He was a lion, though, and so he changed so that his hands were like clawed paws. Like a beast he let his feet drop slowly over, found his footing, and began his descent.
He felt the swamp with his feet half a day later. By then, he was too tired to do anything but rest a while. He didn't love the spongy fungus atop the little islands, nor did he like the teal blue water. He liked the snakes less, and the frogs he found very annoying. But nothing, as he walked day after day, and sometimes even at night, did he find more annoying than the talking tree at the end of the way.
Anyone navigating that swamp would eventually find that island. It is very obviously the closest to the big island, no matter from which direction one spies it.
But, like Windston and Frem, Bombo found himself quite perplexed as to what he should do in terms of going about getting across. The water was no longer water here, but rather that thick and sticky gel stuff. And not a one of them, not even Bombo, could cross that leap in a single bound.
Momentarily defeated, he sat down on his butt and let out a great big sigh. He would've shivered, but he was still in lion form, and cold weather did little to affect his skin.
He did roar, though, and mightily so. He roared out of frustration and anger, and because, in that state, it felt good to do so.
(From way far away, Windston thought maybe he had heard it.)
He slept little after that, curled up in a giant ball of half-man-half-lion.
He awoke to the short verse of a song sung by someone nearby.
He growled and the singer stopped himself as if he forgot to remember not to sing out of some great danger.
“Who goes there?” Bombo growled. His eyes were larger, lighter, rounder, and his pupils were like great black voids, when he was a lion. They were also upturned, menacing, and just above long, sharp fangs as they darted this way and that searching for whoever was stupid enough to sneak up on him. “I said who!” he shouted.
“Sorry,” someone nearby squeaked. “It is I, the Hay-Hum Tree. That is what I’ve decided to call myself,” it chuckled, trying to come across too friendly to harm. “I didn't mean to disturb you, only I forgot you were there. Pardon. Do pardon me.”
Bombo's ears flicked, though his eyes were fixed on the tree as he approached it.
There, at the tree, he propped an elbow against one of the rocks it faced, leaned in, and looked all about the tree. He saw the eyes, nose and mouth clearly, as well as the mossy hairs.
“A talking tree,” he muttered, irritated. “Really?”
“I am, I'm afraid. Though I don't know why. I worry I may be the only one. How tragic would that be?”
“It could be worse,” Bombo warned, but he was shifting back into a man. When he was fully a man, he was less irritated and more curious – but also colder.
“Maybe I need firewood,” he said with a chuckle.
The tree, whose face was only three feet off the ground, did its best to look at him, but couldn't. “I wish I could spare a bit of myself but I'm afraid there isn't much to give.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Bombo, who was nearly as tall as the tree, shook his head. “I wouldn't take from you, my friend. Unless you were made of pig or cattle. Even deer or rabbit.” He slumped next to the tree, sat beside it. “Go on, friend. Sing your song. I wish to hear it a bit while I wait to figure out what to do.”
“You do?” the tree asked.
“Yes. I do.”
“Oh. I've never sung for anyone before.” There was a pause. “Unless you count a hay-hum a someone.”
“These hay-hum frogs?” Bombo asked, looking at two, one atop the other, that must have been stuck to his fur while he was a lion; there were no other frogs for miles around that he had seen.
“Yes, the frogs,” the tree said. “Oh, how I do love them so. They're my only friends, though I’ve rarely ever heard them. Hay-hum, hay-hum, they sing. They sing it for you and they sing it for me. You know, every couple of years I can catch one singing nearby. It is truly a beautiful sound. And it's always just the same.”
“Maybe you don't sing,” Bombo said.
The tree laughed. “I do sing,” he said. “Listen.”
He began to sing a very whimsical song about hay-hum frogs. It had to do with how they must hop and they must leap as surely as they sing and sleep and drink, only I've never seen them, as I've never seen one alive and well, but as cold as the frozen dead lands here, its spirit gone to hell.
Bombo didn't love the song, but he also didn't hate it.
At least, not at first. After the twentieth or so time, he felt like he would kick the tree over just to make it stop. But if it wasn't singing it was talking and talking, and always, whether directly or in a roundabout way, about hay-hum frogs. It liked them, it loved them, and it would love to see one.
“But I can't as I'm doomed to face this rock all day. All day, every day, just rock. And without an ant to crawl by or a fly to fly by. Or, good gracious, a hay-hum to hop on, maybe onto my shoulder.”
Bombo gritted his teeth and bore on thinking, if he could between hay-hum chatter, for the next several hours.
By night, he warned the tree that he would chop him to pieces and cook him in fire to stay warm, and the tree cried and cried and cried.
“What a way to die?” he said. “Standing, defenseless, alone for centuries only to die pining over the mere sight of a slippery little frog.” He bawled and bawled and bawled.
Morning came, and still the tree mourned itself. It wasn't necessarily weeping but it wasn't definitely not. It was as sad as it had been, and all because it had never actually seen a live hay-hum.
Bombo did his best to ignore this outburst too but found that he couldn't. He groaned first and then stomped. The stomp didn't relieve his rage and the tree's pleadings made things all the worse.
“Please don't kill me. Not until I've seen a hay-hum!”
“If you say hay-hum one more time!” Bombo warned.
“I'll die saying hay-hum! It'll be my last words! My last utterance! Hay-hum! Hay-hum!” he shouted.
He continued shouting but Bombo joined him in his shouting with cusses and yells and threats, and all in the very eloquent and rhythmic language of his own people. He did this as he wrapped his powerful hands around the trunk of the hay-hum tree, and he did it as he pulled. He pulled up and up and up and ripped the tree out until its long roots dangled muddy and dripping beneath him.
“Ow!” the tree yelled, but Bombo ignored him. He simply took the tree to the other side of the island, the north side; there, he plunged it face-first into the jelly water. Next, he lay on top, straddling it, and kicked, kicked, kicked, paddled, paddled. The tree made a fabulous boat; before he knew it, he was on the other side of the water, a bit burning and stinging where he had touched the gel, but alive and well.
He dragged the tree out and looked at it. It was still going on about how a hay-hum Bombo's size would never use him like a paddle boat. He ignored it, carried it a little ways inland, and then plunged it deep into the ground, root first, and twisted, twisted, tugged, and twisted.
There, facing open air south, the tree stood, blinking.
“Is this… the world?” the hay-hum tree asked. Bombo was already gone. He was trudging north, toward the mountain.
“Are those?” the tree began, but he interrupted himself with a squeal; two hay-hum frogs, the ones from the island, were right there on the fungus before him, one on top of the other.
“Are those… oh, no – is that it? They just sit there, one on top of the other? What is that? A dance of… ew. I wish I was back at my rocks. Yes, my rocks were wonderful. Large slabs, slick and porous. What magnificent natural structures they were, and what shade they cast. They kept my face from this dreadful wind and the sight of this dead frozen wasteland.”
He went on babbling like that, the rock slab tree, until Bombo was far out of ear shot and beyond, because that's just what he did.