The Hermit of Hooting Hill

The path, if one could generously call it that, wound its way up Hooting Hill like a particularly stubborn earthworm. Jon, his satchel bouncing against his hip with every lurch, squinted against the late afternoon sun. He’d been told, in hushed, slightly breathless tones by a very old woman who smelled faintly of lavender and mothballs, that the Hermit of Hooting Hill held the key. The key, of course, to understanding the Giggle Gem. Or, at the very least, the key to not tripping over his own feet quite so spectacularly in social situations.

He’d already endured Barty Bumble’s latest, and frankly, most spectacular, failure. The man had attempted to fashion a grappling hook out of a stolen garden gnome and a length of questionable twine, convinced it would allow him to scale the “impenetrable cliffs” that, in reality, were just a rather steep slope of mud. The gnome, predictably, had sailed through the air with the aerodynamic grace of a brick, landing squarely on Barty’s own head with a sickening *thwack*. Jon had, in his haste to avoid being implicated in the gnome’s tragic demise, accidentally skidded down the very slope Barty had been attempting to conquer, arriving at the bottom in a heap of mud and bewildered apologies. Barty, meanwhile, was still somewhere up there, probably trying to coax the gnome into assisting him with his recovery.

“Right then,” Jon muttered, adjusting his slightly askew spectacles. “Hermit. Wisdom. Owl noises. This is going to be… interesting.”