Crik (24 page)

Inara squeezed Jack’s hand, grinding his knuckles together in an agonising pinch. He welcomed the contact.

A distant thrum of metal echoed across the clearing. They heard a responding grunt from the Myrm. This time the guttural growl carried notes of speech. None of the huddled children could understand the barbaric words, Grushni kurazan, arran. What those syllables meant was up for conjecture. What was not up for speculation was the sound of the approaching second Myrm. The familiar clang grew louder, until the air reverberated like a war drum.

When listening to the first Myrm making its way toward them, the noise had sounded softer, yet quicker than the new arrival.

Fixated by the sound, they missed Yang take one of the rawhide bags they had fashioned into the surrounding foliage. The brown bag almost passed out of sight when Jack saw it from the corner of his eye.

‘I knew he would give us up,’ he said with a start.

Inara clamped her hand over his mouth. She bit her lip.

The crescendo coming from the Wold must have hid his voice, as the Myrm did not react to the noise. Inara’s hand remained covering half his face. He tracked the long thin arm of his shadow. Gun grey slabs of iron hid the bag. Had she seen Yang take the bag? Her dark eyes, like scorch marks in a white sheet, stopped him cold. He relaxed, but she still kept her hand over his mouth. Bill too ignored Yang’s action preferring to mouth obscenities at him.

Inara waited for the next deafening crash before whispering in his ear, ‘If your shadow wanted to give us up, all he would have to do is disappear. His body is still shielding us.’

Jack only then noticed, with Inara pointing upward with one long finger, the world had not brightened around them. What was Yang doing?

The arm now extended so far its width did not exceed that of a blade of grass.

The giant frog stepped back into view on the far side of the hole. The insects had now swarmed back over Jack’s footprint, alleviating his concerns only slightly. The torn shirt held in a clenched fist remained all the proof the Myrm required to continue its search.

‘Yang must be hiding our scent,’ Inara whispered. ‘That creature doesn’t look that clean to me, but even when it stood over us I couldn’t smell it. Your shadow is full of surprises.’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t have any unpleasant ones for us.’

Inara gave him a reproachful glance before returning her attention to the Myrm. It walked around the clearing, not knowing where they were, but unwilling to leave. In desperation to find them, the Myrm began looking behind everything, whether the obstruction could hide them or not. Once it returned to the tree it would find them for sure, thought Jack in panic.

Jack mistook movement behind the Myrm as the arrival of the second hunter, instead he saw the bag Yang carried snake into view. His shadow held the bag close to the ground, dragging it over the uneven ground. The insects hid the lower half of the bag so that the raised leather appeared to the watchful group like a tortoise shell. So far, the Myrm failed to notice the pack, even when a shard sticking from the ground snagged a strap. 

What his demon attempted eluded Jack. If Yang needed a weapon, something to strike the beast over the head, he could have picked something more deadly than a half-empty bag. Any one of the shards of metal lying around would work nicely.

The bag began to rise. Inch by inch it rose from the insect swarm until it was free. Yang’s appendage was so thin it looked as though nothing held the bag. Yang took it higher, and as it came to shoulder height, the shadow looped the strap over an iron branch at the far end of the clearing. There it remained, sawing back and forth in the wind.

An instant later, just as a thin black line dropped to the ground, the Myrm noticed the bag. With a howl, it raced to its discovery. Snatching the bag, it tore the strap from the branch and brought it to its face. The chosen tree marked the entrance to a narrow meandering path out of the clearing. After only a slight pause, in which the Myrm cast its eye back toward the felled tree, it entered the passage.

A thundering crash from above spoilt any hope the group had of relaxing. Following the sound, a half-glimpsed figure, bulkier than the first Myrm, swung into the path after its fellow.

In many ways, the following silence was louder than the arrival of the Myrms. At least when they were crashing through the Red Wood the group knew how far away the hunters were. Wrapped in pregnant silence they twitched with every stimuli apprehended by their heightened senses. 

The three jumped, as though jabbed in the ribs, when a voice echoed across the clearing. ‘No, no, you’re going the wrong way.’ The voice cried in evident annoyance. Another, caustic, language wrapped each syllable, as though two people spoke at once. ‘I can hear them chattering away.’ The first words were understandable, yet the accompanying dialect shared the harsh tongue used by the Myrm.

They knew the speaker, and when the Myrm stepped from the passage, they saw Krimble holding onto its back. The old man pointed toward them, a maniacal grin twisting his face.

‘They are always yapping away,’ the zombie continued to say in a hurried, gleeful shout. ‘Some nights I couldn’t get to sleep; they wouldn’t shut up.’

Bile seared Jack’s throat as Krimble guided the Myrms around the hole toward the tree. Their one time captor, and captive, pointed a rotted finger and the Myrms followed.

‘What can we do?’ hissed Inara.

What could they do? They would never outrun the hunters through the metal underbrush. Yang’s trick had no chance of deceiving Krimble. All they could do was wait for the Myrms to find them.

For a mad moment Jac
k
wanted to take up a weapon against the Myrms, he gripped an iron bar rooted to the floor before dismissing the act as pointless. The creatures, he knew from the old stories, were ferocious fighters; he wouldn’t stand a chance. He dared not to look over the tree at the encroaching group with the cackling monster hitching a ride. He could picture Krimble without having to see him; a wide smile, pulling pallid skin back from brown teeth, a damning finger pointing to where they lay.

The excited blabbering from the zombie did not cease as he closed the distance. ‘I can hear them. They belong to me,’ he cried. ‘They want me to take them to my bosom. Shout for me, I’m almost there to free you from the frail children. They don’t know you as I do, they can’t understand how they are wasting your lives.’

In the end, Jack stopped listening to the man from the marsh. Yang had sunk to the ground, dissolving the dark shield. Without his shadow covering him, he felt the harsh sun. Yang remained below him, a dark puddle, sinking slowly out of sight. Despite his shadow’s earlier help, he wanted to strike out, to wrap his hands around Yang’s arm to make him defend them, to play another demon trick. Instead, he only looked, and wished he could also dissolve into the ground.

‘How about the wolves?’ whispered Inara.

Bill looked at the girl. ‘What about them? They are far away, still running for their lives. Besides, they can’t do anything for us here.’ His resignation twisted like a plough through Jack’s guts.

‘The demons are calling out to him,’ said Jack as Krimble continued to speak. ‘They’re giving us away.’

Inara gave him a withering look. Before he could argue against her stare, the Myrm carrying Krimble peered over the log.

‘You shouldn’t have left me behind,’ said Krimble, his yellow eyes bright. ‘Or had you forgotten your friend’s tale?’

‘What friend?’ Bill fell back from the Myrm’s stinking breath. Unlike the first beast, this took on the form of a monstrous wild boar, complete with curled silver tusks.

‘Llast of course,’ said Krimble. ‘You remember, the stupid fellow with his fluted shoes. He told you that I acquired his son’s gift to talk to the Myrms.’

‘Stole the gift,’ said Inara.

‘Liberated,’ countered Krimble. The zombie clashed his teeth together in a snarl. ‘I could have these two tear your arms off, and then all you’d be is an annoying talking head.’ As though to accentuate his words the hideous frog appeared. The foreboding beast moved from right to left in agitation. ‘Alas, they have other orders.’ Krimble, with a frown, glanced behind him. ‘It seems they’ve been hot on your trail ever since you left the Blackthorn. They are impatient to get their hands on you.’

‘And you led them straight to us,’ said Bill.

Krimble clenched his fist until it shook. ‘You shouldn’t have sent me away.’

‘I prefer to deal with them, than you,’ said Bill, shifting his glasses.

‘We’ll see if you feel the same way, once we arrive at our destination.’

‘And where’s that?’ asked Jack.

‘To their home of course,’ replied the zombie. ‘I would help you out, but seeing as how you left me behind, I don’t think I will.’

‘We’d never ask for your help,’ said Inara.

‘You might,’ said Krimble, a slow smile growing. ‘Given time you may beg me to help you.’

Krimble turned to address the second Myrm. ‘You’ll have to carry the girl, she’s a cripple.’ He looked to the waiting frog’s blank face. ‘If the other two try to escape, kill them.’ The Myrm’s harsh language echoed his every word.

The hunter’s awkward stance belied its speed; it leapt seven feet into the air, passing over Jack. A cloud of reddish dirt rose as it landed, and then, with outstretched arms, it snatched Inara under her arms.

A surprised gasp left her. If the creature had taken hold of him, Jack knew he would be screaming and hitting out with his fists. The futility of that action would have eventually made him stop. Inara suffered the crude grasp in stoic silence; she already knew struggling would be useless. Even if the beast let her go, she couldn’t escape.

With a yell, Bill charged the Myrm. The Myrm first knocked away the metal spike Bill brandished, and then hit him to the floor, where he lay in a dazed heap.

‘Bill,’ cried Jack rushing to his friend’s side.

The mailed fist reopened Bill’s head wound, soaking the makeshift bandage with fresh blood. ‘I’m alright Yin,’ he replied, touching his head with a tender hand. He tried to get to his feet when Jack laid a hand on his chest.

‘Best stay down until you feel better,’ said Jack.

‘No time,’ shouted Krimble. ‘Get to your feet. We have a long way to go. Hurry now.’

The Myrm, with Krimble’s arm nestled around its neck, hunched over them. Its snarls reminded Jack of a bad tempered dog as it drove Bill to his feet.

‘Ok, ok, I’m up,’ said Bill, holding his head and looking as though he had just rolled out of bed.

Despite the awkward gait of the two Myrms keeping the pace slow they covered a great distance in a short period. The hulking brutes navigated the metal jungle with ease, veering them away from obstacles and taking the boys down half-seen tracks. Occasionally Jack saw Inara watching him from over the crook of the Myrm’s arm. 

Yang appeared periodically during the arduous trek, and each time he did Krimble watched him close, going so far as to lean over the top of the Myrm’s head to keep the shadow in view. Jack never failed to notice Krimble’s renewed interest in his demon. Whether the zombie still yearned to possess the shadow for himself, or if he feared a trick from the troublesome demon, he could only speculate. Perhaps they communed with each other. The unbidden thought sent a shudder up his spine.

Flowers of beaten gold filled a hollow. The Myrms skirted the flowers, heading toward an imposing wall of steel trees, whose trunks reached as high as the few low hanging clouds. The tightly packed trees made an almost perfect circle. As they drew closer, Jack noticed paper-thin sheets of silver cut and shaped into leaves hanging from the branches. Someone had even taken the time to make a bronze squirrel, complete with an obligatory acorn.

‘What do they want with us?’ Bill asked, stumbling beside Jack.

Krimble turned an appraising eye on Bill. ‘They don’t like trespassers. I presume they intend to kill you. The stories I’ve heard about those captured within the Wold are quite bloody. How else do you think people started calling this place the “Red Wood”?’

Rust gave it that name, thought Jack, kicking up a cloud of the stuff.

The bronze squirrel sitting on the branch dropped the acorn, and then turned its steady gaze on the approaching group. In a high-pitched tone, it began to taunt them.

‘I know why you’ve come here’ it cried out. ‘The unwinding of long days, without a twist or a knot has caused many to stick their nose out of their doors.’ The bronze animal rushed over the branch, keeping track with Jack. ‘Most times they return home with a bloodied nose, sometimes they don’t return at all.’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Jack, unimpressed with the squirrel, or its taunts.

The squirrel ignored his plea. ‘You keep strange friends. Two are flesh that want to be more; another is losing his skin until there is no more. Then there are more, a girl without feet, where have they gone? Did they walk away down the street?’

‘Quiet,’ said Jack, throwing a handful of dust at the troublesome rodent.

The squirrel stopped a moment to brush off the flecks of metal dulling its hide. ‘I struck a nerve, plucked like a hair from your head.’

‘Get away,’ said Bill, peering around Jack’s back at the scurrying squirrel. ‘Go on,’ he said waving his hand at the squirrel, ‘we have enough trouble without you harrying our every step.’

The squirrel flattened out its bushy tail. ‘I’m no ordinary animal; you can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do myself.’

The Myrms ignored the bronze squirrel, and Krimble only passed a fleeting glance over the creature before returning his attention to Yang who slipped over the uneven ground. Although Inara tried to keep track of the strange rodent, the Myrm’s jostling gait beat her every effort.

The squirrel, with the lone attention of the two boys, called out a challenge. ‘If you answer a riddle, then I will go. Answer me wrong and I’ll come along.’

‘It’s a trick,’ said Bill beneath his beetled brow. ‘You’ll ask something without an answer and we’ll be stuck with you.’

‘If you don’t want to try, I will remain with you till you die,’ answered the metal squirrel.

‘Where we’re headed I doubt that will be long,’ said Bill.

‘What harm is there in asking,’ said Jack. Glad of the distraction from the oppressive trees bending off to his left, he gave the squirrel a nod.

The squirrel closed one eye. ‘What has fingers, top and bottom and has rings that tighten and burn?’

Now Jack’s brow drew down in a frown of concentration. He repeated the riddle to himself. Did toes count as fingers? He looked over at the rodent, whose front paws were much like its back pair. Even if that were the case, they didn’t possess rings that burned. Nothing about the riddle made any sense, and in time, his thoughts became frayed. Giving up on what the fingers could be, he instead tried to puzzle out what ring tightened and burned. A ring of fire would expand outward, as did the heat of the sun. Preoccupied with the riddle, he failed to notice a glade appear through the widening gaps between the steel trees.

‘I see my question has you both stumped,’ said the Squirrel, leaping increasingly long distances to the next tree. ‘Are you so puzzled, that you can’t answer? What a shame, you’ll never guess its name.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Bill, almost tripping over his own feet. ‘Nothing has fingers top and bottom. I’ve gone through all the animals I know. I haven’t a clue. It could be anything in this crazy place. For all we know you could be friends with a rat who has a hand for an ass.’

‘Then you admit defeat, and will be having me keep up with your feet.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Bill. ‘I just want a fair riddle, that’s all.’

‘As fair as fair can be,’ the squirrel replied.

‘Coming from something screwed together I doubt that.’

The squirrel puffed out its cheeks. ‘You won’t find no screws, bolts, or nuts on me; at least, none that you’ll ever see.’

‘I don’t doubt that you’re missing a few screws,’ retorted Bill.

A gentle lake came into view between the trees, its water lapping the rough shore of the glade. Golden swans, and grey and black Moorhens, swam on its surface. Its colour swirled with purple, green, and yellow, like a rainbow caught in a bubble.

‘It’s beautiful,’ exclaimed Inara spotting the lake.

The metal clad frog grunted something to the silvered boar. With no further communication, the boar turned into the glade.

‘You’ll be pleased to know that we’re almost at our journey’s end,’ said Krimble.

Freeing his mind from the riddle, Jack looked into the glade, and what he saw resting between two banks made his feet falter. The trunk had a red crust, not the brown bark he knew, and the roots anchored on either hill were metal, not the life giving roots of the real thing. ‘The Hanging Tree,’ he and Bill both exclaimed together.

‘What!’ shouted the squirrel, skidding to a halt as the Myrms stopped the group with a series of barking grunts. ‘How’d you know the answer to the riddle?’

‘Riddle,’ said Jack, transfixed by the sight of the tree he had known all his life.

‘The Hanging Tree, of course. The reaching branches are its topmost fingers, the dangling roots are its lower,’ said the squirrel wiggling its toes.

The branches were just how Jack remembered them; they even bowed toward the ground like the real thing. From every height, a hangman noose fell, peppering the ground with their grim shadow.

‘The rings that tighten and burn,’ said Jack spying the swaying rope.

A few brutes, encased in metal armour made to look like animals, roamed around the tree. Their long arms dragged the pitted ground, throwing red dust up as far as their knees. On seeing the captives, they rushed forward in a frenzied knot. One exuberant youth, with a goat’s head, launched into the branches of the Hanging Tree. The magnets pinned to his knees and arms clanged as they stuck to the rigid frame.