Sky Wolves

by Livi Michael

  Late in the night he woke, thinking immediately of Jenny, and his heart sank all over again when he realized she wasn’t there. He also realized he was very cold. The heating must have gone off. But he wanted to get up, to check downstairs, just in case she had somehow found her way back. He reached out for his dressing gown and his hand fell on a mass of hairy wool. It was the jumper his aunts had knitted for him; it must have fallen out when he was looking for something else.

  Normally, of course, Sam wouldn’t be caught dead in that jumper. But right now he didn’t care. He tugged it on, feeling a strange tingling sensation like an electric shock as he did so, and trotted downstairs in his slippers, calling Jenny’s name softly.

  There was no response. The house still felt empty without her. Dejected, Sam was about to turn round again and climb the stairs, when he saw a coloured light gleaming through the glass of the back door. He opened the door and gasped.

  There, in the darkness and fallen snow of the back yard, was a rainbow. Sam had never seen a rainbow up close before and certainly not in his back yard. All the colours gleamed and shone, from deepest violet to a bright, pure red, illuminating the yard and curving away from him.

  Sam could suddenly see that the rainbow was a bridge and that it would take him to where he needed to go. A wild hope flared in him that it would take him to Jenny. He glanced back over his shoulder for a moment, but decided that he couldn’t possibly tell his mother. She would never let him set off alone in the middle of the night, crossing a strange rainbow. He closed the door softly behind him and stepped into the yard. All the rainbow colours glowed softly, invitingly, as he took his first step on to the mysterious bridge.

  24

  The Bowels of the Earth

  Boris landed first, and the impact seemed to drive all four paws into his skull. Although the earth was soft, like ashes, he lay where he was for a moment, completely winded. His stomach didn’t seem to have landed yet and there was a rushing noise inside his head. He had just about summoned the energy to suck in some air when Checkers landed on him, effectively pumping it out again.

  ‘Ppphhnngggh,’ said Boris.

  ‘Boris?’ said Checkers, then, ‘Boris! Boris – where are you? Bor – is!’

  Boris knew he had to stop Checkers shouting. But there was no breath left in his body.

  ‘BORIS!’ yelled Checkers. ‘I’m OK. I’ve landed on something soft!’

  ‘I know,’ Boris managed to say at last. ‘Me.’

  Checkers scrambled off him. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘No,’ said Boris shortly, struggling to his feet.

  ‘That was some fall, wasn’t it? How far do you think we fell? Thousands of kilometres, I shouldn’t wonder. How do you suppose we get out again? Where is this place?’

  Boris couldn’t answer any of these questions. Impulses were reaching his brain but failing to connect. With a sickening lurch, he realized his stomach had landed after all. He opened his eyes and wondered why he still couldn’t see anything. A single message began the long trek along his optic nerve to his brain, then flailed around hopelessly before finally fizzling out.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally.

  ‘Well – I hope we’re not stuck here,’ said Checkers. ‘What happens next? Where do we have to go? Do you think this is where the Guardian lives? And if so – how do we find him?’

  Boris wasn’t good with questions at the best of times. He shook his ears and a shower of soot fell out. Then he spat what felt like soot and ashes out of his mouth.

  ‘I mean, if he’s a Guardian,’ Checkers said, ‘then he’ll be guarding something, won’t he? We’ll probably bump into him sooner or later. Do you think we’ll recognize him when we do? Maybe we should just set off and see what happens. But which way?’

  ‘Checkers,’ said Boris.

  ‘Yes, Boris?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Checkers. ‘Right.’ And he managed to stay silent for almost a minute, while Boris tried to think. Then he said, ‘Can you hear a rushing noise in your ears?’

  If Checkers could hear it too, Boris thought, then there were two possibilities. Either it was the effects of the fall, popping their eardrums until it sounded as though two very small brass bands had become lodged inside their skulls, or else it was…

  ‘A river!’ cried Checkers, and he bounded off.

  Boris sighed the sigh of the unutterably depressed. He had no choice but to run after Checkers. He didn’t want to lose him in this place.

  There was a dim and fitful light from an unseen source, as though they were travelling through a very dark wood on a windy night, with the only light coming from a tiny moon that had developed blood pressure and was emitting a reddish glow. But all around them was the stench of decay, as though no wind had blown in this place for thousands of years. Yet the noise did seem to be the sound of a river, moving slowly and inexorably, and mixed in with it were the sounds of voices yowling and gibbering.

  Checkers stopped suddenly and Boris fell over him.

  ‘I don’t think much of this place,’ he said. ‘Where are all the ice-cream vans? And the rabbits?’

  Patiently, Boris started to explain that there were no ice-cream vans in the underworld, that had just been the Harpies luring them in, but Checkers crouched suddenly to the floor.

  ‘What’s that?’ he whispered in a hushed and terrified voice.

  ‘What?’ said Boris, unnerved.

  ‘Can’t you see them?’ Checkers moaned. ‘Oh, they’re horrible – horrible. Don’t let them get me!’

  ‘What?’ said Boris again. ‘Where?’ Fearfully, he looked all around. He couldn’t see anything. But Checkers went on whining and cringing, and Boris could get no sense out of him.

  ‘There it is again!’ moaned Checkers, flattening himself further.

  ‘Checkers,’ Boris said, ‘what is it? I can’t see anything.’

  They were on a kind of road with tall rocks on either side. Ahead, in the distance, the darkness seemed to be moving, and Boris thought that must be the river. A murky fog swirled round it.

  ‘Oh, stop them!’ Checkers whimpered. ‘They’ve seen us now. We’re lost – lost, I tell you! Doomed.’

  ‘Stop what?’ said Boris, losing patience.

  ‘Them,’ moaned Checkers. ‘Look!’

  ‘Checkers,’ said Boris, ‘you do know that your eyes are shut, don’t you?’

  ‘They can’t be,’ said Checkers.

  ‘They are,’ said Boris. ‘And anyway, there’s nothing there.’

  ‘Can’t you see them?’ said Checkers. ‘Monstrous beasts. Fluttering phantoms. Lots of legs and arms. Far too many heads. More than you’d want. It can’t be useful, having that many heads. All their tongues lolling out and their eyes dangling. You must be able to see that!’

  ‘No,’ said Boris.

  Then he too shut his eyes and, surprisingly, he saw a small mass of something glowing and quivering. With a lurch of horror, he realized it was one of Mrs Finnegan’s experimental meals. It seemed to have come to life and was beckoning him. It was making slurping and sucking noises, though it had no lips, and was wriggling suggestively. His eyes shot open again in dismay.

  ‘Told you,’ said Checkers, whose eyes were still firmly shut.

  Boris swallowed nervously. He shut his eyes again. There were more of them now – the turnip and mung bean surprise slithering over the rocks towards him, the squid custard dribbling menacingly near his feet. Boris shuddered all over. They meant to eat him, he thought suddenly. There were hundreds of them – every foul meal he had ever digested, returning to take its revenge.

  ‘Don’t let them get me!’ whimpered Checkers.

  Boris forced himself to open his eyes. Instantly the food disappeared. It occurred to him that he and Checkers were seeing different phantoms. With his eyes shut, Checkers was seeing hideous forms and grotesque monsters, while he, Boris, was seeing Mrs Finnegan’s experim
ental cookery. Boris had a rush of insight, which was such a new experience that he had to sit down.

  ‘Checkers,’ he said, ‘open your eyes.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t look!’ whined Checkers.

  ‘Open them!’ Boris said sternly.

  Wincing and flinching, Checkers opened his eyes. ‘I can’t see anything!’ he said in a different tone of voice.

  ‘No,’ said Boris. ‘That’s because nothing’s there.’

  ‘But I saw –’

  ‘You saw your own fear,’ said Boris. ‘That’s what fear does – it makes you look away. When you look straight at it, it disappears.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Checkers.

  ‘Just keep your eyes open, whatever happens,’ said Boris. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of except your own fear.’

  With a show of determination he did not feel, Boris set off, expecting at any moment to be attacked by a prawn and parsnip pie. Cautiously, still cowering, Checkers followed Boris as he picked his way over stones and clumps of what might have been dead things. The noise of the river grew louder and the soft earth changed to the mud of the river bed.

  A signpost read: STYX, RIVER OF DOOM. Someone had crossed out DOOM and written DESPAIR on it instead, and someone had crossed that out and written DEATH. On the other side of the sign, it read: ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Fortunately, neither dog could read. But as they looked at the river, they got the general idea.

  It didn’t so much flow as slurp, and again Boris was reminded sharply of Mrs Finnegan’s experimental cookery. It was greenish brown, like her pudding, and from time to time menacing bubbles broke the surface, expelling noxious vapours into the reeking air. It looked as if some enormous giant had blown his nose, discharging a boiling river of snot into the oozing bed.

  ‘Right,’ said Checkers, peering worriedly over Boris’s shoulder. ‘Er – you first.’

  Boris stared at him.

  ‘You can swim better than me,’ said Checkers, though he had the grace to look a little shamefaced, since this was a direct lie.

  ‘I don’t think we’re meant to swim it,’ said Boris, shuddering. ‘Don’t we have to wait for the ferryman?’

  ‘The ferryman?’ said Checkers. ‘You mean the grumpy old cove who’s been in a bad mood since before the dawn of time?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Boris. ‘I think we’re supposed to give him this.’ He jerked his head to dislodge the flowering branch, which, miraculously, was still tucked inside his collar. It straggled and drooped from his mouth, looking, if not dead, then at least deeply depressed.

  ‘What are we supposed to do with that?’ hissed Checkers. ‘Beat him with it?’

  But before Boris could answer, there was a roar from far out on the river.

  ‘You there – whoever you are – take not another step! This place belongs to the shades!’

  Checkers shot backwards, barking furiously. Boris quivered all over but stood his ground. He could dimly see, through the swirling mists, a black speck that was getting larger. Soon it was large enough for him to make out the figure of an ancient man, standing in a boat that seemed to have been sewn together from the skins of long-dead creatures and plying a pole through the turgid water. He was filthy and ragged, but his eyes burned like coals. The sound of wailing and lament accompanied him as he pressed his way through the foul slime, and, as Black Shuck had warned them, he did seem to be in a shockingly bad mood, though this was hardly surprising, Boris thought, if he had been stuck in this unpleasant working environment for all eternity.

  ‘Who dares to trespass in the groves of doom?’ he roared as he approached, and both dogs finally got a good look at him.

  In fact, it was a much better look than either of them wanted. He was as skinny as Famine and a tattered beard hung down to his bony knees, which protruded through the rags he was wearing. His fingers resembled the yellowing claws of a bird of prey and, deep in their bony sockets, his eyes glowed red. But he had a good, strong voice, like the bellows of a furnace.

  ‘Speak!’ he roared. ‘I am Charon, ferryman to the dead!’

  Boris had forgotten what he wanted to say. But Checkers, who felt ashamed of his impulse to run, managed to say, in an unnaturally squeaky voice, ‘Can we have a lift?’

  ‘A lift?’ thundered Charon. ‘This isn’t a taxi, you know.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Checkers. ‘You haven’t got one of those little signs on the top.’

  Boris found his voice and hushed Checkers as Charon glared down at them both.

  ‘If you please, sir,’ he said, ‘we have to get to the other side.’

  ‘Are either of you dead?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Boris.

  ‘Then why do you want to cross the river of death? Don’t you think I’ve got enough to do, ferrying all the lost souls, without wasting my time on the living?’ and he gnashed the few teeth he had. ‘No living soul may enter the abode of death,’ he said.

  ‘But we’ve got to fight the Guardian,’ said Checkers, adding ‘OW!’ as Boris nudged him, hard.

  Charon stared at them, as if they had lost their minds. Then he tipped back his head and laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh. It sounded unpleasantly like the cries of the damned. Besides, they could see the rotting stumps of his teeth.

  ‘Fight – the Guardian?’ he gurgled, slapping his bony thighs. ‘Fight Cerberus, the monstrous Keeper of the Gates, who puts terror even into the bloodless shades? The brazen-voiced Hound of Hades, whose three jaws are rabid with hunger and whose massive back writhes with fifty venomous snakes? Whose howl sends even the gods to destruction?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ squeaked Checkers from behind Boris.

  ‘We don’t have to fight him,’ insisted Boris. ‘We just have to persuade him to come with us.’

  Charon laughed again. It didn’t suit him and he obviously didn’t do it often. It made him cough, a long, horrible cough. When he had finished, he looked at them with his red eyes watering and said, ‘Only once has any mortal successfully tackled the Guardian of the Dead. Hercules, king of heroes and a god among men, had, as his final and greatest labour, to bring the infernal hound to Eurystheus, King of Mycenae. But the monstrous beast so frightened Eurystheus that Hercules had to take him back.’ Charon shook his tattered beard, remembering. ‘That was many millennia ago,’ he said, and sighed. ‘Those were the days.’

  Boris was feeling distinctly depressed. He began to wish that he hadn’t run away from Mr Finnegan. Even the dogs’ home was better than this. Checkers, however, was still making a show of bravado.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘where does he hang out then – this monstrous hound?’

  Charon laughed his wheezing, rattling laugh that ended once again in a terrible cough.

  ‘You want to take something for that,’ said Checkers.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Charon. ‘It’s the damp. It gets to your chest after the first few thousand years. The watchdog of the underworld lives in his den on the infernal side of the river.’ He looked out across the sludgy water and both dogs followed his gaze, but the river was too wide for them to see the other side. ‘He greets the souls I ferry across the water. Unfortunately for them, they are already dead, so they cannot die of fright. However, most of them do wish, at that point, that they had never been born. And he makes sure that none of them return from Hades.’

  Charon looked at the two dogs quite kindly for a moment.

  ‘I cannot ferry the living,’ he said. ‘Return to your homes, small, hairy creatures. Forget this foolishness and consider yourselves blessed.’

  Dumbly, Boris turned to go, but Checkers blocked his way.

  ‘We can’t go back now,’ he said. ‘We’ve come this far. And what’ll happen to the others if we give up? Besides – we don’t know the way.’

  Boris knew this was true. But his heart was filled with dread and his stomach felt as though he’d swallowed an enormous stone. He wanted nothing so much as to lie in his
basket at home, in front of a nice, cheerful fire. He wouldn’t even mind the baby chewing his ears, he thought.

  ‘Come on,’ Checkers said sternly. ‘Chin up.’

  Boris made a feeble, protesting noise. ‘But we can’t get across the river,’ he said, ‘if he won’t take us.’

  ‘He will take us,’ Checkers said.

  ‘No, he won’t,’ said Boris.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said Charon.

  Checkers reached forward and nudged the limp branch in Boris’s mouth. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Give it to him.’

  Boris stared at him dully, until Checkers took the branch from him and proffered it to Charon.

  ‘There you go,’ said Checkers. ‘We’ve got something for you.’

  Charon looked taken aback.

  ‘For me?’ he said.

  Then a look of something almost like awe crossed his ancient features. It seemed even less at home there than his laugh. He reached out trembling fingers towards the straggling branch.

  ‘The Golden Bough,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘Its golden foliage illuminates the darkest shades of Tartarus. This is the vine from whose pliant green stems blossoms the breath of gold flowers, like stars to comfort lost souls through their endless night.’

  Checkers and Boris looked in surprise at the limp twig. After all their adventures, it had only a few leaves clinging to it, and a single flower.

  ‘If you say so,’ said Checkers doubtfully, but Charon went on looking at the branch as if enchanted, delicately touching the flower.

  ‘You bring me priceless treasure,’ he breathed.

  ‘Really?’ said Boris.

  ‘I accept your payment. You may enter the boat.’

  ‘D’you hear that, Boris?’ said Checkers. ‘We’re in!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Boris.

  But Checkers had already leapt excitedly at the boat, which rocked wildly as he landed. Boris sighed and followed him, rather less enthusiastically, shuddering as he was forced to wade into the slimy water.

  Charon, meanwhile, miraculously kept his balance, still gazing entranced at the weedy twig, then, without a word, he tucked it into the folds of his cloak and grasped the pole. As he pushed it, the boat moved slowly through the grimy foam, which seemed to gasp as they passed, so that a terrible stench went up. Greyish weeds clung to the water’s edge, as if hoping to drown themselves. Only Gheckers’s spirits seemed undampened.