“See if you canna catch me, Tommie!”
“Aye! I think I can!” Tommie shouted to his big sister Erin as she skated gracefully along the edge of Loch Shin-Oykel. Winter was Erin’s favorite time. She always looked forward to Hogmanay, and being the Laird Lairg’s daughter made it even more grand!
“Come play, Lewis!” shouted Erin as her big brother passed the loch.
“I canna,” he said, as usual. Erin had learned to stop asking “why not?” for she always received no answers.
As she thought, something swiftly swooshed by, screaming, “Och! Canna you go any faster?”
“I nivver go faster if I dinna want to, Tommie!” grinned Erin as she skated behind her brother with her red hair flying behind her.
When she decided she was done skating, she sat down on the bank and untied her skates. As she trudged toward her house, Erin tripped on a stone. She turned her head to look at it, and saw paper sticking out from under it! She lifted the rock, and realized that it was a map, with an “x” right by Heather Hill!
“Aye,” Erin thought, “Heather Hill is a place of legend. I’ll follow this map and see what may lie there.” And she picked up the map as she turned and walked away.
It was quite a short journey, for as she was entering the forest, she heard a rustling in the bushes. Because Erin was deathly afraid of bears, she looked at the map, then RAN! (Back in the bushes, a bunny stuck its head out!) After several fear-of-bears episodes, Erin arrived at a rock that she thought to be Heather Hill. She tapped it, and a deep rumble resounded through the forest. Erin’s eyes grew as large as dinner plates, and she slowly backed away and hid in the bushes. Next, her jaw dropped when she saw the hill, well, monster, rise to its feet and walk away.
“It’s the Behemoth,” she whispered to herself. “Now you’ve done it, Erin! You should’na gone off like that, chasing after your own treasure!” Dusting off her dress, she added, “I need to talk to Lewis; he’s an expert on the Behemoth.”
The next morning, Erin and Lewis were talking together. “Och,” finished Erin, “I must find the Blessed Bagpipes that are in the Dragon Angus’s cave in the Forest of Gloom, right?”
Lewis nodded. “And I’m coming with you,” he said. Erin smiled at the thought. With no time to spare, they left.
After three days of hiking, Lewis motioned for Erin to stop. “Let’s make camp here. It looks better than last night’s camp,” he chuckled. Erin grimaced. Last night, they had camped two inches from a skunk’s nest…and they smelled enough to prove it! Tonight, however, she slept soundly.
But when Erin awoke, Lewis was gone. “You couldn’a waited until we’d defeated the Behemoth, eh?!” she yelled to whomever could hear. Then she heard a Boom! Boom! Boom! “Och, I’ve done it again!” she thought as she stood there and closed her eyes, frozen in fear. Then Erin heard the sound of bagpipes. She opened her eyes, turned, and saw Lewis at the top of a tree, playing the bagpipes with all of his might! She turned the other way and saw a heap of ash where the Behemoth had been. Lewis dropped the bagpipes and climbed down the tree. Erin and Lewis embraced, and started for home.