat a slow rhythm back and forth.
            “Evermore!” quoth Maeve.
            “I want to know what time is,” said Berry.’  
            “Time is a wastrel.
            “Time is an opening door,” said Maeve.
            Her tail flashed and she vanished up into the canopy.

 

 
            One day Ralph got a notion. He felt like stretching his wings a little. It was a thing he did sometimes.
            So, he kissed Ramona and said he would be back before she knew it. He left the fire circle, doing that special glide thing his people do. He tied a certain knot in a green sapling’s branch, having pulled it from its native trunk. He walked up to his log and hopped up on it. He kinda stretched and popped his knuckles, then he went in, carrying the little knot he had made.
            Ralph walked along the length of the log toward the long dead root ball where there was an interlacing puzzle of dried roots. Seeing the way to get through the maze of roots, first he put his right foot through, then his right arm. Then he shifted his behind through, pulling the left leg and arm after. Once his feet were planted, he backed up a bit and came all the way through.
            Right where he was standing, without turning around, he buried the end of the little branch in the soil at his feet, to mark the spot. It would be a beacon. Only then did he turn around.
            Part of fun of the puzzle was the shift. It was erratic. Sometimes one time, and sometimes another.
            “Whoa!” said Ralph. “Far out.” If he had heard the term he would have thought that he had landed at the end of an ice age.
            Before he did anything else he looked behind to check where his little knot thing was planted. It was right between two massive granite boulders. It’s always good to know the way to go home.
            It was a world of ice. He seemed to be right on the margin of a receding glacier. There was rough grass underfoot. Cold water ran out from under the ice. The land dropped off into a valley. The valley looked hospitable, so Ralph went downhill.
            The trickling ice melt led him to a small river. It was warmer down here out of the shadow of the glacier. The river had worked its way down into the soil of the land enough that there was a small drop off down to its level. It had a strip of sandy beach all along its length on both sides. Ralph felt quite at home. He decided to go swimming.
            The pace of the river was vigorous. There were boulders and fallen trees to avoid. It was a lot of fun. He even ate a couple of fish, to see what fish in this time tasted like. They tasted fine!
            He floated on. Just his head showed above the surface of the water.
            Eventually the river made a sharp turn to the right, and beyond the turn there was a wide area of river beach, mostly made of small pebbles and sand. On this wide spot, this beach, there was a fire burning. It wasn’t a huge fire, but big enough. Around this fire sat six men. They weren’t furry, but rather clothed in skins with the fur on the outside. To Ralph some of the skins appeared to be wolf skins, or something like a puma’s skin. Some wore one, some the other.
            Their skin was pale olive, their hair was dark and seemed to be tied back into a kind of rope running down their backs. He couldn’t see their feet too well, but they weren’t barefoot.
            They must have been a hunting party, because they were all men of suitable age, with no women, children or elderly among them. They had two doglike creatures at the fire also.
            One of the men sat apart. Maybe he was the lookout Ralph thought.
            As Ralph paddled against the current, to stay stationary and stare at the hunting party, one of them, the lookout guy, finally noticed him. He whistled a low, carrying whistle.
            The wolfdogs beat the men to the water’s edge. The guys all carried spears. There was a lot of excited talking in no language Ralph had even a clue about. The dogs barked and jumped into the water. The men waded in up to their waists, making what appeared to Ralph, to be threatening thrusts with their spears.
            Ralph wondered if these hunters even knew how to swim. It didn’t look like they did. It also didn’t look like they wanted to throw their spears away on a target they probably weren’t going to hit from their positions. In a way, it was a standoff.
            Ralph grinned. “Uncool,” he said. Uncle Bob talks like that, and it had rubbed off on Ralph.
            The hunters kept yelling a word over and over. It sounded to Ralph like “takuu!” He surmised that it must mean something like “evil swimming giant!”
            Ralph yelled back, “OK, guys, I’m leaving now. Bye! Better go dry off!”
            Then with powerful strokes of his big arms he fought the current back to the place where he had entered the river. It seemed like hours had passed, but he was happy to see his own footprints still there in the sand. He wondered what those hunters back there would make of them if they came up this way.
            He retraced his steps back up the little valley, taking care to notice the vegetation, and the local birds, many of which were just more crows. There were little brown ones too. None of it looked terribly unfamiliar, but that glacier sure did. He thought of the whole little valley covered in deep ice and shivered.
            There was his little tree knot right where he had left it between the granite boulders. He patted himself down to make sure he had nothing which he had picked up there, then he took a deep breath and walked boldly right past his marker with his eyes closed.
            When he opened his eyes he was walking down his log again in the opposite direction, safely home.
            “How long was I gone?” he asked Ramona as he strode down to the fire circle.
            “Oh, Ralph. You know how it is, you just popped up into the woods and then turned around and came back!” said Ramona.
            “Me takuu! Evil swimming giant!” Ralph giggled. “Some hunters on a beach said so!”
            “I’ll just bet they did, you monster!” said Ramona.
            “I didn’t hurt them, Mona, but I bet I gave them something to sing about and tell their kids about. I might have gone down into folk stories and all like that! Pretty cool, huh?”
            “What a nice monster you are, Ralph,” she said.
            “You should have seen all the ice!” said Ralph.