The Sand Louse looked back and could see the Veldstacks reach the edge of the cliff, and draw up, disconcerted by the drop. He could almost hear the babbling of the angry Shrikes left behind on the sledge, but the wind was too strong for that. He could, however, hear Hatch’s screeching and jubilant laugh:
“Haw haw haw!” laughed the Shrike, as he turned and banked into the wind. They were sailing high above the waters, and had cleared the far edge of the river. His laugh, for the first time, had a pleasing enough ring to it. Fangor supposed that this was the very best moment of the Shrike’s meager life, and he was proud that he, Fangor, had been the genesis of it.
A burst of sound exploded in the air about them and Fangor could again smell the stink of whatever weapons the enemy Shrikes were using. Hatch could only go as far as the wind would take them, but they were quickly drawing out of range. As the air currents faltered, Hatch sank a bit toward the earth. No matter; they were safely past the water. However, landing on the ground was rapidly becoming their only option. Hatch stretched it out as far as he could, eager not to lose the experience of flight. He landed masterfully on a flat patch of snow, but too late realized that the fluffy groundcover veiled a sheet of hidden black ice. Flapping and shrieking, Hatch slipped and skidded over the ground, tumbled end over end, and wound up neck-deep in a snow bank.
For a moment Fangor could not breathe. He was safe in a pocket of air, concealed within the feathers, but everything was white. It reminded him of the dreadful fall into the Shrike’s stronghold, which had led to the capture and disappearance of his friends. He screamed piteously, not knowing which way was up. But Hatch quickly plucked his head from the snow bank and began to dance about, in a manner that was unknown to any other Shrike. Shrikes did not dance, or sing, or make merry in any way. But Hatch was exultant.
“I flew!” he crowed. “I flew!” His voice had the tone of what a Shrike child might sound like, if such children were allowed to play and grow in a normal environment. In the Shrike pods, such joyfulness was never shown much less encouraged. Fangor shared in his excitement. A song was coming to his mind.
Hatch suddenly seemed to sway unsteadily on his feet and clutched at his own shaggy head with a feathered limb.
“I am weak,” he said. “I have not eaten.”
“We will find food!” crowed Fangor. “What do you Shrikes eat?”
Hatch was entirely silent. Fangor began to worry. Surely the Shrikes did not eat something that could not be found in nature? Suppose the Shrikes ate only some special substance that was prepared for them in the stronghold? Would his savior collapse in the snow, and die?
“Come on, then!” said Fangor. “We must get you something to eat, yes?”
Hatch ducked his head down and stared at the snow. “I fear that my eating will be the death of you,” he said.
Fangor felt an icy fear. Shrikes ate Sand Lice? But why, how? He would provide the merest scrap of calories for the creature and then he would be gone. It was hardly worth it.
“I’m not very tasty,” he laughed nervously. “Open the maw, down the craw, and I’m gone, quick as a wink. Better with butter of course, but we have no butter.”
“Not what I meant,” said Hatch, depressed. “It is hard to explain. I will need to…trouble your thoughts for a time.” He sighed. “It is the fate of the Shrikes. Unhappiness is our food. Could you bear to be unhappy for very long?”
“Me?!” squeaked Fangor, amazed. “I’m never unhappy. I was trapped inside a gor-awful bottle for days, and what did I do? I sang! I was jubilant! Triumphant!” He did remember some feelings of doubt when he was inside the bottle, but they were a small bother.
“Then perhaps I shall starve,” said Hatch grimly. “The time has come. Brace yourself. It will not be pleasant.” He reached into his head feathers, plucked Fangor out, and stared at him. Fangor sat on the Shrike’s furry palm, shivering in the wind. All of a sudden he felt the most terrible force steal over him.
Bees! His greatest fear. They were coming, but from where? They were coming to eat him. He could hear their awful buzzing. Now, all around him, he could see their fat, furry bodies shimmying and pulsing as they blotted out what little light was available in the gloomy day. Their antennae were huge and repulsive, and he could see their jaws opening and closing. A great chattering noise deafened him. These were the worst of their kind, the Boring Bees.
He could then hear the voices of his friends, Tully, Copernicus, and Aarvord. They were loud and mocking. “The louse is useless!” one said. “Worthless!” said another. “He should not bother to live,” said a third, the snake. The bees clustered around him and the voices continued, strident and cruel. He could feel the bees’ fat bodies pressing up against him, pressing away the light and the air. He gasped for breath. He was so weak that he could barely move his miniscule lungs. This was awful. How could he go on? What was the Shrike doing to him?
But Fangor remembered the one gift that he had, which had kept terror at bay during the long days when he was a forgotten prisoner in a jar. He would sing. Inside his mind he sang desperately of crushing the bees, and seeing their bodies laid out on the snow. He sang of the little nest where he had been born, and of his numerous brothers and sisters. He called them each by name, although numbers 54 and 76 were hard to remember, so he hummed over those parts.
After a time, it was over. The whirlwind of bees and the harsh voices of his friends had stopped and there was only Hatch, gazing down at the Louse on his palm.
“I am hardly sated, little one,” he said. “You are stronger than one would guess. Your happiness broke through and cut my meal short, but I don’t begrudge you. The taste of happiness was not filling to me, but it was not altogether unpleasant. Maybe I could grow to like it.”
Fangor tried to answer with something witty, but found that he had very little strength.
“What did you see?” asked Hatch curiously. He had never before wondered much about the pain his feeding caused. He wanted to know more—and yet he did not. To know would cause him grief, he realized.
“Bees,” gulped Fangor, and that was all he could say.
“Bees,” said Hatch pensively. “I have also had visions of bees. How strange.”
Sometimes, Hatch had imagined that a cloud of bees was humming over the stronghold and the vision had filled him with a nameless fear. But he had quickly forgotten it every time it had occurred. Once, he had tried to broach the subject with a fellow Shrike, who had sneered at him.
“What use do we have for bees?” number 456 had said. “There are no bees here in the far north. Your wandering mind is an insult to the rest of the Shrikes. We answer to the Hundred. They do not like dreamers.”
Hatch did not express any of these memories to Fangor. He placed the louse back into his head feathers very gently. His every movement expressed regret for what he had done to Fangor. If he could have given the Sand Louse an awkward hug, he would have. He had seen some of the Shrikes’ prisoners try this method of comfort. But, there was really nothing to hug.
Fangor was shorn of energy for the moment, but Hatch’s energy was renewed. With Fangor as his passenger, he set off through the snow toward where he had heard that the home of Pomplemys might be. Before he did, however, he cast one last look back toward the river where the stone now rested. There was nothing to be seen of the rucksack; it had disappeared into the wild waters of the River Hollis. “Would they send an envoy down to find it?” he wondered. It was stupid to have taken the stone. It was too powerful an object, for it was the one of the few chunks of rock that the Shrikes and their various slaves had managed to carry off from the craggy and forbidding ledge off the sea. Only a few loose rocks had been theirs for the taking; the rest were held fast by the force of the one, great stone.
Trapped within that one small stone alone could be enough power to make a wee creature like Fangor himself the master of all the Shrikes. But none had been able to break it apart and, now, it was gone beneath the water. “B
etter that way,” thought Hatch. Since he had met Fangor, he was thinking about a number of things in a new way, although he scarcely dared to admit it to himself.
To Hatch’s great surprise, as he began to march westward, he heard the louse begin to sing. Its voice was weak, at first, but gained strength with each refrain. The tune was stodgy and the words didn’t always rhyme, but Hatch began to find the song heartening. He would never have admitted it out loud, but he was pleased when the louse did not stop. Fangor kept singing as they ventured farther and deeper into unknown terrain.
*
Sometime and many songs later (Hatch wasn’t counting), a most awful apparition emerged from the snowy gloom. It came from their right. Hatch was at first certain it was the Shrike army come to take him back. Had they learned to fly as well? It could not be. The thing had feathers and rough fur, but its head was entirely bald and smooth. It was a Shrike, indeed, but bigger than any Shrike he had ever known.
And then he remembered: This was the creature that he and his fellows had made. It was the Shrike-Grout. It was stumbling along through the snow, holding its midriff as if it had a wound—and it was wailing piteously. The sound was unearthly. How had it made it across the river, and why had it not died before? Fangor and Hatch stared in horror as the creature, without seeming to notice them, crossed their path and staggered on into the fading light. It immediately disappeared among the drifts. Should they go to it? Ignoring it seemed cruel and impossible. Hatch was not certain if the thing could even speak. He had seen how it was made, and it went against the laws of nature.
Fangor broke into his reverie and, once again, Hatch was strangely glad that he had found this odd and comforting companion whose sunny moods were annoying until their troubles became very deep and painful. Then the tiny louse was like a rock against all sadness and despair.
“Good glory!” yelped Fangor. “That thing is gor-awful upset. What is it? What is its name? Should we help it? Shouldn’t we? Chase it. It’s getting away!”
Obediently, Hatch plowed through the snow in pursuit of the Shrike-Grout, with Fangor leaping and yelling atop his head.
“It’s slow! And we are fast!” shouted Fangor. “Chase it! Chase it!”
Over the drifts they went, hoping to catch sight of the creature. Hatch had little idea of what they would say or do once they caught up to it, but he imagined that Fangor would be the one to take care of all the necessary introductions.
Chapter Twenty: Nizz, Found Again
Copernicus had become quite fond of the children, although they had made a merry game of slinging him back and forth to one another. Sometimes, Bax held the tail while Natty held the neck, and they swung him back and forth like a jumping rope. It made Copernicus dizzy, but it seemed to bring them such pleasure and he knew that their spirits needed lifting.
They all three traveled along the river, watching for any sign of the mysterious shadow that the children had described. It had taken some convincing talk to encourage the children into this pursuit, for the shadow was a frightening and awful thing to them. Copernicus had also explained that they should be on the lookout for the clever and kind bee whom they had met once before, although they may not have seen him. Talk of the bee scared them, even though it had proven its friendship. “What if it stung? How big was its stinger, exactly? Did it have friends?” They asked an awful lot of questions and Copernicus tried to answer them as best as he was able.
The whole time, he thought carefully on what they should do once they encountered the shadow. He had no answers. He simply knew that they must keep moving; they must act. Something was changing, here and now, and, if he could do a small thing to arrest its progress, he would have fulfilled his part of the mission.
Somehow he had already given up the notion of ever going back to the world where his friends were. This was his place now, and he would live and die here. Perhaps some small part of what he did would one day be remembered. Loneliness assailed him at times. But he was thankful that he had found the only beings in this time and place that could speak and think as he did.
They were remarkable, these children. Even in the midst of their fear, they found time to laugh and play—sometimes to the snake’s impatience. If he had not chided them on, they would have stayed by the river for hours, tossing stones or braiding flowers into chains. He sensed that whatever lay in wait for them lay in the north. Every step they took he could feel a stiffening within his skin and a sense of growing menace. But he tried not to let the children see his concern.
One morning he awoke before they did and quietly shed his skin by the river’s edge. The old skin seemed to tell a tale of his old life; it had been touched by his friends and had kept him snug within Tully’s vest when he was cold. Now he was made anew, in this new place, and the old skin was like a book of secrets and friendships from a long-ago time. But it could tell no tales, so he nosed it into the river. That way, it could not frighten the children. Light as a feather, the skin floated on the surface of the water and was swept away in the current. Copernicus thought that it looked like a bit of paper, curled and torn, with writing that only he could read.
On the third day of their journey his fear became so great that he decided he had made a terrible error. They should not be heading toward the shadow, but away from it. After all, what could a little snake do against a force that wanted to eat these two children up? They should go somewhere and hide where the shadow could never find them. He had been stupidly brave, without any kind of plan whatsoever, and without any allies. He noticed that the weather was growing colder as well, and a drizzle of rain had begun to fall, misting the children’s clothing with tiny droplets. They began to shiver, and their jokes became less frequent, and then stopped altogether.
“I believe that we are going the wrong way,” said Copernicus, when they paused to take a drink from the river. The sack of food was almost empty. There had been no sign of Nizz. He felt as deflated as the empty skin that he had pushed into the river.
“Oh!” said Natty suddenly. “A flutterby!” Something small and bright had landed on her shoulder—something with iridescent blue wings and a tiny, heart-shaped face. It twitched and flung droplets off itself.
Before they could look at it closer, it did something very alarming and amazing. It spoke.
“I hope you don’t mind that I came to join you,” said the little thing. “I’ve been looking for creatures like you and, when I heard you speak, I knew I had to come and meet you.”
“Another talking thing!” said Bax in great wonder. “A talking bug!”
“She is not a bug,” said Copernicus, craning his neck to get a better look at the creature. “She is an Ell.”
“Indeed, I am no bug! I am Deressema. And the snake is correct; I am what is called an Ell. I’ve been sent here to help you.”
“Sent from where?” said Copernicus. He hadn’t known many Ells in his lifetime and they were always flighty and occasionally unreliable. Of the Trilings, they were the most foolish species. Yet their value was indispensable, for it was Ells who brought the pollens from Eft to Went that allowed the Triling race to carry on.
Deressema ignored him and basked in the admiration of the children, who had never seen anything like her—she talked and flew and was quite pretty, too. Fortunately, smart little Natty asked the same question that Copernicus had.
“Where did you come from?” she said. “Who sent you here?”
“A very wise old Eft from another time, although not another place. His name is Pomplemys, and he is good and kind. He knows that you are in danger,” said Deressema.
“Pomplemys!” gasped the snake. “Did you meet my friends? Did they find him? They are a young Eft and a big Fantastic Grout—all big and moist and very loud, indeed….”
“I met them!” laughed Deressema. “And I can assure you, they are quite safe and happy. They are wonderful; my friends, too, now. Pomplemys and your friends have been working together to help stop the…well, I dare not sa
y their names.”
“The shadow?” piped up Bax.
“The Hundred,” said Copernicus.
“Ssh!” said Deressema sharply. “You never know what may be listening!”
“Did they ask after me?” gulped Copernicus. So fierce was his longing for his friends that he felt as if a stone had lodged in his throat.
“They miss you terribly and of course they would. You are obviously such a dear, dear friend!” hummed Deressema and, to emphasize her words, she flew down and landed right on Copernicus’ back. He felt a little tickly chill from the feel of her feet on his new, fresh skin. He felt a slight ruffle in the air from her wings, brushing over him. This was the nicest Ell that he had ever met!
“So where do we go, then?” asked Natty, who was beginning to act less like a child and more a full-grown being at every minute.
“You must go on south, to the sea!” piped Deressema. “That is the safest place for you, for the shadow is dark and thick north of here. I thought it was a storm cloud and fled from it, and that is how I found you.”
“The shadow is north?” asked Copernicus. “How big was it? What did it look like?” He still felt the little tickle of her legs as she pranced about on his back in excitement; that tickle complimented the little tickle of foreboding that he had previously had about their progress to the north. He had been right, indeed! They were traveling in an unsafe direction. Surely this Ell was a friend and knew what she was talking about.
“Not so much one shadow as many little shadows, all piled together,” mused Deressema. “They came together and then broke apart. And, sometimes, they made strange shapes in the air…like a circle or a ring of darkness.”
“Yes, that’s what we saw,” said Natty. “Why does it mean to do us harm? Do you know?”
“I do not know. But it’s best to hide until it goes away,” said Deressema. “Those mountains there in the north, can you see them?” She briefly took to the air and gestured with her wings toward a series of vague, bluish peaks in the distance. “Those are the darkest place. The shadows are thick in those peaks. They fear the water of the Whael-Rode and that is where we must go. We must follow the course of the river as it wends to the sea. For all I know it is after me, too!” And she shuddered and landed back on Copernicus, as if she had found her natural resting place from here on out.
The Hundred: Fall of the Wents Page 24