by Livi Michael
Before their eyes, he returned to his former shape of a glowing light and disappeared over the edge of the ravine.
Gentleman Jim and Pico rushed to the edge. They saw Orion’s light glimmering over the surface of the water, hovering like a large, pale insect. Then suddenly it dipped downwards and, just as suddenly, disappeared.
‘Now what?’ whispered Gentleman Jim, but Pico could find nothing to say. It was as if the water had swallowed Orion’s soul.
‘Where’s he gone?’ said Gentleman Jim, and both dogs gazed in consternation as the water below them began to churn more rapidly than before, almost as if it was boiling. The surface bulged for a moment, then sank down again.
‘Orion?’ called Pico. ‘O – ri – on!’
The water bulged again and bubbles broke the surface.
‘GO AWAY!’ said a voice drenched in misery.
In agitation, Gentleman Jim ran along the edge of the ravine one way and Pico the other. The surface of the water bulged into the shape of an enormous man, but rapidly the shape disappeared.
Gentleman Jim licked his lips. ‘Orion?’ he began.
‘DON’T LOOK AT ME!’ cried the anguished soul, and he disappeared beneath the surface of the water again.
Gentleman Jim and Pico stared at one another in dismay.
‘Orion, you have to come out,’ said Pico, but Orion only howled again.
‘I can never come out!’ he cried. ‘I deserve only to drown!’
‘Now, look here,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘There’s no use wallowing around! You have to come out and face up to what you did -’
He was cut off by Orion’s lament. ‘I can never face up to this!’ he cried. ‘It is monstrous, horrible! I DESERVE ONLY TO DIE!’
And as this howl faded it was taken up by another, far more terrible and unearthly – a vengeful, hate-ridden shriek, as if all the bad thoughts in the world had been condensed into a single cry, punctuated only by the rapid beating of wings. Gentleman Jim and Pico looked at one another in even greater dismay, remembering suddenly, with horrible clarity, what the starry Orion had said.
The Furies were coming.
30
The Monster’s Tail
‘Of course, it might mean,’ Checkers pointed out, ‘that he’s in a good mood.’
Boris said nothing. He was too busy trying to dodge the shower of stones and skulls dislodged from the walls and roof of the cave. The tail had settled down and was now thumping erratically on the floor of the cave. Every time it thumped, the cave quivered, and Boris was drawing unpleasant conclusions about the size of the beast attached to it.
‘If we could get right up to him,’ Checkers said, ‘we could have a sniff at his bum.’
Boris’s look said it all.
Dogs can tell a great deal by sniffing the bums of other dogs. They can tell what mood they’re in – hostile or friendly – how well they fight, what they’ve eaten recently and so on. Normally, sniffing the rear end of another dog was a good first step to establishing a relationship, but when it came to the Hound of Hades, Boris was unsurprisingly reluctant. He thought that there must be a better plan, surely, if only he could think of it.
The tail was lifting itself now, then thumping downwards, once, twice… The third time, it remained lifted.
The two friends waited. Nothing happened. The dreadful thumping was replaced by a terrible silence.
‘Right,’ said Checkers. ‘I’m going in.’
And before Boris could shout ‘Wait!’ or ‘Don’t do it, Checkers!’ or ‘What – are you nuts?’ Checkers was running under the tail.
‘Checkers, don’t!’ Boris called at last, in a strangled bark. ‘It’s a trick!’
But Checkers went on bounding forward, following the length of the enormous tail.
Boris groaned aloud. He didn’t even bother about being quiet. Cerberus knew they were there, he was quite sure about that, and Checkers was bounding forward to certain death. Which meant that he, Boris, had to bound after him.
With a hopelessness born of utter despair, Boris plodded after Checkers. He aimed to stay to one side of the mammoth appendage, which was twitching evilly above him, but every time he tried to dodge it, it shifted position slightly, just as if it was tracking his every move. As in fact it was, Boris realized, and he would have had a sinking feeling, except that there was nowhere further for his spirits to sink.
Above him, the tail was growing in size and thickness, and Boris knew they must be reaching its horrid end.
‘It’s here!’ Checkers shouted excitedly. ‘I can see it now! It’s a big one – I can smell it from here! I’ll just see if I can get my nose tucked right in –’
‘Checkers – no!’ panted Boris, but he was too late.
Checkers had clambered on to a rocky ledge and thrust his nose upwards, right under the root of the tail. At that precise moment, two things happened. Checkers staggered backwards, reeling from the smell, and the tail coiled itself inwards with lightning speed. Boris barely had time to flatten himself against the sides of the cave before it swept past him, wrapping itself round and round Checkers. And as soon as it had got him, it began threshing around, thumping him against the walls, ceiling and floor. Boris stared aghast as Checkers was butted into the wall just centimetres away, and the cave shook with the force of the blow.
‘Gnnnngggh!’ said Checkers, landing again next to Boris. Then ‘Ppphhhnnngg!’ as the great tail drove him powerfully into a nearby rock. And ‘Ggglllrrrkkk!’ as he pounded the wall again.
‘Checkers!’ cried Boris in distress, clambering uselessly after his friend.
He realized that Checkers was trying to tell him something, but he was greatly hampered by being squeezed to death. Checkers struggled valiantly in the coils of the tail, and Boris ran from side to side after him, trying to keep up.
At last, Checkers got his muzzle free. He shouted something at Boris, but Boris couldn’t hear, and he was finding it hard to concentrate, what with the cave falling in all around him and the imminence of death.
‘What?’ he cried uselessly. ‘What did you say?’
The great tail stopped thumping briefly as Boris scrambled over fallen rocks to get to his friend. Checkers was a sorry sight. His ear was bleeding and both eyes were swelling up.
‘I think I’ve got him cornered,’ he managed to say, as Boris reached him. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is –’
But the tail lifted again, before he could finish the sentence, swinging him high into the air, then battering him into the ground.
Boris growled and gnashed at the tail, trying to bite it, but it was too fast for him. All his life, things had been too fast for Boris and now his lack of speed was going to prove fatal to his best friend.
‘Boris,’ Checkers said, as he hit the ground again and lay still for a moment. ‘Boris – I think I’m done for.’
‘Don’t say that!’ panted Boris.
‘It’s true,’ moaned Checkers. ‘I can’t fight this one. You’ll have to fight him for me.’
‘Me?’ gasped Boris, as the great tail swung Checkers up again. ‘I’m no fighter, Checkers. I’ve never fought another dog in the whole of my life.’
‘Well – now’s – your – chance!’ panted Checkers, and with each word the monstrous tail pounded him into the rocks.
Boris wanted very much to protest. He wanted to say that he had never felt the urge to fight, he just wasn’t that kind of dog. And if he was going to start a fight for the first time ever, it wouldn’t be with the Hound of Hades, whose mounds of poo were five times larger than Gentleman Jim. He wanted to say that he wished he’d stayed in bed that morning, or let Mr Finnegan take him to the dogs’ home, but everything he wanted to say suddenly caught in the back of his throat. A surge of rage the likes of which he had never experienced before boiled up in him. It was rage at all the injustice he had ever experienced, rage at his owners and their fiendish infant and, most of all, rage at the diabolical hound that was pounding his best fr
iend into a pulp. Suddenly he knew himself to be what Jenny had said he was, the guardian and protector of Checkers. Rage coursed through his veins and into his muscles and pumped upwards into his throat, so that he released a savage howl.
‘SPAWN OF THE PIT!’ he howled, taking Checkers completely by surprise, and, tensing all his muscles, he sprang at the tail as it descended once more, driving all his teeth into it as far as they would go.
31
The Darkest Hour
Jenny didn’t know how long she had lain, prostrated by grief, in the place where the body of her master had been, because time had lost all meaning. She simply slumped, crumpled and abject, her eyes firmly closed, as though all hope had gone.
Behind her, on the darkest shore, the corpses were gathering. She knew they were waiting for her, but she didn’t care. A black bridge appeared silently, lengthening itself over the stretch of water that separated Jenny from the corpses. She didn’t need to look; she knew it was there and that she was expected to cross it. Once she had, the bridge would disappear again, leaving her on the shore of no return.
It doesn’t matter, she thought. I have nothing to live for now.
But even as she thought this, a different voice nagged at her.
What about your friends? it said. What about Sam?
Sam. The small boy who had given her his heart.
If Ragnarok broke out in Sam’s world, he would be in terrible danger. Her friends were probably in terrible danger already because of Jenny. She couldn’t just abandon them to fight alone.
Slowly, as if it was unutterably heavy, Jenny raised her head. She kept her eyes closed, afraid of what she might see if she opened them. Despair and fear battled with loyalty in her mind. Baldur, she thought, then, Sam.
She had no idea how to return to Sam’s world, or what she could do against all the forces of Ragnarok if she got there. It would be better, and far easier, to enter the darkness.
Yet, against her will, a picture of Sam’s face swam into her mind. Every day, when he saw her, his face lit up. Every afternoon, when he returned from school, he looked as if seeing Jenny had made his day.
Sam, she thought, and it was as though she was calling him. Sam!
He was her Golden Boy now and, holding the bright image of him in her heart as protection against the dark bridge and the gathering corpses, she finally opened her eyes. And there in front of her was the rainbow.
32
The Chapter of Not Being Destroyed by Furies
The bat-winged, snake-haired monsters were approaching and the air whirred with the beating of their wings.
‘Orion!’ shouted Gentleman Jim and Pico together. ‘You have to come out now!’
‘No!’ said the muffled voice. ‘Leave me alone! I deserve to die!’
‘But we don’t!’ Gentleman Jim pointed out. ‘You can’t leave us to the Furies! Come out and fight like a man!’
‘Let the Furies come!’ said Orion, now clearly visible in the murky water. ‘Let them do their worst! Nothing can be worse than this!’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ muttered Gentleman Jim, pacing up and down anxiously. ‘We’ve got to get him out of there. We’ve – Pico?’
Pico was slithering down the sides of the rocky drop towards Orion.
‘Pico!’ cried Gentleman Jim. ‘Pico, come back!’
‘Orion!’ called Pico. ‘I am coming to you!’
‘Oh, great,’ groaned Gentleman Jim.
There was another hateful shriek and he ventured a look upwards, then immediately wished he hadn’t. The Furies were circling above him and he could see their mask-like faces, twisted by rage. Blood and venom dripped from their eyes and in their talons they held long whips.
Gentleman Jim felt his throat tighten so that his voice came out in a husky squeak. ‘If you felt like coming out and saving my life,’ he managed to call to Orion, ‘now might be a good time.’
Meanwhile, Pico landed in the water next to Orion with a loud plop. He surfaced, kicking furiously, and waited to be assailed by feelings of remorse and despair.
Nothing happened.
He paddled round to where Orion could see him.
Nothing happened some more.
‘What are you doing here?’ moaned Orion.
‘I have come to get you out,’ said Pico.
‘I cannot come out,’ said Orion. ‘I have been bad. Very, very bad.’
‘All the more reason to come out,’ said Pico, ‘and face your doom.’
Orion shifted in the water, turning his back on Pico. ‘No,’ he said sulkily. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’
Pico paddled again, until he was facing Orion once more.
‘I bet you haven’t been that bad,’ he said.
‘I have,’ said Orion.
‘Bet you haven’t,’ said Pico.
‘Yes, I have,’ said Orion. ‘What would you know about it?’
‘All right, then,’ said Pico. ‘What have you done?’
‘Look around you,’ Orion said. ‘Can you not see them all?’
Pico craned his neck. But he could see nothing apart from the cliff walls, with Gentleman Jim’s anxious face peering over and the thousands of points of light that had followed them clustering behind.
‘I see nothing,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’
‘All the animals! The soul of every animal I ever killed! Hundreds and thousands of them! They have returned to haunt me now.’
Pico began to understand. That’s what the points of light were. He looked up and swallowed. They did seem to be clustering over the edge, looking down. And once Orion had remembered everything, he was seeing his whole life in a different, crueller light. He had thought he needed only to repent of his boast, but now he was seeing himself as the animals saw him. No wonder he was horrified, Pico thought.
‘But you were a hunter,’ he began.
Orion merely moaned and turned his face into the water. ‘Stop them looking at me,’ he groaned.
Far above them, Gentleman Jim cleared his throat.
‘Ahem,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you could get a move on, could you? The Furies are coming closer and it’s not a pretty sight. In fact, I don’t know when I’ve ever seen anything quite so hideous. Like a cross between your worst nightmare and a horrible accident. I’ve thrown up betterlooking things –’
‘How kind,’ said the nearest Fury, descending right next to him.
‘Now you listen to me,’ said Pico to Orion. ‘You may have done terrible things – but you were a hunter and it was in your nature to kill. Does the lion go around apologizing? Or the shark?’
‘Yes, but they’re only animals,’ said Orion.
Pico stared at him sternly. ‘I think you’ll find,’ he said, ‘that that attitude is what got you into this mess in the first place.’
‘Not nearly as bad when you get close up to them,’ called Gentleman Jim, as the second and third Furies descended. ‘Quite nice-looking really – in a certain light.’
‘I’d quit while I was ahead, if I were you,’ said the nearest Fury, in a voice that felt like fingernails on the blackboard of his soul. ‘And don’t look so worried. We don’t torture dogs.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Gentleman Jim, unable to look at them.
‘Quite sure,’ hissed the second Fury, with the voice of a thousand snakes. ‘Only humans suffer guilt and remorse. Animals aren’t nearly so much fun.’
’That’s why your friend down there isn’t having any problem with the waters of memory and regret,’ commented the third, whose voice was like the slime on the river bed. ‘Only humans have the kind of conscience that enables us to torture them.’
‘And we will torture this one,’ said the first Fury, flapping her wings a little in glee. ‘We will have fun with him for all eternity!’
‘Oh dear,’ murmured Gentleman Jim. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’
‘So, if you don’t get me out,’ Pico was saying, ‘I shall stay here with you. And I will surely drown.
And then you’ll have another death on your conscience.’
Orion looked at him wearily. ‘Why would you want to die for me?’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ said Pico. ‘I’d much rather you got me out.’
‘Or – i – on?,’ sang all the Furies, in hideously off-key voices. ‘Come to us!’
‘We’ll deal with them when we get to them,’ said Pico firmly. ‘Now – get me out.’
With a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the water, Orion extended a hand towards Pico, cupped him and lifted him free of the water.
‘I shall save you, little dog,’ he said. ‘I shall leave the water and face my doom.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Pico encouragingly, as Orion started to climb, still muttering about how worthless he was and how he deserved only death.
Above them the Furies fluttered their wings, rising and falling in an ecstasy of anticipation.
‘Stand back,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Stand back and give him some room.’
It was hard work, climbing with only one hand, but at last Orion emerged, dripping, over the edge of the cliff, and he was still carrying Pico. The Furies gave a heart-stopping shriek.
‘At last!’ they cried with one awful voice. ‘At last – you are ours! Come and take your punishment. You belong to us!’
And they rose, flapping about his head and brandishing their whips.
‘Oh, no, he doesn’t,’ said Pico, as Orion merely stood shivering, with his head bowed. Anyone attacking Orion has to get past me first. I stand with him!’
‘Pico,’ began Gentleman Jim, as the Furies howled with laughter, but the little dog would not be silenced.
‘If you want to hurt him you must get past me,’ he repeated.
Gentleman Jim groaned aloud.
‘No, Pico,’ said Orion. ‘Save yourself. I have deserved my fate.’
He tried to put Pico down, but the small Chihuahua hung on.
‘No one can be abandoned to fate while they have one true friend,’ Pico said, realizing as he said it that it was true. ‘I am your friend – and so is Gentleman Jim. We stand together!’
Leave me out of it, thought Gentleman Jim.