Hettie Goes Missing!

ELEVEN | Desperate Ghost

As the thoughts reeled and memories of Kreelah laughing, her hugs, the sound of her scolding the jay at her window, and all the smells of her own long-lost, brewed tea—all whizzed through Hettie's head in that very moment—it made Hettie sick to her very thin stomach. 

She knew only one thing: she had to do something, now!

Hettie pretended to be far too tired to go to the pond with the boogles, this night. Most of the light was obscured by the moss-covered trees.

Hettie kept her back to the still breezy curtain and pretended to work. Her knuckles were tight and she was sure if her friends could have seen any part of her hands, they would have noticed her flesh had gone white.

Sometimes the neighbours were sending their own children along on scouting missions, keeping their eyes on developments around the tulug of Untags.

Hettie had become used to the idea of not 'being seen' in the marsh. But by now, she herself and the Bog-wah could 'see' plenty fine. After adjustments, 'seeing' had turned out to be relative to the density veil in whatever point of time you happened to live for that moment.

The unfortunate part was really at home. 

Compared to where Hettie was now, her previous home world resonated in a much denser space—out of flux, or much less of it—so even if you were able to get home, you'd no longer be noticed. 

For all intents and purposes Hettie was 'dun' to the world that she'd known. They just couldn't see her—not even standing right there! She'd be the invisible 'UnSeen' as it were. She'd be a ghost, and ghostly was now what Hettie was feeling.

Hettie knew her body was air. If she looked, she could see right through herself—but the bog-wah (whom she'd become a lot more like now) could sense she was there. And although they didn't 'see' in the same way that humans would see things, they could locate and sense vibrations in space and a kind of movement-like thought—to the point that all carried on pretty much like it did in any old world. 

So being UnSeen didn't bother her now, here in the bog. It did, however, present a huge problem in getting immediate help out to Kreelah!

I have to escape! But how—? I cannot be seen. She had to at least get a message to Kreelah—

Hettie clenched the stick in her hand and moved back and forth, barely able to keep her lungs filled with breath. As she pretended to stir different mud colours, the ones she liked to drool on her flat-surfaced sand box, a familiar thought crossed her mind.

Instructions, she mused. She'd recently taken to showing the boggles her stick figure art to show them her 'hows'. Hmmm. She drooled some silvery mud and it looked like a ghost, and that image gave her an idea—the best one she'd had.

All I need is to buy Kreelah some time—

As chances would have it, when you live in the light, even when light is coming from fireflies, fresh breezes sometimes bring you new visions, and that's just what Hettie saw in her mind: a vision was just what would stir up her insight!

"Haaakk!" She laughed. She dropped to the floor, suddenly moaning and shrieking, just like the bogh. She was inspired!

To see a bogh do this would have been nothing at all, but to the Untags, it seemed Hettie was mad. She was quite ill.

Hettie fell on the earth clutching her stomach, then grasping the hair at the sides of her head. She moaned and leaned forward. She rocked back and forth. 

When the Untags came closer, she took her hands away from her head and threw them wide in the air again. "I can see! I can see her!" Hettie yelled.

"Who see?" demanded Mumma-Daguha.

"Who see?" croaked father-Ked, more uneasy.

"Woah—the wind," Hettie moaned. "Woah, there's a ghost-walker in the minds of the—" She grabbed her hair again for extra effect and bowed down to her knees, rocking low, then suddenly up again, arms wide open. "—I can't see. It's coming. It's—" Hettie stopped, as if staring at something the Untags could not. She did not have to glance at their faces to feel their alarm. Hettie now stood up. "Oh. Oh, I see. Thank you,"—like nothing had happened and turned back to her art.

"See—you—?!" demanded father-Ked. Mumma-Daguha didn't ask. She just stared, overwhelmed. "Gluug."

"Oh. Yes," Hettie said swinging around to face them again, brush in hand. "I suppose it could be useful. Uh, Ghost-walker says, 'There's to be a ceremony again,' in the lands of their Mearth, when all clans come together."

Hettie picked up her next glob of mud—coloured yellow from roots and maybe some pollen—and cheerfully surveyed where to plop it for her next picture, ignoring them both.

"Morh—" Ked was louder.

"Oh—if you want to hear it. The ghost realm just thinks the great Bothe will attend. That's all. Nothing much. It's a new Transfer of Power, like the one I tried to tell you about for humans, so why would Bothe attend? That's probably wrong. These things often are." And she returned to dripping the yellow in a long rolling swirl.

"Uh." father-Ked simply said, not seeming to know what else there was. The couple murmured some surprised phrases. Then Hettie heard a 'bluk' word under father-Ked's breath, and they shuffled back to what they were doing, casting looks, wide-eyed around.

Hettie smiled. (Although, between you and me—if we could 'see' her—when she put the brush down, she briefly crossed her fingers on both hands for luck.)

I love you, Kreelah! She whispered, mostly in mind-voice to be sure that the bogh could not overhear.

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