Wuftoom (15 page)

“What are they doing?” Evan asked.

“This is how we sleep when we're at home,” said Tret. “Come on, new ones. First day sleeping like real Wuftoom!” He wrapped an arm around Jordan's back and led him toward where the other young ones were piling their blocks. Ylander, Evan, and Suzie followed.

Each Wuftoom set up four large concrete blocks. They put one down to sit on so the Wuftoom's body would be raised up in the water. They set the other three up as a back, so that each worm was sitting on a makeshift chair. Tret, Suzie, and Ylander helped Evan and Jordan set up their blocks.

“We need something hard to sleep on,” Tret said, “because when we relax, we lose our shape. If we slept on a bed like a human, we might end up in a puddle. That's one of the reasons we slept in the pipes.”

“What's the other reason?” asked Evan.

“The Vits,” said Tret. “But don't worry. We're safe here. There's the water, which the Vits can't pass through, and two of us are always awake, keeping watch.”

As Evan watched in amazement, the Wuftoom around him began going to sleep one by one. Their heads and backs molded around their blocks, as if they were almost melting into them.

“Go on, try it,” said Ylander.

Jordan sat down on his blocks and leaned his head back. He didn't seem to be having any trouble with any of this. Why was it so easy for him? Evan pushed the jealousy back. He had to look like a good Wuftoom.
This is all normal. This is just how we sleep.

He sat down on the lower block with a splash.

The others watched him with amusement.

“You have to relax into it,” said Suzie. “Don't worry about letting go. The blocks will hold you.” She sat down on her own blocks, right next to his.

Ylander and Tret and the others sat down on their blocks too. Jordan looked completely melted.

Evan sat there, still tense. He wanted to ask someone
how
he was supposed to relax, but even Tret seemed to already be sleeping, so he stared across the room. A hundred worms, all sleeping peacefully, melting into their blocks. The guards stood perfectly still at the mouth of the cave, facing outward.

Evan wondered what it would take to kill one. If you ripped off its membrane, would it lose its shape and go melting to the floor? Could you stab it or beat it, or would it just change its shape? What would it take to kill a hundred all at once? Would a bomb work? A fire? What if you took away their water?

Even as his mind turned over these plots, he realized he couldn't kill them. He had to stay belowground, and he didn't know how to survive here. He didn't know all the creatures and what they could do. He didn't know how to find food.

Could he learn all he needed in two more weeks, before he had to meet Foul?

It couldn't be real. There weren't any Vitflys. There weren't any worms. He wanted to close his eyes. To sleep and be free of this nightmare. To wake up in his bed at home, just a sick boy. But he couldn't close them, and the sleeping Wuftoom eyes stared back.

W
E ARE WAITING, PROEM,
the voice said. Suddenly, Evan could see. He had never even noticed that he had fallen asleep. Even though five more nights had passed since his first time sleeping on the blocks, he still wasn't really used to it. The cave was filled with sleeping Wuftoom, collapsed in near puddles against their blocks. There was no one awake.

I'm not a proem anymore,
he thought.

Oh no,
said the voice in his head.
You're a full-blooded worm now. Are you enjoying yourself? Drinking the pleasant nectar of human refuse?
The voice was familiar. Foul.

Evan started fully awake but didn't move.
Of course I'm not enjoying myself,
he snapped without speaking.
But I have to act like it. Otherwise, they'll be suspicious.

Helping them retrieve their proem,
said Foul. The word “proem” was long and slow and hissed.
We think you have gone over to their side.

I haven't!
Evan thought. How did they know? Were they watching him? He thought these things without meaning to think them. The Vitfly chittered in his mind. Evan could not see or hear it, but he knew its wings went flap, flap, flap.

You will not escape us.

I'm not trying to escape you,
he thought.
I'm trying to get you what you want. But I don't know anything yet. They don't trust me because I don't have my name. I don't even know how to get back home.

You will have all you need before the week is passed,
Foul hissed.

What do you mean?
Evan thought.

You will see. We will be waiting with her
—The voice stopped abruptly.

With her? What do you mean? What are you doing to her?
He screamed the thought as loud as he could think it, but there was no response. The Vit was gone.

Evan sat straight up in the cave, staring at the sleeping worms. The Vits were not supposed to be able to get into Wuftoom minds. But he was not a Wuftoom. He knew it as surely as he knew that the water flowing over his body stank. He was a human inside a Wuftoom body. The Vitflys knew that and used it. Only a human would care about his mother.

He calculated how much time had passed and how much he had left. It had been less than two weeks. That meant he should have one week more. But he didn't even know how to climb. How would he ever learn how to get home, much less find out how the Vitflys could get into the Wuftoom cave?

The Wuftoom began to stir. They rolled on their blocks, lifted, and slowly formed themselves.

His new family. Their lives depended on him not being weak. What if the Vits could read his mind? He had never read Jordan's mind, and the place where Foul's voice had been was gone. But it knew things.

Maybe he should tell Tret. He could let the Wuftoom decide for themselves how they would handle it. But what if they decided to keep him here? To them, Evan's mother didn't matter. Surely, that was what they'd do. Evan sat motionless as the others rose around him, turning it all over in his mind. He had to stay silent. He had to see what he could find out.

Tret, Suzie, Ylander, and Jordan approached. He could not make out their words, but their voices were deep and happy. Since returning from the old house, this group had always been with him. They never let him go anywhere or do anything alone.

“Why are you still sitting there?” asked Jordan. “Tonight we're going to learn how to use our packs and rods!”

Evan didn't recognize the voice that had briefly been his own. It was lower and growly now, and it said things the real Jordan never would have said. Then Evan remembered. Tret was planning to take them on a real hunt.

Evan and Jordan had been allowed to go with the Wuftoom when they hunted in the sewers, but so far they had not been allowed to go where most of the creatures were. It was considered too dangerous because the Vits hunted there too.

The Wuftoom spent nearly all their time hunting. Food was so scarce that often they ate only once a day, and it was a rare day when all the Wuftoom could be fed as well as Rayden and Olen and their cronies. Every night the hunters returned with their quarry—spiders, Mifties, Higgers, Orpas, and other things Evan learned were Gibbens, Nobs, Vays, and Crabs—and they tossed them in a pile for the cooks. The clan tried to maintain good cheer, especially in front of the nameless new ones, but there was no hiding the worry that filled the cave each day when the hunters came home with less.

Evan got the impression that new ones normally were not allowed to hunt so soon, but the Wuftoom needed all the bodies they could get.

Jordan was grinning like an excited child. The others were also smiling, as if they were about to embark on a great game. Evan knew this was his chance to learn more, to come closer to giving the Vitflys what they wanted, but this thought did not excite him. He found himself unable to move and continued to sit rigid on his blocks.

“Still hates waking up,” said Tret, clapping him. The blow pushed Evan forward, and in catching his balance, he was forced to stand. “No time for sleeping in! Tonight we get you ready to leave the sewers. To go where Wuftoom really belong!”

“If we belong there,” said Evan, “then why do we stay here?” He was annoyed at Tret's happiness.

“Not for long, new one! Not for long!” Evan shivered at what had been Olen's refrain. But Tret didn't notice. He was even more exuberant than usual. Eagerly, he showed Evan and Jordan the weapons they would use. They looked like melted plastic rods from the outside. Their surfaces were lined and twisted, bumpy and mottled. But Evan had watched the Wuftoom as they made them, and he knew what they were made of: membrane, from the Wuftoom's precious stores.

“Each one of you will get his own,” said Tret proudly.

Jordan gasped with pleasure. His whole body puffed out and in again. Evan tried to imitate him, but he felt worse than ever. The real Jordan would not be excited. Tret solemnly handed a rod to each of them, and they wrapped them with their worm arms, testing their weight. Jordan tossed his and caught it, then tossed it and caught again, his arms folding around it like he was born to handle it with Wuftoom nubs.

It was so much like how he'd tossed a basketball that Evan's heart skipped a beat.

Jordan didn't seem to miss basketball. He didn't seem to miss his mother, whom he had cried over so recently. He didn't seem to miss the sun, or school, or friends. He hunted the water creatures with the same strength and agility he had used for everything human, yet everything human was forgotten. Was he still in there at all?

Evan tried to put it out of his mind and copy Jordan's technique. He knew that even as a Wuftoom, he had no hope of matching Jordan's skill, but he had to learn the best he could.

Tret started explaining how they worked. “The packs stay on your back at all times outside the waterways. No exceptions, understand?”

The new ones nodded. Because the membrane was too precious, the packs were made of other creatures, their skins sewn together with the strong hair that grew from Gibbens' feet. They were lined with Nob intestines for watertightness and filled with water before each hunting trip.

“The thicker end syncs to the opening,” said Tret, and he swiftly attached his rod to his pack with one arm, so fast that Evan couldn't see exactly what he did. “You have to be able to reload without looking, without even thinking about it.” He pulled the rod swiftly from the pack again and held it out toward Jordan, in fighting form.

Evan watched nervously, feeling like a useless human. When he wasn't able to do it, would they know?

“The trick is not to think too much about it,” Tret continued. “The hole will be there. It's protected on the inside by membrane. The water won't come out, but your rod will go in, smooth as a Miftie down a tired throat. Let's get this down before we actually load up.”

For the next hour the new ones practiced, tossing their rods back and drawing them forward and from this arm to that arm, with Tret circling, giving direction. Since changing, Evan hadn't yet experienced real fatigue, but the repetition of the movement made his arms ache from somewhere deep. Not quite like muscle soreness, the pain seemed to seep from his arms into his body like warm liquid, almost too hot.

Though Jordan learned it faster, Evan was surprised to find that before his arms finally gave out, he was connecting the rod with the membrane nearly every time. He was doing so well, he earned a big clap on the back from Tret.

“Good job, new one! Those Vits are no match for you!”

Evan smiled at him. He was exhilarated in his fatigue. He was learning something he could use to defend himself. And he was learning that maybe the Wuftoom could all defend themselves. Maybe the Vitflys wouldn't win no matter what he did.

He sat down in the water to rest, but Jordan was already tossing his rod back into his pack, getting ready for what came next. Evan's arms were shaking, but he got back up again. He was not going to give up before he learned to shoot.

“The Vits can't pass through running water,” Tret explained, “but that doesn't mean it hurts them. It just acts as a barrier. Normally they don't get hurt by it because they know it's there and they avoid running up against it, like you wouldn't run smack into a wall. But in battle, you can get them!” He grinned and his fangs showed.

His arm was twisted tight around his rod, and for the first time Evan realized how strong Tret was. If Tret had been human, he would have been big with muscles. As a Wuftoom, his membranes were tight and his arms rubbery and flexible.

“If you can get a good stream in front of them while they're flying hard, it'll be just like watching them smack into that wall.” Tret was clearly excited, but he made his expression serious. “It's a good feeling, but you're not ready for that yet. You have to learn how to defend yourselves. How to keep them off you while you retreat.” His shriveled lips twisted as he said it, as if the word
retreat
was hard to say. “First you have to load.”

With their packs now full of water, Evan and Jordan practiced. It was surprisingly hard. There was a special way you had to twist the membrane to get the water to flow into the rod. You had to get it just right, or the water would just slosh, with barely any of it getting in. That was when Evan got the rod to hit the pack at all. He was so tired that half the time he would miss, and when he did manage to hit the pack right, he would get the membrane twist all wrong.

Even Jordan had some difficulty with it, but after a while he was getting the hang of it, and Tret stopped the practice to teach them both to shoot.

Fortunately, shooting was much easier than loading. It just took a certain amount of pressure on the membrane, which could easily be done with any Wuftoom's strength. Still, Evan marveled to watch Tret do it. His whole arm twisted around his rod, and he drew it back without strain, hitting the pack right on, twisting his arms so smoothly that it was hard to notice they had moved, thrusting the rod back and letting a stream of water go.