Читать книгу Blackfire - James Daniel Eckblad - Страница 7

The children stood looking at Elli, waiting for her to provide direction. As Elli considered their next move, the others noticed at once the slow appearance of the beast, Beatríz alerted to its presence from the slight, tight gasp that came from Alex. The creature was advancing to within several feet of the children, all frozen in place, when Alex stepped quickly in front of Elli in a posture of defense while reaching back to pull out his knife. And then, just as Alex had the knife in front of him, the beast lay down on all eight legs and gave out a tiny pleading sort of whimper, as if asking to not be left behind.

“Wait, Alex. I think he wants to follow us,” Elli said.

“I hear a rumbling not all that far away, and I don’t think it’s thunder,” said Beatríz.

“Then let’s go,” said Elli.

“Wait,” Beatríz said. “Can anyone see anything beyond the fire?”

“No,” said Jamie, “no, not at all, Beatríz.”

“So choose a direction and let me lead. I can move best in the dark, I think. I can ‘see’ with my hands and feet and ears probably better than the rest of you,” Beatríz concluded.

“Good,” replied Elli. “Feel which way I’m facing, Beatríz, and lead on.”

Beatríz stood in front of Elli and then stepped forward into the forest with Elli, Jamie, and Alex trailing close behind by the aid of sound and touch. The beast followed Alex, but at a distance. The forest was dense, with thick vines draping from trees, requiring the children to lift and duck beneath them. They struggled to avoid entanglement, and the going was slow and tiring. The rumbling was not far away, and getting closer. No one said a word. There was nothing to say. The only sounds were those of the forest being disturbed by the four visitors—or, perhaps, trespassers—and the beast. Beatríz stopped to rest, and then all of them stopped and stood quietly, hearing only the slight whispers of their breathing and nothing from the creature following supposedly on their heels. All of them felt a heavy cold wind passing by. Perhaps, thought Elli, it was the same wind that had marked its presence on the staircase, shortly after they had left Peterwinkle. In any event, she had the same feeling that something other than the beast was close and noticing them.

They resumed their slow march. Within a minute or so, however, Beatríz, still in the lead, stopped again. “What is it?” Elli asked.

“The wood has just ended here, and the ground is beginning to slant sharply downward. I’m going to get down on my stomach and feel where it leads, and whether we can go any further in this direction,” said Beatríz.

Beatríz lay down and stretched out her arms in front of her head. She crawled forward just a bit. “Elli—Jamie, Alex. Hold onto my legs and don’t let go. There seems to be some sort of drop-off here, but I don’t know how steep it is or how far down it goes.” Beatríz, now secured by the others, crawled downward until soon she announced, “I’ve hit what seems to be flat ground covered with flattened long grass. Let go of my legs and I’ll crawl a little further.”

Beatríz crawled through the grass for a couple of minutes before she came to the same kind of ridge from which she had just descended. “It seems like a circular depression, maybe thirty feet across. I think I’m at the other side. Why don’t two of you follow along the ridge in opposite directions and see if I’m right.”

The children discovered that they were in some sort of clearing just a few feet below the forest floor, and that the tall grass was pressed to the earth and warm, as if a collection of creatures had lain there recently.

“Well, we haven’t heard the rumbling in a while, and I can’t stay awake any longer,” said Elli. “Let’s get some sleep, guys.” All four of them lay themselves down, one next to the other, as if trying to fit into one bed, each one’s head on his or her backpack and an arm around another.

“Has anyone seen The Beast?” Elli asked, in a tone suggesting that the creature now had a name. All said no. “Goodnight,” Elli said.

“Goodnight,” each of them responded. And all four, with thoughts of home, a deep abiding fear of every next moment, and an inescapable weight of drowsiness, as if caused by the fear itself, went to sleep.

Beatríz was the first to awaken, feeling uncomfortably warm. “Guys! Guys! Is that the sun I feel?”

Alex awoke next, sat up quickly to the sound of Beatríz’s voice, and said, “Yes! The sun! And . . . hewz The Beast!” The Beast was lying, in a coil, next to Alex’s feet, its tiny beady eyes wide open. The creature licked his upper lip between his fangs and waited, as if obediently, for an order from someone. All four sat up, rubbing thick sleep from their eyes. If this were their home world, it would have been noon in the summertime. The sun was high overhead, and the sky around it was light blue and cloudless.

“What do you see?” Beatríz asked the others. The others were looking almost straight up, with amazement showing on all their faces.

“We are in a clearing, as you thought last night, Beatríz,” said Elli, “and the depression pretty well takes up all of it. But the trees—the trees around it are so high that we can barely see the leaves at the top. And the sky is like a small blue hole cut out of the trees, with the sun taking up almost all of the space. No wonder it’s so dark around here, even during the day.

“And the trees are so tall and dense, Beatríz, that it could be noon in the middle of the forest, and still we’d think it was night,” added Jamie. “Heck, it could have been daytime while we were traveling yesterday in the dark. I’m not sure in this forest it makes any difference whether it’s day or night. It’s just always . . . dark.”

In their hunger, they noticed, while the sun was still shining overhead, some yellow berries in the bushes growing tightly next to the forest’s edge. Elli took a closer look, wondering like all of them if they were okay to eat. They looked like yellow cherries, with thin blue lines encircling them, like the rings of Saturn. She picked one apart, and a single seed fell to the ground. Jamie noticed there were lots of seeds scattered about the bushes, including within the depression itself, and that all but a few were clean of any berry flesh.

“Guys,” Jamie said, “other things have been eating these. They must be okay.”

While the quickly waning light remained, the children decided to gather some of the fruit for their late breakfast and then gather some more to wrap in leaves and save in their backpacks for later. The berries were refreshing and renewing, as well as surprisingly filling. There were lots of long thorns growing around each berry, like sentinels standing guard in a tight circle, so Beatríz’s job was to take the berries picked by others and do the wrapping and packing.

They had nearly completed their work, all the while gathering and packing while eating, when the rumbling they had heard the day before at Hannah’s, and again while traveling in the dark, sounded shockingly loud and close. They also heard a brutal hacking noise near the rumbling, not unlike what one might imagine the sound of a hundred axes hitting simultaneously a stand of trees to be like. The combination of ominous sounds was so near now that the children had no time to lose in fleeing back into the forest. The chilling problem, however, was that they could not ascertain from which direction the threatening sounds were approaching, or whether those making the sounds had actually surrounded them and were rapidly tightening the circle.

“Ewi,” Alex asked, with urgency in his voice, “hwew do we go?”

“Which way, Elli?” asked Beatríz, with a tone of desperation.

“Look!” Jamie yelled and pointed. “The Beast is heading into the woods over there!” The Beast had trotted quickly to the forest’s edge and then stopped and looked back at the children. “I think he knows the way and wants us to follow him!”

“Let’s go!” ordered Elli. As the children headed for The Beast, he padded on beneath the leafy shroud of darkness.

They hadn’t gotten very far into the forest before the darkness was complete, despite the sun being still high in the sky, making listening attentively for the sound of his swift movement in the ancient undergrowth the children’s only way to follow The Beast. Not more than five minutes and about a hundred yards had passed when the children no longer heard the sound of hacking. In its place, however, they heard even louder rumbling accompanied by grunting—as if words were being growled.

The creatures making the sounds were now very close, evidently gathered in and around the clearing, voicing both their discovery of the children’s recent presence and their vile excitement at the thought of an imminent killing or capture. All of the children and The Beast stood still, waiting to learn what the creatures’ next move would be. The children then heard some low and barely audible conversation and bickering before all became once again deathly still.

Then, the rumbling began once again, together with strident screeching and triumphant yelling, as the creatures swarmed toward the children. The Beast continued his leading with greater speed, and the children struggled to keep up. But as fast as they went further into the dense, vine-entwined forest, it was all too evident that the gap between them and the creatures was fast closing, and that it would be only minutes before the enemy was upon them.

Beatríz, still leading the others, stopped suddenly for what was to be only the briefest of moments to listen for The Beast’s movements, but heard nothing, except the approaching creatures and their own panting of panicked alarm.

“Get down on your stomachs everyone, and stay quiet; maybe (just miraculously, she was thinking) they will pass by us,” Beatríz said, with a note of feigned hopefulness in her voice. They all immediately lay themselves down—and waited, in silence. Then, quite suddenly, the sounds coming from the creatures changed, no longer seeming to be approaching them. The children heard the collective hateful roaring of the enemy and, along with it, the shrill screech of a lone challenger summoning them to battle. The children lay frozen in fear as they listened to the roaring and screeching and wailing of pain in the tumult of battle. All four of them wondered, without saying a word to one another, and with tears welling in their eyes, whether The Beast was sacrificing himself to buy them time to escape. Elli wanted to give the order to move on, but she was uncertain about the direction to take now that they no longer had The Beast to lead them. Perhaps, she thought, they should simply remain where they were until they learned what the creatures would do next, but she just as quickly realized the inadvisability of that decision.

All at once, Alex, who just as inadvisably had raised himself in an effort to see what was pursuing them and how close they were to the ongoing battle nearby, said, in a loud whisper, “Ewi!”

“Shhh, Alex!” Elli said, and just as quickly added, sensing he was no longer on his stomach, “And get back down—we don’t know what they can see and how far in the dark!”

“Ewi!” Alex replied, in a louder whisper and more insistently.

“Alex, you have to get back down and be quiet until we all move together!” Elli insisted.

“But, Ewi, thew ah wites ovew thew!” Without hesitation, Elli got up on her knees and looked quickly all about. She saw the lights—perhaps two dozen—in a single grouping, and not far away.

“C’mon, guys!” Elli ordered. “Follow me—fast—toward the lights—over there to the left!” They scrambled to their feet and pushed against the forest toward the group of tiny lights, stumbling and scraping and bruising themselves in their struggle through the woods that seemed resolved to resist any further penetration into their ancient community by the four young strangers. All of the children found themselves becoming increasingly tangled in coiled vines and twisted branches that impeded their progress, and it was impossible in the dark to ascertain what, or how far away, the lights were. The din of rumbling and hacking had not only resumed, but was once again closing in on them.

“Use your knives!” Jamie yelled, no longer concerned about whether the enemy could hear them or not. All of them—except Jamie, ironically—pulled out their knives and began to hack and cut with surprising ease the vines and branches that were entangling them. All except Jamie were now moving, and moving faster than they had ever moved in the forest to this point. They pushed toward the lights that, nevertheless, seemed to be constantly moving away from them while keeping the same distance, as if intending to lead the children. But Jamie, who alone had remembered the knives, was so entangled that he was not able to reach his knife with either hand. “I’m caught! I can’t reach my knife!” Jamie yelled against the noises of the advancing enemy.

The others were by this time far ahead of Jamie, and only Beatríz was able to hear him. “Jamie’s stuck—way back there!” she yelled.

“I’ll double back,” Elli said, “but you two keep going toward the lights.”

“Elli!” Beatríz yelled back. “We don’t even know what the lights are, or even if they’re friendly!”

“They can’t be any worse than what we’re running from!” shouted Elli, as she attempted to backtrack in the direction of Jamie.

Jamie continued to try unsuccessfully to reach his knife. Then, suddenly, before Elli could reach him, the branches and vines were pulling themselves—or being pulled—away from Jamie. When Jamie was finally able to get to his knife, he was already free to move again. “I’m out—I’m coming!” he yelled to the others. In a minute or so he caught up with his three companions who had stopped and were waiting for him.

Elli barked another order. “Okay, let’s keep going—faster, if you can! The creatures will be on us any minute now!” They resumed their push through the heavy growth and seemed, finally, to be getting closer to the lights. The rumbling and hacking behind them, however, was also growing louder and closer. Elli, in the lead once again, noticed the lights had stopped, not more than forty yards ahead. She noticed also, much to her dismay, that they were disappearing, one by one, until there was only a single small light remaining—hovering, barely visible, just ahead of them.

The children could now feel the vibrations from the movement and destructive work of their pursuers. The ground beneath them began to shake from the enemy’s heavy feet, and the children were hearing trees falling and feeling bursts of wind from their crashing to the forest floor.

Finally, when they had nearly reached the light, it moved suddenly away once more, leaving them with hopes quickly dashed. As the enemy forces were gaining on them, Elli noticed the single light move to the right where she spotted, with newfound hope, the other lights. Far from having gone out, they had been hovering in the darkness beside a tall thin beam of light created by some sort of opening that was more than ten feet high and about a foot and a half wide.

The enemy, with lights of their own, at last saw the children, not more than twenty yards ahead of them, and roared with the certainty of impending triumph. Then, to their astonished surprise, the children vanished. When the creatures reached the spot where they had just seen the children, there was only a single large tree standing nearby. The tree, being one of the biggest in the forest, was too big to hack down, even if the children were somehow within it, which seemed all but impossible. The leader of the enemy forces ordered his warriors to halt and be quiet, hoping to hear the children who had somehow been able to elude them. They looked and listened with keen eyes and even better ears, but saw and heard nothing. At that point the leader motioned for a number of his forces to encircle in opposite directions the trunk that was the width of a house, assuming, with an ugly smug smile of accomplishment, that he would shortly discover the children hiding on the other side of the tree. But, again, there was nothing.

In anger, they attacked the trunk with all of their resources, including the “hacking machines,” but the tree was impenetrable and incapable of being taken down, and the thought, finally, that the children would somehow be in the tree struck them as ludicrous. They then began working away at the forest in the direction they had been heading in their pursuit of the children only minutes earlier. They were determined to follow the children as long as it took to capture or kill them, even if it meant clearing the entire forest to do so. Besides, should the small ones reach the other side of the forest, which was highly unlikely, they would be met with nothing more welcoming than those now pursuing them.

Just as the creatures were about to see and pounce on them, all four children had frantically squeezed themselves through the narrow opening in the trunk from which the light was emanating, stumbled to the uneven floor inside the tree, and then heard the sound of a massive wood door slamming shut behind them. They looked back, but saw no one. The door seemed to have closed of its own accord before disappearing entirely by blending perfectly into the rest of the tree.

They looked around, frozen in silent wonder—each where he or she had tumbled to rest on the floor. The light had seemed bright at first against the pitch blackness to which their eyes had been accustomed outside, but as their eyes adjusted, they realized that the light was soft, streaming in all directions from healthy flames in a stone fireplace on the other side of the large circular room in which they were sitting. The mammoth door that had closed behind them, likely not heard by the enemy above their own loud noises, sealed out the darkness and greatly muffled the sounds of the enemy raging and assaulting the tree.

The children remained quiet, examining their surroundings and unconsciously enjoying their first sense of well-being since they had first arrived in Bairnmoor. It became evident that they had landed on the solid wooden floor of a circular room inside a tree, the diameter of which was about forty feet. There were no windows, and the smooth walls of the room curved gently upward into a circle of shadow that obscured the height of the ceiling—if, in fact, there was any ceiling at all. In the room was a large round wooden table with thick and gnarled branches surrounding it, as if they were a circular barrier to anyone or anything actually being able to use the table. There were also similar tree limbs and branches protruding in a number of different places from the continuous wall of the room, as if they were growing inside the tree and weaving themselves together into complex knots. And although the children could not imagine how anyone could sit in them, there were several articles of twisted limbs scattered about the room that vaguely resembled high backed chairs.

There were also two tall wooden cabinets spread apart along the wall, and perhaps five or six stacks of sticks leaning against them, or against each other, as well as some cups and plates on the table containing remnants of recently eaten food.

Now that she could no longer hear any sounds from the enemy outside, Elli ventured a modestly loud “Hello?” She paused just a bit, out of politeness. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” she now yelled.

“You don’t have to yell so, especially given the acoustics. I can hear you very well, indeed,” a voice somewhere inside the room or beyond the shadow of the ceiling replied.

Elli, Alex, and Jamie looked wide-eyed around the room, straining to see where the voice was coming from, but saw no one or anything else that appeared able to speak. Beatríz said, “I’m sure the voice came from right behind us, near the door that slammed shut.”

“But of course!” the voice said.

Jamie looked back after having looked there already. “All that’s there, Beatríz, is just an old stack of tall sticks.”

“Well, this ‘old stack of tall sticks,’ as you call me, had just pulled you, sir, out of an entanglement a few minutes ago,” the voice said, directing his remarks at Jamie.

“What?” Jamie exclaimed, utterly confused.

“Wait!” said Elli. “I saw what looks to us like a stick move in that stack, and I don’t think it’s a stack of sticks anymore than we are piles of bones! It’s a . . . a . . .”

“A person, I think you mean!” the voice said, whereupon the apparent stack of sticks unfolded and spread itself into a creature that looked like a huge walking stick with two bulbous, knot-like protrusions at the top of the tallest “stick” that opened next to each other as large round eyeballs. The creature blinked a few times at the children, seeming to be not nearly as surprised to see them as they were to see him.

The three children who could see were staring into the creature’s eyes when it spoke to them again. “If the four of you are persons, then I am surely a person, and I suspect that you are persons, so that, therefore, I also am a person, although,” he said a bit wryly, “I have to say that you don’t look very person-like, at least from my perspective. But, if you’ll concede the argument, then I’m satisfied.” He then walked rather giraffe-like over to one of the chair-like articles of tangled branches and, one might say, made a sitting-down movement, finishing it off by crossing one leg over the other.

The person had two legs, and two arms nearly as long as the legs, with four thin fingers and two just-as-thin thumbs at the end of each limb. He had two distinct, porpoise-like holes the size of dimes well below his eyes that constituted his nose, and, just beneath those, a most diminutive horizontal slit of a mouth that seemed almost to move about his face when he talked.

“So,” the stick man said, once he had settled the ontology of their mutual existence—and himself into the tangled wood that resembled a chair, “I suspect that you are persons in the form of children, and that, since there are no known children remaining in the land of Bairnmoor, although at one time they constituted the primary form of personhood here, you are strangers in this land.” He paused and rubbed his chin, ruminating on what self-ascribed profundity he had just uttered, and then added, “Am I correct?”

“Yes,” said Elli, before anyone else could speak, and especially before Alex spoke, “but that’s all we can tell you.”

“By the way, Mr. . . . um . . . person,” said Jamie, to break the ice, “I want to thank you very much for saving me earlier.”

“Not a thing. Not a thing,” replied the stick man. He pulled out a beautifully grained wooden pipe from a hidden pocket on one of his legs that looked like a typical bulge on a branch, and lit it.

“But,” Jamie continued, “why did you save me? And why did you save all of us? And who and what are you—I mean,” catching himself quickly, “besides a person, I mean? And, um . . . what were those lights that led us to your place?”

“So, you have a lot of questions for me, do you? But,” said the stick man who then paused to puff a couple of puffs. “But, you apparently won’t answer my questions; is that correct?”

“We can’t!” Alex interjected himself into the conversation. “Mistuw Petuwinckuw said w’w’ we caan’t tawk . . .”

“Alex, stop talking! Please!” Elli insisted, interrupting him. “Let me do the talking for us.”

“And what, young lady, can you talk to me about?” the stick man asked, with little sense of urgency about the conversation, but with his eyes protruding toward her as if they were going to pop completely out of their sockets in the expectation of a forthcoming—and acceptable—answer.

“Sir, I can tell you who each of us is, and that we are not from this land, and that we mean you no harm, but I cannot tell you more.”

“So, you . . . are?” the stick man inquired, his voice rising in pitch at the end of his short question.

“My name is Elli,” she said compliantly, “and these are,” she pointed in succession, “Beatríz, Alex, and Jamie. And, of course,” she added, “we are children.”

“Hmm . . .” the stick man said, continuing to look at Elli and puff his pipe. “Well . . . my name is Thorn, and I am what is called a Dactyl. My family and I lived along with other Dactyl families in this forest, and this is my home—at least . . . my home as long as the forest lasts,” he added, his voice trailing off and his eyes staring through Elli, as if he saw something behind her that had grabbed his attention.

“What do you mean by ‘as long as the forest lasts?’” asked Elli.

“But,” the stick man said, as if not even hearing Elli’s question, “I must hear more. Whatever are you doing in this forest—and where are you going?”

“I cannot tell you why we are in this forest, sir, except to say that we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by this forest and, to flee from some creatures that were pursuing us, we simply ran further into the forest in whatever direction The Beast was taking us,” Elli replied.

His eyes suddenly retreating back into their sockets, Thorn asked, “And who or what is this thing called ‘The Beast?’”

“Oh, of course. Well, we don’t really know what he is—or was—exactly, but it appeared that he wanted to eat us, and then he became our friend and wanted to lead us away from those who were chasing us. We just called him ‘The Beast.’ The sad thing, Mr. Thorn, is that we believe he is already dead—that maybe he sacrificed himself to give us time to find safety from the creatures when they were just about to reach us.”

“Ah, yes, so he did,” said Thorn, sadly. “I mean died in this battle you’ve described.” Thorn chewed on the stem of his pipe and added, glancing at each of the children briefly, “I saw the entire skirmish from above in the trees; it was this Beast you speak of that actually initiated the contact, rushing headlong into the clearing where your enemies had gathered. I don’t of course know whether he intended to sacrifice himself. What I can say with certainty is that without that distracting conflict we would not be having this conversation.” Thorn blinked. “But, none of this tells me why you are here in this land in the first place.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but none of us can tell you that. We are sworn to secrecy—and nothing will make us tell you, with all due respect,” Elli said, resolutely, but politely.

Thorn smiled a most tiny, barely visible, smile with his lipless mouth. “Well,” Thorn then said, “I simply needed to make sure.”

“To make sure of what?” asked Jamie.

“To make sure you wouldn’t tell me anything,” Thorn said.

“But,” Jamie added, “that’s what the woman . . .”

“Jamie!” Elli whispered loudly.

“I know what Hannah must have said to you,” Thorn said.

“So,” Elli replied, in a question veiled as a statement, “in other words, we don’t need to tell you anything because you already know—like Hannah!”

“Well,” said Thorn, rather matter-of-factly, “I’m not at all certain that I know all that Hannah knows. I only know that Hannah has told me—and others through the ‘maven-line’ as we call it—that if I ever encountered those who resembled you, I was to provide you safe passage through the forest—that is, as long as the forest lasts—and that I would know you because you would be children who would not tell me anything of your mission here.”

“Mr. Thorn,” Elli began.

“Just Thorn—no Mr. Thorn. Please.” He smiled, signaling with twirling fingers for her to continue.

“What do you mean by ‘while the forest lasts?’ I believe you’ve mentioned that twice now.”

“The forest, as large as it still is, was yet much larger when the Queen ruled this land. But Sutante Bliss, who now rules, has been depleting the forest of trees to build huge fortresses and palaces and many things associated with roads and bridges, as well as wood to sell to others for heat and light against the darkness and cold that have overshadowed so much of the land since the Queen’s death.”

“The Queen’s death?” asked Elli, with a stunned and troubled look of surprise.

“Why, yes. Did you think she was still living?” asked Thorn, with a puzzled look of surprise that included one eye rolled higher than the other.

The other children looked at Elli, wondering what those words meant, and what she’d say, and what they’d now do.

“Are you quite certain, Thorn? I mean, about the Queen being dead?” Elli asked, meekly.

“Oh,” he replied sadly, “I’m afraid that I am all too certain. I saw her killed, Elli, by the sword of Sutante Bliss. And I saw them bury her deep below the castle. No, I am quite certain, Elli, that the Queen is dead.” He paused and looked kindly upon Elli. “Does it matter to your mission, Elli?”

Elli glanced at the silver amulet on her wrist and asked it in her mind, with great reluctance, not being at all certain she wanted to know the answer, whether what Thorn had said about the Queen’s death was true. As she feared, and with a visible shudder, Elli saw the amulet begin to glow. “But, if true, then what does that now mean for our mission?” she asked herself. And she then wondered whether Hannah and Peterwinkle knew.

“But,” Thorn added, following another couple of puffs, awaiting patiently a response from Elli, but not expecting to get one, “why does it matter to you, Elli?”

“I cannot tell you anything about the mission, as you’ve already acknowledged, Thorn. Nor can I tell you whether it matters or not that the Queen is dead,” Elli said, forlornly, while looking away with tears in her eyes.

“But, Elli,” said Jamie, “doesn’t it matter that . . .”

“Jamie!” Elli said sharply.

“Dear young lady, Elli,” Thorn said, with a soft and sympathetic voice, placing a hand gently on her shoulder, “I feel bad that none of you knew about the Queen’s death, and that it troubles you. But whatever this means to you I have pledged to Hannah to do everything I can to see you safely through the forest, and that I will do regardless.” Thorn then added, “I would ask you which way out of the forest you wanted to go, but since there is only one way, it will have to be that way.”

Thorn puffed a couple of times on his pipe, which was no longer lit. “We will talk about all of this tomorrow. Now we shall go to bed. I am sorry to say I have no beds that will suit you. However, I will lay some vine rugs on the floor next to the fire and give you some soft coverlets made from skins. I will tend the fire, as needed, throughout the night. You must get some sleep, for your day tomorrow will be a long one.”

“Excuse me, Thorn,” Elli said, changing the subject deliberately, “but what are these creatures pursuing us? We have only heard them; we have never seen them.”

“And a good thing, too,” Thorn replied. While he made ready their meager sleeping arrangements, he continued. “They are called Rumblards and Thrashers, and are fashioned from the wicked art of joining together animals and former persons, or, Unpersons. The Rumblards are fashioned from Unpersons and elephants—hence, the rumbling of their movements. The others, the Thrashers, are made from Unpersons and Sawfish. Both are tools of Sutante Bliss and are tended by others called Wolfmen—who are half wolf and half Unperson—and by Unperson warriors from the north. All of these have been pursuing you, no doubt.”

“But,” Elli asked, with a voice of incomprehension, “how does Sutante Bliss create these creatures—these Rumblards and Thrashers and Wolfmen?”

“He doesn’t. In fact, Sutante Bliss can create nothing; he can only destroy. But, he provides the illusion of creation with evil, and the creatures I have named are the products of destruction only.” The children looked puzzled, but Thorn did not elucidate—and they were too weary to pursue any more questions, including Jamie, who wondered about the lights.

When Thorn had prepared the children’s beds, he pulled himself up and onto one of the protruding sets of tangled branches located along the wall, covered himself with an animal skin, said “Goodnight,” and went immediately to sleep, evidenced by a slight, rather bottled snoring sound drifting from his bed.

Except for the presence of the skin, there was nothing else to distinguish the place where Thorn was sleeping from any of the other protruding sets of branches, or even from Thorn himself, so well did Thorn “become one” with his bed, as he must have “been one” with the forest itself.

Perhaps surprisingly, the children slept soundly through the night, falling asleep nearly as soon as they had lain themselves down.