El Spithor Vulthus (In the Belly of the Beast)

Chapter Four

"You may not survive." These words rang in my head. This had to be a joke. Surely it was illegal for the school to deliver detentions that could result in a student's death? My misdemeanor wasn't worth dying for, after all. Science bored me. Big whoop. The other kids, I'm sure, must've done far worse deeds than I did. I wanted to cry out, "Exempt me from this task! I'm innocent!" But I would sound older than myself, which is not a wise thing on Earth, though on planet Pacifico one would get praised for precocity. Furthermore, none of the other five would want to be my partner, and I might be forced to face the unknown alone, which was worse than going with someone else. So I stayed silent.

The two boys naturally chose each other for company. Due to the fact that they seemed nonplussed at Mr. Vortex' instructions, I thought that maybe they were regulars and had done this before. Which, more significantly, meant they had survived. So I had nothing to worry about.

One of the girls came over to me. I gasped in horror when I saw it was Marcia Spelling.

"Wanna be partners?" she asked.

"Not really," I said, not caring about her hurt expression.

'Well, it looks like you have no choice," she said, as the other two girls stepped toward Mr. Vortex, who handed them a card. The boys held a card as well. I sighed and went with Marcia toward Mr. Vortex, and Marcia took the card he offered.

"Now, everyone, place your card on a desk. Both partners must have one index finger touching the card. Do this now, please." He made sure all of us had obeyed our instructions. "Marcia, that's not your index finger. That's your pinkie."

Marcia blushed. I showed her which one was the index, feeling upset that I had to go to another dimension and hope to survive with a dumb girl for a partner.

"Now, I will blow this horn," Mr. Vortex said, holding up a trumpet, "and you will end up in an alternate dimension. You will spend two hours there, after which your detention will be over and you will be able to go home. Oh, and one last thing. Don't think of taking your finger off the card the second before you here the trumpet. Not only will you be sending someone partnerless into a dangerous dimension, but I have a spare card to send you to a place where you have no chance of survival at all."

I cursed under my breath, for I had planned to do exactly that. Mr. Vortex blew the trumpet, and I felt as though I were sinking into quicksand, though at the rate I was sinking, normal quicksand ought to be called "slowsand." I shut my eyes tightly, and a minute later I felt as though I had just fallen out of a tree.

I opened my eyes and let out a scream. Where my human hands had been before, I now had orange cylinders with green splotches on them, and long claws where I formerly had fingers. There was a puddle of water nearby and I peered at my reflection. I had two horns, and my irises were yellow. Great. I was my old ugly self again.

"Ack!" said a voice from nearby. "Monster!"

I turned to look at Marcia. But there was no human anywhere. All I saw was a mallard duck-like creature with wheels instead of feet. It started rolling away from me as soon as it caught my eye looking at it. I followed it.

"No! I don't want to die this way! That traitor Sherri, letting me come to this dimension alone…"

I laughed, though it sounded unlike human laughter. (After all, I was a Cadowight.) It was obvious to me what had happened. When Marcia and I came to this other dimension, we took on different forms. I wondered why I was a Cadowight, though. Pacifico wasn't in other dimension; only another galaxy. And how could a random high school teacher or disciplinarian or whatever Mr. Vortex was, have a gateway to Pacifico, anyhow?

When I had paused to reflect, I had stopped in my tracks. I looked about me, and saw I was standing on a beach that certainly wasn't on Pacifico. For one thing, I saw a few red crablike creatures burrowing in the sand, and no such animal existed on my home planet, as far as I knew. Secondly, the sun that spread light over the beach wasn't the Gorbal Jutii. This sun as red, ours on Pacifico blue. Furthermore, that green whirlwind moving across the sea was nothing like any of the storms I had ever heard of. Wait…green whirlwind?

I checked. It was coming toward the beach. I had to get out of there fast. I started running away from the ocean, in the direction of some oddly-shaped trees. It looked like their roots were where there leaves should be, and their leaves and branches against the ground. Some of the roots spiraled upward, and others went downward to provide a cage around the leaves. And an animal's face seemed to be carved in each tree, though this wasn't an animal that I recognized.

Then I remembered Marcia. I figured she had rolled pretty far away from me, since I hadn't thought of her for ten minutes or so. I looked in the direction she had been heading. Surprisingly, she wasn't far off. I went over to her and discovered that she had tripped over her new wheels. Like the not-so-malicious Malice I was, I picked her up and started running.

"Let me go, you beast!" she breathed.

"Marcia, it's me, Sherri," I said, without stopping.

"I don't believe you."

"Doesn't my voice sound like Sherri's?"

"Maybe you gain the power to imitate the voices of those you have eaten."

"I thought you said you believed Sherri abandoned you at the last minute, taking her index finger off the card just as Mr. Vortex blew the horn?"

"Hmmm…you know about Mr. Vortex? Then you must be Sherri." I was glad to see that Marcia was intelligent enough to reach this conclusion. "So…we changed into different creatures when we came to this dimension?"

"It seems so," I said. We had now reached the trees. I put Marcia down and turned to watch the progress of the green whirlwind. It had reached the beach, and was coming right towards us.

"Uh, Sherri?"

"What, Marcia?"

"You might want to look at this." She was facing not the beach, but the trees. I turned around. The roots of the trees were swaying in different directions. The part of the roots that had served as a cage for the leaves and branches now separated, and blue creatures were coming out of them. These beasts had wings and looked a lot like birds, except that their beaks were shaped like scissors. I picked Marcia up again and started running. I heard the scissor-beaks chasing after us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the whirlwind change direction.

One of the scissor-beaks got close, aiming for my eye. I thrust my horns at it, and they made short work of the menace. Another scissor-beak aimed for Marcia's unprotected neck, but I bent my head down in time to kill this one, too. The remaining scissor-beaks tried to come up with new plans to harm us as I ran. One of them came straight for my arm. I decided to try something. Holding Marcia up so that the scissor-beak would stick its weapon in her wheel, I hoped that it would work. It did. The scissor-beak got caught, and, try as it might, it couldn't shake itself free. Marcia's wheels were made of wood, and I knew that the properties of wood made it a stronghold against scissors.

Unfortunately, Marcia's wheels weren't that big, and there was no way I could trap other scissor-beaks that way. I also had to worry about the whirlwind which was gaining on us. I ran faster, Marcia screaming, "I don't want to die!" It came to my intention that the scissor-beak was hurting her; the wooden wheel was a part of her skin. I decided there was a way to relieve her of her pain. I breathed on the scissor-beak in the way Mom had taught me when I was six. In seconds, the scissor-beak turned into a vanilla likeness of itself. I took a bite out of its beak. It was the best-tasting vanilla creature I had ever made. I continued consuming until the entire scissor-beak was gone. Then I licked my lips.

One of the other scissor-beaks stuck itself in my back, causing me to howl in rage. I put Marcia down and rolled over a few times, until I was certain the beast was dead. It didn't take away the pain, though. I looked at Marcia, whose neck was about to be pierced by a scissor-beak. Without thinking, I breathed like I did before, turning this creature into vanilla. I wasn't hungry anymore, though, so I left it and took off with Marcia.

A moment later I reached the edge of the beach. There was no landscape at all, except black grass, which I was afraid of. On the planet Pacifico, black grass is a sure sign that you'll encounter the Hithocorpus, a three-humped mammal that feeds on Cadowight horns. As I've noted before, the more horns a Cadowight has, the prettier she is. (Male Cadowights have no horns.) Having two horns instead of three is a characteristic of ugliness. I already had only two horns, but with only one I'd be even uglier.

There were two things, though. First, I was certain this wasn't planet Pacifico, so I needn't have worried about running into a Hithocorpus. But more importantly, though my physique in this dimension was exactly like what I was on Pacifico, I had a feeling that if some part of my skin were altered in any way, it would not be different on my home planet. So even if a Hithocorpus did take one of my horns, I shouldn't care. The only thing to worry about in that situation would be if Nora ever saw me. I wouldn't be able to live it down.

I heard Marcia screaming and turned around. The scissor-beaks were being sucked into the whirlwind. I knew there was only one thing to do: face my fears and step onto the black grass.