Chapter 7

The shaman was able to make seven more amulets before he ran out of silver. I gave him the remaining amber in payment for all of his work and to allow him to buy silver to replace that used in the amulets. I now had enough amulets to last me indefinitely, so I was ready to return to Holly.

Sagro would have started his annual trading circuit before we could get to his home, so we had plenty of time to wander around before I wanted to return to Sagro's place. We turned south to get out of the slush from the melting snow and ice and just kept going. It wasn't long before we started to run into scattered settlements of Celts. My people had always considered the Celts to be crude barbarians, but the Celts had felt the same about us, so there were no hard feelings between the two groups.

I was curious what the country was like to the west, so we took any road leading west which looked likely to support the weight and size of our cart. We occasionally found wood or stone bridges, but none of them were wide enough for our cart. This forced us to turn off the road and look for a way to cross the stream where the bank was not too high or too steep. On one of these detours, we crossed the stream and decided to stop for the evening.

I was hunting while the women were preparing supper. The children were old enough, now, that Little Noise could be left in the care of Big Noise while the women worked on other things. The children had wandered away from camp far enough to be out of sight. They were only gone for a very few minutes when Big Noise came running into camp screaming that a spriggan had stolen Little Noise.

He was nearly hysterical as he tried to tell Orda what had happened. Apparently, the children had been playing near the stream just over a low hill from the camp. A creature that looked like a boy wearing a funny hat, actually the creature's horns, had come out of a hole in the ground and struck up a conversation with the boys. The boy said that he was a spriggan and he lived in the cave he had just exited.

Suddenly, without warning, the spriggan had seized Little Noise and run into the cave. That's when Big Noise had come to report the kidnapping. Orda immediately took charge. She ordered Trudy to stay and guard the camp, and she ordered Junga to find me. Meanwhile, she changed to wolf form and ran to the cave entrance.

I showed up at camp only moments after Orda disappeared over the hill, so Jonga and I, in wolf form, chased after Orda. We caught sight of her as she was about to enter the cave, and I howled at her in hope that she would stop long enough for us to catch up. She heard me and stopped until we got there.

I had gotten a very abbreviated version of what had happened back at camp, so I had some idea what was going on. Sometime in the past, probably over a campfire in the evening, I had heard the story of the spriggan. The spriggan was a creature that lived under ground and had little to do with humans, except that it loved to steal human children to raise as its own. I had never seen one, but it was a popular demon used by the Celts to frighten wayward children. Apparently, this spriggan had taken a liking to Little Noise and had stolen him.

We had no choice: we had to go under ground if we ever hoped to recover Little Noise, and we certainly intended to do that. Luckily for us, in wolf form we were just low enough to clear the roof of the cave, so we were able to move comfortably in the cave. Furthermore, in his fright, Little Noise had shit in his pants, so he left a strong odor trail for us to follow. I don't know where it came from, but there was enough greenish light in the cave for our enhanced wolf eyesight to see quite clearly, thank you.

With such a strong trail and plenty of light, we took off at a dead run after Little Noise and his kidnapper. The cave was narrow, so we ran in single file; I led the way. We didn't have far to go before we came to a split in the cave, one branch leading to our right and the other leading to our left. This was absolutely no problem; we turned left to follow the scent.

We ran another hundred yards or so and came to another junction; this time we turned right. A series of twists and turns like this seemed to lead us in a great circle, and I skidded to a halt. I had a horrible realization—we were following the wrong trail!

The spriggan had outsmarted us. It had a confederate run around at random with Little Noise's pants leading us on a merry chase while the kidnapper escaped with the child down another tunnel. Fortunately, we had the odor trail we could follow back to our starting point. I led us back to the start of our chase, and we all turned human so that we could talk.

We discussed the situation and decided to resume the chase, but this time following Little Noise's body scent which we all knew quite well. We were going to have to check each branch in the trail for evidence of the separation of Little Noise from his pants. There would not have been a divergence before that first branch in the tunnel, so we should head back to that and check the branch we had not taken the first time. We morphed back into wolves and took off for that first connection with a side corridor.

We sniffed around, and sure enough, even though the shit smell went one way, Little Noise's personal smell went the other. We ran down the diverging tunnel and had no problem following the proper scent. We must have run for around two miles until we came to a large chamber full of spriggans. At the far end of the chamber was an ornate throne, and an elderly-looking spriggan sat there. Sitting on his lap was Little Noise, and he was living up to his name! His crying should have been enough to make a stone weep; he was scared, and he was letting the world know about it.

There must have been 60 or 70 spriggans scattered about the large chamber, all looking at Little Noise. The chief or king or whatever he was, was trying to calm Little Noise down to a dull roar, but not having any luck at it. Jonga saw her son in distress and reacted as any mother would—she ran to the throne, changed into human form, and snatched Little Noise to her breast. Immediately, he recognized Jonga, and stopped crying. The drop in the noise level was palpable. The king looked at Jonga and grimaced. "Does this bundle of noise belong to you?"

"He certainly does, and I demand that you return him!"

"By all means, take him and begone. My ears could not have taken much more of that noise. I will never understand how you can tolerate listening to that racket. Please take him away from here, and rest assured that the spriggans will never bother him, again."

"That's better, but I cannot carry him that long distance in the low tunnel. Please assign one of your people to carry him to the end of the tunnel for me."

"Of course, I'll assign the idiot who kidnapped him to that task. Horslon, do as this woman demands!"

"Yes, Your Majesty. Of course, Your Majesty. Madam, hand me the child and I will carry him for you."

Jonga handed Little Noise to Horslon and that triggered the crying all over again. Horslon began to run and Jonga shifted back into wolf form. All three of us ran after Horslon, and we found just how fast a spriggan could run. We could hardly keep up with him. We stepped outside the tunnel mouth, and Little Noise exacted his last mite of revenge—he vomited all over Horslon!

Horslon put Little Noise on the ground and jumped into the stream to try to wash himself off. Little Noise stopped crying and looked for his mother to pick him up. She did so, but she also took the time to wash him off in the stream before we all headed back to camp. Every time we thought of Horslon's fate we had to stop until we quit laughing.

Trudy was relieved to see us and had to hear of the adventure. She, too, laughed at the way Little Noise had gotten even with Horslon.