I don’t want to stop, Elli. Let’s keep going—I’ll lead.”
Their positions switched, and with Beatríz now holding her knife with one hand while gripping Elli’s hand with the other, the two girls searched more carefully with their feet while grazing the wall lightly with their arms and shoulders as they stepped.
Beatríz had been in the lead for just a short while when she stopped and remarked that she heard a faint scratching sound in the distance. They continued on apprehensively, but with resolve. As the slight noise like that of someone digging became gradually louder, the tunnel leading away from the Queen’s bier was turning just as gradually from stone to earth. Beatríz whispered that it smelled like the passageway they had taken beneath the Forest of Giant Trees. (Not so very long ago one of them would have said to the other, “But that’s not possible,” and the other would have voiced something in the affirmative, but not any longer.)
Soon they walked into a cold draft and past a narrow passageway on their left. Increasingly the tunnel assumed the verisimilitude of the one through which Thorn had taken them, and they wondered if somehow they had stumbled back into it—and whether they were also now stumbling upon another Mortejos. But they continued on without stopping until it seemed that the source of the digging noise was just ahead. Elli pulled on Beatríz’s hand and they both stopped. They stood and stared into the blackness, wondering what to do next.
“Be ready to run back with me,” Elli whispered to Beatríz, who squeezed her hand. “We’ll take that tunnel we passed.”
Elli was about to suggest that they announce their presence and perhaps that way learn what they were up against, when, at that moment, just ahead, she saw protruding into the darkness from a tiny opening in the side of the tunnel, what appeared to be a small round lantern. It was dimly lit, but Elli noticed with a start from the lantern’s soft glow that it was hanging from an out-stretched arm belonging to someone or something not yet otherwise visible. The thin, mangy arm covered by tufts of coarse hair and thick folds of weathered skin was soon followed by another, which planted its free hand—or paw—on the ground, as if to brace itself. Two more hands then appeared, working industriously away at widening the hole; a long pointed snout with a round nose at the tip emerged slowly from the opening. Moments later two eyes, well sunk into the fat end of the snout some three feet up from the nose, poked themselves just barely from the broadening hole, inducing Elli to step back and freeze. Elli tugged gently for Beatríz to follow her slowly and quietly backwards.
“Yes, yes, I see you! Look at the light! Look at the light in darkness and live! Can’t go back! Can never go back! Come forward—not going to hurt you!” said the creature as it dug feverishly away with its second pair of arms and pulled itself free of the hole, disclosing a pair of legs on which the creature stood—facing the girls. “Yes, yes, I see you! Step forward! Yes, yes!”
Beatríz and Elli stepped gingerly toward the creature and into the glow of its lantern. It was about seven feet tall, and looked almost exactly like an upside down comma; the same tufts of hair and folds of skin that covered its four arms and two legs also coated its body.
“Yes, yes! Come, come! Sit down! Yes, yes!” The creature sat cross-legged in the middle of the tunnel and beckoned the girls with four out-stretched arms, the lantern swinging gently and scattering soft shadows. Elli and Beatríz knelt down about ten feet away from the creature, but prepared to grab their knives they had already swiftly stowed, positioning themselves for a quick departure if required.
“And who might you be?” asked the creature as it lifted the lantern toward the girls’ faces.
“My name is Elli—and this is Beatríz—and we are children, but not from around here.”
“Yes, yes, I see that.”
Elli quickly added, “And, please, who and what are you?”
“Yes, yes. My name is Aneht, and I am a ground grub,” the creature answered, setting the lantern on the ground without releasing it.
“Would you please excuse me for a moment while I describe you to my friend who can’t see—I mean, can’t see with her eyes?” Elli said, and then turned and whispered to Beatríz.
“Yes, yes, by all means, I see that!” said the grub, who folded its four arms across its abdomen, causing the lantern to swing wildly and startle Elli.
“Miss—is it miss—Aneht?” asked Elli.
“Yes, yes, Miss Aneht,” replied the grub, “or just Aneht.”
“Miss Aneht, we’re lost. We don’t know where we are or where we’re going, and we’re tired and hungry and thirsty, and we need to get out of here. Can you help us?” Elli pleaded.
“Yes, yes! Well, first things first and last things last. You are certainly not lost, since I found you! But, of course, you can’t get out of here if you don’t know where here is—or what it is, if any here at all. Yes, yes. So, there is really not anything to be gotten out of at present, since you can’t know if you are in anything in the first place—if you don’t know what anything is or where it is, if anything or anywhere at all. And, of course, if you don’t know where you are, if any place at all, you can’t know where you’re going, if any place at all. Yes, yes. So, when all is said and done, about the only help you require is help getting something to eat and drink—if, of course, there is anything to eat and drink that can be gotten at all, yes, yes,” said the grub, who then smiled as if having given the perfect answer to Elli’s imperfect question.
“But, Miss Aneht, then . . . what are we . . . specifically . . . to do now?” asked Elli haltingly, uncertain what to think or say in response, and becoming annoyed.
“Yes, yes! Well, of course, you are to do nothing, since you logically—and obviously—can’t do anything, yes, yes. But!” she exclaimed, raising a finger for emphasis, “it is I who can do something—and so I shall!”
“And what is that something you are going to do, Miss Aneht?” Beatríz interjected anxiously.
“Yes, yes. Well, of course, that something is anything I can do that I choose to do, which is pretty much everything I do, which is all I do—and, yes, yes,” she added, with delight, “you will simply come along for the ride!” Whereupon the grub held out two hands and said, with alacrity, “Let’s go! Time’s always running on and running out—always starting, never stopping—always now and never past, and always ending, forever and ever! Yes, yes! The time is now! Follow the light and live!”
“It’s okay, Beatríz; it has to be,” Elli whispered while placing Beatríz’s hand into one of the grub’s hands before placing her own in the other.
Once gripped by Aneht, each of the girls felt like one of the grub’s appendages, dangling free, but well secured. A moment later, Aneht dove back into the hole, flinging the girls through the air in tow.
~three~
Starnee, consistent with having been only half asleep, awoke feeling only half refreshed, and glanced quickly down at Childheart and Thorn, the one still asleep and the other still unconscious. He dropped next to Childheart, who was immediately awakened. The unicorn also felt less than fully refreshed by his sleep, although less because of any ineffectiveness of his slumber, or any residual exhaustion from their recent battle, than by being away from the Forest of Lament, but he said nothing to Starnee. The condor gently nudged Thorn, and, as he expected, received no response. Nevertheless, the wound remained closed and Thorn’s breathing
