People of the Dragon - Debora Pint (best books for 8th graders TXT) 📗

stinking ooze of the slime-thing seared the flesh of men like some unholy acid.

Charn yowled and struck out suddenly with his stone dagger as a ropy extrusion of slime whipped out at him. The member withdrew, his blade still in it. And then a tentacle came slithering out at me and I struck with my axe, and howled like a singed cur as the slime stung my fingers.

"What black hell is this country the Dragon Star has led us into," cried Charn, "where even the slime can rise up against a man?" I had no answer to make.

"Save your breath," I said, "for running."

 

 

Chapter Six

– Junga the Light-Bringer –

 

But we did not ran very far, after all. For swiftlier far than our feet the living wave of black ooze flowed over the ground, and before the white moon broke free from her tangle of clouds we had gained the top of a hummock and found ourselves ringed in. The slime-beast, like a living river, had flowed around the base of the hummock, to join and melt into itself in one circle of slithering death.

And now we were unarmed, for all we had to defend ourselves with was the stone knife at my waist.

"This is the end of it, my brother," I panted. "I told you to go back to the camp, but you would not listen."

"I regret nothing," he said stoutly (though naked terror was in his eyes). "No man should face a death like this alone, without a comrade at his side. Our ghosts shall wander forever, side by side..."

But not in the country beyond the clouds, I thought to myself as the slime came lapping up the slope to suck us down, for our spirits have not been purged of crime in the purifying flames of the pyre. The thought of the flaming funeral pyre reminded me of the burning branch I still bore in my hand and which, in my haste and in the extremity of my terror, I had not thought to cast away. Staring into the red flames I thought, for one mad moment, to turn the torch upon Charn and myself, that we might die a clean death by fire and that our ghosts, cleansed in that fire, might journey beyond the clouds to join our ancestors in the second life. But it was for a moment only that the madness clamored within my brain.

For Charn screamed, a raw-throated yell of unreasoning horror, as a black and glistening wave rose up before him and I sickened at the putrid breath of the thing that oozed up to engulf him and to suck him down in horror. And in that instant a single thought crashed through my fear-crazed mind.

For I remembered how the beslimmed bones of my father had flared up like tinder in the funeral pyre—!

Howling the war-cry of the People, I sprang forward and shoved Charn behind me with a powerful sweep of my arm.

And in the same moment I thrust the burning bough directly into the Father of Slime.

Then it was that we twain gazed into the naked heart of hell... for flames ran crazily over the heaving, glistening tide of putrid jelly... and the thing blazed up like an inferno!

In a heartbeat we were walled about with living flame. It writhed and wriggled like a maddened tangle of worms, sheathed in that web of burning flame. And as it burned, it died: and as it died, it—screamed!

Never, while the world lasts, do I wish to hear such a cry again! A high-pitched squeal—a piping sound, like a newborn babe, mewling and whimpering in fear as it dies, not understanding what is happening to it, not having felt the sting and bite of pain before... ah, Gods, that innocent, baby-cry goes whimpering through my darkest dreams to this very hour!

We leaped over the burning slime to the safe ground beyond, and stood, clutching each other, gaping like madmen upon the horror of its death-throes. By the time dawn paled the east, naught was left of the hideous thing but a rubbery, burnt scum and flames that smoldered amongst the scruffy grass. And I was numb with awe and with the wonder of it.

Perchance it was that in Times gray dawn some accident of nature had touched life within a droplet of slime within the depths of the steaming fens or oozy seas. And the slime fed upon wriggling life, absorbed that which it fed upon, and grew in bulk thereby. Grew vast and vaster still, over ages, till the lake or fen or marsh wherein it had been born was too small to contain it, so it had heaved itself ashore, to feed on beasts and men, growing ever greater and greater, until at length it had become the monstrous enormity that we had stumbled upon in our ignorance and folly.

World-old and world-evil, perhaps, was the Father of Slime... older by unthinkable ages than the race of men... mayhap it was even the first-begotten of all living things on this earth—and a naked savage with a burning branch had brought it to its doom! Irony of ironies, a thing older perchance than the very mountains of the north, and slain by a boy scarce fourteen.

 

* * *

 

Together, wearily, we trudged back across the plains, Charn my brother, and I. To where the People of the Dragon huddled together on the unknown plain, fearful of what the day might bring, strangers in a world of mysteries and terrors.

Like my ancestor, Zar, I bore in my left hand the gift of fire to them who had lost it in the black night of fear.

And in my heart I bore to them another gift, that was like light to the black night of ignorance. For I brought to my tribe the knowledge that nothing there is in all the world that can slay a man, that men cannot slay.

We went unto them, side by side, under the morning.

 

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Publication Date: 07-23-2017

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