Chapter 4, Part iii

 Hector was shaken from his dream by a giant fuzzy brown blob, which, after blinking a couple of times, he realized was Burr.

“Whas' going on?” Hector mumbled, trying to sit up.

“He is gone,” Burr said urgently, and pointed to the other side of the ashes of last night's campfire. “Look, he is gone!”

“Who's gone?” He yawned, rubbed his eyes, then got a better look. There was a skin mat lying on the ground, with a couple other articles, but their owner was indeed missing. Hector gasped with realization. “Goodness! Aric's not here! Where did he go, Burr?”

Burr shrugged frantically. “I don't know! I wake up and he was gone, Lilly didn't know, and he not come back for a much time!”

“How much time?” Hector stood up and immediately started rolling up his sleeping mat and blanket.

“Two hours much,” Burr emphasized. “He leave no letters to say why he go, this make Lilly some sad.”

Hector looked at Burr in confusion. “Lilly, sad that Aric left? Well, I guess if he mysteriously vanished without telling anyone, that's definitely worrisome.” He looked around. “Where's Lilly?”

“She outside, looking for him, she not go far. She want us to go to her!” Burr tugged on Hector's arm. He was a lot stronger than he seemed, for his size, and in a glance Hector noticed that the muscles on Burr's arms were large and defined. That's interesting. Where's my journal? He thought. I've got to write that down! He snatched it up and stuffed it into his pocket before he was dragged from the cave.

It had stopped snowing, for the most part, but the entire world was covered with a thick layer of white powder that muffled all sound. Hector gasped in awe at the sight: they were surrounded by a magnificent mountain range, with towering peaks as far as the eye could see to the north and to the south. All of them wore a beautiful coat of pristine snow and ice, and the sun was just barely cresting the horizon. The view was blindingly white, but he couldn't help staring in wonder. Burr was already trudging up a trail already plowed through the snow – By Lilly, I suppose – so Hector pulled his coat tightly around himself and followed. On top of the cave was a snow-covered boulder, and on top of the boulder stood Lilly, searching the horizon desperately. She caught sight of them, and her face was full of concern.

“Hector, you're awake! Aric is gone, and we don't know where he went! We have to find him!”

“Okay,” Hector shouted back. He took another look around and bit his lip. “Em. Where are we going to start?”

Lilly grunted in frustration and jabbed a finger at the trail of powdery footprints leading away into the distance. “That way, of course! His tracks are still fresh, so he can't have gone too far! Come!” She leaped off the boulder and landed gracefully in the snow.

She's barefoot, Hector realized. And she doesn't seem to notice the cold. Burr doesn't, either. I suppose it's their fur?

Burr yanked him out of his thoughts and dragged him after Lilly. Together the three of them started stomping through the deep snow. They often had to stop and help Hector out of a snowbank, and he lost his shoe more than once. “You need to be faster,” Lilly said tersely, then apologized after a moment. “I'm sorry, I forget that you are not used to such travel...”

“It's okay,” Hector grinned. His teeth chattered in the cold. “What's an adventure without a little rugged hiking?” Lilly smiled nervously, and Burr laughed, though Hector was sure he didn't understand.

They continued like this for about twenty minutes, but they didn't make much progress down the mountain slope due to Hector's clumsiness. Finally Burr hunched over and instructed Hector to hop on his back; once in place, the Tove gripped him under the knees and started off at a rapid pace through the powder.

“Fascinating!” Hector cheered. Lilly snorted and couldn't contain a genuine laugh.

They entered a rocky plain, clean and white with snow, except for a wide trail plowed roughly straight through the middle. “That doesn't look like it was made by just one person,” Hector observed, as Burr's movements made his voice bounce.

“No, it wasn't,” Lilly said ominously. She still didn't seem out of breath. “Look at these imprints right here: these are Aric's tracks.”

Hector gripped Burr's shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. “What made all the other tracks? They're all rough and curving, like they were dragging something big and awkward behind them.”

The concern on Lilly's face turned to something akin to terror as she paced through the tracks. “It... I fear it is that thing which I told you about, down in the valley. The thing which is much worse than the Jubjub Bird. Much, much worse...”

“Bandersnatch,” Burr said. Lilly shuddered.

“What's a Bandersnatch?” Hector asked.

Lilly shook her head. “I'm afraid you'll find out soon enough.”

Without another word they reached the end of the plain; black rocks jutted up from the white snow, forming strange little canyons, mazes and overhangs where the snow couldn't reach the ground. Burr gently let Hector down. “We cannot follow their tracks any longer,” Lilly said grimly. “But the trail leads us to this place. Aric must have come this way, as well as the Bandersnatch. I cannot tell which way they went. Unfortunately, we will have to go separate ways; Burr, you stay with Hector to keep him safe. We will meet again here in two hours' time, where the plain meets the black rocks.”

There was an awkward little moment, in which Lilly, despite her authoritative words, didn't seem to want to follow through. Hector took a deep breath and started marching toward the nearest crevice, which bent out of sight only several yards away. “Let's go, then! There isn't any time to lose! Come, Burr, I'll need your big, strong legs.” Burr obediently followed, and Lilly had no choice but to take her own path.

The narrow pass was dry and the dark-colored rock was beautiful, but a chill wind funneled through and made a frightening whistling sound. In only a few minutes, Hector and Burr had taken so many twists and turn in the black maze that they had become completely lost. They now turned left and right at random. Here and there some unseen animal moved or called out in the clear air, making them both jump.

“Gee whiz,” Hector whispered. Burr gaped at the walls and the sky, mouth wide open. Hector could see every one of his pointed teeth, and his thoughts raced.

“Hey, Burr?”

Burr shut his mouth and looked at him.

“Do you eat meat a lot? Like, Toves in general?”

He nodded.

“I thought so. You said you had eaten a Snark before.”

“I like Snark,” Burr emphasized.

Hector smiled as they walked. He rubbed his hand against the wall and absently felt the grit between his fingers. “What's that thing that River asked you about, that one sport? Glim? Guller?”

“Galum,” Burr answered, and he gave one his rare smiles. “It is a sport we play in Aztlav. They take a stone ball, and they throw it up into the air, and it has to hit all three trangels, and if it falls into the blurst it gives you extra point, but if it touches the flim you lose three points, and then you have to make it back to the pronk before the ball falls off the chook.”

Hector coughed politely. “Yes, I see. Very interesting.”

“It is very violent sport,” Burr added gleefully. “Takes lot of practice.”

“I imagine so. Are you good at this game?”

“Very good.”

“Good for you.”

They took a right turn, climbed up a few fallen boulders, then continued uphill.

“How long have you played Galum, Burr?”

Burr gave a toothy grin as he lightly jumped a gap between boulders. Hector leaped clumsily, and Burr grabbed his arm to help him up. “Eight years,” he answered.

“Ever since you were... Eight? Nine?”

“I was glad to have tenth birth-day, because they do not let you play if not have ten years.”

“I see.”

They reached a sheer cliff wall about six or seven feet high, and without any apparent effort Burr scaled the surface and extended a hand to Hector. They somehow scrambled to the top, where Hector brushed off his pants, straightened his jacket, and kept walking. The black walls were not as tall, here, and a few flakes of snow made their way into the crevice.

“What other things do Toves do with their time?”

At this, Burr's excitement visibly evaporated. He didn't answer for a while. Eventually he tried to speak, hesitated, then spoke. “Um. Some things. The togoms work the Gimble. The others work. Some play Galum.” He shrugged, and once again appeared to be his typical quiet self.

Hector changed the subject. “Do Toves have books? Do you read a lot?”

Burr shook his head with certainty. “No. Only togoms know to read. And their children, like Lilly.”

That's why she was sent to find the Manxor Slithe, Hector noted. Aloud, he said: “I see. That's a pity, my friend, because there are so many things to be learned from books!” He held his hands up in the air. “Why, you can explore the whole world without leaving your own home by reading! Of course, that's no replacement for the real thing. But I don't know what I would do with my life if I couldn't read!”

Burr was silent, and seemed to withdraw into himself.

“What's wrong?” Hector asked. The narrow canyon suddenly came to an end, and a little pathway opened up. It curved sharply around a protruding rock, and Hector pinned himself to the boulder, because on the other side of the path was a steep, snowy slope that ended with a dark line of sharp, black rocks. “If you want,” he asked the brown Tove, “I can teach you how to read.”

“No good, I can't read,” Burr said despondently. He followed Hector along the trail, but his head hung, ears drooping.

Hector laughed as he scooted sideways along the rock. “That's why I'm going to teach you! It's really rather simple, but it's amazing the doors that literacy opens up. Why, you--” They rounded the corner and stopped dead.

Before them lay a village, but it there was something wrong. Squat, stone houses built of blocks of black mountain rock were scattered around the little snowy hilltop, and Hector fancied that one of the bigger ones was a City Hall, or perhaps the town library. They were all covered with a thick layer of snow, as though they hadn't been touched in a long, long time. However, the strangest part of all of this little mountain village was its inhabitants,

They stood idly in the streets, in their doorways, and behind windows; one solitary figure even stood on top of his roof. But every last one of them was standing completely still, and had a blanket of snow on his or her head and shoulders.

Hector forgot all about the cold and the rock in his shoe. “What happened here?” he whispered. Burr seemed worried, but offered no explanation. The two of them moved forward into the town, as if drawn by invisible cords.

(Graphic 4.4: Hector and Burr walk through the not-quite-abandoned village, passing by its inhabitants who are frozen in place like statues. They touch them and wave their hands before their faces, but to no effect.)

“But... look, they're breathing!” Hector exclaimed incredulously, holding his fingers beneath a bearded man's nose. “I can feel his breath! And if you look closely, you can see his chest moving!”

Burr poked a young boy in the forehead; he stumbled backward, giving Burr a shock, but remained where he stood, staring blankly into space. The Tove looked despondently at Hector, who sighed in confusion and placed his hands on his hips. “I don't get it,” he muttered. “What could have happened to these poor people?” He glanced around the street, searching for clues.

“Look,” Burr called out, and pointed somewhere. Hector rushed to his side and followed his finger with his eyes: the Tove had noticed something behind the line of houses on the edge of town.

“That looks like tracks,” Hector said suspiciously. “The very same tracks we saw on the plain. The big ones that were left by the... what's it called?”

“Bandersnatch,” Burr said quietly. He stared, hypnotized, at the wide, sweeping trail in the snow.

Hector pointed to a nearby roof, where a citizen stood motionless. “Hey, give me a boost up there, Burr. I want to take a look at something.” Burr squatted with his hands folded, and Hector struggled up until he made it to the roof, brushing mounds of snow off his sleeves. “Excuse me,” he said to the unmoving man as he tried to get a good vantage point.

Hector squinted in the sunlight that reflected off the snow. “Yep, it's just like I had thought,” he called out, “the Bandersnatch's trail leads from the rock maze, all along here, up behind that house, and past the City Hall. It keeps going up the mountainside until--”

He didn't say anything for a second. The second stretched to two seconds, then ten. Burr called out his name nervously from the street.

“I'm okay, don't worry,” Hector said in a quiet, strangled voice. “It's just that... I just saw something huge and scaly crawl away behind that boulder near the top of the mountain...”

“Come down,” Burr urged, and waved frantically at him. “You have to come down! Bandersnatch will see you!”

“Was that really the Bandersnatch?” Hector asked dreamily, as Burr helped him down off the roof. “That thing is huge! It looked like a giant lizard, from what I could see! Wow! If only I could get close enough to see what its face looks like!”

Burr shook his head in terror. “No, Hictar, you no want to see Bandersnatch close! The Bandersnatch do this to these people!” He waved his arms over the whole town. Hector blinked in astonishment.

“Really? This was the Bandersnatch's doing?”

“Yes!”

Hector couldn't decide if he was horrified or fascinated. “That means... That means we have to hurry after it, because it might be after Aric!”

“Or worser,” Burr said, starting toward the Bandersnatch's trail, “It will find Lilly!”

“Then we've got no time to lose!”

Hector and Burr took off in the snow, following directly in the trail left by the gigantic creature.

*

Lilly was starting to wonder if she had lost Aric's trail for good. She paused for the thousandth time, stooped low to the ground and sniffed carefully. She repeated this process several times, but it was no good; Aric's scent had vanished. She found a spot where a boulder had tumbled to the narrow canyon floor; using it as a springboard, she gripped the snow-covered ledge and pulled herself to the top.

She looked around, sniffing the air, but all she could see were narrow canyon passes that dropped off steeply into the icy rivers that slithered between the mountains. The cold air burned her nostrils, but still there was no sign of Aric. All was as silent as the grave.

I can't help feeling that this is all my fault, she thought, as her heart raced with suppressed panic. I should not have fought with Aric, it was all over a silly map....

Lilly's sensitive ear suddenly twitched. There had been a faint, powdery sound, as if someone or something was moving a lot of snow very slowly...

“Aric?” she called, and whipped her head around.

(Graphic 4.5: Lilly faces a giant lizardlike creature with large fronds on its face and neck, standing in the snow. It bares its sharp fangs)

Lilly only had time to gasp before bolting in the other direction. The Bandersnatch thundered after her.

She awoke her Gyre and sent a giant wave of white powder behind her, but the lizard didn't slow. I have to get out of the snow, it's too deep to run, she realized, and leaped from the snowbank onto a black ledge near a sheer cliff. She rolled onto her feet as she landed and kept running, not sparing a single glance behind, but from the terrible sounds of cracking stone she knew it was only a breath's length behind her. There was another ledge farther down, so she jumped onto it and and sprinted as fast as she could. She peeked over her shoulder.

The Bandersnatch followed, crawling vertically across the face of the black rock and hissing at her. Lilly formed a ball of air between her fists and flung it at the beast, but it only flinched before redoubling its speed.

There was a wide gap in the rock only a few paces away. If she jumped and used her Gyre, maybe she could just--

(Graphic 4.6: Lilly prepares to make the jump, but at the last second her foot twists on a rock and she loses her balance. She falls into the hole and tumbles down into a deep chasm where only a little light makes its way to the dry rock floor. The Bandersnatch appears and looms over her.)

As Lilly gazed up at the Bandersnatch, she remembered the words of Ashes, her togom: that the worst danger of the Bandersnatch was not that it dismembered and violently ate its victims, but rather what it did to them beforehand...

The Bandersnatch looked at her straight in the eye, and flared the fronds on its neck. They glowed a bright red.

Lilly's sight went blurry, and her thoughts whirred against her will.

Lilly ran to the man and woman who stood at the other end of the glade.

“Mother! Father!”

Halfway across the clearing, they turned away and talked amongst themselves, as though their own daughter were not running to them with arms wide open. She heard every word they whispered.

“Such a disgrace...”

“A coward and a failure...”

“Glad we did away with her...”

Lilly's heart gave out. She fell to her knees. She looked up to her parents, but they had vanished, and in her place stood the togom.

“Ashes,” Lilly whimpered. “My togom... I have tried, we are looking for the Sword Bearer, and I--”

“Do not speak to me of effort,” Ashes spat. She refused to look Lilly in the eye. “I placed so much responsibility upon your shoulders, and what do you do with it! You squabble with your rescuers, you destroy them from the inside out!”

“But, my togom--”

“Do not speak to me!”

Lilly felt like sobbing. “But, but, my togom...”

“I am not your togom any longer!” bellowed the shaman, and stormed off into the woods.

Lilly collapsed. She wished she could get those haunting whispers out of her head, but her mind felt as sharp and as lucid as ever. She grit her teeth and held her hands to her head to block out the echoes, but they only returned stronger and stronger...

Her nose picked up a familiar scent. She fought to focus and blinked the tears away, and saw the person she dreaded most to see in all the world.

River's feet were only inches from her face.

“Lilly,” he said in his deep voice. “You look like you are in a lot of pain... what's wrong?”

“I... I have failed,” she choked. “I've failed, River, I've failed...” She looked up to see him looking down at her. His face was contorted in a sickening sneer.

“Good. Then stay there.”

“River, please! You can't say--”

“Useless!” he roared. “You're useless, Lilly!”

He kept shouting at her, but his words all blended together into a nightmarish swarm of insults, squeezing her heart like a vice...