The Hundred: Fall of the Wents
Jennifer Prescott
Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Prescott
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design: Adana and Bayron Mejia
All rights reserved. This book was published by the author Jennifer Prescott. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without the express permission of the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing text.
Published in the United States.
First Edition, 2013
The text type is set in Times New Roman
THE HUNDRED
Fall of the Wents
JENNIFER PRESCOTT
For Winston, Baxter, and Dashiell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: Stolen
Chapter Two: The Underbelly
Chapter Three: Bellerol
Chapter Four: The Shrike Stronghold
Chapter Five: Justice
Chapter Six: Prisoners
Chapter Seven: Elutia
Chapter Eight: The Bee’s Sojourn
Chapter Nine: The Shrike-Grout
Chapter Ten: Escape
Chapter Eleven: The Loss of the Box
Chapter Twelve: The Veldstack Herd
Chapter Thirteen: Attack
Chapter Fourteen: The Last Children
Chapter Fifteen: The Wall of Pomplemys
Chapter Sixteen: Into the Hall of Bones
Chapter Seventeen: Capture of Hindrance
Chapter Eighteen: False Flowers
Chapter Nineteen: Fangor Takes Flight
Chapter Twenty: Nizz, Found Again
Chapter Twenty-One: The Shadow Descends
Chapter Twenty-Two: Jaws
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Shard
Chapter Twenty-Four: Pomplemys’ Revenge
Chapter Twenty-Five: Snell’s Forge
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Pods
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Calling of the Chosen
Chapter Twenty-Eight: On the March
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Falling of the Wents
Chapter Thirty: The Whale Becoming
Chapter Thirty-One: The Deeps
“A long time ago a stone fell to Earth. The humans knew that the stone was coming and that they could not escape it. They found a secret space where the people might hide and live on after the great stone came, taking all other life away. But there was room only for one hundred chosen children.”
—Ancient history of the Dull Bees
Chapter One: Stolen
Tully Swift knelt on the shore of the Windermere, playing at Skilling Stones. He wasn’t looking at the game’s grid, however, which they had scratched out with a stick on the dry ground. He was watching his friend Aarvord.
Aarvord’s bulbous eyes, which sat atop his head on short stalks, swiveled quite independently of one another to assess his next move. One eye craned forward to examine the position of his gaming stones. The other glanced back over his shoulder and blinked down at Copernicus, the snake, who was twining among the rows of stones, sniffing here and there for openings by which his Great Veldstack stone could breach the end gate. It seemed unfair to Tully, who wasn’t small enough to actually crawl about on the game. Copernicus could probably spot clever routes from that angle that he, Tully, could not.
“My belly itches,” said Copernicus, flopping onto his back and scratching at his midsection with his snout.
“Do you have to bother with that on top of the game?” said Aarvord. “You’ll knock my pieces all over.”
Tully rather hoped the snake would knock the pieces; he wasn’t faring very well in the game. His own Great Veldstack stone was boxed in by two Scratchlings and a Lilas Kelpie. He couldn’t get it free without sacrificing a few important pieces.
Aarvord made his move.
“Ha ha!” he said, moving his Grout forward three paces and clinking it into one of Copernicus’ pieces. “Trouble is at your door, my small friend!” Aarvord took the stone he’d captured and dropped it into a cairn of battle trophies.
Copernicus snapped himself into a straight line and gazed, belly down, at the spot that his captured stone had so recently occupied. His small jaw pursed up in indignation.
“This game is boring,” said the snake. “Can’t we play Mud Seekers?”
“I don’t feel like going in the water today,” said Tully, gazing out at the Windermere. A breeze kicked at the lake. A fine yellow pollen had drifted over everything and hung in the air; it stung Tully’s eyes and made him cough.
“Mud Seekers!” said Aarvord. “That old game.”
“Oh, but it’s fun to play Mud Seekers,” said Copernicus. “Remember the day you jumped up so fast that Tully’s antennae went stick-straight and stayed that way for hours. Days, maybe!”
“Not days,” said Tully. “Hardly days.”
He remembered the event, though. Tully, with Copernicus twined around his neck, had tracked Aarvord through the fronds of Goosefoot and Strawberry-Blite that grew at the water’s edge. They peered up from behind reeds and then ducked down again. They crouched behind small clouds of Mites and Gnats. Aarvord had evaded them and they’d lost sight of him.
Then, later, there was Aarvord deep in the muck with only his eyeballs protruding. He had risen up without warning and with such a great muddy bellow that Copernicus had shot off Tully’s neck and swam away for several meters before stopping. Tully smiled at the memory of it. It had been springtime then.
“Your turn, Tully,” noted Aarvord.
Tully took up his fattest stone, the Shrike. Copernicus had left an unwary Ell sitting in its path, and Tully knocked it out. He placed the stone in his own little cairn of enemy pieces.
“Ooh!” said Copernicus. “Cruel, yesss? You’re all out to get me, yes.”
“Not cruel, not cruel!” boomed Aarvord. “Good gamesmenship. Tully scores and moves forward on the field.”
It was the snake’s turn. He nosed out and poked another Ell two steps forward on the field. The Ells were weak pieces but, still, Tully could see how the stone might trouble his right-flank Scratchling in another move or two.
Aarvord reached down a great paw and plunked forward a Dull Bee, the weakest piece of all. Dull Bees could only move forward and by one space only. Aarvord’s right eye swiveled toward Copernicus again and the snake gave a little shimmy of assent. Tully frowned. They were up to something. They were cheating! Skilling Stones was supposed to be every creature for itself in a game of three or four players. But sometimes alliances sprang up. No alliance could last until the end, of course. Someone had to win.
Tully was sure that Aarvord’s rear-facing eye was winking all sorts of code to Copernicus, but to prove it he’d have to walk a full five paces around the game. By then Aarvord’s eye would have swiveled forward again and would be staring down at him with pious innocence.
Tully took his Scratchling three spaces back, out of harm’s way, and sat back, pleased with his move.
Copernicus was snaking out onto the field again, pushing his Lilas Kelpie into a new position. Lilas Kelpies could jump like their cloven-hooved namesakes, but Copernicus had to weave it around the other stones because he had no hands to move it.
Tully reached forward and moved his Went seven long diagonal steps toward Copernicus’ keep, intent on finishing the little snake’s bid to win the game. With Copernicus out of the way he could concentrate on taking out Aarvord and watching that smug expression wiped clean. He released his hand and then saw his mistake. He’d left his back flank unprotected; Aarvord would see the error instantly. How could he have been so stupid! His mind—normally so sharp—wasn’t work
ing properly.
Aarvord reached down and took the first wall with his Bonedog and then, because he had earned a second move, the last wall as well. He was at the gate. Tully scanned the stones for an escape. There was none. Aarvord had won.
“You cheated,” said Tully hotly. “I saw you looking at each other.”
“Ssstuff and nonsense!” said Copernicus. “I lost just as well as you have, yesss?”
“Cheat?” said Aarvord, indignant. “Grouts don’t cheat! Least of all Fantastic ones.”
“You made an alliance,” said Tully. “Not fair. What, will you buy him a treat in the city for helping you to the gate?”
“Alliances aren’t against the rules, really,” said Aarvord.
“They ought to be,” said Tully. “You’re admitting it, then?”
“A treat,” said Copernicus, and smiled dreamily. “Something nice, like a sand louse.”
“Oh, stop,” said Tully. “As if you’d eat a sand louse! Or anything with thoughts.”
“I might,” mused Copernicus. “I would. If he were Fangor.”
“You would not eat Fangor.”
“He begs to be eaten!”
“Ah, did you see Fangor last afternoon?” said Aarvord. “He was bouncing around so furiously that he landed right in the eye of that old UnderGrout who is always yelling about ‘end of times’ at Mayhew Crossing. What a fool. The old feller kept saying ‘I got a bug in me eye. I got a Skimmer in me eye!’ and slapping at himself.”
Aarvord laughed heartily and the sound seemed to echo back over the Windermere.
“Fangor got out of it in time, of course, but what a nimwit,” said Aarvord.
“What a gormless orp!” said Copernicus again, and laughed so hard that he sneezed.
“Eugh, I wouldn’t eat him, not even on a cracker,” said Aarvord.
“He’d taste like muck and mud.”
“He’d have the flavor of an Ugwallop, but with more gristle.”
Tully listened to them jesting and felt hot around the eyes. How he hated losing! He was quite the best at Skilling Stones usually, except when people cheated.
“You cheated,” he said again. “You both did.”
“Still on it? You’re a sore loser,” said Aarvord. “Tully Swift, get over yourself. You aren’t always the best at everything.”
“Didn’t say that I was,” said Tully. “Never would!”
“We know that you are a smart and very fine and very clever Eft and the Efts are the finest evolutionary miracle the planet has every produced,” squeaked Copernicus.
Tully recoiled. He had had that thought but had never actually said it out loud, had he?
His head hurt. He gathered up his stones and shoved them into his pouch. They made a pleasing rattle. The sound reminded him of many happy times with his friends. Today, he felt strange and out of sorts.
“Everyone knows the world would come to a grinding halt without the marvelous Trilings—” Aarvord began.
“Stop. What do you know? You’re nothing but a pair of Dualing Savages!” Tully snapped. He heard himself saying it, and was horrified. What had he meant by that?
Copernicus and Aarvord seemed equally horrified.
“If that’s the way you think of us, then!” said the snake. Copernicus had finished nosing his Skilling Stones into a pouch and Aarvord reached down and cinched it up along with his own.
“Your best friends,” grunted Aarvord. “Maybe, Coper, we’d better go?”
“Yess, we ought!” said Copernicus. And he snaked up the leg of his larger friend and then up his spine and hung around his neck. He turned his head back to look at Tully, and sniffed disapprovingly as only a snake can do.
Tully frowned at them and turned away and looked over the lake again.
“Sorry,” he whispered a little bit later, but they were gone by now and couldn’t hear him. And he didn’t mean it much anyway.
Later he tossed stones into the water and stared out at the far shore.
On the horizon he could see a thin dark line twining westward, as if someone had snapped a black rope into the air. It was bees—a hive of Boring Bees. Their pinprick black shapes oscillated against the sky. Watching the line of bees scatter and flow together again made Tully feel strangely off-balance, and when he blinked his eyelids felt too hot and rough against his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously. When he released his fingers the whole sky was suddenly strewn with dancing black marks.
The Boring Bees. The creatures were dangerous and strange enough such that no one would dare to name a game piece in Skilling Stones after them.
He shivered. The bones in his back ached. His neck suddenly ached, too, and even the tips of his antennae felt bruised by the breeze. He scooped a bit of lake water into his mouth, but it tasted brackish and chilled him even more.
Tully had never been ill before. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what to name it.
“Hindrance,” he whispered, but Hindrance was at least a mile away, at home. His stomach lurched and he gagged a bit of the lake water back into his mouth and spat it on the shore, followed by a gasping sob that would have shamed him if his friends had been there to witness it. The air around him was hot. The water of the lake was dark and dusted with the yellow pollen; it sickened him to stare at it. He looked up. The thick, rubbery plants on the spit of land that stretched beyond where he stood seemed to sway and lurch in a dreamlike haze. Tully saw the Boring Bees circling back eastward, purling strange shapes into the air. They were seeking. For a moment, he had the unsettling feeling that they were seeking him.
He rose to his feet and glanced around, disoriented. Which way was home? There was the path. It looked different than he remembered. He wished that Aarvord and Copernicus had stayed. Why had he called them “Dualing savages;” what could he have been thinking? But they had cheated, they had! It wasn’t fair. So much for them; perhaps now they would not see him alive again. That would serve them for their thoughtlessness!
Tully’s eyes hurt. He wished he could close them and lie down. But then the bees would see him. The bees might settle upon him, covering his small form with their great furry bodies and legs. Blotting out the light.
“What odd and awful thoughts to have, Tully Swift!” he said to himself, but he couldn’t seem to shake the itching of his skin at the thought.
He wandered down the path that bordered the lake. His scales felt alternately too hot and too cold, and the breeze pricked and irritated them. Two Grouts who were wandering up the path in the opposite direction squinted and scowled as he passed. In the bright sunlight an Eft’s scales shimmered like so many small, bright gems stitched together, and cast off brilliant shafts of light. Even Tully was bothered today by the flashings from his own body—they made his growing dizziness even worse. Insects buzzed around him as he walked, and he was tempted to slap them aside, but that would have been rude. He sufficed with pushing his hands before him, as if he were swimming, and that parted the majority of them. As he approached the city the clouds of Mites and Blights and Swarmers thinned and broke apart.
A group of Ells and Efts on the corner were playing a game of Mumbles and Tremors, and they stopped and stared at Tully. He knew none of them, so he ducked his head down. He could hear the group sing the foolish little rhyme that was part of the game, and their high, thin voices made his head throb: A Dualing and a Triling went out to sea, one had two and the other had three….
It was not peak trading time, but still he could hardly bear the crush and thrum of the city market, the stirring feathers and feet and sinuous bodies. There was fur rough against him—Lilas Kelpies on their delicate hooves—and Turtles and Ugwallops and a number of Snakes, but none of them Copernicus. He heard the shriek of an old Scratchling as she saw him:
“Little Eft!” she cried. “Buy a pair of goggles to share with your friends? Don’t blind them, my little Eft. It’s unkind to blind one’s friends.”
Tully thought that he might panic and run, if he had the st
rength. If only there was a kind, caring Went in the crowd—a Went who would see he was in distress, and could help him home. The market was too crowded with Dualings—he nearly tripped over a Tithys Roach, which glared at him with tiny eyes over twitching mandibles. Dualings were often ugly things, and Tithys Roaches the stupidest of the lot. Tully thought he could see Went blossoms nodding through the crush, but it was safer to slip through the knotted mass of low and creeping creatures and escape the market altogether.
He stumbled along for the last few blocks.
Then, finally, he was through the door and home, and down on the floor on his knees, his head in his hands. The light in the dim room still stabbed at his eyes, so he shut them. He breathed out and his breath felt hot against his hands. He shivered uncontrollably.
Hands caught him up and carried him to his bed. He heard the soft voices of the Wents:
“The fever.”
“I heard that three Efts have died.”
“Don’t speak of that. He can hear us.”
But it was more like a dream than anything else, and he forgot their words as soon as he heard them.
Even the comforting water of his own bed felt hot and hurt him. His head rested on a soft pillow of woven reeds and grasses. These hurt him as well; he turned within his watery tub in an effort to keep his antennae from touching any surface.
On the first day, as his temperature climbed, the jagged stones in the wall of his room slyly changed into creatures of strange shape and character, staring at him over his little water bath. His head felt hot and he closed his eyes, but when he opened them again the figures were still there.
On the second day someone came to change the water in his bed, and he cried out as they gripped him. He heard the water rushing out into the drains and fresh, clear water piped in from the cistern.
“Hush, little one,” said a voice. It was Hindrance. He opened his eyes and could see the white blossoms framing her face. They seemed to shift and open into cruel, gaping mouths. He shut his eyes.
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