They didn’t go to Learning. This was because they were females and also because Cacus Loon did not believe in education for the most part. I had heard Loon once say that he had never gone to Learning and look how he had turned out. If that was not reason enough to read religiously every book you could possibly get your hands on, I didn’t know what would be.
Cletus Loon sat next to his father. Cletus looked more like his dad every light, down to the beginnings of a mustache over his lip. He was only two sessions ahead of me, but his puffy face looked older. He was always maneuvering to get the drop on me. I worried that one time he would wise up and go after John instead. The fact that he didn’t told me he feared me too much. Fear was a great thing if it was pointed in the right direction.
After last meal, the light finally gave completely over to dark. John and I went to our room and climbed under our blankets, which had long since given up the notion of providing warmth.
I waited until I heard snores coming from the others, then slipped out of bed and put on my cloak. I also snagged my only sweater and my blanket. A sliver later I was clear of the kitchen and out the rear door.
I would take great pains to make sure I was not followed.
As it turned out, I should have tried much, much harder.
QUINQUE: The Way Out
I LIKED THE NIGHT because in darkness I could pretend I was no longer in Wormwood. I don’t know where else I would be, but it was inspiring sometimes just to imagine a place other than here.
It was chilly this night, but not cold enough to see my breath as I walked along. I had rolled up my blanket and tied it and my sweater around my waist. If Wugs saw me and wanted to know where I was headed, I was sleeping at my tree.
The path to my tree had been clear enough under the milky ball in the heavens we call the Noc, but then clouds came and blocked it out and the path fell into darkness. I stopped walking and took a sliver to light a lantern I’d nicked from the Loons, using one of the three matches I had brought with me. I lowered the hood and opened its shield, illuminating the way.
That’s when I heard it. Every sound in Wormwood needed to be considered, especially at night. Once you left the cobblestones, heightened care was necessary. And there was someone or something else out this night. I turned my lantern in the direction of the sound.
As I waited, my other hand dipped to my pocket and clutched the cutting knife that I took from Stacks a long time ago. The knife fitted neatly into my hand. I could wield it with great skill. I waited, dreading what might be coming and hoping it might simply be Delph prowling around as he sometimes did at night.
Then the smell reached me. That confirmed it wasn’t Delph.
I couldn’t believe it. This far from the Quag? It had never happened but apparently it was happening right now. I clutched my knife tightly, even though I knew it would be of no use, not against what was coming. It brought back memories to me so fierce, so painfully fresh, that my eyes clouded with tears even as I turned to flee.
I put out my lantern because I knew the light was leading it to me, slung the rope tethered to the lantern over my shoulder and shoved my knife into my pocket, freeing my hands. Then I ran for it.
The thing was fast, much faster than I, but I had a bit of a head start. I followed the path by memory, though I took a wrong turn once and banged off a tree. That mistake cost me precious moments. The thing nearly caught up to me. I redoubled my efforts. I was not going to die this way. I just wasn’t. My breaths came in huge clumps and my heart was hammering so badly I thought I could see it thumping through my cloak.
I tripped over a tree root and sprawled to the ground. I turned and there the beast was, barely six feet from me. It was huge and foul and its fangs were not nearly its most fearsome element. It opened its jaws and I had but a moment to live because I knew what would be coming out of that hole. I flung myself behind a thick trunk an instant before the jet of flames struck the spot where I had been. The ground was scorched and I felt the blast of heat all around me as I hid behind the tree. But I was still alive, though maybe not for much longer.
I could hear it taking a long breath in preparation for another blast of fire that would surely engulf me. I had bare moments left. And in those few moments, I found a certain calm, from where I did not know. I knew what I had to do. And I had just a moment left to do it.
I leapt out from behind the tree just as the beast was finishing its replenishing breath. I hurled my knife straight and true and it struck the creature directly in its eye. Unfortunately, it had three more of them.
Then, as blood sputtered from the destroyed eye and the creature howled in fury, I turned and ran. The knife throw had purchased precious moments for me. I made the most of them. I ran like I never had before, not even when the attack canine was after me at first light.
I reached my tree, put one hand on the first rung of my wooden ladder and climbed for my life.
The wounded garm, sensing blood and meat, was coming so fast now, it was as though it were flying. It was said that the garm hunts the souls of the dead. Others say it guards the gates of Hel, where Wugmorts who are bad during life are banished to spend eternity.
Right now, I did not care which theory was right. I just didn’t want to become a dead soul this night, headed to Hel or any other place.
I hated garms with all my being, but I could not fight a garm and have any hope of winning. So I climbed with a focused fury driving my arms and legs. Even then, it might not be enough. I knew my tree’s trunk as well as I knew the flaws on my face. However, halfway up, my hand struck an unfamiliar object, but I grabbed the next board and kept climbing.
I could feel the garm nearly on me. It was a large beast, easily thirteen feet long and over a thousand pounds in weight. It was a flame expeller from living in Hel, it was said, where all they had was heat and flames and old, moldy death. I did not want to feel its flames on me. It was closing fast, but I was climbing faster. Terror can compel extraordinary physical action. I reached the last board step. Below I heard claws on wood. I thought I felt heat rising toward me. Part of me didn’t want to look, but I did.
In the flames down below I saw the hard, armored face of the garm. Its chest was smeared in blood. It had killed nothing to get this. Its chest was always dripping with its own blood as though it were constantly wounded. Maybe that’s why it was always in a foul, murderous mood. It looked up at me, its thin, spiky tongue flicking out, its three remaining cold, dead eyes staring up at me, hungry, dangerous, fatal. Its fourth eye was bloody and vacant, my knife still sticking from it.
I screamed at it. I hurled spit from my mouth at it. I wanted to kill it. I wanted another knife to throw, so the point could find its heart and send it back to Hel for all of eternity.
Yet these were hollow thoughts. My only saving grace was that the garm, with all its strength, ferocity and ability, could not climb.
Momentum alone allowed it to get a few feet off the ground, but it fell back and hit the dirt with a thud. It roared and flames leapt upward, scorching my tree and blackening the edges of several of the wooden rungs. Even though the flames could not reach up this high, I jumped back. The garm rammed itself against the tree, attempting to knock it over. My tree shook under the assault and my oilcloth fell down. And then disaster struck. One of my planks was knocked loose, tilted upward and caught me full in the face. I collapsed backward and plummeted downward before my thrashing hands closed around one of my short climbing boards. My plunging weight nearly sheared it off the trunk. As it was, only one nail remained to hold it to the bark.