By now they were in dire
need of rest, and to make matters worse a moaning, groaning sort of sound
started coming from Righteous – like a dirge that a mother might sing when she
was mourning the death of her child. It set everyone’s nerves on edge and they all
put on an extra spurt to get to those trees as quickly as possible.
Eventually Dutch cracked
the mystery.
“Those trees are huge,”
she said craning her neck backwards. ”I mean very huge. That’s why they looked nearer than they were.”
Indeed, they were much
closer but much bigger than anyone had thought…shooting up into the sky to
dizzy heights
“Perhaps it’s their
closeness to the bone ribs that’s causing them to grow so high – more warmth
and light.”
But they didn’t have
time to stand and wonder, so they plodded on. It was another hour before they
arrived at the first of the giant trees. It was nearly a mile high with the
branches spreading out over many acres, casting a vast shady circle over the
desert scrub. As they watched, a breeze stirred high in the branches causing
them to wave as if they were beckoning the little group to come and take
shelter. They needed no further invitation and tumbled out of the heat, all
except Righteous who stopped at the edge of the shady circle and wouldn’t go
any further. He seemed to have a thing about trees. He had also stopped
singing, but the silence that ensued was even more eerie than the song.
Nonetheless, the rest embraced the coolness beneath the tree and sat down to
rest for a while and finish the last of the food.
Soon they were on their
feet again and getting ready to move when they noticed some animal bones half
buried in the sand. Some even looked a bit like Ahram bones, but there didn’t
seem to be anything ominous in this at first. It was only when they approached
the massive trunk of the tree and noticed a pile of strange looking debris in
the sand, did the first glimmers of unease begin to stir among them. Among the
bones and rubbish were some disturbingly familiar looking items. Rose didn’t
hesitate but went straight to the pile and knelt in front of it. She pushed
some sand aside and unearthed an old broken perfume bottle, half filled with
sand. As if in a trance, she picked it up and turned it over in her hand. Then
her eye caught a weather-beaten old plastic hairbrush, a child’s toy, the pink colour
almost faded to nothing. Rose stared as if in a dream, as if the world had done
a quantum shift and she could not possibly be where she was if these things
were here. These were her toys from when she was a little girl: the matching
pink hand-mirror with the cracked glass, the torn cover of a diary with the
name and date so faded as to be hardly legible - and yet utterly recognizable
to her. As she fingered these the memories they stirred shifted across her
mind…the happy and the sad…so many all at once. She doodled her finger
absentmindedly in the sand and accidentally unearthed another
object….incongruous and yet as familiar to her as the rest of the items. She touched
it tentatively with her fingertips then picked it up. The object was a small
bone flute, bleached by the sun and sands, with three little holes in front for
her fingers and one at the back for her thumb. She felt its familiarity as it
fitted perfectly into her hand, and even though she couldn’t remember ever
playing it, she could hear the music it made, so very much like the music she
had heard in the stockade. Unconsciously she raised it to her lips and was just
about to blow into the hole when a drip of honey dropped onto the back of her
hand from above.
‘Strange’ she thought
and instinctively tasted it with her tongue. Indeed it was honey. Then she
looked upwards - more or less at the same time as everyone else did – and saw hundreds
of fine filaments dripping down towards them, each with a big dollop of honey
on the end. Rags squeaked and took off like a bat out of hell heading for the
sunshine as the huge globs of sticky goo began to plop down in the dust all
around them.
“I think we’d better get
out of here. This isn’t looking good,” said Angelo, who took Rose’s hand and
set off after the bat. But they hadn’t taken more than a few steps before they
were dripping with honey.
“Run. Run for the
sunshine.”
But the sticky stuff fell
in sheets now, tangling in their hair and eyes, making it very difficult to see
where they were going, not to mention the thickening carpet of icky stuff that slurped
at their sliding feet. They staggered around, desperately trying to keep their
balance; struggling like flies in a honey-pot, trying to wrestle their way
through a curtain of golden treacle. Dutch slipped and fell into a sea of honey
and couldn’t regain her feet, Sweet Mary was also going over and Rose and
Angelo had come to a stop wrapped in each other’s arms. They could do nothing
but wait for the end, four little flies in amber. That was when Dutch realized
what all the other bones were about that had been lying under the tree; dead animals…like
them.
Suddenly Sweet Mary
disappeared as Righteous whisked her up and away, burning a path through the
honey and depositing her in the sunshine in a blink of an eye. He dashed back
into the deadly curtain of goo three more times to rescue the others. Within
seconds Rose was dumped unceremoniously next to Sweet Mary, gasping and choking
and trying to wipe the honey out of her eyes and mouth. Dutch and Angelo were
also rescued before they were overcome and plonked in a sticky, soggy pile next
to the others; a sad sight indeed, but all were happily alive.
Having performed his
duty, Righteous once again lapsed into his silent sentry stance and waited.
Slowly, with many
smacking, sucking, sticky sounds, the little band wiped off as much honey as
they could, squeezing it out of their hair and flicking it off into the sand. Sweet
Mary was getting the best deal, for Rags apparently liked honey very much and
was busy licking her clean as fast as his little tongue could go.
“There’s no way through
here if all these trees are the same…and I presume they are. We’re going to
have to double back for a while and head east towards those low hills over
there.”
Groans of discontent.
“I don’t really care
which way we go as long as there’s a river we can wash in,” said Sweet Mary.
Everyone was finding that nothing was quite as uncomfortable as being sticky
from head to foot.
“We’d better get going
then,” said Dutch, turning and striding off into the shimmering sands.
Soon they were covered
from the waist down with the sand and dust they kicked up that stuck to the
honey, and their upper halves were continually plagued by little metallic-coloured
insects that buzzed around them in droves, settling wherever they could to
feast. In the beginning the humans were continually waving their arms to try
and keep them off but after a while they just gave up and trudged on
regardless. A very unpleasant journey was had by all, Rose hanging onto
Angelo’s hand like a kid and Righteous as ever bringing up the rear.
“There it is,” shouted
Sweet Mary from a ridge in front of them. She had been scouting ahead of
everyone else, running from ridge to ridge to see what was on the other side.
The terrain had improved with the appearance of more shrubbery and the promise
of more comfortable climes.
“There’s a little stream
up ahead. And some ordinary sized trees,” she said excitedly, and disappeared
over the hill.
By the time they caught
up to her she was splashing about in the water like a child. The others weren’t
long in piling in…all except the silent Righteous who came to a halt and stood
watching them with his blind eyes.
Sweet Mary stood in the
centre of the stream, her soggy bio-suit hanging around her like an old, out-of-shape
dishcloth.
“Come on Rose,” she
said, holding out her hand. “I’ve found this little pool just round the bend
where we can wash privately.”
Rose, clutching her
flute, obediently gave her hand to Sweet Mary and let herself be led down the
stream and around a secluded bend. Around the corner was a little bit of Eden;
a cool little rock pool next to a grassy bank in the shade of a tree. Without
further ado Sweet Mary took off her bio-suit and began washing herself in
earnest. It was a few minutes before she noticed that Rose was still just
standing there, watching her.
‘Strange,’ she thought.
“Come on Rose. Take off your suit and get yourself clean.”
“Okay,” she said and
obediently did what Sweet Mary told her to do.
WHAT CAN IT MEAN? THESE STRANGE TOYS ROSE FOUND UNDER THE TREE. FIND OUT NEXT TIME.
