Now and again it stopped and turned toward Oomark, and I could hear the same unintelligible mumble it had voiced when on the chase. But Oomark did not answer, nor did he move, except to continue those pushing motions.
I wondered why the creature had not gone in and plucked the boy out of that poor refuge. Certainly its strength was infinitely more than that of the frightened child. Yet it was obvious that for some reason it could not carry through whatever purpose had led to the hunt.
And its indecision or inability gave me a chance at rescue. I shrugged the storage bag off my shoulder. Its present contents I stuffed into the front of my tunic. Then I began to search about me for stones of suitable size and weight.
7
With the weighted bag in my hand, I slipped along using the rocks as a screen. That monstrous figure had gone back to pacing. The pacing was so ponderous and deliberate that I thought that its reactions might not be too quick. Yet one could not be sure. To undervalue your opponent may be disastrous.
I watched that prowl, judging the right moment for attack. Then I leaped, swinging the bag and bringing it down full force, aiming at the monster’s head. But my improvised weapon was awkward, and the blow landed glancing along the shoulder below.
However, it had hit hard enough to make the beast thing cry out. It reeled away and went to its knees. I passed it and reached the rocks where Oomark was. Once there, I whirled to meet any attack the thing might launch.
It was still on its knees, one paw at the shoulder I had struck. And it made a mewling sound, shaking its head. How long it would be so incapacitated I could not tell. I reached for Oomark, though he tried feebly to beat me off. Somehow I clawed him out of his crevice.
He struggled, plainly too overwrought to know who I was, fighting for his freedom. I was bitten, scratched, but I held grimly, trying in the meantime to soothe him with my voiced assurances that he was no longer alone.
I do not know which form of reassurance finally reached him, or whether it was just that he was too tired to struggle longer. At last he collapsed in my hold, a limp weight. I groped for the bag with one hand, while I steadied him against me with the other.
The beast thing was still occupied with its hurt. Only, even as I dared to believe we might escape, that hairy head swung around to face us. There was little sign of nose, and the eyes were so deep-set in twin pits they could not be seen. The mouth was a slit, now well open as if the creature struggled for breath. And the fangs so revealed were such threatening armament as made my poor bag of stones a straw opposed to a laser.
“Oomark!” I tried to put command in my tone, to reach through the fear that made him captive. It was plain that I could not carry him and defend us, too. “Oomark! We must get away. Do you understand?”
I could feel the painful shuddering of the small body pressed to mine. He gasped, but he did answer me. “Kilda?” It was as if he suddenly was aware I now stood between him and the source of his fear.
“Yes, I am Kilda!” There was no longer any time for lengthy soothing. We must be on the move before that thing fronted us again. I controlled my impatience as I added, “I have come, Oomark. But you must help me now. Can you walk if I hold your hand? I cannot carry you.”
“Kilda-that thing!” His hold kept me from moving. “It’ll get us!”
“Not if we go away.” I kept my voice low. “I hit it, Oomark. It is hurt. But we must go before it can stop us.”
The boy turned his head to look. And as Oomark did so, my own hand brushed the top of his head. I must have uttered a cry of surprise, for he tightened hold on me again.
However, it was no action of the beast that had startled me. It was what my hand had found on my charge’s head, what I could see when I looked for them. Evenly spaced, one above each temple, Oomark had small protuberances. The lumps were too regular to be bumps gained during his flight. Nor did they seem sore, for he had not flinched when my touch crossed them.
I gave him closer study. It was true his skin was a curious gray. And along his small arms and legs, where his tunic and breeches were torn and showed skin, there was a soft fluff of fine hair growing. He was changed, changed into something far different from a small human boy!
For a moment I even forgot the hairy thing, our common enemy. But a sound louder than its heretofore mewling made me face it. The creature was on its feet, but it moved unsteadily. And I began to hope that, glancing as my blow had been, I had injured it somewhat.
It tottered a step or two in our direction. I had the cord of the bag tight in my hand, ready, and I swung it. I meant , that to ready it for a blow. But the creature must have taken it as a warning. It stopped.
I saw its slit lips work and spittle in the comers of its mouth, as if it were engaged in some struggle. Then it lifted one paw and held it out, palm up and empty, in a gesture of appeal, while those writhing lips shaped two words, garbled and far from clear human speech, yet understandable.
“No-friend-”
That reaching hand went to its throat, grasping and tearing at the hairy skin there, as if it were so frustrated at its inability to make me understand that it would tear the words from its vocal cords.
After a long moment I began to move. Now it made plain, by the best way it knew, that it was opening a passage for us. How much this change in attitude could be trusted, I had no idea. However, it was true that it might have pulled Oomark from the rocks with very little effort, and it had not. I would have to take the chance –
While I so hesitated, it turned its back on us. Still holding hand to shoulder, it shuffled away. Nor did it turn to gaze in our direction again, but continued out of sight. Was mis all a sham, and would it stalk us, lay some ambush among the rocks?
Staying here was no solution. I thought that, in spite of the mist, I might be able to get back to the woods, perhaps to the pool where I had awakened. Only – what would that avail me? The important thing was, I was convinced, to find Bartare and this mysterious Lady. A door opens two ways, and if one had brought us here, it should let us go again. It need only be that we find it. And the best way to do that was to discover who held the key.
“That thing is gone.” Gently I took Oomark’s head and turned it so that he could see for himself. “Now, while it is gone, we must go, too.”
“Now – quick before it comes again!” His grip on my belt pulled me toward the open. But I had had my fill of wandering. We must go only with a goal in sight.
“Oomark, you want to get away from this place, this whole world, don’t you?”
He did not raise his head to face me squarely, but shot a look at me in an odd, sidewise fashion. With a second shock I saw that his eyes were no longer a warm brown but hard and glinting gold, such as I had never seen in a human face before.
“Away from here – ” he echoed. “Yes, please, Kilda! Before the thing comes back!”
“Oomark, do you still know where Bartare is?”
Another glance from those golden eyes. “I always know. She doesn’t care – not any more.”
“Why?”
“Because – because – ” His small face screwed up in perplexity. “I guess because it doesn’t matter now.”
I wanted to know why it did not matter. But somehow I could not bring myself to ask. Instead, I inquired, “Can you find her now?”
He looked at me directly, with a long, searching, unchildlike stare. There was something cold, aloof, not of the Oomark that I knew in it.
Then he nodded. “Now I can. Come on!”
He grasped my hand and pulled me to the left and away from the rocks. At least, unless the creature had circled back once he was out of sight, we were heading away from where it had disappeared into the mist.