"Here"s your snail," said Corby soothingly, "and a couple of nice new round pebbles." I heard three little plops. "And a-oh, no: it"s a bone . . . Sorry."
"What sort of bone?" I sat up incautiously, to be rewarded with a pain that beat like a drum behind my eyes.
"Only a little "un. Rat, mouse; bat perhaps . . ."
There was a shuffling behind me and Conn"s groping hand closed on my shoulder. "Sorry about that, Thingy dear: there was a drop at the end of the pa.s.sage. No bones broken?"
"I don"t think so," I said crossly. "Where-where are we?"
Snowy shifted his hooves. "Under the mountain . . . Have you your flint and tinder safe?"
I felt in my pocket. "Yes, but-"
"What happened to the torch you carried?"
I groped. "Here . . ."
"Right. You have kindling somewhere about you, too; I saw you pick it up.
Let"s have some light, shall we?"
Given something to do, I felt better, and even more so when Snowy bent his head and touched the stub of his horn to my head. I heard his soft moan even as my pain lessened, and I reached forward to push him aside.
"Don"t, oh don"t! I can bear it. Don"t hurt yourself . . ."
"We are one, child, all of us. All pain is to be shared, all troubles; all endeavour, all joys . . ." I felt an immense comfort, as though my mother had kissed me better, my nurse taken me on her lap, my father laid his hand upon my head. It was another of those elusive flashes of what I could not even call memory, and gone as swift as kingfisher-flash.
I lit the kindling-birch-bark, moss, twigs-and took from their friendliness a branch-tip of fire. As it flared I stood up, all aches and pains miraculously gone, and held it out to Conn.
"Hold it high-let"s see where we are . . . Oh, oh!" I gasped in awe as Conn held up the torch. It flared and dipped and crackled and shone its flickering light upon towers, castles, trees, mountains, cliffs, frozen waterfalls, avalanches- all shimmering like ice and moon-glow. "What-what are they? So beautiful . .
"Stone castles," said Corby admiringly. "Cliffs; snow-slides . . . Caw . . ."
"Stalact.i.tes and stalagmites," said Conn, and he whistled through his teeth.
"Magnificent! I"ve seen the like in Frankish lands, but nothing so grand . . ."
As we stood there, admiring, I heard a faint tinkling sound as first one great icicle and then another dripped into the silence. Moglet wrapped herself round my ankles.
"Too big," she said. I knew what she meant, and some of her unconscious, unspoken fear formed my next words.
"Which is-is the way out?" and even as I spoke the torch in Conn"s hand flared and sputtered and I realized how little fuel we had left.
Then came Snowy"s comfort. "There are several openings on the other side of the cavern. To save fuel we shall go without light, travelling around the perimeter and exploring each pa.s.sageway as we come to it.
"I shall go first as, to some extent, I can see in the dark. Thing dear can come next, holding to my tail-but try not to pull it-and the knight shall bring up the rear. We shall not travel too fast, and if I come across any obstacles I shall try and warn you in plenty of time. Toad and cat with Thing, crow and fish with the knight . . . It will take some time, but we have that to spare. Now, get ready, and remember to bring what wood we have left and any kindling. Easy does it!"
I don"t know about the others but I kept my eyes closed, pretending to myself that it was only a game and that if I opened them there would be light. Puddy was quiet in my pocket, but I could feel Moglet trembling against my chest.
Snowy"s tail was soft and silky and comforting to hold and Conn"s hand warm on my shoulder. It seemed we stumbled, tripped, wandered for hours; sometimes we climbed over rocks, sometimes squeezed round or ducked under; sometimes there was open s.p.a.ce and nothing tangible save the last step and the next. If we paused for even an instant, the silence clawed back into our consciousness as palpable as the ever-present dark. But there was always the tinkle-drip of water, sometimes nearby, sometimes seeming miles away, by its very randomness making the black silence all the more terrifying-the drip of melting snow in an immense and deserted forest, the crack of ice on a hollow lake, a child crying in a deserted house- By now my mouth was dry, my brain in a vacuum, my senses like little sea- anemone tentacles, scared of touch or bruise. Some of the pa.s.sages Snowy didn"t even bother with, as if he knew at once they were dead ends; others we traversed for a hundred steps or so until they narrowed impossibly. I lost count: was this the fifth or twenty-fifth way we had gone? And all the while an uncooked lump as big as a cottage loaf, doughy and indigestible, was rising, ever so slowly, from my stomach to my throat, so that when the squeaking began all my tensions, all my fears, erupted in a small shrill scream.
"Quiet, child!" said Snowy sternly. The perspiration ran through my fingers into his tail and Conn"s fingers gripped my shoulder so fiercely in answer to my terror that I could not help but cry out again. "Quiet: the bats are back!"
The bats! I had forgotten them, although it was they who had led us the right way after the deluge of water, mud and stones had destroyed our first refuge.
I felt a sudden rush of air as myriad wings brushed my mask, stirred my hair, and a language I did not understand touched the high pitches of my hearing.
Apparently Conn noticed nothing, neither did Puddy or Pisky, but Corby put his head on one side to listen and Moglet poked her head from under my jacket.
"What do they say?" I asked.
"That the way out is three openings to the right: we were nearly there," said Snowy comfortingly. "Best foot forward!"
We squeezed into a narrower pa.s.sage than most we had tried, but even I beneath closed lids could feel the gradual difference in the quality of the light, and risked ungluing gummy lids. We found ourselves now in a smaller cave than the last. There was light but no magic castles of rock, no everlasting dripping. Ahead was a rift or chasm, and beyond it the cave mouth and the setting sun sending bars of rose-colour across the floor. We had been entombed for nearly twenty-four hours. No wonder I was suddenly ravenous!
Over the chasm stretched a natural bridge of stone, wide enough for two to cross abreast. I started towards it eagerly, only to be halted by a buffet of bat- wings and a hundred shrill voices, and Conn"s voice, harsh and incredulous.
"Look! Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Look to the right, Thing!" He had got my name right at last but I did not heed it.
Across the chasm, stretched from side to side in eight equally s.p.a.ced strands, was an enormous web. Even as we watched, a spider, as thick in body as a Lugnosa moon and as black and hairy as the Devil himself, legs jointed and hooked like some grotesque toy, ran across to the centre of the web and halted, multifaceted eyes glaring and mouth moving like the jaws of a wolf. I did not need Snowy"s words to know we were beyond hope.
"The bats say that she stops all who would cross: see the corpses parcelled among the strands? They have tried to break through but fall helpless to the glue on the web. There is no way out for any of us, none, unless we can bring the spider to destruction . . ."
The Binding: Cat
Web of Despair
It was Conn"s fighting Hirlandish temper that brought me to my senses. With a cry of rage he had charged the web, only to be repulsed by a tw.a.n.g! of impenetrable strands, a sticky front and a menacing clatter of joints from the spider. Conn collapsed on the ground by my side, such a comical look of frustrated fury on his face that I forgot my worries and patted his shoulder.
"You all right?"
"All right! All right? I"ll kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, sure and I will! Just let me take my sword to its evil body and I"ll-" but then he stopped and of course remembered that his weapon was in pieces. "Ah, wouldn"t you believe it then!
Just when I needed it . . ." He put his hands to his head and tugged at the unruly curls. All of a sudden he had shed ten years and was again an edgy, temperamental lad, the brogue tripping from his tongue like a slashed wineskin. "Ah, "tis terrible, terrible! How in the world can we get past that- that black bag of air?" He sprang to his feet and began to pace the ten feet or so of rock in front of the chasm. "See, the b.u.g.g.e.r has stuck its net to the rock; there, there and there," and he pointed to thick suckers that anch.o.r.ed the strands. "And two at this side, one the other and two at the top-eight together, by the saints!"
Between the thick strands glistening with an evil, tarry glue that clung to whatever touched, were finer strands that glowed with a greyish light of their own. These were pearled with sticky droplets and clogged with pitiful little bat-parcels, some still feebly struggling in the last rays of the setting sun that slanted through the seemingly unattainable mouth of the cave. Freedom! So near, so frustratingly near! Were we, too, to end like those bats, waiting to be sucked to the bone, then discarded into the torrent of water we could hear echoing in the chasm far below the web? Or would we choose rather to drown in those depths, so far beneath the open sky, the woods, the fields we were used to? Or would we huddle here, cowards all, and slowly starve to death?
"Time for supper," said Snowy. "What have you got in the pack, Thing dear?"
Not much: half a flagon of water, some ends of ham, rinds of cheese, honey.
We ate what we could, bunched close together and shivering now, for the sun had gone down. Conn doubled his cloak to sit upon, for the rock struck chill, and Snowy lay down behind us so that my cloak would do as a coverall.
Beyond us and the web the cave mouth was p.r.i.c.ked with stars and a near-full moon swung into view, her pale light too high to penetrate the gloom of the cave. A couple of desperately hungry bats dared the web; one pulled back at the last moment, the other, with a high-pitched scream, became entangled and a moment later a pair of pincer-like jaws fastened on the poor, furry body. Poisoned venom quickly did its work and the stunned bat was rolled and twisted into an obscene shroud. The dry rustling and shaking of the web ceased, and the only sign of the terror that lurked there was a hooked claw that crossed the rising moon, a bar sinister on the gold.
I leant back against Snowy. "What can we do? How . . ."
"We must think," he said. "Consider, a.s.sess. There must be a way . . . But now sleep, my friends, sleep. Often in dreams the answer comes. Sleep . . ."
And cold, still hungry, I dozed off, the comfort of a strangely silent Conn"s shoulder my pillow.
"I"m thinking," said Moglet.
After breaking our fast-a bad joke, this, on what we had left-Moglet had washed her face and perched on an outcrop of rock some discreet ten yards from the web. With inscrutable eyes she had watched the loathsome spider take two bat-parcels and suck them dry, then spit the bones to the torrent below. She had watched the giant insect wipe its jaws with a rattle of forelegs and, satiated, settle back in the middle of the web, to watch us.
The rest of us, excluding Snowy who said nothing, had spent some two hours in fruitless argument and discussion, first one and then the other putting forward wild schemes that could come to nothing. The only idea that had seemed remotely feasible, that of Pisky"s to dare the torrent below, had been dashed by one quick look, a wary eye on the spider the while. If we managed to miss the ledges and projections on the way down and avoided being dashed to pieces on the rocks that reared up like fangs, we should surely perish in the swirling black waters that disappeared into a gaping hole in the rock to heaven knew where.
Twice Conn had tried to get near the bridge of stone that spanned the chasm and twice had been threatened by an immediately alert spider who had run down the web to meet him, jaws clashing. It even pursued him on to the rock floor of the cave the second time, to be driven back by some stones I flung in desperation. After this we were exhausted, and it was only then I had noticed and questioned the non-partic.i.p.ating Moglet.
A careless retort sprang to my lips on her reply, engendered perhaps by frustration, but Snowy blew softly down the back of my neck before I could say anything.
"It is perhaps her turn," he murmured softly, which I did not understand.
"Gather close, all of you, and send your thoughts to her aid. Close your eyes and empty your minds of all except that which will help her thoughts.
Concentrate on cunning, wisdom, energy and, above all, freedom. Now, my dears, now . . ."
So we did. Huddled together, hungry, thirsty, cold and in despair, we nevertheless freed our minds and sent them over to where Moglet sat, a little receiving statue.
At last she stirred. She had been sitting bolt upright, large ears forward, eyes apparently unblinking. But now she performed a long, slow stretch, arching her rump in the air, tail a relaxed loop, front legs stretched out, claws a- sc.r.a.pe against the rock, ears back, head sloped down between her front paws, jaws almost at right angles in an exaggerated yawn. The ritual done, she sidled over to us.
"Well?" I asked, aware that the sun outside was at its zenith, aware of time trickling away like water through carelessly cupped hands.
"Stones," said Moglet. "Lots of them. A big pile. As heavy as you can throw . .
." And, exasperating animal as she could sometimes be, she folded her front pads underneath her and promptly went to sleep.
Stones it was then, gathered in the half-gloom by Conn and myself, pecked from ledges by Corby, hoofed from their hiding places by Snowy, until there must have been two hundred of them of all shapes and sizes.
Moglet opened her eyes and considered. "That should be enough . . . Now then, Sir Rusty Knight, I want you to cut two strips from your cloak, about half a man-hand thick and a hand-and-a-half wide-"
"From my good leather cloak? You must be joking!" expostulated Conn.
"Do as she says," said Snowy quietly.
Surprised into compliance, Conn did as he was told and laid the tanned strips by the stones. "Now what?"
"Now," said my kitten, thoughtfully flexing her paws, "now I shall have to ask our white friend here to do some interpreting to the bats: don"t speak their squeak myself, but I gather he does . . ."
Quickly she explained what she wanted, and while we were still exchanging glances wondering whether it would work, the bats had swarmed down and picked up, four to each strip, the pieces of leather. For a minute or two they practised flying in formation, a thing they were obviously not used to, the strips falling from their grasp twice, luckily onto the rocks close by. Then they were ready, hovering above us with strange clicks and twitters.
"Right!" said Moglet. "Thing dear and Conn, will you please throw stones as hard as you can at the web in the bottom right-hand corner, there where the web has been darned; the small strands, not the thick ones. As soon as you have made a hole, start to make another, still at the bottom, but this time on the left-hand side." She turned to Snowy. "Tell the bats to go as soon as I say "Ready!" "
Conn and I started flinging the stones: his aim was much better than mine.
Some of the missiles went through the fine meshes, clattering across to the cave mouth. Many of mine dropped soundlessly into the water-filled chasm, but before long we had a sizable hole in the right side of the web. As soon as the first stone struck, the spider was down to investigate, throwing out fast streamers to try and plug the holes we made. The stones themselves seemed to have little effect on it, bouncing off the tough carapace like pebbles off armour, but its anger at our attempted destruction of its trap was plain to see, for, even while knitting up the severed strands, it chattered and snapped its jaws.
I heard Moglet"s "Ready!" to Snowy and would have stopped to watch the bats but for his hissed warning.
"Keep going: do not let your eyes stray!"
By now each stone was getting heavier and heavier, and as we switched to the left side of the web, Conn was throwing at least three to my one; in the end I was chucking them underarm, scarce able to see their direction for the sweat that ran down inside my mask and threatened to blind me. I thought I could do no more, but suddenly there was a loud tw.a.n.g! from above and the whole web dropped about six feet. With the speed of light the spider turned and ran up one of the central struts towards the roof. At last I could look up to see what the bats had been doing. The leather flaps had been wrapped round two of the central struts and, thus protected from the gluey stickiness, the bats had been able to bite completely through one strand so that the web hung now only from seven supports instead of eight. The other four bats had not fared so well: the second top main strut had not parted, and even as they tried to escape, one poor bat was caught in snapping jaws. No refinements this time: the spider crunched it with one bite and then spat it out to spiral down, back broken, into the torrent below.
Then the great insect went back to the repair of its web. Spreading itself on the surface of the rock above the break, it clung safe with the four back legs while holding the severed end in its front claws, dribbling some foul oozing mess on it and then drawing up the longer end to meet the shorter and binding all together with some kind of thread it teased from its belly.
"Now," said Moglet, her eyes green with concentration. "Take your sharp little knife, Thing dear, and a piece of leather to protect you from the stickiness, and saw through the left-hand bottom strut. You, Sir Conn, do the same for the upper right-hand one: you are the only one tall enough to reach, and your broken sword has a nice sawy edge. Don"t worry: the spider cannot be in three places at once and I"ll ask Snowy to get the bats to tackle the bottom strut on the right at the same time. That will account for four more struts; one is already through and the other nearly, I think. That leaves two, the extreme left one near the bridge and the one nearest us in the middle. Sir Conn, before you start please make a loop round that one-yes, more leather, please-and attach it by our rope in Thing"s pack to Snowy. He may not be able to free it, but at least the shaking will give the creature pause." I marvelled at my incisive, logical, quick-thinking kitten; never would I have believed her capable of five minutes" sustained thought, let alone the drive and determination she had shown thus far. She gave a quick lick to each front paw. "I shall give each warning if the spider changes direction: off you go!"
An hour later we were totally exhausted, and the spider must have been too.
The bats had gnawed through one more strand, Conn had cut through another and so had I, but all Snowy"s weight had not shifted the bottom one.
We had lost two more bats, but now the web was looking decidedly the worse for wear. Great holes marred it where the stones had gone through and the insect had only managed temporary repairs. Now, not counting the first strut the bats had failed to sever, four had been cut through and temporarily repaired, but did not look as though they would bear any weight until the tarry substance that anch.o.r.ed them had had time to set. And time was something none of us had to spare.
Moglet still burned with energy. Her eyes were huge in the early twilight, for the sun had sulked behind cloud since midday. None of us had had time to think of food but I would have given almost anything for a drink, and looking round at the others I knew they felt the same. For two pins I would have drunk Pisky dry and watched enviously as Moglet lapped a quick half-inch, with permission of course.
"Thirsty work," she remarked, fastidiously pawing the top clear of weed and snails. "Now: one last go! Conn, take the last right-hand strand and bats the left. Thing dear, sharpen that knife of yours once more, for the strand in the middle here is the strongest-"
The right-hand strand parted. Conn ran to my side and together we sawed away at the middle one. The last left-hand strand suddenly snapped loose from the wall above the bridge and the bats screeched above our heads as the maddened spider came rushing down towards us. The bats suddenly flew in a cl.u.s.ter at her eyes so that she could not see, and at last with a strange thrumming noise our strand broke. The others, the mended ones, sucked stickily away from their supports and now the whole web hung suspended by one single line.
The black creature retreated to the middle of her ruined web, hairy legs waving, jaws snapping, eyes darting from side to side judging which repair to make next. Then, crouching back, it gathered its legs to spring- "A torch, Thing, a torch!" called Snowy urgently.
With a speed I had not thought my tired body possessed I grabbed what kindling we had left, bound it with the cord from Conn"s cloak to a piece of wood and struck tinder and flint. In a moment I had a blazing torch that illuminated the whole cave even as the spider leapt from the web to the rock before me. Waving the torch I advanced.
"Back, back you thing of darkness and deceit! Back, I say-" and I flung the fiery brand straight at its eyes.
With a screaming hiss it leapt back for the web, which rocked crazily at the impact. There was a crack! like a whiplash and the last strand parted. For an instant web and spider seemed to hang suspended, then with a rush both fell down into the chasm. The torch followed, and as we rushed forward for a moment it lit up the shattered body of the monstrous creature-arms and legs broken and askew, all smothered by the broken web. Then the foaming waters closed over it and spun it away into the endless rivers below the mountain . . .
The Binding: Crow
The Great White Worm
Outside, in the clean, cool evening air, it was raining again. But now none of us would have exchanged the downpour for the deceptive shelter of those accursed caves. As for me, I opened my mouth and let the blessed water bounce off my tongue; I even sucked the ends of my hair for the precious drops. In spite of being drenched Moglet stood stiff-legged and tail-high as if she had just routed a pack of marauding toms from the backyard, revelling in our admiration and affection. As for the bats, they swarmed away in a great cloud, despite the rain, only to return in twos and threes to drop small fragments of food. I didn"t fancy the idea myself but Corby, Pisky, Puddy and Moglet were delighted. It was the bats" way of saying thank you.