Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (31 page)

“
Tell me about it,” agreed
Anthony.

“
Lord Kring-Hël,” said
Mugzy, getting Anthony’s attention. “I do in fact see the large
pines as you describe off to our right, about sixty feet or so
ahead. But, they are infested with some sort of crawling creatures.
Their trunks and limbs are covered with them.”

“
What kind of creature,
Mugzy? Anything like what we have seen before?” asked Anthony in a
hurried voice, already dismayed at encountering another vile beast
from Storm.

Mugzy tilted his head in a
uniquely canine-like fashion, deep in thought, considering. He
continued to stare ahead, his eyes not leaving what the teenage boy
figured was the same group of large trees, but he could not be
sure.

He himself could not see
them or the creatures the dog-man was speaking about.

After a time, “No, no,
Kring-Hël, these creatures are different. They are not low to the
ground like the squirrel-pig. And, they are certainly not winged
like the creature that tried to steal away the lovely Hyun Kwon.
They’re even unlike the bird-slug we had seen earlier in the day.
These would appear to be a new species onto itself. They are
crawling, or maybe slithering up and down the trees in great
multitudes.”

“
Why does he call you
that?” queried Kimberly from behind with genuine
inquisitiveness.

Anthony turned at the
waist. “I know it sounds a little stilted, huh?”

Kimberly
shrugged.

He could see she did not
want to offend him. “Well,” he began before turning back around to
the dog-man, “It is my title amongst the Twelve. And the Fist,
being as formal as they tend to be, use it from time to time rather
than my name.”

“
Sounds funky,” she
commented with a furtive chuckle.

“
Yeah, it does,” he said
over his shoulder, then echoed the sentiment with a look at Sophie
who smiled back in agreement.

Mugzy looked like he might
have added more when Garfield appeared out of the weather without
warning.

He spoke, pacing back and
forth, breathing in great huffs. “There are yet more creatures up
ahead, though they do not appear aggressive at the moment. Even so,
it might behoove the group to walk along the tree line opposite
from where these insects have gathered.”

“
So they’re bugs?” asked
Elena, her face mixed between antipathy and a tinge of
fear.

“
Of a
sort,” replied Garfield. “They are undoubtedly the largest
bugs
I have ever seen.
They are almost a yard long.”

“
Did you say they were a
yard long?” queried Sophie her face pale with
trepidation.

“
Eewww, that’s totally
gross,” chimed in Mikalah, her hands going to her mouth as if she
was about to vomit out if instinct.

Goofball
kid
, thought Anthony.
How can you be so insightful one minute and then a total
“kid” the next?

“
Do you think if we just
steer clear they will leave us alone?” said Anthony, seeking
clarification he doubted the great cat could give him.

“
I don’t see why not,
Kring-Hël.”

Anthony exchanged a “told
you so” glance with Kimberly, who looked back, mouth
down-turned.

“
I have passed by them
twice now. I strode along the far side of the pathway. They seemed
to take no notice of me whatsoever,” informed Garfield with a
confidence that made Anthony feel more at ease.

“
Ok,
then you lead us and tell us where to walk, since it seems you
already know the way. Pray, we won’t disturb these
bugs
,” enjoined the
teenage boy, gesturing with his hand.

The cat muttered a
quiet
“as you wish”
and bounded off a ways, then settled into a more sedate pace
still within sight.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

~ 17 ~

Finally - a
Dozen!

Day Four, Sunday, 9:51
am…

They came upon some
unseen, but specific spot where Garfield motioned for them to edge
away from the trail. They moved some ten feet to their left. There,
he motioned for them to walk underneath the boughs of the first row
of trees.

They followed suit without
complaint. They all were cautious, peering across the way toward
the towering copse of pine trees.

To a one, they remembered
those trees, or the ones like them in the World of Man. Every
Christmas they would twinkle and glow with lights and massive
ornaments. They would dangle from every branch. It was always a
cheerful sight.

That was not the case now.
The trees themselves were at least twice as tall, and half-again
wider than they should have been. It was though the transition to
the Melded World had aged them a hundred years or more. Their
massive limbs and far-reaching arms bristled with needles. The
blanket of winter draped over them like a two-toned quilt, white
then green, green then white. Their tops were so high, lost were
they in the ever-descending mists of the oncoming storm. They were
a sight to behold, but in a different sense now.

They were besmirched by
nasty, squirming things. Their trunks crawled with the bodies of
dozens of long, segmented insects. These had to be the ones
Garfield and Mugzy had described before. They were scurrying and
scuttling, up and down the great branches of the trees, marring
their great stature.

They were in constant
movement, oblivious to the increasing cold. They did not appear to
be congregating in any one location in search of warmth. They
milled about from one area to the next, chittering and squeaking as
they oozed and squeezed by - or over - one another. They were such
a jumbled mass, entangled about one another; Anthony could not make
out any of their features in detail. Not a thing, other than the
fact they were about three feet long and had many legs. And, their
bodies were encased in some sort of tough, black armor that gleamed
even in the sunless gloom of the day.

He kept his eyes on the
trees until he, his sisters and Sophie had passed them. Only then
did he feel they were safe.

But, the bugs ignored
their passing.

When Joaquin came near, he
glanced over at them with a single raised eyebrow. “Was wondering
when we’d come across some of those bugs. They’re supposed to be
quite a few on Storm,” he mentioned with a shrug at the
insects.

“
What the hell are they?”
asked Anthony, not looking at the other boy. His eyes still held
onto the rippling forms creeping all over the trees.

“
They’re called Snörks,”
he replied as a matter of fact. “They're said to be benign
creatures in this state, but that won’t last long I’m
afraid.”

“
Why
doesn’t that surprise me one bit.” Anthony did not mean to come
across as crass, but he did nonetheless.
Maybe seeing so many terrible monsters is finally getting to
me now.

Joaquin seemed to
understand and chuckled under his breath, bringing a meaty fist to
his mouth to muffle the sound.

“
What happens to them?”
asked Elena, ever curious.

Joaquin peered down at his
pretty nine-year-old sister. “You see them over there all over the
trees, never stopping, always on the move?”

“
Yes,” she
answered.

“
They are looking for
sap.”

“
Why?” she asked, sounding
like a Valley-girl of a sudden.

Anthony frowned at
her.
Why in the heck was she talking like
that?

“
They need sap to further
their maturity,” explained Joaquin with no reaction.

“
What does it do to them?”
It was Mikalah now, her dark eyes aglow with interest.

Anthony nudged them both
to continue on after the bear-dogs. He had to keep them moving.
Staying in one place too long in the Melded World was proving far
too dangerous.

“
Well?” urged Elena,
looking back at the big teen when they had taken a few steps and he
had not spoken.

“
Oh,” began Joaquin,
smiling at himself, “it changes them. The sap, I mean, does
overtime. This depends, of course, on the kind of sap they ingest.
They will begin to grow in size and their bodies will absorb their
many legs over time. Before too long they will begin to slither
rather than creep.” He raised his eyebrows up and down a few times.
“But here’s the weird part. Where their legs had once been, exactly
where they used to come out of their bodies, hard plates will
emerge. They'll be so strong and hard, the one could call it armor
and not be too far from the truth. As time passes, they will become
enclosed in it, a different creature altogether. They will be about
three times longer than they are now, about two times fatter. They
will be completely covered in those armored segments and will
resemble a large snake and not much of insect anymore. My Gift
tells me, each one of them will end up different. No two of them
will be alike, because of the types of sap they ingested during
their transformation period. Since they will have dined upon the
ooze of many trees before their change is complete, they become
individualized. The unique combination of sap from a multitude of
trees makes it so.”

“
Wow, pretty weird,”
concluded Elena, glancing over at the trees infested with the huge
bugs.

“
Yup, you got that right.
When they’re completely transformed, they’ll look different than
they looked before. They won’t be Snörks anymore.” Joaquin’s eyes
never left Elena’s. “By then, they'll be Slükks - the armored
snakes of Storm, and grow up to ten feet long. From then on, they
will live in the branches of trees, waiting for an unsuspecting
passer-by.

“
You see, they like to
drop on their prey,” he continued.

In his mind’s eyes,
Anthony could already imagine how awful a sight like that might be.
A ten foot, armored snake would be heavy. It would do considerable
damage.

“
Their weight alone can
crush just about anything. They really don’t need to use their
fangs or have to inject poison into what they want to eat. Their
bludgeoned prey is usually too stunned or on the verge of death to
move. They just eat them up whole and then slide back up into the
trees to sleep and rest… and wait for the next meal to come walking
by…”

When he finished, they all
fell silent, each of them deep in a wellspring of
thought.

They had made their way
back onto the path, broadening out their formation as they had
before. They trekked passed where Casper Avenue should have been
until they reached another T-intersection. In their world, it would
have been a four-way meeting of the roads. Here in the Melded
World, Eagle Rock Boulevard did not continue on once it crossed
Colorado. It was merely another broad trail, much like the one,
they were on, ending where they stood. It no longer traversed up
the hill toward Hill Drive, more or less, paralleling Colorado
higher up the ridge to their left.

Anthony had not expected
to use any remnant of Hill Drive. It was becoming ever more clear
that only largest of the streets and avenues of their world had
made it through the Rending. They had become the small roads and
trails they saw now. The narrow streets of the World of Man did not
exist here.

The entire group paused
for a minute or so. Everyone glanced about, getting their bearings.
They exchanged looks, sighing at the changes permeating the
landscape about them. So little of the Earth they had known had
followed them.

Not wanting to dwell on
the idea, Anthony motioned for them all to resume their trek
through the snow-covered forest toward the mall, and the Target
Superstore within its cinder-block confines.

Glances exchanged, a few
them exhaled unspoken wisps of unrealized thought. But in a few
seconds, they were all on the move again.

Anthony chanced a peep at
the sky to see the clouds had darkened even more since he had last
looked heavenward. It shocked him to see had fast they had moved.
The nagging sensation that this storm was going to be another bad
one began to take seed in the back of his mind. What he saw only
confirmed it, made much more of a reality. A stiff breeze rushed
passed his face. The snow stung his cheeks and nose, melting,
leaving behind a small red splotch that smarted from the chill long
after it was gone.

“
I think we’re gonna have
to get indoors before too long,” he said to Sophie. She had come up
next to him and grabbed a hold of his hand when the group had
resumed walking.

“
Yeah, I think this storm
is going to be just as bad as the last one,” she replied with her
own glances above. Her eyes trailed after the large, fluffy flakes
falling now. They were a much heavier curtain than before,
lethargic and meandering with the wind.

“
Why are there so many
storms, Tony?” asked Mikalah as she stomped her feet as she walked,
kicking up snow, gazing at it as it billowed before her.