by Chrys Cymri
We stood in a large cave. In the blue light from the glow-worms, I could see passageways leading off in many directions. Some were tall enough to accommodate a dragon. Others would only allow an average sized snail through. It was to one of the narrower options that the praying mantis led us.
‘Are these Clyde’s caverns?’ I asked Cornelius.
‘The Great Leader owns all of this. First we’ll take young sir to the escargatoire. Then the Great Leader’s grŵp rhyfelwyr are needed for an important ceremony.’
Morey started muttering again, and I shushed him. ‘Of course, we’re happy to help Clyde in any way we can.’
Raven slumped into a sit as we followed Cornelius through the narrow passageway. Morey pressed himself close to my ear. Very few glow-worms rested on the ceiling, and I forced myself to use my hands to feel out the bumps in the walls. My boots slipped on ground that was wet with snail slime.
Natural light trickled across the floor ahead. I blinked as I stepped into space and brightness. A hole in the ceiling allowed illumination into the broad chamber. Water dripped from the gap and formed small puddles in which several dozen snail shark pups were splashing.
I found myself smiling. The snails were hamster sized, as Clyde had been when he first came into my life. Shades of blue and pink slid through the pups’ bodies as they ran in and out of the water’s edge.
Peter turned to me and grinned. ‘Children are children, no matter what the species.’
A much larger snail shark barked out a sound. The pups scurried to form two lines facing each other. Jago slid down to take up the empty space at one end. I wondered what game they were going to play.
The pups began to move, forwards and backwards. Then they reared up on their feet to open their jaws. As they whipped their bodies left and right, I felt a chill go down my spine. They were imitating the movements of the adult soldiers. This was no game. They were already being taught how to fight.
The movements continued for several minutes. Then the older snail made another noise. The pups turned so that all of them faced the far wall. I squinted, trying look past the shaft of sunshine suddenly flooding the cave with light. The scratchings on the rock were crude, but I could pick out the outlines of winged snails.
A ragged noise rose from the snails. Blue and pink spread across their bodies, then dark purple. The indistinct sounds intensified. Then one phrase became very clear. ‘Arweinydd mawr, arweinydd mawr, arweinydd mawr!’
Peter bent his head to whisper in my left ear, ‘Reminds me of the Hitler youth. Do you think the pups’ motto is “Blood and honour”?’
Morey flew down to the floor. ‘That’s it. Jago isn’t going to spend another minute in this place.’
The chanting came to an end. ‘And now,’ Cornelius announced, ‘y’all bow.’
The snail sharks touched tentacles to the ground. I raised my hands to my ears and wriggled my fingers as I obeyed. I saw Peter and James follow suit, and Morey bend his own head low. The only being in the chamber who stayed upright, his crest raising high above his head, was Jago.
The large snail moved towards him, growling. The eyas raced over to James, and my brother quickly picked him up. Safe in human hands, Jago shifted to his rear legs to sign an explanation. ‘He wants to know,’ James said to me, ‘why we’re going against the Bible. His father has said it’s wrong to worship anyone other than God.’
I stared at the young gryphon. Morey flew back up to my shoulder. ‘“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings”,’ he commented. ‘Maybe we need to ask ourselves what the snails think they’re doing.’
‘They’re showing honour to their Leaders,’ Cornelius said sharply, his forelegs clicking. ‘Young Jago should remember he’s been given a great privilege. Not many pups get to study here.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,’ James muttered.
‘You said the breeding pens were very active,’ I said to Cornelius. ‘Is anyone allowed to become a parent?’
‘Bless your heart. Course not. Only the best and strongest are allowed to have pups.’
‘Who decides that?’ Peter asked.
‘The Nation has a Bloodline Committee, sir. They’re the ones who decide and make the pairings.’
James looked over at me. ‘This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s their culture,’ I told him firmly. ‘It’s not our place to judge.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Ma’am, sirs, time’s running past like a dog with his tail on fire,’ Cornelius said. ‘Could young Jago please stay here?’
Morey growled. ‘No.’
‘What we’re doing next isn’t right and proper for someone his age.’
I lifted a hand to smooth Morey’s stiff feathers. ‘I’m sure he’ll be all right. Look, he’s not taken the blue pill, has he?’
Morey drew his head back to look at me. ‘Black, there are times when I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
I really needed to expand Morey’s cinematic horizons. ‘Jago sees the truth here. Better than we did.’
‘Want to stay,’ Jago commented, his ears and crest drawn back against his neck.
‘Are you sure?’ James asked.
‘Yes.’
So, minus one gryphon, we made our way back to the entrance chamber. Neither Morey nor James looked very happy about Jago’s choice. I again tried to calm the gryphon. My brother stood to one side and glowered.
Raven rose to his feet. I shook my head as he opened his jaws to speak. His wings rose and fell in a draconic shrug. Cornelius marched across the cavern and started down a mercifully wider passageway.
We were still forced to walk single file. Glow-worms attached to the ceiling helped me to pick out and avoid uneven bits of wall. A couple of growls from Raven made me wish we’d asked about our final destination. The dragon would need space to turn around before he could leave.
Then the space widened out into a large cavern. Glow-worms coated the walls, casting enough light to throw shadows across the stone-lined floor. Large snail sharks, their dark shells the height of my waist, had formed a rough circle. They turned to face the three flat stones set up in the centre. I took a deep breath of the damp, dank air. A large snail shell rested on the central rock, and the shovel on the one to the right. The relics of Clyde’s mother.
Clyde himself stood on the far left stone. A red line had been painted around his shell, bright against the earlier lines of purple and the coloured circles. I glanced uneasily between him and the broken snail shell nearby. A very faint trace of red marked the remains.
Cornelius tapped the two nearest snails. They drew back. The mantis stepped to one side to let us humans walk past and into the circle. Raven merely picked up his feet and stepped over the guards. One of his claws snagged on a tentacle, and the snail snarled. The dragon lowered his head and snarled back.
One snail, her shell decorated with swirls of purple, made noises while colours pulsed through her body. ‘Not in here,’ the mantis translated. ‘Not in this place. Not in front of the revered remains.’
The circle closed again, leaving Cornelius on the other side. ‘I don’t like this,’ Peter said to me. ‘Any idea what’s going on?’
I shook my head. ‘Cornelius, why are the revered remains here?’
‘The Spirit Caller understands more Welsh than English,’ the insect said. ‘Could you ask her again, but this time in Welsh?’
Morey spoke before I could. ‘Pam mae’r olion parchedig wedi dod i'r lle hwn?’
The purple-shelled snail spoke again, Cornelius translating. ‘The Great Leader has no memory of the Noble Leader’s death. Unless he knows the identity of her murderer, he cannot avenge her death. So, we will carry out the Spirit Ceremony.’
‘Which means what?’ Morey asked.
‘We’re not familiar with this ceremony,’ I added in Welsh. ‘Could you please tell us more?’
An array of colours chased through the Spirit Caller’s
body. Cornelius waited until she had returned to a neutral grey before speaking. ‘The spirit of the Noble Leader is still held within her revered remains. The Ceremony will enable her to cross over and enter the body of the Great Leader. Their spirits will combine, and he’ll know what she knows. Then he can hunt down her killer.’
‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ Morey told us. He dropped from my shoulder to land outside the circle.
A hiss went around the cavern. A dozen snail sharks, the size of large dogs, emerged from a crevice and flowed towards the gryphon. ‘Clyde,’ I said, my eyes on their open jaws, ‘do something.’
‘Rhowch y gorau iddo!’ Clyde called out. The soldiers obeyed, halting several feet away. Then browns and oranges, touched with yellow and blue, swirled through his body.
‘You are my grŵp rhyfelwyr, and my friends,’ Cornelius translated. ‘Please come back into the circle. I need your support.’
Morey glanced between Clyde, the snail sharks, and the exit. Then he flew back up to my shoulder. ‘This is distinctly pagan,’ he muttered.
‘What harm can it do?’ I asked him. ‘There’s no such thing as spirit transfer.’
‘What harm?’ Morey pulled back to meet my eyes. ‘There’s good reason why the Bible warns against seeking out mediums or becoming involved in any kind of spiritism. It’s very dangerous.’ Then his feathers smoothed. ‘Actually, Clyde has nothing to fear. He’s been baptised. His soul has the seal of the Holy Spirit and he’s under Christ’s protection.’
I wiped my hands on my fleece. ‘So I don’t have to worry that Clyde will suddenly remember what happened?’
‘There will be no spirit transfer. Come on, Black, have some conviction in your faith.’
The snails turned, lining up face to tail. A sharp sound came from the Spirit Caller. Then they began to move, circling us in a clockwise direction. Raven, standing off to the right, opened his jaws and gave an exaggerated yawn. I glared at him, and he gave me a quick wink.
The flickering light from the glow-worms gleamed on the slime trail on which the snails travelled. The Spirit Caller opened her jaws and, without breaking the pace, released a strange noise. Not quite a chant, nor musical enough to be a song, the sound echoed around the cave and made my teeth ache.
I took a deep breath, and immediately regretted it. A new smell was filling the air, a pungent mix of old leather, rotting manure, and rosemary. My eyes watered. To my left, I heard Peter coughing and James gagging. Morey hopped down to the floor and spread a wing over his beak. Clyde twisted his tenacles, and I found myself wondering whether snails had a sense of smell.
I wiped a hand across my eyes. The cave seemed to be wavering. And the air was becoming uncomfortably warm. I loosened my jacket, and wondered why it had changed in colour from blue to dark red. Raven, I noted, shimmered purple rather than green-black. James and Peter seemed to be striped red and white, as if they’d been turned into deck chairs. As for Morey, yellow did not suit him at all.
The other snails started humming. I felt sweat trickle down my back. A dark swirl, like ink in water, rose from the shell fragments. It hovered over the stone, then firmed into a familiar shape. Tentacles, shell, tail. The spiral was on the left. I swallowed as I faced Clyde’s mother.
Black wavered around the edges of her form, like flickering flames of darkness. For a moment the eyespots looked at me. Shadow pulled away from shadow as her jaws opened.
I blinked. Sunlight warmed my face and grass clumped under my feet. Chickens protested in the distance. A plane droned overhead, and I smelled the damp of leaves after rain. I turned my head, looking for Earls Barton Man.
Raven grunted. The snail rotated. Wings emerged from beneath her shell, and she dived towards the dragon. Raven screamed as white teeth ground into his leg. I glanced around the garden, wondering for a moment why I saw stone walls rather than a wooden fence. Then I spotted the shovel. Three strides took me to the rock, and I grabbed the blue handle. Another three strides and I was at Raven’s side. I swung the flat of the blade at the snail shark.
The shovel juddered in my hands and Raven yelped. Blue-white light filled my eyes. The handle dropped from my tingling fingers and I dimly heard the clatter as the spade hit the floor. A weal rose from the dragon’s right leg, just below the white scars. And the shadow scurried up his chest, swirled around his muzzle, and dissipated around his nostrils. Raven sneezed.
‘I know!’ Clyde’s voice broke across the cave. He flowed down from his platform and crawled up the second stone to stand beside the broken snail shell. ‘I know!’
The snails halted. I stepped back as they turned as one to face us, jaws opening. Cornelius translated, slowly and solemnly, ‘She’s the one who killed the Noble Leader. She’s the one who killed my mother!’
Chapter Twenty-Two
The snails moved forwards, the circle tightening around us. The soldiers pressed in close behind, towering above their smaller counterparts. Peter stepped around me and picked up the shovel. I touched the place on my belt where my sword should have been, and noted with regret that both men were also unarmed. Morey crouched, tail lashing as he bared his teeth. James gulped loudly, and raised his fists.
‘Don’t use flame,’ Peter told Raven. ‘Not in this enclosed space. Teeth and claws only.’
But the dragon simply stared at him. The blue-green eyes were wide and glassy. His wings drooped from his back. The sound of his quick and shallow breaths was jarring in the otherwise quiet cavern.
‘Stop,’ I said desperately, my mind scrambling for the correct Welsh. ‘Gadewch i mi siarad â'r arweinydd mawr. Clyde, please, let me talk to you. I can explain, I promise you, I can explain everything.’
Clyde’s tentacles writhed. Then he commanded, ‘Rhowch y gorau iddo.’
The other snails halted. Colours swirled through Clyde’s body. Cornelius translated, ‘Take away the rest of the grŵp rhyfelwyr. I’ll speak to the murderer alone.’
Peter raised the shovel. ‘I’m not going.’
‘Nor me,’ Morey added.
James glowered at Clyde. ‘We’re staying right here.’
‘Please, go,’ I urged them. ‘He’s still calling you his grŵp rhyfelwyr, so you should be safe.’
‘But what about you?’ Peter asked.
‘We can’t fight our way out of this one,’ I said. ‘If we try, we’ll all be dead. I know Clyde will listen to me. Trust me, I’ll be okay.’
The circle parted, permitting the soldiers to enter. Men and gryphon allowed themselves to be escorted away, although not without grumbles. I bit my lip as I watched Raven move. As one snail tapped tentacles against his foreleg, the dragon shook his body like a dog emerging from a river. He followed the soldier, walking as though he were in a trance.
Then only Clyde and I remained. Well, except for ten other snail sharks and a terrier-sized praying mantis. Although it made the soldiers hiss, I walked over to the empty stone, and sat on it to face Clyde. ‘Do you really know the whole story, Clyde? What do you actually remember?’
‘Dead,’ the snail pronounced. And then Cornelius added, ‘You swung the blade and broke the Noble Leader’s shell.’
‘You were very young when I found you,’ I said. ‘And you were hiding under a bush. How much did you actually see?’
‘Dead.’
‘Yes, you saw your mother dead. You might even have seen her die. But did you see what happened before that?’ Silence from the snail. His body was grey. ‘Then let me tell you. She attacked me, Clyde. I tried to run away from her, I did my best to escape, but she nearly caught me. Raven landed in the garden and issued a challenge. So she threw herself at his leg. She would have crippled him. So I had no option. To save him, and to save myself, I used the shovel against her. The impact didn’t kill her immediately, but she did die a few minutes later.’
The snail was still absolutely still, not even a trickle of colour in his body. I spread my hands. ‘Clyde, I had no choice. Your mother left me with no choice
. She would’ve killed me, and she was doing her best to kill Raven, too. What else could I have done?’
His jaws opened. ‘Told me. About mam.’
‘Yes, I should have told you,’ I admitted. ‘But when? How? Do you think I’m happy that I killed your mother? I’ve felt guilty from the moment I found you, when I realised that I’d taken her away from you. Clyde, I’m so sorry that you’ve grown up without a mother. If there were any way I could change that, I would.’
Finally colour twirled through his body. Cornelius translated, ‘You gave me a home.’
‘Yes, I did.’
Again Clyde spoke for himself. ‘Tank. Cage. Crickets.’
‘Teletubbies,’ I countered. ‘Beer. Rabbits.’ I sighed. ‘Look, I’m not perfect. I did what I thought was best at the time, and I made mistakes along the way. But, Clyde, you know that I love you.’
The eyespots were fixed on my face. I held still, blinking away a few tears. For some reason, I was suddenly reminded of James, stomping upstairs to his room when he was sixteen years old and I had grounded him for not doing his homework. I felt as if I were once again standing on the wrong side of a door, wondering if I’d ever get better at dealing with angry teenagers.
Several snails entered the cave. I recognised the General. The precision of the crescent wing symbols on his shell, and on those accompanying him, made me wonder whether they could be part of some elite. Colours pulsed through their bodies, and then through Clyde’s in turn. I glanced at the praying mantis. ‘Cornelius?’
‘They’ve heard about the results of the Spirit Ceremony.’ The forelegs opened and closed. ‘And the Conclave finds the outcome unsatisfactory. To be killed by a human is not the heroic ending which an Eternal Leader deserves.’
My head was starting to hurt. I rubbed my eyes. ‘I’d be happy not to talk about it, if they are.’
‘A new tale of martyrdom will be created.’ The mantis waved antennae at me and drawled, ‘You ought to be as happy as a dead pig in sunshine. This means the Great Leader won’t have to kill you.’