by Abby Smith
We were being stalked by a brigade of whimsical figurines from a Hallmark shop.
“Are those things friendly?”
Pettikin followed my glance, screamed and raced forward, climbing up my leg, scrambling over the pack on my back and up to my shoulders until he was almost sitting on my head.
“I take it that’s a no?” I stopped walking and observed the creatures while Pettikin calmed down, gasping for air. They stopped when I stopped, eyeing me with empty glowing eyes.
“I… I don’t know,” Pettikin admitted, sheepishly. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”
“You’re not usually afraid of animals though, only people,” I noted uneasily, as I resumed hiking up the trail. Even with the additional gnome burden, I felt OK. The extra power on this world seemed to apply to strength, as well as speed. I glanced over my shoulder again. They were still following us, always matching our pace, always staying about ten feet behind us.
“They’re hard for me to … to read.” Pettikin said.
“You mean like the way you can read the alpacas?”
“Yes, and most animals.”
I mulled that over. “Let’s just keep going” I said. “They’re not bothering us. If we can get to the Gateway and get through, it won’t matter.”
We hiked on for quite a while, making exceptionally good time, just as we had in the desert. I started to feel hopeful that it wouldn’t take us too long to reach the top. The creatures had so far kept their disturbing, but as yet harmless, distance from us. I could, however, feel the excess energy of the world building up in me, buzzing like an electric current. We were going to need to stop soon and have some cookies.
Unfortunately, just as I realized this, I noticed new eyes peering at us from the shrubs on the sides of the road. Unlike the slanted cat-eyes that were following us, these were round and glowed red.
“Do you see those, Pettikin?” My head felt a little dizzy when I talked, and I wondered if I had already waited too long before stopping.
“Yes.” An edge of hysteria crept into Pettikin’s voice.
“We need cookies, or we’re both going to start freaking out and do something stupid.” I scanned the area for a shelter or clearing where we could stop and sit, but saw only the narrow path cutting through the mountain. I noticed, with some alarm, that the Hallmark brigade had closed their following distance to about half of what it had been.
“Eesh.” I increased my pace up the path, and for the first time, had to exert myself to keep going. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t bear, but it was no longer effortless to be hiking up the mountain at a rapid pace. I willed myself on until whatever energy or chemical cocktail was swirling through my body bubbled over, and I got so dizzy I lost my balance.
“Whoa.” I careened on one leg, and the shifting weight of the pack and Pettikin on my back nearly pulled me over. I stumbled into the shrubbery on the side of the path. Pettikin started shrieking. A violent hissing sound rose up from the bushes, and something pricked my leg.
“Ow!” I jumped back onto the path as dozens of tiny creatures poured out onto the road in front of us, blocking our way.
They looked like fluorescent hedgehogs, little roly-poly creatures about eight inches in diameter, with glowing purple quills tipped with silver.
I bent down to rub my leg. “Aww, they’re kind of cute.”
The creatures hissed in unison and puffed up their quills, turning into tiny, evil spheres. Pettikin let out a blood-curdling scream, as a stinging sensation spread through my arms and cheek.
“Ow, hey!” I jumped up and backed away. The creature closest to us shot quills at us, with surprising range and accuracy. Several were stuck in my arms and cheeks, and I brushed them off quickly. They were about three inches long, but very light, so they had only pricked my skin superficially. Besides some mild swelling and itchiness, I didn’t appear to be mortally wounded.
“Take it easy, guys. We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to… Ouch! Darn it!” I had taken a tentative step forward and was greeted with a hiss and another barrage of quills which landed on my leg. Only a couple pricked through the thick fabric of my jeans, and I hastily flicked them off, annoyed. Pettikin whimpered.
From behind me I heard a low, musical growl that sounded almost like purring. I turned around slowly to see twelve pairs of glowing white eyes half closed into slits, and twelve Hallmark ceramic figurines crouched low, ready to pounce.
The hedgehogs hissed.
Pettikin wailed.
My head was spinning, and I really wanted a cookie.
“OK, hold on, calm down everyone—”
No one listened to me. The Hallmark Cats were closing in on us. The hedgehogs puffed themselves up into prickly spheres. It seemed to be their single defensive move, and it had absolutely no deterring effect on the cats. Pettikin and I were about to become casualties of the Great Hallmark Cat-Purple Hedgehog massacre of our time.
I tried to press myself up against the mountain, away from the fray, but one of the cats turned and followed me. It pulled its lips into a snarl, revealing a set of gleaming, pointed teeth. Pettikin screamed.
That feeling in my stomach appeared again, the weight pushing downwards. The detached part of me took over, and I jumped into the middle of the path between the two warring factions. I turned toward the cats, my face a menacing scowl, and held up both of my hands.
“Stop it! That’s enough!”
Some kind of force shot out of my hands, and knocked me back half a step. My voice reverberated off the walls of the mountain through the desert. The cats froze, and even Pettikin stopped screaming.
The echoes faded away, and I stood there for a few seconds while everyone stared at me. I couldn’t believe it worked. I wasn’t even sure what had just happened. I lowered my arms to my side, feeling self-conscious, but decided to press my advantage.
“Cats—sit!”
To my surprise, the cats sat.
“Um, right. Hedgehogs…”
I turned around, and a volley of quills from the nearest hedgehog landed on my shins. I gave him a stern look, and in unison, the hedgehogs pinned their ears to their heads and deflated, cowering away from me.
I almost started laughing at that, but managed to keep my voice firm. “Stop hissing and throwing quills at everyone. No one is going to hurt you. Pettikin…”
“Yes?” Pettikin’s voice was hesitant, as if he were worried I was about to yell at him too.
“I need a cookie.”
“Oh, right!” He rummaged around in the day pack, and soon a package of snickerdoodles appeared in front of me. I ripped the bag open, scarfing cookies as fast as I could. I could hear Pettikin gulping and felt crumbs dropping down my back, so I assumed he retrieved a separate package for himself.
Two by two, little hedgehog ears pricked up.
“What,” I asked them with my mouth full. “You want some cookies?”
The hedgehog closest to me crept forward, sniffing my feet, his eyes huge, sorrowful, red saucers.
I took a cookie from the bag and broke it in half, then fourths. I bent down and handed him a piece. He grabbed it with tiny paws, stuffed it in his mouth, and scampered away.
Within seconds, I was surrounded by purple hedgehogs gazing up at me with forlorn eyes, mewling piteously. I broke up cookies and handed them out. One by one, they scampered into the bushes with their treats.
A plaintive yowl from behind me made me turn around. The cats were watching me, but instead of menacing, they looked hurt.
“Well, you can have some, too.” Unfortunately, my bag was almost empty. I held out the last cookie to the cat that was closest to me. He took it and pranced away, looking smug.
“Uh, Pettikin,” I was now surrounded by pastel cats, pressing up against me, and pawing my legs and arms. I was afraid they were going to knock me over.
“Here, Allie!” Pettikin dropped a fresh bag of cookies in front of my face. I quickly handed them out to the
cats who trotted off with them one by one. We went through three full bags of cookies, but at least the hedgehogs and cats were no longer threatening to kill us.
I dropped the day pack to the ground and plopped down next to it, more emotionally than physically exhausted. Pettikin slid to the ground beside me. I snuck two more cookies from the bag without the animals seeing and handed one to him. We ate quickly without saying anything. The cats were splayed across the road, licking their translucent paws and rubbing their faces, a picture of contentment. From the bushes, the hedgehogs squeaked and made rustling noises, as if they were nesting. I hoped those were happy sounds. It certainly sounded friendlier than the hissing.
The web of light at the top of the mountain was closer than I expected. If we could keep the same pace we had when we started, we would get there soon.
We rested for maybe half an hour before I stood up and heaved the backpack over my shoulders. Pettikin seemed a little worse for wear. “Walk or ride?”
“I can walk for a while.”
We set off at a quick pace, but once again, I noticed some resistance. It felt more like climbing at home, not the effortless running we did earlier. The bushes to our right rustled, and red eyes peered out at us from time to time. The Hallmark Cats were still following behind us.
We trudged on for what seemed like another half hour. The trail steepened gradually as we walked, and now we were hiking up a fairly sharp incline. The Gateway was hidden from our view by the mass of the mountain, so I could no longer judge our progress. I was getting short of breath, and each step seemed a little harder, as if something were pressing down on me. Pettikin was struggling to keep up, and his cheeks looked flushed.
“Is it just me or is it getting harder to walk here?”
“The mountain has power, and it doesn’t want us to reach the Gateway. The closer we get, the harder it pushes against us.”
“Oh. Great.”
The trail steepened, and I had to grab on to the shrubs to pull myself up at times. At one point, it became a vertical stone wall, about six feet high, and Pettikin had to scale it first to show me where the best hand and foot holds were. I grabbed a twisted root at the top to pull myself the rest of the way up, breathing hard.
I wondered how the cats would handle the wall, but one by one they appeared over it, leaping up in one effortless step. They seemed to float whereas I had never felt heavier.
We were climbing another steep incline when my foot slipped. “Pettikin, hold up. What is this?”
An oily sheen spread across the ground. I bent down and picked up a handful of sand beads. Whatever substance was inside them that gave them their soft, rubbery consistency was leaking out. I quickly dropped them, my hand coated with slippery red, orange, and yellow oils. Gross. I wiped it on my pants.
We used the shrubs on the side of the path to pull ourselves up the slick incline, one of us slipping every third step or so, sometimes catching ourselves before we fell, sometimes landing on our hands and knees in the glop. Pettikin, with his smaller surface area, was acquiring a faint, reddish orange patina.
A brilliant flash of lightning produced a crash of thunder so loud, I thought something exploded nearby. Pettikin screamed, and even I screamed and ducked, covering my head with my hands like they taught us in the tornado drills at school. The sky opened up, and we were pelted by hail the size of walnuts for about ten seconds before it changed into a torrential downpour of freezing rain.
Pettikin started to cry. “Let’s go back Allie, I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“We can’t go back Pettikin—we just have to stick it out a little further.”
I tried to press forward, but the ground was a river of slime. It was like trying to climb up a waterslide at a water park. I slipped and fell face first into an oily red puddle.
Disgusted, I wiped my face, struggled to my feet, and started slogging forward again, like a hideous clown, arms flailing.
A second flash of lightning whizzed past so close, it made my hair stand on end. A second crash of thunder made me duck and cover again, tears of frustration and panic welling up in my eyes.
Pettikin cowered in a tiny ball, crying. I slopped my way over to him and scooped him up. I wondered if we should turn around after all. The cats were still there, completely unaffected by the weather and the slime, but offering no assistance. If we went downhill, at least gravity would help us.
I felt the pressure in my stomach, and a wave of energy pressing me down to the ground. No.
I could barely see the path up the hill through the wall of rain. The trail was an oil slick.
“Allie, let’s go back,” Pettikin wailed. “It’s OK, we can try to get to Arcorn another day.”
Human Allie agreed with Pettikin, but detached Allie took over again. “I don’t think so, Pettikin. If we don’t get through now, we’ll never get through. We just have to keep going.”
My mind was filled with grim determination—heavy emphasis on grim.
“Get on, and hang on tight!”
I held Pettikin up to my shoulders, and he scrambled around to my back, clinging to my backpack. I wiped the rain out of my eyes and slogged forward. It was slow and messy, and I kept slipping but I set my jaw and just kept climbing.
Eventually the rain stopped as suddenly as it started. The bulk of the water and slime rushed down the slope, leaving behind just a faint slickness. The air cleared, and I could see the path again. I picked up the pace, struggling against my own exhaustion, the buzzing feeling in my head, the weight of the pack and gnome on my back, and the weight of whatever force was pressing down on us harder than ever. I trudged around a small bend, and the path opened into a broad road, where several caves or indentations were carved into the face of the mountain. I let out a small cry. Up ahead was the diamond matrix of the Gateway, and Taos, Suzy and Sunshine waiting for us.
“Ah! Pettikin, look, do you see?”
His face appeared over my shoulder. He screamed.
“Ow!” I put my hand over my ear. “Wha…”
In front of me was a grotesque creature the size of a small elephant but with the appearance of a large ox with black leathery skin. It had yellow eyes and two twisted red horns on either side of its head, each about three feet long and each ending in a deadly point. It snorted, raining stinky, gray, ox-snot down on us and pawed the ground with a giant, cloven hoof.
I said a word that I’m not technically allowed to say.
Pettikin fainted and fell to the ground with a thud. I scooped him up and searched frantically for some place to run. The ox bellowed.
The bushes next to us rustled, and a menacing growl rang out from behind us. The Hallmark cat brigade was crouched low and pressing forward, twelve pairs of luminous eyes locked on the ox.
I clutched Pettikin to my chest and backed off the trail toward the caves. As much as I was rooting for the cats, this appeared to me to be a battle between Satan incarnate and a bunch of Disney characters.
A swish, then a volley of purple quills shot out from the bushes on either side of the road, landing on the ox. Most of them bounced right off of his leathery hide, and he shook the remaining ones off easily. He bellowed, lowered his head, and charged forward, swinging his deadly horns from side to side.
Another roar, a lion’s roar this time, echoed through mountains. All twelve cats charged forward, white hot light streaming from their eyes like laser beams. The Ox stopped and reared back, almost losing its balance. It closed its eyes and tossed its head, bellowing wildly in the searing light. The cats pressed forward, until it turned around and fled, disappearing into one of the caves.
Pettikin stirred in my arms. I was clutching him so tightly, I was surprised he could breathe.
“Is it over?”
“Yeah, I think it is over.” My voice broke when I spoke. Arms shaking, I set Pettikin down on the ground and slid the backpack off my shoulders. My hands trembled so hard, I could barely open it. The outer cloth was still soaked from
the rain, but fortunately, an inner lining kept the contents mostly dry. One package of snickerdoodles remained. I handed one to Pettikin and ate one myself. The cats crowded around and sat on their haunches, watching me expectantly.
“Oh yeah, you definitely get a reward,” I broke the remaining cookies up so there would be enough to go around and quickly passed the pieces out to the cats. Then I walked over to the bushes and shook the remaining crumbs out for the Hedgehogs.
The alpacas hopped and hummed up ahead next to the Gateway.
The cats lay contentedly in the road grooming themselves.
“Thank you.” I held out my hands, and a couple of them came forward to sniff them. I felt tears well up in my eyes like a dork. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”
I re-shouldered the day pack, and Pettikin and I ran toward the alpacas, the closeness of our destination giving us a newfound energy. And then I stopped abruptly.
A warrior stood next to the Gateway, his arms folded. He was watching us.
“Oh no,” Pettikin moaned.
I wanted to cry. It was so unfair.
The pressure in my stomach returned, and the wave of detachment ran through me. This time, the feeling was so intense that it pushed out into a sphere around my entire body. I was not letting this dude stop us again.
“Allie, what’s wrong?” Pettikin asked.
“Nothing. Just—I think I know what the key Vala gave me is. Well, maybe. Hopefully.”
With one part of me still terrified, I walked toward the Gateway.
The Warrior appeared in front of me, blocking my way.
I glared up at him. “We overcame all your obstacles fair and square. We got here on our own power.” Well, ours and the laser attack cats. They had been a huge asset.
From a towering height, ancient, black eyes locked on mine, cold and intense.
Panic shot through me and I wanted to cower. Instead I clenched my fists, and stared back fiercely, legs shaking.
