The Hundred: Fall of the Wents

by Prescott, Jennifer

  “My parents taught me how to do it,” he said proudly, as they ate the fish over a little fire. No one sampled it but the children, as the Bee, the Ell, and the snake all shunned such fare. The children gained strength from the food and were livelier than ever.

  They had not seen a sign of the shadow. Copernicus started to wonder if it was even real. For all the talk of its dire capabilities, he had never actually witnessed a shadow himself. At times he felt a prickling fear and intangible anxiety, but there was never anything there.

  There was, however, the lovely Deressema, who glowed in the light from the sun and played games with the children in which she urged them to chase her down the riverbank. They never caught her—she was far too quick—but she loved to tease them. And there was Nizz, practical and reliable, who sought out fresh greens that were safe for them to eat and kept a watchful eye on the horizon for bad weather.

  The bee seemed lonely and morose, and Copernicus tried to trick him into friendly conversation. Nizz spoke vaguely of the hive and once mentioned another bee, named Ozz, but then lapsed into silence and flew high where Copernicus could no longer converse with him.

  On one quiet morning while the rest were still sleeping Nizz shared with Copernicus a small part of his story. He told the snake that Dull Bees were silent recorders of all that they had seen in the world’s memory. They were private and ill-named and not respected, but they had a sense of pride in what they did although they did not choose to announce it.

  “Do you remember anything of the Hundred, then? Were Dull Bees alive in those days?” asked Copernicus.

  “Yes. But my long-ago ancestors did not have the gifts of speech and words,” said Nizz. Sometimes spoken words still sounded odd in his mouth, and he fumbled over them. “We remember something. But I don’t know how to speak it.”

  “Try,” said the snake.

  “There was…a stone,” said the bee. “A stone that fell to Earth. I can hear the story in my mind but to speak it sounds strange. The stone blotted out much of life. The Hundred were meant to be the saved. But it did not work out that way.” The bee fell silent, troubled. He was not used to sourcing out these ancient memories.

  “Many died,” continued the bee. “Many children among them. There was greed. No one wanted to be left out. They died in a dark place. And the rest of the planet died as well and only small animals, such as the bees and the lizards under the soil, lived on.”

  Copernicus wanted to ask more of the bee but Nizz seemed tired. He had shared more than he was accustomed to share. Nizz, in turn, wondered at the strangeness of it. What good were the stories if the Dull Bees could not transmit them to others? Was there to be an end time when all would be revealed—when their stories would finally come into the light? If so, Nizz hoped that this end time was not at hand.

  After the sixth day they smelled the scent of salt and, after the seventh, they could see a great body of water. This was the Whael-Rode, explained Deressema. It stretched on for miles, as far as the eye could see. As they approached they could hear a great booming noise as the sea struck the rocks at the edge and was sucked out again. The river they had been following widened to a wide gulf and emptied into this unfathomable ocean. They picked their way along the shoreline until they could go no farther; they stared out at the vast expanse. They were high above the ocean on a jutting cliff.

  The ocean was blue and green and wild, and almost blue-black in its depths. There was neither end nor edge to it. Copernicus had never known that such things were real. His city had been near enough to the ocean, but Copernicus had neither need nor desire to go and see it. For a little snake it would have required a full day of travel.

  The wind was fiercer here, too, and it buffeted the small Ell and the bee so that they had to land on the ground and creep along by their tiny feet.

  The children were stunned to see the ocean, for they had never come this far from their home. They babbled excitedly to each other and asked a number of questions that no one knew how to answer.

  “Does it have an end?” asked Bax.

  “How deep can it be?” asked Natty.

  “Why is it called the Whael-Rode?” asked Bax.

  “Are there good things to eat in it?” asked Natty, who was hungry again.

  Copernicus had a question of his own.

  “Where to from here?” said Copernicus. “There is nowhere to hide here.” Indeed, not even a shrub survived at the edge of the cliff to shield them from unseen eyes.

  Deressema looked nervous and impatient.

  “We must continue south,” she announced. “There will be a safer harbor.”

  For that, however, they had to cross the wide gulf of the river.

  “We should have crossed earlier,” said Natty, who was becoming quite strong in her opinions. “We can walk north again, until it gets narrow.”

  “No!” said Deressema, feeling foolish and unprepared. “That is dangerous. It will take too long.”

  “As dangerous as crossing the river here?” asked Nizz, wisely.

  “We can swim!” said Natty hotly. “Of course, we know how.”

  Deressema was eventually convinced and they backtracked their steps for two days until they reached a place in the river that they had noticed before. It was narrow and flat, and there were a number of large rocks across the passage that could be used as handholds or resting places.

  Nizz flew across in an instant, and waited on the other shore, while Deressema coaxed the children along. Bax had Copernicus slung around his neck. The two children swam from rock to rock, rested, and then swam again. With each plunge into the river Copernicus cursed his luck, for the water shot up his snout and splashed his head. He did not care for it, and it reminded him of his first plunge into the river from the box. But eventually they were on the other side without injury.

  Now Deressema seemed rejuvenated and was fluttering with anticipation. The delay had made her nervous. Pomplemys had said she had to move with haste, lest the Hundred find and eat up the children before they reached the portal. Yet Dee had seen no sign of the Hundred here. Her experience with them, in fact, had always been in her mind. They had a buzzing and insistent tone when they spoke inside her head, almost a whine. Of course, they had said wonderful things to her about how smart she was, how clever, and how of service. The effect had been of many voices speaking at once in perfect unison.

  She realized to her surprise that since coming through the portal box the voices had stopped entirely. And, much more to her surprise, she was relieved. Their constant drone had become an imposition on her own thoughts, even to the point where—she recalled with shame—she had, for a time, forgotten her own name.

  There were times in this bright and happy world that she considered abandoning the plan that Pomplemys had set for her. She had no friends in that old world that would even remember her. If they did, they would shun her for the traitor she was. This little group trusted and liked her. She had even grown strangely fond of the little snake, although his smooth scales vaguely repulsed her whenever she landed on him to preen and chat. He soaked up her every word with obvious admiration. If it were possible for a Dualing and Triling to have a romantic attachment, she would have said the snake had fallen in love with her. What foolishness! Surely he could see that they were different beings altogether. But still, she liked the attention.

  She could stop her quest, have a quiet and happy life here, and forget about going back and fulfilling the mission. But then, of course, there were the Hundred. They would come to destroy whatever peace and happiness she found, and she would be much worse off than she had been before. She feared the Hundred. There had been vague threats from the voices that, if she did not perform as expected, she would be eliminated. She knew that her masters could be cruel and terrible.

  The fear drove Deressema on and, with it, she spurred on the group. When they relaxed, she would remind them that the Hundred were on the move. Her fear infected them as well, and no one could truly
relax for long.

  Eventually, they reached the place where the river met the sea but, now, they were on the far side and could continue down the coast. The days were long, as it was near the height of summer. They picked a careful path along the ocean’s edge. It was rocky and wild, with torturous cliffs and small inlets where the waves smashed up against the rocks with great gusts of spray and made the children gasp with surprise and delight.

  They had paused to take in the view one afternoon when Nizz began buzzing around anxiously in tight circles.

  “Weather,” he muttered. “Storm clouds.”

  They all looked to the north and saw that the sky there was darkening, but not in one great sheet of grey as if a storm was approaching. Rather, the sky was filled with patchy, ragged clouds, like horsetails high aloft preceding a weather change—except that these clouds were not white or grey. They were black. They were moving with great speed directly toward the group, who were exposed on the sea cliffs with nowhere to run or hide. They tore through a very bright blue sky, and there was a high-pitched screaming sound high in the air that accompanied them.

  Copernicus felt very cold. These were not natural clouds. Deressema was tremulous with fear. Surely these were her masters in their nascent form. She could do nothing except stare, for she had never seen the Hundred with her eyes. The children were also mesmerized and could not take their eyes off the terrible racing clouds, which now bore down the coast with fearsome speed.

  It was Nizz who saved them. The bee had been darting this way and that in quick bursts, looking for anywhere to hide.

  “This way!” he urged them, banging his small furry body into the children, and nearly sending Deressema flying into the grass. “A place to hide!”

  Nizz goaded them toward a crevice of rock near the cliff face. A few scrubby trees clung near the edge, and the children used them as handholds to lower themselves into the rectangular crevice, much like a chimney. It was a poor place to hide, for the rocks were smooth and slick and they could easily lose their grip and tumble down to the rocks and ocean below. Like a chimney with three sides only, the crevice was just wide enough to contain their bodies, so they could hold tight by pressing their arms and legs fast against the sides. There was a little ledge just wide enough for a child’s toes to cling. One side was open to the ocean and, although the gap was thin, it would be more than enough for a thing made of air to penetrate. Still, it was all they had, so they climbed down. Natty went first, for she was bigger, and Bax followed and crouched atop her shoulders while she bore most of his weight. Copernicus slipped in after them and curled himself around Natty’s neck. Her face was already red with exertion and her eyes were wide with fear.

  “Do not be afraid,” said Copernicus, although he himself was terribly frightened. “They can’t possibly see you in here. Lean your back against the edge like that. You cannot fall.”

  Nizz had also tucked himself carefully in Bax’s collar, his lithe antennae prickling with anticipation.

  Deressema had stayed for a moment, still perched on the cliff, feeling an awful and cold wind roaring down on her from the north. “Her masters,” she thought, “her masters!” Surely they would know she was a friend to them, and would embrace her. Surely they had the cold and precise reason that she had come to know. Soon she would hear their voices in her mind again; the comforting and familiar directive that would tell her exactly what to do and where to go.

  But there were no voices. There was only a high-pitched keening, as of many souls in misery and agony. The shadows drew closer and she could see with dread that they were souls—bodies blending and twisting into one another in a ragged dance. The ground beneath their passage was scorched and blackened, grasses bending and burning in their wake. They were coming straight for her in their moaning, dreadful swirl of horror. She could see now that the souls were chasing one another in great spirals, one spiral leading into another, so that the whole was like a galaxy on the move. Now she could see faces, their mouths agape and eyes filled with an angry terror. But, where one face began and another ended, she could hardly tell. They would merge and then separate, perpetually morphing.

  Deressema had never been so terrified in her life. Something told her she was not supposed to see this. It would be the end of her, unless she acted now. She would be blown out to the ocean and drown in this unknown world. Buffeted by a strong wind, she inched her way to the crevice and crawled in, tucking into Bax’s collar next to Nizz. Her whole body was trembling with fear and, if he were not so frightened himself, Bax would have shouted out that she was tickling him.

  For those in the crevice, the noise above was the most frightful and demonic sound they had ever heard. Amidst the groans and screams, they could hear snatches of song and language. At times Natty and Bax cried out, although Copernicus wrapped his tail around Natty’s mouth to silence her, and Nizz actually landed on Bax’s tongue.

  “Mama!” called Natty, once. “I thought I heard her.”

  “No,” said Bax. “No, no, no. Make them stop.” He was almost sobbing.

  “They’re calling to us,” said Natty, in a strange voice. “They want us to come. The children! The children. The baby, Hope.”

  “You mustn’t!” hissed Copernicus, with all the force he could muster. For the snake and the bee, the voices, though terrible, held no sway. But for the children, the voices were pleading and loving, as well as terrible. In that shadow were people the children had lost.

  “We won’t! We won’t!” cried Natty. Copernicus held his mouth against her ear and whispered as loudly as he could to block the voices of the shadow out. He whispered of anything he could remember of his old life: warm days on the shore of the Windermere, playing at Skilling Stones with Tully and Aarvord, and even of his brothers and sisters. He whispered of all things bright and clear and good. He remembered the moment when they had to hide from the Shrikes, and told stories of what he had dreamed in that difficult moment.

  “Keep your eyes shut tight,” Copernicus cautioned the children for he sensed that, if they saw a familiar face in the shadow-thing, they would not be able to hold back and would try to crawl out to join it.

  The swirl of souls had come down low to the ground and was hovering over the edge of the crevice. Curiously, it had not come down the side of the cliff to source the children out. Copernicus realized that its weakness was that it could not break apart to travel in unusual directions and seek out hiding places such as the one where they were. At least, it had not learned to do so, yet. It had no whole consciousness, Copernicus thought and, therefore, could not think and reason. It was a dumb, blind thing of pain and anger. Later, he knew, it would become intelligent. Their only safety lay in its agony and stupidity for, while it wanted to take the children up into itself, it did not seem to know how.

  The noise was ferocious now. Swirling bits of trees and grass and twigs were uprooted and came down into the narrow cliff chimney and choked them. A stray branch knocked Bax on the head and he cried aloud in pain; the shadow seemed to take renewed interest. Then, there was a moment when all became silent and a ray of sunshine shot down into the crevice. All of them, even the children, turned their heads up and opened their eyes. Like a hurricane, the storm of souls had an eye. Through it, they could see clear daylight up above, while the swirl of darkness rose higher. They could see it all now in its terrible wonder.

  It rose almost gracefully, and there was something of beauty in its mesmerizing swirl, now that the anguished faces were too distant to see. The voices and shrieks had gone silent. The flowing limbs and hands and arms that had intertwined darkly over them now seemed like a beautiful pattern, receding higher and higher into the sky and, then, vanishing southward. They watched until the dark storm was a mere pinprick on the horizon, and then they crept slowly and awkwardly out of the crevice.

  Natty crawled out and collapsed on the ground, bruised and cramped from bearing the weight of Bax. On her hands and knees, she cried out aloud. The ground around
them was flattened—every blade of grass, every shrub, every flower—as if beaten down by the force of many angry wings. All living things were dark and desiccated—except for them. As they looked around, they saw that the devastation ran in a wide swath from the north and ended where the shadow had whirled above them. The ground around their hiding place had been burnt flat, in a wide circle.

  They all stared in absolute silence. Then Bax said: “That shadow was even worse than what we saw before. It was louder.”

  “Perhaps it grows in strength and power in the light,” said Copernicus grimly. “It has grown in rage and pain and…sssss.” He lost his words and lapsed into a nervous hiss, for he could now see scores of insects that had been crushed in the dark heat of the shadow, and the limp body of a little mammal that had not escaped its wrath. And there was another snake—one of the mute and stupid snakes that lived in this world, but a snake all the same. It was evidently dead. It lay in the center of the wide circle that the Hundred had burned in their wake. Copernicus flicked over to it and stared at its body in pity.

  “Ssssooo,” said Copernicus, finding his voice again. “They kill and maim whatever is in their way.”

  Copernicus had turned black and glittering eyes on the two little children. “Who are these things? Humans? These are your people?” he asked. He sputtered his s’s in short little hisses.

  Natty had gone to the body of the little mammal. “A rabbit,” she said. Copernicus had never seen one of these things, but he felt sorry for it all the same. Natty cradled the rabbit like a doll and stroked its ears flat.

  “They weren’t like that,” said Natty, crying over the rabbit. “People were good. Our parents were good.”