by David Alric
Soon the men returned and set to work. The macrauchenia stood patiently as they were harnessed. While this work was in progress the monkeys returned with the ropes, assisted by some very savage-looking monkeys from the valley. They were accompanied by a wolf-like creature with massive teeth that had apparently been recruited to bite the grapnels off the ropes.
‘The wolf-fang helped us,’ Sophie explained to Lucy, ‘and now comes so that he can tell his kin that he has seen thee.’
Julian said he was a protocyon – a primitive canine.
The men tied one end of each rope to their makeshift harness and the other to the tail-wheel of the plane. Under Lucy’s instruction the macrauchenia started forward and took the strain. The ropes tautened and began to pull on the plane. Soon the ropes were tense but the plane didn’t budge an inch. The animals began to paw at the ground to gain better purchase and strained at their harness.
‘Stop!’ said Julian, and Lucy asked them to stop.
‘I think they’re OK for a bit more,’ she said after speaking to them, ‘or do you think the ropes are going to snap?’
‘Neither,’ said Julian. ‘I think the force we’ve already applied should have started to shift the plane at least a bit. I’m worried that it’s actually jammed on something we can’t see in the marsh. If we carry on pulling we might rip the tail-wheel off or even damage the whole tail section.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ called Clare. She was sitting with Helen on the bank a few yards from the plane and had been watching the whole operation.
‘Any ideas welcome!’ said Julian good-naturedly. ‘As long as they leave the plane intact.’
‘Why don’t we drain the bog,’ said Clare. ‘Then we can see what’s going on and maybe fix ropes to the front wheels as well.’
Julian looked sceptical at first but then looked at the bog and the river beyond, several feet lower.
‘I like the idea,’ he said, ‘but the labour involved is immense, even with all six of us at it. We’d need to cut a drainage channel through or round that rocky ridge separating the bog from the river –’ he pointed, ‘– and stop any more water coming in at the top end by diverting the flow coming down from the gulley.’
‘Maybe we won’t need to do anything ourselves,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘Let me just make some enquiries; though I think I need to speak to something more intelligent than our hosenoses, begging their pardon.’
She turned and spoke to Queenie. A moment later Sophie and Clio went off and soon returned with a very large, fierce-looking monkey, obviously from the same group that had helped them earlier.
‘Greetings, O great agile one,’ said Lucy to the newcomer. ‘I thank thee for coming once again.’
‘Greetings, O Promised One,’ came the reply. ‘How may I be of service to thee?’
‘We wish to free the thunderquill from the watery earth,’ – she pointed – ‘and we wish to take the water away. There are many creatures in this valley that are unknown to us. Are there any that can help us in this task?’
The monkey examined the bog, then turned back to Lucy. The others watched this silent interchange with fascination.
‘The great shieldkin with the tail-that-batters can dig the earth and will come to serve thee at my bidding,’ he said slowly, ‘but … but there is another within my ken who is mighty in the ground.’
He sounded doubtful.
‘What is this creature?’ asked Lucy, to prompt him. She wasn’t sure of the reason for his hesitation.
‘He looks like a giant malevolent one or a giant earthkin – and yet he is neither. We call him the slitherkin. He speaks but rarely and never to us arborikin. I think he will only come to serve thee if he hears thy voice.’
‘Let us try both creatures,’ said Lucy. ‘The arborikin by my side –’ she indicated Clio, ‘– can seek out the shieldkin while thou leadest me to the slitherkin.’
‘As it pleases the Promised One. The slitherkin is hard to find and we may have to search far yonder until the Brilliant One goes to rest.’ He indicated towards the centre of the valley.
‘I will come,’ said Lucy, ‘and some of my kin will accompany us.’
She turned to the others and explained what the monkey had said.
‘I’ve no idea what the “slitherkin” is,’ she said, ‘but no doubt we’ll soon find out.’ She turned to Clare and Clive.
‘Do you fancy an adventure, you two? It’ll make a change; it’s been a boring couple of days, after all!’They all laughed and the three young people set off with the Pleistocene monkey while Clio set off with Sophie to look for some glyptodonts.
As they left the men returned with Helen to their own camp, after unhitching the macrauchenia who wandered off to browse nearby.
The monkey led Lucy and her companions towards the centre of the valley. After half a mile or so he crouched and put his ear to the ground, and then did this at similar intervals as they walked.
Eventually, after listening intently, he tensed then turned his head and put his other ear to the ground. He grunted and stood up.
‘The slitherkin is near,’ he said simply. Lucy thought he looked somewhat apprehensive. He then set off in a new direction and they all followed, wondering what on earth they were going to see.
Soon the monkey stopped, sniffed and peered ahead. Then he spoke again.
‘There is the spoor of the slitherkin. There is none other like it.’
Lucy followed his gaze and saw some fresh earth banked up on the surface. As they grew near they could see that it was the edge of a giant trench, a yard wide and a yard deep that ran along the ground for about fifty yards. Bushes, rocks and small trees that had obviously been in its path, lay thrown or pushed aside outside the giant furrow. They walked along the trench until they saw it disappear into a hole, like a giant mole hole. The monkey, who had become progressively more nervous, stopped again.
‘The Promised One should speak,’ he said, ‘for the slitherkin draws nigh and we are in great danger until he knows it is thee who comes.’
Lucy spoke; she had learnt that most animals seemed to respond best to a direct request or command:
‘Greetings, O Master of the Earth. The hour has come for thee to serve the Promised One.’
There was no reply. She waited and repeated the message.
‘Look!’ said Clare suddenly, and pointed to a spot thirty yards or so away. The earth was agitated by something underneath and then a slightly raised mound appeared and extended towards them. Something was moving along just underneath the surface. Suddenly the ground broke and a head appeared. It looked like the head of a giant snake but as it emerged from the soil two small horns appeared, like the retractile antennae of a snail. These protruded above two pitted depressions that might have been eyes. The head was followed by a long, black, scaly body with a yellow zigzag stripe along its back. It continued emerging for so long that the frightened onlookers began to think it must be endless. Eventually the entire creature slid out from the ground. It was about twenty-five metres long and over a metre in width. It looked incredibly sinister.
‘What on earth …’ began Clare. She glanced at Lucy, but Lucy was preoccupied and looking distinctly worried. Clare moved closer to Clive.
‘I can’t believe this … this alien creature can possibly know about Lucy and obey her,’ she whispered. ‘Have you got a gun?’
‘No,’ Clive whispered back. He put his arm round Clare protectively. ‘Stay still. I’m sure it’ll be OK.’
The monkey left Lucy’s side – she was standing at the forefront of the group – and went to stand behind Clive and Clare, which Lucy didn’t find particularly reassuring. The creature looked at Lucy: it still hadn’t spoken. For a terrible, almost unendurable moment Lucy thought that her power was useless with this animal and that she had brought her sister and Clive into terrible danger. Then, at last, it responded. Its voice was slow and cold and made Lucy think of dark, awful, underground caverns and icy sepulchres.
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br /> ‘It is many aeons since my kin were told of thee, and I had to come and smell thee before I spoke.’ He sounded both primitive and arrogant, and Lucy felt less comfortable with him than almost any creature with whom she had ever conversed. Then, to her great relief, he continued in a more positive vein.
‘Thou art indeed the Promised One. I never thought my kin would need to serve thee: what dost thou desire?’
Clare glanced at Lucy. Her sister’s face had relaxed and she was clearly managing to converse with the beast. She squeezed Clive’s hand and said, ‘I think it’s going to be all right.’
He returned her squeeze and didn’t seem in any hurry to let go as they watched Lucy speaking to the extraordinary creature lying before them.
‘I need thy skill to make tunnels in the ground.’
‘In which place. Here?’
‘No, a league hence. We will show you the place.’
The creature glanced to the sky, now overcast once again. ‘I can come above the earth for the Brilliant One hides this day and will soon descend to his sleep. With the Promised One by my side the deathquills will not molest me.’He paused, then added by way of explanation: ‘All other creatures go in terror of me but the deathquills fear naught that moves, save the greatfang and the Mighty One, and they sometimes attack me.’
Lucy turned to the others.
‘It’s OK; we’re off. He’s coming above ground because it’ll be quicker. He says he doesn’t usually do that because of the sun, but it’s cloudy today. He’s also not too keen on the terror birds: they sometimes have a go at him but they won’t if he’s with me.’
Even as she spoke two enormous terror birds approached. Clare and Clive had seen them at a distance and remembered Helen and Julian’s account of their terrifying encounter with one of these creatures on their previous expedition, but it was only at close quarters that they fully appreciated how large and fearsome they were. Three metres tall, like giant ostriches with massive hooked beaks and formidable claws, the birds stalked menacingly towards the group.
‘I hope you can talk to these guys,’ said Clare to Lucy. ‘They look like the nightmare birds from hell.’ So saying, she felt it was a good excuse to squeeze Clive’s hand a little tighter again.
Lucy didn’t answer. She was already talking to the birds. Soon she turned to the others.
‘It’s OK, they’re desperate to help so they’re going to accompany us back. There’s no animal in this valley that will attack us, but they say they’ll protect us. It seemed rather ungracious to refuse so they’re tagging along. I expect it gives them massive street cred with their mates.’ She looked at them again as they moved even closer. ‘Scary, aren’t they? Helen told me last time we were here that they were probably the top predators when South America was still an island and you can see why. The big cats and dogs came down later when it joined up to North America and that’s when the sabre-tooths started to rule the roost.’
‘Talking of which …’ said Clive, pointing behind Lucy. She turned to see four sabre-tooth cats majestically stalking towards them.
‘Word is obviously round,’ he continued with a smile, ‘that the Promised One is out and about in the crater and everyone wants a piece of the action.’
And his analysis just about summed it up, for a moment later Lucy confirmed that the cats were coming along as well ‘to give us added protection,’ she laughed. As she spoke the largest smilodon, a female, came right up to Lucy and nuzzled her. For a moment Clare thought she was going to attack her sister and the thought of what those massive eight-inch fangs might do made her blood run cold. But Lucy stroked the animal and tickled her behind the ear.
‘Would you believe it!’ she said. ‘This is the very cat that I used to show Dad and Helen and Julian that I could really speak to animals! She heard I was here and came to see us.’
The party made their way back to the camp. It was clear that the valley monkey was not entirely at ease in the presence of various hostile creatures who would, under normal circumstances, have torn him limb from limb, but he gradually adjusted to the fact that, within the magic, protective umbrella of the Promised One, he was invulnerable. As they drew near, Helen, who had been looking out for them, started to laugh, and pointed out across the valley.
‘Just look at what she’s collected this time!’
The men turned to see the bizarre spectacle consisting of three humans, one with a marmoset on her shoulder, a monkey, a pack of sabre-tooths, a pair of terror birds, miscellaneous small attendant creatures and, slithering along behind, what looked like a giant snake. A thought suddenly struck her and she turned quickly to Julian.
‘Where’s the prof? If he sees this circus it’s going to take some explaining.’
‘Relax,’ said Julian chuckling. ‘He didn’t go to his lab. He went for a nap after that lunch you cooked us and has been out cold ever since. I’ve just been across to his cabin to check – though I knew it would be OK as Queenie didn’t come and alert us to any trouble. The wine was a brilliant idea, by the way, where on earth did you dig that up from?’
‘I brought it with me,’ said Helen. ‘It was meant to be a surprise for our last day here, hopefully to celebrate a successful expedition. But when I thought about keeping the prof out of the way while Lucy did her stuff with the animals it seemed to be a much better use for it – and, as you saw, I made sure he drank more than anyone else.
‘And now,’ she said, looking once more at the approaching spectacle, ‘I must get my camera. This is definitely one for the family album!’
As she ran across to her tent Richard and Julian gazed once more at the approaching pageant and now as it drew near they could see that the immense creature in the rear was not a snake, but something that looked as if it belonged in an anthology of mythical and legendary animals.
‘My God!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘What on earth is that – it must be over eighty feet long!’
Julian gazed fascinated at the approaching monster. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘It looks more like a giant worm than anything else. They do exist – in Australia there are still worms up to ten feet long – but I’ve never heard of anything like this. I’ll look it up later.’
Richard was intrigued. He had always been impressed with Julian’s phenomenal knowledge of ancient animals and this was the first time he had seen him nonplussed.
Helen reappeared with her camera, and they went to meet the others; they were joined by Sophie and Clio who were accompanied by two glyptodonts, giant armadillo-like creatures, each the size of a small car. Their vicious, spiked, mace-like tails were obviously the ‘tails-that-batter’ referred to by the crater monkey.
By now it was almost sunset and they decided that if the animals could start draining the bog overnight then they might be able to free the plane in the morning. While the animal search party had been gone, Richard and Julian had worked out exactly where the drainage and diversion channels should be dug, and now explained their plans to Lucy. The animals who had simply accompanied her for the kudos of being in her company now dispersed and they were left with the glyptodonts and the giant ‘worm’.
Lucy soon set the glyptodonts to work scrabbling at the rocks and soil above the marshy area, to divert all the water that flowed into it. She then spoke to the burrowing monster, pointing to the raised ledge that prevented the bog draining into the river below.
‘We want all the water surrounding the thunderquill to go down to the Flowing One. Can you help in this task?’
‘Yes,’ was the simple reply, and the creature slithered into the bog itself. Soon over half its prodigious length was under the surface and half remained, draped languidly across the bank and extending back into the nearby bush in gentle, sinuous curves. Soon, powerful eddy currents began to appear in the marsh from the direction of the head of the creature, and within a few moments several square metres of the surface were seething and swirling and bubbling, as though it were a giant, mud-filled jacuz
zi.
‘We don’t know how long this will take,’ said Richard as the sun disappeared behind the western rim of the crater, ‘and the animals seem to be happy to continue in the dark, so I suggest we all go in and have some supper.’
‘Well, I’ve got good news for you there,’ said Lucy who had just spoken to Queenie. The monkey had approached her as they all stood watching the drainage operation. ‘Sophie and Clio went for a little forage and they’ve just found a dead pig at the base of the escarpment – it must have fallen down from the jungle above. If we can grab it before the terror birds and the jackal-things we can have a pork barbecue. Sophie says she’ll take you.’
Twenty minutes later the men returned with the fresh carcass. In the meantime the others had lit a fire. They all decided it would take too long to roast the pork on a proper spit, so Richard cut some steaks which they barbecued on the grill they had used for their fish supper the previous evening.
After supper, while the young ones talked to the professor about the endlessly engrossing subject of invisibility, Richard asked Julian once again about the strange creature engaged at that very moment in draining the marsh.
‘I think I know what that is,’ said Helen at once; she had missed their previous discussion. ‘At least, I know something that’s said to look like it, but most orthodox scientists don’t really believe it exists. Have you heard of cryptozoology?’
She looked at Richard enquiringly.
‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘Isn’t that all about animals that are rumoured to exist but which mainstream science doesn’t recognize?’
‘Exactly,’ Helen replied. ‘Typically, there’ll be an animal that has been seen – often by very credible witnesses – but for whose existence there is no conclusive proof. The sort of creatures we’re talking about include the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and the Yeti. They’re also called cryptids or UMAs – unidentified mysterious animals. Conventional scientists are mostly sceptical about these kinds of animals but cryptozoologists point out that many creatures we now know do exist were originally thought to be myths or hoaxes. These include the gorilla, the giant squid and the Komodo dragon.’