Lutchen estimated that they had made only twenty or so miles in three days. The extended rest periods that Kippa needed after carrying his burden were slowing them down. The strength of the young man was not equally distributed throughout the day, so that he often used great bouts of energy early on, which generated fatigue towards the afternoon.
After each rest he would hoick up the flapping Wassidrus, who yelled at the shock, and went marching forward like an eager standard-bearer in front of a restless army. Kippa’s instant enthusiasm lasted minutes, after which it sank into puffing resolute struggle. Sometimes his leaping ignition caused disastrous results, as when he thrust the pole too high and jammed the man-flag’s head into a thick mass of overhanging branches. Wassidrus screamed for fear of his head being ripped off of his puffy neck, especially when Kippa yanked at the pole in a violent attempt to get it loose. If the girl hadn’t shouted, Lutchen might not have moved back from his position several paces in advance before the decapitation had taken place, and Kippa would have marched ahead again unaware of the change to his dependent prize.
Lutchen tried to explain to the young man how he might save his strength, but it was a useless task. He just let him go ahead at the beginning of each stretch and then fall back until he could walk no more. So this became the shunting stop-start process of each day. It was in the middle of the fifth day that Lutchen realised that he hadn’t heard Kippa’s plaintive cry to tell them that he had fallen back to a complete standstill. He stopped and asked the girl if she had heard him. She shook her head and they turned and followed their tracks back the way they had come. Then suddenly jarred to a halt. Back along the beaten path stood Kippa, eyes popping out of his head, holding the pole still, its weight resting on the ground. All around him stood a horde of squat yellow manlike horrors, who stared up high at the Wassidrus, who was making odd coo-cooing sounds. There must have been about eight or ten of them, moving in and out the high, sharp grass. They had no necks, their cyclopean faces growing straight out of their chests. So to see the Wassidrus clearly they had to bend backwards in an uncomfortable manner. It was this that made them unaware of the approach of the priest and the woman. Some had pointed sticks, others had wooden knives. Lutchen drew out the massive automatic pistol that the Sea People had given him.
The babyish noises that spluttered down from above seemed to have the anthropophagi mesmerised, as did the swaying fragment of man that made them. The only movement that came from Kippa was the stream of yellow liquid that splashed down his trembling leg.
Lutchen loudly cocked the slide of the heavy gun. He had only ever done this once before, after assembling the damaged parts and test-firing it. The sound had been like mad intimate thunder and a flame had leapt from the barrel, tearing the bucking pistol away from its restraining binds. It had worked and remained in one piece. But now only his nimble hand held the faulty hand cannon in place, and without a trigger guard the naked automatic nuzzled impatiently.
“Aet mi now yu ugi fukkers,” the Wassidrus said and laughed down at the mesmerised tribe of horrors. The old priest raised the gun and one of the horde saw it and let out a grating yell. Instantly, they all disappeared into the swishing undergrowth.
“Fukkers,” bellowed the man-flag.
Over the next two days everybody was aware that the anthropophagi were nearby, following the motley band farther into the interior. Lutchen and Kippa were continually braced, awaiting the attack. Modesta seemed weirdly uncaring and moved between spasms of her previous fits and great lethargy. The Wassidrus seemed drunk with the idea of being eaten by the yellow tribe. He fumed and spat, roared and bumbled as his head lolled between the branches. It was during the tense next night, with the insects ragging loudly and forming incandescent balls in the dark foliage, that the old monk noticed that the girl and the man-flag were whispering together. He grew suspicious at the alliance and did not want to be isolated with the idiot youth, so he began to watch more closely for signs of collusion and treachery. That night his worst nightmare came to visit. He had noticed as the darkness got thicker that the luminous pulsing insects were coming together, their balls coalescing. He had dozed off watching their pulsing and was tipped into waking by the sound of Modesta again going into a fit. And then he saw it above her head and interlaced in the trees: a vast out-of-focus ball of light that changed between shimmers and shadow. He scrambled across the ground, tangling his feet in his sleeping sheet. The ball moved towards him; again it appeared to be attracted to his abject fear. It swarmed six feet from the ground, and its shifting circumference had reached eighteen feet and was growing. Out of the corner of his terror he saw the girl, who was sitting up and waving at it. A thin stream of ectoplasmic mucus-like gel swayed between the tips of her fingers and a tendril of insects that dangled from the ball. He tried to speak but his teeth were chattering and he feared biting his tongue. The Wassidrus and its keeper paid no attention to the manifestation as Lutchen slid back across the sinewy root-infested ground. All fear of the anthropophagi had left him. All doubts about his companions had become irrelevant. He just had to escape the suffocation of his terror. To his horror the young woman suddenly pointed her entangled hand towards him and said something that he did not understand. Utterly convinced that she was setting it upon him, he finally screamed out, “O merciful God, please, no.”
She clapped her hands and the ball splintered apart, the millions of insects fleeing like sparks. The air resumed its usual buzz of night and nothing moved in the trees. The old priest stared at the woman, who was grinning at him. His heart was louder than anything around him except the words he had just said. They seemed to still be hanging in the air, displacing the monstrous ball. Under them Modesta lay down and pulled her sleeping sheet over her strange body, the grin never vanishing from her face. Even after she was sound asleep.
Lutchen finally surrender to rest, but soon Modesta was whispering inside his dream. She was telling him to wake up, they had things to do, somebody important to meet. He awoke and looked at her patchwork face of contrasting pigments and blinked.
“I have to make a special thing and I need your help. I don’t have the strength in my hands to do it alone.” She gave him the same smile as last night and he knew he dared not disobey.
She then told him exactly what she needed to make and why.
“But that’s impossible, my child, we have no materials or tools.”
She liked being called “my child,” but he was finding it more and more difficult to say.
“We will use the trees and him,” she said, pointing at the Wassidrus.
Lutchen did not understand and told her so, so she explained in great detail and finished with a smile. He felt sick and disgusted but knew that he dare not argue or see possible fault in her project. She told him that in some of the bags were strong knives and that she would construct the other instruments herself. While he collected them, she went back to the Wassidrus and whispered gently. A sound that was impossible to gauge could be heard, and Kippa came away frightened and shaking his head.
For the next four hours she searched among the roots and leaves, cut vines, and bled trees. She opened insects like snuffboxes and abstracted tinctures and essences from all around her. She then bound them together and spoke over their making. This was similar to the process that he had seen Tyc use, and he marvelled at the intricacies being known to one so young. When all the parts were made, she called the priest and the idiot over to the Wassidrus. He had been drinking some thick fluid that she had made the day before. She spoke to Kippa in his native tongue, telling him to use all his strength to hold his charge still. She placed a curved knife and a short stumpy saw in the old man’s hands and demanded him not to shake or tremble. She took his wrist and guided him to the lower remnants of the Wassidrus, the fused section that clung around the pole and had once been legs. Together they toiled while the pole shook and whined and the night began to fall away.