There is a small spring not far from where they left the path, and its flow feeds a deep pool rife with silver-scaled fish. They are unlike any fish the couple have encountered in their separate adventures—she along the shore of a polar sea, he across the temperate latitudes of the world.
While their shiny scales attract immediate attention, closer scrutiny reveals a tailless creature with no dorsal fin. Nor does it have eyes. Its mouth is fully as wide as its body, which is slightly taller than it is broad. There are three pairs of heavily veined wing-like fins along its sides, which appear to remain rigid and provide stability, helping the creature remain upright. But which appear to provide neither locomotion nor steerage.
As the couple watch these strange fish, it becomes clear they simply float beneath the surface. Following the flow of water within the pool, taking them where it will. It seems particularly odd to watch them blindly bumping against the rocky walls of the pool. The reactions propelling them in haphazard directions.
But their peculiar movements are not what captures Davina’s interest.
“Look at those fangs, Noah!” she exclaims. “They are as long as the creature’s wide mouth. I have never seen fangs as disproportionate as these. It must be a fearsome predator, indeed!”
Seizing one of the creatures with his bare hand, Noah holds it up for closer inspection as he assures his mate:
“Just as I suspected. These are no fangs. Look at the bristle of hair along its protrusible jaw. What you mistake for fangs.
“I am very familiar with these, because they are identical in structure to what is called ‘baleen’ in my world. A distinctive feature of our most massive animals. Creatures that inhabit our vast oceans and follow endless migrations across them.
“Baleen is actually a derivative of the creatures’ skin and acts as a strainer to trap the free-floating organisms that are their food.
“It seems these blind fish extract nutrients from the water here in the same way. They appear to be feeding constantly on micro-organisms as they slowly move through the pool, the baleen trapping and filtering every nutritious morsel.”
Thus reassured, Noah and his mate quickly spear two of the creatures and tear into the flesh with their teeth. Finding the taste to their liking—akin to the sweet taste of boiled lobster in Noah’s world—they flense the scaly skin and fatty tissue from both creatures and consume the flaky flesh without hesitation.
While there is risk in eating an unknown creature, both know they cannot survive long without food in this vast sea of grass.
Pausing to rest, the couple stare up at the two suns fleeing the sky as dusk arrives. Full and content, they are soon asleep in the darkening world.
Awakened by the feeble light of the suns, which are just beginning to crest the far horizon, Noah prods his mate:
“Let us breakfast before we leave this place, for we must have all our energy to return to the path and strike out across this endless grass.”
Hastily consuming two more fish and drinking their fill, they turn to retrace their steps back to the path.
But there is no clue where that may be!
Search as they will, they can find no trace of the way they have come. Soon, they are forced to quit and trust to chance in the random direction they take.
At first, the going is difficult as the clumps of grass grow so close together they appear not to be discrete plants but a single, choking growth of interlocking stalks. In many places, the couple cannot advance without stepping up onto the base-sod of the grasses and crossing between filaments they brush aside.
Just as Noah considers turning aside to find a more passable way, the grassy clumps reassert their individuality. With clearly defined spaces opening between them. And the farther the couple travel in this direction, the sparser the grass becomes. Until, near the end of this day, they are striding across an expanse whose bare ground opens out like a highway through the grasslands.
That is when they stumble into the city of burrows.
Rounding the edge of an island of clumped grass, they nearly fall into an open pit. Only the mound of earth rimming the wide hole prevents tragedy, as Davina plants a foot to save her mate from falling over its raised edge. Backing away, the couple are surprised to see similar mound-pits scattered across the open terrain ahead.
Besides the occasional island of grass, however, there is no indication other life is abroad.
“I do not know what manner of creatures make their home here,” Noah offers, “but in my world most burrowing animals are nocturnal.
“Until we know more, I think we should stay clear of this place. I do not want us to be caught here in the open when darkness falls.”
Nodding her agreement, Davina joins him in backtracking to the island of grass where they wait and watch in concealment.
But as the night deepens, both surrender to exhaustion from the rigors of the day’s march. Thus, they do not see the timid rodents who venture warily from each burrow to feed on the sparse clumps of grass that border their territory.
Noah would know them as the diurnal, spade-toothed rodents he encountered at the rim of the grand canyon of many colors. Those prairie dog-like creatures projected immense shadows of their likeness to warn predators away. But their nocturnal cousins have no such deimatic defense here in the darkness where no shadows lurk.
Davina is first to feel the presence of evil in the night.
She awakens to the sensation of moisture brushing across her legs. It feels like the sleek touch of the oil extracted from the largest of the finned creatures along the coast of her polar sea. But she is far from the sea, and the sensation gliding across her is marked by irregular movement and discontinuity.
As her wide eyes dilate seeking light in the darkness, she beholds a ribbon of wriggling forms flowing past her in the direction of the burrows. And as her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she can make out the forms of vipers, a narrow stream of them, all slithering toward them, then diverging like rivers about an island, before rejoining the single living flood racing away from them.
Even when she sits upright, the vipers pay her no heed, but continue to detour around her and her sleeping mate and hurry on their way.
The stream comes to an abrupt end as the last of the serpents flows past, and Davina gently shakes her mate awake to witness their passing. Noah slowly rises to his feet and beckons his mate in the direction of the retreating mass.
Moving on cat’s paws in the silence of night, they advance to a wide stand of grass the snakes have disappeared around.
Gently parting the stalks of grass, they look upon a scene that fills them with horror!
The vipers disappear into the clumps of grass surrounding the city of burrows. There they wait.
Shortly, spade-toothed creatures emerge from the burrows’ mouths and, in halting, tentative steps, advance slowly toward the grassy mounds. Meantime, the waiting serpents glide across the open ground behind the prairie dogs and take station in the shadows at the mouths of the burrows.
When all the prairie dogs have reached grass, and are chewing on the green stalks, the waiting vipers erupt from their hiding places to send the rodents fleeing back toward their burrows. That is when the other serpents strike, from their concealment in the burrows’ mouths.
Several prairie dogs are taken. Entwined immediately in the coils of vipers. But the others resort to feints, dodging away in misdirections, then racing past the distracted serpents and into their burrows.
In every case, the trailing snakes pursue their quarry to the lip of the burrow but then halt and do not enter. Instead, they give up pursuit and join their fellows in ripping and rending the flesh of the captured prairie dogs and swallowing every shard—meat, skin, fur and bone.
All that remain are the spreading blots of the victims’ blood seeping into the earth.
Their feast done, the serpents again congeal into a living mass and, like a ribbon, flow silently back the way they came. Standing well aside, th
e couple wait until the last viper disappears before striking out in the opposite direction, straight through the vacated city of burrows.
The early dawn of two suns finds them approaching a forest of towering trees crowned with emerald green leaves and marching entirely across the horizon ahead. They are approaching the danger-filled forests of the equator, and Noah is comforted by the supple feel of the sharp-edged lances he and his mate carry.
Entering the forest, Davina detects the sound of falling water and, following her keen sense of hearing, leads Noah directly to it. The waterfall empties over low cliffs above them to a wide, deep pool inhabited by many different kinds of fish. Spearing two, they relax on a pair of adjoining large rocks surrounding the pool and there eat their fill.
Looking about them, the couple discover they are on the periphery of a wide circular hedge of deep-green cedar-like shrubs that describe a 120 degree arc. Running from the sheer wall of the cliff at one side of the waterfall.
The unnatural symmetry of the cedar hedge gives the place an appearance of human cultivation and care. Of a kind of amphitheater carved out of the tropical forest with the waterfall at its center.
“This is a good place to rest”, Noah suggests. “The jungle is home to many dangers, and we will need alertness and strength to cope with them.”
Selecting a low-limbed tree nearby, he guides his mate up into a wide bolus where they curl up together and are soon asleep.
As light fades to darkness, the night comes alive with the voices of the forest. The whistling, coughing, hissing and grunting of life moving across its black floor. But the sounds are soft and muted. Barely discernible above the soft sigh of breezes wafting through the radiating limbs of the thick tree where the couple rest. And so, they sleep soundly through this first night in the equatorial wilderness.
Stretching herself to wakefulness, Davina looks wistfully at her slumbering mate. She is perfectly content with the companionship that defines and fulfills her new life.
As she is weighing whether to let him sleep, she glances toward the waterfall and, for the first time, realizes the bolus where they lie is at the same level as the top of the cliffs where the water begins its fall.
Standing upright, she can see beyond the edge of the falls to a broad, elevated plateau that stretches out of sight.
Waking Noah, she points to the plateau and remarks:
“This elevated land is more open than the thick forest at the base of the waterfall. The large limb near my shoulder extends to this higher ground. I think we should see where it leads.”
Nodding his agreement, Noah clambers onto the long limb and, grasping his mate’s hand, crosses over to the edge of the plateau. Stepping onto its solid surface, the couple are awed by its majesty and openness.
Many low trees appear, bent with age, festooned with vinous necklaces of thick kudzu-like leaves. Spacious expanses of clear ground run like open galleries between the low trees and coppices of shrubbery that match their height.
And water is everywhere: lakes, rivers and streams, including the nearby waterway coursing over the edge of the plateau and cascading into the pool that furnished them food and water the previous day.
Aghast, Noah exclaims:
“This open plateau is certainly unlike the equatorial forest I crossed!
“It is more like the pastoral countryside that graces so many of the most cultivated lands in my world. It reminds me of the verdant vales of the New England farmland of my birth.
“The closest likeness I have seen in this world was the delta I crossed on the broad floodplain. It opened out from the base of the waterfall that leaped upward through the great river gorge. I have described that place to you. Now you see it for yourself. For this plateau is its mirror-image.”
Aware that great beauty may conceal grave menace, the couple decide to follow the edge of the plateau some distance before striking out into its interior. If there is danger ahead, they want to have an avenue of retreat. For there is no sign of branches transecting the edge of the heights beyond the place where they entered the plateau.
Traveling along the line of cliffs, they quickly discover that every body of water flows inexorably from the interior toward the cliffs. Where they join to form plunging cataracts watering the equatorial forest below.
The result is a scene of violent beauty. Like standing at the neck of the great niagaras of Noah’s world and witnessing one of nature’s great spectacles. Only here, there are many such falls, each rivaling the others in volume and grandeur.
Detouring inland to passable crossings over the many rivers feeding the cataracts is the work of many days, and they are gladdened by the abundance of fish in every one. They make only halting progress on this zig-zag route and decide to strike out deeper into the interior.
Reaching the bank of a great river, they follow it away from the waterfalls into the heart of the high plateau.
It takes but a few days for them to reach the spine of this elevated world. An unbroken hogback ridge of steep hills that snakes away into the distance ahead. The steep slopes nearby are veined with rills of flowing water coursing down their flanks from many soaring geysers along their crest. And like the ridge of hills, the spewing fountains form an unbroken chain marching into the distance.
Great showers of rising mist erupt from the geysers, as the rays of two suns crown the summit with vivid rainbows of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red.
Like a continental divide, the line of hills separates the high plateau into an eastern and western flank as it bridges the equatorial forests. From the grasslands to the south to the pampas in the north. And like a continental divide, the watersheds along each flank flow in opposite directions to create the cataracts that feed the forests on both sides.
The couple are on the eastern side of the great divide traveling toward the northern hemisphere, and the plateau spreads before them and off to their right beyond the range of visibility.
In the distance ahead looms a forest of towering trees whose broad leaves remind Noah of the fronds of palm trees in his own world. But as the shape and size of the leaves appear familiar, their color does not.
This forest wears a blood-red crown adorned with the yellow spikes of long, slender thorns protruding through the scarlet leaves.
The wide-girthed trees tower to dramatic heights, rising far above the clustered shrubs and isolated low-lying trees that cover much of the high plateau. Unlike the bright, open corridors between the lower-lying shrubbery, the forest appears dense and dark.
The couple have yet to encounter fauna on the plateau, save for the fishes that swim in its lakes and streams. Gazing into the tree-line ahead, they wonder now whether land-dwelling creatures lurk in the shadows of this strange forest.
Pausing at the edge of the wood, Davina asks:
“Do you suppose this place is home to the kind of creatures that plagued us in the heliotrope forest? If so, we might not be so fortunate to find what you call a ‘bolt-hole’. Perhaps we should skirt its deep shadows and remain on the open plain.”
Taking her hand in his, Noah replies:
“We do not know if we can walk around this wood. There is a darkening of the horizon ahead, and it extends from the line of geysers along the ridge of the hills to as far as I can see to the east. I think it is the unbroken profile of this great forest and that we must cross it sooner or later.
“We do not know what dangers, if any, lurk in this forest. But I would rather confront them in the shelter of these wide trees than in the unprotected spaces on the open plain.
“Besides our lances, we are armed this time with the foreknowledge of what to expect. This time, no creatures, winged or otherwise, will catch us unawares.”
With that, the couple step boldly into a nearby shadow between two giant trees and enter a world they did not expect.
Instead of a thick, cramped growth, the forest opens out into a park-like setting of widely scattered trees. Looking up, they see
a blood-red canopy whose interlocking fronds reach between the dispersed vertical trunks in a thick, seamless mat. It is quilled with long yellow pendant thorns hanging on vines from the towering roof like stalactites on strings.
The thickest trunks belong to the trees they stepped between to enter the forest and, glancing back, they can see the dense trees run in a circular line in both directions. It is as if they stepped through a solid arc whose far ends melt into the distance.
Noah marvels at the perfect symmetry of the arc and at the inexplicable forces that made it so.
It is a geometry he can scarce credit to the natural forces that shaped it.
“This is an Eden within an Eden!” he declares to his mate.
“It is as unlike the forest of the winged guardians as scarlet is unlike heliotrope. That forest was thick, barely passable except along the river’s bank. This is open, and the rivers here appear to be the only barriers to easy passage.”
It is a presumption that shortly will prove to be illusion!
Proceeding through the sparsely wooded landscape, the couple encounter a series of enormous squiggles alongside the wider waterways extending west to east directly across their line of march.
The odd formations are shaped like undulating serpents. Appearing as lines of upended mud in much the same way sea-worms leave traces of their tunnels along the surface of sand in intertidal zones.
But the couple pay scant notice to the formations in their more urgent quest to find a way across the deep waters. Each time they reach a broad river blocking their passage, they scout along its shore. Hoping to find a narrow place where they may cross. And each time, they come upon a stone ledge reaching across the water in a natural bridge.
It is as if a pathway has been prepared before them, and they are grateful to be on it. Indeed, the only unsettling aspects of their journey through this forest are the unaccountable, serpentine tracks running along the riverbanks and the blood-red stains cast by the light of two suns reflecting off the leaves of trees around them.
While they do not express it, they both shudder inwardly at the eerie premonition they cannot shake. Yet, even the sense of dread cannot dampen their joy at the easy passage this place affords.
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