Locksmith

by Nicholas Maes

  Left foot, right hand, right foot, left hand, left foot, right hand.

  Ow! What the heck?

  He had struck his head.

  “What’s going on?” he cried, only to realize he had reached the first branch. He had been focusing so hard on his dwindling strength that he hadn’t noticed he had been approaching his goal!

  Supporting himself with his left hand and foot, he groped with his free hand to grab the branch. When he released the trunk, he dangled by one hand, then twisted sharply, kicked his legs, and seized the branch with his other hand, too. Pulling with the last of his strength, he almost shouted with relief when the branch was firmly beneath him.

  He gasped for breath, then glanced below. A gossamer mist blocked his view of the soil, but he knew the drop was serious. He sighed. With his fingers back to normal and his belt on the ground, how was he going to climb back down?

  Lewis continued his ascent. Mercifully, this part of the quest was easy. The branches grew so densely together that they formed something like a long flight of stairs. At the same time, among the oversize leaves, he thought he spied the occasional movement — it was so unnaturally quick he couldn’t be sure. There was also a sticky goo everywhere — odourless and hard to rub from his skin. Above him, too, on the tree’s far side, he was sure he could hear a high-pitched squeaking, though it might have been a trick of the wind. Not that it mattered. The weed was all that counted.

  He climbed and climbed, whistling to himself, wondering how he would return to the soil. If he threw the weed down, assuming he found it, his friends would realize he was stuck in the boughs and maybe launch a rescue attempt. He also thought about his recent dream, the one in which guards had emerged from a pool. The dream seemed to be communicating something, but what?

  There it was again, a high-pitched squeaking — eek, eek, eek. Who else was in the tree with him? And that goo was everywhere and sticking to his feet.

  Without warning he gained the top. One moment he was scrabbling from one branch to its neighbour; the next a network of branches parted, the mist thinned dramatically, and … his head was in the clouds!

  How high was he? A mile perhaps, give or take a hundred yards. It was a good thing the mist blocked his view of the region. The sight of all that scarred and battered land would have weighed his spirits down even more. It was terrible how much misery men like Grumpel created!

  A flash of yellow caught his eye. On his right there was a frail plant with a stark green base and bright yellow tips. The third ingredient! There it was! Scarcely able to believe this sight, Lewis plucked the plant and tucked it away as if it were the choicest of jewels.

  “Now all I have to do,” he said to himself, “is find a way to conquer gravity.”

  His elation quickly faded. How would he return? And even if he accomplished this trick, they had to find those twin crests, locate the lock, pick it open, and —

  There it was again, that high-pitched sound, only louder this time and much more desperate. The noise told Lewis it was time to go. Ducking back into the leaves, he began his descent as quietly as possible, in case he wasn’t alone.

  “Eek, eek, eek!” The squeaking was off to his right.

  “Keep going,” he told himself, gathering speed. Unlike his upward climb, when the leaves parted freely, the tree now seemed to block his progress.

  Over to his left had something moved? There had been a streak of brown against the leaves and something big and hairy. “You’re imagining things!” he scolded himself.

  “Eek, eek, eek!” The shrill sound persisted — it contained a note of panic, as if someone or something were pleading for help.

  “I have problems of my own!” Lewis muttered, only to hesitate when the noise rang out again. It projected such sadness that he couldn’t ignore it. With a heavy sigh he veered to his right. As he did, a flash of brown intruded and he passed yet another puddle of goo.

  “All right! I’m coming!” he yelled, even as he wondered if this sound were a ploy and that some creature was luring him into a trap. Debating whether the risk was worth taking, he spied the squeaking party ahead, a few yards past a thin screen of leaves.

  On an outer branch a shape hung in a net. Its struggles were causing the net to tighten, and as the knots drew closer, the trapped creature grew more desperate, thrashing about with whatever strength it still had. Curious, Lewis inched forward.

  There. He could see it. He was faced with … a bat! Like every other beast in that region, it was larger than normal and roughly his size. Its back was furry and matted with oil, and its wings, while folded, were detectable still — they looked like giant sheets of leather. Catching wind of his presence, the bat met his eye.

  Lewis almost laughed. The face was like a giant mouse’s — friendly, frightened, and non-aggressive. Its eyes reflected intelligence, too. In fact, the creature’s expression seemed almost human. Lewis crouched beside the bat and addressed it softly, even though he knew they couldn’t understand each other. The bat, in turn, nuzzled his hand.

  “What have we here?” Lewis asked, giving the net a quick going-over. Its strands were made from the goo he had spotted earlier and had been fitted to the branch to form a snare. What nut would have climbed so high to lay such a trap?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lewis said, assessing the strands. “Our main goal is to set you free. It’s a good thing I’m handy with knots, because this trap is ingenious. Incidentally, my name is Lewis.”

  “Eek,” the bat answered more calmly.

  “The central knot is here,” Lewis said, pointing at a tangle above the bat. “And it’ll loosen once I’ve slackened these six outer ones.” He set to work on the knots, humming to himself as the bat watched him closely. “That’s five of them. There’s just one more and the main one will slip.”

  “Eek,” the bat commented, studying Lewis’s fingers.

  “I’m telling you,” he repeated, handling knot number six, “whoever set this trap is a master, though I wonder —”

  “Eeeek!” the bat screeched, staring past Lewis’s shoulder. The hairs on his neck stood up. He glanced around slowly and almost dropped off the branch.

  He should have known. A web, not a net, entangled the bat. And its creator was poised a few feet away, at the start of the branch where it joined with the trunk.

  Normally, Lewis was fond of spiders. When he caught one in his room, he always carried it outside. They were no bigger than an inch, however, unlike the monster confronting him now. Its abdomen and thorax were two feet across, while each leg was more than a yard in length. Its body was a light, poisonous brown, with hundreds of bristling hairs on its surface, like a porcupine’s quills, only deadlier-looking. A pair of fangs pointed straight at Lewis — they were oozing venom. Worse by far were the spider’s eyes: there were eight of them of varying sizes. Black and intelligent, they twitched simultaneously as they studied him.

  “Easy there,” Lewis croaked, snaking his hand around a nearby twig — it was dry and stout and would break off easily. The bat was nibbling at the sixth and final knot.

  Even as Lewis traded stares with the spider, there was a rush of motion and a crowd of babies joined their mother. They were a tenth her size, but their fangs meant business. Their eyes, too, jiggled like crazy as they sized up their victims for a taste of meat.

  Lewis snapped the twig off with one twist of his hands. “Stay back!” he warned, twirling his weapon.

  For a moment the babies seemed to obey, but then two leaped forward, front legs raised. The bat, meanwhile, kept chewing the knot.

  Lewis stamped his foot. “I said keep back!”

  The mother flinched and drew her legs together, but the babies out in front kept edging toward him.

  Lashing out, Lewis kicked the first off the tree — it was like striking a loose collection of rags. Then he knocked the other with his club and crushed its thorax. “We’re in a jam!” he told the bat as the spiders began hissing. Lewis glanced at the bat and de
termined that it was halfway through the knot. He wanted to tell it to chew more quickly, but a movement signalled they were under attack.

  A dozen babies were rushing him at once. Half were on a high branch and closing in from above, while the others were moving in from below. The mother, for her part, was sidling toward him, all eight eyes focused on his club.

  Pff, pff, pff. He knocked three off the tree, two others were crushed, and a sixth was impaled. As it writhed on his staff, the mother lunged forward. Pff, pff, it lost two eyes. One leg missed him by a matter of inches.

  “Hurry!” Lewis screamed. “I can’t hold them off much longer!”

  There was another rush and another. One spider reached his knee before he struck it with his fist, and twice he was bitten, but his outfit held firm. The bat, too, was almost overwhelmed. Five spiders tried to swarm it, but Lewis beat them back.

  He was tiring. The climb, and now this battle, had him just about beat. His arms were heavy and his chest heaved. The spiders sensed it. They were massing together, above and below, and the mother was sidling in for the kill.

  “This is it!” Lewis gasped.

  One landed on his head and scratched his scalp with its bristles. He lurched and tossed it into space, only to feel his club slip away.

  It was the mother. With a hiss she threw his club behind her and eyed him tauntingly as he raised his fists. A moment later she pressed against him, together with her babies, who were advancing in a swarm. Two legs thrust him against the bat, her six eyes fixed him with a hungry stare, and her fangs reached for his jugular. Four babies were on his shoulders and three were on his knees. There was a smell of something rotting — the stink of death perhaps. He closed his eyes and waited for the fangs to strike.

  “Eek!” he dimly heard from behind. There was a whirl of black and the babies went flying. The mother, too, was pitched into the air. “Eek!” the bat repeated, now free of the web.

  Lewis glanced around. The mother spider was hanging by a thread and climbing furiously toward the branch. Her babies, too, still had plenty of fight. Calmly, the bat arranged Lewis on its shoulders.

  The mother had returned and was steaming toward them. The bat squeaked again — it sounded like a laugh — and leaped into the encompassing mist. The pair dropped like a stone for a second until the bat spread its wings and braked their descent. Fast as a bullet, it circled the tree — the spider and her babies were watching in fury — then down it swooped to the soil with breathtaking ease.

  Although Lewis was reeling from his exchange with the spiders, he knew he had won himself a friend for life.

  CHAPTER 16

  The bat ferried him to the ground so quickly that Lewis could hardly believe he was out of harm’s way. A minute earlier he had been battling spiders; now he was together with his friends again. They were relieved to see him in one piece and slapped his back and ruffled his hair. The bat, too, nuzzled him all over.

  “Thank goodness you’re back,” Adelaide cried. “We were beginning to suspect something awful had happened.”

  “The steel on your fingers is gone,” Alfonse said as the frogs sprayed a rock with their food transformers.

  “And look at your clothes,” the Stranger clucked, motioning to rips the spiders had inflicted.

  “Who’s your friend?” Todrus asked with a good-natured smile.

  As everyone sat and snacked on the goop, Lewis described the events in the tree, mentioning the weed and how the bat and he had wrestled the spiders. Even as he spoke, the bat pitched in. The Stranger listened closely — the translation brew was still inside it — and moments later turned the bat’s speech into English.

  “He’s very grateful. If not for you, he would have been torn to pieces. Incidentally, his name’s Atara.”

  They were all greatly taken with the bat. Lewis asked, via the Stranger, how his new friend had wound up getting stuck in the web.

  “The mist threw him off,” the Stranger revealed, listening closely to the bat’s rapid cheeping. “By accident he flew into the Forbidden Region. When he realized where he was, he fell into a panic, started flying blindly, and crashed into that web.”

  “What’s the Forbidden Region?” Lewis asked.

  “It’s what the bats call Yellow Swamp,” the Stranger translated. “They’re forbidden to go there because the place is so spooky.”

  “Spooky?” The group stopped eating and looked at one another.

  “The place is haunted,” the Stranger explained. “Not a single creature lives on its shores, yet the bats detect a presence, something different and … deadly. That tree was bad, but the swamp is even worse.”

  “So what are his plans?” Lewis asked, deeming it wise to change the subject.

  “He would love to stay and chat,” the Stranger replied, “but his family must be frantic about him. If you don’t mind, he’d like to go home.”

  Lewis stared into Atara’s eyes. The Stranger didn’t have to translate for them. They were thanking each other from the bottom of their hearts and expressing the hope that they would meet again in the future.

  Squeezing Lewis and cheeping farewell, Atara barrelled into the air. They watched him closely as he circled the oak, then vanished into the mist.

  “We’ve been thinking,” Todrus said, handing Lewis back his belt, “about the situation.”

  “Oh?”

  “He means the Alienus,” Adelaide explained. “For once my brother said something of interest.”

  “In Bombardier 19,” Alfonse pitched in, “Dr. Gong breeds dinosaurs in the Arctic and changes the climate to one the dinosaurs can live in.”

  “That story got me thinking,” Adelaide went on, “how Alienus might need a special place to take shape in.”

  “The right sort of temperature,” Todrus added, “or the right mix of moisture and soil conditions.”

  “You’re saying Yellow Swamp was changed so Alienus could grow in it?” Lewis asked, focusing his eyes on the tree trunk. It explained a lot. Most chemicals only formed if their surroundings were perfect — the air and soil as Todrus had suggested. But why not create these conditions in a lab? And why install a lock when Grumpel’s guards could watch over the substance? And why stash it far away in northern Alberta?

  Lewis was about to raise these questions when a movement caught his eye. He sat up straight and squinted hard. Above the ground, at the beginning of the mist, a spider was gingerly descending the trunk. It was too far off to tell exactly, but it looked even bigger than the mother he had battled.

  “Which way to the swamp?” he asked, reaching for his shoes.

  “It’s that way,” the Stranger replied, pointing to a stretch of rock.

  “Then let’s get moving!” His shoe straps tightened, he jumped to his feet.

  “What’s the rush?” Adelaide asked. “Why not rest?”

  “There’s no time,” Lewis cried, securing his belt. “A spider’s climbing down and others will follow. We’d better go.”

  “There’s a second one, too,” the Stranger said. “They’re both gigantic.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” the Pangettis demanded. Although they seldom agreed on anything, both hated spiders with a passion. As soon as Lewis hurried off, they dashed behind him, with the frogs and Stranger bringing up the rear.

  The going was rough. The stones underfoot were coated with moss and slippery as ice in a number of places. Here and there a boulder intruded, and when it couldn’t be skirted, it had to be climbed. The worst part was the path’s incline. Its thirty-degree slant was hard on the calves and had them all fighting to catch their breath.

  They pushed themselves for a good thirty minutes. At one point the path became noticeably steeper, then, at the end of that stretch, it ended abruptly. If Todrus hadn’t been on hand to grab him, Lewis would have pitched into space.

  “Oooh!” the group cried, staring into a void. This mountain face wasn’t at all like the one they had climbed to escape the murderous forest. Where
as the first had been rather easy to scale, this one presented a vertical drop and rock that betrayed no handholds or ledges. One slip, one misstep and … goodbye forever.

  Lewis surveyed the landscape below. It consisted of a barren plain whose earth was charred and dotted with craters as if it had been the stage for a serious battle. Beyond this blighted and empty expanse, which extended for at least fifteen miles, was yet another sea of fog — smoky white and vaporous. It ran on to the edge of the horizon, and for a moment it brought the Pother to mind, though it didn’t seem as unforgiving.

  The group retreated several feet from the edge.

  “Yellow Swamp is beyond that fog,” the Stranger announced.

  “That’s just our luck,” Alfonse said bitterly. “Our destination is straight ahead, yet the face here is impassable.”

  “It certainly is,” Gibiwink agreed. He was dizzy just from looking over the cliff.

  “It could be worse,” Todrus commented. “We’ll return to the easy side, make our way down, then circle the mountain.”

  “That’s not an option,” Lewis said tersely. “We have to climb here.”

  “He’s right. Look!” Adelaide yelled, her face ashen.

  They glanced back. Three hundred yards away, and advancing quickly, was a wave — no, an ocean — of spiders. They easily numbered in the thousands and thousands. Although these arachnids were still a distance off, it was clear that some of them were truly monstrous, much larger than the one Lewis had fought in the tree.

  Everyone’s mouth hung open in shock.

  “What should we do?” Gibiwink whimpered.

  “How can we escape an army like that?” Alfonse murmured, trying to control his shaking hands.

  To increase the travellers’ panic, the spiders were producing a nerve-shattering sound. It was like the hissing of the mother spider Lewis had fought in the tree — only a million times louder.

  The one piece of luck was that these spiders were slow. With the exception of the ones Lewis had battled earlier, these creatures had been hibernating half an hour before. Robbed of her prey, the mother had clambered about the tree and roused her neighbours from their deep winter sleep. That meant these new spiders were still a bit woozy.