Of Mice & Magic: Book 1 Ravenspell

Chapter 19: A Song for a Friend

Being a good friend to another can be a challenging and ennobling undertaking.

—Bushmaster

Amber was racing through the brush, hop, stop, and look. She didn't know much about plants, but these ones looked sickly. The trees and bushes had mouths that gaped, and in some of them she even thought that she saw teeth. Indeed, every one of them looked like some kind of animal—a dog, a mink—that had been caught racing from the cave and was then transformed into a plant, so that an animal's body formed the trunk of a tree or prickly bush, while branches and limbs sprouted from its head and back.

Knot holes were mouths and eyes. Feet became twisted roots, binding the creatures to the ground.

Amber hopped forward, peered around a bush. She spotted a rabbit, nibbling on some brush, but saw that it was a strange rabbit with short ears and fangs.

It lifted its head and tasted the air for a scent, then went hopping over her head in a great rush. She was just about to move again, when she spotted a vine wriggle. It looked like a bit of blackberry vine, complete with leaves, but slithered along a limb, its cruel thorns rasping. It lifted a tiny head, a single green leaf, and Amber spotted little nubs upon it—unblinking eyes. Then the vine monster wriggled up a tree, as if seeking a place to sun.

Everything is alive here, she warned herself. Even the bushes have eyes. Even things that should be dead are alive.

Her heart hammering in her throat, Amber hopped a few paces. She hid in the shadow of a wild cucumber vine, its pale purple flowers open to the daylight, and watched the path ahead.

A creature went barreling through the brush, the fanged rabbit.

Amber waited, heart pounding, until it left the trail, and then she went scampering forward, only to find that her foot was tangled.

She turned, and gasped. The wild cucumber had snagged her rear ankle with a tender green shoot, and as she tried to pull free, its leaves hissed at her.

Amber spun and stabbed with her little spear, piercing the vine.

Suddenly the tiny trumpet-shaped flowers all constricted and began to emit shrill whistles.

A warning call! Amber realized.

There was nothing that she could do now but run.

She pulled herself free of the vine and went hopping down the trail. She heard a thump as something huge came crashing through brush ahead, and she leapt aside just in time. A hairy creature with black stripes on its back went thundering past, bounding on long legs.

A chipmunk-toad!

She was drawing near the cave now, she knew. She could hear the tinkle of water as it flowed over small stones.

She raced up a poor misshapen bush, and stood hiding in the canopy of its leaves, looking for the opening of the cave. And there, she saw a sight that nearly stopped her heart.

An insect stood in the golden sunlight, just at the mouth of the cave. Above it, a monstrous snake spread gold-and-white wings and rose up, like a cobra, to peer down upon the insect.

Ben!

Amber heard movement in the brush. The cucumber vine was still blowing its shrill whistles, and Amber could see now that there were monsters coming for her, dark shapes all around, converging through the brush.

She had no hope of escape.

She could think of only one thing to do.

Sing.

"What are you doing out here," the snake-eagle demanded of Ben.

Ben looked up, and he was so frightened that all eight of his legs were quivering and threatening to collapse.

"I just, I just came out for some sun," Ben said.

"Ticks don't crave sunlight," the monster said. "Ticks crave only warm blood."

Ben didn't know what to answer, and so he just stood there, trembling, afraid to move.

And then he heard singing—a familiar voice—Amber raising her sweet voice in the woods behind him.

"The trail is long and lonely,

and soon I'll reach the end,

in sunlight or in shadow,

I'll come to you, my friend."

Ben whirled and peered into the brush. It wasn't just a song, it was a song of warning and comfort.

Amber had come to save him!

The snake-eagle hissed and peered outside, then flapped its mighty wings. Ben was bowled over by the backwash as the air currents fanned him against the wall. Yet he scrambled to his feet, peered out into the bright sunlight, searching for Amber.

The snake-eagle rose high in the air, searching, searching, then let out a piercing cry and dove toward a bush. Ben saw Amber there, and he cried out in his small, tick's voice, "Amber, watch out!"

But as the snake-eagle dove, Amber ran out along a limb, hoisted her needle, and boldly waited. And as the snake-eagle was about to hit her, she hurled her weapon with all of her might.

Ben couldn't tell exactly what happened, but he saw the needle whip through the air, a flash of silver blurring like a bullet, and then the snake-eagle screamed a mighty death cry that shook the very leaves of the trees and crashed into the smoking pool.

But in the brush all around Amber, Ben could see movement, strange creatures bowling through the underbrush. Horrible vines slithering in her direction. There was no way that she could hope to escape.

And so Ben stood there at the mouth of cave, in the full sunlight, and began to sing his loudest.

"When death is at your doorway,

And there's no one to defend

In day or utter darkness,

I'll stand with you, my friend."

The shaking and slithering in the forest came to a halt as Amber's hunters became confused. Then Ben saw them reorient, and the monsters began racing through the Weird Wood toward him!

I'm going to die, he thought. But Ben felt good, proud. Vervane the vole had once asked him to sing his song, and an octopus had asked him to do so, too. At the time, Ben had told them that he had no song.

But now he had found one.