Tales of Uncle Trapspringer

Another shower of arrows arced through the forest. The sharp metal points pierced soft bark or ricocheted off the tough old trunks.

'Up,' Trap said as they reached a huge ancient oak and dashed around to the northern side, opposite their pursuers. At his gesture she cupped her hands and bent her knees. He stepped into the stirrup she provided and she jerked herself upright as he straightened his knees. Their combined force threw Trap high enough to grab the lowest limb. He locked his feet around the limb and dropped, his arms extended as he reached down for Ripple. She swarmed up his body until she stood on the limb. Then she lowered a hand to pull him up.

Working together, they reached the higher limbs and lay flat while the soldiers beat the bushes below. Long, breathless minutes passed before the determined searchers moved out of sight, deeper into the forest.

Trap and Ripple climbed down again, dropped from the last limb and worked their way west through the thick undergrowth that bordered the road. When they were a few hundred yards away from where the soldiers searched, the two kender crossed the beaten track and entered the woods to the south. Safe for the moment, they followed a creek until they reached a beaver's dam. They sat on a log to rest, to the indignation of the beaver who had just cut down the tree.

'I don't understand,' Ripple shook her head. 'No one could be angry at us.'

'They didn't want us. They said 'kender,' ' Trap reminded her. 'Either they don't like any kender or…'

'That's not possible,' Ripple interrupted. The entire race of kender took justifiable pride in being the friendliest people on Krynn.

'Or… do you think there might be kender outlaws?'

Neither had ever considered the possibility. They occasionally heard tales, most of which they discounted as soon as the stories accused kender of 'stealing.'

Trap and Ripple knew that every other civilized race on Krynn considered kender to be thieves. Their racial reputation was totally justified, of course, just as it was patently untrue. Kender were not thieves, they were handlers. Their curiosity and their insatiable desire to poke and pry and touch led them to handle anything they could pick up. That same curiosity could draw their attention away from what they held. Anxious for some new experience, they often, and quite unintentionally, tucked the articles into their pouches. The oversight usually came from a desire to free their hands for something new, and they often found themselves with items they could not remember acquiring. In a kender city, an oddly shaped rock or piece of glass, knife, scarf, or dish could have a hundred owners in a busy week. Outside their own lands they had learned to make up excuses for unexplained possessions.

'I was keeping it for you.'

'It must have fallen in my pouch,' or

'You must have put it in my pouch by mistake,' were three of the most common used to races who did not understand the kender habit of handling. If the owner of a purloined object wanted it back, the kender cheerfully returned it.

'What should we do?' Ripple asked, her brow wrinkling in disappointment. 'I wanted to see the city.'

Trap understood his sister's feelings. They had been born and raised in Legup, a village in the mountains of Hylo, and like the rest of the Fargo family, as soon as they had reached adulthood they were stricken with wander- lust and had set out to see the world. They had yet to see a city of humans and dwarves firsthand.

Their great-grandfather had walked east from Legup to Solamnia and south to Kaolyn and Abanasinia. After the Cataclysm the geography of Krynn had changed, and now an unnamed sea divided Northern Ergoth and Hylo from Solamnia and its political and geographical neighbors to the south and east.

Trap and Ripple had left the port of Hylo by ship, intending to travel across the channel to one of the port towns in Solamnia. A sudden storm had blown the ship south. The wind screamed through the sails and the sea men dangled from the masts and spars in an attempt to trim the sails. The kender found the trip exciting, but as the storm blew itself out they grew bored. At the first opportunity they asked to be put ashore. The captain was glad to do so after he lost his favorite knife, a carved and silver chased inkwell and several maps. He had not even waited until they reached a port.

He dropped them on a deserted beach. Without knowing their starting point, they had three choices. They could go north or south, with no idea how far they were from the ports shown on the map, or they could strike inland. They were on the western shore of the continent, so most of the cities would be to the east. A day later they found a high road that angled in a northeasterly direction. Correctly guessing it led to a city, they followed it until the soldiers attacked.

'I know,' Ripple brightened, slipped her pack off her shoulders and rummaged in the depths. 'We'll change clothes so the soldiers won't recognize us, and we'll wear these,' she pulled out two crumpled hats with tall crowns and floppy brims.

'You're determined to take a bath and change clothes,' Trap laughed, though he had no objection. It had taken them five days to amble the sixty miles from the shore to their present location. They had stopped frequently, inspecting the local flora, animals and anything else that interested them. The afternoons had been hot and his skin was sticky with sweat.

An hour and a half later, Trap stood with his feet wide apart and his hands braced on his knees as he leaned forward. Strands of his long, dark brown hair, freshly washed and nearly dry, moved in the light breeze. His sister caught it and twisted it into a smooth roll, then she expertly flipped it into a loop close to his head. Using one slim finger, she pulled the coil through the loop. With a gentle jerk, strong enough to set the hair, but not hard enough to cause Trap any pain, she tightened the top knot.

Many kender used thongs, cords, metal rings and other devices to manage their long hair, and in Hylo some cut it short to be rid of the bother. The Fargo family had always adhered to the ancient custom of the actual knot at the exact center of the crown. When Trap stood, the ends fell just to the nape of his neck.

Ripple leaned forward and he tied her much longer hair. Then he caught up the blond ponytail and flipped it around his finger. When he let it go it fell in one shining curl that reached her waist. But no one would be seeing that thick, shining tress for a while. She leaned sideways, caught it in the crown of the hat and seated the headgear firmly on her head, hiding both the topknot and her pointed ears.

The hats had been a parting gift from their uncle, Skipout Fargo, and he had given them cryptic instructions to go with the headgear. Obeying the advice of Uncle Skipout, Trapspringer wrapped his bedding around the forked end of his hoopak and attached his pack to it. Ripple did the same with her whippik. When they were finished, Trap surveyed the result and shook his head.

'Gee, we don't look like ourselves,' he complained when they were ready. With their top knots and ears hidden and their weapons camouflaged, they resembled slender twelve-year-old human children.

'I think it's what Uncle Skipout intended,' Ripple said.

'I can't think why.' Trapspringer murmured with a frown, but when an idea struck him his face lit with a smile. 'Maybe humans like kender to look like them.'

'I see, we're doing it to be friendly! I like that,' Ripple said, nodding her approval. 'Remember what father said.'

As she took a step away from the log a low branch nearly dislodged her hat. She leaned her whippik against the tree, readjusted her headgear, and as she reached for her camouflaged weapon, noticed a small, interesting flower: a pink puff on a short stem.

'What did father say?' asked Trapspringer, who had been gazing into the bushes where a rustle had given evidence of a hiding animal. He decided he had been mistaken and had picked up the thread of the conversation.

'It's very pretty.'

'Father said your hat was pretty?'

Ripple looked from the flower to her brother and said, 'Did he ever see my hat?'

Brother and sister exchanged smiles and shouldered their weapons and packs. The typical kender conversation flowed along a serpentine course with eddies of unrelated but interesting sidelights. To a human, the entire point of the conversation would be quickly lost, but since the kender seldom wanted to make any point they were usually satisfied.

'I hope the soldiers aren't mad at us anymore,' Ripple said as she stepped over a log.

'They made a mistake, and when they realize it they'll be sorry,' Trapspringer said. 'We shouldn't be angry about it, it could happen to anyone. I know they'll apologize, but right now, I think we should keep to the woods as