Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Four - The Village Hidden in the Leaves

The Beaver Cleaver cut across the sky on a north-westerly course that had us flying over hills and an endless untamed forest where the occasional river broke up the sea of green.

Howard took a bit to get used to the perspective. It was hard to navigate using familiar landmarks when you were seeing those landmarks from above. Still, once he got us going in the right direction it was pretty smooth sailing, with only the occasional course correction to fly past a specific bend in a river or past a formation of rocks.

Hopsalot wasn’t that far from Insmouth. The two days of travel time seemed to be mostly because there wasn’t an actual road between the two villages, and because Howard’s route twisted and turned with the landscape instead of darting straight towards Hopsalot.

Being in the air gave us a big advantage with that. By the time noon was rolling around and our lunchtime sandwiches were nearly done with, we could see little trails of smoke coming up fast ahead.

“Let’s circle around halfway and anchor ourselves next to the village,” I said. “Do you know if there are any fields near Hopsalot we can use?” I asked Howard.

“Sure, there are a few. They have a lot of trees in their town, but there are some open areas too.”

“What can you tell us about the people from there? Are they nice?”

Howard’s face took on a strange expression for a moment. “They’re certainly nice, yes. Perhaps too much so. Though I haven’t been here in nearly half a decade.”

I didn’t know what that could even mean, but maybe Howard had gotten a strange reception the last time he’d been here. Hopsalot grew close enough that I was able to make out the town, or at least some of it. There was a river in the middle of it that switched back and forth, with bridges crossing it here and there, and near the centre of town was a big building with a waterwheel on one side.

The problem was that there were only maybe a dozen other buildings I could see between all the trees.

Then I noticed the homes built atop the trees and it clicked.

“It’s a village of tree houses!” I said.

“Yeah, buns tend to like building in strange ways,” Howard said.

I blinked. “Buns?”

“Yeah, your sort of folk,” Howard said with a gesture to my head.

I got excited and leaned over the figureheads as we crossed over the hilly little town. I noticed little gardens and neat little rows of bushes here and there, as well as long-eared heads turning up to stare at us as we coasted by. Clive was at the wheel, so our turn and stop was textbook-perfect and soon enough we were dropping our anchors by the edge of the town.

“I think we’ll be using the same away team as last time,” I said as I hopped onto the deck. “Amaryllis, Awen, Bastion if you want to come. And of course Mister Howard. We’re kinda here for you, after all.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Howard said. “I’ll be honest and say that these old bones of mine are looking forward to being on solid ground again.”

I patted him on the back, then shuffled over to the ladders to lower them down.

Bastion leapt off the side, wings buzzing, then because she couldn’t be shown up by a Sylph, Amaryllis jumped off too. Awen and I stared at each other and shared an eye roll before she started down with the ladder.

I just walked off the edge of the ship and landed in a crouch at the bottom where I could hold the ladder taut to help Awen and Howard come down.

The moment everyone was down I set my hands on my hips and surveyed the town of Hopsalot. No greeting party? Didn’t they worry any?

The town was idyllic. They had cute little homes set up in the branches of trees and with doors and porches painted in soft pastels, and some of the bigger hills I’d noticed from above were actually burrows, with big doors set in their sides and sometimes big round windows that let us peek into living rooms and kitchens. That’s where the smoke was coming from, smoke that smelled like fresh bread and roasting veggies.

The town had a bunch of cobbled lanes criss-crossing it, and everywhere the road met the stream gurgling through the town there would be a little arched bridge with carefully tooled rails carved into fanciful shapes.

There were people too. Buns! With big ears and bigger smiles. They mostly wore earthy clothes, the men in overalls and the women in long summer dresses covered with aprons at the front. They seemed like very nice people. Plenty of them were gathering in clumps next to gardens or at intersections to point at the Beaver.

What really caught my eye was the row of rabbit ears poking out from behind a nearby hilltop.

They wiggled and waved, and sometimes they’d rise up a little and I’d catch a glimpse of big curious eyes staring from under the brim of flower-yellow caps.

It seemed, much to my glee, that little buns grew their ears out before the rest of their body caught up. Like puppies with too-big ears. Mine were not quite two feet tall, and so were the little buns!

That meant that some of them were nearly a third ear in height and it was adorable. And they all had big rounded cheeks, and huge eyes, and I wanted to hug them so bad!

I squealed and waved to the nearest group, only for them to scream and hide away. Not a terrified scream, but a happy playful one. “I like this place,” I announced to my friends.

“I noticed,” Amaryllis deadpanned.

“How can you not like it?” I asked her. “It’s so cute!”

She rolled her birdy eyes and sighed. “It is quite nice, yes. A bit primitive, but at least it’s clean.”

“Someone’s coming,” Bastion said.

I looked over and noticed that he was quite right, a woman was walking our way, trailed by six teeny tiny buns who were using her skirt as cover to peek at us. Next to her was a huge slab of a man, like a walking wall of muscle. He had a big hammer looped to his belt, and one of his ears looked like it had been chewed off in the middle. The lady stopped some dozen steps away and crossed her arms under her chest. “Hello there!” she called.

I hopped forward, scaring the little buns into hiding behind the lady until only the tip of their ears poked out.

“Hi there!” I said. “My name is Broccoli Bunch, captain of the Beaver Cleaver!”

The lady hummed. “Oh my, I’m the mayoress of Hopsalot, you can call me Momma,” she said. “You don’t look like one of my buns.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m not from around here. These are my friends, Awen, Amaryllis, and Bastion, and that’s mister Howard, he’s from Insmouth to the south.”

“A harpy, a human, a sylph, and a fishman neighbour. Oh my, oh my,” Momma said. “Welcome, everyone, to Hopsalot. We don’t have much, but what we do have is yours. I hope we can become good friends.”

I nodded super fast. “I hope that too! Your town is very pretty.”

“Thank you,” Momma said. “But it’s not the town that matters, it’s the people living in it. I’d like to think that the town’s just a reflection of the people within.”

I decided that I liked Momma. “That’s a nice way of thinking!”

“Are you a sky pirate?”

The question came from a tiny head poking out from behind Momma’s skirt. A little bun girl, her head tilted down and her ears almost dragging to the ground. She was hugging a little plush doll to her chest, one of the doll’s ears in her mouth.

“Not technically,” I said. “But we’ve fought pirates before!”

A bunch more heads popped out, all with expressions varying between ‘whoa’ and disbelief.

“I think if you keep on like that you’ll earn yourself quite the following of little listeners,” Momma said. She chuckled and reached back to rub one of the bun’s between the ears.

“Are they yours?” I asked.

“Oh my,” Momma said. “Some of them certainly are. We have a lot of little buns here. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who is who’s child.”

“They all just run around?” I asked.

Momma shrugged. “It’s safe enough around town. As long as they know not to head into the woods. We have some folk keeping watch, of course, and they all have school in the afternoon. Isn’t that right?”

There was a chorus of grumbles from the little buns. It seemed as though school wasn’t really popular.

“Hey, miss captain?” One of the bun boys asked. “Can we go on your ship?”

I smiled. “Not right now. But maybe later we can give you guys a tour?”

That seemed to brighten them up a bit.

“But only if you behave and are good little buns.”

A few of them deflated at that, but some seemed just as eager. “Alright everybun,” Momma said. “I need to keep our guests company for a bit, why don’t you all run off and play?”

“But we wanna see the ship!”

“Ara, you can look at it all you want without bothering our guests, right?” Momma asked. Soon she got all of the little buns to hop away, and a few moments later there was an eager game of ‘pirates versus good guys’ going on atop one of the nearby hills, with lots of tumbling about and rough-housing and squealing laughter. Momma eyed them all for a bit, then turned to us with a smug smile. “That’s taken care of. Now, are there any supplies you need? Or are you just here to rest?”

“We’re here for business,” I said. “Or, well, Howard here is.”

“I see,” Momma said. “Why don’t you follow me over to my place then. I left the cauldron on the stove with some soup on, and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We have some veggies and such on our ship too, if you want.”

“Now why would I want that?” Momma asked.

“Well, your food should be to keep all your little buns, and yourself, you can’t just give it all to strangers like that,” I said. “Not if it means empty little tummies.”

Momma laughed, then she pulled me into a tight-tight hug. “Oh, you’re a sweet little one. But no worries. My garden is still quite plentiful. We won’t run out of carrots and turnips any time soon.”

Looping my arm in hers, Momma pulled me along and down one of the cobbled paths. Her big friend, the man with the hammer and the broken ear, followed along at a leisurely pace, a content smile tugging his lips up.

I saw my friends sharing a look before they started walking to keep up as well.

Momma’s house was near the centre of Hopsalot. It was a strange little home, with half of it built into a hill that had a huge tree atop it, and the other half hanging off said tree. Entrance was little more than a few stone steps leading up to a big round door dug into the side of the hill.

Momma opened it up and gestured to a rug right by the entrance. “Please wipe your paws,” she said. “I do enough dusting as it is.”

Nodding, I took my shoes off, then used some cleaning magic on them before placing them onto a rack next to the doorway. I helped my friends clean off their boots too, just in case.

The interior was very snug, with a low-ish ceiling and a bunch of small corridors broken up by arches every so often, all lit with the orange-y light of a few lamps hanging from the walls.

Momma led us to the dining room, which was a long, curved room with a curved table in its middle with a mixed assortment of chairs and stools all around it. There weren’t any windows, but there were plenty of little paintings hanging from the walls with deserts and forests and pretty mountains on them.

“So,” Momma said as she sat at the head of the table and set her elbows down. “What did you want to talk about?”

***