Beyond the Shroud by V M Jones

Author:V M Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2004-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

‘Who drinks of me …’

‘Adam! Adam — help! Quick!’

Richard’s yell hit me in the face like a bucket of ice water. I jerked bolt upright, my heart twisting in a sickening somersault. ‘Huh? What —’

‘Hurry! Before it’s too late!’

The campsite — the whole forest — was alive with sound: a chittering, jabbering din that made me clamp my hands over my ears. I struggled to my feet, stumbling over my sleeping bag, floppy and stupid with sleep, and stared wildly round. Rich was dancing round the clearing, a stick in his hand, shaking his fist at the trees above us. ‘Bring it back, you little suckers! That’s our stuff!’

‘What — who —’

‘I was on watch,’ Rich growled, then looked sheepish. ‘But I must have dozed off for a second. Next thing I knew, they were all around me!’ He pointed up into the trees. It was still almost dark — that translucent, misty greyness just before dawn. Wide awake now, I focused on the canopy above us. The branches were rocking and swinging with movement, raucous with jibbering, chattering calls. ‘Monkeys?’ I croaked.

‘Not monkeys — chatterbots.’ Kenta spoke quietly beside me. ‘I remember now. That was what the talking stream said: Who drinks of me shall be a chatterbot. In the game, they were cute little furry things — if you caught one, it could give you a wish.’

I thought of Q’s special nickname for Hannah: Chatterbot. Had he called Hannah after the chatterbots, or the chatterbots after her? Whichever way round it was, gentle, bumbling Q would never have invented monkeys like these. Their voices were harsh and strident, their razor-sharp teeth bared aggressively, and their eyes glowed like red-hot coals.

‘Like Q said, it looks like these ones have done a bit of evolving — downhill. I wouldn’t call these guys cuddly or cute,’ said Richard grimly; ‘never mind the fact that they’ve ransacked our backpacks and made off with all our food!’

The five of us sat in a dismal huddle and watched the chatterbots swing through the trees, capering and chattering and flashing their bright blue bums at us as they ripped open our packets of dehydrated food, sweets, chocolate and dried fruit and guzzled the contents. They must have launched their raid on our campsite in absolute silence, with the planned precision of a military operation, and then burst into a triumphant clamour once it was finally done.

Nothing was left.

They stuffed handfuls of food into their gaping mouths, chittering delightedly to each other, grinning so widely the food fell out in a hail to land on the forest floor. They flung handfuls of rice at each other … they sprinkled dried noodles on one another’s heads like confetti. They shoved raisins into each other’s ears and up their own noses. Two adolescent chatterbots chased each other, teeth bared, the front one swinging by his tail from branch to branch, a jumbo pink marshmallow in each wrinkled fist.

At last, despite ourselves, we started to grin at their antics, then to laugh.

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