Chapter 11

'You must hurry!' the voice insisted in Tabatha's mind. 'There is great danger!'

"All right!" Tabatha cried out, running up the steps to Béla's house. "What's the big rush, anyway?" Not bothering to knock, she ran into the house. There was screaming coming from the bedroom. Tabatha raced around the corner, grabbing both sides of the bedroom door to catch herself. She screamed as the room filled with fire, not certain what she was seeing.

Tiny spiders were flowing out from between Béla's legs and from ruptures in her flesh. Lisa's body was flaming. She flowed fire over the river of tiny spider bodies running across the bed, incinerating the little creatures as they tried to flee.

Now, the flaming phoenix turned her attention to Béla. It was Béla's shrieks that Tabatha had heard earlier. Béla shrieked again as Lisa began slowly turning her mother's body into fire, intending to destroy the remaining spider sacs at any cost before any more hatched.

'Save her! Pull her away!' Tabatha heard cry out in her mind. Tabatha wrapped Béla's flaming body into her mind and pulled her into the teleportation zone.

'What now?' she asked frantically. 'Help me!'

Tabatha stretched toward the light, recognizing the sensations of time-walking.

'Where am I going?' Tabatha frantically asked the voice in her head. 'When ... am I going?'

'You are almost there, ' the voice called to her. 'Now, push her out!'

Béla and Tabatha tumbled out into a rainy, heavily wooded area. Béla's scream ended as time began flowing around her again. Then she screamed again as she felt her body being consumed by thousands of tiny, voracious spiders as they hatched inside her muscle tissue.

'You must not eat your host, my children! There is plenty of other food here. Greed is not to be permitted! That is your first lesson! Learn it well!'

Suddenly, Béla's skin began to erupt all over her body as thousands of tiny spiders began tunneling out. Béla shrieked and writhed in fresh, new agony. Tabatha gasped, hoping Béla didn't break her back from arcing at right angles like that.

The tiny spiders quickly disappeared into the tall marsh grass. In another minute, Béla was gasping and sobbing uncontrollably, but no more spiders were eating their way out of her.

'It is done, ' the voice in her head informed them both. Tabatha realized that Béla heard it too, because Béla raised her head, looking for where the voice came from.

'Who are you? Why did you bring us here?' Tabatha cried out angrily in her mind. She also wondered why the voice sounded so familiar...

"I know who you are!" Tabatha exclaimed. "You're that... Hurrah... that keeps following me around!"

'Yes, you are correct, ' the voice admitted. 'Let me show you my true form.' The air shimmered and the body of a meter-high, long-legged spider appeared. Béla shrieked. Both girls jumped back and stared, astounded.

"You are well, Revered Mother?" the spider asked politely, looking (?) at Béla.

Béla stared back, her eyes full of terror. Then she blinked several times, as though coming out of a trance. She looked down at her healing body. There didn't seem to be any ill effects from giving birth to a million spiders, other than the fact that she was covered in her own blood from all the little tunnels they made coming out. She wasn't in any pain, anyway.

"Y-yes, I guess so," she said, her voice shaking and uncertain. Then gaining some courage, "Where are we? Why did you bring us here?"

"You are on Earth, of course," the Hurrah said, not having any trouble speaking perfect English even though neither girl could see anything moving, such as a mouth or vocal cords.

"More specifically," it (He? She?) continued, "you are in the Paleozoic period. The Carboniferous, to be more exact, using your inefficient and usually incorrect terminology. Currently, you are the only humans on earth, and will be for some two hundred million years, yet."

"Why didn't I die from traveling this far?" Tabatha asked. "I moved two hundred years into the future and nearly starved just from that."

"Your mind provided the means," the Hurrah explained. "I provided the power ... I, and others like me. It was necessary for the survival of our species. The Destroyer would have murdered her own mother to commit genocide against us. She does not understand our purpose."

"He means Lisa," Tabatha explained, seeing the image of the fiery phoenix in the Hurrah's mind.

To the Hurrah, she said, "I think she understood the attempt to create a new species, but she probably considered it a threat to humanity and our own survival. The idea of telepathic spiders that can teleport anywhere is a bit scary, you'll have to admit." She grinned at it, hoping it understood her facial expressions – that is, if it could even see her facial expressions.

"I certainly do not admit to such a thing," the Hurrah replied, its dignity obviously ruffled.

"So, what now?" Béla asked, finally coming to terms with what had happened to her.

"I send you back to your own time," the Hurrah explained. "And you, of course..."

"Will forget," Tabatha finished its sentence with a sour look on her face. "Why do you always make us forget?"

"Your primitive minds cannot yet cope with our existence," the Hurrah explained. "We have guided your evolution as best as possible, within the confines of the occurrences which were necessary to enable our species to exist, but human imagination runs wild while human acceptance is severely limited to a very narrow and very often inaccurate and unhealthy frame of reality.

"We cannot accept the possibility that a narrow-minded human could come back and change this reality to one that does not include our species," it stated.

"What about the human species?" Tabatha asked. "Are we destined to be one of those myriad species you spoke of?"

"Alas, no," the Hurrah said. It actually seemed to slump. "Six hundred years into your future, an Arcadian scientific exploration team will visit this star system to study the aftereffects of your star's nova. They will discover descendants of their ancient enemy, the Viragos, hiding amongst the humans on an artificial planetoid of obvious Viragoan construction. They will annihilate both species as abominations because of your inter-special capability to interbreed. It is regrettable, because we put so much work into you humans, and you have your own unique creativity that would have been...

"Never mind," the Hurrah said, shaking itself free of its melancholy. "It's ancient history anyway. Now, regrettably, it is time for you to go."

Before Béla and Tabatha could protest, they were thrown back into the long, narrow tunnel, moving away from the light of the distant past. A moment later, they were both deposited back in Béla's bedroom.

"Where did you go?" Lisa shrieked. "What happened to the spiders? Did you kill them?" Lisa was still flaming. Evidently, they'd only been gone a few seconds.

"What?" Béla asked, confused for a moment. "Oh, the spiders. The spiders are gone. I'm free of them." She didn't know how it happened, but she knew there were no more spiders inside her. Not believing her, Lisa flamed her mother's body, then returned it to its physical form.

"They escaped," Lisa seethed, snarling. "Where did they go? I've got to kill them all."

"I don't know," Béla pleaded, telling the truth. "They're gone! Completely gone!"

Lisa savagely turned on Tabatha. "Where did you take her? Where did the spiders hatch out?" Tabatha shrank back, frightened. She'd never seen Lisa like this. "Tell me!" Lisa shrieked into her mind. The room was getting hot. Lisa's body was radiating intense heat.

"I don't know!" Tabatha cried desperately. "I sent them away! I don't know where – a long ways away! They are no danger to us now!" She screamed as Lisa ruthlessly invaded her mind, determined to discover where the spiders were hidden.

"What the hell is that?" Lisa asked angrily as she smacked against a mind shield. "That won't keep me from finding out!" She flared against the shield, becoming more enraged as the shield refused to burn out.

Tabatha, in intense mental agony from Lisa's powerful psychic attack, discovered what Lisa was trying to burn through and was able to extend it to protect her physical body, as well as her mind, from the heat and energy being generated by Lisa's rage.