by Trevor Pryce
Gee whimpered as the spider spun lower, until her furry forelegs quivered inches from his face, and her fangs spread wider.
“Oh, ribbit,” Gee said under his breath.
“A frog?” the spider asked. “Are you a frog?”
“I’m a Curdle Frog!” Gee blurted. “Sour as a pickled lemon!”
“Sour?” the spider said, a few of her eyes twinkling in the gloom. “I love sour.”
“—is what you’d think I’d taste like,” Gee said, scrambling frantically. “But actually I taste like feet. Like sweaty, hairy, mammal feet.”
The spider’s fangs spread even wider—in what Gee suddenly realized was a smile. Then she chittered and announced, “I like frogs! You’re funny.”
“We are! I am! Frog—funny!”
“I thought you were a lizard.”
“Do I look scaly?”
She chittered again. “They’ve been slinking around, trying to find a way in for the scorpion lord. But a frog?” She slashed at him with her fangs, cutting through the silk binding his ankle. “I never met a hopper before.”
Gee cautiously wiped the remaining web from his leg. “Then this is your lucky day. I’m Gee.”
“No way!” she said, rearing back. “You’re Gee!”
He puffed out his throat proudly. “You’ve heard of me? I didn’t think the tales of my daring adventures had traveled quite so far.”
“What? No. I’m Effie. We’re Eff and Gee.” She waved a few forelegs. “Isn’t that neat?”
“Not as neat as the tales of my daring adventures.”
“C’mon! I’ll show you around!”
She scuttled into the darkness, and Gee eyed the trapdoor overhead, ready to make a break for it. He crouched, tensing his legs to leap upward.
“Are you hungry?” Effie’s voice echoed in the cave. “I’ve got a whole ceiling full of honeypot ants!”
Gee untensed his legs. It was hard to find food in the outback, so maybe he could resupply with honeypot ants. Though he really should tell Darel and the others where he was, or they’d worry and—
A strand of silk shot from the gloom and Effie yanked him toward her. “C’mon!” she said with a chitter as he staggered beside her. “Let’s go!”
He pulled the webbing off himself. “Would you stop that?”
“Sorry,” Effie said, ducking her head as she led him toward a side cave. “I’ve just never showed anyone around before. Where are you from?”
“The Amphibilands.”
She gasped—and so did the four or five other spiders hidden in the darkness around them. “That’s a real place?”
“The realest. So! This is your home, huh?”
“Pretty cool, right?” she said. “Never gets hot, even if it’s a scorcher aboveground.”
Farther inside the cave, a row of torches flickered with bright, smokeless flames, and Gee got his first clear view of the mosaics. Colorful, polished river rocks swirled in patterns from floor to ceiling, depicting spiders in branching tunnels that spread through the earth. In one corner, a rainbow arced down, through a mosaic trapdoor, then swirled along the tunnels and into what looked like a vast underground river.
“Whoa!” Gee said. “Is that water?”
“’Course it is,” Effie said.
He scratched his forehead, dubious. “Underground?”
“That’s where water comes from, silly!” She chittered again. “I’ll show you! C’mon.”
ABBER AND THE THREE APPRENTICE dreamcasters swam toward the Amphibilands. A forest of bright coral blurred past beneath them, and Yabber wondered—not for the first time—if the beauty of the reef was related to that of the Rainbow Serpent.
“We’re almost at the Veil,” he said, his excitement growing as he paddled steadily. “And then you’re in for a treat that will completely blow your shells. You think the mangrove swamp is something? Well, the Amphibilands is something else. The frogs built one of the marvels of the outback, with leaf villages and burrows and tree houses and—well! The creeks and ponds overflow with happy croaking.”
“Not for long,” one of the apprentices said. “Not after we let the scorpions in. Then there will be pain and horror and death the likes of which the outback has never seen.”
Yabber opened his mouth . . . but didn’t say anything. Once they arrived in the Amphibilands, they’d start unraveling the Veil. Allowing Marmoo’s troops to rampage across every village, every burrow, every stream and pond.
Gee followed Effie deeper into the spider cavern, hopping low so he didn’t hit his head on the ceiling.
She stopped suddenly in a round chamber and gestured toward a dark shape in the gloom. “Oh, that’s my sister. Say hi!”
“Hi!” Gee said.
“Not you!” Effie chittered at him. “I meant her.”
“Hello,” her sister whispered, then crawled away.
Effie showed Gee her fangy smile. “She’s shy. Oh! And that’s my other sister, and my other other sister . . . and my web is down that tunnel. I collect nuts.”
Gee grinned. “You are nuts.”
“Silly!” Effie whacked him with a furry foreleg, then scampered along the wall and through a dark cave mouth.
Gee felt a brush of moist air on his skin. “Was that a rainbow in the mosaic?”
“The Serpent,” Effie said, a few of her eyes fixed on him. “Don’t you know about the Rainbow Serpent?”
“Of course I do! I didn’t know you did!”
“Are you kidding? We’re its spideriest fans!” Effie said as she led him around a curve into a massive tunnel. “The Serpent’s the one who told us to dig deeper like this, and not just build trapdoors.”
“It told the platypuses the same thing—to dig deeper,” Gee said thoughtfully.
“Platypuses aren’t real!” Effie laughed, then gestured with a foreleg. “Here we are!”
The moistness in the air tasted good through Gee’s skin as he stared into the torchlit distance. He and Effie were standing on the shore of an underground river. Or what was left of one. Only a trickle of water remained, and a handful of spiders were filling web-baskets with water and hauling them away.
Gee looked downstream, where the trickle disappeared into the darkness. “How far does it go?”
“Nobody knows,” Effie told him. “The diggers kept going until they met another bunch of tunnels, then turned back.”
“All for that tiny little stream?”
“It used to be bigger. There used to be ten times as much water.”
“I’ve got an important question,” Gee said, his throat bulging.
Effie nodded seriously. “What’s that?”
“Can I jump in?”
She chittered and shoved him with a foreleg toward the water. Gee contentedly settled himself in the middle of the little stream, watching Effie climb the wall and pluck ripe round berries from the ceiling. When she tossed them to him, he flicked his tongue and realized they weren’t berries—they were honeypot ants. Delicious. He rolled onto his back in the trickle. The water tasted rocky, but fresh, and he wondered where it came from. And also why the Rainbow Serpent had told the spiders to dig tunnels. Well, maybe Darel would—
“Oh, no!” Gee blurted, sitting up.
“What’s wrong?” Effie said, lowering herself beside him on a thread of webbing.
“My friends!” He hopped toward the exit. “I’ve got to tell them I’m okay.”
“That’s not the fastest way,” Effie said, unspooling silk at him. “Hold on tight!”
He grabbed the silk, then spun slowly in the air as Effie climbed upward. She pulled him higher and higher through the cave. The riverbed disappeared beneath him, and he rose into a vertical earthen shaft that ran straight up and down.
A half-dozen spiders greeted Effie, then gaped at Gee and whispered things like “Poor dear, it’s only got four legs.”
A minute later, Effie pulled Gee into the first cavern—the one with the ramps—and pointed to a trapdoor. “That’s the one
you came through, so—”
A crash echoed in the cavern. One of the trapdoors was ripped from the ceiling, and light flooded into the gloom. Gee raised his hand to shield his eyes from the brightness.
Ponto’s voice boomed out. “Spiders! Release our friend or suffer the consequences.”
Gee lowered his hand and saw Ponto, Darel, and Coorah in a beam of bright sunlight. Ponto’s colors looked intensely vivid, though he hadn’t tapped his poison—and even Darel and Coorah almost seemed to glow.
“I’m okay!” Gee said, hopping forward. “Sorry! I’m okay!”
“Gee!” Darel dropped through the trapdoor into the cavern. “Thank frog you’re all right.”
“If these spiders touched a wart on your head,” Ponto said, falling to the floor, then glowering around him.
“They’re nice!” Gee said. He beckoned Effie to come closer. “This is Effie. My friend.”
Effie crept toward the light. For a second, she looked scared. Then she chittered, “I hope one of you is named Aitch, and another is Eye!”
Gee croaked a laugh. “Ha!”
“I don’t get it,” Coorah said, wrinkling her forehead.
“All you’ve got to get,” Gee told her, “is that not all spiders are bad.”
“Are you sure?” Darel asked, glancing suspiciously into the mosaic cavern.
“Of course I’m sure! Just look at her! Plus, she gave me water.”
“Friendly spiders?” Darel smiled at Effie. “Well, you learn something new every day.”
“So you didn’t even get bitten, even a little?” Coorah asked Gee with a sigh. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind learning how to heal a spider bite.”
“Maybe later,” Gee told her, then introduced everyone.
Effie brought water and honeypot ants and called the “spider mothers”—who were like the chiefs. They sat in a circle around the lighted section of the cavern and listened as Darel told them the story of the Amphibilands. He explained about Lord Marmoo and Queen Jarrah—and about old King Sergu and the quest to the Snowy Mountains to meet the Rainbow Serpent.
“. . . and now the Rainbow Serpent wants us to tear down the Veil, our only defense against Marmoo.” Darel turned from one spider mother to the next. “We need friends to stand with us. We need you.”
N ARCH OF ROCKS ROSE FROM THE sand, looking like the spine of some immense, long-dead beast. Pigo and Lady Fahlga followed Lord Marmoo from the lowest rock toward the highest one, then paused a step below him.
A sea of scorpions covered the sands in front of Pigo, tails held high, stingers swaying. Flanking them were spider battalions, hunched beneath silken awnings. A few taipan snakes dozed atop a flat rock, and lizard mercenaries hunkered behind them—all except Captain Killara’s troop, which Lord Marmoo planned to hunt down after he finished with the Amphibilands for having betrayed him in the battle against the frogs.
A flock of ghost bats clung to the shady underside of the arching rocks, white wings wrapped around their bodies, ears swiveling to track the swarms of blue-banded bees buzzing beneath them. Lord Marmoo had ordered them not to feed, though. At least, not yet.
His lordship raised one pincer, and silence fell.
“Water is life!” Lord Marmoo shouted, his voice rasping across the dunes. “Even for those of us born to the desert. And yet the frogs hoard water. They lock it away in their lakes and ponds, while all of you go thirsty.”
An angry murmuring spread among the spider troops.
“But very soon now,” Lord Marmoo said, “the Veil will fall. Not just tear, not just rip. It will vanish, and we will march!”
Raucous cheers erupted from the troops, and Lord Marmoo lifted a pincer triumphantly. Then he murmured under his breath, “And during the next few days, Pigo, you and I shall lead a squad on a mission.”
“What sort of mission, my lord?” Pigo asked, equally quiet.
“The frogs are soft and weak,” Lord Marmoo said, “but they’re sly. I won’t underestimate them again. We’ll prepare a little surprise . . .”
Darel headed away from the ravine, his stomach bulging with spider water and his mind swimming with worries.
Beside him, Gee toyed with the web-bracelet Effie had given him. “Who knew spiders could be so great?”
“If they were so great,” Darel grumped, “they would’ve agreed to help us.”
“They can’t help,” Gee told him. “They’re afraid to leave the cavern. Effie told me there used to be ten times as many of them before the underground river dried up. You can’t blame them for being afraid.”
“They did give me silkweb bandages!” Coorah said, patting her bag of supplies. “Which was nice. Except . . .” Her voice turned troubled. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Not anymore.”
“Yeah,” Gee said. “It’s not practice now.”
Coorah frowned. “It’s real. Too real.”
Darel barely heard them. He was too busy kicking himself for his failure with the trapdoor spiders. He should’ve said something different, something better. He should have convinced them. He should’ve made them believe. But how? How do you ask someone to take a wild leap of faith?
And what about those tunnels under the spider cavern, and that trickle of water? Was that part of the Rainbow Serpent’s plan?
Well, maybe he’d do better with the possums.
He sighed, and followed Ponto across the outback.
Hours passed. The sun lowered in the sky and the shrubs grew larger and thicker. They stopped once to eat, and hid once when Coorah spotted birds circling high above them.
“What kind of trees are those?” Coorah asked, pointing ahead.
“Just tell me they don’t have toxic wasp hairs,” Gee muttered. “Whoever heard of a hairy tree?”
Darel peered toward a sparse wood rising from the plain ahead. The trees did look weird. He looked closer and realized that half the branches weren’t branches at all: They were curling slides and slanted planks and rope bridges.
“That’s it!” Coorah said, leaping ahead. “The possum village!”
Gee bounded past. “I bet they’ll give us lolli-possums!”
“There’s no such thing as lol—” Darel started.
Then he gave up and raced after them, feeling a glimmer of hope. Maybe the possums would listen. Maybe he’d finally find some allies.
He cleared a wide bush in a single leap, then leaped again, even farther. That time, at the top of his jump, he caught a better view of the possum village nestled in the woods.
Braided ropes and curved planks linked dozens of trees together, forming stairs and swings and seesaws. Ropes trailed to the ground and dangled in leaf-strewn garden paths. Darel caught a glimpse of flowers and herbs and fat seedpods growing in clumps between tree roots, and relief welled up in his chest. Anyone with such pretty gardens had to be friendly!
Then Coorah gave a croak of alarm and jumped sideways, one hand in her herb pouch.
Darel swerved with her, his relief suddenly turning to worry. When he reached Coorah, she was kneeling beside a lump of fur. A possum, lying motionless in the dirt.
Coorah crushed herbs in front of the possum’s nose. “She’s not responding.”
“Wh-wh-what do you mean?” Gee asked as Coorah pressed her ear to the possum’s furry chest.
Darel held his breath. Please, please, let the possum be okay.
Coorah shook her head and whispered, “She’s dead.”
“We . . . we have to tell the village,” Darel said, his throat tight. “Her family.”
The orange light of sunset spread across the treetops as they hopped toward the village in silence. Then Gee gasped in horror. He’d found another limp possum on the ground.
“They’re all dead,” Ponto said as he dropped from one of the rooftop planks. “Nothing’s left alive.”
“There isn’t a mark on them,” Coorah said, kneeling beside a burly young possum sprawled across a tree root.
“How did they die? Was it night
casting?” Gee asked, rubbing his teary eyes.
“Either that or . . .” Coorah shoved her finger pads into the possum’s armpits and started wiggling them. “This.”
“Coorah!” Gee gasped. “What’re you—?”
“Stop!” the burly possum suddenly yelped, curling and giggling. “Stop, stop! I’m ticklish!”
Darel clutched his heart and Gee scrambled backward, yelling, “Aaaah! Possum zombie!”
“They’re faking!” Coorah said, straightening. “All of them!”
The burly possum gave a bashful smile. “Sorry. We didn’t know if you were friends or foes.”
Dizzy with relief, Darel flopped down on a tree root and stared wide-eyed as “dead” possums started yawning and stretching and rubbing their eyes with their tails.
“After that trick?” Gee scoffed at the burly possum. “We’re definitely foes.”
“You can’t blame us for that. We thought you were scorpions.”
“Do we look like scorpions?”
“No, but they’ve been sniffing around lately, looking for our water hole.”
“You have a water hole?” Gee said, finally smiling. “Then I guess you can’t be all bad.”
The possum twirled his tail forward to shake Gee’s hand. “Why don’t you stay for dinner—and all the water you can drink?”
A young possum with a fuzzy face galloped closer and beamed at Darel. “Did we really fool you? Did we? Really?”
“You really did,” Darel admitted.
“I never played dead before!” the fuzzy possum said, looking from Darel to Coorah. “Not for real. I was so afraid I’d sneeze. You want to see the village?”
“We’d love to,” Coorah replied.
The fuzzy possum bounded ahead of them to a swaying staircase that spiraled around a tree trunk. He scampered into the branches, then showed them the slatted walkways and the slides and ropes and ladders.
“Arabanoo would love this,” Coorah said, her lips curling into a smile.
“It’s tree frog heaven,” Darel agreed.
Some of the possums took an hour to wake up, but eventually everyone crowded around a hanging fire pit in the center of the tree-branch village. Darel sat on a swinging bench beside Coorah, who was talking with a gray-furred possum herbalist. Happy yelps sounded from overhead, where Ponto was chasing a dozen young possums through the branches in some crazy game of tag. Darel saw that only the youngest possums hung from their tails; the older ones used theirs as spare hands.