Читать книгу Blackfire: The Girl with the Diamond Key - James Daniel Eckblad - Страница 7

Just as Beatríz was disappearing into the veiling murk of the OOeegaltabog, Elli reached back and grabbed the lantern; she scrambled to her feet and began to swing the lantern brusquely, first one way and then the other. “Beatríz! Beatríz!” Elli screamed into the fog; she heard a splash, like that of two hands slapping soupy mud, and pivoted toward the sound. As soon as she had completed her turn, the lamp rekindled itself, burning its brightest and falling like a searchlight on Beatríz—who abruptly froze in place next to the water that was bubbling around Beatríz’s hands plunged beneath its surface.

“Beatríz!” Elli yelled again, and sprang toward her friend. The laughter had quickly dissipated into some ancient din and distance, and the snarling of the Blackmouths had ceased, leaving behind only a single pair of cat eyes scarcely visible in the sphere of darkness beyond the light encircling the girls. Elli knelt down next to Beatríz, who appeared to be unconscious, and frantically pulled her friend’s blackened hands from the putrid water, wiping them on the shredded hem of her once-diaphanous gown, now looking more like the dress of an orphaned waif in a Dickens novel.

The lantern, again resting by itself, but this time next to Elli, began once more to dim. “Beatríz! Beatríz! Wake up! You’ve got to wake up, Beatríz!” urged a desperate Elli. She wanted to sob—and sob for hours, perhaps unceasingly so—but there was no time for that. Elli patted Beatríz’s cheeks and rubbed her arms, at times roughly so, and Beatríz groaned, as if deep in sleep, acknowledging Elli’s efforts but resisting them. Elli grabbed the lantern and twisted and turned on her knees until the light returned. But she was horrified to see that the lantern was not nearly as bright as it had been just moments earlier, and that it was, even when pointed correctly, still waning as she sat there. She turned partially back toward Beatríz, bent near her ear, and whispered something. Beatríz opened her eyes—wide—and smiled at Elli.

“Okay, Elli,” Beatríz said languidly. “I don’t want to go on any longer, but, I know . . . ” she sighed, “I can want to want . . . and hope to hope again, even though it all seems so not promising, Elli. I’d rather just die right here—right now—or finally really wake up from this nightmare—than to face it all again, Elli, and likely worse.” Beatríz then closed her eyes and relaxed her limbs, as if, or so it seemed to Elli, she had actually decided not to want to want—nor to hope to hope; not any longer. Nevertheless, inexplicably, Beatríz sat up, and in a single, brisk movement sprang to her feet, taking the lantern from her still-kneeling friend and saying, “Okay, Elli, let’s go—but quickly, quickly! I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. If I stop again, I think that’s it, Elli! Honestly, I think that’s it, then!”

And with that, the girls resumed their labored march behind the guidance of the lamp. But Elli noticed that, despite the clarity of the direction they were supposed to follow, the light continued to dim. And with the dimming of the light, the darkling mists started to rise from the ground and descend from above, and the Blackmouths began again to prowl and to snarl, and the OOnwees again to chortle—both sets of vile creatures drawing ever closer to Elli and Beatríz as the illumination of the space around them continued to dissipate into a thickening duskiness.

“Hurry, Elli!” said Beatríz, now pulling on her friend. “The black spot is going away—I feel like it’s going to go out completely, and soon, Elli—just as I think that I am going to go out completely, and soon, whether I want to or not, Elli, and no matter how much I want to want otherwise. There’s not much time, Elli!” Beatríz rasped. “Let’s hope the lantern can want to want and hope, and lead us to someplace safe—and soon!”

Elli and Beatríz had crossed a short series of smaller mounds, and were now climbing, with slow steps and labored breathing, the long hill of an extraordinarily large moor, the largest yet encountered by far, its black grass uncharacteristically long and thick; the OOnwees and Blackmouths had circled to within several feet of the girls, and to within only minutes of reaching them—poised to take them down the instant the flame of the lantern was entirely extinguished.

“Beatríz!” exulted Elli. “Beatríz! Look! Up the hill! On top, I think! C’mon! We can make it!”

“You know I can’t see it, Elli, but I’ll believe you—at least, I want to,” Beatríz said, nearly out of breath. “But,” she added despairingly, “I don’t know if I can make it, Elli! I don’t know—I’m getting light-headed. I’m going to faint, Elli! I’m sorry, but I can’t help it! But I-eeee . . . ” Elli reached back and pulled on Beatríz, helping her hold the lantern aloft.

Up the spongy-turf hill the girls pushed themselves, toward a light getting larger and brighter—yet all the less identifiable because of the immense glare. So dazzling was the light—or seemed the light, for eyes now accustomed to searching the darkness—that Elli could barely slit her eyes enough to see the ground directly in front of her. The tall, thick grass was now pushing against the girls’ feet, as if determined to slow them—even shove them—back, and into the black mouths of the yellow cats that were nearly upon them, their jaws stretched wide, yawping and snapping. Beatríz was going alternately limp and, with Elli’s help, recovering just a bit. There was so little ground to cover now to reach the light ahead, but Elli wasn’t at all confident they would get there, with Beatríz’s involuntary resistance and the Blackmouths closing the gap between them.

The light ahead was now looming and flaring so that it felt to Elli engulfing, even threatening and devouring; but it mattered little, given the terror closing in on them from behind. Beatríz felt a mouth graze one of her boots, causing her to stumble. “Aaaagh!” she wailed as she fell, the heel of her boot now clenched in a set of teeth.

Beatríz fell down, but forward into the arms of Elli, who had in that second turned to catch her; then, together they fell, Beatríz forwards and Elli backwards, up the hill and against the large light—but with Elli feeling herself being caught by something from behind. Indeed, the sudden appearance of the “something” so startled the yellow cats that they halted with violent abruption, causing the one cat to release its grip on Beatríz’s boot and enabling both girls to be pulled—by whatever the something was—into the cavity of the light, just before apprehension by the Blackmouths that had swiftly regrouped and sprung in full force at Beatríz and Elli. Having just missed seizing the girls, the Blackmouths stomped and whirled about, screeching in enraged protest. They threw themselves for a few brief moments against the shocking impenetrability of the light, and then turned and rushed back into the darkness.

“Elli! Elli!” called Beatríz, both exultant over their narrow escape and fearful of their sudden salvation that could prove to be illusory, or perhaps even worse than what they were fleeing from.

“I’m okay, Beatríz! And so are you—I’ve got you! But,” she added, “I don’t know what’s got me! I can’t see! Not yet—it’s too bright! But something’s got me!”

“You mean, Elli, that something else has caught us?” she squealed.

“No. I mean, I don’t know if we’ve been caught—as in captured by something or someone—or caught, as in falling into something that’s gotten us stuck—or, at least gotten me stuck! Something I got caught in, Beatríz, when I fell back holding on to you, when you fell forward into me!” Elli sat still for a brief moment. “It feels, Beatríz, as if I’ve fallen into some tree branches—that then sprang up and away from the Blackmouths, and, and . . . well, I’m sort of caught in them, sort of caught in two large branches wrapped around me. I’m trying to get used to the light so I can see where we are and get out of what’s trapping me—maybe get to my knife so I can cut the branches away.”

“Well,” inserted a new voice, at once imposing and feminine, “I wouldn’t be going after those branches if I were you. What you call being caught was, in fact, being saved; and what you call branches are, in fact, my arms; and what you call being trapped is, in fact, being protected; and, if, in fact, you’d like to get away, you’re free to do so—free to go back down the hill to the Blackmouths and the OOnwees, if you’d like,” the voice said, rather nonchalantly, if not liltingly.