Tears! Saliva! My own body consisted largely of water! All I needed to do was spit! Incredible how slowly one’s mind works, especially in situations of the utmost urgency.
So I collected some saliva in my mouth.
That is to say, I tried to collect some but failed: my throat was absolutely parched. Terror had transformed my mouth into a drought area, my tongue was as dry and rough as a sheet of emery paper, my gums were parchmentlike. The saliva seemed to have hidden away in my pores for fear of the Spiderwitch. I found it quite impossible to coax so much as a droplet to the surface.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
But tears! All I had to do was cry! I had not only learned to weep to order but promoted weeping to the status of an art form. I was a champion – no, the world champion at that form of activity!
Except that I hadn’t engaged in it for a long time, and the situation in which I found myself made concentration difficult. From the sound of its footsteps, the Spiderwitch had almost reached the clearing.
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
So I mentally squeezed my tear ducts as hard as I could. I pictured scenes of almost unimaginable grief, incidents of a profoundly tragic nature, the funerals of my best friends – even my own. But I was quite simply out of practice. Or was it that I was older? A youngster weeps at the drop of a hat; when you’re older, the tears flow rather less easily. Was I still capable of weeping?
The final ‘Boom!’ dispelled my last remaining doubt that the Spiderwitch had reached the clearing. I couldn’t see the whole of it yet, just one of its eight eyes peering through the foliage, probably to see what was struggling in its web. Then it squeezed the upper part of its body through the treetops. Pus-yellow spittle was oozing from a spout in its belly, presumably the deadly secretion that would dissolve me.
And then, for the first time, I heard the Spiderwitch’s voice. A sound that deprived me of hope, it might have been made by all the dangerous representatives of the animal kingdom at once. It combined the menacing growl of a tiger with the venomous hiss of a cobra, the derisive cackle of an evil spirit with the hoarse laugh of a hyena and the sound of a vampire bat greedily drinking. It sent shivers down my spine and brought tears of terror to my eyes.
I started to weep – not deliberately or in simulated sorrow, but from genuine, hopeless, mortal fear! The tears spurted from my eyes in two thin streams, and I still had just enough presence of mind to aim them at my imprisoned hands. But for whatever reason, whether I was squinting from sheer terror or sobbing so hard that my body was shaking, the jet missed them by a good six inches.
There are times in life when you become convinced that the entire universe has assembled in some gloomy back room and resolved to conspire against you. This was one of those times. But there are also times that restore your faith in Lady Luck. The two or three seconds it took for my tears, having shot past their target, to rebound off the petals of an orange lily on to the branch of a birch tree, which bent and released a captive fern frond, which sprang erect and projected my tears at a canopy of chestnut leaves laden with raindrops from the recent Gloomberg Tempest, which in turn sent them pattering down on me like a cold morning shower – those seconds were one such fortunate moment in time. It was the moment when fate released my hands from the spider’s web and signalled the start of my marathon run through the Great Forest.
My marathon escape from the Great Forest
The first hour
I had never run in my life, if the truth be told. The Minipirates’ ship was too cramped and Hobgoblin Island too cluttered with fallen trees; running was out of the question on my raft; the most I ever did on Gourmet Island was take a leisurely stroll (in the end on all fours); my time with Mac was spent entirely in the air; and the Nocturnal Academy’s curriculum did not include athletics.
So I was obliged to run for the first time in my life, and not only run, but – no half measures! – run for my life. I got into a long-distance frame of mind, knowing that the key to success was either greater speed or greater stamina. I realized at the same time that the dice were loaded against me. Being a bear, not an antelope, I had two short, relatively unathletic hind legs. The spider’s legs were not only very long but eight in number.
Off I ran, fast enough to put a safe distance between me and the spider but not too fast, for fear of getting out of breath. My main advantage was my size, because I could slip between trees and under branches, whereas the spider had to forge a laborious path through all that barred its path – dense foliage, forked branches, close-set tree trunks – by trampling them underfoot or wrenching them apart. The creature’s strength was prodigious – its body weight alone was sufficient to bend aside full-grown spruce like a reed – but its progress was forever being obstructed: it had to barge its way through the forest in a zigzag fashion, whereas I had a clear run. Things would have been different in open countryside, where its long legs would soon have decided the issue.
The secret of running is breathing. Breathe in, two strides, breathe out, two strides … Arms slightly bent, hands clenched in front of the chest, push off the ball of each foot in turn. The first hour was no problem. I ran steadily, lithely through the trees with the strength of youth in my heels and fear – a great incentive – at my back. I obviously had a natural talent for running. My lead increased minute by minute, the spider lost ground yard by yard. Sooner or later, I felt sure, it would fall behind completely and abandon the chase. After half an hour of this endurance run its footsteps rang more faintly in my ears:
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The second hour
The second hour was easier still. I felt is if my body were manufacturing renewed energy out of fresh air and pumping it straight into my legs through my veins. I became positively intoxicated. My stride steadily lengthened, my confidence grew. The longer I ran, the greater my reserves of energy seemed to become: the more energy I consumed, the more I acquired. Stopping to rest was pointless, it only made you wearier, prevented you from getting back into your stride again. I even put on speed. The Spiderwitch fell further and further behind.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The third hour
The third hour wasn’t quite as easy. I began to sweat more profusely than I’d ever done, even in the most tropical heat. The salty fluid streamed down me but didn’t fall to the ground; it remained lodged in my fur, because I had no chance to pause for a few moments and shake it off. This increased my body weight considerably, making me feel as if I were swathed in wet hand towels. The sweat sometimes obscured my view for seconds at a time, and I had to be careful not to collide with a tree. But I still felt confident of winning the race, even though the spider had made up some ground. Its footsteps were unmistakably louder again.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The fourth hour
The fourth hour was a definite improvement, perhaps because I had ceased to feel my body. I’d become no more than a soaring, incorporeal spirit that glided over the forest floor like a hovercraft. There were two possibilities: either my body had triumphed over pain and exhaustion or – the likelier alternative, I suspected – it had come to a halt at some stage and sat down, because I couldn’t feel it any more. But I continued to run on in spirit, and my spirit was swift as the wind. The spider was now almost out of earshot.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The fifth hour
By the fifth hour I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. There were times when I almost stopped running from sheer bewilderment, only to be preserved from disaster by my intellect, which fortunately took over just in time. My mind was in the strangest state. I suffered from increasing delusions of grandeur – I actually believed at times
that the forest existed solely to provide me with a marathon course. My weightless body soared higher and higher, and before long I could survey the entire forest. I felt sure I was monitoring its every movement, determining the direction of every root, the growth and destiny of every stalk of grass, every leaf and branch throughout its extent. Then I rose still higher until, as if looking down through a giant magnifying glass, I could see the whole of Zamonia and make out each of the living creatures that inhabited it, all of whose names I knew and whose destinies I sagely directed. Eventually I soared into space and looked down on the entire planet, expertly superintending its rotation and gravitational pull and sending a hurricane or two across the oceans.
From the
‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’
by Professor Abdullah Nightingale
Marathon Fever. A rare condition observable only in Zamonian marathon runners. After some five hours of strenuous marathon running in the atmosphere prevailing in Zamonian mixed forests, with its extremely high oxygen content, the body temperature rises to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. In a person in a standing or recumbent position, this would be fatal; in someone engaged in running, it merely releases so-called bazirs into the blood, in other words, bacillumlike corpuscles productive of temporary delusions when they reach the brain. Far from putting marathon runners at a disadvantage, however, these help to desensitize them against their natural exhaustion and spur them on to further feats of athleticism. The said hallucinations are all of a pleasant nature, being associated with rapid progress. Those who have them tend to imagine that they are creatures noted for their speed, e.g. gazelles, cheetahs, or swallows.
In my case I probably imagined myself to be a winged forest deity, but what did that matter as long as the delusion made me run faster? By now the Spiderwitch had become a matter of complete indifference to me. Was it still within earshot?
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sixth hour
In the sixth hour I regained possession of my mind and my body, the former being clearer and the latter heavier than ever before. I felt I was toting a sack of cement, my legs seemed to be filled with lead, and the sweat clinging to my fur weighed me down. I stumbled along, half dazed and bereft of all my former self-confidence. The marathon fever had evaporated, and my delusions of grandeur had yielded to a more realistic appraisal of the situation. This told me that my strength was giving out, and that the spider had definitely made up some ground.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The seventh hour
During the seventh hour the light began to fade and the forest was traversed by a refreshing breeze that dried my sweat and restored my energies.
With nightfall came darkness. My eyesight has always been good, even in poor light, as I’d demonstrated in the Gloomberg Mountains. Moreover, a seaman’s innate bump of direction and an exceedingly keen sense of smell enable me to move as confidently as a bat in almost total darkness. I smell trees before I collide with them, and my internal compass always steers me in the most favourable direction – instincts which only a bluebear possesses. Furthermore, I could clearly hear the Spiderwitch and gauge its distance from me when it crashed through the forest like a giant on stilts, especially as it couldn’t suppress its furious snarls and greedy slobbering sounds. I mustered all my strength for a final spurt. I would either shake off the Spiderwitch once and for all or be devoured by it. I was staking everything on a single throw of the dice.
My education at the Nocturnal Academy, and particularly my lessons in biology, now paid off. I twisted and turned like a rabbit, dived down holes like a fox, sprinted like a zebra in flight. I flitted across the forest floor, zigzagging like a lizard, or disappeared completely into dense foliage and wriggled through it like a grass snake.
But the spider’s eight eyes enabled it to find its way in the dark at least as well as I could. Its greatest advantage, however, was despair, which spurred it on to unprecedented feats. It was ages since anyone apart from me had strayed into the Great Forest, so the creature’s last meal lay far in the past. Spiders can survive on their accumulated food for immense periods of time, but sooner or later the last calorie is consumed. If I escaped the Spiderwitch’s clutches now, it would not have the strength to lure and ensnare another victim, least of all after expending so much energy on this marathon. It would have to crawl back into the forest empty-handed and starve to death there.
I could clearly hear it trying to put on a spurt.
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
The eighth hour
Meantime, I was no longer capable of switching, just like that, from one escape technique to another. I wasn’t a weasel or a gazelle; I was a bear, and bears are essentially slow-moving creatures that like to take things easy. My legs were dragging me down like ships’ anchors, and every muscle in my body hurt in its own particular way. Worst of all, though, was the voice inside me, which kept urging me to let everything go hang and take a nap. The Spiderwitch had long ago sensed my weakness and summoned up its remaining strength. This quickly reduced my lead. The creature felled whole rows of trees with a single scything blow from its claw-tipped feet, ripped bushes out of the ground with its pincerlike jaws, and hurled imprecations into the darkness in Spiderwitch. It made up a lot of ground while I cursed my plan to stake everything on a single throw, because my strength was really giving out at last.
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
I continued to drag myself along, though exhaustion was depriving me of my natural instincts. I bumped into trees, tripped over roots, and got tangled up in undergrowth. I made little headway, whereas the Spiderwitch was steadily reducing the distance between us.
The Spiderwitch was right behind me now, only a single arachnidan stride from its coveted prey. The whole marathon run had been a futile waste of energy. I was debating whether to simply stand my ground and face up to the creature – I might with luck achieve something in a straight fight if it was even more exhausted than I – when I detected a strange but familiar scent.
‘That’s odd,’ I thought. ‘There’s a smell of genff!’
Where, I wondered, had I heard that peculiar word? Just as I remembered, I fell head first into a dimensional hiatus.
WHEN YOU STUMBLE into a dimensional hiatus you fall in every direction at once: down and up, right and left, north and south, east and west. You also fall through time, not only in reverse but at twice the speed of light, following a trajectory known as the Nightingalian octaval loop. Professor Nightingale was the first – as usual – to describe this phenomenon. The Nightingalian octaval loop should be conceived of as a double loop in the shape of an eightfold figure of eight of which one-eighth is situated in space, one-eighth in time, and the remaining six-eighths in the other six dimensions. This means that, while falling, you’re everywhere in the universe at every point in time.
This process is very confusing at first, and the reader would be well advised not to try to form a mental picture of multidimensional space. It has been estimated that even a Nocturnomath would take an entire lifetime to picture even one square yard of it.
From the
‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’
by Professor Abdullah Nightingale
Multidimensional Space. It is really quite easy to picture a square yard of multidimensional space – provided you have seven brains.
Simply picture a train travelling through a black hole with a candle on its roof while you yourself, with a candle on your head, are standing on Mars and winding a clock precisely one yard in diameter, and while an owl, which also has a candle on its head and is travelling in the opposite direction to the train at the speed of light, is flying throu
gh a tunnel in the process of being swallowed by another black hole which likewise has a candle on its head [if you can imagine a black hole with a candle on its head, though for that you will require at least four brains]. Join up the four points at which the candles are burning, using a coloured pencil, and you’ll have one square yard of multidimensional space. You will also, coincidentally, be able to tell the time on Mars by the clock, even in the dark, because – of course – you’ve got a candle on your head.
So you’re everywhere in the world at once: in the Alps and on the Atlantic Ocean, at the North Pole and in the Gobi Desert, on the Nile and in the Brazilian rain forest. You’re also, as already mentioned, present at every point in time. To cite a few alternatives: one million years ago and the day after tomorrow at half-past three; in the autumn; in springtime; in summertime; at Christmas; and a hundred or a hundred thousand years from now.
But you’re not only on earth; you’re also on the moon and on Saturn, in the Horsehead Nebula and on Cassiopeia’s starry throne, on the far side of Betelgeuse and beneath the wings of Pegasus, on the left horn of Taurus, in the constellation of Cancer, and everywhere else in the known universe. And, just to make matters even more puzzling, you’re in every other unknown universe as well! So anyone falling down a dimensional hiatus really goes places – everywhere, to be exact.
This deluge of optical stimuli would normally drive a person insane, but the brain’s response to a fall down a dimensional hiatus is remarkably self-protective: it lapses into a state of mild dementia, or as Professor Nightingale has termed it, ‘carefree catalepsy’.
From the
‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’