He stopped and listened.
Thud! He heard it again. But he also heard a woody creak from the overburdened cellar doors.
‘Bily!’ Zluty shouted. ‘Get back from the doors!’
This time he thought he heard a muffled shout.
He pushed a small stone against the base of the lesser boulder, then he used the staff to lever it up just enough to allow him to push the thin end of a wedge under it with his foot. He let the boulder down gently and was relieved when the wedge held. He did the same to the other boulder so that neither would roll forward if he moved the other. He went back to the first boulder and again pushed the tip of his staff under it. He heard another thump from below, but he did not dare answer for his whole being was concentrated on holding the unwieldy rock cluster steady so that he could push in a second, larger wedge.
Once he was sure the wedge was steady he got a third wedge. Gradually, in this way, he forced the boulder back until it was resting against the cellar door frame. His fur was dripping with sweat and his muscles were trembling, but all he had to do now was to get the boulder up onto the rim of the frame, then he could use the staff to tip it backwards.
But he had to rest for a bit.
Zluty lay down on the ground and put his eye to the slit between the doors.
He could see only darkness through it. He put his mouth against the door and called his brother’s name, then he put his ear to the slit.
‘Zluty?’ A voice rasped.
It was Bily.
Zluty lay his head on the ground, for the relief he felt at hearing his brother’s voice was so powerful that it had stolen all the strength from him. Before he could bring himself to speak, he heard the scratchy whisper again.
‘Zluty, you have to get us out of here. The cellar is full of water and it’s still coming in.’
‘Get back,’ Zluty said, whispering too, though there was no reason for it. ‘I am shifting the stones out of the way so I can open the cellar door. But the wood is cracked and if these great boulders on top of it fall through …’ he stopped and waited, but there was no response save for the sound of something moving through water.
Zluty got to his feet, took up his staff and set the tip against the boulder again. Hearing Bily talk had heartened him. He shoved the staff deep under the balanced boulder, put his shoulder to it and heaved with all his might.
For one moment nothing happened, then the door creaked horribly and the boulder was falling slowly backwards.
Zluty dropped to his knees and set the staff aside. His whole body was aching as he reached out and tried to open the door, but it was stuck fast because it had buckled and jammed against the frame. He gave a gasping sob of frustration, until he saw that the door was being pushed from below.
‘Careful!’ Zluty cried, alarmed that the wedge under the other boulder would shift. ‘We have to get this door open without moving the other one. There is another big bit of the wall on it …’
Bily said nothing, but this time instead of pushing at the door he pulled. There was a splintering crack and one of the boards broke in half. An explosion of feathers and claws erupted from the gap.
‘Zluty, quickly!’ Bily urged.
Zluty knelt and looked through the broken door. Bily’s filthy face looked up at him, his soft white fur smeared with dirt and completely saturated. Zluty knew how much his neat brother loathed being wet, but Bily hardly seemed aware of the state of his fur and face for he was pushing a nest with several eggs in it up through the gap. Zluty had no more set it aside than Bily was passing up another nest, this one with a clutch of little nestlings in it. Then there was another and another until Zluty understood that Bily must have brought all of the nests from the garden down into the cellar, and convinced the adult birds to take refuge there as well, before the stones began to fall.
‘That was the last one,’ Bily said. ‘Oh, Zluty! I don’t know how you can be here so soon but thank goodness you are!’
‘I hurried,’ Zluty said, reaching through the gap to take his brother’s hand and squeeze it. But how cold it was! He began pulling at another of the boards in the broken door, keeping a wary eye on the boulder balanced on the other door. Once the second board was freed, he could see better. Black water lapped more than halfway up the steps and Redwing was sitting on the step beside Bily, for she was too large to fit through the opening. Zluty began to work on freeing another board with renewed but careful energy.
‘Once I get this next one free, you and Redwing should be able to fit through,’ he panted.
But Bily shook his head. ‘No, Zluty. We have to get both doors open so that the monster can get out.’
Zluty stared at his brother, wondering if the falling board had struck him on the head.
‘Monster?’ he repeated.
‘Hurry!’ Bily urged.
Zluty saw the stubborn desperation in his brother’s face and knew there was no use arguing with him. He was very tired, but he forced himself to rethink the problem of the doors. Finally, he put his face back to the gap and said, ‘The second boulder is too big for me to roll away. The only thing I can do is push it forward and let it fall into the cellar. I think it will just smash through the doors but you have to get right back out of the way.’
Zluty expected Bily to argue that he could not go back without getting wet, but instead his timid brother simply said again, ‘Hurry!’ before turning and scooping Redwing into his arms and backing down the steps into the water. He vanished in the shadows and, after a long moment, Bily shouted out to him in a muffled voice to let the boulder fall.
Zluty set aside the remarkable behaviour of his brother and stood. He took up his staff again. He was totally exhausted now and this boulder was much bigger than the other was, but at least this time all he had to do was lever it up, kick the wedge out of the way and let it fall forward. The weight of it would smash through both doors and then it would fall into the cellar and down the steps.
The whole thing took but a moment, yet as the massive boulder toppled forward Zluty’s heart leapt into his throat at the sudden fear that it might jam in the opening. But it crashed through the cracked cellar doors and landed with a resounding thud onto the top step before toppling ponderously down to the next step, and the next, to be swallowed up by the murky water.
‘Bily?’ Zluty called into the darkness.
‘Come down!’ Bily’s voice floated eerily back to him.
Puzzled that his brother did not simply come back up the stairs, Zluty climbed down the cracked steps to the step above the water. Now he could see that everything in the cellar had been piled at the upper end of the sloping floor. Bily must have done it when the water first began to rise, never imagining that the water would come so high.
‘Hurry,’ Bily urged. His voice came from behind the piled-up mass and Zluty stifled a sigh and stepped down into the water with a grimace. The cold wetness crept through his fur, but at least it was not the thick black mud of the swamp. He had climbed down two more steps before it occurred to him that if he went to the bottom, the water would be over his head! However had Bily got across the cellar?
‘Jump off the side rather than down the proper way,’ Bily called, his head showing above a sodden bale of white fluffs. ‘It’s not so deep there.’
Zluty wanted to tell Bily to come out of the cellar and they would light a fire and dry out before they worried about the supplies. But no doubt it was worrying about them that had kept Bily from panicking, and it was true that they would need whatever they could salvage from the cellar. Zluty took a deep breath and jumped from the side of the steps into the water.
He gave a cry of alarm to find that the water came right up to his chest! He could hardly believe Bily had told him to jump into it, but he must have done it himself already. Hardly able to imagine his timid brother wading through such deep dark water, he moved slowly towards the shallow end of the cellar.
When he was closer, he saw that what he had taken for a pile of thin
gs was actually a barrier keeping the water back from the top part of the cellar. Bily must have built it to keep some of the supplies in the cellar safe, or perhaps to provide himself with a dry place to sit. When Zluty got to the barrier, the water was only up to his knees. He looked over the barrier and saw that Bily was bending over what appeared to be a great pile of blankets between the pallet and the wall.
Zluty opened his mouth to ask what he was doing, and then froze as the pile of blankets moved. Now he saw that under them lay an enormous beast with a long snaky tail and claws that glimmered sharphy in the lantern light.
‘What is it?’ Zluty gasped, through lips that felt numb and cold.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Bily. ‘It is only the monster.’
‘Only,’ Zluty echoed faintly.
Bily bade him climb over the barrier, and when Zluty had done so, his brother explained how the monster had been fleeing the red wind when it was bitten by a blackclaw and had taken refuge in the cellar. Although it had miraculously survived the bite until now, it was fevered and very weak.
Zluty could feel the heat coming from the monster, and he guessed it was its size that had kept Bily’s monster alive this long.
‘We just need to get it onto the wheeled pallet so that we can float it up the stairs,’ Bily concluded eagerly.
Zluty stared at his brother blankly. ‘How do you know the pallet will float?’
‘The egg it’s made from will float and the wood will hold it up too,’ Bily said.
There was a pleading note in his voice that forced Zluty to pull his scattered wits together. He turned to look at the monster. ‘Exactly how much of it is there under those blankets?’
‘Quite a lot, but most of it is fur,’ Bily assured him.
Zluty wanted to tell Bily it would be kinder to let the poor monster lie in peace until it died. But he said, ‘I will go see if the pallet will fit through the doors. I can float it over here but we will have to get the monster onto it before we take away the barricade and float it to the steps. We will have to drag it the last bit of the way up though, so we will have to tie it on.’
‘That will hurt it terribly,’ Bily said worriedly. ‘If only I had some lorassum leaf left.’
For some reason, Zluty found himself thinking of the enormous bones of the creature in the metal egg that had never got a chance to live, but he said nothing about that, instead he told Bily that he had a lorassum leaf in his pack.
‘We can give some to the monster before we move it, only I don’t know how we will manage to get it onto the pallet in the first place. Can it move at all?’
He glanced at the monster and was unnerved to find its glowing yellow eyes were now open and fixed on him.
‘Not usefully,’ it answered in a voice as thick and smooth as tree sap. There was pain in its words, but Zluty thought there was amusement in his tone, too. Yet surely he had imagined that, for how could any creature be amused at such a moment?
‘This is my brother that I told you about, Monster,’ Bily said. His head was so close to the monster’s maw that it could have bitten it off. He turned back to Zluty. ‘It doesn’t matter if it can’t help. We can just drag it onto the pallet using its fur.’
‘Drag it by its fur?’ Zluty repeated, wincing at the thought of being lifted up by his fur. He went back out of the cellar to get the lorassum leaf. The sun had set, but there was still a reddish smear of light in the West so it must have only just gone down. A few stars were beginning to glitter overhead and soon the moon would rise.
Zluty resisted the desire to linger in the fresh air and went back down into the cellar to give the lorassum leaf to Bily, then he went out again to find the wheeled pallet. It lay under a great tangle of sodden roof tiles and when he had got it free, he dragged it into the ruin of the cottage and down to the cellar.
Luckily, the opening was wide enough for it to fit through, and despite its size, the pallet was easy to move because the metal eggshell was very light. When he got the pallet into the water, it floated just as Bily had said it would, and between them they got it over the barrier.
Bily immediately grasped two thick handfuls of the monster’s pelt with complete disregard for its deadly claws and sharp white teeth and urged Zluty to do the same. Zluty had to remind himself that the monster was barely able to move before he could bring himself to obey. The monster’s fur was remarkably soft and he had to wind his fingers into it to get a good grip.
‘Ready?’ Bily asked.
Zluty swallowed and nodded and between them they heaved and tugged until they had got the monster onto the pallet. It had been heavy but not nearly as heavy as Zluty had expected. It did not once complain that they were hurting it, and Zluty wondered if it was the lorassum leaf, or the numbness that sometimes happened just before death that stopped it feeling pain. It would be awful to have the monster die as they were moving it.
He forced himself to stop thinking about what might happen as he set about tying ropes onto the pallet to secure the monster to it. Meanwhile, Bily was dismantling the barrier.
‘Now we will see if it floats,’ he said.
He was talking to the monster, and Zluty tried to imagine how his brother had come to befriend it. But he only said, ‘If the pallet does not float under your weight, Monster, you will have to hold your breath until we can haul you up the steps.’
‘Very well,’ said the monster, sounding more wearily resigned than frightened.
They turned the pallet so that its head was facing the steps, and pulled it deeper into the water. It sank under the weight of the monster a good deal, but stayed high enough in the water to make it clear that they would be able to float it across the cellar to the steps.
Zluty had thought to cut the monster free of the pallet and pull it out of the cellar, but now he saw it would be easier to leave the monster on it for it had fallen unconscious. He found some flat bits of wood to make a ramp and wound the ropes around the stove and the remaining section of the wall for leverage, then he and Bily pulled until the pallet had emerged from the cellar and stood dripping in the midst of the ruined cottage.
The moon had now risen and Zluty sank down in utter exhaustion and relief, but Bily looked around at the mess and burst into tears.
15
Bily had brought out the small honey cakes he had managed to save, giving two to Zluty to serve for their supper and soaking the third in water. He smeared the sweet slime onto the monster’s swollen paw in the hope of drawing some of the swelling and poison from the blackclaw bite, having decided that it was better to do it while it slept in a lorassum dream.
Redwing and some of the other birds came to peck at the crumbs he dropped. Watching them, Bily thought with a pang of his ruined seed collection. Some of the seeds might be saved, but there would be no way to tell if they were still good other than by planting them to see what happened. The thought of planting anything made him think about his precious garden and that made him feel sad and a little sick. Better to concentrate on trying to heal the monster.
It had been Zluty’s suggestion to leave it on the pallet, since that was warmer than the ground. Not that the monster needed warming. The heat of its fever was so great now that the parts of its fur that had got wet as they brought it out of the cellar were almost dry.
He bandaged the paw loosely about the mess of honey cake and then tried to trickle some water into the monster’s mouth, but it just dribbled out again. Giving up, Bily set the bowl by the monster, propping it so that it had only to turn its head to drink. Though he was not sure if the poor thing had the strength even for that. He knew very well that Zluty believed it would die and even the monster thought so. Part of Bily feared they were right, but a small stubborn bit of him refused to accept it. Why would the monster have lasted so long if it was only going to die?
He lingered, gazing into its face, but there was nothing more he could do for it. He looked up the slope to where Zluty had set up a makeshift camp, and was even now co
oking them some soup. Neither of them had wanted to camp right beside the ruined cottage, and besides, the water in the cellar was still rising.
Bily knew that Zluty was waiting for him, but he did not like to leave the monster alone. If only they could have brought the pallet up the hill, but the ground sloped too much for it to be safe.
Finally Bily leaned close to the monster and whispered into its dark furred ear, ‘Please don’t die.’
The monster stirred and Bily thought it would open its eyes, but it did not.
‘I will watch over him,’ Redwing promised.
Bily heaved a sigh and made his weary way up the slope to the fire. Halfway there, he could smell that Zluty was frying mushrooms. He felt faint with hunger.
Zluty smiled at him across the fire, the waves of heat causing him to waver and blur like a vision. For a moment, Bily thought he was dreaming, and that he must still be trapped in the cellar.
‘Sit down,’ Zluty commanded gently. ‘You will feel better once you have some mushrooms inside you.’
Bily sat down on the folded blanket his brother had indicated and held his hands out to the flames. Zluty had often told him how nice it was to be sitting by a fire under the open sky, but Bily had always preferred being inside the cottage by his little stove. Only now the stove was outside as well, he thought sadly.
Zluty pushed a plate of mushrooms into his hands and ordered him sternly to eat. Underneath the bossiness Bily could hear his brother’s anxiety, and so he ate, even though he felt too tired to do anything but sit there. Yet once he had eaten he felt less faded. He looked at his brother.
‘I could hardly believe it was your voice when I heard you calling out while we were trapped in the cellar. I imagined it so many times …’
‘I was hurrying even before the stones fell,’ Zluty explained. ‘I saw some blue berries last time I was in the forest and I wanted to see if they would give a blue dye. Of course, when the stones fell, I didn’t bother with them. I was so anxious that you had been hurt I set the tree sap taps as soon as I arrived to let me leave a whole day sooner. But then the stones started coming down and I could not get back to the cave …’