‘And what do you want?’ replied the spider in a low rumbling voice. Grace had to think about that. Originally she had just wanted to see the ‘silent ones’. She didn’t know they were going to talk to her. By this time Yin and Boot had caught up to Grace and were standing behind her.
‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Yin looking about.
‘Well I don’t know what his name is but…,’ Grace announced pointing to the very large arachnid looming over them.
‘You’re telling me they talk?’ whispered Boot incredulously, suddenly feeling a little exposed under this massive creature’s body. The giant spider spoke again.
‘Her name is Mutet,’ Grace announced. ‘She says that all those you see in the valley are what are left of their kind.’
‘What happened?’ questioned Grace looking up into Mutet’s shining eyes.
‘We are not native to this dimension, we belong to the fifth. We are hiding here from the creatures that invaded our home many, many years ago, destroying our people. We tried to fight back but they were too clever. They would disappear back to their own dimension before we could counter-attack. Eventually we worked out what they came for, what they wanted and how to hide it from them. But it was too late for most of my people, those that could, fled here. Now we are trapped, unable to return, barely able to survive.’ Mutet’s voice rumbled away with a tone of sadness.
Grace relayed the tragedy back to Yin and Boot. Boot was keen to hear more about the invaders, so Grace continued her questioning.
‘They came from a higher dimension. Their behaviour appeared quite simple at first, but their technology was so advanced, we didn’t understand the horror that was to overtake us until it was too late. The higher dimensions are mostly uninhabited by creatures as you know them, but by more frenetic beings. Therefore they need energy, they are drawn to it. They feed off it. But like the plague that they are, they consumed all the energy of their own dimension and have started to prey on inhabitants of the lower ones.’
‘You said you worked out how to hide from them? What did you do?’ queried Grace.
‘Well they feed on energy, but what they need comes from living creatures, from their minds. Only it’s not that easy to get. The stronger beings can resist. So the creatures look for brains which aren’t being used, then they attach themselves, like parasites, and drain the host’s energy away. The stronger they get the harder it is to resist them. Once they can establish a presence they get bolder, attacking you while you think, and finally they invade. Thousands and thousands of them pour into your dimension consuming everything.’
Grace remembered her living room full of Drawl and shuddered.
‘But how did you escape?’ asked Grace.
‘We fled here and trained our brains to emit a null thought. They can’t see us, because our energy is too low, almost as low as the rock around you.’
‘So that’s all you do, Lie here and not think?’
‘Until now, yes,’ rumbled Mutet.
‘Why don’t you fight with the cats?’ suggested Grace thinking hard. ‘Couldn’t you all join forces?’
‘What are cats?’ asked Mutet.
‘Oh right. Well this is Boot, and the lady over there is Yin. Can you actually see them?’ Grace asked as she pointed her companions out. Boot waved at the hairy spider.
‘Hello,’ he said warmly. Yin smiled and said ‘Hi.’
‘But they are two,’ said Mutet, ‘how can only two such puny creatures fight the enemy?’
‘Oh there are many more than that. There is a whole city of them beyond here. It’s just that these two brought me here to meet you. And the taller one, that’s Boot, he’s really good with a sword, he fights the Drawl all the time. He’s like my personal bodyguard. He’s in the army and everything,’ gushed Grace all excited.
‘But our numbers are few, less than a hundred. The survival of our species is at risk,’ argued Mutet.
‘You might well call this surviving,’ said Grace, ‘but it sure isn’t living.’ Mutet growled a low pitched rumble and for a second Grace thought the spider was going to eat her after all.
‘Leave us. Before they return and find us. The sun is already low in the sky.’
Grace turned to the west. The sun was low and the shadows were growing longer, their long dark fingers reaching across the valley, climbing the opposite rock face.
‘I think we should go back now,’ suggested Grace and Boot and Yin agreed. The trio set off, back the way they had come. Grace relayed the rest of Mutet’s conversation. As they climbed the valley wall, the spider roared out one final message.
‘Find the anchor. They use it to get from one dimension to another. Destroy it and they will be trapped.’
Both cats listened carefully as Grace translated this piece of advice.
‘Of course,’ Yin said. ‘It’s so simple! Just as we gave you the amulet to anchor you, the Drawl must use one to adhere to our dimension.’
‘But how come you don’t need them?’ asked Grace with the same confused look she had in her algebra class.
‘Because we are part of your dimension too, we coexist in both. It’s just that most of the time we choose to move around only in the fourth.’
‘So find their anchor, and destroy it, then we can stop the Drawl,’ hissed Boot his lips pressed and his eyes narrowed in concentration.
‘Well, it would slow them down until they could get another one,’ Yin replied.
‘At least we have a plan, that might work, and with Grace’s help, we may just strike a real blow against the dark menace.’ Boot actually appeared to be smiling.
The long walk back was a lot more bearable with ideas bouncing around in their heads. They each pondered their own role in the events that lay ahead.
Chapter Eleven
Yang and General Talus listened incredulously as Yin, Boot and Grace told them about the Avon Dhal and Grace’s conversation with Mutet. They were especially interested in the anchor point that the great spider had mentioned.
‘You know, we have often wondered about this. How the Drawl manage to slip so easily into and out of our dimension. This just could be the breakthrough we have been waiting for,’ the General said running an eye over Grace. ‘Good to see you back in one piece young lady.’
‘Thank you sir,’ Grace wondered if she should curtsy or something as she had no idea of expected protocol in front of a General. She had noticed Yin just called him sir so decided that was probably best.
‘We need to find that anchor,’ the General was getting excited. Not the running around the room flapping like a chicken excited way Yang did, but a more sedate take the pipe out of the mouth and tap it twice on the table kind of five-star General excited.
‘But that could take years, the area is so vast, and the only one of us who could see it is Grace…sir,’ interrupted Boot.
‘But if we look at what we know about the Drawl, their patterns, their common movements, maybe we can narrow down the search for this thing. We know they attack at night, we know they never attack around the park. Who knows why? Maybe they don’t like the pop fish? We also know they arrive in fairly large numbers. We need to divide up the city and stake out each grid nightly. Any sign of them, and we search that area during the day.’ The General was very excited now. He had removed his sunglasses and tapped his pipe an unheard of five times against the edge of the table.
‘You Boot, I want you to coordinate this,’ he ordered.
‘But Sir, that would require more men than a squad, I’m only a sergeant.…’
‘Hmm, yes quite right, quite right,’ the General muttered ‘that won’t do at all. Who is the Platoon Sergeant?’
‘Sir it’s Forkna, Sir!’ snapped Boot crisply.
‘Forkna ay? Isn’t that the guy bucking for a section eight because he plays with vegetables?’ drawled the General.
‘Err, he is a vegetarian sir, because he was raised by vegetarian humans in the third dimension.’
?
??Son, there are only two types of cats in this world, those that fight the Drawl and those who have something better to do. As I see it, we need a new Platoon Sergeant. Congratulations Sgt. First Class Boot, on your new commission.’ And with that, the General left. Only the smell of his pipe and the grin on Boot’s face remained of his visit.
Grace ran over and hugged Boot again.
‘Well done, platoon Sergeant Boot. That has a very important sound to it,’ she said rubbing Boot behind the ears again.
‘Oh come on, is this a dignified way to treat a Platoon Sergeant? Stand down girl!’ Boot ordered, half joking, half serious. After Yang and Yin also congratulated him on his promotion, the mood got serious as they started to plan their mission.
Chapter Twelve
‘I can see how this plan to destroy the Drawl anchor might work, but what good does it do us if we can’t destroy them as well? If they are hiding in a dimension higher than ours they are untouchable,’ Boot sighed.
Yang’s smile disappeared. It was a large hole in their plan. The tiny spark of enthusiasm in the room seemed to waver. Energy generated by a fresh idea to attack the Drawl was exciting, but once that energy was sapped from them, they just felt despondent.
Grace was playing with the small block that contained the piece of Drawl metal. She shook the casing and it rattled.
‘Why can’t you attack the Drawl?’ she asked nobody in particular. Yang turned to speak but Boot was quicker.
‘Because our weapons have no presence in the higher dimensions, they just pass right through them.’
An idea was starting to form in Grace’s mind.
‘This, stuff that the Drawl are made of in this box, is there anymore of it?’ she asked Yang
‘Their armour, yes I suppose so. I’m sure if you looked for it though, you’d find it a lot easier than we could,’ he replied to Grace with a puzzled look on his face.
‘Boot who made your sword?’ she asked. Boot looked surprised, he was exceptionally proud of his blade.
‘It was forged by the great swordsmith Nagamitsu himself.’
Grace took a deep breath and asked the ten million dollar question.
‘Do you think if I collected the Drawl armour he could forge a blade using it? Do you think that would be effective against them?’ Boot, Yin and Yang looked dumbfounded. It was brilliant, devilishly simple and of course absolutely impossible.
‘Nothing like the challenge ay?’ said Yang as he and Boot nodded excitedly.
‘If that works it would even the playing field, no, it would throw the balance in our favour. We must get started on this straight away.’
Boot bundled Grace out of the lab in such a hurry that she didn’t even get to say goodbye to Yin. They strode off down the road towards the city limits. Crossing the final ring-road they reached their destination, the wasteland beyond. Boot directed Grace to the area where the Drawl artefact had been recovered. It didn’t take long for her to spot more of the bizarre metal lying in the soil. She bundled up as much as she could into the knapsack Boot had given her. Straining under the weight of the metal, she only managed to stagger a few yards before she had to drop it.
‘It’s too heavy, there is too much of this stuff for me to carry.’
‘Would you like me to carry it for you?’ asked Boot jokingly.
Grace struggled on in stony silence under the weight of the load. Boot asked her once if she’d like to take a break but Grace gave him the dirtiest of looks. It didn’t take them too long to get back to town and find the residence of the legendary sword maker.
As Boot carefully explained what they wanted, the old cat listened intently but he never took his eyes off Grace. His fur was old and grey, a little thin in parts, but carefully brushed into shape. Eyes, a brilliant blue, made his face look much younger.
He stared at Grace, straining under the weight of the invisible load. He had the weirdest expression on his face and it reminded her of the day there had been a guest speaker at her school. The guy had been so nervous speaking at assembly that he had developed the hiccups. He had just kept hiccupping and hiccupping. In the big assembly hall they echoed around the room seeming to double up on each other getting louder and louder. The school principal had just sat and stared down his nose at the poor guy.
The old cat turned to Boot:
‘I’m going to need a lot of wood for the fires,’ he said and very nimbly made his way across to his workshop leaving Boot and Grace to collect the wood. The old cat was serious when he said ‘a lot’. It took almost four hours to collect enough to satisfy the old cat.
The fires were finally lit, and a thin wisp of smoke rose from the forging hut. No banging had yet been heard so Grace went in to check on things. Nagamitsu had laid out his tools. He occasionally pulled on a very large bellows that pushed more air into the furnace. For a moment it roared as the flames ate up the fresh oxygen. The heat was so intense Grace could feel the skin on her face tighten.
The extreme temperature in the air made the room swim and appear to shake. How did he stand it? Grace asked herself. In his hand Nagamitsu had a large piece of steel that he was rolling around inside the embers of the fire. Once the steel was glowing white hot he removed it and set it upon his massive anvil. He pounded on it with a very large hammer and eventually the metal started to get thinner and wider. Once he had pounded it to three times its original size Nagamitsu turned to Grace.
‘The Drawl material Grace, quickly place it onto the flattened steel.’ Grace could only just hear him as her ears were still ringing from the noise of the pounding. But she reached over to where she had dumped some of the metal she had collected. She laid some on top of the steel the old swordsmith had resting on his anvil. Giving him the nod she withdrew quickly back across the room, the heat was so intense she was drenched in sweat from head to toe. But Nagamitsu stopped her and wouldn’t let her leave.
‘You must be my eyes,’ he said. Grace watched with some interest as the old cat beat the metals together, and then folded the flattened piece over on itself, just like folding an omelette observed Grace. He then beat the metal again until it had doubled in size, then he folded it together again. Occasionally he would pause to study his work checking the metal’s colour and edges. He asked Grace to describe what she saw. Then he would bang away at it for a while longer. Grace counted ten folds before he was done. Now he began to shape the blade, working in the curve, building up the thickness of the back and honing the cutting edge down. At times he would heat it and quench it in various liquids he had in barrels about his workshop. The blade would hiss and boil in some, and merely create billowing white clouds in others.
‘A sword must be strong, yet it must yield. Like an oak in a storm, its trunk must bend with the wind, lest it be snapped in half. The blade will have a hard shell to slice through its enemy’s armour, yet a soft centre to dissipate the energy of the strike through it.’ Nagamitsu smiled in satisfaction as he continued his work.
This was art and science combined in myth and magic. The swordsmith, his fur soaked with sweat and sticky looking from the heat and effort expended, worked all night while Grace fell asleep by the entrance. Boot had slipped off several times to get more wood to feed the insatiable appetite of the fires. As dawn broke and Grace stirred she saw Boot watching the old cat. The sword had been polished and sharpened. A wavy temper line ran down the blade, the hamon Boot had called it. Grace moved forward for a better look. She was impressed, having always thought of swords as just a piece of metal with a sharp edge. Nagamitsu finished attaching the handle.
‘It’s made from sharkskin for grip!’ he instructed her. At last the sword was ready and he held it up to the light.
‘Describe for me what you see Grace.’
Grace took the blade, it was very light, and the balance was perfect. She looked at the pattern above the cutting edge where the old master had indicated.
‘Here,’ he pointed, ‘what do you see?’
Grace s
tudied the edge of the sword. It had a dull finish along the sharp edge. She looked harder at the pattern.
‘It’s, well I guess I’d describe it like the grain in wood,’ said Grace not knowing of any better way to explain it. ‘And it has got the same blue colour, from the metal I gave you.’
Both Boot and the older cat had very, very satisfied looks on their faces. A wood grained hamon was a very pleasing omen.
‘Then let us test it,’ cried Boot taking the sword gently from Grace’s hands.
‘Grace, would you hold up a piece of the metal, above your head?’ Boot asked, stepping back a little. Grace obliged by selecting a large piece of the ultra dimensional metal and lifting it high.
‘Ready,’ she called.
In a slick circular motion Boot moved the sword through the air effortlessly. It made a gentle swish as it cut through the air and the light from the fire danced along its edge. Although only Grace knew that the top of the metal had dropped to the floor, the look on her face was all the other two needed to see.
‘Master!’ cried Boot, ‘You have surpassed yourself this time. How soon before we can equip our scouts with these?’ he asked.
‘I can instruct my apprentices at once, maybe one and a half days?’ replied the swordsmith, a look of pride in his bright blue eyes.
‘Excellent. I will return to collect them just before dusk. Now we must be off, there is still much to prepare.’
***
‘This will be insanely dangerous. You need to know that up front Grace. If you have any doubts about doing this, you should tell me now,’ Boot said as they sat together.
Grace had doubts all right, there were great carnivorous butterflies hacking pieces out of her stomach. She really just wanted to go home, crawl into her mum’s bed and hide. She was the last person you wanted for something like this. Like sports day at school; she was always the last person picked for a team. It was usually:
‘We’ll take Grace if you take Jabba.’
Grace wanted to tell them. She wanted to explain that if they relied on her she would only muck it up. When it came to the crucial moment she would panic, scream or freeze. Instead, all Grace heard coming out her mouth was: