“What has us upset,” said a voice from the darkness, “is that mountains are falling. Great Gaman, most beautiful of caverns, is no more. What has us upset is Niasa will be hatched, I think, even if it means we die, all of us.”
The voice began to sing in a language neither Ellin nor Bao had ever heard before, full of ororees and imimees and wagawagas. The song was unmistakably a lament, long drifting phrases in a minor key, with many repetitions that seemed to go nowhere, reminding Ellin of some twentieth-century ballet music by a man named … what had it been, Grass? Gless? After a time the warmth, the music, and the jiggle-jog of the floor beneath them created a cocoon of nursery-like peace around them and they fell asleep.
When they wakened much later there was light. Dimly glowing stones had been set here and there to cast a pale greenish light on the surroundings. When they sat up, they found their legs had been untied and they could make out the glowing forms of their captors, much brighter than before, sitting at some distance from them having, so Ellin muttered resentfully to herself, a picnic.
“I’m thirsty,” said Ellin plaintively, running her tongue around her dry mouth.
Immediately, one of the Timmys rose and brought them cups full of liquid. “Mir-juice,” said the Timmy. “Not too sweet.”
Ellin tasted it doubtfully. It was tart, cool, with a satisfying flavor somewhere between fruit and spice. By the time she had finished it, the Timmy was back with small loaves of bread. “We brought these for you,” it said. “We took them from the pantry at Mantelby Mansion.”
Ellin put one of the little loaves to her nose, then bit into it. It was one of the sweet breakfast breads Ellin had most enjoyed since being at the mansion. “Can’t we eat your food?” she asked, somewhat tremulously.
The Timmy smiled a three-cornered smile, its eyes crinkling, its lips open to display bright yellow mouth tissues. “Assuredly. But, we thought when people are snatched up and carried off, when they are tied up and put in the belly of a legger and then are in the belly of a swimmer, and it is dark and things are most unfamiliar, then it is probably comforting to have familiar food.”
Only then did Ellin and Bao realize they had indeed been moved into some new conveyance, though it felt and smelled exactly like the former one. The jogging motion had given way to a recurrent warping of their space, first to one side, then the other, like the swimming motion of a fish or snake.
Bao stood up and stretched, bracing himself against the sideways warping. “So, we are having familiar food. What are you bringing specially for me?”
Another Timmy handed over a neatly wrapped sandwich. Ham and cheese. “You are watching us,” said Bao. “All the time we are being here, you are watching.”
“That is true,” agreed the Timmy. “Mostly we watched the other ones, for they are most different. But then, we saw you dancing, and we said, oh, they are dancers, we must bring them, too, and we asked Bofusdiaga, and the word came, yes, bring them. So, we took some things to make you comfortable, and if you had not come in upon us when you did, we would have come for you very soon anyway.”
“That makes me feel so special,” said Ellin, only slightly sarcastically.
The Timmy was alert to the tone. “We will not hurt you. We do not hurt people. Oh, the Fauxi-dizalonz showed those other ones they were gau, but that was their own fault. Being gau is always the creature’s fault if it will not go through and through to get fixed.”
“What other ones?” asked Bao.
“Now they call themselves Wilderneers,” said the Timmy, with an exasperated little shake of its head. “They were the first mankind ones who came. But they were all … all one kind and all Jong. Jong, that means … like something we sweep and throw away. We did not know they were Jong until they went in the Fauxi-dizalonz. Then Bofusdiaga cried out, and we all came running to see. Fauxi-dizalonz turned an evil color, and they came out like evil monsters, and we told them, ‘Go back through, take up all the disguises you have left there and fix yourselves,’ but they would not.”