Lana and the Three-Headed Wolf, Part II

This is a parody of the Winnie-the-Pooh story "In Which a Search is Organised and Piglet Nearly Meets the Heffalump Again".

Leni was sitting in her and Lori’s room one day, counting her spools of thread, when there came a knock at the door.

“Fourteen,” said Leni, “Come in. Fourteen… or was it fifteen? Dang it! That muddled me.”

“Hello, Leni,” said Lori.

“Hello, Lori. Fourteen, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“My spools of thread which I was counting?”

“I should say so.”

“But are you sure?”

“No,” said Lori, “Does it matter?”

“I just like to know,” said Leni humbly, “So I can say to myself, ‘I’ve got fourteen pots of honey left’. Or fifteen as the case may be. It’s sort of comforting.”

“Well, let’s call it sixteen,” said Lori, “What I came here to say was: Have you seen Hops anywhere?”

“I don’t think so,” said Leni, and then, after thinking a little more, she said, “Who is Hops?”

“One of Lana’s pets,” said Lori carelessly.

This didn’t help Leni much, because Lana had five pets, and she kept trying to adopt so many others, and in so many sorts and sizes, that she didn’t know whether she ought to be looking for Hops in a stable or in a tank.

“I haven’t seen anybody today,” said Leni, “Not so as to say, ‘Hello, Hops!’ to. Do you want him for anything?”

“I don’t want him,” said Lori, “But Lana does.”

“Oh, I see,” said Leni, “Is he lost?”

“Well,” said Lori, “nobody has seen him for literally a long time, so I suppose he is. Anyhow,” she went on, importantly, “I promised Lincoln I’d organise a search for him, so come on.”

Leni said goodbye affectionately to her fourteen spools of thread, and hoped there were fifteen, and she and Lori went out into the hallway.

“Now”, said Lori, “This is a search, and I’ve organised it.”

“Done what to it?”, said Leni.

“Organised it. Which means planning it out. And the way I’ve planned it is that we don’t all look in the same place at once. So I want you, Leni, to search in the backyard first and then work your way towards Lisa and Lily’s room and look out for me there. Do you see?”

“No,” said Leni, “What–?”

“Then I’ll see you at Lisa and Lily’s room in about an hour’s time?”

“Is Lana ‘organdized’ too?”

“We all are,” said Lori, and off she went.

As soon as Lori was out of sight, Leni remembered that she had forgotten to ask who Hops was, and if he was the sort of pet who slept in a doghouse or the sort who climbed up trees, and as it was too late now, she thought she would begin the hunt by looking for Lana and asking her what they were looking for before she looked for it.

“And it’s no good looking in the backyard for Lana,” said Leni, “Because she’s been organdized in a special place of her own. So I’ll have to look for the special place first. I wonder where it is.” And she wrote it down in her head like this:

ORDER OF LOOKING FOR THINGS:

1. Special Place. (To find Lana).
2. Lana. (To find who Hops is.)
3. Hops. (To find Hops.)
4. Lori. (To tell her I’ve found Hops.)
5. Hops Again. (To tell him I’ve found Lori.)

“Which makes it look like an annoying sort of day,” said Leni, as she walked outside. The next moment, the day became very annoying indeed, because Leni was so busy not looking where she was going that she stepped on a stick and she had only just had time to think to herself, “I’m flying. What birds do. I wonder how you stop.”, when she stopped – Bump!

“Ow!”, rasped something.

“That’s funny,” thought Leni, “I said, ‘ow’ without opening my mouth.”

“Help!”, said a gruff, raspy voice.

“That’s me again,” thought Leni, “I’ve had an accident, and fallen down a well, and my voice has gone all raspy and works before I’m ready for it, because I’ve done something to myself inside. OM-gosh!”

“Help! Help!”

“There you are! I say things when I’m not trying. So it must be a very bad accident.”

And then she thought that perhaps when she did try to say things, she wouldn’t be able to, so, to make sure, she said loudly, “A very bad accident to Leni Loud!”

“Leni!”, rasped the voice.

“It’s Lana!”, cried Leni eagerly, “Where are you?”

“Underneath,” said Lana, in a muffled sort of way.

“Underneath what?”

“You,” rasped Lana, “Get up!”

“Oh!”, said Leni, and scrambled up as quickly as she could, “Did I fall on you, Lana?”

“You fell on me,” said Lana, feeling herself all over.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Leni sorrowfully.

“I didn’t mean to be underneath,” said Lana, “But I’m all right now and I am so glad it was you.”

“What happened?” said Leni, “Where are we?”

“I think we’re in a sort of pit. I was walking along, looking for Hops, and then suddenly I wasn’t anymore, and just when I got up to see where I was, something fell on me. And it was you.”

“So it was,” said Leni.

“Yes,” said Lana. “Leni…”, she went on nervously, and came a little closer, “Do you think we’re in a trap?”

Leni hadn’t thought about it at all, but now she nodded, for suddenly she remembered how she and Lana had once made a Leni Trap for Three-Headed Wolves, and she guessed what had happened. She and Lana had fallen into a Three-Headed Wolf Trap for Lenis! That was what it was.

“What happens when the three-headed wolf comes?”, said Lana, trembling, when she had heard the news.

“Perhaps he won’t notice you, Lana,” said Leni encouragingly, “because you’re just a little girl.”

“But he’ll notice you, Leni.”

“He’ll notice me, and I’ll notice him,” said Leni, thinking it out. “We’ll notice each other for a long time, and then he’ll say, ‘ho-ho!’”

Lana shivered a little at the thought of that “Ho-ho!”.

“W-what will you say?”, she asked.

Lana tried to think of something she would say, but the more she thought, the more she felt that there is no real answer to “Ho-ho!” said by a three-headed wolf in the sort of voice this three-headed wolf was going to say it in.

“I won’t say anything,” said Leni at last, “I’ll just hum to myself, as if I was waiting for something.”

“Then perhaps he’ll say, ‘Ho-ho!’ again?”, suggested Lana anxiously.

“He will,” said Leni.

Lana shivered again.

“He will say it again,” said Leni, “and I’ll go on humming, and that’ll upset him. Because when you say, ‘Ho-ho!’ twice in a gloating sort of way, and the other person only hums, you suddenly find, just as you begin to say it the third time… that… well… you find….”

“What?”

“That it… isn’t… something,” said Leni.

“Isn’t what?”

Leni knew what she meant, but being a girl of very little brain, couldn’t think of the words.

“Well, it just isn’t,” she said.

“You mean it isn’t ho-ho-ish anymore?” asked Lana hopefully.

Leni looked at her admiringly and said that that was what she meant – if you went on humming all the time, because you couldn’t go on saying, “Ho-ho!” forever.

“But he’ll say something else,” said Lana.

“That’s just it. He’ll say, ‘What’s all this?’ and then I’ll say – and this is a very good idea, Lana, which I’ve just thought of – I’ll say, ‘It’s a trap for a three-headed wolf which I’ve made, and I’m waiting for the three-headed wolf to fall in.’ And I’ll go on humming, and that will unsettle him.”

“Leni!”, cried Lana, and now it was her turn to be the admiring one, “You’ve saved us!”

“Have I?” said Leni, not feeling quite sure.

But Lana was quite sure, and her mind ran on, and she saw Leni and the three-headed wolf talking to each other, and she thought suddenly, and a little sadly, that it would have been rather nice if it had been Lana and the three-headed wolf talking so grandly to each other, and not Leni, much as she loved Leni; because she really had more brain than Leni, and the conversation would go better if she and not Leni were doing one side of it, and it would be comforting afterwards in the evenings to look back on the day when she answered a three-headed wolf back as bravely as if the three-headed wolf wasn’t there. It seemed so easy now. She knew just what she would say:

Three-Headed Wolf: (gloatingly) “Ho-ho!”

Lana: (carelessly) “La la la, la la la.”

Three-Headed Wolf: (surprised, and not quite so sure of himself) “Ho-ho!”

Lana: (more carelessly still) “Diddy-da-dee, diddy-da-dee.”

Three-Headed Wolf: (beginning to say, “Ho-ho” and turning it awkwardly into a cough): “H-r’m! What’s all this?”

Lana: (feigning surprise) “Hello! This is a trap I’ve made, and I’m waiting for a three-headed wolf to fall into it.”

Three-Headed Wolf: (greatly disappointed) “Oh!” (after a long silence) “Are you sure?”

Lana: “Yes.”

Three-Headed Wolf: “Oh!” (nervously) “I-I thought it was a trap I’d made to catch little girls.”

Lana: (surprised) “Oh no!”

Three-Headed Wolf: “Oh!” (apologetically) “I-I must have gotten it wrong then.”

Lana: “I’m afraid so.” (politely) “I’m sorry.” (she goes on humming.)

Three-Headed Wolf: “Well, well, well, I suppose I’d better be getting back?”

Lana: (looking up carelessly) “Must you? Well, if you see Lincoln anywhere, you might tell him I want him.”

Three-Headed Wolf: (eager to please) “Certainly! Certainly!” (he hurries off)

Leni: (who wasn’t going to be there, but Lana felt bad about leaving her out since it was her idea) “Oh, Lana, how brave and clever you are!”

Lana: (modestly) “Oh, not at all, Leni.” (And then, when Lincoln comes, Leni can tell him about it.)

While Lana was dreaming this happy dream, and Leni was wondering whether it was fourteen or fifteen, the search for Hops was still going on all over the Louds’ property. Hops was Lana’s pet frog. He had been staying with Lincoln for a few days along with Lana’s other pets when Lana was at camp, and he had started round a rosebush for exercise, but instead of coming back the other way, as expected, he hadn’t, so nobody knew where he was.

“I expect he’s just gone home,” said Lincoln to Lori.

Lori shook her head. “Lana told me he’s not in his tank, and he can’t have gone for a walk, since according to her, he didn’t make his ‘goodbye croak’. This is serious. He is lost. We must begin this search literally now.”

Lincoln, who was thinking of something else, said, “Where’s Leni?” because he hadn’t seen her in a while, but Lori had gone. So he went into his room and drew a picture of Leni going on a long walk at about seven o’clock in the morning, and then he climbed to his treehouse and read comics for a while, and then he wondered what Leni was doing and went out to the front yard to see.

It was not long before he came to a large hole Charles had dug, and he looked down, and there were Leni and Lana, with their backs to him, dreaming happily.

“Ho-ho!”, said Lincoln loudly and suddenly.

Lana jumped three feet in the air with surprise and anxiety, but Leni went on dreaming.

“It’s the three-headed wolf!”, thought Lana nervously. “Now then!”. She hummed in her throat a little, so that she wouldn’t forget what to say, and then, in one most delightfully easy way, she said, “La la la, la la la,” as if she had just thought of it. But she didn’t look round, because if you look round and see a very fierce three-headed wolf looking down at you, sometimes you forget what you were going to say.

“La-da-da-diddy-dee,” said Lincoln in a voice like Leni’s. Because Leni had once invented a song which went:

La la la, la la la

La la la, La la la

La-da-da-diddy-diddy-dee

So whenever Lincoln sings it, he always sings it in a Leni-voice, which seems to suit it better.

“He’s said the wrong thing!”, thought Lana anxiously. “He ought to have said, ‘Ho-ho!’ again. Perhaps I had better say it for him.” And, as fiercely as she could, Lana said: “Ho-ho!”

“How did you get there, Lana?”, said Lincoln in his ordinary voice.

“This is terrible!”, thought Lana, “First he talks in Leni’s voice, and then he talks in Lincoln’s voice, and he’s doing it so as to unsettle me!”. And being now completely unsettled, she said very quickly and in a higher voice than usual: “This is a trap for Lenis, and I’m waiting to fall in it, ho-ho, what’s all this, and then I say, ‘ho-ho’ again.”

“What?”, said Lincoln.

“A trap for ho-hos,” said Lana huskily, “I’ve just made it, and I’m waiting for the ho-ho to come-come.”

How long Lana would have gone on like this I don’t know, but at that moment Leni snapped out of her daydream, deciding that it was sixteen. So she got up, and as she turned her head to soothe herself in that awkward place in the middle of her back where something was tickling her,  she saw Lincoln.

“Hello!”, she shouted joyfully.

“Hello, Leni.”

Lana looked up, and looked away again. And she felt so foolish and uncomfortable that she had almost decided to run away from home and be a garbagewoman, when suddenly she saw something.

“Leni!”, she cried, “There’s something climbing up your back!”

“I thought there was,” said Leni.

“It’s Hops!”, cried Lana.

“Oh, that’s who it is, is it?”, said Leni.

“Well done, Lana,” said Lincoln.

And with these encouraging words, Lana felt quite happy again, and decided not to be a garbagewoman after all, so when Lincoln had helped them out of the hole, and they all went off together hand-in-hand.

And two days later, Lori happened to meet Lucy in the basement.

“Hello, Lucy,” she said, “what are you looking for?”

“Hops,” said Lucy.

“Oh, but didn’t I tell you?” said Lori, “Hops was found literally two days ago.”

There was a moment’s silence, but thankfully, Lucy saw the funny side of it. “Don’t apologise”, she said.