you fly with bird wings or bat wings?' asked Swift, whose greatest joy was to pretend he was a bird and fly from tree to tree.
`No wings. I just held my arms out and flew.' She showed them what she meant by stretching out her arms.
`Dream flying might be your gift,' said Lem, while secretly thinking that his gift of talking to animals was a much better one. `But dreaming doesn't help us if the Forest is no longer safe.'
`Unless we're supposed to find the palace I dreamed about before your precious wolves come back,' Lyla replied sharply.
`And on the way we might find an oracle, elf-speaker, sand-reader or bone-diviner to tell us what the three moons' song means,' added Celeste who, being the peacemaker of the group, always knew what to say to stop an argument.
It didn't take long for them to eat a cold breakfast, pack their ox-hide bags and choose their weapons. Then they took one last look at the cave that had been their home for longer than they could remember, stepped out into the clearing and pulled shut the ox-hide curtain for the last time.
They stood in front of the broken moon dial, agreed they were doing the right thing, then set off for the river.
`We could raft down it,' suggested Chad, as they walked single file along the path that, according to Celeste's diary, led to their favourite sandy beach.
`Or swim down it,' said Celeste, who loved swimming more than anything.
`Or build a boat and sail down it,' said Chad, whose efforts so far to build a boat had failed.
But on reaching the beach they discovered they could do none of these things. The river was no longer a smooth waterway meandering past half-moon beaches and shaded by twain-nut trees. Instead it was a turbulent, log-filled torrent that had broken its banks and flooded the nearby meadows. Eyeing the debris spinning by they all agreed that entering it or floating on it would be too dangerous.
`And it stinks,' complained Swift holding his nose against a powerful stench that hung over the water's surface.
They were wading ankle-deep through an overflow when they saw something strange floating towards them. At first glance it looked like a log but as it came closer they saw that it had a row of yellow spikes running down its back to the tip of its long thin tail, a sharp tooth-filled bill and two beady black eyes. Swift was already fitting an arrow to his bow when Lyla pulled him out of the water and up onto the muddy bank out of reach of the advancing creature.
`I think it's one of those scary things the wolves are afraid of,' she warned. `And there might be more of them.'
`And it might not stay in the water,' added Chad, walking backwards so he could keep watch. Slimy things in water were not his favourite animals. In fact slimy things in water scared him half to death.
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
