Priam's Lens

THIRTEEN The Coming of the Demons

They had moved back, away from the river, but Littlefeet had not been able to shake the sensation that things were not as they should be. For one thing, they seemed so far outside their traditional territory that he was certain that the Family was headed far closer to the coast than it had ever been, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the distant mountains to the west, which had always defined their boundary, were considerably farther away and looked more like ghosts or discolorations in clouds than high snowcapped peaks.

Father Alex was feeling much the same misgivings, and the unexplained deaths of the other family’s scouts, even though months had passed, continued to haunt him.

Lost? How in God’s name could the Family ever be lost?

It was inconceivable. Yet every time they had scouted west they had hit other rivers, natural barriers as uncrossable if not as wide or as threatening as the great river to the east, that simply should not have been there. Since the land did not change in this fashion, at least not like this, it meant that they had jogged more south than west after re-treating from the great river and had somehow gotten caught in a new area.

No, that couldn’t be right. How could there be rivers on both sides of them if they had not ever crossed a river in the first place? Rivers did not spring whole from the ground; they had sources in the mountains or in the upper lakes fed by various streams and waterfalls.

He called the Family council together, and they were as baffled as he was. Finally, one of the old Brothers who had clearly not much longer to live but whose experience was all the more valuable for that said, “We must depart from our traditional ways this once, it is clear. Since, as it is said, we cannot have a river on both sides without crossing one, and we have not crossed one, then one of two things has happened. Either the one to the west does spring from the ground even though we have not seen this before, in which case we must travel north along it to its source and go around it, or God is shaping a new path for us, in which case we will not find a source and will be forced to go where He wills. In either case, the course is clear. To the western river, and then north.”

They all prayed for guidance, but the only thing that they received was the wisdom of the old Brother, who had survived some fifty-plus years, and that would have to do. The Lord, Father Alex reflected, always seemed to make the struggle so hard. As he was so fond of noting to his questioning pupils, though, God always answered every single prayer. It was just that He usually said, “No.”

Littlefeet was back pretty much to his normal self now, and was feeling far more secure. He was the veteran now, instructing the new young would-be warriors and scouts and wearing his scars and limp like battle tattoos. He still thought of Spotty, but not as much as he used to. It was Greenie, in fact, who had borne his son just a few nights before, while Spotty had delivered someone else’s daughter. His thoughts were much less on any one-time adolescent romance than on the idea that one day his son would be in the men’s kraal and he would be able to teach him all the skills of survival. Still, he could never quite get out of his mind how she had stood by him all that time he’d been injured, first in his soul and then in his body. That counted. That would always count.

The smaller river they followed now was not on anybody’s list of known features, and that was one reason why nobody liked their position. Still, over the week since they’d turned back north, it had been growing progressively narrower, and the creeks that they had to contend with that fed into it tended to be small, shallow, and easily manageable. It seemed obvious that either they were going to reach its source fairly soon or that it would cease to be a real obstacle and allow a ford. The current was swift, but already it seemed quite shallow.

In the evenings, Littlefeet liked to go near the shore and watch the water. He wasn’t at all sure why he found it fascinating, but more than once he wished that people could somehow get in and move around in a big river or lake even if it was so deep you couldn’t touch bottom. There were stories about folks who could do that, but he was one who had never believed it possible. Certainly nobody in this Family knew how to do it.

Still, in the early evening or again in the predawn light, if he was up he would watch it, almost as if hypnotized by its rippling power, and he watched things float by on their way down to the sea. Leaves, even some logs, all sorts of stuff that fell in the river seemed to float along the top and go for some distance downstream before mostly hitting the bank or some built-up reef and sticking there.

He began to wonder why you couldn’t find a log that would hold up a person and float on top of the water. It would be risky, sure, and scary, since when it finally hit something you might fall off or, worse, get stuck out in the middle, but the thought stuck in his mind. The other warriors found the idea interesting but hardly practical. Besides, why in heaven’s name would you ever want to? What would be the purpose or the need? It seemed to them to be all risk and no reward.

He supposed that they were right, but it still seemed like there should be some use for it. Suppose you were out here, scouting, say, and got cut off by Hunters? You couldn’t make it back and you were outnumbered, but if you could jump on something and float with the river, you could escape them and maybe get back since they would lose the ability to track you. It was a thought, even if his limp kept him out of the scouting business for now. He began to try and figure out how to prove his idea.

The nightmares came and went, but as they moved north there was a certain heightened intensity to them when they involved the demon images themselves. You could always tell when you were eavesdropping on demon thoughts; there was a curious fish-eye appearance to everything, where every view seemed grossly distorted, and almost always from above. Not too far above the ground, it was true—but above the level of the highest things that grew. The colors, too, were off, and the vision was often double or even triple. He hadn’t been sure whether these were really things he was getting from other creatures or whether they were in his own head, but as they progressed he got his answer.

Others now were having them, too, and more often than not the images were strikingly similar to his, if not as detailed or vivid. He began to talk of it with the other young men, all of whom were equally worried.

“There are demons ahead on this path,” Big Ears agreed. “Demons ahead, and water on the other three sides. This is not good.”

“It is as if we are being forced into their arms, if they have arms,” Hairy Toes put in. “They clouded our Elders’ minds, and those of the scouts, to put us into this trap. They mean to take us, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll die before I let any demons take me!” Littlefeet told them firmly. “I’ll not be caged and made into some mindless thing for their amusement!”

The others murmured agreement, but all knew as well that their first responsibility wasn’t to their own welfare but to the welfare of the Family.

“They may just want the women, to breed their foul mixed-breed monsters,” Great Lips suggested. “You know, like they tell in the ancient stories.”

“Well, we’ll fight ’em all the way, no matter what the cost!” another warrior told them, and they all nodded sagely. There was a certain comfort in talking this way as a group, but, later on, almost all of them would consider what they had said and wonder how they with their spears and blowguns could possibly stop the demons from taking anything and anybody they wanted.

Not that they hadn’t all seen demons, at least once. At great distances, of course, and without a lot of definition, but they could hardly be missed, particularly some clear nights, when they sped across the sky in their moon ships and did things that everyone knew were impossible, like streaking so fast you could hardly see them and then stopping in an instant, and making sharp right and sharp left turns at great speed. That was supernatural power, there was no doubt of it.

Even in the daytime they could occasionally be seen, their ships less distinct, more blurry, but still doing what they did, like gigantic glowing seeds. They almost never took an interest in anybody on the ground, though, or so it seemed. Few could think of a time when one actually went right over either a camp or a march, and none could remember one so much as pausing, let along stopping, in the vicinity. Still, they were there ahead, that was for sure, and the young men of the Family could sense them.

In a few more days, they found out why, as the ever shallower and ever narrowing river led them to the very edge of the great groves of demon flowers.

Even Father Alex knew that they could not be that far off course. The huge flowers took up the whole center of the bowl-shaped region of the continent, but never close to the Families, or accessible to them. He summoned Littlefeet.

“No, Father, this could not be where I saw the great demon flowers,” he concurred. “This must be new.”

Father Alex sighed and nodded. “So that’s it, then. They are expanding their groves, and they have diverted rivers to ensure that their cursed flowers get the water that they need. Such effortless power, and for what? Giant flowers!”

“Why do they do this, Father? Why do they grow these and not care about us or anything else?”

Father Alex shook his head. “Who can know how a demon thinks, my son? I am not even certain that we would understand it if we did know, nor, perhaps, should we spend much time trying to imagine what demons think. Know only that they exist to thwart the will of God and corrupt His creations, for that is the nature of rebellion.” He turned and looked away from the huge flowers. “I believe we should consider other questions of a more practical nature,” he added.

“Sir?”

“We cannot go in those groves. Now, at least, we can be reasonably certain that this confusion was not directed at us but rather was the result of their meddling further with creation. We dare not go into the grove. Those who go into the groves tend to go mad. We must risk crossing the river. It appears shallow enough at this point, but it is still wider than I would like, and you never know about such things. Let’s see—who is the tallest warrior in the Family? Walking Stick?”

“Yes, Father. He is a head taller than even you.”

“He will do. Bring him to me, and we will see if this river can be crossed along this point.”

Littlefeet started to go find the tall man, but then he stopped. “Um—Father?”

“Yes, my son?”

“What if it can’t be crossed here?”

“We must cross it. Otherwise, our Family will surely perish, trapped in this area with too little food and far too little land. Our protection against the Hunters is the expanse of our territory. Here—well, sooner or later, Hunters will find us. No, we must cross. We must.”

Walking Stock was tall and lean but not the strongest man for all his size. He was a little ungainly even in normal walking, as if his body had grown up only in some parts and not in others, and he was not at all thrilled with the idea of taking a walk across a river.

“Tie vines together, as many as we can muster,” Father Alex commanded. “If possible, see if we can make a chain of vines that will span the very river! This way, if Walking Stick falls in or it gets too deep, we can haul him back in before he breathes water and dies.”

It was the women who began assembling the vines while foragers came in with as many more as they could find in the surrounding area. Littlefeet, however, was looking for something else, and he found it in a curious log that he watched float out of the grove beyond and come down, bobbing and weaving in the current. He saw it hit something in the middle of the water and suddenly shoot over toward the riverbank he was standing on. He walked downriver a bit, pacing it, and was rewarded when it came very close to shore. At that point he took a chance, waded in just a bit, and grabbed it.

The log was half his size, yet weighed almost nothing. It was incredibly light, and easy to bring on shore. Catching his breath, he hauled it the nearly full kilometer back north to where most of the Family was preparing for the possible crossing.

“What is that?” several of the women asked, and some of the warriors laughed and responded, “Littlefeet is going to float down the river on his great log!”

Red-faced and upset at the derision, Littlefeet decided to show them! Several of the Elders shouted for him to stop, and he could hear Father Alex running up, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Wait! Wait! Do not let your pride kill you! You cannot swim!”

It was too late, and the taunts overwhelmed his otherwise keen sense of self-preservation. He pushed it out into the flowing waters while grabbing onto it tightly.

For a brief moment he feared that they were right; it wasn’t as easy keeping hold of the thing while moving with nothing beneath you to give you confidence. Panic overwhelmed him, but he fought it back as he maneuvered for the most comfortable way to “ride” the log.

It was scary and not at all what he expected; the log and its rider spun around and went out toward the center of the river, all the time tracing a lazy circular pattern that left him disoriented, while the shouts of his Family members seemed to come from everywhere at once. He knew now that this was a very bad idea, even if the principle was right, but at this point he didn’t see any way to stop it or get off.

They hit some floating branches with leaves still on them; they scratched him. Now and then his feet would actually bump something, possibly rocks on the bottom or maybe mud, and threaten to loosen his tight two-armed grip on the log.

He had no idea how long this ride of terror continued. Eventually the river took a turn to the east but the log did not; it ran aground on a soft mud bar, the water suddenly only millimeters deep where the sediment had built up as the river slowed for the turn. The shock jarred him off and into the mud, and the shock of that was enough to jiggle the log loose again. It drifted away, back out into the river, as he struggled with thick, grasping mud that seemed to be alive and trying to pull him down.

Exhausted, he managed to crawl in the shallow mud up toward the shore, and when he reached real solid ground he simply collapsed, a mud-covered, gasping mess rather than a warrior of the great Family Karas.

How long he lay there he did not know; the fear and exhaustion of the float and escape had drained him, and he might even have passed out for a time. When he felt rested enough, he found the mud baked hard over much of his body, and the sun seemed quite low in the sky.

Aching, he managed to get up and walk a bit back north, beyond the bend, to where the river’s mud was level rather than banked, and, finding a solid rock to perch on, he managed to wash off some of the mud. The rest would have to wait until he got back to the camp, which he assumed was still where he had left it, considering the limited options for movement they had.

He got up, looked around, and tried to get his bearings. The sun was quite low over there, and shadows were lengthening. That meant that north was up this way, as he’d thought, but something was wrong. If north was that way, then the river was in the wrong place! With a shock, he suddenly realized why: he’d landed on the wrong side of the river!

Well, not exactly the wrong side. In one way he’d proved his point. He was on the side the Family wanted to be on. Trouble was, he was pretty sure that there was no shallow spot for fording the river between where he’d left them and here. In fact, this bend was probably as shallow as it was going to get.

Now what? he wondered. Best maybe I go back up, even if I am on the wrong side. Maybe I can help rig up a crossing for the Family. If Walking Stick hadn’t managed to get across, and he suspected that the tall warrior hadn’t, then he might be able to do the job. There were a few good archers and spear throwers among the young men; if one of them could get the line across, then he could tie it off and reinforce it.

He started walking, trying to ignore the aches and pains caused by his flotation, and made some time before he realized that it would soon be dark and he was still a fair way from the Family. He had to be a pretty good distance away because he hadn’t even heard them.

Going into the groves of trees and bushes nearby, he managed to find enough food to satisfy him through the night. Food was abundant here, as abundant as it was scarce where the family was now trapped. He had to get them across! He just had to!

The night was not peaceful for him.

They came in the night, well after the nightly storm and at first only in his dreams. Nebulous shapes, very large and very real yet somehow fuzzy, as if viewed just after you woke up and before your vision cleared. Some were as silent as the grave; others gave off odd buzzing or humming noises that changed as they went across the sky.

The demon eggs, in which the Fallen rode across their conquered planet.

In his mind, in his dreams, he could hear them, although this made no real sense. If he was hearing their thoughts, then they were thoughts beyond his comprehension, inhuman sounds, gibberish of the worst order. But he could see as they saw, looking down from their demon eggs, the warped and distorted view that made everything look so monstrous, so large in the middle and so small trailing away on all sides, and so bizarre, with people, insects, small animals, and even plants shining with colors that no human eye saw, night or day, and in some cases making people look as if they were on fire. Even the air had color and texture to it, like the shimmer of heat in the distance on a particularly hot day, only he did not see the heat as distortions in the air but as a pale yellow-orange gas.

Their thoughts were impenetrable, but they radiated a cold indifference to what they were seeing that chilled him as much as the solid water had up high in the mountains; worse, because it seemed to go all the way to his heart and freeze his soul.

He saw them pass right over the camp, which was still laid out by the side of the river—and the wrong side at that. The Family hadn’t made it, and they hadn’t figured an alternative way to cross yet, either. He was curiously disappointed; although it gave him the chance of being a hero, the Family always came first, even at the expense of his life, and he would have much rather seen them on this side, or not seen them at all. He could track the Family and rejoin it, but if they were still over there, they were trapped and exposed.

The demons did seem to take note of the large group there, every one of them pausing for a moment to examine it before continuing, but they felt no concern, no alarm, nor did they even feel dangerous to the mostly sleeping group of humans. Once identified, they could be safely ignored, and the demons went on across the groves of their great plants.

Interestingly, over the gigantic flowers, most closed for the night but some open to the stars for whatever reason, there was a sense that the demons really did care about them, that the flowers were important, almost a part of them. It was the kind of feeling he’d gotten when he’d seen his first child born, although he did not for a moment think the flowers were in any way true children of the demons. Still, his mind made that analogy, the only one that came even close.

Father Alex had taught that no human could understand the demons, and that those with some of the Sight into demon thoughts should never try, for to understand them would be to cross over to their side voluntarily. If you did that, you had sold your soul.

Littlefeet had been born and raised in a hunter-gatherer society of the most basic sort; the old stories and legends of the times when men were like gods were told, of course, but these had little relevance to anyone hearing them except to drive home just how hard they had fallen, and how cursed and unlucky they were to be among the generations after humanity’s Fall. He could no more comprehend those tales than he could understand the demons, and he spent no more time trying one than the other.

He could not even understand the preparation and planting of things; they just grew and, luckily, in abundance enough to feed the Families. Littlefeet’s distant cousins among the stars who had not yet fallen to the Titans understood the activity, although not why they did it or what the flowers truly meant to the Titans. Beyond that, they were as ignorant as Littlefeet and his people. Nobody knew if the small fuzzy egglike structures were Titans, or containers for Titans, or ships. Nobody knew much of anything, even after a very long time. They only knew that you couldn’t fight them, that all that had been tried against them had failed.

And, like Littlefeet, they knew that the Titans really didn’t give a damn about humanity. It was just an irritant; it was something in the way.

Littlefeet awoke with a great sense of foreboding. He was pretty sure they hadn’t even noticed him, off by himself and still downstream, but now the demons were doing something up there with the flowers, both inside the great existing groves and on the riverbank to the west—his side.

He could hear the weird thrumming noise as they worked just north of him, and he could actually see a couple of large demon eggs poised above a spot, their undersides now crackling with energy and using lightning-like tendrils of orange to rapidly do something to the ground. As each of the tendrils whipped around in its frantic activity, the demon sounds grew stronger, louder, more persistent. He didn’t like this one bit, and he knew that if he didn’t like it, the rest of the Family up north would be in a near panic.

There was only moderate moonlight from Achilles, but it, together with the light radiated from the higher demon ships, gave him enough illumination to move in the darkness. He couldn’t afford to sleep right now, or even be tired; he shook it off. He had to get north, to the point across from the Family!

He moved fast, using reflections in the river of the lights from above to keep himself oriented and on solid ground, and, while tripping and falling several times, he managed to get very close to the camp, close enough to hear yelling and screaming. It was then that he began to see bodies floating in the river.

They were mostly too far out for him to tell who they were, but it didn’t matter; all of them were Family, and he knew each one no matter who was out there.

Most were dead, but here and there he could hear screams and see people actually clinging to bodies, using them as he’d used the log. He was surprised that the bodies held up like that, and, certainly, many did not, but smaller, lighter figures clung to one here or there, screaming in terror.

“Hold on and kick the water!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Kick the water away and come to me! Kick! Kick and I will get you when you come near!”

Most heard him, but only a couple actually made the attempt or stifled their panic. Others were losing their grips or going under with the bodies.

He saw one actually manage to get close to the bank, thrashing away, and he ran down close and then reached out. “Give me your hand! Your hand!” he yelled, and the floater did. The first time he missed, but the second time he got a grip and pulled what proved to be a screaming woman not much older than he to shore. She was still clinging to the body of an older man, a warrior by what markings he could make out. Littlefeet made no attempt to rescue the body; dead was dead and there was little that could be done for him.

The woman, little more than a girl, lay there sobbing and gasping for breath and coughing up crud. “Just stay here!” he told her. “I’m going to try and save others!”

He did manage to get two more, in one case moving back down the riverbank some distance. All three were young women. One who seemed half-drowned and not long for the world he fought desperately to save.

It was Spotty.

None of the Families knew how to swim, but some things all warriors were taught, including how to keep someone from choking and the way to clear water from the lungs. He worked on her, pressing rhythmically on her abdomen, then blowing in her mouth, forcing the water up, forcing air in to displace it. He was afraid he was going to lose her, but then she coughed and turned half over and threw up a lot of water. He hadn’t thought anybody could breathe that much water and live.

When she could sit up, still occasionally coughing and puking but obviously a survivor, he squatted down close to her and said, “Just stay here. I have saved two more and maybe I can get others!”

She tried to protest but that just brought on more wracking coughs, so she tried to hold on to him with a grip so tight it startled him.

Gently, he tried to pry her hand off his arm. “I’ll be back, I swear,” he told her in a gentle tone, and she relaxed. Still, when he got up, she managed by sheer force of will to get to her feet as well. He reached out to steady her, knowing that, if she could, she was going to follow him.

By the time he surveyed the river again, there didn’t seem to be very many bodies left in sight and none with any signs of life either in them or clinging to them. Still, the sight sickened him. They were Family, and he felt each loss as if it had been one of his own immediate circle of friends. He even felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t been there, little that he might have done.

Spotty seemed to grow a bit stronger with each step, but he knew she was running on sheer nervous energy and couldn’t keep it up for long. The second girl that he’d rescued was just sitting there now, staring out at the water, almost curled up in a ball. He had seen this before. She was in shock, and would be in some danger until she collapsed and slept it off. She was called Froggy because she had an unusually deep voice for a girl.

He turned to Spotty. “Are you up to caring for her? I have one more to get just up here. If you can see to her, then I can get the other one and maybe we can make plans.”

Spotty had recovered some of her wits and nodded, although it was clear that she didn’t want him to leave. Duty now came first, and she accepted it.

The third girl was called Leaf because of the way her hair naturally draped over her head. She’d seemed the best off of the lot when he’d dragged her in; that was why he’d been confident enough to leave her to see to the others.

He found her sitting there, very natural-looking, staring out at the river. It was so natural that it wasn’t until he touched her and saw her open, unblinking eyes that he realized she was dead.

He said a little prayer for her, closed her eyes, and laid her out on the ground. There wasn’t much else he could do now but head back to the other two, which he did in some haste, now suddenly fearing that if Leaf could die like that, so could they.

Both were, however, still alive, much to his relief. “She was alive when I pulled her out, but she was dead when I returned,” he explained. “I do not see any more, but more may have made it farther down. Can you speak? Can you tell me what happened?”

Spotty’s voice was so raspy that it sounded worse than Froggy’s ever had, and speaking was clearly painful for her. “Some Hunters, some crazy, wild folk, they came out of the flowers when the demons came,” Spotty told him. “We fought with them, but they were crazy and began to kill. They kept fighting until they were hacked almost to pieces.” Her tone was flat, her eyes almost blank, as if she were_, relating something she’d heard, not lived through. “They got into our kraal. Some of the babies—”

Her voice trailed off, and it was clear she couldn’t go on.

“What about the rest of the Family?” he pressed, feeling guilty for doing it to her. But he had to know, and Froggy wasn’t in any shape to talk yet.

“Father Alex screamed for us to scatter,” she told him. “The warriors made as much of a line as they could to preserve our way out, but then more Hunters came from the south and we were trapped between. Many of us jumped or fell in the river, having no place to go. Others—I don’t know. Many surely did scatter into the darkness, but how many I can’t say.”

At least he understood the situation. There were always Hunters around of one kind or another, mostly scavenging, feeding off the weak, dead, and dying, trying to figure out how to get a better meal. Being trapped there had obviously brought some in, maybe trapped as well by the new river the demons had made. Then, when the demons went to their groves and began doing whatever it was they did, anyone hiding in there was flushed out. It was always said that to spend even one night in those groves was to go forever mad. Maybe it was true.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere tonight,” he told them. “Both of you come away from the river. I will stand guard as well as I can, but I think we are probably safe for the night here on this side of the river. Get some sleep.”

“And then what?” she asked him in that same flat tone.

“I don’t know, but it will be easier to find out in the daylight,” was all he could think to answer.

They slept on grass in the brush, exhausted, unable to stay awake. Littlefeet intended to stay awake himself, but he, too, had had a very long day, and in any case he was no match right now for any Hunters that might come along. In spite of his wishes, he nodded off himself.

In his mind, in his dreams, he saw it all again, this time not through demon eyes but through someone else’s, someone human. It was horrible, nightmarish, brutal and hopeless. He saw many of his friends get taken down, some of the women grabbed and eaten alive, two Hunters munching on a screeching baby before several women and two warriors fell on them and hacked them to bits with knives and sharp cooking rocks.

With a start he realized that he was seeing it all replayed through Spotty’s eyes, inside her nightmares. He knew this not because he saw anything to indicate it, but because he saw her finally isolated, pushed into the water, struggling and coming up grabbing onto Rockhand’s body, and then, panicked and thrashing, sensing rather than hearing someone on the other shore, someone drilling into her frightened brain, “Kick! Kick and hold on!”

Somehow he and Spotty had been connected, at least as strongly as he’d been in his dreams to the passing demons. Her being one of the survivors was not as much the marvelous coincidence it first seemed, although it still might be the work of God’s hand. She had heard him while others had not, heard him in her mind, and this had given her the will and strength to make it to him.

It was well past sunup when he awoke and found the two girls still lying there near him. He nervously stared at each, but saw that both breathed; their chests went up and down, and there was some movement now and again. He relaxed.

He thought about scavenging for some food, but decided to wait. He didn’t want to wake them, not now, but he had the feeling that, whatever they did from now on, they should do together; that it was better to be a little hungry than to split up.

The hot sun and the crescendo of insects stirred up by it began to make things uncomfortable, though, and very soon Spotty stirred and then opened her eyes. She looked around, then sat up, frowning.

“Good morning,” he said softly. “Or, rather, more like midday.”

She stared at him in seeming confusion, then managed, “I—I… Do you know me?”

“Of course I do,” he responded, a little confused himself. “Don’t you remember? I’m Littlefeet.”

“Little—No, I, um, I don’t know what I mean. I mean, I can’t seem to remember anything.”

He realized that she wasn’t playing with him. “You really don’t remember who you are?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s like I just, well, woke up. I know your words, I understand you and can speak, but I don’t know anything else. It is a little scary.”

He’d never seen anything like this, but the old tall tales and legends had had stories about this sort of thing. He’d never believed them, but apparently it was possible to lose your memory. Not a little, but mostly. In the stories, people always lost their memories after having something awful done to them, so maybe that was true, too. Even if he’d thought it could really happen to somebody, though, he would never have bet on Spotty. Not tough, caring Spotty.

Froggy sighed, turned over a bit, then opened her eyes. She was short and chubby with big breasts, in dramatic contrast with the taller, thinner Spotty. “Oh, my!” she sighed. “I had such awful dreams!”

“They weren’t dreams,” he told her softly. “Um—do you remember who you are?”

“Urn, yeah, sure. You’re Feet and I’m Froggy and this is Spotty. What are you doing here, anyway? And where’s everybody else?”

“Then you don’t remember,” he replied. Just more than Spotty does.

It turned out that she didn’t, not really. She remembered a lot, but the previous night’s horrors had been totally blotted out, not erased but relegated to confused if frightening nightmares. She found it hard to believe that anything was missing, but was even more astonished to find Spotty completely blank.

“You two went through a lot last night,” he told them. “I think it’ll come back to you, at least some of it, after a while. Some of it, I think, you’d both be better off not getting back.”

“So what do we do now?” Froggy asked him. He’d never taken a lot of notice of her before, but for all the shock and horror of the previous night she seemed in better shape than Spotty.

“Let’s all find something to eat,” he suggested. “It’s not hard over here. Then we’ll work our way up north and see what’s left of the camp. Spotty, you’ll just have to stick with us and trust us until your memory comes back. Okay?”

“I guess,” she replied. “I don’t have anything else I can do, and from what you say, it’s real scary out there.”

He found some melons that made a good breakfast, and then they worked their way back to the river. Mercifully, he saw no bodies around, either floating or against the banks. The current had been swift enough to carry them at least out of sight downriver.

An hour or two’s walk north brought them directly across from the Family camp. It was all trampled and clear to be seen from their vantage point, which meant it was no more good as a camp anyway. There were some bodies visible over there, but it was impossible at this distance to tell who they were, or even if they were friend or foe. Probably a mixture of both. Hordes of insects were already going to work on the remains.

Far off he could hear the sound of one of the demon machines, but he couldn’t see it. No others were in evidence.

Littlefeet sighed. “Well, I don’t think everybody got killed, ’cause if they had there’d be a lot more bodies over there. Still and all, they’ve scattered all over to be safe and preserve the Family, and I don’t hear any wailing babies or anything like that, so they’re some distance off. The scouts’ll try and round ’em up, but where that’ll be it’s hard to say. Won’t be here, and I don’t think they’ll try this camp again, not this close.”

Spotty didn’t really follow some of this, but Froggy was upset. “You mean we’re cut off?”

He nodded. “Seems like. It’s the three of us on this side and all the other survivors on that side. Well, at least that tells me what we gotta do.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Well, if we came up north to the demon flowers and couldn’t find a crossing, then they’ll come back to the river and head south, figuring maybe that somewhere down there might be enough built-up mud and crud to manage a swamp crossing. That’s my guess as to how they’ll think. So we move south. If we find ’em, maybe we can help get ’em across.”

“What if we can’t find ’em?” Froggy asked him. He sighed. “Then I guess we’re on our own.”