A sudden scream from Moss indicated that something had touched him.
‘Are you all right Moss?’ Kel managed to gargle, spitting out a mouthful of water at the same time.
‘Yes, I think so. A vine just touched my head, grabbed some hair and pulled it out by the roots, it hurts, but not too much damage so far. Keep as low in the water as possible.’
The raft drifted on, and the unhappy and very frightened three clung on tightly to the binding vines around its side, keeping themselves as low in the water as possible, yet in fear of being attacked by whatever might be swimming around beneath them.
The light in the tunnel slowly dimmed as the strange growth on its walls diminished, leaving the trio in total darkness again.
‘I’ve managed to get a stave free,’ called Kel, ‘and if I hold it up and nothing grabs it, I think it should be safe to climb onto the raft again, as we are at great risk of being attacked by whatever might be in the water.’
Kel held the stave up as high as he could, but nothing tried to take it away from him, the only sound now being the quiet swish of the water under the raft, and then a scraping noise as the stave touched a lower section of the tunnel roof as the raft drifted on.
‘Get back onto the logs, I think we are getting too close to the tunnel wall, and we could get scraped off.’ Kel was already halfway back onboard.
They huddled together in the middle of the floating collection of logs, holding on to the binding vines in case anything tried to snatch them off in the darkness, and not knowing where they were going.
A faint glimmer of light up ahead gave them a little hope as the craft gathered speed in a narrow section of the dark tunnel, and suddenly they were out in the sunlight, covering their eyes against the brilliant glare.
Three simultaneous sighs of relief sounded out as they realized they had survived the dangers and traumas of the tunnel, and apart from being very wet, were all in one piece, except for Moss, who had a small section of his head hair missing.
The river had slowed down a little and thankfully widened out again, the cliffs had receded back from the banks leaving an apparently normal river bank covered in short foliage interspersed with the occasional clump of rocks.
‘We must dry everything out while we have the chance.’ said Moss, who had already divested himself of his carry belt and its hanging equipment.
The first thing Kel checked was their store of dried berries.
‘It’s a good thing the draw string on the bag of dried black berries Mec gave us held the water out, or it could have expanded to enormous proportions by now, and we would have lost our emergency food supplies.’ Kel was inspecting all the little bags containing their survival equipment, and making sure the contents were dry.
The further the raft drifted down stream, the wider the river became and the more they had to use the poles to make any headway. The cliffs were now receding to become a low ridge, a long way back from the river bank.
A few trees, interspersed with bushes, began to appear as the raft slowly glided on, but nothing like those they were used to in the main forest.
While Jay kept the raft on course with her pole, Moss and Kel readjusted the vine bindings, replacing some which had been damaged when the raft rubbed against the cliff and the tunnel walls.
They decided to pull into the shore, take a rest, and see what the land was like. Their food stocks were going down steadily and needed to be replaced in case there wasn’t the chance to do so later.
As the raft drew nearer to the bank, Jay, who was kneeling on the edge of the logs, called the others over,
‘Look at this.’ she said, pointing to a mass of white waving strands in the water below.
‘Is it a kind of grass?’ she asked.
Moss lowered his pole to try and entwine a few of the waving strands, but they immediately retracted back into the soft mud, and out of sight.
‘It’s a life form of some sort, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Mec said we would find all sorts of strange things on our journey, and it seems he was right, as always.’
‘They look harmless enough.’ Kel said as he made the raft fast to a convenient bush with the mooring vine.
The white tendrils retreated into the mud to avoid Kel’s feet as he stepped ashore.
For a long time they talked over the high points of their adventure on the raft, while sitting on the river bank, and then just looked at the view of the river as it spilled out onto the broad flood plain.
Their reverie was disturbed by a grunting noise, and they sprang to their feet, Moss with his bladed stave at the ready.
Peering out from the bushes was a large fat creature on four legs with a long snout waving about in the air as if it was sniffing out some delicious smell. It didn’t seem frightened of them, moving a little closer and then sniffing the air again.
Before they could stop her, Jay had moved forward and reached out to touch the long snout of the creature, which was still waving about. There was little reaction to her contact, except for the long thin snout curling around her hand for a moment, and then letting it go. It repeated this action several times, and then moved forward to almost brush up against Jay, who seemed to show no fear whatsoever.
‘That was a dangerous thing to do,’ commented Moss, his stave at the ready, ‘it may have thought you were a meal on legs, and there would have been little we could do about it, considering its size.’
‘I just knew it safe,’ Jay replied, ‘I always know.’
‘That’s a useful thing to be able to do.’ Kel said, realizing the possible future benefits of such a skill.
‘Yes,’ Moss replied, ‘and you can only make one mistake.’
The fat grey creature had now stripped a bunch of leaves off a nearby bush with its nose, and turning to Jay, seemed to be offering them to her.
As her hand took hold of the leaves, the snout let go, swung around to strip off some more leaves, and then stuffed them into its mouth.
‘Pity you aren’t a leaf eater, you wouldn’t have to work very hard to get your food with one of those around.’ Kel said with a laugh, and the whole atmosphere on the river bank changed to one of peace and friendliness.
Somehow the creature engendered a feeling of well-being among the trio, and they relaxed to lay down on the short grass, and give their tired muscles a rest before continuing their journey.
Moss woke up from a long doze, and realized that Kel was missing, although Jay was still lying on the bank, fast asleep.
He was about to call out his name, when Kel came pushing through the bushes, his arms laden with fruits and pods.
‘You should have told me what you were about to do.’ chided Moss, trying to look cross, but failing, due to his relief upon Kel’s return.
‘You were asleep, and I thought you might need the rest, anyway, our grey friend followed me, keeping quite close at all times, so I don’t think anything else would have stood much of a chance.’
As the light had dimmed a little, it was decided that they would stay on the river bank for the night, and resume their travelling next day, there being little point in going on now as they wouldn’t get very far before it was dark, and finding another safe place in time couldn’t be guaranteed.
What did surprise them as they settled down for the night, was the grey creature which had befriended them, also curled up as close as it could. It showed no fear at all, but made snoring noises until Jay got up and stretched the snout out into a straight line, and then they all slept peacefully until the dawn broke.
Moss was the first to awake, yawn, stretch, and then notice that their grey friend of yesterday had gone. Jay seemed saddened at its departure, but soon cheered up when they prepared the raft for the next leg of their journey.
They hadn’t been afloat for long when the raft ground to a halt on a mud bank just below the surface, and it took a lot of heavy poling to get it off and into deeper water.
The further downstream they we
nt, the further out into the river they had to go to get water deep enough to float the raft, until the shoreline was only just visible as a hazy smudge on their left, and nothing but open water on the other side.
‘I don’t like the idea of being so far from land.’ Moss said, as he pushed on the pole to try and increase the speed of the sluggish raft.
‘If anything happens out here we won’t stand a chance of getting back to solid ground before it’s too late, that’s if we can get there at all.’
‘What do you suggest then?’ Asked Kel.
Before he could answer, Jay had gone to the edge of the raft to check on the water depth with a stave, and gave a little cry of surprise as her foot went straight through the surface of one of the logs to reveal a seething mass of chewed up wood and a large number of the white worms.
She pulled her foot out quickly, scraped off several squashed worms and put her foot over the side to wash off the remaining mess.
Moss and Kel rushed over to see what the trouble was, and stared in horror as they realized just what had happened.
‘It must be those white thread like worm things’ said Moss. ‘When we stopped on the bank for a rest, they must have sensed the logs above them, cut their way in and have been chewing away ever since.’
‘We’ll have to make it to the shore now, we have no alternative, the whole lot may fall apart at any time, and then we’ll be in deep trouble.’
They spread their weight as evenly as possible on the logs, ever fearful of a foot disappearing into a mass of sticky white worms, or even worse, going right through the weakened logs into the water beneath.
They poled on, not really sure they were still going down because it was so spread out now and the water seemed to be almost still. Kel noticed that the logs were now flexing in rhythm to the small waves which had become apparent of late, and he thought about tightening the vines.
‘The whole structure has weakened almost to breaking point,’ Kel said, ‘and we’d better get to the bank soon, I don’t think it can last much longer without retying it all.’
‘I agree, but how?’ Moss didn’t have any ideas either.
They pressed on, steering the raft towards the distant bank as far as the mud banks would allow, but getting no closer as far as they could tell.
A deep resounding boom echoed across the water, and they all turned to see what could have caused it. In the far distance, almost on the horizon, a plume of smoke sped skywards, lightning flickering around its crown as it reached a few fleecy clouds in the higher atmosphere.
‘What was that?’ they chorused almost together.
No one had an answer, but along with the smoke, streaks of fire were now leaping skywards.
It was Moss who spotted the next event which was to threaten their survival. Speeding across the relative calm waters towards them was a huge tidal wave.
‘If that hits us we are done for!’ Moss cried out in sheer panic, ‘our only hope is to hang onto the vines as tightly as possible, and hope we get washed ashore.’
The eerie silence was broken at last as the speeding wave drew ever closer.
A rustling, rushing noise grew in volume until it became a dull roar, and the wave was upon them. Many times their height, it lifted the wobbly raft high up, so that they could see the land clearly, and then it carried them forward at an ever increasing pace, as the wave reached the shallows and speeded up.
It seemed to take forever, the journey across the shallows, and then they saw the river bank racing towards them.
‘Hold on tight, I think the logs are breaking up.’ Kel needn’t have said anything, their fingers had almost melded with the holding vines, as their white knuckles showed.
There was a sudden upsurge as the wave hit the bank, throwing the raft up into the air, to crash down a few seconds later in a mass of spray.
Several of the logs on the outer edge of the raft had broken away, the holding vines whipping about like living creatures as the stress was relieved.
The power of the wave lessened as it raced inland, lowering the remains of the frail raft and its hapless occupants from its lofty crest almost down to the level of the ground, until it finally spent itself in a mass of frothing water and mud, the raft breaking up into a shattered heap of chewed timber and squirming white worms.
After getting back on their feet as the spent wave retreated, the three looked at each other in sheer disbelief, and then, covered in mud and pulped wood from the remains of the shattered raft, hugged each other in turn, tears of relief running down their faces.
When they had got their breath back, Moss set about trying to rescue the remains of the larger logs, as their staves and spare vine ropes were attached to them.
Kel and Jay unlashed the equipment as Moss dragged the logs in, and before long, as dirty as they were, some sort of jollity had returned to the party.
‘Where do we go from here?’ asked Moss, looking around to find something different to water and the unending grassy plain.
‘I can only suggest we use the Direction Pointer, and follow its indicated course as we have done before.’ Kel answered, ‘I for one would like to wash off this mud, it stinks, so let’s hope we find clean water before too long. I don’t want to go near that river again, anyway, the water will be muddy for some time, after that upheaval.’
They set up the indicator, picked up their possessions and trudged off in the direction it had shown them, three very grubby, hot and tired individuals, but happy to be alive.
Moss remarked that they seemed to be going away from the river, and put it down to the fact that the river had gradually turned away from their intended heading earlier on, and they hadn’t noticed.
The first of a small group of rocks could be seen just ahead of them, and they diverted off their intended course out of sheer curiosity.
As they drew nearer, it was obvious that the group of rocks was much bigger than they had first thought, and were unlike any others they had come across so far. Almost black in colour and sponge-like in texture, they were very hard. Climbing up the pile to get a better view of the surrounding countryside, Moss suddenly called out in surprise.
‘Be careful as you come up, the rocks are very sharp, but you must come and look at this.’
After struggling up to the top of the rock pile, the others joined him and they looked down into a large deep pool of crystal clear water.
‘First, we must make sure something nasty hasn’t made its home here, and then we can fill up our water bags with clean water instead of the dirty looking stuff we got from the river. After that, if it’s still safe, we can wash off this stinking mud from ourselves and the equipment.’
Moss attached the largest fruit they had with them to a long length of vine, and dangled it into the water. As nothing much happened, except that the fruit looked a lot cleaner after its dunking, he tied the vine to the end of his stave and swung it out over the middle of the pool until the fruit was hardly visible as it sank into the depths. Still no reaction of any sort, so Moss deemed it safe to lower one of them to the water level, and fill up their water bags, after first washing them out well.
With as much fresh water stored as the containers would hold, and their own thirst slaked, Moss decided it was time to take a bath, one at a time just in case something unexpected happened.
Kel was the first to be lowered down with the aid of a vine rope, and plunged into the cool clear water. He was quite a good swimmer, and showed off appallingly by diving deep, and then surging up to the surface to rise some distance out of the water before crashing back, causing wavelets to lap around the rim of the pool.
Jay was quite impressed at his prowess in the water and he would have gone on, going deeper and deeper if Moss hadn’t called him out.
As Kel reached the rim of the water hole, Moss, not to be outdone, took a short run of three steps and launched himself in a flying leap towards the centre of the pool, to disappear into its depths for several seconds. Kel was a little
worried as the time went by, and then Moss surfaced to leap out of the water even higher than Kel had.
When Moss finally got out of the pool, it was Jay’s turn, but she wasn’t as used to the water as the other two, although she had lived by the river.
She carefully climbed down with the aid of the vine rope, and lowered herself into the water, keeping near the edge of the rocks. It was this cautious approach to the water which largely saved her life.
Suddenly the centre of the pool erupted in a fountain of foam and a large grey-brown shape reared up to look around for the thing which had dared to disturb it.
Jay was only a short distance from the rocky edge when the monster appeared, and her arms cleaved the water in a frantic effort to reach the safety of the rim. Moss had grabbed his stave and was about to throw it when he realized it would be of little use against such a large creature, and might even make it more angry. They could only stand there and watch as Jay struggled to reach safety, the whole scene happening in apparent slow motion, and the water creature gaining every second.
As Jay reached the rim of the water hole and began to climb out, a clawed arm raked the rock beside her, leaving deep scratch marks in the hard stone.
Moss and Kel had found some loose stones, and began to rain them down onto the creature, diverting its attention for a few moments and so allowing Jay to climb out of its reach.
Panting for breath, she joined them on the top of the rock pile, well out of reach of the water monster who was churning up the water in a frenzied fit of rage as its intended meal had escaped.
‘It must live deep down in the pool, well out of our sight, waiting for something to come here for a drink, and then snap. Nasty.’ Moss pulled a face of disgust to reinforce his opinion of the creature.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Kel, ‘we had a difficult time climbing up here, so I don’t see how any of the creatures we have seen so far could do better, or even as well.’
‘It must get its food from somewhere, and a lot of it, just look at its size.’ Moss didn’t like to make a statement, and not be able to back it up.
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