Synopsis

Chapter 1.

Sleebos aren’t mean creatures. They like to fish and lie in the sun and play tag. They
can’t see very well but they can smell honey a kilometer away. With a nose as long as an axe handle, that’s easy.

For as many decades as there are notes in a symphony, sleebos lived in the grassy
Loland on the eastern edge of the Would, southeast of Barren Plain. Recently the water had warmed in the stream that ran from Barren Plain, through the Would then through Loland. The air also smelled of smoke that drifted across the plain from the great mountain. This meant the trout and the bees gradually left the grassy Loland for the cool waters, clean air and wildflowers of the meadow at the base of the Dimrock Mountains.

As Chogi and Tanee picked along the blackberry bramble, they were surprised to stumble across a pair of chubby sleeping sleebos. It was rare to find a sleebo in the Dimrock foothills. Sleebos are difficult to approach. Their only defense is that keen sense of smell that allows them to waddle quietly away from their foul-smelling natural enemy, the long-nailed gunock.

The sleebos lay snuggled side-by-side, one long nose pointed into the wind, one to the south.

Tanee was the first to notice the tufts of matted gray fur that had been ripped from the
thin pelt of the sleebos, probably as they reached for the sweet berries on the thorny
bush. She noticed the cuts on their small, padded feet – feet designed to move quietly
across grassy meadows, not stumble up and down rocky foothills.

Tanee leaned forward to mention how exhausted they must have been as Chogi leaned to point out how adorably they snuggled. They cracked skulls, yelped and scared the sleebos. One bolted wide-eyed straight into the thorny bush, the other into a pile of rocks. They bounced backward screaming, which from a sleebo is no louder than the whine of a puppy. They tumbled onto their tender paws, the slope of the hill carrying them away from Chogi and Tanee.

An hour later they went nearing their cabin. Though Tanee was nearly a head taller and a fist thinner than Chogi, their strides were the same. Tanee’s straight blonde chin-length hair flopped in rhythm with the full black curls that bounced off Chogi’s shoulders. Tanee breathed easily through her slightly parted lips, one corner of which always seemed to slope up, the other down. The nostrils in Chogi’s aquiline nose flared as he kept the rapid pace. Their chins, Tanee’s pointed, Chogi’s square, were both erect. Were they both not so rusticly attractive, it would have been difficult to believe they were sister and brother.

The setting sun behind Dimrock peak left a chill in the air and they still had a hearty
walk to their cabin, higher in the foothills.

About halfway home they stopped to slip on wool sweaters that Chogi had knitted the previous winter. They rested longer than usual because of the lovely view of the
meadow and the valley. The leaves were changing colors, a parade of redheads and
blondes, hair blowing in the wind.

It was dark when they reached the front porch. The night was cloudless. The sky was a black blanket over the world that had been patched many times. Where the needle had pierced the blanket, a little light shined through.

After the long walk, picking berries, two hours in the kitchen baking pies and too much cabbage stew for supper, Chogi barely managed to sew a patch on his shirtsleeve and Tanee to sharpen her whittling knife before they yawned and decided to end the day.

Shreds of early morning light snuck under barely responsive eyelids when Chogi scooted across the pine floor to slippers he had neglected to set beside the bed. It was the first night it was chilly enough to wear the socks he had traded last spring from Traveler, who had been happy with the parsnip stew and two loaves of brown bread in exchange. The socks made his feet sweat under the covers. He had rolled and tossed them from the bed into the open dresser drawer across the room.

When his wide flat feet touched the cold floor, he regretted the toss.

With slippers, and a robe tied snugly around his sturdy waist, Chogi shivered as he closed the window in the noisy room. They had thought for weeks about the design of the cabin before they began to build. They agreed that one room would be the quiet room—for sleeping, sewing, reading, painting, writing, or sulking—and one room would be the noisy room—for building and cooking and singing and dancing and arguing. The big fireplace was in the noisy room, the little one in the quiet room. Chogi had the kindling arranged and was reaching for the flint when his hand stopped.

“The pies,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” Tanee asked.

“The pies are gone.”

They rushed to the partially open window and raised it so quickly that the frame thudded into the sill, shaking the glass they considered the pride of the cabin. Traveler had made a special trip with the sheets of glass. They worked for weeks on the table they had offered in payment.

“Where’d they go?” she asked.

He got his other sock and boots, went outside and knelt below the window.

“A footprint. About that round.” He held thumbs and first fingers in a circle. “And ten
toes. Make that nine.”

“What was it?”

“The print is smudged but I think it was a sleebo.”

“Why would a sleebo steal pies? What are sleebos doing up here anyway?”

“They like sweets and were hungry. Why they’re so far from Loland, I don’t know,” he
said.

Inside the cabin, they sat silently as they waited for the chamomile tea with maple syrup to cool. “They must be very hungry,” Chogi said.

“Hungry enough to get cut and torn on the thorns and slashed on the rocks,” Tanee said.

“I baked berry pie. I’m going to eat berry pie. Get the buckets, I’ll get the packs,” Chogi said.

They filled the buckets then tromped back to the cabin. The heavy buckets and the pace
left them both with sweat on their tanned and broad foreheads, some of which dripped into Chogi’s dark green eyes.

Tanee unpacked what remained of the bread and cheese they had nibbled for lunch, then carefully folded the blue sweater that matched the tint of her eyes. Chogi’s green sweater needed an airing and went on the line behind the cabin.

A pie and a half sat on the windowsill that night as Tanee snuggled into the long bed. The shorter bed was empty.

Chogi sat in a rocker beside the open window, a large metal spoon in one hand, an empty teapot in the other. Tanee had argued it would be easier to set the pies on the table and close the window.

It wasn’t banging and clattering that woke her, but the morning sun. She was surprised at having slept so long. She poked her head into the noisy room to find Chogi slumped in the rocker, arms folded, teapot and spoon beside his crossed feet.

The hissing of the teakettle woke him. A warm mug of tea and honey gently brushed his arm.

“Maybe they don’t care that much for your cooking,” Tanee said.

“I thought they’d be back.”

“Didn’t hear a thing? Or did you sleep all night?” she asked.

“I heard something, maybe a whine or a whimper. Maybe the wind.”

“A whine or a whimper?”

“Maybe the rocking chair squeaked.”

“Finish your tea. I want to look at something,” Tanee said.

The dew was still heavy when they stepped out the door.

“Which way?” Chogi said.

“I don’t know.”

“You want to show me something, but you don’t know how to get there?”

Tanee began to walk around the cabin in ever widening circles. Chogi followed close
behind.

It was over an hour before she stepped into the purple heather at the base of the knoll not far from the cabin. A second later Chogi stepped into Tanee. As Chogi staggered to the side, he heard a muffled crack. His boot shattered the bones in the front paw of a mutilated sleebo. The paw was one of the few places where skin and fur still covered bones. Splotches of half-dried blood crusted on the rocks and heather and entrails littered the ground. Its nose had been eaten up to the white skull.

Tea and honey from Chogi’s stomach sprayed over a sleebo rib cage still flecked with
shreds of red meat.

Tanee stood on her tiptoes, nervously scanning the horizon.

“Gunock.”

Neither of them would have thought it possible to run that fast back to the cabin.

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