Denizens and Dragons by Kevin Partner

Author:Kevin Partner [Partner, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trantor Press
Published: 2018-12-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

IT FELT AS THOUGH HE were in a fast-flowing river, lolling back and forth to a thump, thump, thumping like rocks turning over in a gravel bed. He was drowning! Bill sat up, opened his mouth wide and gasped in huge grateful breaths.

“Be still,” the metallic voice said from a foot above him.

Now he remembered. “Where are we?” he said, as the movement ceased and he felt himself being lowered to the ground.

“We have outrun them.”

Bill swayed a little as he steadied himself and then looked up into the soulful yellow glow. “How is that possible?”

Another voice spoke and Bill spun round to see the machine he identified as the father looming over him, the two smaller figures standing alongside. “I do not understand why, but we did not feel fatigue when we should have.”

“We can usually only travel a little way from our village before we must turn around. We ran because we could think of no other course to take and we thought that the further we got, the better chance you had of escape,” said the first machine. “But we passed the markers at the limit of our range and did not feel the usual fatigue. Those that followed dared not go further, not even that poison you call Humunculus. That was over an hour ago; dawn approaches and yet I feel as though I am freshly charged.”

They had stopped on the outskirts of a little wood that sprung out of the grass. “Where are the draconi?” he asked.

“They follow,” the mother said. “They have spread out to scout the land to either side. Their leader said to stop when you awoke and wait for him. My name is Nessa, by the way. Thank you for rescuing us. This is Daven, my husband. Beside him stand Finlay and Bette, our children. At least, they were our children before… this.”

Bill followed the machine family into the trees, picking his way carefully in the faint moonlight. He turned around to see two moons in the sky, reminding him that he really wasn’t in his own world anymore, however similar it seemed superficially. As if to confirm this, he could see several pairs of glowing eyes regarding him from beneath the trees looking, more than anything, like a family of depressed owls. His heart sank as he crunched his way towards them. If he’d had any lingering doubt that living souls lurked within those metal and wooden shells, he doubted no longer, and he felt the burden sink upon him. He wondered whether he’d ever surface from the weight of responsibility.

He felt something pull on his leg, gave a cry and crashed back into the hard body of a machine. A little face appeared at nose level, took off its hat and bowed. “Friend Bill, you awake. It makes me so happy!”

“Sebaceous,” Bill sighed, “you scared the bananas out of me.”

Sebaceous grinned, his pointy teeth seeming to have a luminescence of their own. “Humans is so blind in the dark, like great mammoths stomping around.

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