The uncomfortable pinch along its sides led to a bright surface and a sweet bite which it savored as the brightness swallowed it. It slithered inside to a darkness just as sweet, and stayed burrowed, sucking the sugary, crumbling darkness.
As it lingered on one bite, it remembered another taste--sweeter, savory, but with a bitter aftertaste. While this delicious memory confused the earthworm, for it felt it ought to have neither memories nor feelings, it also maddened the earthworm, a familiar emotion, despite its blind, limited universe, for now contained in its slithering impressions of an apple.
Apple. When the word bubbled up in the worm's brainless consciousness, the fruit pulped in an explosion of seeds and fruit flesh as it expanded, and its pink dimmed from worm to boy.
Conrad's suspended senses came back in an oceanic rush of light and noise, and he squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears to wall out the raucous laughter.
"He's still slithering!"
"He's choking on a mouthful of apple," came a gruff voice somewhere on the androgynous line between alto and tenor. When meaty hands grasped under his armpit and yanked him to his feet—feet? what were those? where was the slithering rest of him?—his eyelids wobbled open, and his first glimpse of the world outside the apple was the dead eyes of the ogress.
She had exchanged her white Ratzappers uniform for a jacket of peach-colored leather studded with metal rings. As his vision came into focus, he saw that under the joined rings the coat was sewn from human faces.
"You're...you're..."
"Spit it out, worm."
"You're not human."
The laughter spilled free, and the ogress leaned in with a squinting, growling grin so close that by a quick chomp, she could get a new face for her ensemble. "You're not on Earth, worm, so that's not surprising."
"Not....not..."
"Look at him coming around."
"They call us monsters. Look at stupid!"
"Not on Earth?!" Conrad screamed, fell to his knees, and swung his head in an anguished circle, laying his eyes on the ogress, the wolves, and the tall, gaunt man, who still wore his ripped Ratzappers uniform, though he had belted on a sword.
"Shut him up." When the ogress sat on an old deadwood log, her enormous weight jostled the other end, spilling the gaunt man to his feet, so that he used the forward momentum to bowl forward toward Conrad.
Conrad raised his arms to his face, cowered into a crouch, and closed his eyes. "Please don't hit me!" This produced another raucous guffaw from the gathered monsters, as well as a phlegmy hacking, and Conrad opened his eyes to see spit moistening the ground, and the haggard man glaring through half-lidded eyes and a nose wrinkled in a supercilious sneer.
"He's shut up. Should I knock him over to see if any more whimpering oozes from the worm?"
When the ogress ignored him, the gaunt man sneered, hrumphed, and turned from Conrad.
When a violet sunset dimmed the sky to cobalt blue, stars swelled not like the sparks of Earth, but like iridescent, pearly dewdrops, and a red-gold moon, its craters and rills as clear as if only a mile away, eclipsed the brighter disc of a silver moon that seemed to ripple under its smaller counterpart.
"What is that?!" Conrad croaked, pointing his arm, which shook as if still half-worm and all rubber.
"Haven't you seen a lunar eclipse, worm?"
"It's floating!" Conrad's wail was quickly stifled by a warning glare from the gaunt man, but he couldn't help a high-pitched hissing, as if his terrors were escaping as irrepressibly as steam.
"That's an optical illusion, you meatball." The ogress tsked. "See what we're liberating them from? Better to be a healthy morsel than a no-account ignoramus..." The motley crew of monsters smirked and tittered, then degenerated into hysterical laughter.
Although the Elderliches were silent on the subject of science, at Loren and Berangere's request, they had taken the Animalytes to the roof on the previous lunar eclipse. When Berangere objected that there were safety procedures for a lunar eclipse,
Njal nodded, then threw into the heavy summer night a grainy dust that lingered in the air, and shaded the rooftop until it seemed like a cave. While Conrad thought it a trick at the time, now he had cause to wonder, not because the gaunt man's accent reminded him of the Elderliches, but because magic was obviously real.
A buzzing wind blared through the woods, fluttering the branches and leaves, and its resonance shuddered the soil, shook the fallen log, and knocked the werewolves and ogress from their seats.
"Did anyone see it?" growled the ogress.
"Why do we need to see it?" retorted a werewolf. "We know what that was. Or rather, who."
"See to our guest," seethed the ogress. "We're on the hunt."
"We can't bring that down!" moaned the other werewolf.
The gaunt man retorted, "keep it in sight as long as you can. You," he barked at Conrad. "On your feet."
Conrad got to his feet, and somethow stayed there, though he felt limp, rubbery, and slimy with sweat from the heat roiling from the conjoined moons. Despite his captors' shouts of displeasure, he couldn't take his eyes off the satellites, as if they drew his eyes into their orbit.
"Look at me, worm boy." When Conrad's fearful eyes flickered to the gaunt man's murderous grimace, they widened, as if accomodating the man's wish by expanding the frame of Conrad's vision. "Do I have your attention?" Though the leaves and branches thrummed from the eerie vibrations, the lull suggested they were the only ones in the clearing. Though he wanted to look around, he was terrified of taking his eyes off of the gaunt man.
"Yes."
"Run, worm-boy."
"What?"
"Run. I'll be right behind you, so don't flee or drop to a no-legged, cowardly pace."
"Run where?"
"Yahh!" When the gaunt man shouted, then drew his sword, Conrad spurted five feet in his first leap, then sprinted. "Yahh!" Each time Conrad lagged or turned his head, the gaunt man shouted, "Yahh!" When hot breath lifted the hairs of Conrad's neck, and he thought the cold sword point touched his back, he found his second wind, burned up his third and fourth winds with it, all at once, then burst through tall grasses, creeks, and bushes like a wet, breathless tumbleweed.
Though Conrad became so exhausted that his head lolled, he could not halt his tramping momentum, and stomped on, his eyes lulled by the hypnotic moons.
When the red-gold moon slipped right, a brassy dart gleamed with reflected silver from the full face of the larger moon. The strange vehicle inched ahead like a prop plane except its wings weren't rigid, but flitted so fast that they would have been invisible were it not for the rippling backdrop of the silver moon.
Though Conrad was suffering, and could not be said to be glad about anything, he was not unhappy that he had thought of changing into his tennis shoes before leaving the Mansion. Though the soles were rapidly beaten by pebbly soil and gouged by rocks, his sandals would have ripped half a mile back, and he might have run this fiendish race barefoot. That said, the constant jarring of pounding feet and the stabbing of his ragged breaths left scarce moments for reflection. There was only the endless running.
When he could spare the energy for wonder, the gaunt man was the wonder. Somehow this pocked, scabby, emaciated creature jogged right behind him, as if daily evils were his calisthenics, and serving an evil regime was the best regimen. When Conrad fell, tangled in his vestments, the gaunt man thrust down, and Conrad screamed, believing himself stabbed, but the sword only pierced his lower vestment, which the gaunt man then snatched and tore against the unyielding blade, hacking Conrad's robe into a mini-dress.
Now Conrad ran bare legged, his legs scratched by tall grasses and thorny branches,
though these small tears were nothing compared to the nonstop running which chaged his blistering thighs so raw that he feared the step that would send his legs toppling one direction, and the rest of him in another.
Though they started far behind, and for most of this moonlit run lagged behind—and though Conrad had scant motivation to catch up to maneating monsters or prove himself anything other than a survivor—Conrad slowly reached the loping ogress and werewolves.
While her ogrish stride was long and powerful, and their wolvish stride was nimble and quick,
Conrad was younger. Though an hour ago he thought he would die, through gruelling repetition and the gaunt man's hounding, Conrad found a groove in himself more obtinate than granite.
When he passed the werewolves, then the ogress, he risked a lolling glance at the flight of the dark needle on the verge of the horizon, and poured on a desperate spurt of speed, heading for a thick treeline of firs, whose green looked nearly grey in the starry blue night.
"The worm's headed to ground." When the werewolf's snarling chuckle stretched into a hacking squeal, spun into a rasping cough, then quickly trailed away, Conrad knew he had lost one of his pursuers.
Though Conrad racked his brain for tricks he watched on TV--throwing dirt in their eyes, or leading them towards low branches--he doubted his ability to pull them off, and kept to his grind, trusting the seemingly endless reservoir of stamina he had tapped. When he heard the howl at his heels, the terror that one of his pursuers was now a murderous wolf stimulated Conrad to another explosion of footfalls, and he aimed at the widest gap in the treeline, hurtling over the overgrowth fringing the tall grasses from the firs to land on wobbly turf that gave out and sent him half-sprawling on a tree root. When the wolf landed beside him, his shoes tore the soil in backing away, but his hand, arcing in a sloppy half-fist by reflex, landed with the weakest possible force--but as it collided with the wolf's ear, that was enough.
As the wolf collapsed in a raging howl, scratching its own face in the paroxysm of pain,
Conrad staggered away.
When another howl answered the suffering werewolf, terror thrummed in Conrad's numb legs and leaden arms, inspiring him to half his former momentum despite his roaring, inflamed lungs, the branches grasping his bare legs, and alternately hurtling and stumbling over tree roots.
As Conrad ran, and ran, and ran, the tenacious monsters lagged behind, but never more than a dozen yards. Having lost sight of the shadowy needle, Conrad had no illusions about their current quarry. As he could only expect to live for as long as he ran, Conrad ran, and ran, and ran, until the character of the woods changed from a meandering, scratchy route of crammed-in trees, bushes, and shrubs, to towering trees with gigantic leafy canopies and monstrous root neworks only partially submerged in soil, and the other half of their roots protruding like the Loch Ness Monster, so that nothing but grass grew near for fear of being strangled.
While glad to be no longer shredded by warring weeds, and only too happy for expanded running space, Conrad broke stride over the monstrous roots, while the monsters took them with wolfish lunges, or snapped them on flinty ogrish shins.
When hands fell on his back and yanked him skyward, he kicked and wheeled his arms,
his neck swayed in a half-circle, he panted so fiercely that he had no air for screaming,
and a hairy hand with long black nails--not like fingernails, but huge black doornails--clapped over his mouth.
"Shut up, boy." The contempt was pure--Conrad knew from long use of contemptuous sarcasm that if the creature was pretending, it had practiced well, and wanted him to know he was not liked. "Hang limp, idiot."
When the ogress and werewolves traipsed underneath, tramping over roots and overgrowth and sniffing, Conrad's teeth chattered, and he got a hairy noseful of his captor's musky palm sweat when it shoved its whole palm between Conrad's teeth.
Though the monsters quickly passed from sight, they dangled until they could no longer hear the crackle of trodden branches. His rescuer grunted, then hauled Conrad onto the wide branch.
Sprawled on the enormous tree limb, Conrad's panting became hyperventilating heaves,
and then, mortifyingly, vomiting. While he wouldn't mind puking in front of an Earth animal,
this beast had not only hands, but thumbs, and a scornful wrinkle around its furry eyes.
"You're welcome! That branch was my favorite daybed."
Conrad recognized the raccoon's voice. "Do I know you?"
"While I know your name, Conrad, we're not familiar."
"You were in the Mansion."
"Yes, that was me. What gave it away?" The raccoon's sneer creased deeper. "Are you a fan?"
"Well, no...but I did recognize your voice."
The raccoon's head dipped into a bow. "If only your playhouses recognized the value of animal performers."
"My playhouses? I don't own any playhouses. Do you mean arcades? I've never been to one."
The raccoon's voice rose into a shrill falsetto. "Pity the nation whose prince is a poltroon; they fear the future, fight the present, and flee the past."
"What?"
The raccoon growled a cruel laugh. "I bet you don't even know a wolverine when you see one?"
"You're a wolverine? You look like Rocket Raccoon. He's an actor too--well, CG."
"Harumph." The snort dissolved into a rumble of laughter. "I am indeed a raccoon, my prince."
"Prince?"
"Never mind, kit, we have a long way to go."
"No, I'm Conrad."
"What?" The animal seemed bemused.
"You called me Kit."
"I know your name's Conrad! I called you Conrad a minute ago. A kit is a young raccoon."
"Didn't you think that might bother me." Conrad began to feel more like himself. "You got mad when the policeman called you kid."
"So I did." The raccoon's easy, relaxed smile almost seemed genuine. "Kit, I'm tired of talking. Follow me."
While Conrad had chased and fled monsters for miles, only to be rescued by a mocking raccoon, and had neither the energy nor the desire to tail this insolent animal, he was alone in a strange forest on another world. When the raccoon loped along the gigantic branch, Conrad followed cautiously, but found that aside from the plunging view on either side of the bough,
it was not unlike a sidewalk. When the branch tapered uncomfortably narrow, the raccoon nimbly stepped to a neighboring branch, a move that Conrad mangaged to duplicate more from brash imitation than from any native agility. That brnach widened as they neared the next titanic tree trunk, where they hopped to a higher limb for the next leg of their journey. The raccoon's instincts for selecting a stable branch were so good, that neither raccoon nor boy, nor their combined weight, shook any of the branches.
Conrad kept waiting for the raccoon to climb down, or find a low enough branch from which to leap, but instead they ascended gradually to traverse the colossal woods from a dizzying altitude. His astonishment at their treetop journey was soon supplanted by pride in the accomplishment, as if he could ever hope to duplicate the feat without the raccoon's leadership.
"This is amazing!"
The raccoon looked back. "I'm glad you approve."
"If you put signs up, mister raccoon, anyone could do this."
"Do you put up walking signs for babies?"
"I've never seen a baby."
"Why am I not surprised," sighed the raccoon.
"Well, I've seen them on TV. I was six when we came to the Mansion, and our youngest was three."
"My point is that any week-old raccoon can make this journey. I walked and climbed many miles before my first words."
Conrad had no response, other than the feeling that it was unfair for the raccoon, who had an adult personality, to pick on Conrad, who was only a bully because it seemed the natural order of things. "Where are me going, and when will we get there?" While he had intended a frustrated sigh, it jetted out like a sigh of exhaustion.
"Do you mean me?"
"Who else?" scowled Conrad.
"I was just checking," said the raccoon, with an aloof nod, "as you didn't say my name."
"I don't know your name."
"And yet I know yours," said the raccoon. "Someone has forgetten their manners."
"That someone is you!" yelled Conrad. "You could have introduced yourself by now!"
"No, your highness," said the raccoon with a condescendingly sad frown, from which crocodile tears or hyena laughter might spring at any moment, "I can't go around introducing myself to royalty, can I? That's lese majeste. I must be invited first."
"I'm not royalty!"
"Though I sympathize with the suggestion that you are unworthy, the facts are otherwise. As Gaona was settled sixty years ago by the current king's granduncle, you are not only prince of Gaona, but following Queen Suvani, Prince Vemulus, the Duke, and the Marquessa, fifth in line for the Alsantian throne. Regardless of how you or I feel, you're a big deal. Change branches."
"What?" Realizing that he was gawking over his shoulder at the raccoon,
Conrad looked down and saw that his branch had tapered to such a slim stem
that when he hastily leaped aside it whipped the air.
"If you can't walk and talk at the same time, my prince, choose walking."
"Can't we rest?"
"You're ready to call it quits already? I thought you'd want some more branch between you and the ogress."
Conrad sighed and trudged behind the raccoon, not asking any questions. They had changed branches four more times before he said, "fine, I give you permission."
"To save your life? That's very big of you, your highness." The raccoon snorted.
"I invite you to tell me who you are."
"Oh? I may approach the throne?" The raccoon's velvety voice almost crooned it. "Jgorga."
"Is that like George?"
"Is Conrad like dragon?"
"Say your name again."
"No."
"Please?"
"Only because I've never been pleased by royalty." He snickered. "Jgorga."
"Juh-gore-gah?"
"Guh, not gah. And you're stretching it out a little."
In a titanic cherry tree, their arboreal journey began a downward turn through pink fleurets clumped on curling twigs. Blossoms were strewn on its wide branches and the roots and grassy soil below, which they had neared by imperceptible degrees, so that now they were now only several yards from the forest floor.
"These are good to eat, if you're hungry," said the raccoon.
"Of course I am." Conrad immediately regretted his sulking tone. "I'm starved." He had already popped the tiny cherries in his mouth to suck on the sweet juice, but when Jgorga said they were edible, the boy crammed them in until his lips and fingers were cherry-stained.
"Eat up," smirked Jgorga. "Then, you simply must try the termites."
When Conrad meant to say "the what?" only "AWT" sputtered out around a mouthful of cherries.
"The bugs in the tree, Conrad. They're crunchy, salty and good--nature's candy."
Conrad downed the cherries. "Thanks, but no! Tell me something, Jgorga."
"Something."
"Funny. How are all these trees this big?
"While there's a great story to that, we don't have long enough to tell it, as we're almost there."
"I don't see anything. Just more trees."
"Conrad, I envy your clear head and unprejudiced vision. To walk through life so blissfully ignorant would be almost like being human."
"I am human!"
"You walked the arboreal route so well I forgot you weren't a raccoon."
"Thanks," While Conrad tried to stifle his smile, it peeked out, then bounded up. "What's arboreal mean?"
"The tree route, Conrad. Here we are." As they ran down a deadwood leaning against a neighboring tree, its hollow trunk echoed their footsteps.
"Jgorga, I still don't see anything."
"Just watch your step, Conrad. Don't step on anything."
"How can I walk without stepping on anything?"
"You can step on grass, Conrad. Nothing else."
"What am I looking for?"
"Conrad! Stop!"
Conrad froze, his foot hanging over a meaty toadstool as wide as a dinner plate.
"Stop!" Jgorga repeated his strangled cry.
Conrad stepped back. While the toadstool was an impressively fat fungus that no doubt took more than one night to grow, Conrad was even more insensitive to mushrooms than to the younger Animalytes, and moreover, he was a bully, and bullies liked to kick things. Though his kicks had never connected with Oji, it was not for lack of trying, and he also kicked doors shut, shoes under his bed, the toys of the smaller children, and cans and plastic bottles in the alley behind the Mansion. To Conrad, an unkicked toadstool was like a yard of unpopped bubble wrap. He had to do it. When his brows knitted mischievously, his smile curled cruelly, and he drew his foot back for the windup, Jgorga growled, lunged, and knocked Conrad on his back.
Between the smack of his body on hard earth threaded with tree root, and the crushing weight of the raccoon on his ribs, the wind was explosively and painfully knocked out of him,
and the inhalation that followed was hoarse, gruelling, and made his eyes bulge. "Get off me!" he shouted, flailing at paws and fur until the raccoon's hairy hands pinned Conrad's arms.
"Conrad, you almost stomped our escort."
"Get off me!" As Conrad's screech squandered his shallow lungful of air, he wheezed, and Jgorga rolled back onto his stomach, so that Conrad's relief at gulping down air was undermined by raccoon-squeezed guts which threatened a volcanic eruption in two directions.
"For the next stage of your trip."
"Aren't we there?" Conrad's groan was less exasperation than his belly shifting under raccoon paws.
"Gaona's an island, Conrad. Does this look like an island to you? Not that it matters, unless the Kru are willing to forgive you."
"The crew?" Conrad's gasp bottomed out in an enormous belch. "I'll puke if you don't get off me, Jgorga."
Jgorga winced. "Let me do the talking."
When the raccoon stepped off of Conrad, the boy sprang up with a scowl, but instantly regretted it when sour bile rose in his mouth. As he mastered his raccoon-induced stomachache, Jgorga lowered his head to the brim of the toadstool, then lower still, where a dozen tiny people, fanning glossy four-fold wings, nocked two-inch arrows to miniature bows. When one flinched, an arrow flitted into Conrad's chin, and like an enormous uppercut, flooded him with a wave of dizziness and a floating unconsciousness.