Bibi Blundermuss and the Tree Across the Cosmos by Andrew Durkin

Author:Andrew Durkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798985899009
Publisher: Andrew Durkin

29

THE RIVER ELDRED

Water everywhere. Cold everywhere.

Sinking into the river, Bibi couldn’t breathe or see. It moved all around her—an endless green murk with no top or bottom. She seized up. Cori! She kicked, feeling nothing but current.

Swim!

She exhaled everything, arcing her arms through the water. Up. Must get up—must get air. Her sodden backpack weighed her down—she squirmed out of it, and the river pulled it away.

Her lungs ached, ravenous for oxygen. Must get up—must get air. She kicked and climbed through the watery darkness until it thinned. Then she broke through the river’s surface, gulping and spitting in the noisy gush.

“Bibi Blundermuss!”

Corineus! His thin scared voice, nearly drowned out by gurgling chop, came from in front of her somewhere. Bibi squinted, trying to see through water-streaked glasses. A wet silhouette on a lower bank, Corineus stood upstream from where they had leapt in. She paddled forward, with the undertow, and in a moment felt the mud and rocks beneath her. Crab-walking along the bank’s green slime, she crawled out at last, coughing and wiping the cold silt from her skin.

Corineus stood still among rushes almost as tall as he was. His blood-striped haunches juddered with pain. What was he looking at? Where were Yega-Woo and Genza? Where was Valmyr? The cool air chilled Bibi through her wet clothes.

She followed Corineus’s gaze, and her heart sank, like a cinder block dropped into the churning river.

No, no, no, no.

Some fifty feet in front of them, on the sandy riverbank, young Genza stood cornered by Valmyr against a scarp. Neither seemed aware of Yega-Woo nearby—crouched among the tall rushes, watching, river-rock eyes glistening with panic.

“I told you I would get you this time, woodskull,” Valmyr said, breathing heavily.

Genza stabbed low with his antlers. Valmyr parried, and then struck up with one paw, opening a seam across the elk’s side, very near his scar, and deftly pulling back again, out of range of the hooves. Genza staggered, blood showering out.

Bibi’s tongue went dry—she looked at Corineus, but no words came. She looked at Yega-Woo. An aura of fury and fear seemed to crackle around the doe.

“Genza!” Corineus said in a hush. “Oh, Genza!”

“And now to finish you,” Valmyr said, and made a noise like a revving motorcycle engine.

But before Valmyr could attack, Yega-Woo charged from the bank and toward him. She slammed into him so hard that he toppled, with a yowl of surprise, and rolled out of the way.

Genza, still stunned by the blow draining his blood, briefly turned toward Yega-Woo with a sinking, distant look. And then, as if overwhelmed by the pain, he collapsed into the wet sand with a sickening thud—unconscious.

Genza!

Yega-Woo had already gone quite a way down the bank—putting a hundred yards or so between her and Valmyr. She stopped to look back as the white lion got to his feet.

Valmyr snarled, tail lashing. “The doe!” he said, seeing her and growling, as if he couldn’t stand the idea of being bested by a girl.

Bibi understood Yega-Woo’s plan—she hoped to distract the king of the white lions, to save Genza from the death blow.

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