Victims of Nimbo (4 page)

“I … think so.” He blinked and looked at the ropes that held him in the crotch of the tree. Then he smiled faintly and said, “I have never fallen out of a tree in my life.”

“I know, but I was afraid you might. You were delirious and tossing around.”

“Well, untie me. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Quickly Sarah unfastened the ropes, then saw that Abbey was now loose also. “Are you all right, Abbey?”

“I’m sore as a boil.” Abbey groaned. She tried to move her arms and legs and winced. “Sleeping in a tree is not what I like to do the most.”

Teanor laughed. “You two just don’t know much about trees,” he said.

Sarah saw that he was moving carefully and his arm was swollen. Nevertheless, he made it safely to the ground. The girls lowered their knapsacks, then followed.

Teanor looked about worriedly and said, “This is the ancient forest. It’s not a good place.”

When Sarah glanced around, she saw a twisting trail. “Is that the way we go?” she asked.

“Yes. That trail will lead us to my home.”

“Let’s have something to eat first. I’m starving,” Abbey said.

The other two agreed, and they ate a cold breakfast. Then they started out.

Teanor did not keep as fast a pace as the day before, and Sarah knew that he was not yet over the effects of the poison dart. He did not complain, however. Often he glanced around warily.

“You’d better keep that bow and your swords handy,” he said. “There are many strange beasts that roam in these woods.”

“I guess we’re used to that,” Sarah said. “We’ve seen everything from saber-toothed tigers to snake people in NuWorld.”

The sun rose higher, and the way grew even more difficult. Brambles and briars clawed at their clothing, tearing rents in them and scratching their hands as they attempted to pull them away.

Finally they took a break and sat down beside a brook. The girls washed their faces, and both drank from the small, clear stream, but their guide was watching the woods.

“That was good,” Sarah said, drying her face with a handkerchief. “I’d like to take a swim. I’m so hot and sweaty and dirty.”

Abbey was pulling at her hair. She said, “Yuck! My hair is filthy!”

“If you’d cut it off as our females do,” Teanor said, “it wouldn’t be so much trouble.”

“Cut my hair off!” Abbey was indignant. “I’ll not do any such thing.”

But Sarah was thinking of more important things than a shampoo for Abbey’s hair. “Do you think the
boys will be able to follow your map?” she asked Teanor. “This is a twisted sort of trail.”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “It would have been far better if they had been back from their hunt and I could have led them. But then
you
insisted on coming.”

Sarah knew that the young man was upset with her. As a matter of fact, she was upset with herself, but it was too late now to do anything about what they had done. “They are good woodsmen,” she said brightly. “I’m sure they’ll find us.”

Teanor started to get up. “We’d better get going,” he said. “We don’t have—” He broke off suddenly, then yelled, “Look out! It’s a scorpion!”

“A scorpion?” Sarah had in mind one of the small NuWorld scorpions that she had seen before. They were no more than a few inches across, and she said, “Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of scorpions.”

At that moment Abbey screamed and scrambled to her feet.
“Sarah!”
she cried and began fumbling for her sword.

Sarah looked up to see one of the most frightening sights she had ever seen. It was a scorpion all right, but it was a monstrous one, the size of a young horse.

“Get out of here!” Teanor cried. He grabbed for his staff to defend them, but Sarah saw that such a fight would be hopeless.

“Run! I’ll stop him!” she cried. She seized her bow and quickly notched an arrow. She drew back the string, aware that she would have only one shot, and she was not certain that one arrow would stop this beast.

The scorpion was much like the smaller ones that she had seen, except that it had a spotted body and a snakelike head. It scrambled along on six legs. A segmented
tail curved over the creature’s body, and at the tip of it a long stinger was poised. The poison from such a monster would be tremendous.

Sarah breathed a cry to Goél for his help and drew back the bow. As the terrible creature scuttled toward her with its stinger ready, she loosed the arrow.

It struck the scorpion exactly in the center of its open mouth.

The momentum of the beast carried it forward a few steps until it was only a few feet away from Sarah. She had no time to move. She knew if the creature fell on her, she would be crushed. With a burst of desperation she threw herself to one side, and the scorpion’s stinger descended right where she had stood.

“Sarah, are you all right?” Abbey cried.

“Y-yes, I’m all right,” Sarah said, and she scrambled to her feet. The beast had fallen to one side, and its beady eyes had already lost their fierce red light.

Teanor walked up and looked silently at the scorpion. He did not speak for a moment, but then he looked at Sarah seemingly with new respect. “So even a girl can fight,” he muttered.

But Abbey cried, “That was a wonderful shot, Sarah! If you hadn’t gotten him right in the head, he would have killed you.”

“I think I had a little help with that one. Thank you, Goél,” Sarah said. She found that her hands were shaking, but she concealed that from the other two. “I hope there are no more like this around.”

“There are a lot more of them,” Teanor said worriedly. “And the quicker we get out of here the better. Now let us go.”

He led the way again, along a path that twisted like a snake. The attack of the scorpion had driven away all
thoughts of rest, and they traveled as hard as they could.

At noon they stopped for a brief break. With her bow, Sarah had brought down a tiny deerlike creature, which they quickly dressed and cooked over a small fire. The meat seemed to put new life into them all.

Unexpectedly, Teanor suddenly said, “You are a wonderful shot with that bow. None of our people have bows.”

“How do you fight your enemies, then?”

“We really don’t. We have no enemies except the Earth Dwellers. And they can’t get at us.”

Sarah considered that. Then she sat looking up at the trees that towered overhead. “These are the biggest trees I’ve ever seen,” she said.

He looked at her with surprise in his eyes. “These! Why, these are just saplings!”

“Saplings?” Abbey cried. “What are you talking about?”

“These are not big trees,” he protested. “Truly, don’t you have trees this big in your world?”

“Back in OldWorld, the biggest trees were the sequoias, and these are much bigger than they were.”

Teanor just shook his head. “I would not want to live in a world that had spindly little trees like this.”

The two girls looked at each other.

Sarah said, “Then I’m anxious to see your big trees, if these are small ones.”

They began their journey again and traveled hard. They stopped only once more, about midafternoon, and Sarah looked about her, surprised. The trees here indeed were bigger! They rose to the sky like towers.

Teanor saw her looking up. “Well,” he said with satisfaction. “Now you’re seeing something like a tree.”

“How much farther is your home?” Abbey asked. “I’m exhausted.”

“It’s not far. We’ll be there in an hour if we move fast.”

As they trekked through the vast forest, Sarah was more and more astonished. The trees rose hundreds of feet over their heads. And there were no branches for at least fifty feet in the air. She once stopped long enough to touch one and found that the bark was not rough and scaly but smooth and almost moist.

“It would be hard to climb one of these,” she murmured, looking upward.

Teanor laughed. “Difficult indeed! And we are safe now, unless we run into a band of wandering Earth Dwellers.”

“Do they live close to here?”

“It’s quite a distance to their village, but they come here to hunt the deer and other animals for food. That’s how my people get captured.”

The ground was level now and covered with fine mosslike grass. Sunshine filtered through the foliage far overhead, and there was a constant murmuring as the wind rustled through the leaves.

At last Teanor stopped. He took a deep breath, then turned to the girls and smiled. “Well,” he said. “This is my home.”

Sarah looked about them and saw nothing but the trunks of the enormous trees. “Where is the village?” she asked.

Teanor laughed again, then pointed upward. “There,” he said.

Both girls gazed up into the tree. Sarah could see nothing except foliage. Far above them, the first branches grew straight out. The branches were as large as the
trunks of the OldWorld trees she was accustomed to seeing. They spread wide, making a kind of canopy, so that she could not see the branches above.

“Up there?” Sarah asked.

“Yes.”

“You live in a village in the
trees?”
Abbey gasped.

“That’s why they call us the Cloud People. Sometimes, when the weather is right, the clouds cover the tops of the trees, and we actually live in the clouds. Sometimes above them.”

“But how do you get up there?” Sarah asked.

“Like this.” He put two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle that hurt her ears. It was some sort of a signal, for suddenly a stout looking vine descended from somewhere in the foliage above.

“This is the way we get up,” he said. He scrambled up the vine as agile as any monkey Sarah had ever seen. But he stopped twenty feet up and smiled down at them. “Well, come on. Are you going to stay there all day?”

“But—but we can’t climb a vine like that!” Sarah said.

“No. I didn’t think you could.” Hanging on easily by one hand, he whistled again and then slid back down to the ground. “For old people and babies we have to make other arrangements. And for girls too, it seems. Although our own females can climb the vines almost as well as men.”

The two girls kept looking upward, and Sarah saw something descending. It came down in fits and jerks, and when it finally came completely into her vision, she exclaimed, “Why, it’s a basket!”

There were two of them, each about the size of a large barrel back in OldWorld. Vines were attached to them, and they landed on the ground with a thump.

“There you are, Sarah. This one’s for you,” Teanor said. “And you get into that one, Abbey.”

“You mean they’re going to pull us up?”

“There’s no other way to get there, and you can’t stay here!”

At once Abbey, who had little fear of heights, jumped into her basket. “Get in, Sarah. It’s just like an elevator.”

Sarah swallowed hard and said, “All right. I suppose I’ll have to.”

“You’re afraid of going up high?” Teanor asked with astonishment. “I never knew anybody who was afraid of heights.”

“I’m not afraid. I’m just careful,” Sarah said defiantly. Slowly she put herself into the basket and held onto the edge of it until her knuckles turned white. “All right,” she whispered. “I guess I’m ready.”

Teanor whistled another signal, somewhat different from the others, and Sarah gave a short cry as her basket suddenly lurched. Then it started rising, and she closed her eyes.

Abbey, however, seemed delighted. “Look, Sarah!” she cried. “You’re missing it all!”

Sarah cautiously opened her eyes and looked. The ground seemed to be very far below them. Her basket kept rising steadily, although rather jerkily. She watched the ground slowly fall away from her. But she hung on and glanced upward.

Teanor was climbing a vine above them, as easily as he had moved along the ground. The muscles in his back and arms were well developed. He smiled down at her and then waited until her basket reached his level. “So how do you like it, Sarah?”

“It’s—it’s fine,” she managed to say. She did not
want to show fear, and she forced herself to look down again. It was indeed a beautiful sight, with the majestic trees rising everywhere and the green ground underneath.

“Look above you, Sarah!” Abbey suddenly yelled.

Sarah turned her head upward and saw what seemed to be a platform built on a huge limb extending outward from the trunk. There were large square openings here and there in it, and she saw that the vine that pulled her basket disappeared into one of them. Not knowing what to expect, she held onto the side of the basket as it passed through one opening at the same time Abbey’s basket was drawn up through another.

A small group of people was gathered on the platform, and two men seized Sarah’s basket and set it down with a thump.

Teanor appeared suddenly. He gave himself a flip off his vine and landed on the very edge. Sarah gasped. She knew it was hundreds of feet to the ground, but he seemed to have no fear at all.

Teanor, however, saw the alarm in her eyes. “It’s all right, Sarah,” he said. “You’re in my home now. Welcome to the land of the Cloud People!”

S
arah and Abbey stood on the tree platform. It was made of small saplings fastened together with vines. For a moment Sarah became almost ill, for, in spite of the size of the trees, she could feel the platform swaying under her. A brisk breeze rustled through the glossy green leaves that formed the canopy overhead. Looking up, she could see blue sky. Indeed, the clouds seemed very close, white and fleecy.