“Just relax, my friend,” Toshty advised. “Enjoy the food and friendliness. You’ve been through a lot. Sareth is right; you really do look thin. Rest up and renew yourself. You will feel stronger and be better able to continue your search.” He patted his friend on the shoulder. “And besides,” he added, “they are Helga’s family, too, and they need to get to know you a bit.”
Breister was thoughtful. He did want to honor the Abblegurt’s as the family who had raised Helga. Helga often told him how much she longed to visit the Rounds, but there had been no way to leave the Hedgelands until they were expelled.
“How odd life is,” Breister reflected, sitting at the hearth listening to the happy chatter in the Abblegurt dugout. “Helga, who so longs to be here, is not; and I, who know these Bison only as fanciful stories now come to life, am here! Helga would choose to come here in a minute, if she were able, yet I find myself here by the most amazing forces of chance. The very household where she was raised! In my vision, it was almost as if I knew I would someday be here...I could see it...it was just like this.”
Over the next few days, the travelers explored the Rounds with Elbin. He was an excellent guide, showing them places that even Toshty had never seen, despite his numerous visits. Breister found one of the places where Elbin took them especially interesting. They went to a rocky point overlooking a quiet pool along Hervy’s Trickle. “Roundies often come here to jig for perch,” he explained. The flat, overhanging rock was caked with smoky residue left by the fires and drippings of countless fish-frys.
“Well, this is certainly a sight to see,” Breister said politely, wondering why they had gone on such a long walk to see a dirty, scorched boulder.
Elbin grinned at his visitor’s puzzlement. “Look over the edge into the pool,” he directed.
Breister, Toshty, and Annie did as had been suggested. Breister howled with glee. “HELGA!” The word was written with stones at the bottom of the clear, deep pool.
“Yes, Helga placed the rocks herself,” Elbin explained, smiling fondly at Breister. “I knew this was a place you’d want to see.” Breister’s happy face confirmed this. “The rocks have been there since Helga left,” he continued. “A ferocious snapping turtle inhabits the pool—Grandfather Vicious they call him. Most of us just refer to him as Grandbub Vic. He’s said to be over 100 years old, but he’s still fit enough to take off toes with a nip of his beak. I saw him once and he surely weighs at least 400 pounds—he’s a terrible wonder to see! Why, there’s been hunters go after him and come back with chunks of their hide gone, and their pikes and hooks left nothing by splinters. So, everyone just leaves him alone. The Deep Springs River is a much safer place to swim.”
“Makes sense to me,” Breister observed.
“Maybe so,” Elbin agreed, “but, just before Helga left the Rounds, she wanted to say ‘GoodBye’ in a unique way. You see the result.”
“Well, it’s true to her brave and strong-willed nature,” Breister said with a tone of admiration. “Sounds just like something she would have done.”
“And I imagine that no one is about to jump in there and change it,” Toshty laughed.
“No,” Elbin chuckled, “even if Helga made friends with Old Vic, or whatever she did, it will remain something only she would do.”
With Elbin’s help, the three friends became skillful at catching perch with a jigging pole. They pulled out 30 fish in just over an hour. “Grandbub Vic doesn’t eat fish,” Elbin explained. “The pool is full of them. But Hervy’s Trickle is picked clean of just about any other water critter around the big snapper’s territory—snakes, clams, frogs, mussels, crawdads, smaller turtles—you name it, and the old fellow eats ’em. But the fish just go along like nobody’s business. No one knows why. But it makes this a great place to catch them.”
The delightful feast of fried fish they shared gave Breister a deep feeling of contentment. He felt that he had gained some precious closeness to his daughter, which he would have missed had he pressed quickly on in his search.
But, as the days passed, Breister’s desire to continue his search grew. Not wishing to offend his generous hosts, he enjoyed the happy fellowship of the household. His feelings of restlessness continued to increase, however. He had resolved to share these feelings, when one morning he noticed that Sareth was up extremely early, rustling in the kitchen.
“Sareth,” Breister inquired, coming out of his bedroom and rubbing his sleepy eyes, “it is more than an hour before sunrise. Why are you up so early today?”