The young ones had set up targets in the corner of the cave. They were dead creature skins, hanging from the ceiling by Gibben hair. Tret shot the streams in front of them at an angle, so fast that the skins blew in the wind and were thrust back. He grinned as he did it, and Evan imagined the real things, hissing and screaming as they were tossed backward, falling like bricks into the water.
Evan was determined to learn it. Before the end of the night, he was loading almost as well as Jordan, and the next night he made his first good shots. He knew he was learning fast, but it was not fast enough. He needed to learn more before it was too late. He had to find his way home.
His mother's face stayed in his mind, and over it, the flap, flap, flapping of the Vits. He didn't hear Foul's voice again, but he didn't need it to remind him.
Jordan was obviously as eager as Evan to go, although for him it seemed to be fun and exciting.
“Tomorrow!” Jordan whispered to Evan when they had a break.
“I think so too,” said Evan.
Tret had been showing his fangs, eagerly sliding around all night, unable to keep still. And sure enough, the next evening Tret and the other young ones woke Evan and Jordan early, smiling with their fangs out.
T
HE NEW ONES NERVOUSLY FIDDLED
with their packs, checking and rechecking to make sure they were secure on their backs and practicing their load technique. Evan was so nervous, he missed the first few times he tried, but when Tret laughed and told him to relax, Evan steadied himself and was able to hit the spot again.
“Not to disappoint you,” said Tret, “but it's unlikely that we'll run across any Vits tonight. We're not going out too far today. But it's always possible, so don't let your guard down.”
Jordan gripped his rod and gave a fang-filled grin.
Evan could not share his excitement. He actually knew one. What would the Vits think if they knew he had a weapon? Would they be convinced that he had turned against them? But he had no choice. He wanted to scream to them in his mind,
I have to! I have to learn so I can do what you want!
But there was no one in his mind but him.
Jordan followed Ylander and another young Wuftoom named Blottix out of the cave. They were set up in groups of three. Evan was to go with Tret and Suzie.
“Good luck!” Jordan said to Evan as he passed on with his team.
“You, too,” said Evan, smiling without meaning to. He couldn't help but think of school, and how Jordan had never spoken two words to him when they were boys, and despite himself, he felt a surge of pride to have been noticed. It blocked out his confusion for a moment. It came back only a minute later.
“First you have to learn to climb,” said Tret. “The old Nob's allowing it because we need hunters.” He grinned.
At first Evan nearly leaped with excitement. This was what he had been waiting for. Yet if this meant that he could travel, then he would have to travel. He would have to do something, make a choice that he did not want to make. A great part of him would have preferred to remain helpless. His whole body pumped as Tret spoke.
“I'll still go first, and Suzie will still go after you, so you can't get lost or fall backward, but this time we won't link up unless you need it.”
Evan nodded, holding all his feelings in.
“The trick is to grip the pipe walls with your membrane. It takes practice because your first tendency is to slide. You do want to slide; you just want to be able to direct yourself. You have to use your strength to draw yourself up. Let's practice against this wall.”
Tret leaned himself against the wall of the large pipe and compressed into traveling form. His legs glued to his body. His arms stuck up over his head, melting until his head was giant and deformed. He held his rod above him, with both arms wrapped around it. Then his back began to fold the pack into itself, so that the pack finally sank into him completely, and Tret was standing nearly flat against the wall.
Evan stared in amazement, his back itching in sympathy.
“It might seem like it's just a kind of skin, but I'm sure you've noticed by now, membrane doesn't just protect you. It's our biggest organ, and the strongest, too.”
Evan hadn't noticed. It had never done much except hang on him.
Tret seemed to read what he was thinking. “You haven't had a reason to really use it yet. It doesn't come from your arms or your legs. It comes from your center, from what really makes you a Wuftoom. That's the part of you that can control it.”
Evan knew that his insides had changed around. He knew his organs had changed, so that most things seemed to flow through his whole body, like his breathing and his heartbeat. But there still was something in his core, something that stayed in one place. He thought that must be what Tret meant.
“You feel it?” Tret asked.
Evan nodded.
“Okay, once you've got yourself ready, like you see me now, you concentrate with that part of you. You send your energy, your Wuftoom core, out to the membrane that you need to use. That's the top of your arms to start, and then the rest of your body as you slide through. You make it ripple from one part to the next, so you'll grip when you need to and slide when you need to.”
This sounded too hard to Evan, but he tried to hold back his doubts. He had to learn this. He stood next to Tret and leaned himself against the wall. He lifted his arms with his rod over his head and tried to relax into it, letting his limbs collide and mix. The pack tickled as it started to fold into his back, then burned. He jerked forward.
“Just let it go,” said Suzie. “Let it fall in. Let your body absorb the water. Don't worry, it's made specially for this. Just let it sink.”
Evan held tight as his back folded slowly around it. He felt himself bloat with it.
“Good! Now try to move your membranes,” Suzie went on. “Don't think about it too hard. Let it go and concentrate on your center.”
Evan tried to do as she said. For the thousandth time he felt that everything would be easier if he could just close his eyes. But they stared forward at the other wall, a rounded concrete monster covered in green slime. He twisted his arms, and Suzie frowned.
“Your arms shouldn't move,” she said, “only your membrane. Your body follows the membrane.”
Evan took a deep breath with his whole body and stared past Suzie at the wall. He tried to focus on his core like Tret said. He knew it was there. It really was the part of him that was Wuftoom, the part he'd been fighting for weeks now. He'd done everything he could to pretend it didn't exist, and when he did notice it, it was an illness. It made him love to eat dark creatures and fear the sunlight like he used to fear the dark.
It's just to get through the pipes,
he thought.
I can fight it again after that. After I learn how to get back.
He took another breath and let his consciousness fall into it. The view of the wall was still there, but it became unimportant background. He felt springy, but not soft. He felt a coolness on the outside, and on the inside, a growing heat. He imagined the pipe he was about to go up. He'd been up them many times attached to another Wuftoom's legs. He felt the coolness of the pipe against the coolness of his body and imagined pressing himself against it and, slowly, sliding upward.
He lifted and lifted. Then suddenly he was really seeing the wall again, and Suzie was standing in front of him, a big grin on her face.
“Did I do it?” he asked, breathing deeply. It took a lot of energy, even just standing there pretending.
“You did it!” said Tret proudly. “It took me a lot longer to get that!”
Evan smiled uneasily. He felt on fire, his eyes now sharper, searching the water for creatures, watching the pipes and the cracks in case any came out. He desperately wanted to hunt, but he didn't want to at all.
“No time to waste, then,” said Tret, and he pushed his head up into the pipe and started sliding.
Evan hesitated.
“Don't worry,” said Suzie. “I'll be right behind you.”
Evan pushed his rod into the pipe, then his arms and then his head. Now that he was pressed so tight, he was less distracted by his open eyes. He settled back into his core, and he felt himself moving up, slowly, but up. He could feel Tret ahead of him even though they weren't connected, so when Tret made a turn, Evan followed easily. He was so slow that Suzie bumped him a couple times, but he never fell back into her.
After a few minutes they began heading steadily down, which was easier than going up. Still, he got slower and slower as they went, and by the time they dropped out of the last pipe, he was gasping for breath. For the first time he felt his membranes ache. He had not known they could ache. It felt like an arm being pulled out from the shoulder a thousand times, all over his body.
“What a Wuftoom!” Tret said, grinning at Evan from above him, since Evan had dropped, exhausted, to the ground. His pack was sticking partway out, and he shook it all the way. He gasped as the air sucked it from his body.
“In and out is hard,” Tret said, “but it will get easier, I promise.” Tret and Suzie sat down next to Evan while he recovered his strength. Evan noticed that they, too, gasped as their packs released.
They were not in the sewers anymore. They were in a tunnel carved out of the ground, just barely tall enough for them to stand in and not wide enough to walk in side by side. The walls were unevenly cut and dirt dripped from the ceilings, landing in small and large piles. No human had made this tunnel, and no animal, either. He couldn't think of any dark creatures who could have made it.
“Who made this?” he asked.
“The Boomtulls,” said Tret. “The same race that made the Birch the Vits stole. They had large claws and they were very strong.”
“Were? What happened to them?”
“They left,” said Tret. “We're too young to remember, but the old ones say they left for a far-off place, somewhere without many humans. They hated humans with a passion. They would dig up into human houses and catch them while they were sleeping. They could go into the humans' minds, and they used their skill to give them nightmares. Adults, children, babies, the Boomtulls wanted to destroy them all. They'd drive people crazy.” Tret paused thoughtfully. “I guess all the dark creatures think about doing it,” he continued, “but we Wuftoom need humans for proems. The Boomtulls drove many to their deaths.”
“They could get into people's minds?” Evan asked, his heart pumping. “But not Wuftoom's?”
“I'm told the Boomtulls could,” said Tret, “though they refrained because of a truce between our races. But don't worry; the Vits can't even get into humans. The scholars say the Vitfly minds are different. They're more like flies than either Wuftoom or human.”
Evan desperately wanted to know more about this, but he couldn't let Tret know that he was wrong.
“What the Vits gave you, they can't use,” said Tret. He looked solemnly at Evan, then put his arm on Evan's shoulder kindly. “They can't hurt you. If they want to hurt us, they will have to fight us in the flesh.” He gripped his rod and twisted his strong arms around it with a grimace of his shriveled lips.
“I won't do what they want,” Evan blurted. “I won't help them. I promise. I want to help you destroy them!” As he said it, he knew it was true. He wanted nothing more than to destroy the Vitflys. It was a part of him like his membrane and his nubs. He wanted it more than anything. Almost.
“We know that!” Tret smiled and squeezed his back. “It is not Wuftoom nature, what they want. They misunderstand us.”
Evan's heart raced. They did not know the Vits had talked to him in his mind. They did not know how much human was left and how different he was. He didn't want to be different. He didn't want to care about his mother. He wanted to stop caring just like Jordan had. He wanted to cry in frustration, but he willed himself to remain calm.
“Why did the Boomtulls leave?” he asked.
“The humans caught one and killed it,” Suzie replied. “They were going to dissect it. But the others rescued the body and they all left.”
“Is that what we'd do if the humans caught one of us?”
Tret shook his head. “I don't know. There's been a lot of talk, but so far we just hope it never happens.”
They sat silently a few more minutes. Evan breathed in the damp, earthy air. It was a thousand times sweeter than the sewers. He had thought that the Wuftoom were suited to the sewers, with their lack of smell and their sense of touch adapted to the feel of the water. But now he knew that he was wrong. He knew they were meant to live here, in the earth. And knowing that, he fully realized how afraid they were of the Vitflys, to remain cooped up in their man-made slums.
No one said anything, but he could tell the others were also drinking in the air. Finally, Tret stood up, and Suzie and Evan followed. Tret checked his pack and lifted his rod.
“What are we looking for?” asked Evan as they started moving single file down the tunnel.
“Nobs,” said Tret. Nobs were furry little creatures that looked like rodents, but they had no eyes. Their heads had empty holes on them where the eyes should be, and what the holes did for the Nobs, nobody knew. Evan had never seen one living, and now he knew why. “They travel in burrows that cross the Boomtull tunnels. If you look closely, you'll see the openings on the walls. They appear closed up, but there'll be an indent that doesn't quite match with the surrounding walls. Sometimes the Nobs cross our path, but if not, we reach up into the holes and grab them.”
“If they're intelligent, why don't they hide?”
Tret snorted. “âIntelligent' is pushing it. Have you ever tried to talk to one?” He looked at Suzie and she smiled meanly, one fang showing.
“They only know a few words,” she said. “Barely better than a rat.”