Читать книгу Blackfire: The Girl with the Diamond Key - James Daniel Eckblad - Страница 9

“thorn? thorn?” the girls squealed with unrestrained delight.

“Is that really you, Thorn?” exclaimed Elli, struggling under the weight of Beatríz’s chest to turn around to see.

“Thorn? Thorn? Do you know Thorn?” said the voice, laced with both skepticism and desire.

The light around Elli no longer glaring and oppressive, she tilted her head way back to behold, only two feet above her own, the face of what appeared to be that of Thorn, except for the bushiest bunch of dreadlocks Elli had ever seen encasing its head, the two bulbous eyes scarcely visible from behind the braids that draped, twisting and turning, all the way to the creature’s knees.

“Elli? Elli, what is it?” pleaded Beatríz, who couldn’t see what was behind Elli’s head.

“I should say not ‘what’ dear child, but who!” rejoined the Dactyl-looking speaker, reminding both girls of Thorn’s friendly reprimand of Jamie so long ago. “And who or what might you be?” inquired the stick figure, “besides, obviously, children and girls? And, I’d like to know, what could you possibly be doing here in the OOeegaltabog, how did you get here—and how have you managed to survive? And, what do you know about Thorn? But,” she said, before pausing and lifting Elli with a gentle easiness and setting her down next to Beatríz, “you must be thirsty and hungry—and tired; let me go and get you something to eat and drink. Know that you are entirely safe to rest here for a few moments until I return. And then we can talk a bit until you must go to sleep. Back in a jiffy!” Thereupon the creature stood and glided away with long and swift and elegant strides, disappearing with flying dreadlocks into a nearby stand of trees.

“Elli, where are we? What do you see? And who is this creature—or person—who sounds like Thorn? And,” Beatríz said, her voice rising for emphasis, “does she look at all like Thorn?” When Beatríz received no reply, she said again, “Elli?”

“Yes . . . yes, Beatríz . . . I hear you; I’m just trying to take it all in first!” Elli said, looking all about with glances darting this way and that. “Okay, okay, Beatríz. Here is what I’m seeing—and what I saw of the person who sounds like a female version of Thorn; I’ll call her a ‘she’ at least for now. She looks, Beatríz, just like Thorn, so she must be a Dactyl, except that she has a lot of hair, sort of like dreadlocks springing up all about her head and falling to her knees. Even her face looks a lot like Thorn’s, Beatríz, perhaps softer, although to be honest it was hard to get a good look at her through all that hair!

“And then, Beatríz, as far as where we are. Well, it looks a lot like the place called Sanctuary we just left: we’re sitting in a large meadow, maybe a hundred yards across, and there are trees surrounding most of the meadow—and there are all sorts of trees—oaks and maples, and lots of fruit trees—apple and orange and, um, cherry trees, and olive trees, and also, also some banana trees, and pineapples and coconut palms; and then there are lots of wildflowers—large ones like we saw in Sanctuary, and—”

“So, are we back in Sanctuary, Elli?” Beatríz said. “Did we just go in circles maybe and get ourselves back to where we started from?” she asked, unclear in her voice which emotions were more dominant at that point, those of delight or of disconsolation.

“No, Beatríz, we can’t be back in Sanctuary—the place isn’t nearly that large; we seem to be in some kind of bubble or dome, like what you would find in a botanical garden in the middle of a city, but much larger; it’s definitely a dome of some sort, like the one over Glannabar, and there is light everywhere, as if the sun were shining, except that it’s not—it’s nowhere around. It’s as if the sunlight is coming right out of the ground and lighting up the sky!

“And,” Elli said, before taking a long breath, “and it’s on a hill, Beatríz—like another gigantic moor—and it seems to be surrounded on all sides (I’m sure of it!) by the OOeegaltabog. And it’s as if it has invisible walls—walls you can’t see—”

“Like Glannabar, right, Elli?”

“Yes, that’s right, Beatríz, sort of like Glannabar; and it seemed, like it was with the falcons before, that the Blackmouths couldn’t get through to get us in here—”

“And like the awful things that were just big mouths floating around and laughing at us? They couldn’t get through either, Elli? Right, Elli?” said Beatríz, nervously.

“No, Beatríz, the laughing creatures—the ones you called ‘OOnwees,’ remember?—did not come through the walls; but . . . but what do you mean by them looking like floating mouths, Beatríz? You mean you could see them? And they looked like the mouths of Blackmouths or Wallymogs?”

“No, no, Elli! Not like Blackmouths—or Wallymogs—but like, well, like—and I could see them, Elli, I really could, when my eyes were closed and the black spot was gone! I could see them very clearly! And they were like . . . well, like they were just big mouths, monkey mouths, but bigger, like hippo mouths, and just floating in the air! And they had no teeth! Just sticky things dripping from their lips. And, and here’s the thing, Elli: they each had a bunch of arms—and hands—that seemed to be feeding the mouths all the time, putting stuff into them, but I couldn’t see what—and, yes, they were laughing—eating and laughing! Just eating and laughing!

“And, and they seemed to be reaching for me—for us—just above the heads of the Blackmouths, and I knew they were called ‘OOnwees,’ although I don’t know how I knew that. And, oh, it was the awful-est thing yet, Elli!” said Beatríz, beginning to cry once more as if going through it all over again. “They’re truly not here, are they, Elli?”

“No—no, they’re not here, Beatríz,” Elli said, tentatively, while looking all about and listening carefully, and squeezing Beatríz’s leg lightly. “No, Beatríz—I don’t see or hear anything. And I never saw them at all; I only heard them, and their laughing seemed to go away when the Blackmouths couldn’t get through the wall. And, besides,” Elli said, with sudden confidence, “I think this person like Thorn would have noticed them, and would not have left us alone, anyway, if she had been concerned at all about them.”

“Elli,” Beatríz said, as if in a calm after a storm, “if there is no sun, where is the light coming from? And who do you think she is?”

“Well, to answer your first question first, as Thorn would say,” said the Dactyl, entering from behind Elli and startling the girls, causing them to gasp, “the light is from the effulgence of the grasses and the ground itself, and even from the trees a bit, although that’s not apparent except at night, when the light from the ground fades away. And the sky looks blue, as if from the sun, and you can even see a bit of the clouds of the OOeegaltabog above the sky, if you look closely.”

The Dactyl laid baskets of fruit and nuts and coconut milk in front of Elli and on Beatríz’s lap, and then sat down across from them. “And, as for the second question, my name is—”

“Poplar? Are you Poplar?” asked Beatríz exultantly, and with that wide grin of discovery that has no doubt about what it has suspected to be true.

“Yes, yes, I am!” declared Poplar in a voice that seemed to melt in its effusive warmth. “So you know Thorn—and all about me! Please, quickly, tell me what you know and, and . . . if you know, is Thorn still alive? And, tell me, please, where he is!—Or where he was the last time you saw him!”

While Beatríz and Elli ate and drank, Elli continued to glance all about in wonderment, alternately staring in joyous disbelief at Poplar and feasting with her eyes on the surroundings that made her think of what the Garden of Eden must have looked like. Both girls recounted for Poplar all that had happened, from the moment the four children discovered Peterwinkle beneath the library to the moment they were losing the race against the Blackmouths and the monkey-like mouths visible only to Beatríz, careful to announce to Poplar before beginning the long narrative that the last time they saw Thorn he was alive, but engaged in a fierce battle. When they got to the part of the battle raging on the field between the castle of the Queen and that belonging to Taralina, the girls paused at length to ponder with Poplar what might have happened to Thorn—as well as to the others.

As she listened attentively, Poplar was enveloped in both deep sorrow and profound gratitude, while keeping alive a little fire of hope that, no matter what, she would see her mate again. And she was nearly ecstatic over the abundance of first-hand information about Thorn that stretched well beyond their separation of more than two hundred years ago, virtually to the present day. Poplar was gladdened by the children’s knowledge of her, and cheered, as well as deeply saddened, by Thorn’s words of love and longing for her. She did not, however, ask whether Thorn was still looking for her, or at least still hoping she was yet alive somewhere.

“But, Poplar, I have to ask, quickly,” Beatríz said, when the girls’ story was concluded, and before other questioning by Poplar commenced, “what were those things I saw—or thought I saw—when my eyes were closed, and that Elli said she couldn’t see—that looked like giant monkey mouths, with lots of arms and hands, just floating in the air and laughing hideously—and that, and I don’t know why, but that I called OOnwees?”

“Yes, the OOnwees, Beatríz; you were seeing the OOnwees.”

“And what are they exactly?” interjected Elli.

“They represent insatiable avarice—always at the core of death and its continual dying.”

“The avarice of what?” said Elli.

“What do you mean, child?” said Poplar.

“The avarice of what creatures, Poplar? The avarice of what creatures that have died?”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me, Elli,” said Poplar, with a quizzical look on her tilted head. “Avarice is of nothing but itself; it can inhabit and take over other creatures, and typically it does—in fact, as far as I know, always does—outside of the OOeegaltabog, that is—but it is of itself and by itself in the OOeegaltabog, where it, all alone, dies and continually dies, thinking it is consuming something, consuming everything it attempts to devour, but consumes nothing except itself—growing always more hungry and more thirsty, just when it thinks it has satisfied its hunger and thirst.

“So, in other words,” said Beatríz, still nibbling on what remained in her basket of nuts and a few berries, “they would not have hurt us—they can’t hurt us?”