SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) (16 page)

Kabor and I kicked, and screamed, and bit to no avail. Kabor tried to slash the hag, but she held his arm firm. He managed to switch hands on the knife and swiped at the tendrils. But her tendrils were slippery, wood-strong, and tightly wound. It wasn’t working. The hag had overtaken us. She dragged us knee deep into the bog waters.

Kabor kept the fight up and cut one tendril away. I wriggled an arm free, drew my knife, and stabbed her firmly in the shoulder. Her flesh was soft and unnatural. Still, she would not let go, so I cursed and stabbed the vicious witch repeatedly. Black liquid oozed out of every slit, but the wounds did little to impede her. The tendril roots and grasses that were somehow a part of her shot out repeatedly to twist around our limbs and trunks. I cut at them, but there were always more. They twisted together, tough as rope.

The worst was yet to come. That hag opened her mouth wide and even her tongue lashed out. It wrapped around my neck. My knife dropped, and with my free hands I did all I could to keep her leash from choking me.

With the two of us fully in her grips, the hag proceeded to drag us under. She was too strong to resist, an unsurpassed wiry strength. I looked to the others, half-expecting – fully hoping – to see Gariff charging to our rescue. But all I beheld was his entangled, sturdy bulk being pulled under as we were being pulled under. Both hags had bypassed the lumbering Bobbin to secure the faster prey. Holly screamed. I could not see where she was.

“Play dead,” I whispered to Kabor, just before drawing my last breath. By his eyes I could see he thought I was mad. “Just do it and wait for my signal.”

Down we went under the mosses; down into a cold, deep pool.

Chapter XXI

Queen of the garden under

S
o I let myself slip, deeper and deeper down the watery path to doom’s end. I gave myself wholly to the woman in the bog and accepted the bitterness of defeat. There was no denying her victory. The hag’s relentless grip and that twisty strength of hers is what caught me off-guard. Her tendrils not only held us firm, they latched onto debris at the bottom of the water pocket and pulled her along. She would have her way and I, Nud Leatherleaf, aspiring diplomat, seemed destined to adorn her cursed garden and roll with the bones of children from long ago – the lost innocents of Fortune Bay. I was to be her thing to put on display.

In return for giving in, she was to leave me there, alone, and not spend too many precious seconds lingering about in admiration of her prize decorations. That was the secret deal that I made with her.

A deathly chill engulfed me as we crossed into a layer of icy water and descended into a hidden drop-off. I bit my lip and tried hard not to flinch. She had to believe that I had drowned.

You don’t have the right, you stupid hag.
A voice echoed from within, from behind my brow.

“Wait,” it told me.

The voice was reassuring. The voice was Paplov’s.

As far as I could tell, Kabor had followed my lead. He was holding up well, for a Stout. That or he had already drowned. Kabor’s chest had barely puffed out at all when he tried to imitate plump Bobbin – a less than encouraging sign.

The hag kept on with her undertaking, oblivious to my machinations.

Paplov’s calm voice resounded again in my mind. “The moment will come.”

Then something unexpected happened.

I felt a sharp tug forward, then a pause as the ropey tendrils slackened. Soon after came another tug. I bided my time.
She’s testing my resolve,
I thought. It was the same way I might test a fishing line to see if the catch was still there, gauging the creature’s will to survive by the fight left in it. I pulled back the next time, trying my best to imitate that last feeble trace of desperate resistance. I played the hooked fish, except I was baiting her instead of the other way around.

After a little more fight, just for show, I gave in and allowed myself to drift. The hag seemed satisfied enough with the performance. She even let loose her grip a little. The depth of water pressed against my ears.

I could break free
, I thought. Pips are built for speed and quick dekes, and are semi-aquatic. I definitely could out-swim a blundering old woman, especially in an open stretch.

But I owed it to Kabor to stick it out.

I wanted to breathe, already, at only twenty counts. Nerves, I think. My record was one hundred and ten.

The hag crept farther into the hole, dragging us deeper than I had imagined possible anywhere in the bog lands, except perhaps Everdeep Hole. The pressure in my ears mounted. For Kabor, it would be worse. Our bodies bumped together as we were towed. I didn’t feel him kicking or moving at all. Then again, he wasn’t supposed to… not yet.

The hag changed course, abruptly, and sped up. She began to move sideways. My arm clipped something – a stump at the bottom of the hole. I half opened one eye as I skipped and spun along the bottom, stirring up mud and debris. I had counted to thirty in the time it took for the hag to bring us all the way down. At most, Kabor would have that much endurance in him again to spare.

I spotted the “garden” – not much of a garden at all; shallow mounds set within a ring of long-spears. Someone should have told the old woman that gardens are for living things. In hers, decaying things, long dead, drifted from the ends of sharpened poles. One pole skewered an oddly familiar, dark round mass, wrapped in reeds.

Still, Kabor had not flinched.

The hag slowed her pace, wrapped her tendrils around the bases of several posts, and carefully glided through the pike barrier. She coasted to a halt in the centre of the garden and set us down on the muddy bottom. The wood in my pack kept me floating back up. The hag kept a tendril on me at all times to force me down.

The Queen of the Garden Under never thought twice about the act of drowning us. Still, there seemed to be some hint of affection in the way she went about her gruesome task: the way she so delicately wrapped me in braided rushes like a spider wraps its tender prey in silk. And the way she so gently stroked my hair away from my forehead, like a mother might, to fully appreciate the precious face of her sleeping child. Kabor’s death shroud was next.

To the hag, we were more than mere showpieces. We were her emotional treasures, to cherish and protect until the end of days. Nearly forty-five counts had passed and the hag had not yet honored our secret deal. She wasn’t about to leave us alone any time soon. Worse, she started feeling at my pockets as she hoisted me up and floated me over the garden ring. What a lovely beacon my stone would make, flashing at the bottom of the bog for all eternity, a last sight for future victims.

It was Kabor’s swift action that set us on our way. His reflexes bordered on precognition. I had just then gained my water lungs and comfortably suppressed the urge to breathe. All the while, the Stout had drifted death-like, just out of my reach, and loosely tethered to a pole. The time had come to make our move.

So when the hag’s rearranging brought me close to Kabor, I thought to grope for an arm or a leg. But before even laying a hand on him, he sprung to life.

Something else stirred as well. The spiked round mass stuck to a pole began to quiver. Legs shot out, fan-like in all directions. Kabor shot upwards as the central mass of the dark ball spun about its axis. I had seen the thing before. Somehow, the hag had acquired Fyorn’s spider – the prize attraction in her gruesome collection. And somehow, it was still alive.

Fear. Panic. I shot upwards after Kabor, kicking the hag square in the face. My braided bounds quickly became undone. Kabor tore at his bindings and set them adrift as he wriggled upwards. The hag batted at the spoiled ropes falling around her, hand over one eye. She let out an electrifying screech.

Barely into our escape, I felt a tremor in the water – the wake of the Shadow’s passing. I caught sight of the tail of the hulking creature as it disappeared into the darkness.

The Shadow in the Water must have circled round, out of sight. It came back at us like a blur out of nowhere, crossing above and stifling our ascent. Then it swam out of sight again. The hag gained water on us in that moment, and her groping tendrils caught my ankle. Kabor was already snagged.

As we succumbed to her grip once more, the Shadow maneuvered to make a third advance, this time angled from below. Suddenly there was turbulence and mayhem, thrashing and swirling water. I was thrust aside. The Shadow had something in its jaws. “Kabor!” I screamed into the depths.

Then a muted wail of anguish reverberated through the water. I was released, flipped head over heels.

The Shadow had taken the wrong prey and disappeared into the inky depths. I felt for Kabor. He was with me.

But which way was up? I had lost track of time and direction. In the confusion, I went still for a moment and just let myself drift. The buoyancy of my backpack pointed the way, and off we went.

The two of us barreled straight into a mass of ropey vines. Although not fixed to anything solid, the vines were so entangled with one another that they opposed our every move, wrapping around arms and legs. I pushed up, at least I thought it was up, but it might have been sideways.

Nearly out of breath, I finally broke through to the surface. It was dark. I gulped at the air, foul air. It tasted bitter on the tongue, dank and decayed. But it was life.

Kabor should have been right behind me. Heavy breaths pulsed through the silence. My heart pounded.
He’s not coming up.
I shook my head. Beaten, I removed my pack and tossed it to the dark shore. Maybe there was still time. Maybe.

Down into the tangles I dove, groping about frantically in complete darkness. I searched the water column around me, end to end and through and through.

Half a minute later, my leg brushed against what felt like a hand in the weeds. It was. I grabbed on and pulled, but there was no life pulling back. Kabor’s limp body was caught in the tangles. I twisted, jolted and finally yanked him out, then dragged him to the surface, and to shore.

Exhausted, I laid my best friends’ cousin on the cave floor. I fumbled in the darkness to find his chest. No rise, no fall. Nothing. I felt for his face, plugged his nose and gave him two short breaths. I pushed down on his chest fast, repeatedly, to jumpstart his breathing. Nothing. I kept at it. Nothing. With every last bit of strength, I raised my fist up high and belted it down on Kabor.

I heard the spurt of water first; then coughing and a gasp for air. A long moment passed, and the Stout sucked in a single divine breath. He rolled over onto his stomach, retching. He was alive.

Chapter XXII

A hidden passage

T
he soggy and exhausted Stout lay face down on the dark, muddy shore, coughing and spouting bog water. Short, eager breaths regulated the urge to cough up a lung.

“I feel sick. Nud? Where am I?”

“A safe place,” I said, scanning every direction. There wasn’t a glint of light anywhere to break the darkness.

I collapsed beside him, smiling, breathing, and indulging in the rush of having just cheated death. It was a selfish moment. The air was stale and smelled of all things that crawl into the earth to die. I didn’t care. A long, black minute of well-deserved tranquility floated by as my body normalized. Side by side, we lay still and speechless. Our breaths grew even and steady. Kabor cleared his throat.

“I… was trapped. I couldn’t get out.” The half-drowned Stout’s fist thudded on his chest.

“I pulled you up,” I said. There was a long silence. Breathing.

“Was that some kind of giant eel?” he said.

“Dunno,” I said. In the long pause that followed, I waited for a milky “Thank you.”

“This is all your fault,” he spat. The acid water he swallowed must have turned his words sour. “You were supposed to fight with us, but you weren’t even moving… you let her get a hold on you.” His voice began to waver. “I tried to help… .” Kabor’s hands fumbled in the dark. He grabbed my arm. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”

I was…
seeing
. But I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t say that the hag was not what made me act that way. I didn’t know what to say.

“Let go,” was all that came out. He did.

“Where is that damn rock of yours anyway? It would be nice if we could see down here. Did you
forget
to take it out?”

“No.” I fumbled for words and fumbled through my pockets. I hadn’t forgotten anything; I just hadn’t put two and two together. One by one, I stretched my pockets wide open and felt through them.

“Well?” he said. “ Cough it up.”

“I don’t know where it is.” The stone just wasn’t anywhere. I patted myself down.

Kabor let out an impatient sigh. “Did the ole crone take it?”

I snapped back. “I DON’T KNOW!”

I stopped what I was doing and thought through everything that had happened during the fight. The last thing I remembered about the stone was looking into it. It was unnerving, to say the least, to have a gap in my memory. It just doesn’t happen very often to Pips. I started searching again, from the very beginning. Right pocket, left pocket, back pockets, shirt pocket…

Finally, I remembered the backpack. “I know…” When I undid the clasp and pulled back the flap, a pinch of pale red light filtered out between the soaked pieces of deepwood. Tucked away at the very bottom corner was the stone.

I breathed a sigh of relief. During the mayhem, I had half a mind to cast off the pack, for speed’s sake. I don’t even know how the piece got there – it started in my pocket, then I took it out, and then… no matter. I fished it out. In the palm of my hand, the light of the stone danced and pulsed, trapped in its gummy prison. There was scarcely a moment of calm between the flurries of red flashes. It seemed… excited, if unliving stones can be thought of that way.

I took a few minutes to empty the pack, shake the remaining water out, wring my cloak and dump the water out of my boots.

“You know we can’t swim back,” I told Kabor. By
we
I really meant
him
, mostly. I was surprised he could even swim at all. I repacked the wood and the boots, and left the flap open so everything inside would dry over time.

“We have to,” said Kabor.

“I don’t even know how to backtrack our way out,” I said. “It was dark and I was disoriented. If we try, we could get turned around and lose our way underwater. And what’s to say you won’t get stuck again? You could get us both killed, even if we did figure it out. And then there’s The Shadow…”

“I think it ate the hag,” he said.

“Hope so,” I replied.

Silence. The Stout shook his head.

“What about Cuz?” asked Kabor.

The last I seen of Gariff, he was in the process of being pulled under, just like us. The light of the stone steadied for a brief moment, and the Stout and I locked eyes. I didn’t want to say it, or even to think it. The light vanished. When it returned, he was still staring. I didn’t have to say anything. My lack of words spoke volumes.

Kabor let out a defeatist sigh.

In the uneasy silence that followed, I backed away and rested against the rock wall. A twisty tree root jabbed me in the back.

“Gariff’s OK. They’re all OK,” I said, trying to convince myself that such words could be true. “The Shadow and one of the hags were tied up with us. That leaves two old ladies. Gariff is skinning one alive by now, and Bobbin’s sipping tea with the other, exchanging turtle soup recipes.”

Kabor smirked. “I believe the Gariff part. And either way, Bobbin’s simply unsinkable.”

As we sat deluding one another, and ourselves, chains of flickering light scattered off the cave walls to reveal the natural chamber around us. Fossil imprints of small, insignificant creatures from an ancient sea embossed the stone. We were at the mouth of an irregular, tube-like cave. A few feet away was the wide pool we had entered from. Above the pool was a pitted and well-rounded dome. The cave walls had an overall smoothness to them, and showed the elongated signs of shaping by water.

The tube-cave would be a tight fit. Dense mats of fine roots dangled from the ceiling, nearly blocking passage in some areas, and thicker roots hugged the curvature of the rock wall. The roots played host to a nest of old cobwebs and vermin sheddings. The floor was chunky gravel. Despite all the signs and sheddings of past life cycles, no living thing dwelled there.

“We could probably dig our way up and out,” I said, examining where the roots punched through. I had no idea what I was talking about.

“I doubt it,” said Kabor. “Roots work their way through small fissures in the rock and then expand into them. Besides, we could be underwater and underground at the same time.”

“No. How is that even possible?” That did not seem right at all. “Wouldn’t we still be underwater then?”

Kabor sized up the chamber carefully, repeatedly rubbing his scruffy chin as he closely examined the walls, the roots, and the floor. He put on his glasses, went right up to each feature and stared at it sideways, inches from his face. I described the dome to him.

“Water
used
to run down through that big conduit, that’s for sure,” commented Kabor.

“I know that,” I said.

“And did you see the side openings? They’re drains. They relieve pressure when she fills up.”

“What stopped the water from coming?” I said, doubtful.

“The bog’s ability to retain water, maybe. These tunnels are flooded regularly… a cycle. And I would guess we’re near the end of that cycle.”

That didn’t sound good. “How long?” I said. “It’s as wet as it’s ever going to get in the bog right now. And that BIG rain we just had—”

Kabor bit his upper lip and started shaking his head.

“Dunno… years, decades. Maybe only during floods, or maybe it takes time to soak through. Or it could be that the geology shifted and there is no cycle to it anymore. Maybe…”

In the minutes that followed, Kabor came up with more maybes than I cared to count. After hearing half a dozen theories, I thought it best to move on. Young Pips are less than patient. I waited for a pause in his mental flatulations.

“We should get moving,” I said.

With a tilt of his head, he motioned to the passage. “You really think that’s our best bet?”

I nodded. “We can always come back.”

Kabor had a grim look about him. “Humph,” he said. “Lead the way then.”

I peered ahead, into our would-be escape route. “It does seem to slope up a bit, right?”

“That’s right,” he assured me. He
sounded
like he knew what he was talking about.

The Stout seemed quite at home underground. He had experience working in one of the mines outside of the Bearded Hills. According to Gariff though, the younger of the two cousins was too easily distracted and never really accomplished anything productive on the job. In part, it was because he avoided any and all honest work. Gariff once commented that Kabor used up more energy trying to get out of work than he would have just doing it – always a workaround or a shortcut, never the straightforward and sensible way. At the mine, he spent his time roaming the drifts and getting into trouble, not to mention danger, until he was eventually let go. To his credit though, he did find a few stray mineral veins while picking away where others hadn’t thought to look or had given up the search. But the network of caves under the bog was nothing like the organized, reinforced tunnels of a Stout mine. Water sculpted them, and water was a Pip’s element.

I started along the passageway, gripping the SPARX stone in one hand. Every few yards I stopped, held it up, and waited for the flicker to reveal the way.

Kabor continually and repeatedly asked about what was coming, how tight the fit was going to be, and whether it looked safe. “The flashes are fast sometimes” he complained, or “The shadows are confusing.”

“Just follow my lead,” I told him.

We soon discovered that it made more sense to crawl and wriggle our way along the gravelly floor than to stoop continually, often having to resort to it anyway. After several long minutes, we reached a divide in the passage. The main course abruptly widened and leveled out. An offshoot tunnel veered off to one side, curved, then ran nearly parallel as far out as I could see.

A light breeze refreshed the air at the junction. It was a good sign. Our luck seemed to be turning. We kept on through the larger tunnel.

“Out in no time,” I said, spirits raised. And as we crawled along on hands and knees, my mind began to drift towards the world above and the fate of our good friends.

Gradually, the passage gained in height and became high enough to walk along without stooping. Over time, the bed of gravel disappeared, replaced by larger, rounder river stones. Footing became an issue in the dim and fractured light, and I found myself wishing that I had my boots on. In one area, dark crevices loomed above, adding even more height, and a new odor was on the air. I stopped to rest by a small offshoot tunnel and hauled out my boots. That is when I noted the first signs of life – the floor was splotted with some kind of dung.

“Look Kabor,” I said, pointing to the splotches.

“I ran into some a while back,” he said. “They’re all over the place.”

“Bats?” I asked.

“Maybe. Hurry up with your flippers.”

The boots were dripping wet, so I tied them upside-down to a shoulder strap for later use. Kabor still had his on – it’s a wonder he had been able to swim at all. Of course, only a Stout would go swimming with his boots on, and leave them on afterwards.

Over the next leg of the journey, the scenery more-or-less repeated itself many times over – a dark, winding tube-like passage with smooth limestone walls and no major offshoots, small cracks and crevices here and there, and a stony path beneath our feet. At times, it was difficult to tell if we were traveling up or down. Certainly, there was no way to determine our bearing – we could have been directly under Webfoot for all I knew, or on our way to Proudfoot. Along the ceiling, fewer and fewer roots showed through until there were none at all.

So after a long crawl and a doubly long hike, we came upon a choke point in the passage. Rubble covered the ground and stacked up along the sides – a partial collapse. I inhaled the sweet air. It was high quality. The breeze had become stronger and it carried a pleasant water and mineral scent.

Kabor noted the change in my demeanor. “What is it?” he said.

“Water. Don’t you smell it?”

“I hear it,” he said. We stopped to poke at the fallen debris.

I found a weak point in the pile and punched through to the other side.

“Ahhh!” I yelled.

The floor gave way.

I felt myself drop.

I grabbed for the wall.

My heart pounded. Teetering in mid-air, half my body swung over a dark abyss. A mere two fingers gripped enough rock to keep me from toppling into it. I hung there for a suspended moment, and then gained a foothold.

I had come upon a large crevice of sorts in the rock. The passage opened up into it, and then fell off a cliff. Across the gap – no more than a few feet – a wet wall glistened. Water sprayed slippery doom from above. The mist chilled my cheeks and forehead. Below, a proven drop to sudden death beckoned. The gravity of the downward plunge drew me to the edge, as though inviting me to join the scattering of bones below. Kabor had halted behind me.

“What’s the hold-up?” he said.

“Death by plummet, that’s what.” I waited for the next flurry of flashes then gestured to the drop. Kabor peered down from behind the rubble.

“Oh,” he said. “Now that’s a doozy.”

A dozen feet up the far wall and offset to one side by another five feet, a second cave opened into the gap. By its size and shape, it appeared as though it once connected with the passage we stood in. A steady stream of water sputtered off the edge of the high opening and fell like red rain, glimmering in the light of the stone.

A knot developed in my stomach as I stood there, surveying the obstacle, a knot that told me we had gone the wrong way.

Kabor pushed me aside to get a better view. He was excited, and motivated.

“I never seen anything like this before.” He stuck his head out and looked up. “We can scale it.”

“I don’t kn—” Kabor cut me off.

“There’s only up or back down,” he stated, leaning out dangerously to get a better view. He said it like it was an obvious, everyday problem, and went on to provide an equally obvious plan.

“There was that one side tunnel, not too far back,” I reminded him. “That might be the way.” It had been small, but we could have squeezed through.

“I say we go up,” he insisted. “That’s the way out. The crevice is narrow enough to wedge ourselves in as we climb.”