Emily Rodda - The Golden Door

Rye seemed to hear Sholto jeering in his ear.

Ignorant people often call things magic when they do not understand them.

Rye cursed himself for being so stupid. It was no excuse that Weld was perfectly flat, and he had never walked down a hill in his life before. He was not in Weld now — he knew that! And the girl in red had not been deceived.

“What is it?” she called softly, looking nervously from side to side, then back at Rye.

“I …” He could not bring himself to explain. “I want to know your name,” he finally burst out, snatching at the first question he could think of.

The girl folded her arms and pressed her lips together. It occurred to Rye that perhaps she clung to the old Weld belief that to know a person’s name gave you power over that person. She was strange enough to believe anything.

“You know my name,” he pointed out. “It is only fair that you should tell me yours.”

“Sonia,” she said at last. “My name is Sonia, if you must know.”

She turned and hurried on.

The slope was becoming steeper. With every step, the rocks grew less, but the trees grew larger, and the bushes and vines more luxuriant. Ferns massed on the ground, splashing the fallen leaves with bright, tender green. Rye kept thinking he caught glimpses of movement from the corners of his eyes, but whenever he turned to look, he could see nothing.

Sonia wound her way quickly through the trees, occasionally hesitating before choosing one direction or another. At first, Rye could only trail after her blindly, but after a time, he found that he was able to guess which way she would go.

There was a path. The marks of it were very faint, but they were there. Once he had seen them, Rye could not understand why he had not noticed them before.

At least , he thought, Sonia is not as mad as I thought, and we are not just wandering aimlessly. The path must lead somewhere.

But where?

Rye forced that disturbing question out of his mind. For good or ill, he and Sonia really had no choice but to follow the path if they were to have any chance of living through the night. The rustling treetops hid the sky, but he knew that by now it must be dimming. Soon the sun would go down, and the skimmers would take flight. He and Sonia had to find shelter by then.

“We had better —” he began, then found himself crowding into Sonia as she stopped abruptly.

He saw what had halted her, and his blood ran cold.

Right across their path, strung between two trees, a slimy net sagged like a vast, crude spiderweb. And hanging in the web was the skeleton of a man, the bones picked clean.

Rye felt a roaring in his ears. His mind flew to Dirk, but almost at once, he realized that his fears were foolish. These pitiful remains were not Dirk’s. The bones showed that in life the dead man would not have been much taller than Crell. And instead of a skimmer hook, a small hatchet lay half buried in leaves at the foot of the net.

“What has done this?” Rye whispered.

Sonia shuddered. She looked pale and sick.

“Who knows?” she muttered. “Some creature of the Fell Zone — one of the creatures stalking us now, no doubt. They are all around us. Can you not feel them?”

Rye nodded, his heart thudding. He felt breathless. Again he thought he caught a flicker of movement by the side of the path. He swung around with a gasp, his hand tightening on his stick, but still he saw nothing.

“We had better move on,” he said. “Soon the sun will set. And the skimmers …”

“Skimmers!” Sonia made an impatient sound. “Are skimmers all you can think of? You are as obsessed with them as everyone else in Weld!”

“Of course I am!” snapped Rye. “Because of the skimmers, I have lost my home and everyone I love! As you have yourself, Sonia! Or have you been so long in the safety of the Keep that you have forgotten?”

Sonia paused. An expression that might have been shame crossed her face. Then, without another word, she stepped from the path to move around the slimy net and its hideous burden.

And instantly the tree on that side seemed to come alive. What looked like a thick section of mottled bark peeled away, revealing itself to Rye’s horrified eyes as a huge, lizardlike beast, foul-smelling slime dripping from its snarling jaws.

The monster reared up on its hind legs and lunged at Sonia, its mottled tail lashing, a fan of spines and skin rising on the back of its neck. Sonia screamed and ducked, avoiding the snapping jaws by a hair, and ran for her life. The beast dropped to all fours and leaped after her, frighteningly fast.

Yelling in shock, Rye shrugged off his bundle, snatched up the dead man’s hatchet, and gave chase.

Ahead he could see flashes of red as Sonia wove frantically between the trees below him. The gigantic lizard was hurtling after her, gaining on her every moment. At first, it looked weirdly like a huge piece of tree bark careering down the slope, but in moments, its knobbly, scaly skin had begun to change, quickly taking on the nutty brown color of the dead leaves. Soon it was visible only because it was moving.

Rye pounded after it, slipping and sliding, keeping his feet by a miracle. His heart felt as if it were bursting in his chest. The hatchet was in his hand. If only he could get a clear line of sight, he could throw it. His aim was usually good — not as good as Dirk’s, but good enough. Surely, even running, he could hit a target as large as this huge lizard. Injure it, at least. Delay it.

And then what? Then his only weapon would be the bell tree stick.

He could not think of that. He just had to keep running, waiting for the moment when …

He lost sight of Sonia behind a tangle of bushes. He could hear her sobbing gasps, but he could not see her. He could only see the beast, a surging, hissing mass of brown. For an instant, it was directly below him, but before he could hurl the hatchet, the creature had wheeled around the bushes and disappeared. Then, suddenly, Sonia burst into view again. She was glancing over her shoulder, her face twisted in terror.

The beast was right behind her. It was almost upon her. And ahead of her …

Rye went cold. “Sonia!” he bellowed. “In front of you! Beware!”

He saw Sonia’s head jerk as she heard him. She looked blindly ahead but did not see what Rye could see so clearly — the slimy strands of another crude net stretched across her path.

In horror, Rye saw the red figure run straight into the net. In horror, he saw her fixed by the sticky, gleaming strings, struggling like a fly in a spiderweb. In terror, he saw a second monstrous, drooling lizard peel itself from the tree to which it had been clinging and lumber forward to claim its captured prize.

But the monster chasing Sonia was not willing to surrender its prey to a rival. Seeing the second lizard, it gave a harsh bellow and rose onto its hind legs, the fan of skin on the back of its neck deepening to bloodred.

The second lizard snarled and sprang. The next moment, the two beasts were locked in combat, biting, slashing, and hissing.

And so intent were they on destroying each other that Rye, reaching the place at last, was able to dart past them to the web in which Sonia was struggling.

Without the hatchet, he would never have been able to free her. The slimy, foul-smelling cords of the net stretched as he tore at them, sticking wherever they touched and threatening to trap him, too. But the hatchet, once he stopped panicking and thought to use it, sliced through the slimy strands like a knife cutting greasy string.