by Chrys Cymri
‘It’s Clyde. The lemmings took him.’
‘The same lemmings which offer themselves as his meals?’
‘Not this time. They captured him with a net.’
‘Then you’ll be wanting these.’ Raven twisted his head and brought his teeth to bear on the leather strips around his neck. ‘Here are your swords.’
A row of sheathed weapons tumbled onto the grass. Peter, James, and I retrieved our blades. I pulled my sword free, somewhat ashamed at how the weight gave me confidence.
‘The Doctor wouldn’t approve,’ Peter said as he threaded the scabbard’s loop through his belt.
‘He does rely on others to carry weapons,’ I pointed out. My own belt was a bit thin, but I strapped the sword to my side and hoped the leather would hold. ‘Think of me as Ace rather than the Doctor. But with something better than a baseball bat. Raven, can you find Clyde?’
The dragon snorted. ‘Of course. And help you recover him, if you ask nicely.’
Morey turned to his wife. ‘I should go.’
‘Yes, certainly.’ She bumped his beak with her own. ‘He’s part of your grŵp rhyfelwyr. You must.’
‘And me,’ James said. ‘I’m part of his group.’
I pointed at the blue gryphon clinging to his shoulder. ‘You have Jago to look after.’
‘Come on, Pen, they’re only lemmings. It’s not like we’d be going up against something dangerous.’
‘What if they’re taking him to the Arctic?’ I countered. ‘You need to stay here.’
‘Raven?’ James asked. ‘Where is Clyde?’
‘I can find him,’ Raven replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean I know where he is.’
‘And he can only carry two people anyway,’ I pointed out. Peter had already climbed onto the dragon’s neck. I quickly followed suit. ‘Let Lord Willis know we might be back late.’
As Raven kicked us away from the ground, Peter leaned forward to speak into my ear. ‘You know they can’t be that far away. They were straining to lift that net.’
‘I know,’ I told him. ‘But it’s still no place for a gryphon as small as Jago.’
Morey, who was riding in the space between dragon spine and my stomach, cocked his head to look up at me. ‘Don’t underestimate him.’
‘Because he’s a griffwn glas?’
‘Because he’s my son.’
The meadow had slipped away beneath Raven’s wings. We were now heading away from the town. The landscape of middle Lloegyr was laid out below us, forests spreading out across the gently rolling countryside. I tried to work out where we would be in England. The outskirts of Coventry? But instead of roads and factories, a large herd of unicorns grazed in a clearing and a solitary dragon sat on the rocky pinnacle of a hilltop. Cities like Llanbedr and towns such as Caer-grawnt were still the exception rather than the norm.
Raven pulled up suddenly. I was thrown against the spine at my back. ‘What’s up?’ Peter called out over the sound of the dragon’s wing beats.
‘There’s a thin place here. I’ve never used it before, but it feels--familiar.’
‘Explore it later,’ I urged. ‘We need to find Clyde.’
‘This thin place will lead us to Clyde.’
‘Look down,’ Peter told me. I followed his finger. ‘Aren’t those lemming bodies?’
Grasses had been flattened, and several fluffs of fur floated across the area. ‘Did Clyde fight back?’ Morey wondered aloud. ‘I’ll drop down and have a look.’
‘Clyde isn’t down there,’ Raven said. ‘The crossing is very narrow. Hold on tight.’
It suddenly occurred to me that I’d never thought to wonder what happened if someone were too big for a thin place. But it was too late to ask. Raven took us further up into the sky. Then he tucked wings and feet close against his body. Only the tips of his wings were unfurled as we dropped down in a step dive. The dragon turned sideways, and I grabbed desperately at both Morey and the spine in front of me.
The bright sunshine of a spring afternoon was replaced with the chill of a misty landscape. I looked back over my shoulder. Peter gave me a grim smile. ‘Still here,’ he confirmed. ‘Raven, can you give us a little more warning next time?’
‘I told you to hold on tight.’
‘Okay, better warning, then.’
The dragon had extended his wings again, and we soared across moor land. Short grass bumped over uneven land, the green broken up by clumps of yellow-flowering gorse. Rocks formed stacks on the low hills. The low fog alternatively exposed and hid the land beneath us.
‘Where on Earth are we?’ I asked Raven.
‘We’re flying over Lloegyr.’
‘But that can’t be,’ I said. ‘Air thin places always cut between our two worlds. Don’t they?’
‘This is the first time I’ve come across one which doesn’t.’ Raven took us lower, and I felt his chest swell against my legs as he took a deep breath. ‘But this is definitely Lloegyr. I smell were-rabbits in the wind. And something else. Lemmings.’
‘Great.’ I felt for my sword. ‘Let’s go liberate a snail shark from his fans.’
I turned my head at the thrumming sound of lemming wings. They rose from behind an outcrop of rocks, their small eyes glinting as they aimed their bodies towards us. Ropes dangled between their small legs. ‘Don’t even try,’ Raven told them in Welsh. ‘You can’t carry a net large enough to capture a dragon.’
High-pitched squeaks flowed between the rodents. I shifted nervously. ‘Raven, do you think we should go higher? Just to get out of their reach?’
‘I’m not worried about snail shark fodder.’
The lemmings scattered in front of him, forming two groups to rise above us. Raven’s wings pounded as he put on speed, obviously intending to duck under and past them.
The group on the left exchanged more squeaks. We were close enough that I could see that the ropes had been coated with some black substance. One trailing end brushed against my hair.
Then the sky was filled with netting. The lemmings, I saw to my horror, had no intention of trying to drop the material onto an entire dragon. The ropes had been released over his left wing.
Raven bellowed in rage. The material caught around the long sweep of skin, tangling and fouling the leading edges. We dipped to the left as Raven’s right wing fought uselessly to keep us upright. But, without a counterbalance, his weight was pulling him out of the sky.
Morey’s claws tore across my shirt as he flung himself free. The ground was rushing towards us, and my mind scrambled for what action I could take. Should I try to jump off the dragon? The mixture of rocks and grass made me hesitate.
And then Raven’s body juddered as we hit the ground. My hands clutched at the spine, my legs clenched around his neck. I was flung back and forth, and my teeth rattled together. Soil was flung up around us, and a clump of grass hit my nose. Earthy peat filled my nostrils, and I shook my head to fling it away.
Raven had tried to land in a run, but his angle was wrong. I cried out as his forelegs folded under his body, and he slid on his chest. A stack of rocks loomed ahead of us. I found myself extending my feet as if I could put on the brakes. Raven’s tail whipped up and then behind us. A loud crack ached across my ears, and we came to a sudden halt.
My stomach slammed against the spine in front of me. Air was driven from my lungs. My head spun, and sparkling lights swam in my vision. I leaned low across Raven’s neck, trying desperately to take in air. My blood roared in my ears.
Arms encircled my waist. I dimly felt myself being helped down from the dragon. My feet stumbled against the uneven ground. Then I gasped and drew a deep, painful breath. It took me a moment to realise that the groan I heard was my own.
My pain was echoed. I put out my hand, and felt dragon hide slide past my fingers. ‘Raven?’ I asked weakly, blinking tears from my eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ Peter’s voice sounded far away. ‘Penny?’
‘Fine,’ I managed to gasp. Thick
liquid was warming my fingers. My vision stabilised. Raven’s crash landing had torn up the soil around him. The left wing was lying in front of me, netting rucking up the skin. His forelegs had bent awkwardly under his body, and his neck and head rested on the ground. His right wing was still flapping, grasses waving under the movement.
A hum of lemming wings made me look up. Six of the rodents held a small net between them. Morey was trapped inside, and his curses made my ears burn. The invective halted, and one red-brown eye glared at me through the fibres holding him tight. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me about my language,’ he growled. ‘Just you get trussed up in a net, and see how you like it.’
‘Well, I do declare, this won’t do. This won’t do at all.’ The words were spoken in slow drawl, like something straight out of Gone with the Wind. Half a dozen lemmings floated down beside us. Straddled across their backs was a bright green praying mantis, about the size of a small terrier. The insect stepped onto the ground. The folded front legs were carried high, near the triangular head, and the massive compound eyes nearly reached my knees. ‘No, siree, this won’t do at all. I promised y’all wouldn’t be harmed.’
Raven lifted his head and snarled, ‘I definitely feel harmed.’
The mantis opened his forelegs, revealing the sharp spines which lined the interior. Then he closed his legs with a sharp click. ‘Yes, sir, you look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet. Lemmings, set them loose.’
The lemmings hurried to obey. Sharp teeth cut through the nets. Morey shook his body as he stepped free. ‘Only damage was to the ego,’ he reassured me. ‘Although that is damage enough.’
The netting dropped away from Raven’s wing. The dragon groaned as he pulled his forelegs forward. I forced myself to stand back as he rose shakily to his feet. There was little I could do to physically support a dragon. He folded his wings onto his back, the left more awkwardly than the right. Blood and mud clung to his forelegs. Raven twisted his neck to look down at the mixture, then glanced over at me. ‘More scars, formidable Penny. Knowing you is bad for my hide.’
‘But y’all can walk?’ asked the praying mantis.
‘Shaken up,’ Peter said. ‘But looks like nothing is broken.’
The mantis extended brown wings and flew up onto a nearby rock. This brought him nearly level with my eyes. ‘Then allow me introduce myself. I’m Cornelius Eleanor Winchester von Gockelspruch the Third.’
‘Of course you are,’ I said weakly, wishing I’d thought to bring a hip flask. A shot of Talisker would have done wonders for my nerves.
‘Peter Jarvis,’ Peter said.
‘Trahaearneifion.’ Morey flew up to my shoulder. ‘Although I’m also called Morey, if that’s easier for you.’
Raven snorted. ‘Hrafn Eydisson. But if you cannot pronounce that correctly, call me Raven. My temper is currently short, and I might flame you if you got it wrong.’
‘Penny White,’ I said. ‘Are these lemmings under your control?’
‘No, ma’am, not strictly speaking. But they have orders to follow my commands.’
‘Orders from whom?’ I demanded.
‘From someone who is glad to see you.’ And Cornelius gave us a bow. ‘I’ve been sent to take y’all to him.’
I found myself wondering which southern American state he’d come from. Then I reminded myself that the USA in Daear probably bore very little resemblance to that on Earth. ‘We’ve come to look for a friend of ours,’ I said. ‘His name is Clyde. He’s a snail shark, but he’s family, and we want him back.’
Cornelius wriggled his antennae. ‘Is this snail easy to pick out?’
‘His shell curls on the left,’ Morey said. ‘And he can fly.’
A whistling sound came from the praying mantis. It took me a moment to realise that he was chuckling. ‘Yes, sir, I think we can help. Please come with us, just over yonder. Maybe one of y’all can offer me a ride? Walking does wear me slap out.’
Peter gave him a nod, and Cornelius flew onto his shoulder. The lemmings swarmed ahead of us, small legs carrying them over the rough ground. Raven shuffled alongside me, the mud and blood mixture clinging stubbornly to his legs. Peter himself was limping slightly, and at my look he shook his head. ‘I’m okay. My foot caught against a rock as Raven made his crash landing.’
I concentrated on my breath and my own footing. We were climbing up a hill. Rocky outcrops forced us to turn first one direction, then another. ‘Tors,’ Morey told me. He had draped himself around my neck. ‘Formed by the erosion of rock. The geomorphic processes are quite interesting. Differences in climate and rock types means that tors vary from region to region.’
‘Makes me think of giants,’ I puffed. ‘Putting blocks on top of each other.’
‘It’s a perfectly natural process, I can assure you.’
‘Dartmoor,’ Peter said. ‘I think we’re in the Lloegyr equivalent of Dartmoor.’
‘Isn’t that where the large dog lived?’ I asked.
‘What large dog?’ Morey asked, sounding alarmed.
Peter gave me a quick wink. ‘A huge hound haunts Dartmoor. He comes out at night and looks for evil doers. So you should be okay, Morey, an upstanding family gryphon like you.’
We finally reached the top. Green grass alternated with tufts of taller brown. Around thirty feet away from us was a circle of standing stones, about Peter’s height. The sides facing us looked smooth, and I wondered if they’d only been recently erected.
The lemmings halted. Snails poured across the ground, emerging from behind a rock slab set in the middle of the circle. Two of the largest snail sharks, easily the size of small ponies, took up positions at the gap between the stones nearest us. Another twenty lined themselves on either side of the slab. They faced inwards, tentacles erect. An honour guard, I realised. The snails had formed an honour guard.
Cornelius flew to the ground. ‘If y’all would come with me, guests of the Great Leader.’
We walked between two stones, the large snails watching us with dark eyespots. Raven stopped just outside, his body too large to allow him passage. Cornelius halted, then called out, ‘Your friends are here, Great Leader!’
A snail shark crawled onto the slab. At first I was dazzled by the colours which had been painted around his shell, reds and oranges and yellows bright in the mid afternoon sun. Then I realised that, unlike any of the other snails, the spiral was on the left. ‘Clyde?’ I stuttered.
The mantis turned to face us, foreleg spines clicking. ‘Sirs, ma’am, y’all are speaking to the Great Leader, the ruler of this here land.’
Snails suddenly emerged, sliding onto the hilltop from all directions. I gazed around, my jaw hanging as hundreds of Clyde’s kind covered the grass. They ranged in size from as small as my fist to nearly as large as the honour guards. Jaws opened as they sang out, ‘Arweinydd mawr! Arweinydd mawr! Arweinydd mawr!’ And then continued in Welsh, ‘You are the Great Leader. Lead us into victory! You are the Great Leader. Under your wings we conquer!’
Clyde flushed a bright pink. I’d never seen him so happy.
‘You should have named him Charles,’ Morey said into my ear. ‘The Prince of Snails.’
Chapter Sixteen
Cornelius flew onto the rock and landed on Clyde’s right. The snail angled his eyespots at the mantis. Colours flashed through his body. Cornelius asked him something in a low voice.
The other snails fell silent. The lemmings, I realised, had disappeared. A breeze brought me the smell of damp and grass. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, but it did remind me how far away we were from civilisation.
‘The Great Leader gives his friends great welcome,’ Cornelius said, his accent and speech suddenly changing. Now he sounded like a starchy diplomat, with only a trace of the earlier twang. ‘He’s pleased that you managed to find the cut through.’
‘Cut through?’ I repeated. ‘You mean the thin place?’
Clyde’s jaws opened in a smile. ‘Thin place.’
�
�My apologies, Great Leader,’ Cornelius said smoothly. ‘I will, of course, use your preferred expression from now on.’
Yellow trickled through Clyde’s body, followed by swirls of orange and blue. ‘The Great Leader offers his own apologies,’ Cornelius said. ‘The assistants--’
‘Lemmings,’ Clyde interrupted.
The mantis cocked his head. ‘The lemmings had thought you’d kidnapped the Great Leader. Now all know that you offered him protection. We’re in your debt. You have restored the Great Leader to us.’
‘He’s getting all this from Clyde?’ Peter asked me quietly.
‘I always thought he could say more than we could understand,’ I said, grinning through my tears. ‘Now we have a translator.’
Morey brought his head between ours. ‘And have you noticed? None of these snails have numbers painted on their shells.’
‘What do you mean?’ Raven asked behind us. ‘Why would snails mark their shells with numbers? Do they even understand numbers?’
A low hiss rose from the assembled snail sharks. The sound made my neck prickle. A large snail near Clyde turned towards the mantis, red and orange swirling through his dark body. Cornelius waved his antennae at us. ‘Are you talking about red markings on shells? You’ve met the rebels?’
‘Attacked,’ Clyde said. And as reds and browns pulsed around his exposed teeth, the other snail sharks hissed again.
‘We had no idea,’ Cornelius said. ‘The rebels haven’t come near this stronghold for weeks. They seem to have been busy elsewhere.’
The dark snail caught the insect’s attention for a second time. Cornelius cocked his triangular head, compound eyes watching carefully. ‘The General says anyone who dares to rise up against the Great Leader will die. Please be assured, the army will find and destroy them all.’
A smaller snail, light brown with a tan shell, moved closer to the rock slab. The mantis angled his head and listened. ‘The Major Domo invites the companion protectors of the Great Leader to view his chambers. With the permission of the Great Leader.’
‘We’d love to,’ I said quickly, acutely aware of the angle of the sun and the scabs on Raven’s legs, ‘but it’s rather late. Could we come back another day? Thursday? That’s four days from now.’