Bane turned his eyes from the whip. “What d’you need us for?”
“Company. I like the company of my sons,” said Ashes, laughing at them. “Besides, you’re safer with me than staying here. The Shoveler might decide to feed you to Belly. Or Crawly might get hungry and forget you’re part of the family. Or Mooly might decide to find out how well you can fight, and you don’t want to fight Mooly.”
“I’m not ascared of him!” asserted Dyre.
“More fool you, then,” said his father. “You haven’t been in the pond like we have. You may not have our ability to heal. Mooly’s got a skin like steel plates and he’s fast. Faster than anybody here. Including me.”
“So, it’s just us going?”
Ashes’s face went blank, as though the question had derailed him. His features sagged, like wax, half melted. Bane looked at Dyre, gritting his teeth, readying himself to do something … anything. Dyre’s mouth was open, and he shivered as though frightened. Then, gradually, sense seeped back into Ashes’s eyes, his facial bones acquired rigidity, and he spoke as though nothing had happened. “It’s just us, starting out. Who else decides to go is their business. Us sons of thunder are into independent action.”
When they left, several other of the Wilderneers said they’d be coming along, soon, and midway through the morning, Bane spotted Webwings, high in the air above them, flying far faster than they were riding. He cleared his throat tentatively.
“Well, what you got in your craw?” his father asked.
“Webwings, he’s up there. Those … those spiders on him, Web-wings. Where did he get them?”
“They aren’t spiders, they’re part of him,” said Ashes, patting his hip. “Just the way this whip is part of me, and Crawly’s hooks are part of him. We came out of the pond that way.”
“How come … how come some of you are so big?”
“Weren’t big, not then. Some of us got bigger. Crawly wasn’t any bigger than you to start with. Foot wasn’t all that big, just one foot larger than the other. Belly wasn’t, he just had a pot on him. Ear wasn’t all that big, he could still get around, only he kind of held his head to one side. It’s just those parts went on growing and growing while the rest of them shrunk down.”
“Why is that?”
Ashes pinched his lips together. “Well, Belly always did think more about his next meal than anything else. And Tongue was a talker.”
“And Foot?”
“None of us can figure Foot. It wasn’t he liked dancing or anything. Gobblemaw was sort of like Belly. Mosslegs, we can’t figure. Webwings we can’t figure.”
“When you all escaped from the pond place, what did the Timmys and those other things do?”
“Do? They didn’t do anything. They tried! Tried to push us back in, gibbering and jabbering. Some of them used our language, too, ‘Go back through, go back through,’ but we’d had enough. We smashed a few and beat a few and got ourselves out of there. They didn’t come after us, just perched all over the place, staring and chattering. Timmys. Joggiwaggas. Tunnelers. All kinds. Well, we gathered our people up, even the strange-looking ones, and we took them all up out of there, oh, that was some climb. We didn’t want to go by the road, take too long, so we went straight up, pulling and heaving, carrying the ones that couldn’t move on their own. Some of us decided to stay there, to keep watch, but the rest of us went back … “
The last few words trailed off dreamily, as though Ashes were drifting into somewhere else. Bane and Dyre exchanged looks again, wondering, not speaking until Ashes began to talk again, as though he hadn’t stopped.
“ … went back eastward, to the towns, and by the time we got ourselves sorted out, that trader ship had already landed. Some of us, the ones who could move easiest, we tried to stop them, but they had weapons on their ship, and some of us got killed before they took off in both ships.”
Dyre was still digging at the problem that bothered him and Bane the most. “The Timmys didn’t even try to stop you leaving?”