The Time of the Titans

Chapter 28: Suur-Muino

Those moments of the night that I spent awake, I was restless. Restlessness oozed out of the damp, stony walls of the vault. It was pitch-black dark, no embers of campfire, no shine of moon. Occasionally, smells of fungus and still water floated into my nostrils, not unusual for a cave like this. I heard rustle here and tiny steps there, but it didn't frighten me since it was natural there would be all kinds of small critters in a place like this.

I felt guilt for Helena and for Mary. How could I have fallen for biological instincts, forgetting both my past and my future? Yet I was also worried about the boys of the Secret Brotherhood. If I was ever to meet them again, how would they take it that I had slept with the enemy? After all, enemy was what Giovanna was, and I was still a prisoner, even though my wrists were no longer tied. I tried to rationalize it: This meant nothing. I was merely making my own moves, exploiting Giovanna's longing. It would make them relax their vigilance, until a moment would come for me to escape, find my way through the island, and back to the Base.

Well, I didn't know if I was still welcome there. And how, then, I would get to Giovanna's world? I would need to travel there sooner or later in order to liberate Mary and the girls. Since Brynhilde was a captive of the boys, Giovanna now constituted my best ticket to Mary.

That night, I didn't see dreams, or if I did, I didn't remember them later when I would write down what I had experienced. Perhaps what had happened between me and Giovanna had temporarily cut the connection. Connection to what? Connection to wherever my strange dreams stemmed from.

Yet I woke up into a nightmare. The morning never came.

A primitive instinct, older than mankind, startled me even before it was quite close. Almost as soon as my consciousness had been catapulted from emptiness back to the cave, I heard steps, which could not belong to a mouse or a gecko. The quiet but determined steps made their way across the vault and then approached the site where I was lying, slowing down.

A big animal was here. The large leaves, which made up the bed on which I lay, rustled as I jumped to sit up, and the animal heard it. The steps stopped. It was very near. And I was now sitting stiff of horror, while my primordial instinct told me it was a predator. After all, lopes didn't dwell in caves, and this creature would be at least of that size.

I wished there was even a single moon-ray of light. The predator started growling in a low voice. Now it was certain – this beast was danger, and it was slowly approaching me.

At the same moment, sounds started coming from the direction of the mouth of the vault. Screams that sounded like mahis. Running steps of many feet. Thumps, and cracks of breaking sticks.

The animal near me was confused for a short moment, which I used to search for anything I could use as a weapon. Of course Giovanna had not given me a weapon – I was lucky enough not to lie there all tied up. Finally, the only useful object I could get to my hands was a stone. I grabbed it in my fist and rushed up.

At that moment, the beast attacked.

I could now feel its size and power, as it jumped over the bed of leaves, where I had lain just a moment before. I run away along the stony wall of the vault, still in pitch-black, until I stood still against the wall, certain that the beast would otherwise jump onto my back. Its large, furry body brushed on me when it swooped by, missing me only by an inch, but it promptly corrected its course and assaulted again. I threw it with the stone and hit it.

The animal retreated a couple of steps, but judging from its growl, it prepared for another attack. I crouched to find another stone, and I found a stick of some kind.

When the animal came at me again, I lashed out at it with the stick, which cracked at the force of the hit. I didn't know where in the animal's body I had hit, but it retreated again, growling ever more aggressively. The stick had not caused enough damage, and now I held only a miserable stub of it in my hand.