Prologue (4)

"You again? The stalking lumberjack!" The young maiden with the Kaba growled, standing on top of the logger who was lying on the ground.

"Suzie, what's going on over there?" A voice from inside the house asked her.

"Big momma, it's that shady lumberjack who terrified me last time in the forest when I went there to pick up mushrooms for the dinner soup," she explained loudly to the old lady.

"What? Did he dare set foot onto our property? No way! I'm coming outside to whoop his bottom," Grandma said in fury and fire. Then she rose off her rattan chair and met her granddaughter and the woodsman outdoors.

At the same time, a man rushed out from the other twin house where the logger had first tried to sneak in.

"Suzie, what is the matter darling?" He enquired while running toward her.

"Uncle Bibi, look at the man over here. He is a lumberjack. He was spying on me. The first time I caught him red-handed in his dirty activities, was in the forest. And today he dared come onto our property. He was peeping through the window using the now broken brick," she explained to her late mother's senior brother.

"Wait a minute! I must be dreaming. Someone should wake me up, please!" Uncle Bibi, his glasses off, reacted to the discovery he was about to reveal.

"This is Babida the lumberjack, the Killer of the Monster of the Forbidden Mountain. He was awarded the medal of the highest honor and merit by the reigning Emperor's deceased father, the Great Batang IV, for his bravery and heroic actions during the attack of the empire about fifteen years ago by the Terror of the cursed Hill," Suzie's maternal uncle disclosed the past to her.

"Oh, Loba, God of the gods! That's him Bibi." Grandmother reacted, her eyes wide open in amazement.

"Yes, mom! There is no doubt about it," Uncle Bibi stated.

Just right after the true identity of the man the young Miss Suzie and her grandmother believed to be a stalker was disclosed, the neighbors came out massively to raise the hero of their younger age: Babida the lumberjack. They surrounded him while hailing his name and hugging him time and time again.

"Babida the lumberjack, the savior of the Batang people, the slayer of the Monster of the Forbidden Mountain," they chanted.

Surprised by the story Uncle Bibi has just told her, the young maiden Suzie was piqued by an itching curiosity. She began, confused, a set of questions to her late mother's sibling.

"But Uncle Bibi, I don't understand. Where is the Forbidden Mountain? I have never heard of it, though I have been in this land for the past eighteen years. I have never left even once," she interrogated her uncle who was all ears.

And she went on: "You said the Monster's aggression took place fifteen years ago, meaning I was a three-year-old toddler back then. So I must have witnessed the sad event but as I am speaking now, there is no souvenir emerging from my mind. Why is it that?"

Her uncle was still mouth shut as she elaborated, even more, her stance: "Why is it that I had no idea who this man, Babida the lumberjack, was? Are the empire's heroes forbidden to show up in public? Or is it simply forbidden to speak about them? Which of course makes no sense if that is indeed the case."

Done with her litany. Suzie's uncle cleared his throat and replied: "Well, now listen to me very carefully my little darling!"

And suddenly, a powerful storm erupted. The sky became dark then drops of rain began to fall. The crowd that orbited the woodsman was dispersed. The latter was left standing straight in the middle of the yard. Big Momma went back inside the house, inviting her grandchild Suzie and her son Uncle Bibi to do the same but they ignored her. The rain got stronger.

Uncle Bibi got at the same time a flash memory.

15 YEARS AGO...

"Anna, Anna! Wake up, wake up!" Bibi shouted as he opened the door of his junior sister's bedroom.

"Take your little daughter Suzie with you and both go hide in the cave!" He ordered her.

"The Monster of the Forbidden Mountain is attacking the empire. The beast is right now in Okunde and will soon arrive here in Ekule," he reported to her.

Anna who was barely asleep, bounced off the bed in panic and rushed to the opposite room where the three-year-old infant Suzie was profoundly slumbering.

Gently but with hastiness, she instructed the little girl to get up.

"Sweetheart, get off the bed! We have to go to the cave. Do you remember? I told you we will have to hide there each time a villain comes around to harm us," Anna murmured to the child's ears.

"Oh, Mommy, please leave me to sleep!" replied the little girl very annoyed.

"Sweetheart, don't be vexed! But do you remember what I told you we will have to do anytime a big monster comes around? It's to go hide in the cave, isn't it?" Anna insisted.

"Yes, mommy, true!" Three-year-old Suzie answered without opposing further resistance and then followed her mother.

Bibi escorted his sister and his niece to the underground.

"Ok, that's awesome! Now that things are in order, I can leave you with my conscience in peace. I have now to head back to Okunde and join the imperial forces which are on the brink of collapsing before the incredible might of the Monster." Uncle Bibi said as he left the two females in the hideout.

But before the young soldier's departure to the warzone, he stopped by his room at the end of the corridor near the staircase and wore his uniform constituted of two steel bracelets -one on the right arm and another one on the left hand-, along with silk trousers, and a long curved sword. As it was of tradition he let the chest, proudly exposed. Ready, he walked out barefoot.

In Okunde, the imperial army had already sustained a significant loss of valiant soldiers. More than a hundred men of honor had perished under the claws and beak of the Monster of the Forbidden Mountain.

It was a massive bird that weighed about twenty thousand kilograms and measured almost ten meters long and five meters large. It could not then fly for a lengthy moment nor hover enough high in the sky to not hit trees.

So its preferred way of moving was on its legs. It dwelt in the mountain situated in the north of Okunde. The hill was proclaimed forbidden by the late Great Batang IV. No inhabitant in the empire was permitted to hike there after the fifteen-year-old Emperor's son, Dida the First, was killed by the Monster during a promenade.