The Beasts of Upton Puddle

by Simon West-Bulford

  “Speak!” boomed the voice of Gnauserous from the huge glass ball.

  Joe swallowed. It felt like he’d tried to eat an entire egg without cracking the shell and got it lodged in his throat. He could feel Tabariel’s gaze boring into the side of his head, willing him to say something, anything, but he couldn’t speak.

  “The fate of your kind rests on your shoulders, and you say nothing?” said Gnauserous.

  Joe’s legs melted to jelly, and his teeth chattered. Shoulders hunched, expecting a blast of fire to consume him at any moment, Joe peered above him with one eye closed, looking directly into the fierce eyes of the dragon queen. Everything else faded. There was no sound. No feeling in his body. All he could see were the two eyes staring back at him like stagnant, green pools split by dark rifts. And in those rifts Joe saw his own cowering, pitiful form reflected back.

  Joe stared at himself. Was this who he really was in the face of death? In the face of injustice? Was this how an ambassador for humanity should look? The image blurred as tears formed a hazy screen over his eyes. He knew this was not what he wanted to be, knew he was about to let down more than six billion people, but bone-crushing terror pressed him to the floor. The hard stone sent a juddering crack through his kneecaps.

  A voice echoed behind him. Tabariel’s response no longer held the edge of respect that it had earlier, only blind anger. “What are you doing?”

  At first Joe thought Tabariel was shouting in rage at him, chiding him for his weakness and cowardice, but the seraph continued. “Have none of you any honor at all? Or are you so afraid that you must attack a child who has not even had a day’s training in resisting such things?”

  At once, the oppression lifted from Joe. The fear was still indented on his mind like the pain of swallowing a jawbreaker and still feeling its bulge in his throat even though it was no longer there. He struggled to his feet, still staring at Gnauserous, still feeling the quivering in his legs, but at least knowing now that not all of it was his own weakness.

  “His lack of preparation is not our concern,” said the queen stiffly. “Too much is at stake to take any chances, even if this is just a boy.”

  “With every action and every word, you confirm your dishonor. Why don’t you simply attack and be done with this charade? Why even bother—?”

  “Tabariel!” one of the other seraphim behind Joe shouted. “Don’t tempt her. You know she’ll do it, so don’t fall into her trap.”

  Gnauserous roared, and raucous rage-filled words rebounded from the walls as the seraphim and dragons began their tirade. Thirty-two voices screamed for dominance, and Joe could pick out each one and hear each word. Wincing under the wrath of a debate that had no doubt been argued with the same venom time and time again, Joe looked around the great hall, seeing the dragons weave their necks like charmed snakes, seeing the seraphs dart and pulse with glaring lights as they shook fists to make their bitter points. At least the quarrel was buying some of the time they needed, even if it was short-lived.

  The squabble was broken by Gnauserous as she reared up, belched a huge fireball, and stamped her front claws into her platform. The thunderous noise resulted in sudden silence. Joe watched, painfully aware that he still had said nothing.

  “No more.” said the glass ball. “The time for discussion is over. The boy has not provided a defense, and therefore—”

  “Charges!” shouted Joe, knowing there would be no other opportunity.

  “What?” hissed Gnauserous.

  “Charges,” Joe repeated. “If you’re going to destroy everyone, and I’m supposed to have something to say, you’d better tell me what it is we’ve all done wrong . . . Your Majesty.”

  Stillness settled inside the hall as Gnauserous glowered at the tiny figure in the center of her lair.

  “Very good, Joseph,” whispered Tabariel. “Excellent.”

  Gnauserous lowered her head to the level of Joe’s, an acidic stench on her warm breath. The voice came slowly, tauntingly, from the sphere. “You wish to know why I am declaring war on your species?”

  Joe held his ground. “Yes.”

  “The crimes of humanity are numerous. Any one of them is enough to justify eradication.”

  “Then I want to know all of them,” said Joe, feeling that he’d got the ball rolling rather nicely. “Right from the start, right up until today. I want to know every single crime.”

  “Ridiculous! Your principal crime is existence. All humans are evil. Your kind is nothing but a germ, a rampant disease that has spread across the skin of the world and infected it. A lush and beautiful earth it was once, but every day you plunder it, then squander what you steal, only to blacken the skies with poison. Would you give measles or influenza the chance to survive if it invaded your body, or would you purge your blood with medicines before it caused more suffering?”

  “Measles can’t talk, but if they did, I’d at least listen to—”

  “All living things speak, Joseph Copper, but human arrogance presumes that ears are the only way in which their speech is heard. Were it not for the seraphim, we would be as mute to you as the bacteria you destroy without hesitation. If dragonkind were at the mercy of humans, we would not be given the privilege of a hearing such as this.”

  “You’re wrong. Not everyone—”

  “Gnauserous!” The shout came from a seraph that had darted into the hall from behind Joe. “The globbles have seen many ships approaching the island. An army is coming.”

  “What?” said Gnauserous. “How can that be? They cannot possibly know we are here.”

  “I don’t know, Majesty, but they have come upon the water. There is a battleship, several cargo ships, and we sense from the globbles many men wait to land on the beach with weapons. What should we do?”

  “There is no longer any need for debate. I do not know how they have discovered us, but the humans have made the first aggressive move, and we will respond in kind. After the eradication of these invaders, we will turn our attention to the rest of the world. Kill these traitors that stand before me now, including the boy.”

  The rest of the Conclave, both dragons and seraphim, looked at each other, as if adjusting to the gravity of Gnauserous’s order before acting.

  Tabariel yanked Joe’s ear, the pain jogging him from shock. “We don’t have much time. Climb onto my dragon. Quickly!”

  Still shaking, Joe clambered up the leather straps surrounding Tabariel’s dragon and pressed against the scaly skin as the beast reared into the air, dodging two of the Conclave and bellowing flame. A yell of pain exploded from Joe as the dragon rocketed through the hall’s entrance, almost yanking Joe’s arms from their sockets. But Joe grasped tight, watching in horror as a blur of tooth, talon, and wing rushed around him in clouds of smoke and fire. With his ears popping and the skin pulled tightly across his face, Joe fought to stay conscious as Tabariel’s dragon spun upward into the sky like a shot from a gun. Dragons raced on either side, some allies, some not. Blue sky became thick forest as the world turned upside down.

  “Hold on tight and close your eyes,” yelled Tabariel, who clung like a limpet to the dragon’s neck.

  Joe did exactly as he was told as they zigzagged between trees at impossible speed to outrun the enemy dragons. With every desperate turn, Joe felt the whip of a branch or the scorch of a fiery blast, until at last they skidded to a halt on the beach closest to the Nesting Caverns.

  “Run,” said Tabariel. “We will meet you in the caves if we survive.”

  Joe threw himself off the back of the dragon, hitting the beach so hard that the wind was knocked out of him. He strained for breath, turning onto his back. Several dragons collided, kicking, clawing, and screeching.

  Joe spat grit and blood and ran for the caverns, almost falling face-first as he wrestled to gain pace on the shifting sand. Less than two minutes later, Joe collapsed into the entrance, wishing he could not hear the deafening shrieks behind him. His throat burned with each exaggerated breath. />
  There was no one there to greet him. They had all moved on.

  Outside, the skirmish reached its climax as eight dragons writhed amidst coils of sulphur and spraying blood. Two fell, joining a line of serpentine bodies dashed across rocks and strewn along the shore like beached fish. The occasional wing or tail tip lifted and quivered in the throes of death as the other six victorious dragons selected a place to land. One simply slumped, too injured to move on, but the other five limped toward the cavern.

  Joe was unsure if these five were on his side or the Conclave’s, but Tabariel’s appearance soon set his mind at ease.

  “We escaped,” he said, “but the Conclave will send more. We must find out where Merrynether and the others have gone.”

  “Perhaps they left us a message.”

  Tabariel raised a hand and cocked his head. “I can feel somebody reaching out to me. Somebody must have stayed behind to wait for us while the others searched for a new location.”

  Tabariel hovered deeper into the cavern, lighting the walls green as he went, and Joe followed, his feet crunching on broken eggshells. They didn’t have to search long before Danariel’s own moonlight luminescence mingled with Tabariel’s glow from one of the tunnels.

  Danariel smiled briefly. “Tabariel, Joe, good to see you both. What happened? We thought it would be at least two days before you returned.”

  “Good to see you too, Danariel, but I am afraid the news is not good. Gnauserous is taking no chances. She loosely follows the law to keep the rest of the Conclave subservient but has already ordered our deaths.”

  “So suddenly? But she—”

  “Wait,” said Tabariel. “There’s more. Strangers have come with an army. Perhaps it is this Argoyle Redwar you expected.”

  “Redwar,” Danariel said, nodding slowly.

  “It must be him,” said Joe, “but nobody seems to know how he managed to find the island. Aren’t the Conclave able to stop people from seeing it?”

  “Yes,” said Danariel, “but while you were away, we found something. Let me show you.”

  She floated a little way down the tunnel she had come from and pointed to a dirty brown rag on the ground. Joe decided not to get too close when he smelled its repulsive stench. Then he recognized it.

  “That’s Thumbler’s coat, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Veronica has a potent combination of herbs and chemicals to preserve bodies for a lot longer than usual. She planned to get Thumbler here, prepare him for the trolls’ ritual burial, and take him to them. She wanted to personally explain what happened—a big risk, knowing how trolls are at the best of times.”

  “Doesn’t smell very preserved to me,” said Joe, pinching his nose.

  “No. It’s how we discovered something was wrong. Veronica realized a foreign element must have reacted with the chemicals she used for preservation and, sure enough, she found something inside Thumbler’s coat that she hadn’t noticed before.”

  Danariel drifted down and picked up a black disc. She passed it to Joe. It was the size of a large coin and had tiny square markings along its edge. Small perforations revealed silver innards on one of the faces.

  “This is a homing device, isn’t it?” said Joe.

  Tabariel buzzed in a tight circle. “A traitor. He led your enemy straight to us.”

  “He wasn’t a traitor,” said Danariel sharply. “Thumbler was a tortured prisoner, and Redwar used him. He fed false information to Thumbler, who thought Redwar already knew the location of the island. They fitted him with a bug and let the poor little troll escape so he could warn Veronica. And we all fell right into his trap.”

  Joe stamped a foot. “We rushed here to stop him but led Redwar straight where he wanted to go.”

  Danariel sighed. “Veronica was furious with herself. We tried to convince her the chemicals probably stopped the bug from working, but we all knew it was too late.”

  “Where is she now?” Tabariel asked.

  “She went with Snappel to Hallowbear Tor, the troll colony. She’s hoping to persuade them to join our cause.”

  “What chance has she got?” asked Joe.

  Danariel looked at Tabariel before answering, her expression less than hopeful. “It will be dangerous. Trolls are fickle creatures. But they aren’t treated very well by the Conclave, so there is a small chance they might help.”

  “And if they do help,” Tabariel joined in, “then the wyverns may help too.”

  “The wyverns?”

  “Yes, the wyverns live with the trolls. They are treated with equal disdain by the Conclave, and to our shame . . . most dragons on Pyronesia treat wyverns with the same contempt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, although wyverns are similar to dragons, there are physiological differences. Ridiculous, I know, but they are seen as a lesser species because they are smaller and have two legs rather than four. But it’s more than that. They are also considered far less intelligent.”

  “I see.”

  Tabariel’s aura diminished slightly for a moment, like a bulb on the verge of burning out. “But what of the others? Where did the rest of my dragons go with your . . . army?”

  “Semeriel suggested that we move to the Mourning Gorge,” Danariel said.

  Tabariel balked. “Semeriel suggested that?”

  “Yes. I was unsure at first, but I suppose it is the safest place on the island from the Conclave.”

  “Safe from the Conclave, yes, but perhaps not safe from . . .”

  “Not safe from what? What’s in there?” Joe asked.

  Both seraphim hovered for a moment, avoiding direct eye contact with each other.

  “Come on. What’s the big problem with the Mourning Gorge? What’s inside?”

  “It’s haunted,” said Tabariel abruptly.

  “Haunted?”

  “Yes. Haunted.”

  “I didn’t think ghosts were real,” said Joe. “But then I suppose a few months ago, I didn’t think you were real either.”

  “They aren’t real,” said Danariel with an edge to her voice. “It’s just a tale. That’s all. Nobody has ever actually seen a ghost there.”

  “But they’ve been heard,” said Tabariel.

  “I don’t think I want to hear more,” said Joe. “I don’t care what’s there. If that’s where everyone else is, that’s where we should go.”

  “Of course,” said Tabariel. “We should leave at once before the Conclave come for us again. I will check on our dragons, and then we must be on our way.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Joe had never seen a ghost and felt more than a touch of nerves at the idea of hiding in a haunted cave, but for the second time in less than a day, Joe gulped down his fear and endured another dragon flight toward an uncertain end. Another sandy beach peeped out from behind a crumbling cliff edge before Tabariel’s dragon banked toward a dense forest area. Joe wiped his eyes as the sudden rush of air forced tears from them, but he kept a solid focus on their destination. Through gaps in the vast cloak of leaves below, Joe could make out what had to be the Mourning Gorge: a great split in the ground stretching for miles on either side, deep enough to hide a fair-sized tower block, dark enough to make bats think twice.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Joe asked.

  Tabariel, who was sitting next to Danariel on the top of his dragon’s head, swiveled round to look down at Joe.

  “The Mourning Gorge, though some call it the Gate of Sorrows.”

  “Great,” said Joe, “so I should expect to have plenty of fun when we get there.”

  “At least you’ll be with friends again,” said Danariel.

  Warmth filled Joe when he thought of Mrs. Merrynether and the others waiting for them—but only for a moment. Anger gushed back with the memory of how the old lady had got him into this situation. Danariel too. He looked at the seraph, and when she turned to look at him, he knew she could feel his pain. He wanted to say something, wanted to tell her just how betrayed he
felt, but there was such a depth of compassion in her eyes that his anger slid away like salt through a sieve.

  “Lie flat. Cover your head,” said Tabariel, and at once they were crashing through the leafy layers, branches cracking away from them as exotic birds scattered in panic. A jolt, followed by four nearby thuds told Joe all five dragons had landed.

  They stood at the edge of a chasm, peering into unfathomable depths.

  As it had so many times before, Joe’s curiosity got the better of him. “I know I said I didn’t want to know earlier, but . . . is it really haunted?”

  Two answers came from both seraphim at the same time.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  Joe pressed his lips together and squinted at each of them in turn. “Why do people believe it’s haunted?”

  Tabariel fluttered upward, then stared into the blackness. “Nobody has been there in many years and with good reason. The last time a seraph came here looking for alternative nesting grounds for her dragon, she went mad. She spoke of . . . of humanlike creatures that stood before her one moment and were gone the next. And their disembodied wailing was so disturbing that she fled in terror. After she told the Conclave, she never spoke again and slowly degenerated into a reclusive soul that eventually starved her dragon of life.”

  “A ghost story. That’s all that was.” Danariel sniffed.

  “What do you think is in there, then?” Joe asked.

  “I have my suspicions.”

  Joe waited, hoping for more.

  Danariel glanced at Tabariel, then looked away. “It doesn’t matter, but we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”

  One of the other dragons swooped from the edge of the chasm, its leathery wings stretched out, riding the thermals, circling downward into the darkness as it looked for signs of the entrance. It breathed a jet of fire on the other side of the gorge not far below, momentarily lighting up a teardrop-shaped gouge that split the slate-colored rock face into an opening large enough to hold Merrynether Mansion. Several tracks had been etched by years of water erosion from the forest above, making natural but dangerous paths to the foreboding cavern. It looked as though the trees had wept for this great wound cut into the island.