And thus it came to pass that Ralph the Timid attended the oddest picnic of his life. It had all the usual trappings of the picnics he remembered from his childhood. There was a red and white checked cloth spread on the ground, and a basket full of good things to eat. There was even Ralph's favourite, a fruitcake which he had thought up to then to be a secret family recipe based down through Beryl's family. Or maybe it was just very similar. All the trappings of the picnic were familiar, and yet everything felt odd. To begin with, his foster family had usually picnicked on the meadowed slopes higher up the mountain, never in a clearing in such dense forest as this. And then, perhaps more notably, he had been a child with his family. Now he was a young man sharing a meal with a very unusual man and an extremely large bird.
Ralph watched Mad Pete surreptiously as he ate his chunk of cake. The more closely he was able to look at him now they were sitting together, the odder the older man seemed. There was nothing unusual in his physique - Pete had two arms, and two legs, the requisite amount of heads and features that figured thereon - but in the manner he chose to adorn himself. That was decidedly unusual. Ralph himself wore a tunic and trousers of greenish brown homespun cloth. This was what he always wore, with perhaps some variation as to colour, and maybe an extra covering it was cold. His foster father and foster brothers all wore some variation of the same thing (except for his young foster brother Michael, who wore flowing robes, but he was expected to become an apprentice to the soothsayer and had been born in the year of the fluffy bunny, so that was understandable) and Ralph had never seen anyone dressed like Mad Pete before.
The first impression he had had was one of colour. Loud, brash colours covered Pete from head to toe. His hat was somewhere between red and orange. His left leg was a bright side of purple, while his right leg was a more subdued shade of virulent ultramarine. His shoes were both the same colour - a somewhat sickly yellow - and his tunic was green. Or at least, so it had appeared to Ralph from across the clearing. Close up, he noticed that Mad Pete's tunic was only sometimes green. It was made of very fine cloth which shimmered through shades of blue, green, purple, pink, silver, gold and red according to how the sun fell across it.
Mad Pete saw him staring and laughed. "You're wondering what a fine shirted fellow like me is doing in a forest like this one, aren't you?"
As a matter of fact, Ralph had been wondering almost exactly that, except it had been more like "Why is a man wearing a shirt like that wearing such a bizarre combination of clothing, and what is he doing here?" and he almost choked on his mouthful of cake. "How did you know?" he gasped in a rather exclamatory way.
Mad Pete nodded slyly and tapped the side of his nose. "I know all sorts of things. I can tell by the way people look at me."
Ralph was sincerely grateful that Mad Pete's person reading skills were not as good as he thought they were. "It is an unusual shirt - I've never seen the like."
Mad Pete looked proud. "It's my favourite. The fabric comes from the Wide Flat Plains in the middle of Ablet - they breed special sheep there that give the really unusual wool."
"That's amazing!" said Ralph, sincerely. The sheep up in the Eastern Mountains didn't even give green wool - his foster mother had always had to dye it.
Mad Pete agreed with him, then changed the subject. "Now, young feller me lad, you were going to tell me your story, so we could see if Ethel had any pearls of wisdom for you."
At the sound of her name, the Unexpectedly Large Warbler gave a short warbling whistle, and Ralph the Timid was struck once again at her size. Up close, she seemed even larger. Since she was looking down her beak at him with what seemed to be an expression of intense concentration coupled with impatience, he hurriedly launched into his story. He explained how Harold had found him, and the chartmaker had guessed wrong about his birthday, and how because of this he did not know his purpose. "And that's why I'm here, " he finished. "I'm off to explore Ablet until I find my purpose."
Mad Pete stroked his chin musingly (his own chin, not Ralph's). He picked up a slice of bread and ate it absently. He was deep in thought. Ethel too seemed to be deep in thought, although she had no bread. Then she gave a sudden warble and twitched her wings, as if she had thought of something.
Mad Pete absently patted the great claw that clung to the incongruously small twig on which the bird was perched. " That's a good idea, my girl. A good idea indeed."
He looked straight at Ralph. "We're up here in the mountains to find something. It's in a cave near here. Now, we've found the cave all right, but the thing we've been sent to retrieve is hidden in it cleverly, and well, it's too hard for my old eyes to see, and Ethel here won't go in the cave, they give her claustrophobia. Now, it seems to me, we could help each other out. If you went into the cave and picked up our parcel, Ethel would be willing to give you a lift down the mountains. Cuts out a lot of rough ground that way."
Ralph the Timid was always up for a challenge, and he loved exploring caves. He and his foster brothers had explored every region of the caves near the village and he knew them well. He agreed immediately to Mad Pete's plan. "Where is the cave?" he asked, wondering if it was one that he knew already. It was unlikely, as he was quite far from home, but perhaps it would take him back home and he could tell his little sister about the Unexpectedly Large Warbler.
Mad Pete said that he would show him, and Ethel warbled, and they all packed up the picnic things. Ralph followed the older man along a barely visible trail through the trees until they came to a large clump of limestone boulders. "Here we are!" said Mad Pete, cheerfully. He pointed at the boulders and Ralph made out a tiny entrance deep among the rocks.
"Will I be able to get in there?" He asked somewhat doubtfully.
"Oh yes, it's much bigger than it looks." Mad Pete was lighting a candle as he said this, which he then passed to Ralph. He then pulled two further unlit candles from his belt and pushed them into Ralph's, muttering "Just in case."
And then, just as Ralph was considering it might be a bad idea to leave his possessions, meagre though they were, with an oddly dressed stranger whose very name aucknowledged he was mad, Mad Pete pushed him towards the hole and Ralph stumbled towards it without time to change his mind.
And so it was that Ralph the Timid found himself underground in the middle of the forest, in a limestone cave, holding off the omnipotent darkness with a small candle flame. "What am I looking for?" he called up to Mad Pete, who was lying down, looking into the cavern.
"Oh, you'll know it if you see it!" said Mad Pete airly. "I'll see you when you get back. Don't be long now!"
And Ethel warbled her agreement.
[Word Count: 6465]
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