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The vegetation and the trees fell suddenly away as we came to the riverbank. Almost wide enough to qualify as a lake, the muddy waters ran calmly past us, swirling around the mottled trunks of gnarled and knotted trees. Small dark shadows shot this way and that through the waters; beavers, maybe? I’m not really up on wildlife. And I can’t think of beavers without remembering the talking ones in Narnia. I’d make a lousy trapper. We all stood close together on the riverbank for mutual comfort and support in such alien surroundings, and we looked up and down the river. Just more of the same, from one horizon to the next. It was getting darker. The Blue Fairy studied the crap brown waters with a sort of disgusted fascination.
“Do you suppose they have alligators here?”
“Almost certainly,” I said.
“Oh, God . . .”
“I can deal with alligators,” Honey said cheerfully. “I could use a new pair of shoes. Or even luggage.”
Shadows were lengthening, filling the gaps between the trees. The light was going out of the day, and the sky was the dull red of drying blood. Cries from surrounding wildlife were becoming louder, more urgent. Already the gloom was creeping in around us, and I couldn’t see nearly as far as I could when we arrived. I had a strong feeling . . . of being watched.
“Did anyone else see that film The Blair Witch Project?” said Peter.
“I liked it,” said Walker unexpectedly.
“I saw it in the cinema,” said Honey. “All those jerky camera movements made me seasick.”
“I always thought they should have given James Cameron the sequel,” said the Blue Fairy. “Let him do another Aliens. Send a whole company of heavily armed marines into the Blair woods and have them blow away everything that moved. Like to see the Blair Witch deal with that . . .”
“Oh, tell me we’re not here looking for the Blair Witch,” I said. “That was fiction from begi
“No,” said Peter. “Sasquatch, maybe. You know: Bigfoot? Half man, half ape, maybe even the missing link. Often glimpsed, never properly identified.”
“Actually,” Walker murmured, “Sasquatch was a Native American name for a particularly reclusive tribe called the Shy People. The name Bigfoot is more recent, from tracks found in various locations.”
“I’ve seen some photos and a couple of amateur films,” I said. “But nothing even remotely convincing. And there’s hardly anything at all about Bigfoot in the Drood library. Mostly because we were never that interested in them. If they wanted to stay hidden and keep themselves to themselves, that was fine with us.”
“I saw a film on television, when I was just a kid,” Honey said slowly. “About a creature in Arkansas . . . Spooked the hell out of me. The creature lurked around this small town and even terrorised some people, but it was never identified . . . Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”
“Could be,” said Peter. “Maybe Grandfather saw that film too.”
The insects were swarming around us now, clouds of them sweeping in from off the river. We all flapped our hands, trying to swat the damned things, but we might as well have been holding up signs saying, Fresh meat! All the blood you can drink! Since mosquitoes are known to breed around rivers for the express purpose of passing on malaria to people, I was actually considering armouring up in self-protection, when the Blue Fairy spat out half a dozen words in Old Elvish, and every single insect dropped out of the air, stone cold dead. The world seemed to pause, considering, and then all the other insects boiling up off the river decided to go somewhere else. We looked at the Blue Fairy with new respect. He smiled happily.
“Works even better with pests at parties. Look, it’s going to be night very soon now, and not even a Bates Motel to take us in. What was Alexander King thinking of, dropping us in the middle of nowhere? I mean, how are we supposed to find one bloody Sasquatch in God knows how many square miles of wild forest? It could be anywhere, and you can bet good money that if it wants to avoid us, it’s perfectly capable of hiding itself so completely we could walk right past it and not even know it was there! I am not tramping through this godforsaken wilderness dressed like an extra from Shakespeare in Love just in the hope we bump into the damned thing!”
“Easy, Blue,” I said. “You’re hyperventilating.”
“I’m entitled! Do any of us even look like hearty outdoors tracker types?”
“I hate to break this to you,” said Honey, “but our situation is even worse than that. According to Langley, these woods cover hundreds if not thousands of square miles, most of them completely unmapped, except for a single notation: Here Be Deadly Wildlife That Will Bite Your Ass off if You Don’t Pay Attention.”
“I want to go home,” Blue said miserably.
“What . . . kind of deadly wildlife?” said Peter, looking quickly around him.
“Alligators, bears, wolves, wild pig, snakes, you name it,” Honey said cheerfully. “Great hunting grounds. My uncles used to take me hunting when I was younger. Though that seemed to consist mainly of drinking beer, wandering in circles, and telling stories that were entirely unsuitable for my young ears. Either way, I could bring down a full-grown buck with one shot, skin it, and dress it out before I was twelve.”
“How wonderfully primitive,” said the Blue Fairy.
“At least in Scotland we had a loch to look in,” said Walker, sensing things were about to get nasty. “Where are we supposed to start here?”
Everyone looked at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I said. “There’s lots of stories about the Sasquatch, mostly of personal one-on-one encounters, but it’s all very vague. There have been some edgy confrontations, but there’s no recorded incident of a Sasquatch ever killing or even attacking a man. Mostly they’re supposed to be . . . shy and diffident creatures.”
“Shy and diffident; great,” said the Blue Fairy. “Shy and diffident I can live with.”
“And no Drood has ever bothered to track down the truth?” said Walker.
I gave him a hard look. “We have a whole world to watch over and protect, often from the likes of you.”
If Walker was bothered by my hard look, he hid it well. “I’m surprised no one’s ever tried to catch or trap a Sasquatch,” he said thoughtfully. “Especially given the locals are undoubtedly all experienced hunting and trapping types. Why would they allow a dangerous and potentially exploitable creature to just roam around their backyard, unchecked?”
“If I’m remembering what I saw on the television right,” said Honey, “they tried tracking it with dogs once. Pedigreed hunting hounds from all over the county. But the moment the dogs got a scent of what they were after, they tucked their tails between their legs, backed away, and tried to hide behind each other. They didn’t want anything to do with what they were smelling. Their owners took a lesson from that, and maybe we should too.”
“But it’s never killed anyone,” I said. “So why is everyone so scared of it?”
“Maybe it’s a Neanderthal,” Peter said suddenly. “Cut off from the world in one of the last great wildernesses on earth, the last of its kind . . .”
“Maybe,” I said. “But . . . Alexander King warned us off from disturbing the Yeti, so why is it okay for us to go bother the Sasquatch?”
“Clearly he knows something that we don’t,” said the Blue Fairy.
“I think you can count on that,” said Peter.
“Hold everything,” said Honey. “Langley’s just told me something very interesting. These teleport bracelets we’re wearing were preprogrammed to bring us here, to a particular location, at an exact moment in time. Well, the bracelets brought us to Arkansas safely, but Langley says we’re missing a whole day. They say it’s been twenty-six hours since they were last able to locate me.”