Suzanne Collins - Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane

"Yes, you six were in the cave and what about the others?" asked Ripred.

"They were lost," Ares said, after it was clear Gregor wasn't going to answer. And the bat picked up the story, telling how the remaining group had split. How Twitchtip had led them until she'd collapsed. How Goldshard and Snare had fought. How Gregor had taken the Bane. "And now we are here."

Ripred looked at them thoughtfully. "So, you are. What's left of you," he said. "I am sorry for your losses."

That was the thing about Ripred: One minute he was about to kill you, and the next he seemed to understand it was all you could do not to curl up into a ball and die.

"Just out of curiosity, Gregor, what do you expect me to do with that pup if I don't kill it?" said Ripred.

"I thought you might, you know, kind of raise it. Everyone's so afraid of what it's going to turn into. And if Snare had got hold of it, it probably would've grown up to be a monster. But maybe if you take care of it and stuff, it might turn out okay," said Gregor.

"You thought I'd be its daddy?" said Ripred, as if he hadn't heard right.

"Or, at least its teacher. One of the other rats could be its parent," said Gregor. "Just for, you know, eighteen years, or whatever."

"Ah, here's something you obviously don't know about rats," said Ripred. "That ball of fluff over there will be full grown by the time you've seen another winter."

"But...it's just a baby," said Gregor.

"Only humans grow so slowly," said Ares. "It is one of their great weaknesses. The rest of us in the Underland mature as the rats do. Some even more quickly."

"But how do you teach it everything it has to know?" said Gregor.

"Rats learn faster than humans. And what does it really need to know? To eat, to fight, to find a mate, to hate everyone who is not a rat. It doesn't take long to learn these things," said Ripred.

"You know other things," said Gregor. "About what goes on in the Overland, even."

"Well, I've spent a lot of time in your libraries at night," said Ripred.

"You come up and read books?" asked Gregor.

"Read them, eat them, whatever mood strikes me," he said. "All right, Overlander, you may leave the pup with me. I won't kill it, but I can't promise I can teach it much. And you know, there will be hell to pay in Regalia."

"I don't care," said Gregor. "If they think I'm going to do their dirty work, they can think again."

"That's the stuff, Boy. You're a rager. Don't let them push you around," said Ripred.

"I am a rager," said Gregor sheepishly.

"I know. It's just that there are brand-new ragers, and there are old veteran ragers who have fought in countless wars. And you would be...?" said Ripred.

"The first kind," said Gregor. "And I don't even have a sword."

"How's your echolocation coming along?" asked Ripred.

"It's not," said Gregor. "I stink at it."

"But you'll keep practicing, because you have such unflagging confidence in my judgment," said Ripred.

"Okay, Ripred," Gregor said, too tired to get into an argument about the whole worthless echolocation thing. He stood up. "Are you going to be able to handle it? The Bane, I mean?"

"If it's anything like its mother, I'll have my paws full," said Ripred. "But I'll manage."

Gregor went over and patted the baby on the head. "You take care, you hear?" The Bane nuzzled his hand.

"Give it this, when we're gone," Gregor said, handing Ripred the remaining candy bar. "It'll help. Ready, Ares?"

Ares fluttered forward, and Gregor climbed on his back. "Oh, yeah, and about Twitchtip. You'll let her stay if she makes it back, right?"

"Oh, dear. You haven't become attached to Twitchtip, have you?" said Ripred.

"As rats go, she is among our favorites," said Ares.

Ripred grinned. "She can stay if she can drag her pathetic hide back here. Fly you high, you two."

"Run like the river, Ripred," said Gregor.

As they flew off, he looked back over his shoulder. The Bane was sitting next to Ripred, eating the candy bar, paper and all.

Maybe it would work out in the end.

After they had flown for a while, Gregor remembered that Ares hadn't rested after the long trip through the tunnel. "You want to find a place and take a nap?" he asked. "I can keep watch." But even as he spoke, he yawned. He hadn't had much sleep, either.

"I am strangely wakeful," said Ares. "Why do you not sleep while we fly? I will rouse you when I have need of rest."

"Okay, thanks." Gregor stretched out on Ares's back. The fur was damp, and it smelled of rotten eggs, but Gregor's clothes were in no better condition. Beneath the fur was the warmth of Ares's body. He closed his eyes and let oblivion take over.

Ares let him sleep about six hours before waking him. They camped in a niche high in the rocks of a cavern. The bat conked out immediately after providing Gregor with a few raw fish.

Gregor picked up one of the fish and ripped off a strip of skin with his teeth. Then he took a bite of the cold meat. Howard had always cleaned the fish with a knife, cutting neat pieces away from the bones. Gregor didn't have a knife or even a sword now. And what did it matter, anyway? Still, hunched over his fish on the stone ledge, he felt like he was in a time warp. He'd become a Neanderthal man or something, tearing into raw flesh, just trying to get the life-sustaining calories into his body. That must have been a hard life. Of course, his own wasn't exactly a picnic.

He thought longingly of rich, fatty foods. Mrs. Cormaci's lasagna, loaded with cheese and sauce and noodles. Chocolate cake with thick frosting. Mashed potatoes and gravy. He ripped off a stubborn piece of fish with a grunt. It didn't take long, he thought, to erase hundreds of thousands of years of change if you were hungry.

Gregor wiped his hands on his pants and leaned back against the stone. He found himself staring into his flashlight beam, drawn toward the one bit of light in this huge, dark place. He was down to his last set of batteries. If they ran out, he'd be entirely dependent on Ares to get him out. Who was he kidding? He was already entirely dependent on the bat. In fact, it didn't really seem fair. Ares kept them alive about ninety percent of the time, anyway. Gregor didn't feel like he'd really been holding up his end of this bond thing.

"So, stop staring at your flashlight and keep an eye out for trouble!" he thought. Disgusted with himself, he swept the beam over the surrounding rocks. Nothing new. Still, he had to get better about being on watch. Howard had said there were tricks to keeping your mind alert. Gregor did his multiplication tables for a while; that seemed to help. Next he tried to remember the capitals of all fifty states. But that only lasted for, well, fifty states. Finally, he forced himself to calculate something he'd been consciously ignoring: the number of days he'd been in the Underland.

It was almost impossible to figure out. He'd been in Regalia less than two days before they'd set sail on the Waterway, he was pretty sure of that. He thought someone had said the trip to the Labyrinth was about five days. Then another day or two until he met up with Ripred? Nine days? Ten?

His family must be a complete wreck. He would be coming home right around Christmas. Without Boots. Forever.

Gregor went back to his multiplication tables.

When Ares woke up, there was more raw fish and then they took off again. They followed the same pattern for a day or two. Gregor sleeping while Ares flew, Ares sleeping while Gregor kept watch, until finally Gregor awoke to the words, "Overlander, we are here."

They were not moving. Gregor sat up and rubbed his eyes. The light was brighter than any he'd encountered for days. He slid off Ares's back onto a polished stone floor and looked around. They were in the High Hall. It was completely empty. Somewhere, not too far away, he could hear music playing.