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Linder was about to ask about Makalo when the latter appeared, puffing. “The rock-borer is definitely coming—Oh, hi Linder. Am I glad you’re back.”
“Okay,” said Linder, “Let’s move away from the tunnel opening. Over there, the ledge broadens out.”
“Do you think the borer will follow us?” asked Thomas.
“I don’t think so,” said Linder, but I don’t know enough about them to be sure. He might view us as dessert.”
The cliff side shook with a dull, low frequency throb, as if a train were passing through a tunnel just inside the rock. The noise gradually grew louder. Suddenly, large thick tentacles emerged from the tunnel mouth. The tentacles spread out like a giant sea anemone and a grey tube, two meter in diameter, emerged, projecting about five feet beyond the end of the tunnel.
The tube opened up and a cascade of small round pebbles the size of marbles spilled down the mountain side, adding to the scree already there. When the cascade stopped, the tentacles searched the area around the tunnel mouth, and pulled organic matter from the cliff surface into the maw of the monster. Finally, some of the tentacles lifted off the surface of the cliff as if sampling the air.
“You’d almost think,” whispered Linder, “that the borer can sense that we’re here.” He felt the old chill he had first felt in the worm caves, when he had been pursued by a borer through the tunnels.
Suddenly, the tentacles retracted, the protruding end of the borer became bullet shaped, and the monster pulled itself back into the mountain.
The six friends breathed a collective sigh of relief. “I never stop being amazed at rock-borers,” said Linder, “If you had told me I would meet a creature so completely symmetrical it wouldn’t have to turn around in a tunnel, but simply open up a mouth at its other end, I would never have believed you.”
“You know you sound exactly like my brother Al when you talk like that,” said Thomas.
“Is that a bad thing?” asked Linder looking anxiously at Pam to see if the reference to Al had distressed her.
“No!” said Thomas.
“Yes,” said Makalo, “it shows you have been spending altogether too much time with him.” Makalo grinned broadly.
“I think,” said Linder, also smiling, “that I have been spending far too much time with the lot of you. I need some new friends. You folks know me far too well. I have no secrets. I’m an open book.”
“A book with mostly blank pages,” added Makalo helpfully.
“Okay, enough of this. Let’s get moving. Pam, you have your wish. Maybe this rock-borer was a sign from God that it’s time to find Al.”
“Maybe!” said Pam smiling, ignoring Linder’s cynicism.
Linder led the way down. After lowering Little Thomas by rope, Pam and Thomas were next. Makalo came last. Following three hours of steady progress, they reached the fourth terrace then stopped for lunch. Pam put up her ankle.
“Let me have a look,” said Linder. He could see that it was swollen.
“On second thought, this looks like a nice spot. We’ll make camp here.”
“But we have lots of daylight left,” protested Pam.
“We need to get some food, and game seems plentiful here. We have fresh water. A rest now will help us make good time tomorrow.”
“This is really about my ankle, isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty swollen, so that’s part of it, but my other comments are true and valid.”
Pam harrumphed her displeasure at the delay, but bit back any further retort.
Two days later, they were continuing northwest on the fourth terrace with Linder in the lead, when he came back to the rest of the group at a lope, his index finger to his lips. “Trouble!” he whispered. Without another word he led them back to the cliff wall. They crouched in a hollow among the rocks.
“What spooked you?” asked Pam.
“Spiders,” said Linder. “Big spiders, the size of a large dog.”
“You don’t mean,” said Thomas, “those bugs we saw in the terrace below?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
Linder climbed out of their depression, which was shaped a bit like a sand bunker on a golf course, and peered back along the cliff. Then he came back down into the depression. “I don’t believe it. They’re climbing up the cliff the way spiders walk up walls. There are thousands of them. The whole escarpment wall from the fifth terrace is covered with them.”
“Are they coming this way?” asked Pam, a tremor in her voice.
“I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I am sure the main body of them is heading away from us northwest.”
Linder periodically peeked out to see if the spiders were gone. Finally, the terrace ahead of them looked empty, and the cliff wall was also bare.
He wanted to wait to be sure it was safe, but Pam insisted they make a dash for it right then. Ultimately, Linder agreed.
Retracing their steps to the edge of the woods, the group headed back the way they had come. With Linder in the lead, they stayed under cover as much as possible, glancing up at the cliff every few minutes, afraid they might see arachnids. But they made it to a rocky gully without incident. In the bottom of the gully a large, deep creek meandered. They found a natural rock dam, which allowed them to cross. At Pam’s insistence, they pushed hard to put as much distance between themselves and the spiders as possible before nightfall.
Finally, Linder called a halt. “We need to decide where to go,” he said.
“I want to find Al,” said Pam.
“Of course, you do,” said Linder, “but we don’t know where he is. We need to get you and Little Thomas somewhere safe.”
“We have to avoid the arachnids at all cost,” said Makalo.
“But all our friends and allies are northwest, the direction the arachnids have gone,” said Thomas.
“So, we also have to head northwest. But do we go up or down?” asked Linder.
“I don’t want to go up and risk meeting Bigelow,” said Pam with a shudder.
“So, we go down to the fifth terrace and try to meet the green dragons,” said Linder.
“The green dragons,” said Pam. “are you sure they’re safe?”
“They’ve saved our lives several times,” said Linder. “I have to go on what I know.”
So, they climbed down to the fifth terrace. But their pace was slow. After several days of journeying, Pam’s head was spinning. She had asked incessant questions about the green dragons. Having lived with the Eagles, she knew their fear of dragons, but what she was hearing from Linder made her realize the green dragons were different. Still, she knew the adults looked like a cross between a small Tyrannosaurus Rex and a huge bat. I’m not going to let their appearance frighten me.
When they finally came out of the woods to a broad, burn-scarred meadow, her fear intensified, but she would not allow herself to show fear in front of Little Thomas.
Then she saw a tunnel mouth on a broad ledge. From Linder’s description, she knew it to be Hiszt’s lair, but where were the dragons?
Just then a green dragon spiralled down, landed on the ledge, and waddled into the tunnel mouth.
She felt panic. Dare I go in there? What if the dragon doesn’t know me and fries me to a crisp?
She steeled herself, reminding herself they hadn’t walked this far only to sit at the edge of the meadow in indecision. Pam transferred Little Thomas’ hand to his uncle Thomas and walked boldly into the meadow. Makalo and Tandor followed.
“Is this a good idea Pam?” asked Makalo.
“This has taken far too long already. Desperate times require desperate measures.”
Pam stopped well below the ledge so that she could still see the tunnel mouth, and called in her no-nonsense voice in the Common Tongue, “Hiszt, are you in there Hiszt? It’s Pamela, Al Gleeson’s wife—I mean Al Gleeson’s mate.”
Pam was just about to call again when a green dragon waddled out of the tunnel and peered at her and the others, swiveling its eye stalks from one to another.
“Welcome Pamela, mate of Hiszt’s human friend, Albert Gleeson. I am Hirsa, Hizst’s mate. My Common Speech is still poor. Come up here so we can communicate mind-to-mind. I have much news.”
Pam scaled the small wall to the ledge slowly. Her ankle still gave her a twinge from time to time, especially when she was climbing. She reached the ledge with a grunt of pain, having twisted her ankle with the final exertion.
Drawing a deep breath, Pam approached the green dragon. “Friend Hirsa, I cannot speak mind-to-mind like Dave Schuster, but maybe you can speak to me using mind-talk the way Hanomer, our Hansa friend talks to us.
She put her hand on Hirsa’s neck, which was as thick as a small tree trunk. Suddenly pictures and information bubbled out of Hirsa. Pam heard of the battle and the victory in great detail.
Finally, Pam interrupted the dragon’s flow of thought. “But where is my mate, Albert Gleeson?” Pam asked out loud.
Ah, of course, you have been separated from him for a long time. Albert Gleeson has been wounded. He has returned to the human town of Seth.
“Seth,” said Pam in despair, “how am I ever going to get there with my child?”
I will take you, human friend Pam.
But Hirsa, the air is too thin for you to fly.
I am strong and I will take you by the great Spiral Tunnel.
After a hasty meal, Pam and Little Thomas settled onto Hirsa’s back, as she walked rapidly up a tunnel. True to her word, even though she waddled, Hirsa moved as fast as a cantering horse.
“Are we going to see Daddy again?”
“Yes, soon my love. Are you afraid?”
“No, this is fun.”