Someone has decided to blockade the bridge, to prevent the meat-eater from crossing it. Willem thinks the idea is stupid but does not voice his opinion.
This creature uses the rivers. Blockading the bridge is useless. But it gives people something to do.
They barricade the bridge with a wagon, turned on its side, tied in place with long ropes that loop around and under the stonework. The execution of the blockade is as stupid as the idea. Have they already forgotten that this creature can climb?
Other villagers go about different tasks. Everybody finds something to do.
The church tower has not one but two sentries, one watching the river, and the other scanning the farmlands to the south and east, in case the beast comes from either direction.
And it is coming.
Some want to kill it. Others just want to keep it out of the village.
The mayor has assembled those with muskets into a small squad and is making them march in unison back and forth along the edge of the square. There are four muskets altogether, the three from the hunting party, plus one that had remained to protect the gap in the saur-fence.
“They are idiots, playing at being soldiers,” Jean says, watching the squad march back and forth across the square with Monsieur Claude at its helm. “We have a fool for a mayor.”
Willem murmurs a sound of agreement, but thinks that the mayor is smarter than Jean is giving him credit for. A squad of muskets, with even a small amount of discipline, has a greater chance of killing the raptor than panicking individuals.
The saur-fence has been strengthened with additional poles crossbracing the existing supports. The tops of the sharpened posts have been interlaced with strong rope for added strength.
The preparations have not been limited to the fenceline. The shutters on windows are closed and barred. Lengths of timber are placed inside doorways, ready to brace the doors. Many of the village children have gathered in the church for safety. Monsieur Beauclerc’s pinschers are chained at the church doorway. The outside of the church has been strung up with lamps, all brightly lit. Inside, Father Ambroise is doing his best to protect the village through prayer.
* * *
Cosette finds Willem at the blacksmith’s, where he is helping Jean sharpen crossbow bolts. She stands at the entrance, framed by the doorway, her hair not let down or brushed for bed. Like the others in the village she clearly does not anticipate sleep this night. Lamplight trembles across her face and in the faint glow and the flickering shadows, Willem thinks she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
She says nothing, but waits for him to put down the metal file and newly sharpened bolt and to cross to her. It is as if she dare not enter this place, this dark, smelly, manly place, as if it would corrupt her.
Pieter starts to follow, but stops as Willem makes the stay signal with his hands. Pieter sits back on his haunches and crosses his front legs across his chest indignantly.
As Willem approaches she backs away until she is clear of the entrance, out of earshot of Jean, who has glanced up briefly, then returned to his work.
“My father has wronged you,” she says, “and so have I.”
“It is not important,” Willem says, “not now.”
“It is,” she says. “It was not a firebird that killed my sister. So it was not your doing. I came to apologize.”
“On whose account?” Willem asks, more roughly than he intends.
“On my own account,” she says.
“And your father?”
“He does not yet see the truth, but he will,” she says. She reaches out and takes his hand.
Willem looks away, now feeling bad. “He has lost a daughter and you have lost a sister. You are both suffering.”
She says, “My father is not thinking, he is only feeling. Sense and reason will return when the pain subsides.”
“I believe it,” Willem says, awkward and unsure what to say next. “Thank you for your words.”
“I must go,” she says. “I am helping to look after the children at the church. Besides, I did not mean to interrupt your work.”
“There is much to do,” he agrees, glancing behind at the row of shiny new crossbow bolts.
As he turns back to her, she leans forward, catching him by surprise. She presses her cheek to his and her lips touch his skin momentarily, then she lets go of his hand and is gone, out into the dark of the nighttime village.
He looks after her, a little confused, but with a slowly diffusing warmth that disappears in an instant at the sound of Jean’s voice. “Willem!”
Willem turns quickly.
Pieter is standing tall on his hind legs; his body is completely rigid, except for his beak, which twitches constantly.
“Pieter!” Willem calls.
With a squawk Pieter scrambles down the leg of the workbench, across the floor, and up Willem’s leg into his arms. The little saur is shaking violently.
“It is here,” Willem says.
“Why have the lookouts not sounded the alarm?” Jean asks.
“It approaches. That is all I know,” Willem says.
Jean rises and takes his crossbow, attaching a quiver of bolts to his belt. “Good. Let us see if it likes the taste of steel. From which direction does it come?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps from the river,” Willem says. “It seems to like the water.”
“Then we go to Antonescu’s cottage,” Jean says. “It has a high roof and we shall have a good vantage point.”
A heavy wooden ladder leans against one wall of the smithy. Jean picks it up easily in one hand and hoists it onto a shoulder.
Willem places Pieter into a sturdy wooden bucket and covers it with a sack. When they leave the smithy, he braces the door. It is the best he can do to keep Pieter safe.
Although the hour is late, the village square is abuzz with movement, men with weapons, tools, or just sticks. Women with lamps. The faces are strained, lips pressed tightly together. Heads flick around at the slightest sound.
Monsieur Lecocq, the eeler, sees them. His eyes take in the ladder and the crossbow and he crosses quickly to them.
“What is happening?” he asks.
“Go to the church,” Willem says. “Tell them to sound the alarm.”
“What have you seen?” Monsieur Lecocq asks.
“Do as he asks,” Jean says. “There is no time for questions.”
Monsieur Lecocq nods and has turned toward the church when a sound comes echoing from the direction of the forest. A deep, undulating, gurgling howl. A primal bellow. It sounds just once, and lasts little more than a second, but that is enough.
Around them everyone stops. All eyes turn toward the river. There is a moment when the entire village seems frozen in tableau: a Christmas ornament, porcelain figures posed on a painted backdrop.
Then the illusion is broken as everyone begins to run, all in different directions. Some to their homes to barricade themselves inside. Others to their weapons. Some seem to run aimlessly in one direction, then another, panicked by the sound to the point of folly.
“What in God’s name was that?” Jean asks.
“I do not know,” Monsieur Lecocq says.
Jean begins to run and Willem runs with him, leaving Monsieur Lecocq still standing openmouthed and unsure.
The church bell now sounds. The alarm seems unnecessary. The bellow of the beast was warning enough.
François meets them at the edge of the square. “Where is it?” he asks. He does not carry his ax, but rather a hatchet in each hand. The blades look newly sharpened. Willem wonders where he got them and suspects they belonged to the old Romanian woodcutter.
“We are mounting Antonescu’s roof to look for it,” Jean says.
“Remember that this creature can climb,” Willem says.
“I hope so,” Jean says, raising his crossbow.
At the cottage, Jean flips the ladder up against the wall. François tucks the hatchets into his belt and is the first one up. Jean steadies the ladder for Willem, and then climbs himself.
The tar pit is beginning to flame, combining its light with that of the torches on the saur-fence, lighting up the lavender along the riverbank. There is a mild moon but it is behind a cloud, and does not assist.
As Willem clambers from the ladder onto the spongy thatch, he sees François standing on the apex, near the chimney, one foot on either side of the roof. The light from the fires below throws him into silhouette, backlit with a skittish yellow glow. His arms are extended and held high, a hatchet in each hand. He is ready to face the saur.
Willem scuttles on hands and feet over the reeds of the thatch and stands behind François, balancing himself with a knee against the stonework of the chimney.
Nothing is moving. Not on either bank of the river, nor on the now-barricaded bridge. Not that Willem can see. The torches and the tar pit are a hindrance, not a help, the brightness of the flames burning his eyes and throwing everything behind them into deep dark.
Willem blocks the flames with his hand and scans the trees of the forest, straining his eyes, imagining that he sees vague shapes up in the high branches. But there is nothing.
“Where did that roar come from?” Jean asks.
Below them people are climbing up on the supports of the saur-fence, trying to locate the source of the sound.
Jean is right. It sounded close. Yet they can see nothing. It is as if the meat-eater is invisible.
“That is no firebird,” François says so quietly that at first Willem doesn’t realize he has spoken, until the meaning of the words creeps into his brain like a tendril of fog.
“Where?” Jean asks.
“In the river,” François says. His words are slow and disconnected.
“There is nothing in the river,” Jean says. His voice comes from right behind Willem.
Willem cannot see it either.
“That is no firebird,” François says again, and this time Willem looks to the center of the river, still shading his eyes from the fires. Then he sees it.
There are eyes in the river, two pale disks against the dark of the water. They gleam dully in the light of the fires. The water is rippling slowly alongside the eyes, and by following the ripples forward, Willem finds nostrils, also jutting out of the water. The eyes blink slowly. The nostrils close to narrow slits, then open again.
“It cannot be,” Jean says.
“It is a crocodile,” François says.
He is wrong. This is much bigger than any crocodile.
The eyes turn to face the village. They blink once again, languorously.
“It’s in the river,” someone cries from the fenceline, and more people climb up to get a glimpse.
“Get away from the fence!” Willem shouts. Don’t they remember what this creature did to the fence by the church?
His foot slips on old crumbling thatch and he has to clutch at the chimney for support. It takes him a moment to relocate the circles that are the eyes, and when he sees them they appear to be floating upward, as if detached from the body. But it is not the eyes, Willem realizes. It is the whole head of the creature that is rising from the river. The water has been a kind of camouflage, allowing the saur to sneak up on its prey. And its prey is the village.
Water streams from the snout. It is no crocodile. A crocodile is low and squat. It cannot raise its head like this. The eyes, now well above the water, flare with the lights from the tar pit and the flaming brands.
Up, up comes the head: heavy, ridged skin; long, straight teeth in a single, even row jutting out over the lower jaw. Willem cannot watch, and yet he cannot take his eyes off it. His heart does not seem to be beating in his chest. The head does look like that of a crocodile, yet it is intolerably large. And still it rises, water draining in long rivulets, creating dancing strings in the firelight.
Then the river itself seems to flex and bulge up behind the creature. But it is not water. In the dim light Willem sees what it is surely impossible to see. The river is the monster. The monster is the river. What he had thought was a dark shadow behind the creature is actually the backbone of the beast and that is now high in the air as the bulk of the creature emerges from the water.
“It cannot be,” Jean breathes. “It is like an elephant with the head of a crocodile.”
“It is bigger than that,” Willem whispers. “Much bigger.”
He looks at the saur-fence and at the ropes and extra poles that strengthen it. They now seem so puny, so inconsequential.
People still cling to the fence, where they have climbed to get a view.
The front legs have just emerged from the water, more like arms with long bony claws for hands. The surface of the river wallows as water surges in to fill the void created as the saur stands upright on great tree trunks of hind legs.
It snorts, and misty vapors jet from its nose, orange in the firelight.
A slapping sound comes from behind the animal. Its tail is flapping back and forth on the surface of the river, splattering huge sheets of water to either side.
It takes a step forward, toward the village, and now Willem realizes that however large he had thought this creature, he was wrong. It has been standing in the deep of the river, and only now as it moves toward the bank, and shallower water, is its true size being revealed.
“Get away from the fence!” Willem screams down at the onlookers, frozen in place.
“Get out of there!” Jean joins in, waving his arms.
Still the onlookers pay no heed and it is not until the monster steps out onto the riverbank, crushing the lavender plants, that they tumble and scatter, then run, shrieking, away from the fence.
This meat-eater did not climb the tower to take Monsieur Antonescu. It did not need to climb. It is as tall as the church tower.
Willem watches as the giant saur stops at the fire pit, its eyes caught for a moment by the leaping flames. Willem hopes for the briefest of moments that the fires will deter it, but it shakes its great head and simply steps over. It towers over the saur-fence, then lifts one of those great hind legs, pushing through the fence as though it was made of matchsticks. The newly intertwined rope splits like cotton.
The beast roars again, the same gurgling, low-throated sound, and Willem feels the thatch of the cottage vibrate beneath him.
There are shouted commands from behind him and he turns to see Monsieur Claude’s musket squad: two kneeling, two standing behind them. The front row fires, then the back, but if there is any effect on the beast, other than angering it, Willem can’t see it.
Perhaps they have missed; perhaps the musketballs cannot penetrate the thick, scaly skin. The small troop scatters, the men running as the beast roars and steps toward them.
It passes right next to the cottage, so close that he feels he could reach out and touch it. It seems to be sniffing around, picking a victim. Willem is conscious of Jean’s presence above him and looks up to see Jean standing over him, his crossbow to his shoulder.
“No!” Willem screams, but it is already too late.
The crossbow twangs and silver flashes in the sky. There is a grunt of pain from the beast and the end of the bolt is protruding from its upper jaw, close to its eye.
The head of the great lizard swings toward them, so close that the disks of the eyes are like twin moons in the night sky.
“Move,” Willem yells.
Jean turns and starts to run, but slips on the thatch, sliding and disappearing over the edge of the roof. Willem hears a thud from below.
“It is a creature not of this earth,” François says, unmoving. “It is a demon from the depths of hell. We have sinned. Our mayor has sinned. This is God’s wrath visited upon us.”
François seems spellbound by the sight of the huge head that is now swinging toward him. Willem pushes him and he falls, the hatchets slipping from his grasp and sliding over the edge of the roof. François follows, hands scrabbling for purchase, then he, too, is out over the edge, and Willem hears another thud and a curse as he hits the ground.
Willem runs for the ladder, but the creature is upon him and he can only dive and slide headfirst over the edge of the roof, falling, landing on Jean in a tangled cluster of arms and legs. On the other side of the cottage the giant saur bellows again, in frustration.
“Run!” Willem yells, and does not wait to see if they listen.
The beast moves past Antonescu’s cottage into the road. It steps through the village, untouched and untouchable as people scatter out of its path, hiding behind houses, or just running. The creature seems in no hurry, aware that there is food all around it, and content to take its time. It is dark of skin and with no moon it is visible only by how it blocks out the lights of the burning brands and the lamps behind it.
The dogs chained at the gate of the church begin to bark, then to whimper. They tear at their chains, again and again until their necks are bloody, finally wrenching the wooden stake out of the ground and running together, yelping into the night.
It is then that the mighty tail of the creature swings around, accidentally it seems, and smashes into the church. A wall collapses, exposing the innards of the church: pews, drapes, and finery, along with a crowd of women and young children.
The nostrils of the creature flare and it turns back in that direction. The air fills with the sound of children screaming, trapped in the rubble. Mothers covers their children with their own bodies. Father Ambroise steps forward, blood streaming from a cut on his head, a cross in his one good hand; Willem doesn’t need to see his lips to know that they are moving. He is praying. Invoking the name of the Lord to ward off this evil demon. The beast does not seem to hear.
But when all is lost there is sudden movement. By the light of the lamps that still festoon the church they see the schoolmaster, Monsieur Delvaux, brandishing a sword that gleams brown and rusty in the lamplight. He charges at the creature, screaming incoherently in a voice hoarse with madness.
Then Willem remembers: Cosette is in that church. He remembers the softness of her lips on his cheek and it is like gravity, pulling him in that direction.
Monsieur Delvaux actually gets within striking distance of the great head before the snout of the creature flicks to the side—a careless movement, nothing more—sending the schoolmaster flying sideways into the graveyard, where he lands at the feet of a statue of an angel. The angel looks out at the demon over the fallen man, who shudders and tries to rise, then collapses.
Another scream rends the air. It comes from the church, and a figure is running toward the graveyard. Willem recognizes the dress and the hair. Cosette is running to her father.
The meat-eater wavers for a moment between the children cowering in the church and the girl and her father, exposed in the graveyard.
It turns toward Cosette.
Willem himself is now a statue. He watches, unable to move. The huge clawed feet of the beast shake the ground as it moves toward Cosette. She shrieks again and again, but makes no move to flee. She covers her father’s broken body with her own. He is pushing her away, wanting her to save herself, but still she clings to him.
Willem’s hand touches the apparatus in his leather satchel. But his feet will not move. What use would it be anyway? What works on a microsaurus and a firebird could not possibly have any effect on this behemoth.
He knows he should try, that he can’t just watch as those dreadful jaws close on her gentle flesh. But still he does nothing, paralyzed by fear.
Jean has his foot in the stirrup of his crossbow, drawing back the string to reload the weapon. Behind him, he can hear François praying.
Cosette screams once again, a shrill, primal, piercing sound, and now the beast is upon her. The long, crocodile-like snout swoops down toward her.
But there is another movement, and a flickering light bound with the screeching of a feral animal. Some kind of small creature scuttles over the ground toward them. At first Willem thinks it is a dog or a small saur with a burning brand in its mouth, but then he realizes it is a human. It is the wild girl, Héloïse, a flaming torch in one hand, running with the other on the ground like an animal.
The beast turns, its eye drawn by the flame, and Héloïse hurls the torch at the creature’s head, where it impacts with a shower of sparks. The saur snaps at her but she is too quick for it, rolling along the ground beneath its jaw and between its massive legs, then running toward the gap in the fence.
It almost works. It almost turns to chase her, but then some part of its brain remembers the easy pickings in the graveyard.
Cosette has somehow dragged her father to his feet and together they are stumbling away, but now it is back on their scent. It takes a step forward, the huge clawed foot crushing gravestones and flower beds alike.
It takes another step, but this time Willem is there, and Jean is right behind him.
Somehow Willem’s feet have found the will to move. Perhaps it is the sight of Héloïse, or the way the saur’s eye followed the flaming torch.
He is terrified, shaking, almost unable to stand. His heart thuds painfully in his chest, but he steps toward the awful creature with a shout and a wave of his arms.
The snout turns toward him and the eyes blink once, slowly, as the creature evaluates him.
“Don’t fire your weapon,” he says to Jean. “Stay behind me. Do exactly what I tell you to do.”
The beast growls, not the undulating bellow of before, but just a deep rasp from its throat. It sounds like a laugh.
The breath of the creature brings forth the stench of death. Of putrefied flesh and the sweet odor of decay.
It growls again, perhaps unsure what to make of this fragile man-thing that steps toward it, seemingly without fear. A beast such as this must never have encountered such a thing, for even in the remote depths of the jungle there could be no creature that would not flee, gasping and screaming, from these teeth, these claws, these cold, dead eyes. Even the breeze sputters to nothing, as if not daring to approach the creature.
It shuffles its feet, the movement shaking the earth so much that Willem is unbalanced and nearly falls.
The meat-eater waits. Its prey is coming to it. The tongue is ridged and pointed and drawn back in the open mouth. A cluster of mottled white teeth at the end of the jaw are larger than the rest, each longer than Willem’s forearm.
The creature draws in breath, preparatory to a strike. But there is a clap of Willem’s hands and a flame appears between his palms, burning bright yellow in the blackness of the night.
The meat-eater pauses, watching the flame. Willem steps closer. Within easy range now of those long, evil teeth.
He separates his hands and the flame leaps from one palm to the other, then back. He moves his hands in a circle and each time they cross, the flame jumps to the other hand.
The meat-eater watches, transfixed, mesmerized by the flame dancing in Willem’s hands. Its giant head moves closer.
William begins to whistle, gently, and the creature cocks its giant head.
The flame leaps to Willem’s left hand and stays there as he brings it closer and closer to the eye of the creature, now transfixed, unmoving.
He can scarcely breathe, so pungent and foul are the fumes that envelop him from the creature’s throat.
“Jean, get down on the ground,” Willem says, in a singsong voice.
Behind him there is a rustle of clothing as Jean drops down.
“Move forward slowly,” Willem says.
Willem loses the eye of the creature as it notices the movement but he catches it quickly with the flame, weaving a glowing spell in the night air.
Jean has passed him now, crawling forward beneath the massive jaw.
The creature snorts and the flame in Willem’s palm goes out in a whirl-storm of droplets. Willem coughs and chokes, panicking and fighting the urge to turn and run. He holds himself in place, just barely, and manages to clap his hands together again. The eye of the beast is once more caught by the leaping flame.
“The skin is soft where the jaw meets the neck,” Willem says, in the same singsong voice.
Jean says nothing. Crouched on the ground beneath the jaw of the beast, he aims his crossbow upward. The beast tilts its head to one side.
“Wait for its head to straighten, then fire straight up, into its brain,” Willem says.
Jean nods silently. The head stays on its side, then cocks the other way. Willem makes small, intricate movements with the flame and slowly the head returns to level.
There comes the twanging, punching sound of the crossbow firing, and the creature rears up, bellowing in pain, a long, agonizing rattle of sound. The crossbow bolt is nowhere to be seen, but a trickle of blood marks a small hole on the underside of the beast’s neck.
Jean has rolled to the side. It snaps at him but misses, then turns back to Willem, who falls and grunts as the hard earth slams into his back.
The terrifying jaws close together millimeters above Willem’s prone form, the long front teeth grazing his smock, then as the head raises again, the creature seems to stiffen. It staggers. The damage is already done. The bolt has entered its brain. It is dead, but not yet aware of it.
The head of the creature begins to fall. Had Willem been underneath, the creature would have got its revenge, for the weight of the skull that crashes down where Willem had lain is far more than enough to crush the life out of him.
But a strong hand has grasped his arm and hauled him out of the way.
A few meters away Jean is just getting back to his feet.
It is François whose hand is on Willem’s arm.
The chest of the beast moves for a few moments with the beating of its heart, then is still.
Willem tries to stand, but his legs collapse. François has him, supporting him with a strong arm under his shoulders.
Around them people start to gather, slow and cautious, not yet convinced that the creature is dead.
Monsieur Claude stands with a musket aimed directly at the eye of the beast, as if it will suddenly rear back to life. Glancing around, Willem sees the looks on people’s faces. They see Monsieur Claude standing over the head of the beast like a hunter standing over his kill. He does nothing to dispel the idea that it is he, the mayor, who has saved the village.
Over in the graveyard Willem sees Cosette crouched by her father, who is being tended to by the mayor’s wife. Madame Gertruda has yet to unbarricade herself from her cottage. Monsieur Delvaux seems to be having trouble breathing.
Willem finds his legs, and with a quick thank-you to François, who deserves more than that, he moves across to the graveyard.
Cosette strokes her father’s forehead and in that simple touch of love from a girl to her father, Willem sees that the crazy man who has been making his life miserable is no more than a father, grieving terribly.
Cosette senses him behind her and looks up.
“How is he?” Willem asks.
She does not answer but rises suddenly and wraps her arms around him, enveloping him in an embrace that exceeds all bounds of propriety.
Then she turns back to her father.
Monsieur Delvaux is conscious but clearly in great pain. He looks up at Willem and nods mutely. He says nothing, and yet says everything.
Then his eyes close, but not before Willem catches a glimpse of such agony and suffering as he has never seen before.
Before, he had Willem to share the blame for what happened to Angélique.
Now he only has himself.
“Willem!” It is Jean’s voice.
He is with his father and a group of other men who are gathered around the creature.
Willem touches Cosette briefly on the arm to let her know that he is going, then crosses over to Jean.
The creature is no longer in darkness. People have appeared from everywhere with lamps. It lies on its stomach, one of its front legs splayed out to the side, the other caught underneath its body. The rear of the animal is on its haunches as if it might at any moment rise and resume the battle. The jaw is closed, but even so the huge teeth are terrifying. The eyes are glazed and the pupils have narrowed to slits, like cats’ eyes.
Monsieur Lejeune is examining some rags, remnants of cloth that are caught on the bony protrusions at the top of the creature’s spine, at the base of the neck. Not just fabric, shreds of leather as well. It makes no sense, and all Willem can think is that it is the remains of the clothing of another victim.
The beast shudders once as Willem leans forward, and he jumps backward, but it is just a death rattle.
“What is it?” Jean asks.
“Look at these scratches,” Monsieur Claude says, pointing to deep gouges on the skin of the beast around where the fabric is caught.
“Claw marks,” somebody says.
It is only when Monsieur Lecocq drops to his hands and knees and peers under the neck that the awful truth starts to become clear.
“There is a buckle here,” Monsieur Lecocq says. “These rags are not caught on its back, they are strapped around its neck.”
“Like a collar,” Monsieur Claude says.
“A collar!” The word is repeated around the crowd, and there is consternation as the ramifications of that sink in.
“These scratches are from its own claws,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “As if it had been trying to remove the collar.”
Jean is examining the fabric, tearing it with his hands to reveal more of the shredded leather underneath. He pieces two fragments together and looks up, confused.
There is embossing on the leather and, with an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, Willem recognizes the markings of the French emperor Napoléon. Now he notices the royal blue of the cloth, the imperial color.
“It is not a collar,” Jean says. He has unearthed a molded hump of rounded leather. Willem has seen this shape before, but cannot place it in his mind. Then with sudden, horrible clarity, it comes to him.
“What is it?” François asks.
Monsieur Lejeune speaks what Willem already knows.
“A saddle horn,” he says.
The great beast shudders a final time, then moves no more.
* * *
A good deal of time passes after this before Willem remembers his pet, hidden in the smithy. He unbraces the door and uncovers the bucket to find Pieter still frozen, comatose. The last time, it took many hours for him to return to normal.
Willem whispers soothing words to him and blows gently on his face. But as he goes to pick Pieter up he notices the eyes. They are not wide and flickering around as before. They do not move at all.
Pieter is not comatose.
The cheeky little microsaurus has simply died of fright.