The bank path was waterlogged and slippery to walk on. But after sighting more yellow-spiked movement they preferred sloshing along it than wading knee deep in the turgid overflow. Even so, there were times when they had no choice.
So with Lyla in the lead, her spear held high, Celeste, Chad and Swift in the middle with their short swords, and Lem last, with his long sword held high and ready to slice off the head of any creature that attacked them, they stepped into the water and hurriedly splashed through it.
Each time they reached the safety of an almost dry path they were sure they'd heard the snapping of teeth and the gurgling of regurgitated water snorted through bony nostrils coming from the river. By late afternoon they were tired of mud and slush and had begun searching for a tree to sleep in.
`This is a good one,' said Swift, stroking the smooth red trunk of a tall twain nut tree. `It has nuts for us to eat and a stork's nest at the top big enough for us to sleep in.'
Lem stared up at the tree's thick, leafy canopy. `How do you know there's a nest up there? I can't see one.'
`I just know,' said Swift. He grabbed a branch and swung himself effortlessly into the tree's fork.
Chad followed. Suddenly his eyes widened and he shouted down to the others. `Hurry. Climb up. Something is stalking us!'
But Lem wouldn't hurry. `How do you know-'
`Lem! Just do it for once,' ordered Lyla.
`I was just ask-'
`Lem!' shouted Lyla and Celeste together.
Chad and Swift reached the nest first. Leaving their capes and bags inside it they climbed higher to see what was following them.
`How long do we have to stay up so high?' whispered Celeste, as the slender, pink branches of her perch dipped and swayed dangerously.
`Sssshhh!' hissed Swift.
Above them the sky turned dark and menacing and the air in the tree's canopy hung heavy and fetid with the same stink they'd smelt by the river. Around them the Forest was abnormally still and eerily silent. Lem whispered that the animals were either afraid or the Forest was empty.
Swift hushed him. From the direction of the river came a series of loud thuds, a howl of pain followed by a squishy sucking noise, and the scary sound of trees and bushes being crushed. Soon, whatever was making the thudding was so close that their tree shook from its roots to its uppermost branches. Lyla and Celeste stretched out and clasped hands.
Then they saw it.
It had an elongated, metal-grey body with a long tail, enormous trunk-like legs, huge feet and a weaving, serpentine neck supporting a smooth, eyeless head. Strapped into a metal saddle upon its back, crouched a humped-back rider wearing a spiked helmet, a metal facemask and leather armour. In one hand the rider carried a whip and in the other a light that lit up the branches.
With ponderous precision the creature lifted and leant its enormous front feet against each tree trunk that it passed. Then, sliding its blunt blind head in and out of the tree's forks and branches, it snapped off branches with its neck or guillotined them with its dagger sharp teeth. All the time it was searching, its rider was urging it on with his cracking whip and his loud hoarse voice. At last the creature reached their tree.
Swift and Chad, with terrified eyes, clung to their perches and held their breaths while the creature's long purple tongue with its dripping purple spit, stretched towards their crunched-up legs.
If it finds them I will have to fight it, thought a horrified Lyla, wishing that instead of thrusting her spear into the back of her belt to make climbing easier, that she'd thrust it into the front where she could withdraw it faster.
Unable to reach Swift, who had shrunk himself into the smallest space, the slobbering creature moved on to Chad, who was so scared he had almost become part of the tree. The creature's slime-covered tongue missed his boots by a leaf's width, but then it smelt Lem and triumphantly changed direction and gurgled towards the older boy.
Lem, with his back balanced against a branch and his long sword held aloft, was just about to stab the revolting smelly creature in the head, when it just swung right past him because of the noise Celeste's branch made as it dipped low under her weight.
The girls were standing ready. Celeste was about to leap to another branch so Lyla could spear the creature when the rider grunted a loud order and cracked his whip. The creature's flicking tongue froze in front of Celeste, who froze too, not a muscle moving on her terrified face.
A second whip crack cut into the creature's smooth, grey neck. With a squeal of pain, it swivelled around snapping Celeste's branch as its front legs dropped to the ground with an earth-shaking jolt.
As the branch beneath her feet vanished and Celeste began to fall, Lyla stretched out her spear. Celeste grabbed it and swung her legs around a lower branch. `Thanks,' she mouthed.
With faces as white as the silver-circled moon that had suddenly emerged from a bank of dark grey cloud, the children watched and waited until they could no longer see the creature or hear its footfalls. Then shrugging her stiff shoulders Lyla turned to Swift. `How did you know it was coming?'
`The tree told me. When I touched it, it talked to me in my head the way the wolves talked to Lem.'
Chad nodded. `It talked to me too.'
`Can you hear it talking now?'
Chad rested his cheek against his branch. `It says there are six more creatures like that one in the forest.'
`I think talking to trees is our magic gift,' grinned Swift, patting the tree's trunk.
`Talking about gifts,' said Celeste climbing onto Lem's branch. `Could you have talked to that creature, Lem?'
`No. It isn't real.'
`It looked real.'
Swift wrinkled his nose up in disgust. `It stunk real too.'
`Well it isn't. Splash says it wasn't born from an egg or a mother. That it was becamed by magic.'
Celeste held up her snake and stared into its tiny, emerald green eyes. `What about its rider, Splash? Is he real?'
Lem answered for the snake. `No. He was becamed too.'
3
Bats in the Palace
The stork's nest was large enough for them to curl up in and soon all but Lem, who was on guard, were asleep. Two hours later it was Celeste's turn and then Chad's. During his watch the tree warned him the other six purple-tongued creatures were coming, so he woke the others.
With their hair full of stork's feathers and their eyes full of sleep, they climbed higher than their original perches to balance on branches so thin that they feared they might break at any sudden movement.
The dawn sky was the colour of raspberry juice and the pink moon was sliding beneath the horizon when they sighted the first long-necked creature. Behind it plodded five others, one behind the other. On their high backs sat their harsh-voiced, whip-whirling riders. These riders had removed their metal masks and the children could see their hairy faces and bulging eyes. Lem whispered that they were the ugliest of beings, and by the way they whipped their mounts, they were also the cruellest.
`It's not that I like the smelly blind creatures,' he breathed as they watched two of them rear up and bite each other after being fiercely whipped. `It's just not right to hurt them for no reason.'
`Perhaps the reason is that they haven't found us,' whispered Celeste.
Her words silenced them all but they each quietly drew their weapons, ready to fight for their lives. The creatures moving closer and closer to the twain nut tree, but again they were lucky, not just because they were higher but because it seemed as if the creatures were taking less care.
`Why are they looking for us, Cel?' whispered Swift,