Path of the Shaman

11

On a huge powerful body with gray skin and pink palms and feet rested a round head about a meter in diameter with one and a half meter ears and sixty centimeter tusks protruding from under a two-meter trunk, which, being forty centimeters at the base, tapered towards the end to a miserable quarter of a meter. Finding me with his small evil eyes, Heffalump lifted his trunk to the floor, crumbling Venetian stucco and Florentine mosaics, and again made that trumpet sound. My legs began to buckle, and I commanded myself a strategic retreat. Turning around with the Flute in his arms, he pranced into cover behind the throne, for some reason raising his knees high. The Heffalump was about to twitch after me, but, tangling his legs in the trunk, which reached his knees, he slammed on the floor. Twitching a couple of times, he pulled his bugle out from under him and blew already, rather, embarrassing and pitiful. For a second, I even felt sympathy for the terrible little animal, and finally pa