That's impossible, he thought stupidly. Roots don't move -
He pulled back sharply, yanking his leg out of the rough gray manacle the root had formed. There was thin pain in his calf, like the pain of a rope-burn. He raised his eyes and felt sick fear slip into his heart. He thought he knew now why Morgan had sensed him and gone on anyway; Morgan knew that walking in this forest was like walking into a jungle stream infested with piranhas. Why hadn't Captain Farren warned him? All Jack could think was that the scarred Captain must not have known; must never have been this far west.
The grayish roots of those fir-fern hybrids were all moving now - rising, falling, scuttling along the mulchy ground toward him. Ents and Entwives, Jack thought crazily. BAD Ents and Entwives. One particularly thick root, its last six inches dark with earth and damp, rose and wavered in front of him like a cobra piped up from a fakir's basket. OUR boy! YESS!
It darted toward him and Jack backed away from it, aware that the roots had now formed a living screen between him and the safety of the road. He backed into a tree . . . and then lurched away from it, screaming, as its bark began to ripple and twitch against his back - it was like feeling a muscle which has begun to spasm wildly. Jack looked around and saw one of those black trees with the gnarly trunks. Now the trunk was moving, writhing. Those twisted knots of bark formed something like a dreadful runnelled face, one eye widely, blackly open, the other drawn down in a hideous wink. The tree split open lower down with a grinding, rending sound, and whitish-yellow sap began to drool out. OURS! Oh, yesssss!
Roots like fingers slipped between Jack's upper arm and ribcage, as if to tickle.
He tore away, holding on to the last of his rationality with a huge act of will, groping in his jerkin for Speedy's bottle. He was aware - faintly - of a series of gigantic ripping sounds. He supposed the trees were tearing themselves right out of the ground. Tolkien had never been like this.
He got the bottle by the neck and pulled it out. He scrabbled at the cap, and then one of those gray roots slid easily around his neck. A moment later it pulled as bitterly tight as a hangman's noose.
Jack's breath stopped. The bottle tumbled from his fingers as he grappled with the thing that was choking him. He managed to work his fingers under the root. It was not cold and stiff but warm and limber and fleshlike. He struggled with it, aware of the choked gargling sound coming from him and the slick of spittle on his chin.
With a final convulsive effort he tore the root free. It tried to circle his wrist then, and Jack whipped his arm away from it with a cry. He looked down and saw the bottle twisting and bumping away, one of those gray roots coiled about its neck.
Jack leaped for it. Roots grabbed his legs, circled them. He fell heavily to the earth, stretching, reaching, the tips of his fingers digging at the thick black forest soil for an extra inch -
He touched the bottle's slick green side . . . and seized it. He pulled as hard as he could, dimly aware that the roots were all over his legs now, crisscrossing like bonds, holding him firmly. He spun the cap off the bottle. Another root floated down, cobweb-light, and tried to snatch the bottle away from him. Jack pushed it away and raised the bottle to his lips. That smell of sickish fruit suddenly seemed everywhere, a living membrane.
Speedy, please let it work!
As more roots slid over his back and around his waist, turning him helplessly this way and that, Jack drank, cheap wine splattering both of his cheeks. He swallowed, groaning, praying, and it was no good, it wasn't working, his eyes were still closed but he could feel the roots entangling his arms and legs, could feel . . .
8
. . . the water soaking into his jeans and his shirt, could smell
Water?
mud and damp, could hear
Jeans? Shirt?
the steady croak of frogs and
Jack opened his eyes and saw the orange light of the setting sun reflected from a wide river. Unbroken forest grew on the east side of this river; on the western side, the side that he was on, a long field, now partially obscured with evening ground-mist, rolled down to the water's edge. The ground here was wet and squelchy. Jack was lying at the edge of the water, in the boggiest area of all. Thick weeds still grew here - the hard frosts that would kill them were still a month or more away - and Jack had gotten entangled in them, the way a man awakening from a nightmare may entangle himself in the bedclothes.