"The whale is no fish, thou ninny!"
"Nay, but thou wilt be, and thou dost call me a…"
"Quiet!" Rod snapped. "Here comes another one!"
"Two more!"
"Three!"
They stood rooted to the spot, staring at the huge spheres of flame that roared toward them. "They truly are great balls of fire," Gregory marvelled.
Fess's head snapped up. "But their elevation is significantly lower than mat of the first! Flee! Fly! Or you will be seared for certain! Go!"
The family leaped into the air, the boys shooting away over the meadow, Gwen and Cordelia swooping away on their broomsticks. Rod brought up the rear.
But the fireballs swooped faster.
"To the sides!" Gwen called. "Out of their pathway!"
They veered sideways, Cordelia and Gregory to the left with their mother, Magnus and Geoffrey to the right with their father—but the outside fireballs only sheared off after them.
"The menace comes with purpose!" Fess cried. "Up! See if you can rise above it!"
The family made a full-scale try at transcendence, swooping up into the sky so fast their stomachs thought they'd been forgotten—but the fireballs swooped up after them.
"They have our measure!" Magnus cried in despair. "How can we evade them?"
"I see a river!" Rod called. "Dive, kids! With as deep a breath as you can, then hold it! Maybe the fireballs will stay away from the water!"
As one, the children gulped air and stooped, barrelling downward like lead weights from the Tower of Pisa, and shot into the water as though they were holding a splash contest, with Rod and Gwen right behind.
The outside fireballs veered back toward the center one, and the three of them shot by overhead. Fess knew he had to be mistaken; the noise of their passage couldn't truly have had an undertone of disappointment. "They have passed! You may come up!"
Four waterspouts erupted with four children inside them, exhaling explosively and gulping air like landed fish. They fell back into the water with cries of relief. Rod and Gwen followed with a little more dignity.
"They were chasing us!" Now that the crisis was over, Geoffrey could afford to be angry. "They truly did chase us!"
"Go rebuke them, then, brother," Magnus said, disgusted.
"Who could have set them on us?" Gregory wondered.
The four young Gallowglasses were silent, staring at one another.
"We do have a few enemies," Fess admitted.
"And these fireballs, like the rocks, have sprung from one of them!" Geoffrey slapped the water. "Did I not say 'twas an enemy behind it?"
"We do not know that, and… Out of the water!"
"Wherefore?" Geoffrey asked, peering around him. "I see naught to fear."
"Aye," Magnus agreed. "There is naught but those four bumps on the water's surface."
"Those four bumps approach," Cordelia said nervously,
"and there is a log on our other side that doth likewise come nearer!"
"Out!" Gwen snapped, and gave them a head start with telekinesis as Fess explained, "Those are no logs, but giant amphibians! And they are hungry! Quickly, children! Out of the water!"
The family shot out like pellets from a blowpipe, looking rather bedraggled; the ladies' brooms were definitely not at their best with soggy straw. The collection of bumps and the log shot toward each other, slammed together, and climbed halfway out of the water, following them in a crescendo of flashing teeth and writhing serpentine bodies. But the huge jaws snapped shut a good yard short of anyone's heels, and the two great lizards fell back on top of each other and lay glaring up at the children.
"Don't just sit there like a bump on a log," the bottom one grumbled, "go get them!"
"I didn't come equipped with wings, fishface!"
"Fishface? Who do you think you're calling fishface, snaketail?"
"What are they, Fess?" Cordelia stared down at them fearfully.
"Why, I do know them!" Magnus said, staring too. "Thou didst show them me in my bestiary—though we have never seen them here, and I had thought them but myths! They are crocodiles from Terra!"
"Very good, Magnus!" Rod said, impressed.
"However," said Fess, "only one is a crocodile. The other is an alligator."
"How canst thou tell?" Gregory demanded.
"The alligator's snout is more rounded at the tip; the crocodile's is more pointed. There are other differences, but those are the most obvious ones."
"They got away," the crocodile groused, glowering up at the children.
"Inflation does it," the alligator answered. "Everything's going up these days—even food."
"Well, it was a nice try." The crocodile sighed, turning away.
"Probably sour children anyway." The alligator turned away, too.
"Well! Such audacity!" Cordelia exclaimed, jamming her fists onto her hips. "I'll have thee know I am quite mmfftfptl!" The last bit of pronunciation was occasioned by the clapping of Magnus's hand over her mouth as he hissed in her ear, "Wilt thou be still! The last we should wish would be to have them think thee sweet and tender!"
Cordelia gave him a murderous glare over the top of his wrist, but held her tongue.
"I'm gonna go hunt up some mud guppies," the crocodile grumped.
"Yeah." The alligator turned away. "Me for some crayfish."
"They'll do in a pinch," the croc agreed. "See you later, alligator."
"With a smile, crocodile."
They swam away, disappearing into the muddy waters of the river.
"Well! Praise Heaven we have survived that!" Cordelia watched the two reptiles depart, still miffed. "How dare they call me sour!"
"Thou wouldst not wish them to know thee better, sister," Magnus assured her.
"Come," said Gwen, "let us be on our way, and quickly—I do not wish to give them time to think again."
Chapter Six
They hadn't gone far, though, when Cordelia stopped, staring down at the grass. "What things are these?"
"Let me see!" Geoffrey jumped over to her, and Gregory twisted his way in between them. Gwen looked up, interested, and stepped over.
An insect was toiling its way through the long grass, but with such intensity of purpose that Geoffrey said, "Can it be a warrior bug?"
"Not properly a bug." Fess's great head hung over them. "It is truly a beetle, children. It is strange, though."
Rod looked up, alert. "In what way?"
"I had thought they were extinct."
"What?" asked Gregory.
"This particular variety of insect. It is a scarab, such as were represented in ancient Egyptian art."
"Here is another," Magnus called, ten feet away. "It doth move… why, toward Papa!"
"Toward me?" Rod looked down—and saw another scarab struggling through the grass. "Hey, I've got one, too! Only it's heading toward you!"
"Toward me?" Magnus stared.
Cordelia clapped her hands. "Belike they seek one another!"
"Nay," said Gwen. "They move toward the fairy ring."
They all looked up and saw, midway between Rod and Magnus, a flattened circle of grass—and in the center of it, a larger-than-average rock, thrumming away.
Rod frowned. "What's this? Are the Wee Folk helping out on rock distribution now?"
"Oh, nay!" Gwen said, with a mock glare at him. "Thou dost know the Wee Folk dance in circles, and leave rings behind them—but here all is flattened, not the circumference only!"
"What hath made it?" Gregory wondered.
"Perhaps the rock itself," Fess said slowly. He moved closer, being careful not to step on the scarab, and lowered his head toward the circle. "Yes, it is a small depression, a sort of natural bowl. If the rock landed with enough momentum, it might have rolled around and around the circle until…"