Beyond the Deepwoods (6 page)

‘YEAH!’ Twig roared and punched the air. ‘I've actually been and gone and done it! The hover worm is dead.’

As he spoke, dragon's smoke billowed from his mouth. The night had become bitter with an icy north wind. Yet Twig was not cold. Far from it. A glow of pride and excitement warmed his whole body.

‘Hel’ me,’ came a voice from behind him. It sounded strange – as though Gristle was talking while eating.

‘It's OK,’ said Twig as he pulled himself to his feet. I …
GRISTLE
!’ he screamed.

The slaughterer was all but unrecognizable. Before
Twig's battle with the hover worm, Gristle's leg had been swollen. Now his entire body had swelled up. He looked like a huge dark red ball.

‘Ta’ me home,’ he mumbled unhappily.

‘But I don't know where your home is,’ said Twig.

‘I'll ta’ you,’ said Gristle. ‘Lif’ me u’. I'll give you birectio's.’

Twig bent down and gathered the slaughterer up in his arms. He was surprisingly light.

Twig started walking. ‘Le’,’ said Gristle a while later, followed by, ‘Le’ agai’. Ri’. Strai’ o’.’ As Gristle continued to swell, even the simplest words became impossible. In
the end, he had to press his podgy hands against Twig's shoulders to indicate which way to go.

If Twig had been going in circles before, he certainly wasn't now. He was being steered towards somewhere new.

‘
WOBBLOB!
’ Gristle shouted. ‘
BLOBBERWOBBER!
’

‘What?’ said Twig sharply. But, even as he spoke, he realized what was happening. Gristle's body, which had been light when he'd picked it up, was now
less
than weightless. The massive, bulging mass was on the point of floating up and away.

He tried his best to hold on round Gristle's waist – at least, the place where his waist had once been – but it was impossible. It was like holding a sackful of water; the difference being that this particular sack was trying to fall
upwards
. If he let go, Gristle would disappear into the sky.

Twig wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he wedged the inflated boy between two branches, taking care to choose a tree without thorns. He didn't want Gristle to burst. He pulled the rope Spelda had given him from his shoulder, tied one end to Gristle's leg, and the other round his own waist – and set off once more.

It wasn't long before Twig was in difficulty again. With each step, the upward pull grew stronger. It became more and more difficult to remain on the ground. He clutched hold of the branches of bushes he passed, to keep himself anchored. But it was no good. The slaughterer was simply too buoyant.

All at once, Twig's legs were dragged off the ground,
his hands lost their grip on the branches, and he and Gristle floated up into the air.

Up and up, they went, into the icy night and towards open sky. Twig tore in vain at the knotted rope around his waist. It wouldn't budge. He stared down at the fast receding ground and, as he did so, something occurred to him – something awful.

Gristle would be missed. His family and friends would come looking for him when he didn't return. Twig, on the other hand, had done what woodtrolls never did. He had strayed from the path. No-one would come looking for him.

· CHAPTER THREE ·
T
HE
S
LAUGHTERERS

A
s Twig continued to rise up through the cold, dark air, the rope dug painfully into the bottom of his ribs. He gasped for breath and, as he did so, a curious whiff of acrid smoke filled his head. It was a mixture of wood smoke, leather and a pungent smell that Twig couldn't identify. Above him, Gristle grunted urgently.

‘Are we near your village?’ Twig asked.

Gristle grunted again, more insistently this time. Suddenly, between the leaves, Twig caught sight of flickering flames and blood-red smoke. There was a fire, not twenty paces away.

‘Help!’ Twig bellowed. ‘
HELP US!
’

Almost at once, the ground below him was swarming with the blood-red slaughterers, each carrying a flaming torch.

‘
UP HERE!
’ Twig shrieked.

The slaughterers raised their heads. One of them pointed. Then, without a word being spoken, they slipped into action. Calm and methodical, they removed ropes which had been hanging round their shoulders, and made slipknots at one end. Then, with the same unhurried sense of purpose, they began tossing the makeshift lassos up into the air.

Twig moaned as the ropes tumbled back through the air beneath him. He spread his legs wide and held his feet out, hooked and rigid. The slaughterers tried again, but with Gristle pulling him still higher, their task was getting more difficult by the second.

‘Come on,’ Twig muttered impatiently, as the slaughterers tried again and again to lasso one of his feet. Above him, he heard muffled cries as Gristle's inflated body crashed through the uppermost branches. The next instant, Twig's own head plunged into the dense green canopy. The bruised leaves gave off a lush earthy smell.

What will it look like? Twig found himself wondering.
Above
the Deepwoods. In the realm of the sky pirates.

Before he had a chance to find out, he felt something land on his hooked foot and tighten around his ankle. One of the slaughterers’ ropes had found its target at last. There was a strong tug on his leg, then another and another. The leaves slapped back into his face, and the earthy smell grew stronger.

All at once, he saw the ground way down below him – and his foot with the loop of rope around his ankle. Twenty or so of the slaughterers had a hold of the other end. Slowly, jerkily, they were pulling the rope in.

When Twig's feet finally touched the ground, the slaughterers immediately turned their attention to Gristle. Working in utter silence, they slipped their ropes around his arms and legs, and took the strain. Then, one of them pulled out his knife and sliced through the rope which was still tied round Twig's chest. And Twig was
free. He bent double and breathed in deeply, gratefully.

‘Thank you,’ he wheezed. ‘I don't think I could have lasted much longer. I…’ He looked up. With the immense bulk of Gristle tethered above them, the whole group of slaughterers was trotting back to the village. Twig had been left on his own. What was more, it was beginning to snow.

‘Thanks a lot,’ he snorted.

‘They're worried, is all,’ came a voice from behind him. Twig looked round. A slaughterer girl was standing there, her face lit up by the flickering light of her flaming torch. She touched her forehead, and smiled. Twig smiled back.

‘I'm Sinew,’ she said. ‘Gristle's my brother. He's been missing for three nights.’

‘Do you think he'll be all right?’ asked Twig.

‘As long as they get an antidote inside him before he explodes,’ she said.

‘Explodes!’ cried Twig, trying not to imagine what would have happened if they
had
soared up into the sky.

Sinew nodded. ‘The venom turns to hot air. And there's only so much hot air a person can take,’ she added grimly. Behind her, came the sound of a gong being banged. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘You look hungry. Lunch is about to be served.’

‘Lunch?’ said Twig. ‘But it's the middle of the night.’

‘Of course,’ said Sinew, puzzled. ‘I suppose you eat lunch in the middle of the
day
,’ she said, and laughed.

‘Well, yes,’ said Twig. ‘Actually, we do.’

Sinew shook her head. ‘You're strange!’ she said.

‘No,’ Twig chuckled as he followed her through the trees. ‘I'm Twig!’

As the village opened up in front of him, Twig stopped and stared. It was all so very different from his own village. The slaughterers lived in squat huts, rather than tree cabins. And whereas the woodtroll cabins were all tiled with lufwood for buoyancy, the slaughterers had constructed their huts with dense leadwood which anchored them firmly to the ground. There were no doors to their dwellings, only thick hammelhornskin curtains, designed to keep out draughts, not neighbours.

Sinew led Twig towards the fire he had first glimpsed through the overhead branches. It was huge and hot, burning on a raised circular stone platform in the very centre of the village. Twig looked behind him in amazement. Although, beyond the village, the snow was falling thicker than ever, none fell inside. The dome of warmth from the blazing fire was so intense that it melted the snow away to nothing before it could ever land.

Four long trestle tables, set for lunch, formed a square around the fire. ‘Sit anywhere,’ said Sinew, as she plonked herself down.

Twig sat beside her and stared ahead at the roaring flames. Although the fire was burning fiercely, each and every log remained on the ground.

‘What are you thinking?’ he heard Sinew say.

Twig sighed. ‘Where I come from,’ he said, ‘we burn buoyant wood – lufwood, lullabee, you know. It's all right, but you have to use a stove. I've … I've never seen a fire outside like this.’

Sinew looked concerned. ‘Would you rather go in?’

‘No!’ said Twig. ‘That's not what I meant. This is nice. At home – well, where I was brought up – everyone disappears inside their cabins when it's cold. It can be very lonely when the weather's bad.’ Twig didn't add that it was pretty lonely for him the rest of the time, too.