And that washes him right outa this story and sends him on his way. Well, almost, because a couple of days later Tremendous Ptarmigan says, “I had a nice chat with the mammyth at the King’s palace.”
“Is that what took you so long?” Cleveland said. “I thought you fell in.”
Tundra Dawn reins in. She sends Ptremendous Tarmigan as exasperated a look as she can manage with eyes from a craft-shop discount table. “Um, you do remember we’re searching for a mammyth? Hunting a mammyth, even?” By the hopeless way she says it, she has no confidence that TP/PT ever remembers anything.
But Tremendous Ptarmigan nods brightly. “Oh, sure,” he says.
Tundra Dawn holds on to her patience with both hands. With sidekicks like hers, she has considerable practice. Morosely, she considers it. Then she asks, “Why didn’t you tell us that before it was, like, too late to do anything about it?”
“You heard the King,” Ptremendous Tarmigan answers. “He said mammyths weren’t very common in palaces.”
After considering her practice some more, Tundra Dawn says, “They don’t need to be very common. There just needs to be one of them, so we can hunt it.”
“What did you and this mammyth, if there was a mammyth, talk about?” Cleveland asks. Then he sneezes. Even in tundra summer, baby, it’s cold outside.
“Don’t snuffle up at me,” TP/PT says. “We chatted about all kinds of things. He says to watch out for the one from fit the eighth. I don’t know what that means, though.”
“The Baker could tell you,” Cleveland says.
“What Baker?” asks Tremendous Ptarmigan.
“The Baker,” Cleveland says. They go on confusing each other, and Tundra Dawn, for some little while.
Then our chain-mailed (but not chain-stored) heroine cocks her head to one side and says, “I hear music.”
“But there’s no one there.” Cleveland comes in right on cue.
“It’s, like, a bell,” Tundra Dawn says, which is not the next line, but which is, like, what it is.
There may not be anyone there, but Ptremendous Ptarmigan points to motion in the distance. “Look!” he exclaims. “It’s a herd of cheeseheads!”
Cheeseheads they are, ambling across the frozen tundra in search of tailgates and other Arcana of the Sacred Pigskin. Instead of by an ordinary bellwether, they, like some other faithful, are led by a lamb. Like an ordinary bellwether, the lamb wears a bell around its neck. Unlike an ordinary bellwether’s, the lamb’s bell is held on by a pink satin ribbon with a fancy bow.
Tundra Dawn spurs her horse forward, careless for the moment of worries about animal cruelty (what she will do if and when hunting the mammyth segues into killing the mammyth is something she resolutely refuses to dwell on). The horse jumps high over the lamb’s bell-bedizened neck. After her touchdown, she waves her sidekicks forward. They too perform the lamb-bow leap.
Cleveland wrinkles his nose. With the kind of nose he has, this isn’t easy. With the kind of nose he has, this shouldn’t even be possible. But I’m the narrator, and I’m here to tell you he does it. In fact, I repeat myself, slowly: Cleveland . . . wrinkles . . . his . . . nose. Okay? Wrapped your visualizer around it yet? Sweet! Then we’ll go on.
“Of course you don’t, you translettered avian, you,” Cleveland says. “The only avians, translettered or not, with a good sense of smell are vultures.”
“Sounds discriminatory to me,” TP/PT says. “And elitist. Everyone should be able to smell as good as everyone else.”
“If you want to smell good, try taking a bath,” Cleveland says. “If you want to smell well, try not being an avian.”
Tremendous Ptarmigan gets mad and puffs out his feathers to look, um, ptremendouser. Before the bickering can get really bitchy, Tundra Dawn says, “Boys, boys.” She’s defused, and defuzzed, these squabbles before. She goes on, “I think you’re smelling the cheeseheads, Cleveland. They’re Roqueforts.”
“Rogue farts?” Cleveland nods. “They sure are!”
“I used to watch The Roquefort Files sometimes,” the Tarmigan says. “I didn’t smell anything bad then.”
Tundra Dawn sighs. Good sidekicks are hard to come by. And stinking cheeseheads are a fact of life on the frozen tundra. “Faa-aar-vv!” they bleat mournfully. “Faa-aar-vv!”
“Come on,” Tundra Dawn says. “We’ll ride away from them. Then we won’t smell them so much.”
Away they ride. The smell does get . . . not so bad, anyhow. Cleveland keeps complaining about it anyhow. TP/PT keeps complaining about Cleveland’s complaining. Instead