Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 7
Page 4
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From Crush’s vantage point, the sky stretched out in front of him to an endless horizon, and when he turned his head to look down, the mountainside had disappeared leaving only the treetops of the forest below. A tremendous pressure was crushing his midsection, and he found it hard to breathe as the talons of the eagle clamped down on him tightly. He had been in a number of tight corners in the past, but this one had him scared. Eagles had been known to drop their prey from great heights, not by accident, but as a means of killing and tenderizing the meat.
“I’m not on the menu tonight,” Crush yelled as he drove the claws of his fingertips deep into the foot of the bird. The talons released, and his midsection flopped downward as he held onto the upper section of one foot. The bird lifted its head in mid-flight and shifted its feet forward in an effort to fling him off in mid-air. That was when Crush saw Boulder holding onto the tail feathers below him.
“Hey! How’d you do that?” he cried out to the elemental, knowing that he probably could not hear him over the sound of the wind. Understandably, no answer came from Boulder, as he was preoccupied with holding on for his life by the tail feathers. The eagle was undeterred by Crush and the unexpected passenger, and the winged creature began flapping its wings in long strokes to increase its air speed as it flew over the forest. Faster and faster it flew, and Crush dug his claws in tighter in an effort to hang on. Outward they flew toward Scalus Mountain, and the trees of the forest below passed by in a blur, but Crush and Boulder would not let go of the speeding eagle. They were quickly approaching the river when the bird began to make a wide turn, banking to one side as it glided over the edge of the forest. The extreme force of the turn caused Crush’s legs and feet to point outward almost horizontally with the ground below, yet Crush refused to let go of the eagle’s feet. Within seconds they had changed direction by one hundred eighty degrees, and when the flight path straightened out again, they were headed back to the mountain from which they had come. The feathery wings began the long flaps once again, and the eagle’s air speed grew faster and faster. Soon Crush and Boulder were stretched out beneath the bird, hanging on with all of their might as the bird cruised onward toward the mountain as fast as it could possibly go. Despite the adversity, they dangled from the raptor and tormented it as the treetops passed by below in a blur.
Many minutes ticked by, and Crush’s hands began to cramp from the strain of gripping the foot of the bird. He could not let go and expect to survive, yet his hands had become numb from the pain. If he was going to survive this bird’s attack, he would have to get into a better position. Swinging his feet forward to rest on the talons for a moment, Crush pulled one hand free and reached up to grab the bird’s thigh with his claw.
Anxiously aware of the claw in its thigh, the eagle turned its head down and tried to snip him into two pieces with its razor sharp beak. Curled under into a ball, the eagle lost its flight control and began to plummet in a death spiral towards the side of the mountain. Crush used this opportunity to get a hand around a feather that protruded out along the bird’s side and then to lift himself toward the bird’s back. As he reached for another handful of feathers, Crush gradually climbed his way from the feet, all the way up onto the bird’s back, where he could then use both arms and legs to hold on tight to the speeding bird.
“If I had a saddle, I would be set,” he thought as he rode the eagle like a cowboy at a rodeo. The bird came out of the dive and quickly gained altitude in the sky. Angling upward, it flew higher and higher toward the clouds above. Crush pressed himself closer to the skin of the bird, and he rested his face in the feathers while the bird’s shoulder muscles rippled forward and backward in the symphony of flight. As his head moved in and out with the flexing of the wings, Crush glimpsed Boulder still hanging onto the tail feathers below, and he marveled at the strength of the bird to carry such a solid load so high into the cover of the clouds. The eagle pierced the puffy mist and struggled skyward until the air temperature had dropped dangerously low, and Crush felt his lips and fingertips freeze.
In the open sky above the clouds, the eagle twisted about and flicked its tail skyward in a spin, and Crush and Boulder held on as the bird spun once like a ball out of control. With a second spin Boulder shot upward into the sky and was airborne, free but still gripping a feather in his fist.
Emancipated from its burden, the eagle flapped its wings with a torrent of activity in an effort to shake loose the bit of human food that had become a rodeo rider. With a squawk of anger the eagle whipped its head around to bite Crush, but with the grace of a cat, he managed to dodge the slapping maw each time it closed. Before the eagle could free itself of its unwanted rider and wait for Crush to strike the ground, Boulder fell from the sky, landed squarely on the neck of the bird, and tightened his grip as they all went into a free-fall toward the mountain below.
“Can you guide it?!” Crush called out to Boulder over the sound of the gushing wind. The man of stone leaned back to answer the question and brought the head of the screeching bird back as he went. They were still plummeting toward the ground, but the eagle was now spread out horizontal like a skydiver gliding on the currents of the wind.
“The bird does us no good if it does not flap its wings!” Boulder replied. “Get the wings going!” he urged. Crush pushed the feathers aside with his hands to reveal a bald spot on the avian skin, and then struck the exposed skin on the back of the bird with a set of claws from his fingertips. Digging in deep, blood flowed from the pierced skin and with a nervous jolt of excitement, the eagle threw out its wings in irritation. The renewed airflow above the outstretched wings created the lift necessary for the eagle to glide in a circular motion above the mountaintop. For a brief moment, Crush imagined that the dire situation had turned a corner and was now within their control.
As things go with an active imagination, reality quickly set in, and the eagle let out a shrill squawk as it glided ever slower toward the mountaintop below. Scanning the horizon, Crush caught sight of another flying object approaching in the distance. As he tried to focus his eyes during the mild spinning motion of the eagle ride, Crush actively turned his head to watch as flapping wings came into focus on the oncoming object. Crush then realized with dread that another eagle was approaching.
“Boulder!! Look!!” Crush shouted as he pulled out one claw from the bird’s skin and pointed at the second eagle in the distance. Boulder acknowledged Crush’s concern with a simple nod, and he leaned forward on the eagle’s head in an effort to angle it downward. Slowly the eagle descended toward the rocky top surface of the mountain. Making a quick assessment of their descent and comparing the speed of the approaching adversary, Crush estimated that the oncoming eagle would intercept them before they could attempt a landing on the mountaintop below. Down, down, down they drifted as the looming predator drew closer, and with no possible escape available to them, Crush and Boulder strengthened their grips on the bird as they waited for the imminent strike to arrive. Crush made final eye contact with the approaching bird of doom, and he glimpsed the grim determination on the face of the advancing eagle. The oncoming collision between the birds had to be stopped, or their fate would be sealed.
With only an instant left to act, Crush extended his claws and leaped fearlessly from one eagle to the head of the other speeding predator. With the swipe of one claw, he made solid contact, scratching an exposed eye while catching the closing eyelid with the other claw. The eagle’s head twisted around with the force of the blow, and Crush snatched the feathers of its neck, hanging on for another instant. He then wrapped his legs around the thick neck of the bird and waited for it to swing back around in midair for a second pass at Boulder. To Crush’s surprise, the attacking bird never even made an attempt to strike Boulder on the other eagle. Instead, the giant eagle went into a dive toward the mountaintop, and Crush clutched tightly to the bird’s neck in fear. Not realizing the damage he was doing,
Crush was unaware that the tight hold on the bird’s neck was incapacitating the blood supply to the bird’s brain and causing the eagle to become light headed. By the time he did realize his mistake, it was too late. The eagle was unconscious and headed straight down like a missile toward a flat area of the mountaintop below. Crush released his hold just in time for the bird to open its one good eye and see the bare rock slam into its beak at a harsh angle.
Crush leaped backward and up in order to slow his momentum, rolling into a ball in the air as the eagle wrecked head-on with the hard, flat surface of the mountain. Tail feathers-over-beak the eagle rolled along the surface and skidded over the edge of the rock, free falling down the cliff face to the forest below. Crush landed next, and the momentum rolled him into a fuzzy ball of fur that was headed directly for the cliff. When he reached out with his claws to get control, his fingers dragged along the ground, and several fingernails were ripped off with the exertion needed to stop his momentum. As he continued to slide to certain death, Crush reached out desperately to snatch a leftover root