“Hurry, Elli!” said Beatríz, now pulling on her friend. “The black spot is going away—I feel like it’s going to go out completely, and soon, Elli—just as I think that I am going to go out completely, and soon, whether I want to or not, Elli, and no matter how much I want to want otherwise. There’s not much time, Elli!” Beatríz rasped. “Let’s hope the lantern can want to want and hope, and lead us to someplace safe—and soon!”
Elli and Beatríz had crossed a short series of smaller mounds, and were now climbing, with slow steps and labored breathing, the long hill of an extraordinarily large moor, the largest yet encountered by far, its black grass uncharacteristically long and thick; the OOnwees and Blackmouths had circled to within several feet of the girls, and to within only minutes of reaching them—poised to take them down the instant the flame of the lantern was entirely extinguished.
“Beatríz!” exulted Elli. “Beatríz! Look! Up the hill! On top, I think! C’mon! We can make it!”
“You know I can’t see it, Elli, but I’ll believe you—at least, I want to,” Beatríz said, nearly out of breath. “But,” she added despairingly, “I don’t know if I can make it, Elli! I don’t know—I’m getting light-headed. I’m going to faint, Elli! I’m sorry, but I can’t help it! But I-eeee . . . ” Elli reached back and pulled on Beatríz, helping her hold the lantern aloft.
Up the spongy-turf hill the girls pushed themselves, toward a light getting larger and brighter—yet all the less identifiable because of the immense glare. So dazzling was the light—or seemed the light, for eyes now accustomed to searching the darkness—that Elli could barely slit her eyes enough to see the ground directly in front of her. The tall, thick grass was now pushing against the girls’ feet, as if determined to slow them—even shove them—back, and into the black mouths of the yellow cats that were nearly upon them, their jaws stretched wide, yawping and snapping. Beatríz was going alternately limp and, with Elli’s help, recovering just a bit. There was so little ground to cover now to reach the light ahead, but Elli wasn’t at all confident they would get there, with Beatríz’s involuntary resistance and the Blackmouths closing the gap between them.
The light ahead was now looming and flaring so that it felt to Elli engulfing, even threatening and devouring; but it mattered little, given the terror closing in on them from behind. Beatríz felt a mouth graze one of her boots, causing her to stumble. “Aaaagh!” she wailed as she fell, the heel of her boot now clenched in a set of teeth.
Beatríz fell down, but forward into the arms of Elli, who had in that second turned to catch her; then, together they fell, Beatríz forwards and Elli backwards, up the hill and against the large light—but with Elli feeling herself being caught by something from behind. Indeed, the sudden appearance of the “something” so startled the yellow cats that they halted with violent abruption, causing the one cat to release its grip on Beatríz’s boot and enabling both girls to be pulled—by whatever the something was—into the cavity of the light, just before apprehension by the Blackmouths that had swiftly regrouped and sprung in full force at Beatríz and Elli. Having just missed seizing the girls, the Blackmouths stomped and whirled about, screeching in enraged protest. They threw themselves for a few brief moments against the shocking impenetrability of the light, and then turned and rushed back into the darkness.
“Elli! Elli!” called Beatríz, both exultant over their narrow escape and fearful of their sudden salvation that could prove to be illusory, or perhaps even worse than what they were fleeing from.
“I’m okay, Beatríz! And so are you—I’ve got you! But,” she added, “I don’t know what’s got me! I can’t see! Not yet—it’s too bright! But something’s got me!”
“You mean, Elli, that something else has caught us?” she squealed.
“No. I mean, I don’t know if we’ve been caught—as in captured by something or someone—or caught, as in falling into something that’s gotten us stuck—or, at least gotten me stuck! Something I got caught in, Beatríz, when I fell back holding on to you, when you fell forward into me!” Elli sat still for a brief moment. “It feels, Beatríz, as if I’ve fallen into some tree branches—that then sprang up and away from the Blackmouths, and, and . . . well, I’m sort of caught in them, sort of caught in two large branches wrapped around me. I’m trying to get used to the light so I can see where we are and get out of what’s trapping me—maybe get to my knife so I can cut the branches away.”
“Well,” inserted a new voice, at once imposing and feminine, “I wouldn’t be going after those branches if I were you. What you call being caught was, in fact, being saved; and what you call branches are, in fact, my arms; and what you call being trapped is, in fact, being protected; and, if, in fact, you’d like to get away, you’re free to do so—free to go back down the hill to the Blackmouths and the OOnwees, if you’d like,” the voice said, rather nonchalantly, if not liltingly.
~four~
Childheart began to wake from a deep sleep, noticing first the water that was gently flowing all around his body—entirely submerged, except for his head. But even that was being bathed by tender hands caressing his face and scalp with soft sponges and delicate fingers. Childheart soon discovered that he was resting in a sling, in a large pool inside a large hall, staffed by dozens of attendants. Unpersons were bathing him and tending to his numerous, but superficial, wounds. Otherwise, he was alone in the pool, and there were no guards. But neither was there any place for him to run to, much less escape from. At this point, in any event, Childheart felt confident in his own security, even as, it seemed to him, his captors must have felt confident in their own securing of him.
More than anything, it was the sole voice he heard back in the forest, giving orders to those who had apprehended him, that told him that things were okay—for the time being, anyway—because it was, he now realized, the voice of his companion, Kahner. But he also knew that things were about to be not okay; for the voice of Kahner was the voice now of one who was an enemy, regardless of the explanation for his capture.
Obviously, Childheart reflected, Kahner was not who he said he was; not a general fighting alongside the Queen, Taralina. And what else that Kahner told him in Taralina’s castle, he wondered, was not true? Perhaps all of it?
Then who was Kahner, the former Unperson who was healed and returned to being a person only by virtue of the girls’—and especially Beatríz’s—love? Precisely who did he appear to be, now? Childheart knew that he was about to find out, for at that moment he heard the tramping of dozens of boots approaching.
“Lower the unicorn here!” ordered a Wolfman. Whereupon Childheart felt the sling, attached by several cables to a crane above, lifting him out of the water. As he was being lowered to the pavement, surrounded by Wolfmen and Unpersons wielding warm towels to dry off the unicorn, several hands clamped a steel collar around Childheart’s neck, alerting him that whatever else was about to happen to him was not going to be fundamentally benign.
“Where am I? And where are you taking me? And who is it who gave you orders to apprehend me back in the forest?” Childheart said as he was being led down a wide stone hallway, not unlike the one he now recalled that led him to his first encounter with Ashani; he could only hope that this next encounter with whomever would turn out in the end to be just as favorable. But he felt quite certain that whatever was about to transpire would not end well for him.
Receiving no reply, Childheart continued, “I know it is one called Kahner who gave you your orders.” Childheart paused and then added, when again receiving no response, “General Kahner and I are friends and companions; I doubt he would take