Gobbelino London & a Complication of Unicorns by Kim M. Watt

Author:Kim M. Watt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838044749
Publisher: Kim M. Watt

Patsy took the lead, running fast and sure through the secret mesh of tunnels and drains that underlay Dimly. She shot around turns and hooked through bends without hesitating, never pausing directly under a grate, stopping at the occasional intersection to sniff the air and place her paws on the greasy stone, feeling for vibrations. Once we waited while a surge of sudsy, bloodied water rushed through a drain that crossed ours, and twice we hunkered down in silence as something slithered and panted its way through an unseen junction.

“D’wyrms,” a broken-tailed juvenile whispered to me. He had a scar on his haunches and he limped, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. None of them were slow, not even the pregnant queen, and my legs ached from too long in tunnels that forced me into a half-crouch.

“The worms?” I asked.

“D’wyrms. No eyes, lots of teeth. Fast. Follow scents through the drains. They made them to track us, but turns out they’re not so good at differentiating between fresh and old scents. So long as you keep quiet, they’ll go past.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. You don’t want them to hear you. They’ll tear in one end and out the other, quicker than you can think.”

“Oh,” I breathed, and wondered if it would be a diplomatic breach to ask him to stop the nature lesson, then. A moment later we were running again.

I decided at least three times that I couldn’t take it anymore, that I was just going to have to beg Patsy to point me in the right direction and I’d straggle back to Callum with nothing to show for it but a nasty taste in my mouth and some matted fur. The first time I almost gave up was when my legs were screaming with oncoming cramp after a particularly long, low tunnel that I had to tip-toe through with my legs at strange angles. My next almost-breaking point came when we plunged into a sewer where I could at least run upright, but I missed the ledge on the side and fell into the stinking, flotsam-strewn water below. Something totally touched my paw, and the only thing that stopped me screaming the place down was the thought that the d’wyrms would all come flocking to me. Well, that and the snickering rats. I just hoped it hadn’t been an eel. I hate eels.

And now I was seriously considering giving up again as we raced through increasingly low and narrow passageways, the floor rough enough to tear at the sodden pads of my paws, the sides wet and slick with moss and dark growth. It was too dark to see more than the racing, furry rump of the rat in front of me, and the air was so thick with stale humidity I could barely breathe. The gouges from yesterday’s crow attack were stinging with the filth that had been rubbed into them, and my bumped nose hurt to breathe through, and all I wanted was a warm bed and a large bowl of custard, whatever promises I might have made about giving it up.

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