Helga, as a young beast, had always been tall for her age and strongly-muscled. From her earliest years, her Wood Cow heritage had shown itself in her talents and interests. She worked for a master carpenter, Alao Barkword, during her years in the Rounds and won his admiration with her skill. Always overflowing with opinions, Alao would often loudly compare his apprentice to the legendary Ragebark, known all over as the best carpenter that ever lived in the Rounds. “I knew Ragebark,” Alao boasted, “he was no Helga—she is the best carpenter Cow that ever lived—and she’s only a youngster! What will she be when she is full-grown? It will be something to see, that you’ll be sure!” Standing at full height in her pounded barkskins, boots, wide-brimmed hat, and carpenter’s apron, Helga, even at age twelve, towered over most other creatures in the Rounds community. Her huge forearms rippled with the strength needed to lift and carry timbers.
After completing her apprenticeship, the world seemed to be hers for the asking. Smart, strong, and talented, Helga hoped to find her fortune and make her mark. Just past her twelth birthday, Helga joined a running wagon team to provide some service to the Rounds while she decided what path she would next take into her future. Things did not go as she planned, however, and circumstances that, at first, seemed disasterous to her future happiness intervened to force her to leave the Rounds. What seemed fatal to her future, however, because of her courage and confidence in herself, ultimately resulted in her being reunited with her family at O’Fallon’s Bluff. Her confidence in the face of disaster created a future she could not have dreamed possible.
Now, as she listened to JanWoo-Corriboo recount the story of the WooSheep, Helga recognized this same spirit in her new friend. She admired the energetic strength, fierce self-confidence, and snappy smartness she saw. How many of the emotions she had felt when she completed her apprenticeship and went with the wagon runners now came alive in JanWoo-Corriboo. She loved to listen to her, to watch the pulsating rhythm that moved her so constantly that she seemed never to be still. How much she admired her.
How much Helga knew she needed JanWoo-Corriboo in this, the greatest challenge of her life. Her once powerful legs were weak from injuries. She hobbled along with the aid of a walking stick. She had lost both her Mamma and Papa. Would she be alone for the rest of her life? It almost seemed to be too much to bear. Where had the happy times gone? Where was her father? Helga, feeling herself sinking into a slough of self-pity and despair, closed her eyes to force back the tears that were gathering.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” JanWoo-Corriboo asked, interrupting Helga’s reflections. “We can be at the ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still’ by dark if we want. It’s a great place to visit at night.” She looked mysteriously at her friends. “Night is the best time to visit if you really want to understand the place,” she said excitedly. “That’s when the Venom Bats are most active!”
“Ohhhh...Great!” Burwell shuddered. “I can’t wait to feel what it’s like to have a Venom Bat sink its teeth in me! Yep! Yep! Yep!”
“Don’t worry, Burwell,” JanWoo-Corriboo advised. “Venom Bats are so tiny you won’t even see them coming! They just sort of fly into your ears. You hear a little flutter, they zip in your ear, and bore into your brain. You die so quick, you won’t feel a thing.”
Burwell, Bwellina and Helga all looked at JanWoo-Corriboo to see if she was serious. They couldn’t tell. She just stared at them with a look that said, ‘Yes, that’s what I said.’
“Well, O.K.,” Helga said at last. “There’s worse things than Venom Bats biting me on the brain. I want to find Papa. Let’s get going.”
“Here,” JanWoo-Corriboo said, handing Burwell a pack. “This will be enough provisions for an overnight. We can come back tomorrow and fill up again if we need more.”
“The ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still’ is that close?” Helga asked with some surprise.
“Oh, yes,” JanWoo-Corriboo replied. “It is very close. But sometimes, close is far away,” she added. Helga thought that she noticed a hint of sadness in her voice.
Picking up the pack, Burwell settled it comfortably on his shoulders. Helga picked up her pack. JanWoo-Corriboo and Bwellina both slung water jugs across their shoulders. Looking delighted with her charges, JanWoo-Corriboo raised her arm and pointed toward a jagged gap between some hills in the Bone Forest. “Forward, ho! That’s where we’re going—the ‘Mountain That Moves But Stands Still’—but don’t tell anyone I told you that,” she grinned.
They walked several hours heading back into the dry, barren lands of the Bone Forest, but not in the same direction as Helga and her friends had traveled before. Moving deeper into an ever more barren and forbidding terrain, at first they made slow progress. The bones of the Ancient Ones were everywhere and JanWoo-Corriboo delighted in telling about the fossils. Burwell loved to hear JanWoo-Corriboo rattle off the names of the Ancient Ones.
“She’s fantastic,” Burwell exulted. “Show her a leg bone and she says, Tyrannosaurus! Show her another bone and she says Pterosaur! She’s amazing! Yep! Yep! Yep!”