Clash of the Sky Galleons (23 page)

Everything - from the leaves and bark, to the sky itself - gleamed and glinted, as though the heavy downpour had burnished the entire forest. Up above their heads, the remnants of the great gathering of stormclouds
scudded quickly across the sky. One moment, the sun beat down; the next, everything was cast in shadow.

‘The Deepwoods,’ Maris breathed. ‘They’re … they’re beautiful.’

‘They might be beautiful,’ said Quint, as he unhitched the parawings and separated them. He slipped his own over his shoulders, and helped Maris on with hers. ‘But remember, Maris, the Deepwoods are deadly. We have to find an ironwood pine, and that means climbing down to the forest floor and trekking. When we do, you must promise me …’

‘Promise you what?’ said Maris, wide-eyed.

‘That you’ll stay close to me. We must keep to the shadows - and don’t touch or eat or drink anything, no matter how hungry or thirsty you get.’

‘But—’ Maris began.

‘Nothing!’ insisted Quint, seizing her by the shoulders and staring into her eyes. ‘Not a dew-filled seedpod, not a succulent delberry … Nothing at all! The Deepwoods cannot be trusted!’

Maris stared back into Quint’s eyes, so full of concern and anxiety. She nodded slowly.

‘I promise,’ she said.

Without further delay, they began climbing down the huge blackwood tree, leaving those great gnarled branches where they’d weathered the storm. Quint went first, finding handholds and footholds on the broad pitted expanse of the trunk, and pausing on branches to help Maris down after him. Occasionally, she would slip - but Quint’s reassuring hand was always there in
an instant, gripping a wrist or an ankle to steady her.

The lower they got, the easier the climb, as the broad trunk of the blackwood tree became ever more gnarled and encrusted with handy knots and whorls. Maris began to relax, and paused now and again to look around.

‘Oh, Quint, what are
they
?’ she asked as they passed a bough full of tiny hovering birds of iridescent green.

‘Emerald mossbirds, I think,’ said Quint. ‘Though sky pirates call them skull-peckers.’

‘What a horrible name for such beautiful birds,’ said Maris, resuming her descent.

Quint smiled, and decided not to tell her about the unfortunate habit they had of pecking out the eyes of any creature foolish enough to venture onto their nesting branch.

‘What’s
this
?’ Maris asked a moment later, pointing at the long thin insect running across the branch by her hand. She giggled. ‘Look at all its little legs going!’

‘A hairy thousandfoot,’ Quint replied, adding matter-of-factly: ‘And they can strip the flesh off a finger in seconds …’

Maris gave a small yelp of alarm and quickly withdrew her hand as the orange and grey mottled creature disappeared into a crack in the blackwood bark.

As they got closer to the ground, the forest around them became darker and colder, with the low sun unable to penetrate the depths of the forest. Finally, they reached the base of the tree, where the great gnarled roots fanned out from the huge trunk and sloped down towards the shadowy forest floor below. There, they disappeared deep into the rich earth, anchoring the mighty blackwood tree securely enough to withstand all but the most ferocious Deepwoods storms.

Quint paused and peered down into the gloom. Anything could be down there, lurking in the shadows -packs of voracious wig-wigs with their fluffy bodies and knife-like teeth; poison-tentacled hoverworms or death-breathed halitoads …

He took a deep breath, grasped Maris’s arm and quietly slid down a long, snaking root towards the forest floor. Their feet hit the mossy ground with a soft
ploff
at exactly the same moment, and they tumbled forwards. Instantly, Quint sprang to his feet and grasped Maris’s arm once more, pulling her into the shadows beneath a cluster of huge toadstools. He glanced around furtively, then motioned to Maris to follow him.

‘Keep your eyes and ears open, and stay close!’ he instructed, before setting off at a brisk pace. ‘And try to touch as little as possible. Flowers can sting, thorns can poison, vines can scratch and snag …’

Maris hurried after Quint, her face taut with fear.

‘And as for the creatures,’ Quint continued, skirting round a clump of milkwort fronds, ‘they’re best avoided, however small and innocent-looking they may appear.
Remember, Maris, out here in the Deepwoods, nothing is what it seems!’

Maris stared about her, Quint’s ominous words echoing inside her head. It was difficult to imagine that it was quite as dangerous as he maintained. The shadowy undergrowth was shot with shafts of dazzling sunlight. Magnificent tree-trunks were everywhere, some with sleek silvery bark, some with velvety golden bark, and some with dark rough bark out of which grew mossy fronds, multi-coloured lichens and delicate blooms that fluttered in the fading wind.

There were banks of moonbells and dewdrops, tumbledown-furze and comb-bushes which, as the wind blew, filled the air with soft music - an ever-changing chorus of delicate chimes and plangent humming. And the
smells! Every footstep they took brought new ones - the sweet fruity aromas of limeweed and woodapple blossom, laced with the the sour odour of stinkwood and decay.

So much beauty thought Maris, as she followed Quint through a small glade and back into the undergrowth, yet shot with so much danger … Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue.

‘Quint,’ Maris said, her voice hushed and urgent. ‘Look over there. Lemkins!’

Quint followed her gaze, to see three lemkins - their bright fur glinting in the shafts of sunlight like sapphires -frolicking together in a clearing just ahead. Over and over they tumbled, pulling one another’s ears and tails, and chirruping with delight.

‘Just like Digit,’ Maris whispered. ‘You remember Digit, my little lemkin pet? He died last winter - and I still miss him …’

Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, one of the lemkins shot through the air, as if sky-fired, and disappeared into the shadows beneath a comb-bush. The bush shook violently, as though it was alive, and the air filled with a hideous wheezing sound. The other two lemkins raced up the nearest tree, making their distinctive
whaa-iiii kha-kha-kha-kha
calls of distress.

‘Run!’ Quint shouted. ‘It’s a halitoad!’

Maris stared at the comb-bush as its broad serrated fronds parted and a hideous creature with warty skin and bulging eyes waddled out into the sunlight, its mottled chest inflating like a tilder-bladder balloon, and its long
sticky tongue licking its gaping needle-fanged mouth.

Quint grabbed her arm and, dragging her with him, dashed across the clearing as fast as he could. They had just entered the surrounding trees when, from behind them, they heard a rasping blast as the halitoad exhaled.

‘Hold your breath!’ Quint told her, as he pulled his collar up to cover his mouth and pinched his nose shut. Beside him, Maris did the same, and the pair of them continued running through the trees until their lungs were bursting. Then, unable to go a step further, they tumbled to the ground and sucked in a lungful of air.

‘Urgh-gh-gh
…’ Maris gagged, and began spluttering with disgust as a foul and fetid stench caught in the back of her throat. ‘… That
smell
…’ she cried, her eyes watering.

Quint nodded grimly. The halitoad’s breath is fatal. Any closer and we’d be as dead as that lemkin,’ he said. ‘We were lucky. Very lucky’

Looking around, Quint set off again, with Maris close beside him.

They went deeper into the woods and as they did so, although the sun was now much higher in the sky, when the canopy closed above their heads, the forest floor
became as dark as in the middle of the night.

‘All these trees,’ Quint muttered. ‘Blackwood, redoak, leadwood and lullabee; sapwood, sallowdrop and weeping-willoak …’ He shook his head. ‘Yet not a single ironwood pine.’

They went on in silence, trudging through the dense undergrowth, their feet sinking into the thick mattress of fallen leaves. Maris had no idea how long they trekked through the gloom, avoiding the enticing sunlit glades that looked so beautiful, but were so deadly.

Then suddenly, up ahead, there was a shaft of light. Golden beams of sunlight were streaming down from above. As they approached, Maris and Quint saw that a line in the forest had been cleared. The reason became apparent as they got nearer. A huge tree had come down in the previous night’s storm and, as it fell, it had taken a dozen or so others with it.

‘Typical,’ Quint snorted, as they approached the gigantic trunk.

‘What?’ said Maris.

‘First ironwood pine we find,’ he said, ‘and it’s lying on its side.’

Together, they made their way cautiously to the edge of the vast pit where the tree had been been uprooted and looked down. The taproot of the colossal tree had gone down into the earth almost as far as its trunk had grown up, and now the hole it left was immense. Dark and smelling of rot and fungus, the rainwater which had collected like a small lake at the bottom glinted in the sunlight.

As Maris looked down at it, she suddenly realized how thirsty she was. Her mouth was dry and gritty, her throat hurt and she could still taste the faint but disgusting halitoad-breath tang on her tongue. She’d do anything to wash it away.

‘No,’ said Quint firmly, as if reading her mind. ‘We can’t risk it. The water might look clear, but it could contain rust-blight or spore-worms …’

‘Spore-worms?’ Maris shook her head and turned away. ‘No, on second thoughts, I don’t want to know,’ she said weakly.

Quint laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard,’ he said gently, ‘but we have to go on. If we find an ironwood pine and climb it, then we’ll be able to gather some rainwater at the top, where it’ll be pure …’

‘If we
find an ironwood,’ said Maris miserably, drying her eyes. ‘But what if we don’t?’

‘We must,’ said Quint firmly, helping her to her feet. ‘One thing’s for certain, we can’t stay here much longer …’

He pointed ahead at the dappled sunlit clearing. Strange Deepwoods creatures were emerging, drawn to the light - and the promise of an easy meal.

Small translucent cray-spinners, with diaphanous wings and eyes at the end of long swaying stalks, were twisting in the dappled light. Large dust-flies and tentacled
wind-whelks hovered over the rich churned-up earth, hunting fat wood-grubs and curling thousandfoots. Weezits - long-armed and sharp-fanged -darted from the trees, hunting the cray-spinners and wind-whelks in turn. And behind them, rustling through the trees, came larger predators with their sights set on the weezits …