However, Timothy’s praise and Barbara’s enjoyment of her first kill was short lived. In a matter of seconds, the creature’s spiny legs began to flail, as it righted itself off its back, and began running at them at full speed. So that her arrow had obviously done very little, except seemingly anger the foul beast, if these monsters could even feel such emotion.
And all at the same time, Arthur managed to stab at the exact right moment, impaling one of the beasts upon his long spear. But even that would not kill it, and instead it buzzed and hissed, and beat its metal-like wings trying to free itself from the end of the spear.
Then, another of them flew behind Tavora’s head. And suddenly the beating of the wings went silent, and she felt the instant pain of its thorny legs pricking into her back and on her shoulders.
As a reflex, she swung her sword blindly behind her head; And at the last instant, as the insect opened its jaws to bite at her, she miraculously struck at just the right angle to separate the disgusting creatures head from the rest of its body. At that precise moment, she felt the beast’s grip release, and she turned to see its legs curled up tightly, in a way that she knew without question that she had killed it.
���Ah!��� Tavora screamed in a delayed panic: her breath panting, her face sweating from fright. She could hardly move, paralyzed by overwhelming fear. Yet, somehow she composed herself enough to form words, and to yell out to the others. ���Go for their heads. It’s the only way to kill them,��� she shouted, with a dry and frantic voice.
Her words carried through the mayhem, and they all heard her, even above the sound of wings and the hissing noises that the creatures made. So that Timothy, with his still superhuman abilities was able to slice his double sword blades with a surgeon’s aim, and Barbara could adjust her targeted arrows to shoot the unwholesome beasts from the air with a single shot.
However, there is only so much that a group of five can do against a legion of unending, meter-long insects, who have it trained in their instincts to kill you. So that arrows will eventually run out, and Tavora with her inexperience in battle was becoming an easy prey. And as such, Ata had to go about the nearly impossible task of protecting the both of them.
Another of those putrid bugs, the one that Barbara had shot through with an arrow, it leapt from the shadows onto Tavora’s leg; and before she could swing at the monster, Ata had grabbed her by the back of her coat and flew her, with the help of his armbands, as close the fire as he could. While in the air, he kicked at the creature’s head, and it fell with a crackling, screaming hiss into the flames.
Yet, even still, the monster cave insects would not be abated, nor defeated, and they ran all the more violently at the group. So that it became an impossible situation to defend against, and the five were forced to retreat.
���Everyone to the fire!��� Timothy shouted. And since all of them, but Tavora, had seen this trick done before, they all knew what to do. Huddling as closely to each other as they could, Timothy struck his forearm bands together, wrapping a force field around all of them.
And not a moment too soon, with biting blade-tipped jaws the entire swarm descended upon their force field, constantly striking at the energy field domed around them, in search of any weakness in their defenses.
���Well, it’s better than being eaten, I suppose,��� Arthur said, watching as the colony of monstrous insects continued to attack at them.
���We will be eaten eventually, though,��� Timothy interjected, as if he’d needed to clarify that point for some reason.
Yet, almost before the words had left his mouth. Barbara turned to her friend, and, perhaps justified, snapped at him. ���Do you have to do that every time?��� she asked.
But Tavora interrupted them all. ���Do you hear that?��� she asked, still frantically panting and injured from the bugs’ attacking.
Though before there could be an answer, there was a searing, slicing, frightful pain that almost felt, in the same moment, like a burning heat in her thigh. Tavora cried out in a desperate agony. The undying insect, the one that Barbara had shot through the abdomen, the one that Ata had kicked into the flames, had crawled out of the fire and had gotten into their force field, as Timothy had struck his armbands together.
In shock and pain, Tavora let go of the group and immediately she was pushed from the force field dome. She had broken the link, and was forced out, close to the fire, surrounded by a swarm of deadly cave insects.
This seemed to be the worst of all ways to die, and she thought in a fraction of a second, why would she be speared her life during the Giant War, only to die such a brutal death at the jaws of unmerciful, monstrous black-hearted insects.
A wave of heat and light flew past her face, and then again. It was Ata. He had left the force field as well, and was waving a burning branch from the fire in the air. Trying to frighten the swarm enough to buy them some small amount of time, until they could get back into the force field, if that were even possible.
���You don’t have to do this,��� Tavora said, nearly crying as the swarm drew nearer.
���You didn’t have to save my life, either,��� Ata said, over his shoulder. ���Let’s say we’re even,��� he added.
The black moving mass of the swarm was now only a few feet away. In this in between time, Timothy, and Barbara, and Arthur had made a terribly foul, impossible plan to relinquish their force field, and to fight through the swarm until they could get back to Ata and Tavora. It would not work, and they knew it would not work.
Yet, as Timothy was on the brink of retracting his energy field, a single flaming arrow soared through the darkness of the cave, piercing into the body of one of the creatures. And this single burning arrow was followed by a waterfall of flaming arrows, creating a wall of fire around them all, and separating the group of light travelers from the hive of deadly insects.
The cave was now washed in the vibrant light of torches, beating back the black insects into the shadows.
At the cave entrance, a man dressed in a flowing robe and riding upon a gigantic lizard, in the same way that one would ride upon a horse, he shouted an order to them, ���Curro!���, which means to run.
Howbeit, given the circumstance, it wouldn’t have mattered what that man might have yelled. They were leaving that cave, and in a blazing hurry.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Traveling By Night
The still pervasive darkness was kept back in some small way as they rode on horse-sized lizards through the towering forest, with trees wider and taller than most would ever imagine. The light of their rescuers’ torches burned through the night, and they were all much safer and feeling better. All of them, that is, but Tavora, whose leg throbbed and still bled a trickle even after it was wrapped, and she felt sick all over. Though she was good at hiding when she was in pain, so most thought her to be alright.
As they continued on, they tried to make some sense of this new world around them.
���I think this might be the same world I’d gone to before,��� Barbara said to the boys, as she held her arms around the waist of a serious-faced man with trimmed beard and full robe, trying her best to stay on the back of a crocodile-sized lizard without the normal help of a saddle.
���It does seem like the same place, doesn’t it? Colossal trees, and giant lizards… that’d be my guess it was the same place,��� Timothy replied.
To ride upon the backs of gargantuan lizards is not as slimy or disgusting as it might sound, but for expert horseback riders, as Timothy and Barbara were, it was the most unnatural way to travel. (And I would guess this to be because lizards, unlike horses, do not gallop or trot, they run as if gliding across the forest floor, making only the faintest sounds. It was something that had to be gotten used to, for sure.) And while they slithered through the deep night, on the backs of giant reptiles, they heard the hoot of a regular, roughly earth-sized gre
y owl in the trees.
���Isn’t that bizarre?��� Timothy said to the group. ���Massive trees, and lizards, and now insects, unfortunately, but normal-size birds. How is that possible?��� he asked.
Their lizards ran over the fallen leaves and branches in the unearthly forest with the lightest and surest steps. And eventually, Timothy began to think that he might, after a while, grow to like riding on lizards, more than on horses. Except that once he thought it over, and realized that most lizards were carnivorous, he promptly changed his mind.
���Ha!��� Ata exclaimed, after several minutes, and completely startling even their straight-faced robed guards. ���I have it,��� Ata said, grinning. ���It’s time, it’s all about time. Well, more like time and oxygen really.���
Timothy looked at his friend oddly, but Barbara was the one to blurt out, ���Tell us what you mean, Ata. You’re confusing us,��� she said, speaking slowly and intentionally, as if Ata had gone a little mad.
���Yes, sorry about that,��� he said, still smiling. And then, going on to explain the whole bizarre occurrence, in as much detail as he could (as he tended to do when he felt he was being especially clever).
���Don’t you remember,��� he said. ���In Sonsuz Su, all the people lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, except they’d all lived on tiny man-made islands, and so that’s why we hadn’t noticed it, because it was a different ecosystem. But the fish were bigger…���
���Hadn’t noticed it? Hadn’t noticed what, the fish?��� Timothy asked, as he tried to keep his legs up while his lizard leapt over a fallen log.
���Yes, Ata. What is it?��� Barbara said, knowing he would explain things much more quickly if she pressed him to. And though it could be considered impolite, she thought it might be alright just this once.
���Sorry, sorry. Yes, I’ll hurry,��� Ata said. ���It’s biology. That’s all. Every kind of trees, and all reptiles will never stop growing, as long as they’re alive. And in Sonsuz Su, because they’d periodically cut portions of the forest down for wood, then we’d never noticed it. But on this planet, with a little more time, say… [he did a few speedy calculations in his head, given the size of the trees, and the lizard he now rode upon] maybe two thousand years, then all of these things could have grown to be just this big, given the right environment.���
There was a brief pause, as Timothy and Barbara tried to process all that they’d just heard.
Eventually, Barbara spoke up. ���So then… those bugs, in the cave, were just regular-sized… [she gulped, forcing herself to say the word] cockroaches, that had gotten too old, and had too much fresh air?��� she asked, while trying desperately not to allow herself to imagine the horribleness she’d seen that night.
���Yeah,��� Ata replied. ���If it helps you to think of it like that… it’s like the giant insect fossils we have in our world, only still living.���
And all of them, individually, shivered with disgust, though glad to be rescued from that cave of horrors, and hopefully, safe from now on.
���Ata?��� Tavora called out from further up in the group. Her voice sounded frail and paper thin. ���I feel sick,��� she said, in a way that they all knew the pain that she must be enduring.
And the night instantly felt all the more darkened.
Though only a few minutes later, ahead, through the forest, they saw a mammoth tree, and a light, as bright as a city’s light, that came pouring through the knots in its trunk.
���Hold on, Tavora,��� Barbara said, with a purposeful gentleness in her voice. ���We’re almost to their city. You can make it.���
However, the injured Tavora’s hands were now far too weak. And as her lizard and stern-faced guide leapt over another dried branch, she could not keep her fingers clenched any longer. And she fell to the ground with a harsh thud, onto the dirt and leaves.
Chapter Thirty-Five
A City of Roots
Their city was a spectacular tower, built within the trunk of a massive hollowed out tree that somehow still grew, through a system of veined water tubing that fed nourishment throughout the giant hollow tree to keep it strong.
But nothing about that place seemed to hold their fancy at the moment, nor could it, as Arthur ran with his superior, superhuman strength, carrying Tavora up a winding staircase that had been carved directly from the heart of the tree itself. Her face was dirtied and eyes closed shut. She was barely responsive, not unconscious, but not in her normal mind, either. She would mumble words, but nothing at all that made sense.
���What’s the matter with her?��� Barbara yelled, trying to keep Arthur’s pace as they ran up the stairs, following the leading of their rescuers.
���She’s been bitten,��� he answered, leaping two or three stairs with every stride. ���We have to hurry,��� he shouted, before he ran out of sight, around the bend of the stairs.
When, at last, they saw Arthur and Tavora again, they were found on roughly the fifteenth story of that enormous tree (which had in itself around two hundred spiraling stories, till it reached the upper branches).
Ata, Timothy, and Barbara burst into what was more or less a hospital room, on a floor that was primarily dedicated to the practice of medicine. Ata’s chest pounded, winded, and feverish of breath, and nearly faint from panic. And also, Timothy and Barbara felt for the very first time, since their return from Eddesu, the capacity to grow tired, which they’d already in so short a time grown accustomed not to feel, and so they did not like it.
On a bed, also carved from the tree itself, lay Tavora. Her face, gaunt and greenish, and the area around her leg was purple, blood red, and swelled beyond belief.
A man in a white robe, who had all the characteristics of an aged and excellent physician, was busy mixing a steaming concoction in a deep bowl. He spoke something to Arthur in a foreign dialect, and Arthur had somehow seemed to understand.
Mr. Greyford gently pulled the sick girl’s hair away from her face. ���This will hurt, dear. You should hold my hand,��� he said, speaking his words clearly.
Though she was unresponsive, and it seemed to the three others, who’d just arrived, that there was little chance that she’d heard anything that was said; Only a moment later, her frail fingers reached for the old man’s sympathetic hand.
In an instant, the native doctor poured the steaming hot liquid onto Tavora’s open leg wound without warning. The brightly colored green mixture sizzled as it fell onto her skin, sending up a billowing cloud that smelled putrid, like the odor of decaying flesh.
Tavora screamed, then moaned violently with her jaw clenched.
���You’re hurting her!��� Ata shouted, running to the bedside.
Sweat dripped profusely from her forehead, as the doctor stirred another bowl of the scalding substance.
Yet, seeing Ata’s face, Mr. Greyford held up a hand, and said something in the doctor’s native language, causing him to halt what he’d been doing.
Then Arthur spoke, both to Ata and looking around at the rest of the group, so that they knew he was addressing them as well.
���If we don’t do this, Ata, then the infection will spread to her heart,��� Arthur said, resolute and very serious.
At this point, small tears forming into larger ones started to show on Ata’s face: a sight that both Timothy and Barbara had never thought to see in their whole lives, which made it all the more difficult to bear.
Arthur continued, ���Would you rather her not to feel pain, or would you rather her to live?��� he said.
With a tear upon his face, Ata said in a tragically graveled voice, ���To live…���
���Iterum,��� Arthur said to the doctor (which in the man’s native language means, ���Again��� or ���Once more���).
And both Timothy and Barbara turned away as the pain happened again, though her scream churned in their stomachs, and stung in their ears. Though Ata, however, had looked on the entire time, as if he were a guard whose duty it was to stay vigilant. And when asked later, about why he had not turned his head during the treatments that night, Ata replied, ���Because it hurt more to look… and if I couldn’t help her, then I at least wanted to hurt with her.���
Once morning had risen in that world, and after a night spent tossing and turning in vacant beds, in that otherwise empty hospital room; By then, Tavora’s fever had finally subsided to levels that were no longer life threatening.
And her doctor, the man who’d administered her treatments the night before, he made a few predictions about her recovery that had turned out to be true: Namely that she would do very little but eat and sleep for hours on end, and that this would likely go on for a period of two weeks, which it did.
And that first day of her recovery, the group had decided to keep watch over Tavora’s bedside. Taking their breakfast and mid-day meal, within that sizable circular hospital room, they kept a watchful guard, but found it to be a considerably dull thing to watch over a sleeping girl.
Very often that day, Tavora’s doctor, or other important men from the city, would pay visits to their room to check on the condition of the girl. And they would speak at length with Arthur, about all manner of things.
In this way, during a lull in activity, while the room was left alone with just the five of them, Barbara asked the obvious question which all of them had wondered.
���Mr. Greyford,��� she said, coming to sit beside the old man. ���How are you able to speak with them?��� she asked. ���Have you ever been here before?���
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 56