Colene pulled in her paddle and hurried to join Nona. They clasped hands. “Grow. Boat. Fast.”
What did the girl have in mind? Nona didn’t argue. She put her hands on the gunwale and concentrated with all her might. She could make the boat grow, but it would not affect the people on it, because her power did not extend to living things.
Meanwhile Colene went on to Darius and told him something, making gestures to augment her limited telepathy. She gave him the paddle. The two of them grabbed the net grown from the swatch of handkerchief and spread it out across the empty center of the boat. Then she ran back to rejoin Burgess. Nona’s wonder grew; this just did not seem to make much sense as a defensive measure.
The Anomaly was circling again, assessing the situation. Then it made another pass, this time not quite as swiftly. It intended to leap and catch on end of the boat or the other, and make a meal of the creatures there. Nona was expanding the boat, and it was already significantly larger than before, but the monster would still be able to clear it.
Darius took the paddle and stroked vigorously in the water. The boat began to turn, not getting anywhere but changing its orientation.
Burgess aimed his trunk to the side. This caused the boat to turn faster, being pushed from each end. But it remained right in the path of the monster. Had they gotten confused, so that instead of the paddler balancing the floater to propel the craft forward, they merely spun it around?
The Anomaly launched into the air just as the rear of the boat was swinging toward it. This caused it to miss the end and land at an angle in the center. The shock was violent; the entire body of the monster was on the boat. But the boat was half again as large as it had been, and remained firm.
Then Darius and Colene ran in from opposite sides, picking up the ends of the net. They charged the Anomaly with seeming fearlessness. This was crazy!
They met, putting their ends of the net together over the body of the monster. They quickly knotted these, and stepped back.
At last Nona saw what they had done. They had trapped the Anomaly! The creature was now on the enlarged boat, trussed in the net. It was unable to return to the water, because it was not equipped to crawl on land. It couldn’t pull itself along with its mouth tentacles, because they too were wrapped. It was, in effect, a fish out of water.
Nona stopped expanding the boat. She started contracting it, so they could move it more rapidly. They had defeated the monster, and had only to move along to the far shore. Thanks to Colene’s brilliance.
Nona really was jealous of the girl’s intelligence. She would have to tell Colene, knowing how pleased she would be to hear it.
CHAPTER 5—HALLUCIGEN
DARIUS was glad to reach the shore. The crab had been bad, but the Anomaly had been worse. He preferred to have his feet on the ground, so that he could at least fight or flee in good order. He had hardly covered himself in glory on the boat!
The boat scraped against the shallow water at the edge, and wedged in place. Now the humans and the horse could get out—but what of Burgess? They had lifted him in, but the special strength and coordination had been provided by Seqiro, who had governed their minds. Now the horse’s mind was exhausted, so they couldn’t do that. Seqiro, resting as they forged slowly on across the lake, had recovered enough to link them telepathically, but that was all. Probably the telepathy extended only in the small space they occupied, being at low ebb.
“Will we need this boat again?” he inquired, looking around.
Nona shrugged. Colene, as usual, made the decision: “No. We’re getting well away from here.”
“Then we can destroy it.” He took the axe and started chopping at the gunwale, after Colene had led Seqiro to the shore.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Colene cried. “It’s a nice boat!”
“I am making it possible for Burgess to float his own way out,” he replied.
She was quiet, recognizing the sense of it. Before long he had two cuts through the gunwale, and was able to bash out the intervening section. Burgess floated through and onto the water without difficulty.
“What about Anomaly?” Nona asked.
“Say, yes,” Colene agreed. “We can’t just let it die like that.”
So Darius cut the strands of the net, and pulled it clear, freeing the monster. In a moment Anomaly used its tentacles to haul its head over the remaining gunwale. Then it gave a great heave and splashed into the water. It swam away. Darius wouldn’t have cared to say so, but he was just as glad; the thing had been a terror, but he had no stomach for killing a creature already rendered helpless.
“I guess it’ll know not to bother us again,” Colene said, almost wistfully.
“We should move on into the forest,” Darius said. “But if there are no crabs here—”
“Yeah, we’re all so tired,” Colene agreed. “Say! Suppose we made a fire? Most wild creatures are afraid of fire, aren’t they? Maybe we’d be safe beside it.”
Darius considered that notion, and liked it. He brought out one of the magic firesticks he had gotten from Colene.
“Uh, wait, Darius,” Colene said. “Those matches don’t set fire to just anything. You have to have dry tinder. Anyway, we shouldn’t waste them, because we don’t know when we’ll ever get more. We should save them for real emergencies.”
Darius, about to protest that he did know about tinder, stifled it, realizing that she had a point. One of those matches had enabled him to escape captivity in a foreign Mode, and might be needed for that again. “How can we make fire?”
That stopped them. There were supposed to be ways, but none of them seemed to be proficient in such techniques. Colene sent out a mental picture of rubbing two sticks together, but without much hope. Probably early man got fire by saving it from a natural blaze started by a lightning strike.
And there was an idea: once they had a fire, they should save it. Except that they weren’t quite sure how to do that, either. If they had the right ceramic container for a firepot, and the right slow-burning material, and could stop it from smoking too badly—
“Maybe Nona can make fire magically,” Colene suggested wryly.
Nona shook her head. “This was beyond the power of the despots of my Mode,” she said. “They could make the illusion of fire, as could we all, and could transform materials, so that it looked as if they had been burnt, but—”
“So that’s what the Knave did, when he was trying to rape me!” Colene said indignantly. “He made it seem as if my clothing was burning off, but there was no heat. He must have transformed my clothing to dust, with the illusion of flames.”
“Yes. I believe that much of despot magic was actually the appearance of other magic. So my own powers must be similarly limited.”
“How can you be sure?” Colene asked.
Nona paused. “I suppose I could try it. My other magical powers manifested over time, surprising me. There might be another one forming. But even so, it might not work in this other reality.”
“Try it,” Colene said. “Just focus on something flammable, and try to light it.”
Nona looked around, evidently somewhat at a loss. Darius saw the chopped remnant of their boat. “Try that,” he suggested, pointing. “It’s wood.”
“Yeah, try that,” Colene agreed, smiling.
Nona squinted at the boat. Suddenly there was a fireball, and sparks flew out. In a moment Darius saw that the boat had become a bonfire.
He looked at Nona, who stood openmouthed. “I was joking,” he said, after forcing his own mouth closed.
“So was I,” Colene said.