Chapter 10: Cool, Clear Water

"Speaking of getting back, just where are we?" Neal paused, looking around them at the tangled forest. "These woods don't look like any place we've been before."

"We've been angling off to the west," Amy told him. "I was hoping that this would be a shorter way back to the pickup point, and we'll stay farther from General Essgant's encampment if it is."

The trees were closing in on them again, changing from the semiopen woods they'd been fleeing through. In their shade, the ground underfoot was damp and mossy, bare of undergrowth. Even the air was moist, and it had a humid warmth that hung about them with a dark undercurrent of corruption and decay. The ground squelched softly under foot as they trotted along. Ridges of higher ground always seemed to angle south and west, dwindling at their farther ends into boggy flats.

"Didn't Jal say something about having to avoid swamps?" Jewel asked. "We're a long way off of the route we followed coming up here."

"We'll just have to keep going and hope for the best." Neal slung his pack over his shoulder and started off again. "Our food supplies are nearly gone, but they should still get us where we're going. We may be hungry by the time we reach a village, but we'll survive."

Jewel began to hear soft croakings, and echoes of distant rumblings that seemed to travel through the ground. It felt almost as if she was hearing them through the soles of her feet. Once again she was conscious of stealthy movement just outside of her range of vision, soft impressions of footsteps she couldn't quite hear.

"I think we'd better head back toward drier ground in a hurry," she warned. "I'd bet anything we own that we're being followed."

"Boolies again?" Neal smiled, but his eyes searched the swampy forest. "Sounds like a good idea to me. What do you think, Amy?"

"This is not a good place. I too agree. We should go back and around."

Jewel followed the next ridge they came to back to the east and north, jogging along lightly under the spreading trees. The noises became louder, almost loud enough at times for her to be sure that they were there. Suddenly the sounds died to nothing. There was no trace of a breeze, and the forest was utterly still.

The three travellers fled through the silence and gloom, running faster and faster as their footsteps echoed strangely in the silence under the trees. Something fell from a high branch, landing in their path. A puff ball, its spores rising in an orange cloud. Another fell, and still another, ringing them in as they came to a halt. Jewel brushed the spores away from her face, and they swirled angrily away from her hand. They were all about her, circling like hungry insects, growing larger and brighter until they blotted out the universe.

She was falling... No, she was flying through the golden light, and it was wonderful! No more heavy arms and legs, not even a body to hold her down as she floated in the summer breeze to a place where there were no worries or cares. Neal was there, holding her close, loving her, and Amy was there too. She loved them both, and they loved her back, their three souls twining together in an ecstasy that grew until it was a torment that went on and on...

Her head hurt! How could that be? She didn't have a head, she told herself crossly. She was a freeroving spirit, soaring into the light of the sun... But her head did hurt. Her wrists and ankles, shoulders too. The ground was rough and prickly on her bare skin, and the air was cold...

"Jewel, please wake up! Are you all right?"

"Amy? Wha' happened? Where are we?" She pried one eyelid open for a second, then let it fall shut with a jarring clang that nearly rocked her head free of her shoulders. Somewhere, far above her, spread a rough and jagged graybrown sky.

"Oh, yes. Now I remember. They threw puffballs at us, but we flew away, all three of us. Away up into the sky. We did, didn't we?" She opened one eye, then the other. Two Amys looked worriedly down at her from an impossible height, then merged into a vision of pink and gold. "No, of course we didn't. Why don't you put your clothes on? Aren't you cold? Where's my tunic? Where's Neal?"

"He isn't awake yet. He tried to drag you out of the cloud of spores, and ended up breathing in more of them than we did. I was on the edge of the cloud, so I woke up sooner than either of you. I don't have any clothes to put on. They took all of our clothes, our packs, everything we had!"

With Amy's help, Jewel pushed herself to a sitting position. Her arms trembled, barely holding her weight. The strange sky resolved itself into the roof of a partially collapsed mud and stick hut, its intact portion barely large enough to hold the three of them. Neal was stretched out on the muddy floor beside her, smiling peacefully. As she watched, a frown puckered his forehead and he rolled his head from side to side.

"Betty?" The words came faintly as she reached out to gently smooth away the frown wrinkles, the way she'd longed to do so many times before. "Where are you, Betty? Is it time to get up already? I don't hear the kids..."

His hand reached out, groping, but found only her bare thigh. His eyes opened slightly, then widened as they focussed on his companions.

"Where... ?" He looked around. The last remains of the smile left his lips, and it was as though the weight of decades settled back on his shoulders. "Of course. I was dreaming of... So, the Boolies did get us, after all."

"Are you all right, Neal?" Holding back the tears that threatened to spill from brimming eyes, it was all that Jewel could do not to reach out to him again, to hold him close and try to smooth away the lines of pain and sorrow from his brow. This was not the time for...

"I'm fine, now." Neal drew in a deep breath as he painfully pulled himself to a sitting position. "Those spores really pack a wallop. Hey, they took our clothes! Did either of you have a chance to see what they looked like?"

"No," Amy answered. "Jewel just woke up, and I haven't been awake very long, either. The way my wrists and ankles feel, they must have lashed us to poles and carried us here. A long ways, from how sore they are."

"Ouch! Yeah, you're right." He rubbed his wrists. "Lemme see what's outside." On his hands and knees, looking curiously defenseless in his bare skin, he poked his head cautiously out of the low doorway like a turtle fearing a slap on its beak. Nothing happened, and he stuck his head out farther. Still nothing.

He crawled out of the hut and stood up. Amy and Jewel followed, standing close on either side of him as they gazed about at the strange scene. They were on what seemed to be a low island. Not large, perhaps a hundred feet across at the most and not much longer. Not more than a half an acre, Jewel estimated. A canopy of branches partly hid the sky, though not more than fifteen or twenty of the nearby trees sprang from dry ground. Others stood in shallow water between their island and the nearer shore of the lake, their branches intertwining. A dozen or so huts in various stages of extreme disrepair were visible among the tree trunks, scattered more or less randomly across the higher ground at the center of the island. Jewel started to turn at the hint of a sound from behind them.

"Good. You wake fast."

They whirled as one to face the owner of the deep voice. Stood gaping at the creature who watched them from beady eyes, a being who matched not at all the image conjured up by the resonance of its voice. Scarcely four feet tall, its slender body covered with shaggy hair, it resembled pictures Jewel had seen of primitive apelike ancestors of mankind. Far more apelike than Neanderthal Man, yet still recognizably human with its higharched cranium.

"Who are you?" Neal kept his voice level, undemanding. "What is this place, and why have you brought us here?"

"I am Kreeg. You come to land of Bu'uliGaan. All who come here belong to Gaan. I, Kreeg, speak to Gaan."

"Who is Gaan?"

"Gaan is great. Gaan is old. Gaan live in water past all memory. Eat all that go in water."

"We have not harmed you. Let us go on our way. You will be rewarded. We will bring you gifts."

"We have all. You have nothing. You are meat for Gaan, so Gaan not eat Bu'uliGaan. We not make you stay. Go if you want. Go in water, so Gaan can eat." Kreeg laughed, a shrill cackle that contrasted with his deep voice as he showed big yellow teeth. He turned, and with a bound was up the trunk of a nearby tree. As he disappeared into the branches he called back, "Go where you will. None will stop you, as long as you stay out of trees."

"Hey, how about something to eat?" There was no answer to Neal's cry from the silent forest.

"Brr! It's getting cold." Amy shivered in the damp air, wrapping her arms about her body. Jewel put her arms around her, sharing body warmth. "It must be almost night."

"I don't think so." Neal stood slightly apart from the two women, studying the light that filtered through the trees. "My guess is that it's still morning. Those spores must have knocked us out all night."

"Maybe even more than one night," Jewel agreed, taking a deep breath and patting her flat stomach. "Maybe two or three. I feel like I haven't eaten for a week."

"What was the name that Kreeg called his tribe? It sounded like 'Bu'uliGaan'." Neal picked up what looked like a stout section of branch, then cursed as it crumbled and fell apart in his hands. "I wonder what it means."

"There's an old word, 'beovelli, '" Amy answered after a moment's thought. "It was the name that the 'first people' called themselves when our ancestors came from beyond the mountains. It was supposed to mean 'us' or 'people'. People of Gaan."

"The word must have come down in the common speech as 'boolie'," Jewel guessed. "Or 'Bu'uli.' Now, if we knew what Gaan is..."

They had walked down to the edge of the water as they talked, wincing as their bare feet stumbled over sticks and pebbles embedded in the muddy ground. Neal was still keeping some distance between himself and the two women, Jewel noticed, hiding a faint smile at the thought. On three sides of the island the water was fairly shallow, dotted with trees whose branches often interlaced. On the side where they stood the bank rose to a height of five or ten feet, sloping off fairly rapidly into deeper water. Neal idly picked up a flat stone, skipping it across the still waters of the lake. The splash was answered by a greater splash a hundred yards or so from the beach. The water moved as a large body was forced through it, and a fanged head darted toward them!

"Look out!" Neal flung them back from the water's edge, scrambling after them. Jewel rolled clear as the gaping jaws fell short, and the monster thrashed its way back into deeper water.

"What in the world was that?" Jewel shuddered, drawing closer to Neal's reassuring bulk as a vee of ripples cruised back and forth before heading back toward the middle of the lake.

"Kingshark!" Amy pressed herself close to Neal's other side. "But big! Now we know what is Gaan."

"That head!" Neal brushed mud from his knees where he had stumbled, getting away from the edge of the water. "Like a giant conger eel. Did you notice? The neck bent from side to side, not up and down like a bird or mammal. No sound of breathing, either. It must have gills, like a true fish."

"That's some combination," Jewel, who had gotten a somewhat better look at the monster, agreed. "Head and neck like a conger eel, wings like a manta ray, and a shark's body and tail. No wonder the Bu'uli worship the creature. It's sure ugly enough to be some kind of demon."

"I wonder if there's more than one." Neal studied the body of water. Surrounded by thick forests, it wasn't more than three or four miles long by about a third that wide, with only a few steepsided islands here and there to break its expanse. At the farther end, it was difficult to tell where the islands left off and solid ground began. "This lake doesn't look like it's big enough to support more than one creature that size, if that."

"One thing's for sure," Jewel observed. "No swimmer or small boat could make it from here to the shore past Gaan, and he comes at the smallest splash."

"Yeah," Neal agreed. "We don't have any knives or other tools, either. Hey, I was right, it is morning. There's the sun starting to break through the clouds. That means that this island is on the northwest side of the lake. Our pickup point should be almost due southwest of here, unless the Bu'uli carried us a lot farther than I think they did. Let's check these other huts. See if we can find anything we can use."

They found nothing. Even the sticks that held up the huts were small, halfrotten. By the time they were done, the clouds were gone and the day was hot and still.

"It looks like there were a lot more huts here, once." Jewel pointed out faint ridges that the others could barely discern. "Here, and here, can't you see the mounds where huts used to be? There must have been a goodsized village here at one time."