This is a first draft of Chapter 4 of The Unicorn Guide, the fourth book in the 11 Quests series. Books 4, 5 and 6 tell a new story, so you can read The Unicorn Guide even if you haven’t yet read the first three books. Since this is a first draft, if you spot any errors please let me know! I’d be happy to find out in email and fix it. Feel free to send along any other comments you may have. Make sure you read Chapter 1 first!
Chapter 4
Animals
Tumi shrugged, smiled and started walking through the jungle in the opposite direction from the path Glider had taken. He had started this adventure alone and was fine continuing it alone. He didn’t need some old fairy to tell him what everything was. He’d figure it out for himself.
He worked his way slowly through the jungle. The thick foliage made it impossible to move very quickly, but that was just fine with Tumi as he took in all of the new sights. Many plants seemed similar to those he was used to, but there were subtle differences. For some, the leaves had purple mixed in with their normal green. One tree had green bark that looked like snake scales. Tumi had jumped when he saw that one, thinking there was a huge snake in a tree, until he realized that he was just seeing the tree itself.
The animals were even more surprising. He saw a handful of monkeys moving from tree to tree high overhead. There was nothing unusual in that sight, except that these monkeys all had really long arms and legs. Each one also had a hat on its head.
Like those monkeys, many animals were very similar to the ones Tumi was used to from his part of the Amazon rainforest. There were many others that may as well have come from the moon, because they were so different from anything he had seen. At one point, he was forced to wait as hundreds of small balls of fur rolled past him, clearly trying to get somewhere in a hurry. They came in all of the colors of the rainbow and looked so soft and cute that Tumi was very tempted to pick one up to play with. However, many of them growled with a deep, throaty sound that made the boy think that these creatures may have defenses that they usually kept out of sight.
After a couple of hours of one new sight after another, each interesting but none threatening, Tumi was so engrossed in this new world that he tripped over a fallen branch and found himself down on his hands and knees on the ground. Just inches away he saw the largest turtle he had ever seen. It was five feet across with a deep green shell and a beak that Tumi was quite certain would give a very nasty bite. He looked at the boy through two beady black eyes on the sides of his head.
“Woah there,” said the turtle in a deep, slow voice. “You might want to watch where you’re going. A little thing like you couldn’t harm me, so I’m not about to bite you. But, I saw a humdinger about an hour ago and you wouldn’t want to fall on that.”
Tumi’s eyes widened. “You can talk!”
“Of course I can talk. But are you hearing what I’m saying? There’s a humdinger around here. Just watch your step.”
“What’s a humdinger? How will I know it when I see it?”
“You don’t know what a humdinger is?” The turtle considered this for a moment, surprised that this human was not only clumsy but apparently not very smart.
“You know what a ball is, right?”
“Yes.”
“And fur?”
“Yes.”
“A humdinger looks like many balls of fur. But, the fur stings.”
“Oh! I saw the humdinger. I’m glad I didn’t touch it.”
“Perhaps you have more sense than you seem to, then. As terribly interesting as it has been to talk with you, I must take my leave. As you can tell, I am in quite a hurry.” The turtle said this in the same slow rhythm as the rest of what he said and didn’t sound in a hurry at all.
The turtle’s massive but short legs started moving and Tumi slowly stepped aside and watched the turtle pass. It took five minutes for the turtle to disappear from view, but watching him go, Tumi couldn’t help but believe that the animal truly was in a hurry. He guessed it was all a matter of perspective.
Once again, Tumi was on his own, making his way through the jungle. He imagined that if he was far away and approaching the Lost Jungle from a clearing, it would look just like his home. From where he stood, though, the details seemed crazy. His legs tickled as he walked past a fern with blue feathers in place of leaves.
He continued to walk on with no particular destination in mind. As the hours passed, he managed to find some plants to eat that didn’t look or smell poisonous. He spit out one vegetable that looked like a tomato but tasted like burnt wood. He found some orange berries that were sweet and delicious, so he made a small bag from a large leaf to carry a few with him. He thought the better of trying to eat one small plant that tried to bite his finger.
Eventually, the dense foliage abruptly ended and Tumi stepped out into a grassy clearing. The boy had never seen anything like it. The only times he had ever been more than a few feet away from trees and bushes were when he was around the river. The grassy field was liberating and Tumi ran out into the field with a large “whoop!”
After the hours of making his way slowly through the jungle, it felt wonderful to be able to stretch his legs and run. The field was not very large. It would have taken Tumi only about thirty seconds to run across. He stopped running sooner than that, though, when he noticed that the clearing was occupied.
He had seen a couple of horses in his life as traders from the cities had occasionally made their way into Tumi’s part of the jungle. As with everything else in the Lost Jungle, these horses were a bit different from the ones he had seen. Each of the ten or so horses in front of him had a beautiful, spiralled and extremely sharp looking horn coming from a point on its head just above its eyes.
A small, black unicorn broke away from the others and started walking toward Tumi, the point of its horn leading the way.
Continue reading with Chapter 5