“Look! We get across quickly and then right away go to the spot on that side of the water where the lantern wanted us to go in the first place—maybe fifteen seconds from here to there! Okay?” Elli said in a persistent tone reflecting that she did not intend to take “no” for an answer. Elli heard no reply, but her friend was squeezing her hand, and painfully so. “Beatríz?”
“Okay,” Beatríz said quietly, in a muffled voice, as if the words had never actually left her mouth. Still she didn’t move; whereupon Elli abruptly stepped around her and began to pull Beatríz along behind her in the direction of the narrow crossing.
Arriving almost immediately (as Elli said they would) at the place where they could simply step across the thick, disturbed liquid, Elli paused, pulling Beatríz alongside her and announcing to her triumphantly, “See, Beatríz? Come on—one big step—two feet wide at most!” Elli then tried once again to step around and in front of Beatríz, nudging her gently back from the edge of the liquid while urging her, “Here, follow me! Just this once more—to get us quickly across, okay? I’ll jump first and then hold your hand while you jump—okay?”
In that same moment, however, that Elli was trying to insinuate herself between Beatríz and the seam, the black spot in the lantern had utterly disappeared for Beatríz, and the light had gone out for Elli, leaving Elli in an iridescent duskiness now so dense that she couldn’t even see her own hand holding on to Beatríz’s.
“Elli! Things are coming! I can hear them! From everywhere!” screamed Beatríz, as she twisted and turned frantically all about to try to locate the black spot. Elli also twisted and turned, no longer holding on to Beatríz, to try to see what it was that her friend was hearing, and that she was not. However, just as Beatríz was pointing the lantern back in the direction from which they had come only seconds earlier, Elli also heard the rapid padding and slapping of dozens of wet feet. Beatríz re-grasped Elli’s hand, yelling, “This way, Elli!”
“No!” screeched Elli, “Blackmouths!” Indeed, in the very instant Elli heard the creatures she also saw them, in the beam of light that had abruptly returned: the heads and partial bodies of at least ten of the black-mouthed cats, protruding from the edge of the ring of darkness, panting loudly and blocking their path of return.
“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
