Trouble starts
Disclaimer: Some of the characters are mine. Coraline and friends belong to Neil Gaiman and to LAIKA studios.
Despite the odd sounding of the raccoon's advice, Coraline and Cat very quickly found their path – or at least a path: a sandy trail surrounded by some shrubs as well as patches of greenery in the middle. Moreover, although it was not as nice as the trail of silverweed that the two friends had encountered when they had passed through the hill, it was serviceable enough, and therefore accepted.
Well, 'accepted' would be the wrong word. When all was done and said, the two friends did not have a lot of choice anymore – they just had to find Wybie, or that gahonga creature, or Wybie and that gahonga creature, or the Lady of Summer, or Wybie – you get the point.
Cat, however, had a different point in mind:
"So, let's get the story straight: the Beldam is alive, and it's a different hag that's dead," he was taking to Coraline. "So, that's still good news for us, right?"
"I guess," Coraline replied, uninterested in talking about her other mother or whoever that the Beldam was to her. "It's probably not a good thing, but, really, I don't like the idea of her being dead either." She paused. "I guess I don't like the idea of anybody being dead at all."
"That's 'cause you're a human," Cat shrugged. "Now as a cat, I have to struggle daily for my food and drink-"
"Wybie or I always leave you some dry cat food at night and wet cat food during the day," Coraline could not help on pointing it out.
"Regardless," Cat's glare could have stunned a mouse twenty paces away from him, "regardless of your kind offerings that taste like- well, they taste and that's all that is to it, a cat like myself must catch and kill daily all sorts of feathery or furry snacks, so I am more callous in face of certain danger."
"Really? I mean I know that that is true when you killed the chief rat back in the Beldam's house, but here you, well, haven't-"
"That's because I am not hungry to begin with," Cat shrugged.
"What? Not hungry? But we have been here for-" Coraline trailed off.
"Exactly," Cat said in a smug voice that only a cat could speak in. "There is no time here, nor any, ahem, body needs that depend on it."
"What? But that's not natural!"
"We've been walking around a place that has the sun, the moon and the stars in the sky all at the same time," Cat said wryly. "This place is never natural, just nice – or not so nice. Therefore, let us hurry and find Wybie or at least someone who can help us find her before it is too late for him!"
It was at that point that the banter of the two friends was interrupted by something far less friendly – cries for help.
"Cat," Coraline said slowly, "do you hear what I am hearing?"
Cat hesitated, before replying. "We really shouldn't stray off the path – again," he finally admitted. "This place is hard enough to get around using them, let alone-"
"Cat. Please," Coraline said plaintively. "This just might be who we are looking for."
"Who? Wybie or the Lady of Summer?" Cat asked wryly.
Coraline's eye twitched, she abruptly turned and walked off the path, swatting aside various shrubs as she passed through them. Cat, cursing his more diminutive physical stature (as compared to Coraline's) could only hurry in attempt to try to catch up to her.
[Break]
"I must say, youngster that that was a most exciting story I have heard since the hags have bound me."
"It is? I'm sorry; I haven't realized that you've been stuck here for so long...wherever here is."
"Youngster, here, in the land of the fey, time has no meaning, but you're right. It is for too long that I've been bound here, and may be bound longer yet."
"Why is that?" Wybie could not help but ask.
"Once upon a time, there were three of the hags – Trillobia the defiler of water, Vyrdahlia the blighting flame, and Terraxia, the black horror from deep underground. Together, their covey had suborned the chief of the oreads, and she became their fourth, the Old Woman of the Mountain, the mountain hag. With her help, they were able to bind me as well. Then their fourth had left for other parts, and has suborned a human child instead. And that child became the fifth hag, the fifth Beldam."
"But that's not Coraline – I told you she told me that she beat that old woman or whatever, with my help, I should add!"
"Yes, she did – but now with the demise of Trillobia, her enemy will join the covey and grow stronger yet. When that happens, I fear both our world and your friend will be in more trouble than ever before!"
"No!" Wybie said firmly. "You don't know Coraline – she will rescue us yet!"
"We will see, youngster, we will see..."
[Break]
"Well, here we are, and where's the crier?" Cat said with open scepticism, as he and Coraline began to look around for the (abruptly terminated) cries for help, failing to see anybody at all. "Friend, have you forgotten that here nothing is exactly as it seems, really?"
"I haven't forgotten, but Cat, really, what has exactly led your suspicions-"
It would be probably safe to say that Cat was the one who noticed first the huge spider – almost the size of small chicken – as it climbed down the tree trunk in order to fall straight onto Coraline's neck and nape. Coraline, however, would later always claim to have noticed the spider's shadow descend before Cat did, and consequently she was the one who reacted first: by jumping away and squalling so loudly, that wild birds flew away in panic, even as the spider fell, missing her by few centimetres, onto the needle-strewn ground.
Even as the huge vermin landed onto all of its eight feet, Cat jumped, yowling almost as loudly as Coraline was squalling, and landed onto the spider's neckless head, where he began to scratch and bite the oversized arachnid.
The spider did not like this one bit: it squealed and began to flee, flailing around in order to shake Cat off it. Coraline, however, had enough: she jumped to the still dizzy vermin and kicked it hard, causing it to roll around (Cat jumped away just in time)... and to turn around, facing Coraline. The spider's frontal half was covered in rather disgusting-looking ichor, with the color of fresh snot, of all things, but the spider's impressive fangs (looking long and sharp enough to be fishhooks) were dripping venom instead.
"Poor little witch-girl, prepare to fade," the spider hissed in an oddly clear voice.
"Hey, whom are you calling a witch?" Coraline said in an indignant voice.
"A girl with a black cat!"
"Well, at least I have a brain bigger than a walnut!"
"Coraline, please, you flatter this thing – spiders don't have brains, all they have is some gunk between their eyes – all eight of them," Cat said scornfully, as he fluffed up his fur and snarled back at the monstrous arachnid.
"Gunk, have I? Perhaps, but I am not the one walking around not knowing where to go!"
"Well what do you know? Other than harassing young girls and their friends!"
"I know how you can reach the gahonga!"
"Oh really? And how's that – by the sandy path or by the path of silverweed?" Coraline did not look too impressed with the spider, but then again, the reverse was also true.
"Hah! The home of her ladyship may be so close, yet to go straight to it would be like crossing the seven seas and a desert besides! One must see that red fly agaric over there, go to the right of it, count seven grassy knolls, and reach a ravine. Once you cross the ravine, you must cross the field, and only then, then, behind a mighty oak tree, will you find whom you seek! But beware the hags, my mistresses!" the spider yelled a parting shot and fled into the trees, vanishing from the sight of Coraline and Cat within moments.
The latter pair just exchanged gloomy looks. "That is likely to be a trap," Cat said flatly.
"Of course it is," Coraline sighed in regret and disgust. "The Beldam used rats, her aunts, apparently, use spiders or similar vermin."
"So?"
"So nothing. We defeated the Beldam, we can defeat her aunts. Let's go – it's not like we can find any path any time soon either."
"We can try," Cat argued, but his heart was not in it.
Coraline shook her head. "We can run and we can hide, but they're just like the Beldam, only less subtle. And more ugly. Let's go – one way or another, we must do we can to rescue Wybie and maybe the gahonga as well."
Cat nodded in agreement:
"Let's go and find those knolls, shall we?"
[Break]
The forest met the Beldam with an almost literal wall of gloom – there was naught but pine and larch, silver fur and spruce. No animal or smaller vermin rustled under foot, no bird or bat fluttered among the prickly branches. There was no life, and even the trees looked partially dead, chocked by prodigious amounts of moss.
"Lovely," the Beldam muttered to herself as she wrinkled her nose from distaste, but her screech owl heard her anyways.
"Are we going in there, whee-eee?" the small bird hooted from the top of the Beldam's sunhat.
"Here's what's going to happen," the Beldam said gently, as she took her companion off the hat. "Or, more correctly, here's what happened. My daughter, you see, has a quick, a fast-learning intelligence – but it is still green, and her heart is still pure and naive. Therefore, she does not know that my aunts as well as she thinks she does. And this means, this means war."
"War? But why, whee-eee?"
"Because I am not letting them do to my daughter what their sister did to me," the Beldam growled. Once again, something flashed behind the black buttons, something of a completely different colour than before. "It's time for me to live or die for my beliefs, and for at least one other aunt of mine to have a reckoning!"
"A reckoning, how exciting, whee-eee!"
"Something tells me," the Beldam said, calming down, "that you don't fully understand what 'a reckoning' means. Well, fair enough. I believe that your services are no longer needed anyway. Feel free to go home."
"What?" the screech owl puffed itself up with indignation. "You can't-"
"Oh, can't I?" the Beldam's voice – just like her grip on the tiny bird – was surprisingly light, but it would not fool a deaf person. "And why is that?"
The bird froze, aware of something else lurking behind the Beldam's black button eyes. "Because?" it managed to squawk nonetheless.
The Beldam smiled at that reply – the kind of smile that showed-off the sharpness of her teeth and little else. "Do you know even know what is there, in my aunt Vyrdahlia's forest?"
"...No?" the bird squawked again.
"I thought so. Very well, let us make a deal. Are you a fast flyer?"
"Yes!"
"Then you fly over these woods as fast as you can and seek out me or my daughter on the other side, in the estate of my aunt. If you manage to come there before me, you'll keep your job; if not, well..."
The screech owl flew off like a bullet from a slingshot. The Beldam's button eyes trailed after him, until it vanished over the treetops. Then she straightened her back, shifted her grip on the shovel, and with the words "Well, it's show time!" entered the dark, uninviting woods.
To be continued...