Flight into the Deeps

The remainder of that night was filled with competing fears. Runt worried Gunther and his men were chasing him down, so he pushed on into the Wilds. But every step forward took him further into the grip of the terrors from the Deep.

The trees began to change. Thicker, taller, more ancient. The scrub, too, became more dense until it was hard to even find a way forwards. Runt climbed off Stripes and stood in the dark, listening. The blanket of silence had long since lifted. Frogs croaked. Crickets chirped. Owls hooted. With every passing second Runt identified a greater number of sounds. For example, if he concentrated hard enough, he could identify at least five different types of frog, each with their own peculiar call and their own unique timing. The number of creatures around him seemed to swell as he focused on the sound.

It was a bush orchestra, or more accurately, a choir of the Wild. Runt could hear, amongst the chaos and cacophony, a pattern to it all, a complex rhythm, a chorus that, at once, was perpetually repeated and yet never the same. It was hypnotising, intimidating, and beautiful.

He peered up into the branches of the nearest tree. No drop-bears, as far as he could tell, but wasn’t that the point? They hid up there. Still, it seemed safe.

Not knowing what else to do, Runt scraped together a pile of leaves and sat. Stripes soon curled up in front of him and, before long, they both fell soundly asleep.

Runt woke to a warm wet nose snuffling his face, then his neck, then under his head. As he opened his eyes a crack he quickly learned two things. Firstly, he fell asleep on an ant nest. Secondly, a kiddner doesn’t actually eat children. It eats ants.

He saw a nose longer than his arm snuffling around him. A tongue, almost as long again, flicked in and out of its tiny mouth at the end of the nose, licking up ants off the leaves, and off Runt. Looking up along the nose, two tiny, black, beady eyes stared back. Its plump, sheep-sized body was covered in a mat of spikes, each several inches long. The kiddner took a step forward and Runt saw that its feet ended in long, sharp claws.

Runt scrabbled backwards until his back hit the tree. The near-blind creature, sensing movement, immediately took fright. The kiddner’s spikes stood up across its back and its body seemed to swell in size. “It’s going to shoot its spikes at me!” Runt thought and, turning, rushed up the tree.

The kiddner did not shoot any spikes. Runt later learned the spikes were a kind of hair and, as far as he knew, most creatures did not shoot hair. What the kiddner did was dig. The long claws began slinging dirt in all directions. Within seconds it was half-buried in the soil and leaf litter beneath the tree. It became something like a spiky bush with its head, feet, and belly all hidden beneath. Runt lay very still across the branch. The kiddner-bush sat very still but Runt could hear the creature puffing from the effort of digging and the spikes across its back rose and fell in time with each breath.

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Runt slowly and carefully climbed back down the tree. His curiosity got the better of him and he approached the creature. With one trembling finger extended he touched a spike. They really were as sharp as they looked. And hard, too. Like a long, sharp metal nail.

A rustling noise from the bushes nearby gave Stripes away. The dog padded in holding a dead rabbit in his mouth. It soon disappeared into the dog’s belly.

“Well I see you’ve sorted out your breakfast, boy.” Runt said, scratching the pup’s ears. His own stomach rumbled, reminding him that he, too would need something to eat.

“Bye, kiddner.” He sang as they left in search of food.

Finding things to eat was easy. Finding things to eat that didn’t taste like poison was hard. Runt tried several different types of leaves, flowers, and seeds. He nibbled on three kinds of mushroom, and even contemplated eating a hairy caterpillar. Runt spat out anything that tasted sour or bitter which was just about everything. The caterpillar he put back, unharmed.

“Greybeard said there were fruit trees out here,” Runt thought to himself, “forbidden fruit trees. Fey-trees, he called them. I hope I find one before I starve.”

Runt remembered the rest of the fey-tree story. It ended with a drop-bear killing a young boy. He started looking up whenever a tree stretched overhead. His neck very quickly began to ache. It was also why he very nearly walked directly into the enormous rear end of a mammoth.

The rear end of a mammoth is an intimidating sight. Its legs are like tree trunks with long claws sprouting from its toes. Standing six feet tall, Runt’s head only reached knee height to the enormous beast. Later, when Runt saw them more often and learned their ways, he decided they were basically fat shaggy cows, and about as scary as one, which is to say, not at all. That was later, though. Right now, he was frozen with fear.

The enormous beast snuffled and tore at the tall ferns that grew thick amongst the scrub. Its massive rump rocked left and right as it fed. Runt, realising he hadn’t been spotted, began to back away slowly, motioning Stripes to do the same. To his horror, the rear underbelly of the beast began to squirm.

It was the stuff of nightmares. In the fork of the mammoth’s legs, in the loose skin of its tummy, something moved, kicked and wriggled. A pair of nostrils suddenly poked out and snorted. This was shortly followed by a whole head. Runt now stood face to face with the head of a mini-mammoth that had somehow emerged from the rear underbelly of the mega-mammoth.

There was no time to think or wonder about this miracle of terror, though. As soon as the mini-mammoth caught sight of Runt it bellowed. The mega-mammoth flinched, stood up tall, and began to spin around. The ferns and brush crunched and snapped beneath its massive paws. Fortunately for Runt, it takes a long time for a creature that large to turn. The boy and his pup disappeared deeper into the Wilds before the creature could spot them.

“Two heads?” Runt puzzled to himself. “Is it so they can see danger coming from behind?”