James Enge: This Crooked Way

Still it was alarming. The air currents totally dispersed the smoke trail by which Morlock had been gauging the flame's progress. Even after some moments the smoke did not return.

"Are you all right?" Morlock called out.

"Yes," replied the flame, its voice muffled by the tightly woven roof of gripgrass.

"Can you breathe?"

"Yes," replied the flame, with overtones of annoyance.

Morlock took the hint and returned to his whittling.

Presently the flame's bright wavering crown appeared, like the point of a knife, through the blue mat of gripgrass. It swiftly ran around and cut a smoking shoe-sized hole in the still tightly lashed grass.

"One shoe free," the flame announced curtly and disappeared.

Finally the wavering crown reappeared and repeated the procedure.

"Second shoe-" it began.

Then the flame was nearly extinguished by the passage of both shoes leaping backward up and out of the gripgrass patch. Landing with a double thump on the forest floor, they immediately began to run away again.

Morlock hurled the improvised javelin he had carved out of the tree branch, spearing the leather sole of one shoe. The other, farther off, kept on hopping away. Morlock bided his time. Finally throwing his knife, he transfixed the shoe, in midleap, to a nearby tree. Both shoes struggled briefly and fell still.

"You'd better get yourself some sensible shoes," suggested a matter-offact voice behind him. Before he could respond, the flame had reentered the nexus and was lost among the choir.

He fed the choir their double handfuls of leaves and sat aside while they smokily consumed and discussed them. As he waited he carefully removed every trace of the spell he had written on the shoes; he sewed up the holes with the leftover strips of leather from the spell.

The reek of poisonous smoke was still heavy in the air when he finished, and he glanced impatiently over toward the nexus. If he'd known they were going to take this long he would have picked drier leaves. (They preferred leaves moist or, as they said, "chewy.")

"We've been done for centuries!" cried a flame defensively as he approached. He saw this was essentially correct; the leaves had all been consumed, and they were working again on their lump of coal.

"We think the forest may be on fire," the matter-of-fact voice observed.

"It may be," Morlock agreed. "Friends, I am going to wrap you up again."

He took their complaints and bitter insults in good part. But he wrapped the nexus in its dragon-hide covering and stowed it in his backpack.

Shoes firmly fastened to his feet, pack comfortably strapped to his crooked shoulders, Morlock wandered casually toward the source of the poisonous smoke. On his way he was attacked by several white wolfish or canine beasts that had black beaks and narrow birdlike faces. He killed one of them with the accursed sword Tyrfing. He had no chance to examine the dead predator's body; although its companions fled howling, the corpse was immediately set upon by a cloud of small catlike creatures with long leathery wings ending in reticulated claws. These were apparently scavengers that followed the birdwolf pack. They descended with pitiless delight on the dead predator; their brown triangular cat-faces were soon black with blood.

Several of the scavenger catbirds orbited around Morlock, as if searching for a place to land and feast. He knocked them away. One scored a long bloody gash along his left forearm, but as the wound was shallow he decided against treating it at that emergent moment.

He was further delayed by the passage of a fire-breathing serpent taller than himself and as long as a caravan. The approach of this monster was evident from five hundred paces away in the afternoon gloom of the woods. Deciding to take cover until the thing passed, he climbed a tree with comparatively dense foliage, most of which was still blue-black from winter, and wrapped himself in his black traveling cloak to complete the camouflage.

He could feel the blood from his wound soaking into the cloak, which began to cling to his skin. And his torn, bruised, and poisoned feet had had enough trouble today without perching for an appreciable chunk of the evening on a tree branch. Plus, there was the inevitable sharp object intruding on his wounded arm-he didn't want to move away from it in the serpent's presence. (Fire breathers do not hear or smell very well, but they have bitterly keen eyesight.) He grinned wryly and waited it out. Most annoyingly, and most trivially, leaves from the tree (he assumed that was what they were) kept brushing against him and tickling his skin unbearably.

The giant worm rumbled away into the woods. Morlock sighed with relief. Now for some free movement …and a good scratch!

He threw back his cloak. The catbirds that had settled down on and around him (whose feather-fur he had mistaken for leaves) leapt screaming into the air and began to circle the tree.

Morlock shouted several croaking insults a crow had once taught him, then plucked one of the catbirds out of the air and snapped its neck. He killed a second with a well-thrown knife and dropped the first body where the second one fell.

The scavengers having gathered on the ground to feed on their fallen comrades, and Morlock dropped down beside them, branch in hand. He killed several more scavengers by methodically flailing about before the survivors flew off to a safe distance. It was an ugly business, and as Morlock stood over the crushed catbirds and heard their fellows screaming at him from a nearby tree, he was not pleased with himself.

But it had been necessary. This demonstrated to the deadly catbirds that he was not merely a wounded prey staving off death but a predator in his own right. They would be more cautious in following him thereafter; perhaps they would leave his trail entirely. And if nothing else, these corpses would entertain the survivors while he got away.

Having retrieved, cleaned, and sheathed his knife (the grip was covered by razor-thin teethmarks), Morlock made his way into the woods. He looked back once and saw that the forest floor where the dead catbirds had been was alive with dark winged forms.

Heading straight into the smoke-bearing wind, he walked until he found the fire. By that time night had entirely risen, and he could see from a distance that it was a kind of campfire. A tree had been cut and sectioned, certain sections quartered and several of the quarters set afire, all with considerable labor, no doubt. The hapless campers, one man and one woman, lay unconscious before the fire. You might have thought them overcome by weariness until you noticed their faces, greenish even in the red firelight. Apparently they'd been poisoned by the fire they'd set and were in danger of dying.

Morlock felt the tug of sympathy; he also felt there was something wrong with this scene. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the cloud of scavenger catbirds settle silently down on a nearby tree. He found he couldn't walk away and leave these as catbird fodder.

He beat down the flames with his hands and heaved earth over the fuming coals. He sat down some distance away from the pair and bound up his wounded arm as he waited for them to awaken.

Morlock kept thinking he should get about his own business. But the scavengers were still out there in the darkness watching what he would do. He waited, thinking long, slow thoughts to pass the time. Twice he roused himself to kill several large carnivorous beetles the size and temperament of snapping turtles who were approaching him hungrily. He tossed the dead beetles out into the wood, where the catbirds devoured them.