It was choked, husky. It might have been a mumble of words in an unknown language. Oomark dropped the jelly blob. He looked over his shoulder to give a shriek of terror.
Then he ran, passing out of my reach. After him, touching first one point to the ground and then another, was a dark purple thing, which might have been two triangles welded together in the middle. From it emitted the gobbling noise, as if it struggled to call out in recognizable speech.
Awkward as it looked, it was swiftly following Oomark with purpose. I could not guess what it was, but Oomark’s reaction suggested something terrible.
It bumped past me and was gone, crashing in the boy’s wake. I tried to hit it with the supply bag as it passed. But either my aim was poor, or else no touch affected it. And it showed no interest in me.
Somehow I arose and started in the wake of hunted and hunter. It had all happened so quickly that at first I was moved perhaps by instinct alone. Then the full horror of that chase urged me on. That Oomark still ran and the purple thing trundled after him, I was assured by sounds.
I was not to be a part of that chase very long, tor suddenly a long ripple of crimson writhed out just ahead of me. I couldn’t avoid what twined between my feet and brought me crashing to earth in a fall hard enough to drive both breath and sense out of me.
Dark – it was very dark. There was some reason why I must move. That need prodded at me savagely. Now I crawled, dragging forward inches at a time. Still that need would not let me rest.
My hands, outstretched to pull me on, suddenly plunged into wetness. Liquid rippled about my wrists. Water! I craved that water more than anything I ever had in my life. I dragged on farther, to fall again, my face in the water. Then I drank and drank, as if I could never get my fill. It was so sweet and good. I must still have been drinking when I lapsed once more into darkness.
I awoke from a sleep so profound that I did not even know a stir of memory until I sat up and looked around in childish wonder.
There was no sunlight. A thought stirred – what was sun? Bright warmth should be overhead. I turned up my face to a sky that was silver-gray, through which mist arose in curls. There was no direct source of the light that I could detect.
I stirred uneasily as memory awoke. My eyes no longer hurt. Why – this was a normal, natural world in which there were no blazing shapes. I was beside a pool into which fed a miniature fall of water, from which trickled a small rill over which hung plants with tall fresh green leaves shaped like the blades of ancient swords. In the midst of each cluster of those blades, as if it were some treasure they were bared to defend, stood a stalk of darker green crowned with large white flowers, each petal tipped with a spot of silver glitter.
Farther away were bushes, each heavy with flowers, cream white or silver pale. Nowhere, as I turned my head slowly to view the hollow where I was, were there any colors save the shades of white and cream of the flowers, the silver gray of the rocks, the green of the foliage.
I cupped my hands and drank again. And I remembered everything.
Oomark? But that other word – I must somehow have returned to Dylan. Then what of the children? Were they back, too? Or were they still entrapped, over there – in there – however you might deem it. I must find them – or get help to find them.
“Oomark!”
As I got to my feet, my body was curiously light, restored. I felt no pain, no ache, no fatigue now. I was not hungry. I was only impatient.
“Oomark?”
Studying the disturbed moss and soil, I could see the track I had made crawling to the pool. Perhaps if I back-tracked –
I had, indeed, left a well-marked trail, first through a break in the wall of flowering shrubs and then between trees. There was a strong fragrance from the flowers, and among them gently fluttered gauzy-winged creatures that were never still enough for me to be sure whether they were birds or very large insects. The trees had dark green leaves. And here and there among them were large, plate-flat flowers such as a small child might draw, a round center, each petal distinct. These were green also, but much lighter and brighter. And some had touches of blue at petal tip, while others showed a faint silvery dusting. Yet both kinds grew on the same tree.
Though I had an urgent need to hunt the children, yet I looked about me as I went, for it seemed I could see details more clearly than I ever had in my life before.
The marks I followed ended at last in a place where there were footprints instead. Seeing those, my belief that I had won free from the other world was shattered, for I read my own boot marks. And those followed and in some places overlaid earlier spoors, consisting of smaller prints overrun again by larger. The large ones were oddly shapeless, so I could not be sure what manner of creature had left them, save that they must be those of Oomark’s pursuer.
So I followed that new trail. It led on, dodging among the trunks of the trees, as if Oomark had fled, intent only on outdistancing whatever followed him. My fear grew as I ran as fast as I could in the same direction.
Here the trees grew farther apart. I came out of the woods into open land, though mist limited my range of vision. When I glanced back, I could see fog closed in behind me.
Trees gave way to bushes, many of them hung with the perfumed flowers. Something swooped over my head and was gone. Some bird or flying thing must be coursing prey.
I had a growing sensation that I was under observation. Twice I stopped short and turned to look along my back trail. Though I sighted nothing moving there, yet the feeling that something had just scuttled into hiding was strong.
The trail I followed, which had been so clear to read in the muck of the woodland, was harder to discern here. I caught only a few faint impressions, and sometimes in an open patch the marks of Oomark’s boots or the imprint of the shapeless foot of his hunter. Once I lost them altogether and had to circle back and forth until I found some smudged and beaten-down grass, which, I thought at first with a leap of fear, must mark Oomark’s capture. Yet, to reassure me, there was beyond a boot mark.
He had made a sharp turn to the right. And I wondered if he had been trying to head back to the woods, away from the open, for there was no more cover here save grass. That was very thick and lush, brushing above my ankles as I moved.
The peculiar misty atmosphere hid the trees from which I had come. It enclosed me in a small bit of open, which moved with me, as if I were under some perambulating cover designed never to permit me to see very far. Now there pushed up through the grass, rocks, until I was among some towering as tall as trees. When I reached that point, I heard sobbing, alerting me to danger by its very hopelessness.
So warned, I crept on as softly as I could, taking care in the setting of my feet among the gravel and small stones thickly strewn among the rocks, until I came to a place where I could look down a slope.
Just within the wall of mist were those I sought. Oomark was wedged between two stones, as if he had fought his way into a very cramped pocket of safety. He was crying, though it was more a kind of bleating, a sound that might come from a human being who had been driven by fear into the escape of near-mindlessness. And he kept moving his hands feebly in a pushing motion, as if so to defend himself against some attacker.
Yet that which had hunted him was not close but rather kept a goodly distance away, pacing back and forth, as if some invisible wall stood between him and the boy. Him – it – that – I drew a breath of disbelief, but I was also sure that my eyes reported truly the form of what prowled there. Man-sized, humanoid in general shape, it was like no man nor alien I had ever seen. Its shoulders were thick and bowed, which made its too large head bob forward when it moved, rather than be held erect. Its arms were long, its legs thick, and it was covered with a mat of black hair, curly as an animal pelt. Yet it was no animal – for on and over that furry body were ragged remnants of clothing, twisted and tied together, as if, though the creature might have been far more comfortable to discard them, it clung to those as one might cling to a charm.