Beyond the Deepwoods (17 page)

With both hands gripping tightly to the branch by his head, and his left foot, leg bent at the knee, resting in a knothole in the trunk, Twig eased himself down. Droplets of cold sweat beaded his brow as his right foot probed the darkness for somewhere to stand.

Lower and lower he stretched. His arms ached. His
left leg felt as though it was about to be torn from its socket. Twig was on the point of giving up when, all at once, the very tip of his big toe found what it had been looking for: the next branch down.

‘At last,’ Twig whispered.

He relaxed his elbows, released his toegrip in the knothole and swung down till both feet landed on the branch. His toes sank deep into something soft and fluffy.

‘No!’ he yelped, and recoiled in horror.

There was something on the branch. An animal of some kind. Perhaps the wig-wigs were able to climb trees after all.

Kicking out blindly, Twig tried his best to pull himself back up to the safety of the branch above his head. But it was no use. He was tired. He heaved himself up, only to find his arms were too weak to take him quite far enough. His hands were beginning to lose their grip.

Suddenly, the moon burst brightly through the forest canopy. It sent flickering silver darts shooting down between the windblown leaves. Kite-shaped patterns of light played on the tree trunk, on the suspended body of Twig, and on the forest floor, far, far below him.

Twig felt his sharp chin pressing hard against his chest as he strained to see directly beneath him. His eyes confirmed what his toes had told him. There was something –
two somethings
– on the rough bark. They were clinging to the branch like the furry paws of some great beast which was climbing up to get him.

Tentatively, Twig lowered his legs and prodded them
with his toes. They were cold. They did not move.

Twig eased himself lower onto the broad branch and crouched quickly down. Close up, the two objects were not furry at all. They looked more like two balls of gossamer thread that had been wound round and round the branch. Twig inspected beneath the branch. His body quivered with excitement.

There, suspended from a silken rope, was a cocoon. Now Twig had seen cocoons before. Taghair slept in one, and he had been present in the lullabee grove when the caterbird had hatched. He had never, however, been so near to one. The long pendulous object was larger, and far more beautiful, than he had ever imagined.

‘Amazing,’ he whispered.

Woven from the finest filaments of thread, the cocoon looked as if it had been spun from sugar. It was broad and bulbous, and shaped like a giant woodpear which, as it swayed to and fro in the wind, glistened in the moonlight.

Twig reached down under the branch and grasped the silken rope. Then, taking care not to slip in his eagerness, he slid over the edge and lowered himself, hand over hand, until he was sitting astride the cocoon itself.

It felt like nothing Twig had ever felt before: soft to the touch – impossibly soft – but firm enough to hold its shape. And as Twig plunged his fingers into the thick silky wadding, a sweet and spicy fragrance rose up all around him.

A sudden gust of wind sent the cocoon twisting round. Above him, the brittle branches whistled and
cracked. Twig gasped and clutched hold of the rope. He looked down giddily at the dappled forest floor far below him. Something was there, scratching about noisily in the dead leaves. He could neither go up, nor down.

‘But then I don't need to,’ Twig said to himself. ‘I can spend the night in the caterbird cocoon.’ And as he spoke the words, his entire body tingled. He remembered the caterbird's words:
Taghair sleeps in our cocoons and dreams our dreams
. ‘Perhaps,’ Twig whispered excitedly, ‘I, too, might dream their dreams.’

Mind made up, Twig twisted himself round until he was facing the cocoon. His nose pressed against the springy down. The sweet, spicy smell grew more intense and, as he lowered himself still further, the silken cocoon
caressed his cheek. Finally, his feet came to rest on the matted rim, where the emerging caterbird had rolled back the fabric of the cocoon.

‘Ready, steady … go!’ said Twig.

He let go of the rope and dropped inside. The cocoon swung wildly for an instant. Twig closed his eyes, petrified that the rope would not hold. The swaying stopped. He opened his eyes again.

It was warm inside the cocoon – warm and dark and reassuring. Twig's heart ceased its frantic pounding. He breathed deeply of the aromatic perfume and was overwhelmed by a feeling of well-being. Nothing could hurt him now.

Twig curled himself up into a ball, knees bent and one arm folded beneath his head, and sank down into the padded softness. It was like being immersed in warm, scented oil. He felt snug, he felt safe and secure, he felt sleepy. His tired limbs grew heavy. His eyelids slowly closed.

‘Oh, banderbear,’ he whispered drowsily. ‘Of all the trees you could have chosen, thank Sky you placed me in a lullabee tree.’

And, as the wind rocked the wonderful cocoon gently to and fro, to and fro, to and fro, Twig drifted off to sleep.

*

By the middle of the night, the clouds had all disappeared, carried away on winds, which had themselves now dropped. The moon was once again low in the sky. Far away in the distance, a sky ship, sails all hoisted to catch the sluggish air, sailed across the moonlit night.

The leafy surface of the Deepwoods canopy sparkled like water under the moon's glow. All at once a shadow passed across it: the shadow of a flying creature which glided low over the top of the forest.

It had broad and powerful black leathery wings, scalloped at the back and tipped with vicious claws. The very air seemed to tremble as the wings flapped, ponderous yet purposeful, across the indigo sky. The creature's head was small, scaly and where the mouth should have been a long tubular snout stuck out. It slurped and snuffled, and a foul-smelling vapour puffed into the air with every wing-beat.

Little light from the sinking moon penetrated the forest now, but the creature was not deterred. Raised brassy-yellow eyes cast two wide beams of light which scoured the shadowy depths. Round and around it flew, back and forth. It would not give up until it found what it had come for.

Suddenly its luminous eyes locked on to something hanging from the branch of a tall turquoise lullabee: something large and rounded and glistening. The creature let out a piercing squawk, folded its wings and crashed down through the forest canopy. Then, with its
strong stubby legs extended, it landed heavily on the branch of the tree and hunkered down. It cocked its head to one side and listened.

The sound of gentle breathing floated up towards it. It sniffed at the air and its whole body trembled with anticipation. It took a step forward. Then another. And another.

Designed for flight, the creature walked slowly, clumsily, gripping hold with one clawed foot before releasing the next. It walked right round the massive branch until it was hanging upside down.

With its talons digging into the rough bark above it, the creature's head was level with the opening to the cocoon. It poked inside it and prodded around with the bony tip of its long, hollow snout. It trembled again, more violently than before, and from deep down inside its body came a gurgling sound. Its stomach convulsed and a stream of bilious liquid spurted out of the end of its snout. Then it withdrew.

The yellow-green liquid fizzed where it landed and gave off twists of vapour. Twig screwed up his nose, but did not wake. In his dreams he was lying in a meadow beside a babbling, crystal-clear brook. Crimson poppies swayed back and forwards, filling the air with a smell so sweet it left him breathless.

Talons still firmly gripping the branch, the creature turned its attention to the cocoon itself. Filament by filament, it teased apart the matted clumps of wadding around the opening with the claws on its wings. It drew them silently across the hole. Quickly, the opening was closed.

Twig's eyelids fluttered. He was in a cavernous hallway now, lined with diamonds and emeralds which sparkled like a million eyes.

The creature flapped its wings and seized the branch in its wing-claws. It let go with its feet and then, suspended in mid-air, manoeuvred itself along the branch until its body was directly over the top of the cocoon. It splayed its legs and began sucking in air noisily. As it did so, its stomach inflated and the scales at the base of its abdomen stood up on end. Beneath each one was a rubbery pink duct which, as the creature continued to gulp at the air, slowly opened up.

All at once it grunted, and a sharp spasm juddered through its body. From the ducts, powerful jets of a sticky black substance squirted down onto the cocoon.

‘Mffll-bnn,’ Twig mumbled in his sleep. ‘Mmmsh…’

The glutinous tar-like liquid soaked in and slid down over the cocoon in all directions, soon covering it completely.
When it set, the cocoon became an impenetrable prison.

With a reedy squawk of triumph, the creature seized the pod it had made in its taloned feet, sliced through the silken rope with one of its wing-claws, and soared off into the night. Silhouetted against the violet sky, the creature's huge wings beat up and down; below it the deadly pod swayed back and forwards, back and forwards.

Twig was floating on a raft in the middle of a sapphire sea. The sun, warm and yellow, beat down on his face as he bobbed along over the waves. All of a sudden, a ridge of black clouds cut out the light. The sea grew rougher, and rougher still.

Twig snapped his eyes open. He stared round him wildly. It was black. Pitch black. He lay there, motionless, unable to make sense of what was happening. His eyes refused to grow accustomed to the dancing darkness.
There was no light. Not a glimmer. A bolt of terror zinged in his head and shot down his spine.

‘What's going on?’ he screamed. ‘Where's the opening?’

Struggling round to a crouching position, Twig felt about the surrounding casing with trembling fingers. It was hard to the touch. It echoed when knocked –
boom, boom, boom
– impervious to his pounding fists.

‘Let me out,’ he screamed. ‘LET ME OUT!’

The rotsucker screeched and lurched to one side as the sudden movement inside the pod knocked it off balance. It beat its wings powerfully and gripped the matt black ridges all the more firmly in its talons. It was used to its quarry struggling to escape. The frantic jerks and jolts would soon subside. They always did.