Beginner's Guide to Curses (Kelpies) by Lari Don

Author:Lari Don [Don, Lari]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781782503408
Publisher: Floris Books
Published: 2016-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

As Molly stepped away from the outhouse doorway to let the others past, she felt a tickling vibration in the soles of her feet, like mild pins and needles.

Innes burst out of the doorway. “The wyrm is waking! Get out of here! If we’re trapped inside its coils, we might be crushed.”

He dragged Beth out with him. Molly reached into the outhouse and grabbed the toad.

As they scrambled over the humped ring of earth, where the vibrations felt less tickly and more threatening, Atacama said, “Head for higher ground, so we can watch what happens and keep out of danger.”

“Danger?” yelled Molly as she followed the sphinx up the field. “Danger? I kept asking if it was dangerous to set the wyrm free, and you all kept ignoring me, and now you want to run away…”

“This isn’t running away,” said Innes. “This is a tactical redeployment to a less compromised location. We’ll see how big the wyrm is, how sleepy it is, how annoyed it is. And if it’s gigantic, wide awake and angry, then we’ll run away!”

Finally they leant, gasping, against the fence at the top of the field.

Molly put the toad down, then grinned. “Those look like proper buildings from up here.”

Then she noticed that the ridge of earth they had clambered over was a clear circle even from this distance. And the circle was moving.

The ground inside the circle and the ground outside the circle were still and solid, but a ring of land was moving slowly clockwise round the three new buildings. The earth was swirling, like a whirlpool.

“It’s waking,” said Atacama.

“It’s coiling,” said Innes.

“It’s rising,” said Beth.

The toad croaked.

Then the earth started to fracture and fall away. Diamond-shaped fragments of soil fell from the swirling circle.

Molly could see shining lines and zigzags of colour – purples, greens, golds, russets, greys – emerging from the dark brown of the earth.

“Is it just going to stay there, winding round and round?” asked Molly. “Or is it going to…”

A tail flicked up. A long pointed flexible tail ripped up and out of the earth.

“If that’s the tail,” said Innes, “the head must be…”

And, out of the farmland below them, rose the massive rounded head of the wyrm.

It was bigger than the outhouse they’d been sheltering in five minutes ago.

The wyrm yawned, revealing a forked black tongue and curved white fangs. The space between its jaws was tall enough and wide enough for Innes in his horse form to fit inside.

Then the wyrm turned and looked at them.

Molly stared back.

It was a snake and it wasn’t a snake. It was long and legless and scaled, so it looked like a monumentally huge snake. But it wasn’t just a snake. It had a frill of skin around its head, where the skull narrowed to the neck. As it looked up the hill, the frill flicked out into a spiny ruff, royal purple and poison yellow, like a frame of swords and silk around its massive mouth and dark gleaming eyes.

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