The Cloud Road

  He was just attaching the last filled bulbs to the rope when the crevice fell into shadow. It was not utterly dark, for on the surface the sun was still shining. He might have signalled Bily to haul the bulbs up, but Zluty knew his brother would be worrying. Besides, he was terribly hungry. So he climbed back to the surface and helped Bily haul up the bulbs and empty them into the urns.

  The heat of the sun was very welcome, although at first its light was so bright it made Zluty’s eyes water, and the whiteness of Bily’s fur dazzled him. But by the time they had reattached the emptied bulbs to the end of the rope, Zluty’s eyes had adjusted and he was hot enough to be glad to get into the shade. Bily had prepared food, and as Zluty ate he explained what he had seen at the bottom of the crevice. He did not mention the sounds he had heard.

  Bily agreed the cracked bulbs would be useless for carrying water, but there was a thoughtful look on his face that made Zluty wonder if he had some idea of how they might be repaired. He seemed a good deal less upset over the cracked bulbs than he would once have been, before the loss of their beloved cottage. This saddened Zluty, for what if all that had happened to them had quenched Bily’s desire to make things?

  When it came time to climb back down into the crevice, Bily did not want him to go.

  ‘We need not fill the second urn right to the top,’ he said. ‘After all, it might only be another day or two before we see the mountains.’

  ‘Just one more trip,’ Zluty promised him.

  Watching Zluty climb back down into the darkness, Bily felt another stab of unease. For all the lovely smell of growing things in it and despite the fact that no harm had befallen his brother, there was something about the crack in the ground that made the fur on his neck prickle.

  Once the bulbs had been lowered, he went back to the wagon and mixed a batter out of the flour he had ground. When it was ready to stand he draped a clean cloth over it and then set about laying out the rows of cactus needles he had boiled. The water they had been steeped in was already cool and Bily added a few herbs and seeds and gave the mix a stir, relieved to know that when it thickened he would have a good supply of numbing salve for the Monster’s paw. It had begun to look red and sore again.

  Then he examined the cracked bulbs.

  He had made them very thin because Zluty had needed to carry water enough to last him the whole way from the cottage to the Northern Forest and they had to be as light as possible. The bulbs were plain and undecorated so he did not feel their loss too keenly, but they had served well and it seemed a pity simply to abandon them. Especially when he had an idea how they might be used.

  He found his foraging pack and, after taking a deep breath, he climbed carefully down into the crack and began gathering small plants. His bag was quarter full and he was thinking of climbing back out, when he put his hand into a little hollow and felt something move under his fingers.

  Startled, he snatched his hand back, only to overbalance. He lost his footing and slipped, but managed to grab hold of the rock with the other hand. He felt it wrench it painfully. He found a foothold, but before he could examine his hand to see what he had done to himself or figure out how he was going to climb back out of the crack, he saw what he had touched.

  It was a beetle, round and red and shiny as a cherry, with glittering drops of colour all over its shell. Then, to his everlasting astonishment, Bily heard its voice in his mind.

  ‘Greetings, O Giant Beast of the Bright Overworld!’ it boomed.

  It seemed impossible that these large and grand words were coming from this tiny creature, for usually the smaller a thing was, the harder it was to hear its voice or understand what it wanted to say. Bees were the only tiny creatures that seemed to have no trouble making themselves understood, but even they did not speak as clearly as this masterful little beetle. For there was no doubt that’s who the speaker was.

  ‘Do you understand me, O Giant Beastliness?’ it asked, now speaking very slowly as if it thought Bily dim-witted.

  ‘I do,’ Bily answered gravely, shaping his words aloud and also in his mind. ‘I was just so surprised when you talked to me.’

  ‘O Gargantuan Beastliness, I, too, am surpriseful,’ said the beetle. ‘I did not know there are such creatures as you in the Overworld. What do you eat, for it is said there is no greenfulness there? Only sand and terrible burning heat.’

  ‘There is sand and heat, but there are also green and growing things,’ Bily said. ‘I should like to talk more to you about the Overworld, but I have hurt my hand and I need to try to climb back up.’

  ‘That is a pity, O Beastliness,’ said the beetle. ‘Yet I am glad to have met you.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ Bily said. ‘Perhaps you will see my brother when he comes and you can talk to him. He looks like me, except that his fur is yellow. He went down a while ago.’

  ‘Down?’ asked the beetle sharply.

  ‘Yes,’ Bily said.

  ‘Then he will not come back for the Underworld is the domain of the Grey Swallower,’ the beetle replied, making a clicking sound.

  Bily’s hand was throbbing now, but the beetle’s words alarmed him. ‘What is a Grey Swallower?’

  ‘That which is all greyness and swallowing mouth,’ said the beetle. ‘It has no ears to hear and its eyes are weak and do not like the light. But it has a nose to smell its prey and a mouth to devour all things foolish enough to descend to its realm.’

  ‘But Zluty is big like me,’ Bily said.

  ‘You are largeful, truly, O Beast, but the Grey Swallower is vastful and its hunger is still more vasty,’ it answered, sounding regretful.

  Bily’s wrist was beginning to swell and he realised he could not possibly climb up. Besides, he had to warn Zluty about the Grey Swallower. Clenching his teeth and fighting tears of pain, he bid the beetle a hurried goodbye and climbed slowly and painfully down. By the time he reached the ledge his wrist hurt so badly he could not close his fingers and his other hand was aching from having to do everything. But he was more worried about Zluty than himself.

  He threw himself down on the ledge on his belly, hung his head through the gap and called out his brother’s name.

  Zluty propped his staff against the crevice wall, wishing he had not brought it down with him. It had been awkward to carry on the climb down. In the end he had been forced to stick it through the back of his chest harness to get it out of the way. And he had not needed it. Not for the weak light given out by the single skystone netted at its tip, nor to defend himself. The trail of skystones was enough. He had not heard another sound in the pool all the while he had been filling bulbs with water, and now they were all full and tied to the bottom of the tow rope, along with his backpack. He had just finished in time, for the fire he had lit had died down to ash.

  All that remained was to collect the skystones he had laid down, and then he would climb up and help Bily pull the water bulbs and his pack up.

  He had just reached the spongy fungus close to the water and had taken up the last two stones, when he heard again the stealthy sound of movement in water. It was much closer than before, and it came to him suddenly that whatever lived in the dark pool was waiting for him to kneel by it and dip his bulbs in. Fur fluffed and ears pricked, Zluty backed away, dropping the final two skystones into their pouch.

  All at once it was very, very dark.

  Dismayed, Zluty realised his mistake.

  In gathering up all the skystones and putting them into his foraging bag, he had extinguished their light! And perhaps that was all that had held the thing from coming after him sooner.

  Sure enough, he heard the sound of something rising up out of the water. Not something small and furtive but something immense from which water poured down in noisy torrents, as from a great height. He backed away a few more steps and told himself he was safe because he was nowhere near the edge of the pool.

  Then he heard the sound of it slipping hugely and endlessly from water onto stone.

 
Terror gripped Zluty and he turned and fled along the tunnel. He did not look back, knowing it would slow him, but he could hear it coming after him, sliding and squelching along the stony floor. Coming to his staff, Zluty snatched it up without slowing and continued running, certain that the mild light of the single skystone at its tip would not hold off the enormity pursuing him, now that it had been roused to action.

  Reaching the bottom of the rift, he ignored the tow rope dangling down, and the net of filled water bulbs attached to it. He flung himself at the place on the wall that was easiest to climb. Only then did he dare to glance back.

  And saw it.

  A huge, glistening, slug-like creature filled the tunnel as it slid forward on a wave of evil-smelling black froth. It was featureless but for a maw as wide as a small cave and ringed with glistening teeth, and two tiny pallid eyes on long stalks. Oozing from the tunnel to the base of the crevice, it reared up before Zluty, uttering a gurgling groan full of urgent hunger. Half-stunned by terror and the awful fusty scent of its breath, Zluty’s will was nearly numbed. It was the thought of Bily, who would certainly come down after him if he did not go up, that made him strike out at the fire with the end of his staff. Beneath the grey ashes, the embers were still bright. Exposed to the air, the sudden glow of orange made the enormous slug cringe back with a squeal of outrage.

  The sound was so loud and shrill that Zluty’s ears rang with it even after he had thrust the staff into the back of his harness and begun to climb. He did so with desperate speed, praying he would be able to get out of the thing’s reach before it recovered.

  He had not climbed far before he heard it coming after him, and suddenly understood why the walls of the crevice were slimy. The creature could slide up the wall, and it was coming up after him slowly but inexorably, uttering its hungry, blood-chilling gurgle.

  Zluty bent all of his will on climbing as fast as he could, knowing his only chance lay in putting the jutting ledge between him and the dreadful creature pursuing him. He was terrified it would catch him before he could get past the ledge and perhaps it was only its lack of hands that saved him, for when he saw the ledge above and risked a look back, it was right behind him, rearing up.

  Reacting on instinct alone, Zluty hooked one arm around a stone outcrop, drew out his staff and thrust its glowing tip towards the giant slug. It cringed back, and in that moment Zluty jumped at the small gap between the ledge and the wall of the crevice, and there, miraculously, was Bily, waiting to drag him up onto the ledge with a gasping cry.

  And it was not a moment too soon, for a second later they both felt the huge soft impact of the immense slug against the underside of the ledge; heard it groping blindly, wetly, hungrily, before it gave its bubbling scream and withdrew.

  Zluty lay there trembling, uncaring that he was grazed in a dozen places.

  It was a long time before Zluty became aware that Bily was talking to him.

  ‘I am safe,’ he whispered to his galloping heart, getting shakily to his feet, and both of them climbed gladly back up to the light.

  They set off as soon as they had everything stowed away into the wagon, neither of them wanting to linger beside the dark opening that housed the Grey Swallower. They headed West, much to Redwing’s delight. Indeed, she had soon flown so far ahead that she was little more than a speck of red against the fading sunset.

  Hours later Zluty was still trying to shed the numbness that had come over him in the wake of his encounter with the horrifying Grey Swallower. And what a perfect name that was for the monstrosity that dwelt in the deep crevice!

  There had been no sign of the beetle that had told Bily about the giant slug, though Bily had stopped fleetingly at its little hole and called out to it as they climbed up. No doubt the awful screams of the Grey Swallower had frightened it.

  Zluty wondered how long it would be before he stopped seeing the nasty thing flowing towards him out of the darkness every time he closed his eyes.

  At dusk Zluty suggested they make a proper camp and sleep until they woke, for they had not rested at all during the daylight hours. He re-bandaged Bily’s injured hand, lit a fire and got out their bedding.

  Bily fed water to the still slumbering Monster and set out a dish of seed for Redwing, who had yet to return. Finally he set down a bowl of water by the unstopped bee jug, in case the bees ventured out. By the time he returned to the fire, Zluty lay curled asleep. Too tired to think of food, Bily put a blanket over his brother, wrapped himself in his own blanket and lay down on the other side of the fire. Within seconds he was fast asleep, too.

  They slept the night through and it was Redwing alone, returning just before dawn, who saw the Monster sigh and lift its head to gaze around clear-eyed for the first time in many days.

  Its gaze rested on Bily for a long time before it lay its head down on its paws and closed its golden eyes again.

  Zluty sat bolt upright and groped for his backpack almost before he was awake. He found the small metal egg inside its cloth and lifted it out to unwrap it. ‘What is it?’ Bily asked excitedly. ‘Has it opened?’

  Zluty shook his head. ‘I dreamed of it,’ he said. ‘I was back in the Northern Forest where I found it. I saw a greenish glow beyond the trees and when I went towards it, I found the burned place I told you about. There was light coming out of the big metal egg. I went to look into it, but instead of bones inside, there was a mess of the same workings and metal threads that are inside all of the metal objects that break open. Then I saw the green light was not coming from the big egg, but from a smaller one lying a little distance away. This one. “Take it. You will need it for the closing,” a voice whispered to me, when I bent over it,’ Zluty said.

  ‘The voice was coming from the egg?’ Bily asked.

  Zluty shook his head, thinking of how he had reached down to pick the egg up.

  ‘When I touched it I felt relieved, as if it was something that I had been looking for my whole life, without ever knowing it.’ His expression darkened. ‘Then I heard a wet, slippery sound behind me . . . ’ He shuddered. ‘That was when I woke, and very glad I am that I did!’

  ‘I wanted to wake you but you were sleeping so soundly,’ Bily said.

  Zluty heard an uncertain note in his brother’s voice, and pushing the dream from his mind, he rewrapped the metal egg and thrust it back into his pack, asking, ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bily said. ‘At least . . . Oh, Zluty, you had better see it for yourself.’

  He crawled out from under the canopy, leaving Zluty to follow. When they were both standing, he pointed West. Zluty saw a long, low smudge of grey and white cloud lying along the horizon.

  ‘It is only a cloud bank,’ he said.

  ‘That is what we thought about the arosh,’ Bily said softly.

  Zluty studied the smudge more seriously, then he said, ‘It is not red. I think it is just clouds this time. It might even be a good sign.’

  ‘A good sign?’

  ‘Clouds mean rain,’ Zluty said, noting Bily’s pale cheeks and regretting mentioning his nightmare. He had only done so because his head had still been half muddled with sleep. He made his voice firm and confident. ‘It never rains in the desert, so clouds must mean we are nearly at the other side. Did you notice it was a bit cooler last night?’

  Bily looked doubtful, for it was already growing hot as the sun climbed towards its zenith. But he said, ‘The Monster told me winter is colder in the mountains than on the plain.’ He cast a final troubled look at the sky before going off to get the pancakes he had made from the batter he had mixed the previous day.

  Zluty studied the long bank of cloud for a little longer but it was nothing like the red roiling smudge that had been the first sign of the arosh. He went to help Bily, whose injured hand made it hard for him to do anything.

  ‘I never knew two hands needed one another so much,’ Bily sighed, when he had dropped something for the third time. ‘One is all but useless without the other.??
?

  ‘Like us,’ Zluty said, giving him a hug. ‘You sit down and tell me what to do.’

  By the time the meal was eaten and the dishes cleaned and put away, the sun blazed down mercilessly over the shimmering sand. Yet still Zluty thought it was not as hot as it had been in the middle of the day, when they first came to the desert. He noticed Bily was again gazing uneasily at the cloudbank and said firmly, ‘I am sure it is not a stone storm. How should a thing that never came before suddenly come twice?’

  ‘How should a thing that never came before, come at all?’ Bily asked reasonably. ‘Besides, the arosh must have come to the hot land before, else the Monster’s people would not have been able to name it.’

  This was patently true and Zluty turned to gaze at the Monster’s sleeping face. Once, early in their journey, it had told them some of its people believed a stone storm heralded change. This made it sound as if the storm had a will and wit of its own, which was impossible, and yet, hadn’t change come to their lives?

  By the time the shadows were long, Zluty was weary with thinking and glad to go on. The moon rose, but when dark fell, it did not give out much light because it had narrowed to a crescent. Indeed it was close enough to darkmoon that he could see the smaller, blue moon for the first time since their journey had begun. The Moon’s Dream, Bily had named it, long ago, and the name had stuck. Visible only when the white moon waned, and only every three darkmoons, it would remain visible during the night for the next three darkmoons, whenever the white moon waxed. Zluty thought of it as the winter moon, and had made his last foraging journies in the days immediately after it first appeared, knowing winter would follow hard on its heels.