Panda quests 

Panda quests

By Rosalind D H and Sage F W

This is a continued version from previous issues, so if you want to read the earlier chapters, look at the previous editions of the literary magazine. 

Chapter 3- A Surprise 

Many weeks later on a day that makes you feel like you just want to curl up in a warm den and snuggle close while it rained, and the clouds outside were a gloomy gray and thunder boomed in the background, the sisters were cozied up with each other, playing a creative game with leaves they had invented.

The two had spent most of the last  month playing together, and began to enjoy the company of one another.

 When coco was about to put down another leaf and capture a mushroom, a sickly sweet smell seeped into their den and  flooded their noses and made their brains foggy. 

“What is that smell?” Coco asked timidly, “ It is the weirdest thing I may have ever smelled. Wait, no the weirdest thing would be burning bamboo mixed with peanuts.” They both poked their heads out of the den to investigate. Outside stood a weird monkey on two feet, with long limbs and tufts of black fur on top of its head. The monkey had pale ghostly skin and the smile of a crocodile.  

 He had chainmail armor with a circus tent designed on the chest plate and had an iron sword with a golden hilt in a scabbard at his waist. He also had two strange wrist cuffs that had interlocking swirling patterns cut into the steel.

Fear gripped them, for they knew this was a human. Humans rarely showed up in their uninhabited island, but every once and a while, a brave adventurer would show up to try to ford the jungle, or claim the land for their own. All of these humans would eventually be picked off by some predator, or possibly run out of food and water of course, but even though they couldn't survive in the wild, they could be dangerous.

 The man was holding two dirty rags which the weird smell came from. They both inhaled trying to place the smell but as they inhaled again,  the edges of their visions started to blur, and they slumped over. As they were slipping away they heard the man utter something they could not understand, in a voice that could only be described as a frogs. Then the man started to laugh a terrible, maniacal laugh like rocks scraping together. 

“How did we get here?” Willow asked as they stuck their heads out of the bag they had been shoved in. In their foggy-brained haze, they had felt themselves lifted, and dropped into a ship, brought across water, and then put on to a wagon that they could now see was being pulled by five colorful llamas. They were an array of colors, a bright red llama, a neon yellow llama, one that was a bright green,  blue and purple too.

“Who would need a llama rainbow!?” Coco whispered to Willow.

“Him I guess. Where are we anyways?”

Looking around, the sisters saw a forest nothing like the one they grew up in. The trees  were pretty short and had white bark. The grove looked almost magical, with creme trees, and slits of yellow sunlight accompanied by the sage green of the leaves overhead. 

Birch trees! Willow had read about them in her favorite book:  Plants Around The World, but had never seen a real one! 

“We need to get out! Who knows how far away from home we are!” Coco Bean started to try to squirm out of the bag, but they suddenly stopped. The man began to make his horrible noises, and gestured to his pet dog  (a husky). It had been following him everywhere, but looked more scared than loyal.

The place they had arrived in was a large grassy field, so different from their home. It was populated by large colorful fabric houses, pointing up to the sky, and many odd things the two pandas had never seen before.

The man pulled them to a small striped yellow and purple tent, and they were put into a large cage surrounded by smaller cages full of other animals. They stayed there until the next day, when the circus man came to get them. He grabbed a squirrel, a rabbit and a fox and yelled at some men standing to his right. As soon as the man yelled, the henchmen jumped and immediately got out leather gloves and picked up the animals and slipped heavy looking rope leashes over the animals heads.

They continued this process with a deer, a monkey, a rat, a mouse, a parrot, a cat and a penguin until the only animals left were the two pandas.

 When he pulled them out of their cage, he brought them to a circus ring surrounded by stands. He stepped back, and then he hit the two wrist cuffs together and the weird ruins started to glow crimson. Red electricity shot out of his bracelets and right at Coco and Willow! It didn’t hurt exactly but it felt strange, as if their limbs had been turned into slime. Suddenly their vision blurred and clouded over, all they could see was the ruins glowing an eerie red.

 Suddenly Willow felt the urge to do a beautiful backwards somersault  and Coco found herself wanting to perfectly balance on a ball. They both tried doing it, and failed terribly. Willow tried to do a somersault, but just fell over sideways and got a bruise on her butt. Coco got on the ball but immediately  fell off and fell face first in a pool of water. She swam to the edge of the pool, sopping wet and cold. Self conscious, Coco looked around to see if anyone had seen what they had done. She saw an elephant juggling lit torches practicing nearby. The torches flew through the air in amazing arches above her head.

That night, after practicing, and failing all day, they were brought back to their tent to sit in their tiered, bruised misery 

“What is that?” Asked Willow, pointing at the cage across from them.

In it was a panda with brown fur, like Coco Bean´s. He had the same wrist cuffs as the man, but his wrist cuffs were glowing golden, not red. He was laying in his small cage, eyes closed, grimacing as he clenched his paws. 

“I think those bracelets are hurting him!” Willow said, sitting up. “Should we help him?”

“ Hello?” Coco asked the panda, but there was no response. The panda seemed to be asleep. “Umm, hi.” Coco said, louder this time. 

The strange panda began to ever so slowly move his head. “Coco?” He said in a weak voice, crackly from lack of use. 

After several weeks of practice, they got the hang of their tricks, Coco could now easily balance on a ball, and Willow could somersault anywhere she wanted. Pleased, the man announced that it was finally time to perform in front of an audience. The juggling penguin, the swimming cat, the flame throwing elephant,  the acrobat mouse, the tightrope walking gorilla, and of course the somersaulting  panda, and the ball balancing panda. 

“Now introducing the pandas!” the man, who was wearing a fancy golden suit shouted to the crowd. Coco hopped onto her ball and rolled her way onto the stage while Willow somersaulted her way in, ending in a beautiful twirl to join the other performing animals. 

The audience just loved them. They cheered, and exclaimed how cute and talented the baby pandas were.

               The two sisters still weren’t sure why they wanted to do all of this. Over their time there, the pandas had noticed that the circus man had been using the bracelets to take the power from the other brown furred panda. They had never been able to talk to him, but they were starting to think that the bracelets were the things making them do their tricks. 

         When all the animals were on stage, they began the performance they knew by heart. Coco and Willow did very well  on their first show. They rolled, and flipped, and jumped and swirled, and the audience loved them. 

At the end of the show they wandered back to their tent, as normal the amber panda lay 

       But just as they began the finale, their vision unclouded. The magic had stopped. Coco fell off her ball, Willow tipped over mid summer salt, and the other performers stopped too.

         That included the fire juggling elephant. She had fumbled, and the torched fell to the ground, still burning. 

          The audience was confused. What was happening?  Then someone screamed. “It's on fire! The tent caught on fire!” Willow and Coco looked up to see a wall of flames, roaring up the side of the brightly striped fabric tent. Everybody began to panic, and run around, searching for an exit.

“Where do we go!?” Asked Coco Bean over the roar of panicked voices . Willow took her arm, and pulled her to  the opening through the smokey chaos, but the entrance was engulfed in fire, so they ran the other way, pushing through the fleeing people and animals, hoping they could find an exit.  

The smoke clogged the air and made them cough and choke. They needed to get out.

“Hey!” a voice barked. The two pandas turned around to see who had spoken, and saw a dog with fluffy white fur that looked like a white plume of smoke speaking to them. It was the human’s dog. “Follow me!” It ruffed. The dog ran over to a small gap in the raging fire, where there was a hole burnt out of the tent that was the perfect size, so they could slip out easily. 

They ran after the dog for the gap in the flames as the fire crackled around them. As Willow was looking at the animals screaming and flailing, a sinking feeling set into her stomach. The man was nowhere to be seen. He must have escaped, and would soon be plotting more trouble. The flames waved through the air, burning everything it touched. The cat was at the top of one of the posts holding up the tight rope, claws digging into the charred wood. Three acrobat mice were standing on the cat's head, hugging its ear. The juggling penguin was trying to hide behind the elephant's legs, waving desperately at the flames.  The elephant was just a baby, and had tears streaming down her cheeks, and was looking wildly around. It was too sad to watch. Willow was not looking where she was going, and a large spark suddenly hit Willow’s leg. She cried out in pain as the smell of burning hair filled the air. Coco grabbed one of Willow's unburnt paws, and helped her keep walking.

Soon though, they both realized that they were moving too slowly. “Don't worry!” Said the dog. “We're  almost to the gap! Here, let me help.” Coco Bean draped Willow over the dog's shoulder. 

“Hey”. Said Willow, As the dog pulled her toward the gap.  You could hear the pain in her voice, but she kept talking. “I know this is a bad time, but we never heard your name.” 

The dog said. “My name is Scout.” 

“Im Coco Bean, an this is my sister Willow.” Coco pointed to Willow on his back as they made it through the gap. They had escaped the fire. They were now in the wild birch forest all on their own. The tall trees loomed over them and thick bushes blocked most of the path.

“I guess we go in.” Coco said. 

Chapter 4- A secret

Willow and Coco Bean were getting tired from walking through the deep white forest, and didn’t have food, because there was no bamboo in this alien grove. They could feel the growing hunger in their stomachs nagging at them.  “Come on. We need to keep moving.” Coco said. 

“My leg still hurts and I don’t see you with any legs about to fall off!” Willow shot back. 

“Your legs are not going to fall off.” Coco said. “But if we keep moving then we can heal it at the Kingdom of the Amber Pandas.” They had decided that the only way that Willow would ever be able to run or jump again would be to find the jungle that was said to have had jade mint, a magical plant known to heal injuries and ailments. The only place that had it was the unexplored jungles, everywhere else had been stripped clean of any hint of the plant. Pandas from all of the tribes had sent explorers out but no one had come back and if they did they were forever changed. Nobody was sure if there was actually jade mint in it, but it was worth a chance.  

After hours of forging through the foliage the trees had begun to change from birch to a more familiar jungle terrain. They started wondering if it was the right choice to come here. It was dark with a small amount of sunlight seeping through the leaves of the dense jungle leaves. Their legs were aching from their long journey through the dense ferns and trees. 

Later, once the sun had gone down and they were thinking about quitting for the night when Scout’s stepped on something. It appeared to be a large mound of moss but upon closer inspection revealed itself to be an old stone brick covered in plants. It looked like it had been there since the beginning of time. They looked around to see a stone wall covered in vines and shrouded in low hanging branches. It towered above them far above their heads, moss in twisting patterns filling in the spiderweb of cracks.

“Wow?” Scout said in awe. “What in the world is that doing in a jungle?”

“I think it’s some kind of ruin.” Suggested Coco Bean. “There might be something helpful here.” 

They searched around the perimeter, and found a small doorway about the size of a panda, with a carving above it that read.

<<><>

“Is that some kind of ancient language?” Asked Willow.

“Let's just keep moving.” Said Coco.

They walked through one at a time, Coco Bean coming last, shuffling her feet in an ancouse way. Something wasn’t right about this place. Whoever had lived here probably didn’t want people in their home judging by the fact that they had built it in the middle of the rainforest and surrounded it with a huge wall. 

As she went into the cobblestone hallway she could barely see, and accidentally kicked a stick across the floor. Willow was about to take a step when arrows started to fly through the air, one just missing Willow’s ear taking with it a few strands of black hair. Willow jerked back to dodge another arrow.

“Ow!” She exclaimed when she landed on her injured foot, jumping back. “Why were there arrows flying at us?!”

“Who ever lived here really didn’t want visitors.” Scout said as he examined one of the arrows. “These are poison tipped. Did any of them touch you?” 

“I don’t think so.” Willow said unsure.

“I think we better not touch these.” Scout said and began tip-toeing his way across the floor. 

Coco went back outside to grab more sticks and came back with a pawful of them.

“What are those for?” Asked Willow.

“Watch.” She said, and rolled one across the floor. They heard a click, but nothing else happened. The friends rolled another stick, but it just disappeared into gloom.

 “I guess we should go after them. Hopefully the sticks triggered any trap there might be, but watch your step.” said Scout, taking a step forward and almost fell into the pit that was now at his feet. You couldn’t see the bottom of it.

“Wow! Now we know what happened!” they had to inch along the small ledge on the wall to get past this trap.

They moved on without finding any other traps, but they still stopped to roll a stick every few feet. Soon they came to a dead end, and in the faint light they saw five switches. They guessed it was like a combination lock. Coco Bean stepped ahead and started flipping the switches. 

“That's not going to work.” Said Scout. 

“Let's try and think if we saw a clue or anything.” Said Willow. They all sat and thought for a little while, and then she remembered. “Oh! I know! Remember the inscription above the doorway!” She stepped forward and started trying it. “What was it? Left, left, right, left, right?” 

“Yes! It worked!” exclaimed Coco as a tunnel carved itself out of a moss covered wall ahead of them.