Two Toucans

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There were the silhouettes of two toucans in the trunk of a tree in the dark and rainy afternoon. Maple and Bolt were sleeping lazily in a tree in an African rain forest. There was a pounding amount of rain every day, and it has been most boring for them since they were toucans and obviously cannot fly through strong storms.

Maple was a golden-brown toucan with shining blue eyes. Maple’s parents had died, and she had been sent to live with Bolt’s family and now he was her closest friend. They couldn’t do anything without each other.

Bolt, a colorful toucan, always blending in and camouflaging, was very adventurous and he was as quick as lightning. (Though he’s a little forgetful.)

One day, Maple was twitching like crazy in her sleep and woke up with an earsplitting screech. Bolt leaped up from his nap and rushed to Maple’s side. “I had a terrible nightmare!” Maple gasped out. “A snake as long as one mile was covering the whole rain forest and everything that was covered turned pitch black! When the snake covered me, I was in complete darkness!” She moaned and collapsed onto her side with exhaustion. “And I think the snake was called Sasmes……”

Bolt dashed to the Drinking Pond, where all the rainwater from a hole in the trunk dripped down to make a small puddle of water. Bolt fetched some moss and dipped the moss into the Pond. Then he sprinted back to Maple and squeezed the water into her open beak. She coughed and stood up. “Thanks!” she spluttered.

“Sasmes......Sasmes……where did I hear that name???” Bolt muttered to himself. “Oh yeah!! My mom told me a story about him! He’s King of the Snakes, aka Snake of Darkness!!” He shuddered at the thought of meeting Sasmes.

A few days later, the showers had stopped and there was a hopeful scent of sunshine in the sky. Maple and Bolt were lounging on thick branches covered with soft moss, watching the sky for any rain. Maple was drifting off to sleep when she suddenly opened her eyes wide and struggled to get on her feet. She swayed on her branch, tilting to one side, then to another. Maple groaned awkwardly as she tried to balance herself. Bolt gave out a terrified squawk and flew above Maple...... “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!” she screamed and tensed her wings when Bolt swooped down and gripped her shoulders tightly. She was so scared as Bolt took off with her.

He dropped Maple inside her nest in the trunk and asked her what happened. “I had another vision!” she wailed. “I don’t know what it means, but it was a black map of the rain forest with a black snake with red eyes curling around it and there was another brighter, transparent rain forest map with faint colors, growing bigger and bigger and becoming more and more translucent on top of the other one until the black map was fully covered and out of sight. Then the map turned into a tiger with us perching on its shoulders!”

Maple closed her eyes and took gulping breaths. Get over with it, she thought.

Bolt’s beak dropped. “Then you’re the Future-Teller!!!! You can see what will happen in the future……I think that’s the future......since the previous Teller had......uh......drowned in the river----you can be our next one!” The Future-Teller was an animal in the rain forest that can see the future ------ also called The Teller.

Maple shrieked in excitement and skipped around the trunk happily. But she suddenly stopped and turned to Bolt, her face grave. “Nobody knows!” she whispered urgently. “We should go on a mission to save the rain forest!!! NOBODY KNOWS!!!!!!!”

Bolt lifted his head proudly. “Of course! I love missions, especially when nobody knows what’s happening and it’s our secret. And I’ll tell Dad the whole story!” he added as he sprang to his feet like a spring.

“Wait!” Maple bounded after him and lowered her voice. “Stop! You said it was our secret, remember? Just tell Dad our friend invited us on a long one-month trip somewhere really fun in the middle of the rain forest and we wanted to go.”

Bolt nodded obediently and flew to his dad’s tree. Maple caught snatches of conversation and Bolt’s persuading begs, until finally, his dad sighed and said, “Fine.”

Maple smiled in relief. She knew Bolt would never let her down. She saw him jumping from branch to her. “Excellent job!” she praised happily. Then she grew more solemn. “Come on! Let’s get going! I’ll get the traveling survival kit and the herbs in case we get sick. We can pick some fruits on the way......” her voice trailed off as she tried to remember other important things to bring for the long journey. “Oh! I almost forgot the mini-fridge and the first aid kit!”

They began the long journey......

Bolt and Maple flew through the rain forest, ducking through low-hanging branches and rising higher above swamps and quicksand. They were panting heavily because of all the things they brought. Bolt accidently folded his wings with exhaustion in mid-air and plummeted into a moss-covered trunk, barely missing a nearby quicksand pit. Maple groaned. She swooped down and tried to pry Bolt up with her beak, but he refused stubbornly even to sit upright. Maple sighed and settled down beside him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have brought so many things.” She muttered a few quiet words and then fell into a dreamless sleep. They didn’t know a tiger, camouflaged in the bushes a few feet away from them, was watching with glinting blue eyes. It was Bolt who woke first and saw the eyes of the tiger. He squawked with alarm and immediately, Maple woke up saying groggily, “Whatsamatter? Whatsamatter?” When they saw the tiger emerging from the shadows of the shrubbery, they froze and then struggled into the air with all their belongings. “Drop the mini-fridge!” Maple called out as Bolt almost fell onto the tiger’s head underneath the weight of the fridge and the first aid kit. “He might want the food inside!”

“Hey! No! I don’t want to eat anything! I just want to be your friend!” the tiger shouted to the two descending toucans.

Maple landed on a high branch of a tree and spun around to confront him. “Oh, really?” she sneered. “If you’re lying, I’ll scratch your ears off until you’ve learned a lesson!”

“Maple! Give him a chance!” Maple looked down. Bolt stood on a lower branch jutting out of the same tree and was giving her a penetrating stare.

Maple glared at him, then turned to the tiger. “Fine,” she snapped angrily and attacked her branch (as she always does when she’s very mad). “Tell us your story.”

“My name is Theodore.” The tiger launched himself into his sad story. After Theodore had finished, even Maple was sniffling with emotion.

“I was just like you, too,” she said in a sad, quiet, voice. “My parents had died. Just like you.” Maple burst into tears. (She’s super emotional.) Theodore sniffed. “May I be friends with you?” he asked shyly. “I don’t have any.” Maple and Bolt nodded, Maple’s a sad nod and Bolt’s an enthusiastic one. A moment later the toucans flew up into the air with the first aid kit and the traveling survival kit, and the tiger, carrying the mini-fridge and the herbs, followed them on the ground. Maple told Theodore about their mission to save the rain forest. “Oh, good!” Theodore exclaimed. “I know where Sasmes lives!” He seemed happy to be useful for a dangerous and important mission.

Finally, after hours and hours of flying and walking, they arrived at a cave with shadows creeping all around it. “Cave of Shadows,” Theodore read the words engraved deeply into the hard rock walls. His eyes widened in shock. “We’re here!” he whispered. “Quick! Hide!”

Maple, Bolt, and Theodore squeezed under a large clump of bushes. “Maple! Bolt!” Maple and Bolt heard Theodore hiss to them. “We’re here! This is Sasmes’ lair!” Bolt gaped at him as he spoke. “Already?” Maple said, staring at Theodore as though she had never seen a tiger before.

“Let’s take a look.” Theodore crept out from their hiding spot just as a group of snakes appeared out of the dark entrance to the cave. They hissed angrily at him and pushed the struggling tiger into the shadows. Theodore lay there, unmoving. He was trapped and was having all his strength drained away, a thin, silver mist of energy seeping into the cave. Evil laughter echoed faintly in the darkness of the cave. Sasmes’ laughter, Maple guessed with a shudder of fear. Bolt was trembling beside her. They both watched Theodore become a shadow of a tiger, and then he was whisked by an unseen force away into the cave. The snakes followed him. Maple and Bolt looked around, making sure nobody’s nearby, then both stealthily pressed themselves to the forest ground and walked into the now silent Cave of Shadows. Maple shivered in the damp tunnel. How could anybody live here? she thought. Maple and Bolt froze as the sound of something slithering in a smaller tunnel to their right, but they relaxed when the bone-chilling sound faded to the usual, creepy silence. “We must be in the main pathway,” Maple murmured a few minutes later after passing another small hole indicating the entrance to a small tunnel. “But there’s not many snakes here, is there?”

Just then, a huge clad of cobras (all without tails) came wiggling down the path. Maple and Bolt ducked through a tiny pathway tunnel and listened for any clues for how to get to the main Snake Hall, as what Theodore told them to go to if they wanted to find Sasmes’ Chamber of Fire, where he slept and ate in.

One snake was saying, “I can’t believe His Majesty bit our tails off and put them in his soup as our punishment for not taking the idiot tiger to him first!”

Another snake fearfully glanced backwards, then lowered his voice and whispered, “I hope he never does that kind of punishment again! Oh no! His Majesty is coming!”

For the first time, Maple and Bolt saw Sasmes. He had ruby red eyes, long, glistening fangs dripping with blood, and knife-sharp, black, and shiny, polished scales. All the snakes bowed low to him. His slanted eyes flashed toward the snake that had talked second in the conversation about the punishment. “Yes......Dagger, come with me.” Sasmes whipped around, his sleek tail catching Dagger’s head. Dagger groaned with pain and tried to get up, but with another flick of his tail, Sasmes rolled him into a small tunnel and they disappeared.

A snake left the group and wandered off to the tunnel Maple and Bolt were hiding in. “Well, well.” She hissed menacingly. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” The snake gripped them tightly and pulled the two toucans into the main tunnel. She called, “Your Majesty! I found two intruders!” A moment later, Sasmes appeared. He eyed Maple and Bolt. “Take them into the Chamber of Fire and tie them up in the flames.” He said something to the snake. “I’ll deal with them after I finish my lunch.” The snake nodded and said, “Sure, Your Majesty.”

“NO!!! What are we going to do?” Bolt kicked and squirmed in the burning hot fire.

“Calm down!” Maple glared disapprovingly at Bolt. Then she snapped her attention towards the door. “He’s coming.” They quivered.

Sasmes entered and they shrank from his fiery gaze. “What were you doing in the tunnels?” he thundered angrily. The ground seemed to shake. Sasmes glanced at the ceiling. It was raining dust. The fire instantly vanished. He slithered to the door. “Hey! Stop!” Bolt screamed. “You can’t just leave us here! The rocks are going to fall!” Sasmes’ nostrils flared in warning and he slammed the door. The rocks tumbled down, smashing the chains that held the two toucans into pieces. Maple and Bolt flew up into the light that shone down brightly from the hole in the roof. They burst through the gap and collapsed onto the now grassy ground. Meanwhile, the shadows were turning into rainbow-colored animals. The animals in the rain forest all hid when a battered-looking Sasmes staggered out of the rubble. Then, as he hesitated warily, the animals attacked him on every side and, as if they all had the same wild thought, pinned his tail with his head using his fangs and threw him into the fast-flowing river that led to Antarctica. The cave’s rubble turned into a magnificent pink palace with a rainbow arching above it. There was a sign made of pink glass that said, “Welcome to the Rainbow Castle!” The rainbow-colored animals strutted inside, greeted by a beautiful, pure white peacock. Maple and Bolt saw Theodore with the pretty peacock. They waved, and he reared up in greeting then vanished into the castle.

A while later, everything returned to normal, but then something happened in the Rainbow Castle that was exciting to all animals of the rain forest. Maple and Bolt found that out when the Rainbow messenger came to their tree trunk house. Theodore and the peacock, whose name, Bolt and Maple had figured out, was Luci, were getting married and everyone was invited to their wedding! “Also,” the messenger had announced majestically. “They are now the rulers of the rain forest!”

Everything was peaceful now. Theodore and Luci ruled the rain forest wisely and kindly, and nobody ever saw Sasmes again.

The End