your day tomorrow will be a long one.”
“Excuse me, Thorn,” Elli said, changing the subject deliberately, “but what are these creatures pursuing us? We have only heard them; we have never seen them.”
“And a good thing, too,” Thorn replied. While he made ready their meager sleeping arrangements, he continued. “They are called Rumblards and Thrashers, and are fashioned from the wicked art of joining together animals and former persons, or, Unpersons. The Rumblards are fashioned from Unpersons and elephants—hence, the rumbling of their movements. The others, the Thrashers, are made from Unpersons and Sawfish. Both are tools of Sutante Bliss and are tended by others called Wolfmen—who are half wolf and half Unperson—and by Unperson warriors from the north. All of these have been pursuing you, no doubt.”
“But,” Elli asked, with a voice of incomprehension, “how does Sutante Bliss create these creatures—these Rumblards and Thrashers and Wolfmen?”
“He doesn’t. In fact, Sutante Bliss can create nothing; he can only destroy. But, he provides the illusion of creation with evil, and the creatures I have named are the products of destruction only.” The children looked puzzled, but Thorn did not elucidate—and they were too weary to pursue any more questions, including Jamie, who wondered about the lights.
When Thorn had prepared the children’s beds, he pulled himself up and onto one of the protruding sets of tangled branches located along the wall, covered himself with an animal skin, said “Goodnight,” and went immediately to sleep, evidenced by a slight, rather bottled snoring sound drifting from his bed.
Except for the presence of the skin, there was nothing else to distinguish the place where Thorn was sleeping from any of the other protruding sets of branches, or even from Thorn himself, so well did Thorn “become one” with his bed, as he must have “been one” with the forest itself.
Perhaps surprisingly, the children slept soundly through the night, falling asleep nearly as soon as they had lain themselves down.
~four~
When morning broke, it made very little difference either inside or outside Thorn’s home. The sun had been rising for several hours, but since it was not yet nearly overhead, the large clearing around the immense tree in which the five had been sleeping had the appearance of dusk. Though it was becoming slowly and steadily lighter, it was nevertheless impossible for anyone to see more than three or four feet into the surrounding forest.
Inside the tree, it was the darkest it had yet been because Thorn had let the fire die down to dusty flickering embers. Thorn awoke well before the children had even begun to stir into consciousness, lit various lamps hanging on the wall, and pulled out a preparation table from one of the tall cabinets. He then put coffee on to simmer over the fireplace coals and cut up some bread and fruit.
It was actually the smell of the coffee simmering that awakened the children, one by one. And while none of them actually liked coffee, the smell comforted them with the familiarity of home.
The children rose and took nourishment with Thorn by the low fire, even to the point of drinking the sweetened coffee and actually enjoying its taste and warmth. No one had yet said anything, as if the meal was meant to be eaten that way—in meditative silence.
When all had finished, Thorn addressed them. “In a few minutes we shall set out. As I said last night, regardless of where you expect your journey to take you, you will, in any event, have to leave the forest first, and there is only one—that is to say, one safe—way. And that is underneath the forest, following the main root from this tree to where it emerges from the ground many miles from here. There is a narrow tunnel which the Dactyls excavated a long time ago that follows alongside the main root. However, I will need to lead you, since there are numerous other tunnels made for various purposes by a variety of creatures, including some into which the main tunnel divides or that break off from it. There are also tunnels that ground waters have created that would confound you, sending you easily and truly—and literally—to a dead end, with no hope of ever being found.
“We will each of us carry in our rucksacks water, fruit, and dried sweet bread, as well as a skin for warmth when we need to rest or sleep.”
“How long will it take us, Thorn?” asked Jamie.
“If we make good time and not encounter any, shall we say, ‘interferences,’ we can make it in three to four days. We will carry no torches for light, since the air is scant as it is simply for breathing. You will feel as if you are climbing up high into some mountains instead of descending deep into the earth as the air becomes increasingly thin and you tire more easily.
“We will, however,” Thorn said, with a note of the fortuitous, “have the light of my eyes to guide us. Indeed, just as you will be able to see my eyes when they are open, so I will be able to see what lies some several feet ahead of me, my eyes casting a dim light upon our path whenever I open them. However, just as you will be able to see my eyes when they are open, so, too, will other creatures that may be hidden in the dark beyond the reach of my glow.
“I will have Beatríz follow immediately behind me. Her keen sense of hearing that I noticed when you first arrived may assist us most valuably during our journey. I will have a rope tied about my waist, and each of you will take hold of it, one after the other. And, by all means,” Thorn said, as if this was the most critical instruction of them all, “do not under any circumstances let go of the rope. You may never find it again—or the rest of us you.”
Having finished his instructions, Thorn doused the coals with water, blew out the wall lamps and led them in the dark across the floor with his glowing eyes to the other of the two cabinets. He then moved the cabinet aside and, with his thin fingers pressed into several small holes in the wall, pulled out and slid to the side on a hidden track a small door, not unlike the door of an airliner. Thorn reached into the pitch black opening and took out a rather long thick rope with a loop to go around the leader’s waist and a number of knots along the length of the rope against which those following could rest their grips.
With each one in place along the length of the rope, beginning with Thorn and ending with Elli, Thorn slid the door shut, enveloping the children once again in that darkness that had become all too familiar a traveling companion since they had first descended the library’s basement stairs a few days earlier.
The tunnel that, at the beginning, was little higher than eight feet, would never reach that height again during the course of their journey underground. At times, they would find it considerably smaller. Thorn, who was himself nearly eight feet tall, would have to travel most of the way bent forward at the waist as much as ninety degrees, looking as if he were the feeblest of old men. Beatríz thought the tunnel, in general, had the odor of dry black dirt. There were times, however, as they passed by unseen passageways off of the main tunnel, when the odor reminded Alex of those times when he would dig in the moist nocturnal grass for large worms that would surface only when the sun had set. The ground descended gradually with firm, packed earth, as if it had—as, indeed it had—been traveled for hundreds of years by thousands and thousands of creature feet.
Like a slow-rolling and soundless train, the four “cars” that were the children and the “engine” that was Thorn with two eyes for “headlamps” that appeared to be low on their batteries, moved steadily through the tunnel. Every once in a while Thorn would slow to a stop, examining with a wagging glow a fork in the tunnel or something amounting to a T intersection to determine down which tunnel the main track was running. It was not at all clear to the children how deep underground they had traveled, or were going to travel, but they had been descending silently for hours, and each was becoming short of breath. Thorn heard their rapid and shallow breathing
