Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 7

by Christopher D. Carter

  *

  The limbs that hurtled by in a blur scraped and scratched Crush’s arms mercilessly on the plummet downward. Crush reached out to catch a thick limb just in time to swing out and land on his feet in the dark. Was he on the ground now or simply on a ledge? He could not tell, and until his eyes could adjust, Crush did not dare to move an inch from the spot where he was crouching in the dark. The frogs that had been belching a thunderstorm a few moments earlier had stopped chirping altogether, and as his vision adjusted, he began to be able to make out his surroundings. Instinctively, Crush relaxed his tense muscles, and he felt his balance return after the unexpected tumble from the treetop. Quietly he crouched as a wild cat in the dark, and he waited to hear the soft crunch of leaves that would follow Boulder’s movements through the thicket. It seemed that an eternity had passed before he heard some movement from below. Cocking his head down, he listened as a slight movement sounded along the bark of the tree that he was perched upon, and he waited as the sliding and slithering grew louder with the approach of the shadowy creature.

  Crush held his breath for an instant, and his consciousness folded into his mind. Focusing on the location of the sound, he then felt the vibration echo through the soles of his shoes, and his deepest fear had come true. The serpent that he had latched onto before his fall from the treetop was making its way back up the center of the tree. The forked tongue flicked out once toward him, and he felt the slithering creature make its way along the limb as it sensed his body heat. There was no way that he could hide himself from the snake, and the snake seemed to have no fear of him regardless of his size. With a burst of desperate speed, Crush leaped down to what he hoped would be the ground below, and to his great surprise, he landed safely on his feet and then rolled with the momentum along the surface of the ground. He then got back onto his feet, and he peered back up into the tree where two large eyes that were shaped like slits glowed down at him from a gigantic head. With a hiss, the serpent’s head launched itself from the lower limb like a spring and struck out at him. Crush ducked just below the serpent as the head and body flew by him and landed on the ground at his feet. Afraid of what the snake might do to him if he did not defend himself, Crush grabbed the tail of the snake that now lay in a coil, and he yanked backward with such strength that the serpent lashed past him like a whip. Striking the trunk of the nearby tree, the snake rolled over in a slither of chaotic movement, and Crush leaped up into the lower branches of another tree nearby. Then he climbed up several branches into the foliage and waited for a moment to readjust his eyes and to identify the movements below. He heard the sound of leaves rustling and then the sound of a plop below the surface of a body of water, and as quickly as it had appeared, the giant snake swam away into what Crush could faintly see as a small bog. For the moment, he was safe from the attack of the constrictor, and he let out a sigh of relief.

  As Crush sat perched in the tree, more movement came from below, and Crush recognized the sound of rock striking rock. Then he saw the tiny sparks fly out between moving appendages, and Crush knew that he had located Boulder. With graceful catlike movements, Crush bounded down the tree to the ground, and he placed his hand on the shoulder of the elemental being as Boulder strode out from the base of the tree.

  “Boulder! It’s me,” Crush announced, and the stone face turned to meet his gaze.

  “That was quite a fall for a human to survive,” Boulder proclaimed. “It is good to see that you are not hurt and that you are still able to walk,” he added as he appraised Crush’s condition. “What was all the commotion down here just then?” he asked, and Crush could only sigh in response.

  “I think it was a snake,” said Crush. “And a very large snake, at that,” he continued as he looked out over the surface of the bog where the constrictor had swam away.

  “Ah, a worm,” said Boulder as he spotted the ripples in the water. “We have those in the mountain. Nasty buggers, they are. Always scratching their skin on our faces and leaving it behind for the wind to carry away. It was one of those that had ended the journey of another human on his way to Scalus.”

  “It almost ended mine,” Crush thought to himself. “Which way do we go to the river?” he then asked the elemental. He was growing weary of this world, and he was anxious to keep moving. Boulder took a moment to gain his bearings there in the woods, and with some thought, he settled on one direction.

  “There,” he pointed into the dark forest with a hand of stone. “You cannot see it from here, but I can feel the stream as it wraps around the shallow surface of the ground. Are you ready?” he inquired of Crush.

  “Of course. I don’t want to be here when that snake comes back,” he answered honestly, and so they began the trek away from the mountain of the old men and headed deep into the black forest toward the river. After an hour of trudging through the thickets and briers, Crush stopped at a particularly large and hoary evergreen and inspected the lower branches for snakes before clearing off a spot to sit at the base of a tree. He then seated himself down to rest and looked up at Boulder for a second. The elemental stood as still as a statue. He did not blink. He did not breathe.

  “Do you need to rest at all?” Crush asked his new partner with genuine concern. Boulder finally blinked once, and then looked down at the field agent.

  “No, I am fine for now,” he replied and then peered around to keep a careful watch around them for signs of any movement. “We should keep moving though. That ‘snake’ as you called it, it is the least of my worries in this forest.”

  “While I was on the mountainside, I saw the treetops swayed by something large beneath the foliage,” Crush noted. “And from the treetops, I caught the strong scent of a human passing by through the air. What was it?” No answer ever came quickly from the man of stone, and this instance was no different. Crush thought that he would have to ask the question again, but after long moments had passed, the elemental spoke up.

  “You are a human, and from what I have gleaned from the other humans that I have observed over the centuries, it would be difficult for you to understand,” he offered. “There is a type of human who lives in these woods, but it is not like the humans that you would know. This human is proportionally much larger than you. The snake that you encountered earlier would indeed be only a worm in his eyes as well. That is why we must not tarry here long,” he suggested.

  “If it is a large human, a giant in my language, no matter how large it is, then it should be able to listen to us, and we should be able to explain the needs of our journey,” said Crush. Boulder simply shook his head in reply.

  “No, it is not that simple. You have seen the kidnapping and enslavement of your people beneath the mountain, but that pales in comparison to what your people would endure from the ‘giants’,” Boulder explained. “The giant is feral and knows no right or wrong. It only knows to hunt for the next meal, much as the eagle that snatched you from the cliff side. You will never be able to make the giant understand your cause.”

  “It’s that bad, huh? I’ll take your word for it, but it would still make things quicker if we didn’t have to worry about discovery by a giant,” Crush reasoned. “I really don’t like hiding.”

  Before he could continue the conversation, a branch from overhead broke and drew Crush’s attention away from the conversation. Looking into the foliage above, a shiny pair of eyes blinked, and Crush was startled by the appearance of another animal in the forest. Standing up, he tried to focus in closer, and the animal began to climb down the trunk of the tree to where they stood on the ground. Neither Crush nor Boulder could tell what the animal was, but they could tell that it was not very large in size. When it had reached the bottom limb, Crush examined it more closely and noted the long hair on its head and back. He did not recognize the species, but it appeared to him to be some type of monkey that was indigenous to the forest. It measured about three feet from head to the tip of its tai
l, and except for its face and chest, its entire body was covered with red fur that was parted down the middle by a black stripe running down the center of its back.

  “What do you call this animal?” Crush asked the old man of the mountain. Boulder gazed at it and simply shrugged his shoulders.

  “I cannot say for certain, but it is not a human nor is it a rock,” he answered with a grind of his teeth. Crush was underwhelmed with the lack of information contained in Boulder’s reply.

  “Thanks loads, Sherlock. But have you ever seen one?” Crush asked more generically.

  “Yes, I have,” said Boulder as the monkey began to scratch its head and twist its face around to get a better look at Crush. The monkey then scratched its behind and licked its fingers afterwards. “Though I gather it has different sanitary habits than most humans,” he said as he turned to Crush. “I hope.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Different than this human,” Crush confirmed by pointing to himself. “Hey, little guy. I think I’ll call you Simon. Can you speak?” he asked the monkey in hopes of being able to communicate one-on-one with an animal in this new world. The monkey simply stuck out its tongue at him in