Strangewood (33 page)

The sky was a textured azure today, with streaks of yellow
and green that might have been shifting strings of cloud, or merely the whimsy
of the air. The breeze off the river was a bit chilly and Thomas shivered a
little. It made him recall the many trips he had taken here in the past, both
awake, as he was now, and in dreams, as he had done for so many years. He
didn't recall ever being cold before. Not in Strangewood. It wasn't a place
where discomfort — real discomfort — had ever been particularly
welcome. All of that had changed now. Possibly forever.

Thomas knew, in any case, that it wasn't really all that
cold. Where he had come from, where he belonged, it was still a steamy,
scalding July. In Strangewood, it seemed to be perpetually autumn. Early
autumn, but just at that moment where, as beautiful as everything was, the air
shimmered with the foreknowledge of the moment, coming too soon, when
everything would begin to wither and die; a fleeting moment, preserved forever.
Or so he had thought, once upon a time. Forever, it seemed, was not as eternal
a concept as he had always believed.

They walked westward for several hours, along the sandy
banks of the wide river as it curled at the outer edges of Strangewood. Though
Thomas had expected Mr. Tinklebum to be a constant source of whining
complaints, the bell-bottom was — save for the bonging of his tummy
— oddly silent. Perhaps, Thomas thought, the gravity of their situation
had finally reached him, a creature who had lost his entire race in a single
blaze.

To a single enemy.

With that thought, Thomas glanced over at Tinklebum's face,
saw a cold glint in his eye, and realized that there might be more sanity in
the little lavender man than he'd thought. A lust for vengeance did not
expressly dictate insanity after all. He began to think of Tinklebum
differently after that.

They reached a stretch of shore that was quite rocky. A
small jetty had been built thrusting out into the river, but there was no sign
of any vessel. Nor, Thomas found as he glanced into the wood off to their left,
was there any sign of a dwelling. No sign of life at all, save for that jetty.

A curious thing, he thought.

After the span of rocky bank, they rounded a corner, and
there above them, though still far ahead, were the Bald Mountains. Thomas
paused a moment, staring up at the windswept peaks with an overwhelming mixture
of emotions: fear, anger, anticipation. And a deep, abiding sadness, as he
wondered once again how it had all come down to this.

"There it is, then," said Brownie, and
halfheartedly danced a little jig. There was a certain cynicism, even sarcasm,
to the dance that Thomas could not respond to.

"Perhaps we ought to rest a few minutes before
continuing on?" he suggested.

"True enough," Tinklebum chimed in. "I could
use a washout, and a drink, for that matter."

The bell-bottom waddled, clapper bonging all the way down to
the river's edge. Without preamble, he simply leaped from the river bank into
the water, and sank like a stone. A large air bubble gurgled to the surface,
displaced, perhaps, by the open bell shape of his body.

"I suppose I could use a drink," Brownie agreed,
but as he moved to the water's edge, his eyes kept returning to the forbidding
peaks of the Bald Mountains.

A silent communication seemed to pass between them. A
desperate sense of imminent destiny that brought Thomas up short and had him
staring at the grizzly. From the expression on the bear's face, Thomas was
certain that he felt it too.

"It won't be long," Brownie said grimly.

"No. Tomorrow morning, I should think," Thomas
observed.

Neither of them said a word after that. Brownie crouched at
the edge of the river and dipped his huge head down to drink. Thomas removed
his shoes and rolled up the legs of his pants and tentatively put one foot into
the chilly water. It was cold, but it felt good, the current sweeping over the
fine hairs on his leg and his foot sinking into the sand beneath the water. The
sand would give way to real silt only a few more inches into the river, he
knew. The sand itself should not have been there, but Thomas never questioned
anything in Strangewood. There were certain things, such as that sand, that had
seemed out of place to him even the first time he'd visited this odd, other
place.

But there it was. Beneath his feet and real as every nerve
and synapse knew it to be. For all that it could not be, Strangewood was as
real as the world Thomas had been born into. In many ways, he'd often thought,
it was more real. More . . . the word escaped him a moment, but eventually
seemed to flutter back into his mind. It was even more
normal
than the
world of his birth.

Several minutes had passed since Tinklebum had dropped
beneath the surface, but Thomas and Brownie were not terribly concerned for
him. The bell bottom was not going to float, and he was most certainly not
going to be able to swim. So it was with no surprise at all that Brownie and
Thomas heard a cling-clang clatter from down along the shore — admittedly
somewhat muted as Tinklebum was a bit waterlogged as yet — and looked up
to see the bell bottom moving toward them once more. Despite his girth, the
hollowness of his body had naturally caused the current to drag him a short way
downstream, back the way they'd come.

The bell-bottom clanged over the stony patch they'd crossed
some short time before and approached with a demeanor even darker than Thomas
had previously noted. He'd been amiable previously, but in a slightly psychotic
way. Now, despite the refreshing bath, he seemed to have sunken into an anger
and depression from which he might never recover. It was as though he were
seething, burning, a bomb instead of a bell. Ready to explode.

It worried Thomas greatly, even having him along. Tinklebum's
behavior from here on out would be impossible to predict.

As he looked over at Brownie and heard the snuffling chuckle
that came from deep in the grizzly's belly as he too watched Tinklebum's
approach, Thomas became uneasy at the realization that the bear didn't see it. Brownie
was his ally, yes. They were comrades-at-arms. And Tinklebum was supposed to be
his ally as well. But the horrors he had experienced served to make him more of
a liability than anything.

Before they reached the Jackal Lantern's fortress, he would
have to determine if it was even safe to have Tinklebum along. And if he could
count on Brownie’s allegiance should he try to send the bell-bottom away.

Still, in spite of Tinklebum's tenuous sanity, a certain
fellowship had begun to form. Though only a child when he'd first visited the
wood, Thomas had always been the decision maker, the only one among them mature
enough to give voice to reason. There was a power in that, but he'd always felt
something of a loss from being placed in that position. As if something,
somehow, had been taken from him.

This was something altogether new. This joint purpose they
now shared made all the frivolous years before seem to dissipate. As a writer,
Thomas had felt quite alone at various times over the years. It was a solitary
profession. But aside from the tenderest moments with Emily, he had never felt
a more intimate bond than this.

Despite his doubts about Tinklebum, he knew that for the
life of his son and the future of Strangewood, they would stand or fall, live
or die, together. It was like a dream. A form of companionship so pure that he
would previously have doubted its existence. But here it was.

And, just as this thought was completing itself in his mind,
the sand began to shift beneath his toes. He stared down at the surface of the
river as it rushed past his bare legs — the rolled up cuffs of his pants
had been twice submerged an inch or so, and lay heavily on his skin — but
nothing moved under the water.

The sand and soil of the riverbed buckled suddenly, roiling
beneath him so that Thomas lost his balance. Over he went, arms flailing as he
fell backward, away from the shore and into the deeper water, with just enough
time to see the look of pure astonishment on Brownie's face as he splashed into
the cold river.

The river closed around him. Thankfully, he'd managed to
hold his breath. But the water had made Thomas deaf and the pressure on his
eardrums was eerie. He was comfortable, as some people were not, with opening
his eyes under water, but he was angry and embarrassed and frustrated by his
fall.

As Thomas struggled to get his feet under him, he looked
back under the water toward the riverbank. The sun cut the water enough to
cause a certain amount of glittering glare beneath the surface, and his
fumbling feet had stirred up some of the silt so he could not see much. But he
could see that there was something coming up out of the sand. It had thick
claws and a hard blue shell.

In a voice that, underwater, could have been an anchor
striking stone, Thomas said, "Shit."

With a single thrust, he propelled himself to the surface
and found that, on tiptoe, he could put his face out of the water.

"Sand crabs!" he screamed.

He'd forgotten all about the things. From the look on
Brownie's face — amusement turning swiftly to alarm — he wondered
if the bear had ever even heard of the creatures. Tinklebum was running along
the shore toward where Thomas had fallen in — where the sand crab was
emerging — and it was decidedly surreal. Thomas's ears were still
underwater, so while he could see the bell-bottom waddling quickly along, there
was no sound to accompany him. It made the shore seem that much farther away.

A flash of blue beneath the water, and Thomas knew the sand
crab was coming for him. Brownie roared and leaped into the water behind the
thing, and Thomas turned and dove into the current. As he did, he felt
something try to grip his leg and spun in the water to see that another of the
sand crabs had come up behind him when he was not paying attention.

That was two.

There would be more.

Brownie ducked his entire upper body into the water, head,
shoulders, and arms disappearing into the river. With a splash, he pulled
backward, hauling from the water the snapping, hissing crab who had first
unbalanced Thomas. Its trio of dark blue claws clicked together with dangerous
precision and one of them closed on Brownie's right arm, not far from the
shoulder. The bear growled.

Quickly he turned, stomped two large steps to the shore, and
tore the sand crab's grip away. He held it over his head and beat it
mercilessly against the ground, shell cracking, small eyes popping, claws
shattering, until only green and red entrails and shards of blue shell were
left.

By then, Thomas had scrabbled up the stony portion of the
riverbank, where he saw not a single claw erupting from the ground. The stony
portion of the shore must be safe, he guessed. At least from attack from below.

"Tinklebum! Brownie! Here!" he cried loudly, even
as the sand crab he'd managed to swim past poked its stalk eyes out of the
water along with its two foreclaws and began snapping at him.

Moving closer.

"Brownie!" Thomas shouted again.

But the grizzly had other troubles. The sand just at the
edge of the water had begun to churn as though the earth were about to split. Several
sets of claws emerged along the shore, and Thomas could see at least two other
sand crabs moving up out of the water toward the riverbank. The current didn't
seem to be bothering the crabs at all.

Lucky them, Thomas thought. This was what they were made
for.

Without another moment's hesitation, Thomas glanced around
and found the largest stone he thought he could lift. He gripped it with two
hands, hefted it, and under its burden, he stomped along the stony shore to
where the sand began.

Tinklebum was going a little berserk. He stood still,
screaming at the crabs, his whole body shaking so much that his clapper bonged
against his insides loud enough to make Thomas wince in pain. But it kept the
crabs at bay for a brief moment. Long enough for Thomas to come up behind the
nearest one and drop the rock.

It crushed the crab's shell, pinning it to the sand. But
even as Tinklebum saw Thomas and decided it was time to move, the crab reached
a quivering claw out to clamp down on the bell-bottom's leg. Whatever Tinklebum
was made of, however — porcelain or steel, Thomas didn't have a clue
— the claw did no real damage save a minor scratch. Then it fell away as
the crab at last died.

The others were moving in.

The river burbled by at what seemed a quickened pace. The
clouds were uncaring wisps above as the breeze caressed both innocent and
vicious alike. It was a beautiful day to die. But Thomas was determined not to
oblige.

"Brownie, come on!" he shouted at the bear, who
even now was bleeding from several minor wounds as he used one flailing crab to
batter another. "We've got to get out of here or we're fucking dead!"

The grizzly winced, turned his attention from the crabs for
a moment, and then tossed two of them aside. With the lumbering stride of a
furry freight train, he pounded along the sand toward them. In seconds, he
stood at their side, bleeding and sweating, despite the chilly wind. And the
crabs moved in from sand and water alike.

"Please try not to be profane," Brownie asked
Thomas. "It doesn't become you."

Thomas glanced at the bear as though he were insane, but saw
that Brownie was quite serious. "I'm afraid it has become me," he
said sadly. "I'm not eight years old anymore."

"I think we're all well aware of that, Thomas,"
Brownie snapped.

For a moment, Thomas was taken aback by the bear's use of
his given name, rather than the seemingly more intimate but in truth more
formal name they all called him here. But then he smiled. For wasn't this just
another example of the bond he had been contemplating just as they were
attacked?