“Come on, Elli!” ordered Beatríz as she yanked on Elli’s hand that was trying to pull her in the opposite direction—and across the seam of water that was beginning to splash in a markedly-heightened state of turbulence.
“No, Beatríz! They’re right in front of you—they’re going to get us! Quickly! Across the water! This way!”
In an unprecedented display of strength, Elli spun Beatríz all the way around, nearly pulling Beatríz off her feet that were planted firmly in opposition to the direction Elli wanted to lead them, and was about to jump over the disturbed liquid—Beatríz in resistant tow, and the light rapidly dimming—when the shoreline Elli was aiming for lurched away and withdrew completely into the ring of dusky darkness encircling the girls.
“Elli! Stop!” screamed Beatríz. Elli resisted no more.
“It’s too late now anyway,” said Elli, breathlessly, loosening her tension on Beatríz’s out-stretched arm. “It’s too wide now—I can’t even see it—and it was probably a Moormog, anyway. But, come on, Beatríz,” Elli urged, with renewed tension in her grip on Beatríz, “we have to at least back up! The Blackmouths! They’re coming toward us!”
More than that, so much did the yellow coats of the creatures blend into the light cast by the lantern that it appeared to Elli that ten or so Blackmouth mouths and pairs of eyes were floating—disembodied—toward them, the only thing otherwise visible in the light being about forty black paws dancing along the ground and approaching them—not perceptibly connected to any legs!
Again Elli began to pull hard on Beatríz, grabbing her more securely about the wrist. But this time Beatríz was unmovable.
“Elli!” Beatríz shouted in a voice that sounded like a friend who, in that moment, was much older. “Elli!” she yelled, snapping Elli’s body back next to her. “Look, Elli” she said, as if she had planted her words along with her feet she had dug deeply into the soppy turf, the Blackmouths beginning to growl and seethe. “Elli,” Beatríz said more calmly, feeling her friend yielding control, “I have never been so frightened before, not even in Bairnmoor, but we have to follow the lamp, Elli—we have to!”
Elli stepped alongside of Beatríz, her knife extended, and then stopped. “Okay . . . okay, I’ll take your lead, but I’ll go first.”
The friends stood dead still, facing the Blackmouths that were only a dozen feet away, where they, too, had halted their brief advance. “Beatríz,” Elli said, almost inaudibly so, and not believing for a second that what she so desperately wished for would happen. Elli felt her perspiring hand losing its grip on Beatríz’s wrist, and let go, but instantly re-grabbed Beatríz once more by the hand. The sounds of menace, fearless and relishing, erupted more noisily from the black faces of the great, yellow cats; the black mouths and eyes and paws—on invisible bodies bunched together and crouched low to the ground—began to slink toward Elli and Beatríz.
“No! Get away!” Elli screamed, waving her knife as if shaking out a dusty rag. The Blackmouths abruptly stopped, their growling now becoming mixed with howls out of obvious pain from an attack by an invisible source. Beatríz took a step forward, drawing next to Elli; at that point the cats backed away, appearing to retreat from the advancing beam of light.
“Beatríz! They clearly don’t like the light; it seems the closer they get to it the more blinded they become, and the more it hurts them!” said Elli, who gripped Beatríz more tightly and took, along with a quietly compliant Beatríz, another step toward the Blackmouths; once again, the cats retreated an equivalent distance.
“Yes, Beatríz, let’s keep going,” said Elli calmly, with no evidence of uncertainty in her voice. She guided Beatríz and her lantern forward, one small step at a time. The cats roared and yowled to a deafening loudness, began to jump and turn in place as if avoiding hot coals, and then separated violently into two packs, one pack of Blackmouths gathering in their agitation close to the left side of the path being taken by the girls, the other pack, swirling and snarling, along the right side, with neither group looking toward the light. The bodies of the Blackmouths had become fully visible, and Elli was initially dismayed to see the lethal mouths stretched wide no longer retreating as Beatríz and she got ever closer to them; but she noticed as well, with the barest of a burgeoning hope, that the Blackmouths seemed unable now to see them at all, their eyes collectively cast toward the ground—and so, it seemed, unwilling to attack.
Indeed, as Elli and Beatríz passed slowly between the two gangs of creatures, feeling perhaps not unlike Moses passing between the looming walls of water in the Red Sea, not one set of jaws snapping in angry frustration, nor one set of paws hopping crazily in place, claws fully extended, made contact with the girls. Although they passed right between the Blackmouths that lined both sides of the path like animated garden statuary, the girls near enough to the heads to be able to reach out and touch them—and close enough to feel the wet blasts of air ejaculating from their mouths that were yammering beneath shut eyes at the light assailing them—none of the Blackmouths made any effort whatsoever to stretch their necks only the slightest of distances into the path and easily lock their mouths onto the girls.
Beatríz, feeling the dank warmth of the creatures’ rapid panting against her legs, began to press on Elli to go faster; Elli resisted, but said nothing.
“Elli,” whispered Beatríz, who was about to say something further. But Elli squeezed her hand hard, eliciting a tiny yelp from her friend.
The companions had just gotten beyond the reach of the Blackmouths still lining the path, when Beatríz whirled around and began to point the lantern toward the cats while backing up next to Elli. Instantly the black spot disappeared, and Elli was again surrounded by the impenetrable duskiness of the OOeegaltabog, no longer able to see the Blackmouths, which nevertheless could fully see them. One of the unseen cats flew at the lantern, knocking it from Beatríz’s grip. “Ah!” screamed Beatríz.
As soon as the lamp struck the ground, another of the Blackmouths grabbed it, while Elli, on hearing the lamp fall, pulled her knife and began waving it wildly all about at the creatures, which were now nearly next to her but not visible in the fog.
“Elli! The lamp!”
“I know, Beatríz—I think they’ve got it!” Not even able to see her knife that she was yet swiping at the thick gases swirling from the agitation of the hidden beasts creeping ever nearer and about to attack, Elli yelled, “In the will of the Good!” Elli couldn’t, in that moment, recall if she had ever used the one opportunity she had, according to Hannah, to invoke the special dispensation and powers of the Good’s will while brandishing her knife in battle, but she had nothing to lose—and hoped the Good would look favorably on her appeal, regardless.
The Blackmouths continued to growl and yelp stridently, but made no further advances toward the girls.
“Elli!” screeched Beatríz, “the lamp! We’ve got to get the lamp!”
“I know, Beatríz! I know! I’m trying to get it!” Elli heard the lamp being dragged along the ground, moving away from them off to her left. “Quiet, Beatríz!” Elli ordered, but barely audibly so. She clamped down on the hilt of the knife with the pressure of a vice grips and dove to the ground where she thought the noise of the lantern scuffing against the peat was coming from, striking hard at a place just beyond the lantern, and piercing what she assumed was the skull of a Blackmouth; the creature wailed and let go of the lamp—which Elli then frantically felt for and grabbed with her free hand before scrambling back next to Beatríz.
While still slicing through the fog with her knife, Elli pressed the lantern back into Beatríz’s hand. “Here, Beatríz! Turn around—and quickly! Find the black spot again!” But Beatríz had already started to turn as soon as she felt the lantern in her hand, and had found the dark circle behind her eyelids by the time Elli had finished giving her orders.
The wide globe of light cast by the lantern returned at once, encircling the girls and fully illuminating the Blackmouths—that yelled and yowled more ferociously,