The Fabulist

Willowmina put one of her branches to her head, and with great exasperation, said, “Hyenas. Fine. If we can get them to stop laughing at you and calling you names, will you then quit climbing up our trunks at night and chewing on us?” The three raccoons nodded eagerly. “Okay, then. Where are these hyenas at?”

“They only come out at night.”

In short order a decision was reached, that Willowmina and Slub Glub would stay with the raccoons into the evening, until the hyenas came around. Slub Glub, who still felt that he had been cheated out of his slumber by the rising sun, climbed back into the hollow log with the raccoons and began snoring loudly. Willowmina sat down next to them, folding her branches together and drooping her fragrant foliage onto the boggy earth.

Hours slithered slowly past, until finally the big angry sun in the sky descended, flailing his thousand arms as the world dipped once more into darkness. Then soon after, the silence of the forest was pierced with a chorus of cackling laughter. Hearing the hysterical hyenas in the distance, the raccoons awoke with a start. Slub Glub crawled out of the log, and instantly wished that he hadn’t.

Streaming out of the darkness came a dozen spotted hyenas, their toothy maws twisted into great clownish grimaces. With a bear-like gait they approached, and one of the sleek, fanged creatures learned towards Slub Glub, making an awful kind of laughing sound in his direction.

“Bwah-ha-ha!” the hyena taunted.

Slub Glub couldn’t take such abuse, and he climbed up Willowmina’s trunk to get away from the nasty animal. Willowmina, being significantly taller, had a different perspective. From where she stood she could see that the hyenas, all twelve of them, were not alone – on the back of each was a witch, and each witch was carrying a torch.

With a long sweeping swipe from her biggest branch, Willowmina knocked the twelve witches off their hyenas, and the horrid hags fell down onto the ground.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

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Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb