Chapter 11: The Cairn
And when Britain had been founded by this noble lord,
Valiant men bred there, who thrived on battle.
In many an age bygone, they brought about trouble.
More wondrous events have occurred in this country
Than in any other I know of, since that same time.
But of all those who dwelt there, of the British kings
Arthur was always judged noblest, as I have heard tell.
From Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Nick and Judy arrive at the wild fox's village only to find out more about "Waah-i-ald!" and that something was buried there for them a long time ago. Agent Minos of the ZBI travels back to his homeland overseas to bring Nicolaus back to Zootopia.
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Nick and Judy stood on a tall ridge that overlooked the small village full of coyotes and foxes, below them the inhabitants were in various stages of dress and undress and had excitedly gathered with tails wagging around a tall stone, a large granite monolith which towered above a huge pile of rocks. Suddenly the wild fox wearing a linen tunic tied around his waist like if it was a kilt, urgently pulled at Nick's paw.
"Come on Carrots, it's time to go where angels fear to tread!" Nick called out as he grabbed her paw too. "Well, considering this is a village full of canids maybe that should be where rabbits fear to tread. After this, a visit to the Mystic Spring Oasis will never bother you again!"
Judy looked at all the gathered predators and sighed heavily as she was led down the path towards them.
"What's the matter Fluff? Don't tell me you are afraid of two dozen or so foxes?"
"I was just thinking about where we might be. If we were where the university campus will one day be built when we arrived, where are we now in conjunction to the future city?"
"Well since we are over half a day's trip from the river's mouth, which I guess is the Lion's Tail, I would think that we are now somewhere in what will become the Snowy Hills of Tundratown? Maybe they'll dam this place up to make one of the ice lakes?"
The villagers below were happy to see the adventurers. At least they were happy to see Nick and Judy, as they rushed forward in their excitement to touch the red fox and the gray rabbit as the group climbed down the ridge. "Well at least the priest and you brother stayed behind to repair the ship," Sir Bors chuckled to Aideen from behind her. "So much for protecting your maidenly virtue, well at least the so called virtue of your eyes!" The bull snorted in an amused tone will he shouldered his massive shield and shook his head at the scene below them.
The red fox vixen glanced back at the bull, her embarrassment concerning the condition of dress and undress of the native foxes and coyotes had finally been replaced by that of resignation. "Fie, so yon savages do not know how to dress proper?" she finally replied. "That nay be my concern, for they art truly just children of nature."
The wild fox had stopped pulling at Nick and looked back at her. His ears drooped as if he was embarrassed by his fellow villagers, although he still did not understand why nudity was such an issue with the strangers? Still he knew that she was uncomfortable with it.
Aideen saw his look of concern and gave him a smile before she called out in the old language with yips, whines, and barks. He still looked distressed at first, but then she gave him a smile and he grinned back with his tail wagging.
It was then that Nick suddenly realized that there was a lot more to the old fox language then just the archaic words they spoke to each other. There was also the motion of their ears, their facial expressions, tail movements, and even bodily motions which were part of their conversation.
"Waah-i-ald!" the excited villagers chanted as they surrounded the red fox tod and his rabbit companion.
"Gee Carrots, I've never had anyone except you act so happy to see little old me!" Nick laughed out as they were pulled towards the tall stone and the pile of rocks.
"Do you think they will sacrifice him?" one of the spear wolves snickered, causing Judy's ears to droop and look back at the two warriors. The two canines in chain mail were now ogling some of the scantily dressed coyote females.
The crowd stopped at the pile of rocks in front of the tall standing stone. "Waah-i-ald!" the wild fox called out as he began to pick up some of the rocks from the pile, the other villagers quickly joined him.
"That is a cairn, so I think they are digging up something or someone," Sir Lionel grunted as he joined them. The large bull had an amused look up his face.
"Judy, I'm not going to be happy if they dig up fox bones!" Nick called over to her, but she had stepped behind the standing rock and was now looking up.
"Ah Nick…!" Judy urgently called out. "You need to see this!"
He stepped around the stone and looked up to see that there was a crudely looking, but familiar, carving deeply etched into it. "Where have I seen this before?" he muttered.
"It is in the Museum of Natural History. Remember we saw it during that case when the museum was vandalized?"
"Oh yeah, the one where that fancy dressed up wolverine…what was his name?" You know, he was the guy who always wore a pink dress shirt under his scruffy navy blue suit and walked around with a stupid flower pinned to his jacket."
"Chuckles, he calls himself Chuckles and claims that he is a criminal mastermind."
"That's right he was the goofball who tried to flood part of Sahara Square and was involved with that Sequoia Towers real estate fiasco. Didn't he once condescendingly call you adorable or something?"
"Nick, you know he called me adorable and I hated that!"
"Well you can be!" the fox snickered as he looked up at the carving. "I still say this looks like a fox with big rabbit ears and feet."
"The archeologist claimed it was supposed to be a god or maybe a crude etching of a fennec fox?"
"Waah-i-ald!" the wild fox said as he joined them and pointed up at the etching. Then he grabbed both of their paws and pulled them together before he pointed up again and repeated, "Waah-i-ald!"
"All this time, I thought there were just trying to pronounce my name," Nick said as he looked at the other fox and then back up at the figure on the stone. "I guess that is what they call their god and when he heard my name, it sounds about the same."
The wild fox pushed the two of them closer together and then with an agitated sigh, pointed at them and then the etching before he called out again, "Waah-i-ald!"
"Ah come on!" Nick scoffed. "Is he trying to say I'm related to their god?"
Before Judy could answer, there was cheering from the other side of the rock as the villagers pulled a small black plastic looking box from among the huge rubble of stones.
"Fie, what be this?" Aideen asked as she looked down at the box. "Tis like nothing I have even seen before?"
"Where is the lid to open this thing?" Bors said as he leaned over the container and pushed it lightly with his hoof. "You want me to crack this open with my sword?"
Before anyone could answer, one of the coyotes reverently lifted the box and carried it to an elder who was watching from one of the lodges.
"Verily, I take it that the answer is in yon hut?" Aideen sighed as she finally removed her helmet.
"Well ask your friend!" Judy sighed as she looked first at the vixen and then the wild fox. "I would really like to know what is going on around here, wouldn't you?"
The vixen growled, yipped and barked at the wild fox, who smiled and pointed towards the lodge. The fox excitedly barked and yipped back as he waved them towards the doorway, the only word which the other travelers understood was that name "Waah-i-ald". Aideen cocked her head in confusion and yipped and growled back.
"What's the matter?" Nick called out as he walked over to her side.
"He sayth that they have been waiting since before his grandsire's, grandsire's time to find out what this Waah-i-ald hath left in yon box."
"That sounds like a really long time! I wonder why they have never opened it before?"
Aideen looked back at the wild fox and barked and yipped out her question. His ears flattened and he looked offended, before he barked and whined back. "Fie, I thinketh we hath upset him?" she tried not to giggle. "He said it twas not for his tribe to open, but thine."
Present Day
Agent Topis Minos glanced out of the police car's window as it bumped along the gravel road. Despite his checkered past with the law here, the aegean wildcat in the black suit still loved the familiar countryside they were passing. This was the home of his birth, a place that he had to flee from when he was younger.
"All those years I chased first your papa and then you, it's still hard for me to believe you are now a police officer!" the gendarme driving the car laughed. "Agent Minos of the ZBI! I bet your papa is rolling in his grave, he was the best smuggler I ever knew."
"I doubt it, my father was always an admirer of you and the local officers. He only followed grandpa into smuggling after the Great War, when the government seized the family business."
"Your grandfather was loyal patriot, he just chose the wrong political party to back after the war ended and payed for it with his life and property."
"We all paid for all those years of stupidity by the corrupt central government's bureaucrats and their damned five and ten year plans. Collectives, quotas, fixed pricing, and such nonsense destroyed our economy. We are at least twenty years behind the remainder of the world in our technology because their stubbornness."
"Granted, but they are now all gone. A new republic has replaced the old socialist party, but now we also have the mafia back too."
Minos looked over at the driver and smiled. "All those years when you chased us through the mountains, you could have caught us several times but you didn't. I have always wondered why you sometimes let us escape."
"The villagers around here would have starved if you hadn't helped them. Even our political commissioner knew that, may the gods give rest to his atheist soul. Your papa was like our local version of Robin Hood, taking the riches from his smuggling and giving it to the poor."
"Before we get to the farm, have you still no clue about who broke into the doctor's office and then defaced the church's confessional? Why would someone first attack and then help this Nicolaus?"
"That fox is an enigma! He was found wandering around the hills and still has no memories. He is having dreams, but he claims that they are someone else's. Look Topas, why did you come here so fast after we inquired about that ZPD police officer Nick Wilde? The police chief in Zootopia was vague at best about his officer. Please just tell me that our dear friend Nicolaus is not some crazed serial killer!"
"We have no record of this Nicolaus in our data base either or any idea what he might want with Officer Nick Wilde."
"Damn, so you don't know who he is either?"
"Look, the docs at the university want to study that device in his neck. It is a medical breakthrough and we want it safely in their paws so it can be studied. Do you have any idea what something like that is worth on the market?" the cat partly lied as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistachio. He knew that it was the DNA test results, which had accompanied the doctor's report, which had also caused a commotion at the university. The fox's DNA exactly matched those of Nick Wilde, who had disappeared during an experiment at the lab.
Minos looked back out of the car's window at the farms and the hills beyond. It was about this time yesterday when he was sitting at a table in an upscale bistro in downtown Zootopia and was listening to a very pretty, but also very self-absorbed sand cat. He was trying his best not to yawn as she yammered and complained about everything.
Bored with her constant talking, he begun to look around the room at the other patrons and noticed an odd couple sitting in a booth in the back of the restaurant. From the way that they were positioned, he took them to be lovers on a date. Both the light gray furred hare, with the black stripped ears, and the white furred arctic vixen were very, very familiar looking. He stared at the hare, trying to remember where he had seen him before, but he could not place the face. Why did he have these feelings that they were both very dangerous, but not to him?
"Are you listening to me?" the sand cat complained as she nosily chewed on a bread stick. He smiled over at her, trying not to respond with the first ungentlemanly answer that came into his mind.
"Yes, you were saying that your roommate always leaves her underwear in the bathtub…" he began, but she cut him off as she continued with her story.
He looked back at the hare and the vixen again. The vixen had some faint stains on her arms and paws, that looked kind of like either grease or oil which she had tried to scrub off clean. So, she must work with machinery of some kind. Carefully, he pulled out his phone and took a photo of the two, then sent it to his office with a text asking them to review and to also try to match them on the agency's facial recognition network. The sand cat was so self-absorbed in her story that she didn't even notice he wasn't paying attention again.
A few minutes later, a response came back and he gave a frown as he read the text message. The hare was only an accountant named Jack Savage and had no criminal record. He couldn't help but chuckle at a prey animal having the last name of Savage. A copy of the accountant's professional page with the Zootopian Accounting and Finance Association popped up and the hare didn't look like he had lived much of an exciting life. The vixen's picture showed her standing next to a souped up dragster and that explained her faint stains, she worked on cars. He slipped his phone back into his pocket and returned to pretending to be interested in the other cat's conversation.
Thank the gods that his phone rang before they finished desert! Much to his date's dismay, he explained that duty called and that he had an emergency which required him to leave the city that night. He quickly paid the bill and hustled her into a Zoober, sending her away from his life, and returned home to quickly pack and catch the next flight overseas.
"We are here!" the gendarme triumphantly called out, pulling him from his memories. They had arrived at an adorable white washed stone cottage, where various mammals stood around, both inside and outside, and it seemed to the agent that most of the villagers had shown up to see him again.
A cairn is a Scottish Gaelic term for a site made from a pile of loose stones, commonly used as a burial site marker. Large chambered cairns, dating back to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, are found throughout the British Islands and Ireland. A modern cairn can be found on a mountainside outcropping in the Balquidder Glen, which the locals call Creag an Tuirc (crag of the boar). This marks the traditional gathering place of the highland Clan MacLaren and is also their ancient war cry. From there you can look down into the glen, the loch below, and also the church graveyard where the famous outlaw Rob Roy is buried.
Chuckles is a Zootopian criminal mastermind who bedevils Nick and Judy in the game Zootopia: Crime Files.
The dashing super spy Jack Savage in my first story Zootopia: A Paradox in Time, became a mild manner accountant in the restored/repaired timeline. However, he was reunited with Skye! She was Jack's wife in the other timeline and had been tragically murdered by another agent of the too powerful Agency. In the story's end, they met again when Jack's car broke down in front of the garage, where she was working as a mechanic. Jack is also the thin hare in the black suit who Nicolaus remembers in his nightmares.