With that they fell into line, with Nimp leading the way and then Mary with the witch’s handbag, then Roger with Regor and finally Yllib helping his wounded brother Taog, bringing up the rear.
They made their weary way along the upwardly sloping exit vent, leaving the deadly magma chamber glowing evilly behind them. After a little while Ylib called out for them to stop.
“I believe it is safe for us to take off our gas masks,” he said, taking his off. They all quickly and happily followed suit.
“Just leave them on the ground,” Mary told them. “I don’t think I imagined them to exist forever, but I’ve really no idea how long they’re going to last at all.”
Roger noticed that despite the traumatic experiences they had all come through, Mary seemed to have grown even stronger in character and self-confidence. He didn’t realize it but Mary had observed the exact same thing of him.
“I didn’t know that you could do dragon magic, Roj,” she whispered to him.
“No. Nor did I!” he answered, not knowing what else to say.
“Well you were juss wonderful, Roj. We never would have made it without you … and without Regor too; you two working as a team like that.”
“Thanks, Mary, you were pretty great yourself you know. Wouldn’t you say so, Regor?” Forgetting that Regor was now soundly sleeping.
And indeed, Regor was fast asleep, curled up in his leathery shell, packed away in Roger’s rucksack. All Roger and Mary could hear was a series of rumbling grunts and snores.
“Looks like we’ll have to make the rest of the trip without the help of Regor … or Gran,” Roger told her. “I think Regor over-strained himself back there. We do forget sometimes that he’s not even born yet. Can you imagine how powerful and impressive he’s going to be when he’s been hatched and all grown up?”
“Oh yes!” Mary exclaimed, looking at him with a twinkle in her eye. “I think I can!”
They trudged onwards and upwards, lost in silence and their own thoughts for a while and then Mary once again whispered over her shoulder, “And juss who is this Green Witch, I wonder, and what is she going to do for us, eh Roj? Grannie definitely seemed to be putting a lot of faith in her helping us, didn’t she? She’s never even mentioned her to me before. I wonder what she’s all about eh?”
“Well, we’ll just have to find out,” Roger answered, trudging onward.
The volcano’s fumerole vent stretched on without deviation, like the one they’d travelled down to the central magma chamber by, this one also without turns and twists. The sheer force of the magma erupting had blown with such power that this tube now angled directly up to the surface.
But it was a long and arduous hike and Mary had to conjure some new Moonberry sticks from the handbag to light their way up the gloomy, dusty slope that seemed to go on and on forever.
At last, Nimp called out, “There’z a dim light ahead, weez are nearlyz free of vis volcano!”
This news gave them a much-needed jolt of pep and zip as they hauled their dirty, weary bodies up the last hundred yards of the tunnel.
“Now all vee haz to do is get acrozz ver Black Heath to find ver Green Vitch. Vere vee vill be zafe for a whilez at least!” Nimp told them, as they stood with him under the evening sky, and once again, on the rocky, ash-strewn surface of the volcano.
“Yes, and somehow escape the attentions of the Wood-mill Camps while we do it!” Roger added, pointing across to the camp fires that were twinkling like beacons in the distance, one to the left and one to the right of them.
Night was falling once again. It had taken them all day to cross the interior of the volcano. Above them stretched the sparkling firmament of the sky, with the last few, ruddy rays of the sun now sinking and tinging the distant western horizon a dull purple and red.
But Roger and Mary now stood together in silence, hand in hand, gaping in saddened awe.
There before them stretched the ruined wreckage of what Mary and Roger had once known as the Bad Wood. This had been a beautiful wood and was beautiful no longer. This was now a burnt and blackened wasteland.
They dreaded the idea of having to now cross this ashen plain of wrecked and ruined nature. To Roger and Mary this was an even worse version of Hell than the fiery depths of the volcano!
CHAPTER 12:
ACROSS THE WASTELAND.
Nimp told Yllib to lay his wounded brother down and attend to his wounds and for them all to take a much-needed rest.
“Yes, we’d better all get some food and drink too now,” Roger agreed. “We’re going to need all of our strength to get across that wasteland … and without getting caught too.”
The night was darkening rapidly now and Roger could see that there were in fact several more camp-fires burning. The ‘Humdrums,’ as the Dark Folk called them, had obviously set up Watch Posts across the Wasteland, strung like little flickering pearls, stretching from the main West Camp across to the main East Camp.
“I reckon the Smoking Tree, or what was really the Tree-King, would be more or less in the middle between those two main camps,” Roger said, pointing and munching on a wedge of bread and cheese that Mary handed him.
“Yes, that’s about right,” Mary agreed, “we should head that way and keep as far away as possible from any of those two larger camps.”
“Right yer are,” said Yllib, finishing bandaging his brother’s arm. “I reckon we should all get ourselves a quick nap before we leave here. Come midnight it’ll be darker and guards are more likely to be asleep, and we’ll be fitter for getting across before dawn. We don’t want to be caught out there when the sun comes up, or they’ll be onto us like a nest of angry ants!”
“Agreed. Ant az I don’t need to zleepz very much at all I vill wake youz up at midnightz, zo don’t vorry. I vill be on ver watch till zen,” Nimp told them.
Roger and Mary laid themselves down side by side, looking up at the arcing, star-strewn sky. Roger was in fact now wide awake and felt like his body was buzzing with a restless energy.
Then Mary squeezed his hand and said, “Night, night, Roj, see you in the morning, at midnight!” Then she chuckled and turned on her side and fell asleep, her other hand tightly holding onto Grannie Madden’s handbag.
Soon Roger too was fast asleep, curled around his rucksack with the Dragon’s egg and dreaming. His mind was full of images of huge, contorting worms, monstrous creatures with distorted angry faces that he half recognized as the Fire-Worm Lords, Morgrave and Morgrim, though their faces seemed to flicker and change into other faces he recognized, like his father’s and Josh the Cosh’s or his least favorite fellow students and school teachers. Whatever or whoever these faces were, they seemed intent on one thing, and that was getting him!
Then suddenly he felt himself being shaken and woken up. Nimp was standing over him and was offering him a drink of water from one of the Hircumen’s flasks. The Goat-men were very well provisioned and prepared for travelling outdoors at all times. It was only little things like going underneath volcanoes that daunted them, and even then, their fierce courage wouldn’t allow them to back off from such dangers.
“Rise and shine you,” Mary called to him cheerily, “we’re off to find this Green Witch Grannie told us about and avoid all them annoying Humdrums that are after us too, if we can.”
With that the group continued their march down off the slopes of old Hooter’s Hill, now but a smoking, soot-scarred volcano, and stepped onto the burnt and blackened plain of the wasteland.
“No Moonberries viz timez. Juzt followz me inztead ant keepz very quietz ant cloze together. Vee don’t vant to loze anyvunz!” Nimp called to the group, as they followed him down into the inky murk of the shattered bad wood.
Roger was starting to feel strangely claustrophobic again, even though they were once again outside, under the open sky. The clouds had thickened, and a drizzle had begun. The air felt thick and the ground was heavy, damp and cloying.
The charred remains of the trees loomed al
l around them like skeletal monsters, rearing up with clawed fingers raking at the gloomy sky. Roger couldn’t help but remember how this wood had once been so rich and full of botanical wonders.
“Do you think it’ll ever grow back to how it was?” Mary whispered.
“It will if we’ve got anything to do about it and I think Nimp definitely does!” Roger replied enigmatically. He’d noticed Nimp a couple of times now, looking at something in the palm of his hand and muttering to himself about it. He strongly suspected that it was whatever the Tree-King had secretly given to him, just before the forest fire had broken out.
“Shhhhh! Pleeze be quiet youz two. Vee are getting nearer to ver Green Zward where ver Tree King grew ant held hiz Court. Ant I think there’z zumthing there!”
Roger peered ahead and sure enough, across the blackened bowl of the Tree King’s sward of a meadow, once called the ‘Green Acre’, he could see a large, blasted tree-stump standing alone at its center; and not only that, there was also a pale, flickering glow coming from behind it.
“I think that’s another camp fire we hadn’t spotted before,” Yllib whispered to Nimp.
“How are we going to get past them now?” whispered Mary.
“Don’t yooz vurry, I vill use my powers of ‘Dark’,” Nimp answered. “It iz at itz strongest in ver night timez, ant it vill cloak uz all in ver shadowz, but vee must be very, very quiet nowz.”
True to his word, Nimp gestured for them all to gather round him and then waved his arms in a strange, rhythmic, circling motion. A small ball of misty darkness appeared between his arms. He continued moving his arms wider and stroking with his hands and fingers as if kneading a ball of dough. The ball of ‘dark’ grew ever larger until it eventually engulfed them completely.
“No Humdrumz vill be able to zee us now!” he told them. “But vee must be very quiet, ant vee must stay togetherz inside ver cloud of ‘dark’ at all timez.”
“Agreed!” Roger nodded, speaking for them all.
Nimp once again took the lead. They quietly crossed the blackened sward, skirting around its edge now and Roger felt the dark gloom weighing ever more heavily on him, every step they took. The sights all around him were ghastly to behold. He quickly glanced back at Mary and could tell by the look on her face that she felt exactly the same horror that he did.
The Night Imp’s magic ‘dark’ had the strange property of totally obscuring the vision of anyone outside it looking in. All they would see would be a thin, hazy swirl of grey mist. But for those within the cloud of ‘dark’, they could see out of it just as well as if it wasn’t there at all.
They crept onwards, passing the burnt-out stump of the old Tree-King’s tree. Then Nimp quietly led them away from where the glow of the little camp fire was. This was now clearly in view as they moved away, towards the far side of the sward.
Then Roger gave a sudden gasp. He froze and rubbed his eyes. He just couldn’t believe it. There sitting next to a battered jeep, warming his hands at the campfire and talking to a group of rough-looking wood-mill men was his very own father!
Roger then noticed that, besides his father and the dozen or so Mill workers present, there was another unexpected figure standing there. Roger could just make it out, lurking in the shadows a few feet behind his father. The figure looked very similar to Nimp. It was about the same height, but it seemed blacker and thinner and somehow oily, like a glistening, upright eel. It was like some nightmare Imp creature that had been stretched and dipped into an oil slick and now glinted and gleamed with a black, slippery sheen, reflected from the camp fire.
Nimp had seen the creature too and froze in his tracks.
“Vee musht beez very carefulz now. Vat iz a Black Imp! Vay are very, very bad Impz!”
Roger hardly dared to breathe. They were moving very slowly now and being very careful not to make any noise. Roger could hear the murmuring of the men’s voices more clearly now. His father seemed to be giving them instructions. Then Roger froze once again. His mouth dropped open in sudden horror as he clearly overheard his own name. His father was talking about him!
“… I hope that is all clear. It is important that that the boy, Roger, is not harmed. You need not worry yourselves about the others, Humans or Woodlings. But we’d prefer capturing as many of them alive as possible. There are important experiments and tests that my colleagues in the government labs very much wish to do. But, I repeat, on no account may you hurt the boy. There will be a sizeable bonus paid to you all if the boy is taken unharmed. Is that understood?”
Roger’s mind was in turmoil. He knew his father was involved in some terrible scheme to overthrow the government and somehow take over the Great Forests of Inglande. He had just recently over-heard as much at the business dinner attended by all those important and rich people at their Manor House. But what was his Dad doing here now … and how did he even know Roger was heading this way?
But then his question was answered. The Black Imp stepped forward and spoke quietly but firmly to Roger’s father. “Missster Briggssss, our spiessss in the volcano have informed usss they have ssseen your boy jussst this lassst day … he wasss deep inssside the volcano. It isss mossst unlikely he will have sssurvived there. I have ordersss to sssee that you get to the Wessst Camp immediately for your own sssafety as thisss area is ssscheduled for defumigation proceduresss tomorrow.”
“But if he did get through, then he’d be heading this way… I need these men and all our, ahem… allies, on the alert for him, just in case they do see him,” Mr. Briggs tetchily replied.
“All of the Campsss have been alerted, Mr. Briggsss, I assure you. We all want to find the boy … and hisss companions too, if they do manage to get thisss far. You know the Master Plan mussst be adhered to, no matter what. Our Overlordsss insissst on it!”
“All right, Mr. Shlik, understood. I know we have a schedule to keep to. Let’s go then.”
Mr. Briggs turned towards the jeep, ready to drive off with his sleek and slimy cohort, Mr Shlik.
Roger had made Nimp slow down, so he could catch what his father had to say. But now he felt totally confused. Just what was his father up to and just who exactly was he up to it with?
But before Mr Briggs could get in the car, the Black Imp Shlik suddenly froze in his tracks.
“Jussst wait!” he hissed. “There is another Imp near here, a Night Imp. I can senssse another of my race. He isss using hisss powersss of dark I believe.”
“What, where?” cried Mr. Briggs. “Find him, he may have my son Roger, find him now!”
Nimp also realized that the Black Imp Shlik, had sensed his presence and was now approaching them, the Night Imp’s cloud of ‘dark’ now no longer able to protect them from being discovered.
Nimp and the Hircumen and the two children froze where they stood. Nimp indicated with a finger to his lips for complete and utter silence.
The Black Imp approached ever closer, his eyes narrowing in concentration, peering into the murky night and his slit-like nostrils flaring to catch the scent of a fellow Imp.
“I can smellsss you, little cousssin, I know you’re there. Give yourselvesss up now!”
Shlik was getting very close and was homing in on their exact location. Roger felt terrified. His heart was beating so loudly in his chest, he was afraid that the Black Imp would hear it. But he stood as still as a statue, hoping beyond hope that Shlik wouldn’t spot them and pass on by.
Shlik was just a few yards away now.
“I can sssee your dark in the dark, Night Imp, and I can sssmell your friendss’s fear. Come from behind the tree ssstump now and give yourselvesss up … or elssse!”
Roger realized that the Black Imp now new exactly where they were. Nimp realized this too. The game was up, there was nothing else they could do now but …
“RUN!” Nimp yelled. “Run for your livez … towardz ver treez, ver Green Vitch’s Voods, it’z our only chance.”
They were now being chased by the Mr. Shlik and the m
otley crew of the club-wielding wood-mill workers. The Black Imp pointed to where they were hiding as he sprang towards them, screaming for the Humdrum men to get them.
“You won’t essscape usss thisss time!” he yelled. “Get them men, there they are!”
But the workmen still weren’t exactly sure as to where ‘they’ were. Nimp’s ‘dark’ was still shrouding them, even as they ran, and although the Black Imp could now plainly see them, the chasing wood-mill men couldn’t. Nimp took some advantage from their confusion and led the band of weary Egg-bearers towards the distant Woods of the Green Witch. But it was still such a long way away. “Juzt how are vee goingz to make it?” he thought. He really had no idea at all.
They ran as fast as they possibly could. But the Black Imp screamed at the men once again, getting them to follow in the right direction this time. The Night Imp’s shroud of dark was now in tatters and abandoned, as they fled towards the distant tree line.
As they closed in, Nimp quickly hurled several more of his exploding ‘dark’ bombs; scattering them about in different directions in order to keep their pursuers confused and uncertain as to where they were. Shlik came bounding forward, once again screaming at the men.
“There, there, you foolsss, you senseless humdrumsss! They’re heading for the Green Witch’s Wood. Get them, ssseize them now!”
Shlik charged ahead of the men now, rallying the dozen or so thugs to follow him
Mr. Briggs yelled after them. “Do what the Black Imp says! He can see them a lot better than you. And bring them all to me … alive if you can; but whatever you do don’t hurt the boy!”
The men followed hard on the heels of Mr. Shlik. Mr. Briggs though, sprang towards the jeep. He knew he had to make a quick radio report to the West Camp first and he also felt that he’d have a better chance of catching them if he used the jeep. At least he could ensure they didn’t make it to the edge of the woods and disappear into the tree cover.
He also realized that the jeep’s headlights and swivel-mounted searchlight would be very useful for exposing any more of these nasty, shadowy, dark-folk. They’d obviously deluded and brain-washed the poor boy’s deranged and feeble mind.
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