Chapter 274

Gnag, 2.9 metres again and growing as he eats, a mouthful of root in his iron jaw, turning toward the small splinter-girl walking at him with both fists full of shards. Behind her, the golden Cave-Bear shrinking in a shower of gold light back into a golden retriever, shaking himself, trotting to Kompis.

swallowing the root, licking his iron teeth, looking at Flisa with the patience of a man looking at dessert.

at the wheel-side of the crowd as always, second hand to everything, very still, looking at Gnag with her strange eyes: the eyes that see the one way into anything.

hearing it, and grinning.

Flisa throwing: both fists, a fistful of her own shards flung straight at Gnag's face like grapeshot, sap-gold sparks trailing.

snapping on reflex, catching them all, KRNCH, chewing. Every gold glint in the shards dying between his iron teeth. Swallowing. And growing, a little. Bark creeping a little further up the man's side of his neck.

chewing, and stopping. A flicker in his one human eye. Looking down at the bark on his own chest, which has crept past where it was. At his human hand, the knuckles going grey.

at the edge of the clearing, one eye shut, measuring the bark-line on Gnag's neck the way he'd measure a plank.

Gnag lunging at Flisa, jaw wide, and Flisa gone into the ground. Out of a root behind him, another fistful, SHARD-STORM, into the back of his head as he turns, and he catches it in his teeth again, because he can't not.

chewing, swallowing, sweat and sap on the human half of his face. Bigger. Stronger. Greyer. His stomach growling anyway.

eyes gold on Gnag's threads. Very few. And the warmest of them, the oldest, running not to a person but to a door: a kitchen hatch in a yard wall, a long time ago, where a line of skinny boys queued with their hands out.

going very still.

Gnag, stronger with every mouthful and starving with it, going berserk: swinging oak arms that smash root-arches, roaring, lunging at every glint of gold Flisa shows him. The crews scattering. And the strippers, at the clearing's edge, wheeling up a great nail-cannon on a cart, nine iron barrels, aimed at the little splinter-girl.

Svala, perched on a root, pointing at the cannon, the crimson mark blazing, and flying: one straight line, the nine-barrel cannon cut in half across its middle. She crashes into a root at the end of it, scarf over her face.

stepping out of a root, out of breath, her arms half the length they were, chips missing from her face, holding the last fistful she can spare. Visibly smaller.

appearing beside her in a Swap, catching her by the shoulder, looking at Gnag: the bark at the corners of his mouth. Almost there.

Flisa throwing the last fistful high, over Gnag's head, a spray of shards against the white star. Gnag's head going up after it, jaw opening. And Rougeina, eyes on the biggest shard of the spray, blink: she's in the air above his face, and the shard is where she was, on the ground beside Flisa. Then, on her next heartbeat (never two Swaps in one beat), blink again with the next biggest shard, and the next, one Swap a beat, as fast as her heart will let her, every Swap pulling a shard out of the spray and into the air directly over his open throat, until it's raining shards straight down his gullet.

swallowing them all. Unable not to.

going still. The bark on his neck spreading over his jaw, up his cheek, over the corners of his mouth. The man's last skin. His one human eye, wide, looking out of a face that is almost all oak.

the iron teeth in it slowly sinking into wood, the lips going grey and grained. And his stomach, for the first time in the chapter, for the first time in years, silent.

the last of the man in him, wet, looking down at the little splinter-girl, at the crews, at the Great Root.

closing. The bark growing over the lid. Smooth. A knot where an eye was.

(No balloon.)

Where Gnag stood, a stump: a broad old cork-oak stump, three metres tall, its roots already sinking into the ground among the Splinterlands' roots. In its bark, if you look, the shape of a face: a big nose, a closed eye, a mouth, peaceful, with a little curl of iron showing at the corner like a tooth.

and his strippers at the clearing's edge, staring at what's left of their master. Draw-knives dropping from their hands into the moss, one by one.

(The stump says nothing. It's a stump.)

walking up to the stump. Small. Very small. Leaking sap. Laying her palm flat on its bark, over the closed eye, and leaving one splinter there: a gold glint in the grain.

steady. And under Flisa's hand, through the stump's new roots, very faint, the Great Root's heartbeat, slow and calm.

on his knees in the moss, his hands empty, looking up at Jeppson, who has come to stand over him.

The strippers, one by one, leaving their iron where it fell, walking off into the root forest, empty-handed. A root fox watching them go. Then another. Then hundreds, red flashes slipping back out of the roots, home.

crouching in front of Flisa with his boxwood folding rule out, unfolding it, holding it up beside her, one eye shut.

a full metre of chipped cork-oak and sap, glaring up at him, at the rule, at all of them, every crew member gathered round looking down at her, her splinter-teeth bared.

(Nobody says anything. Tihi's cheeks are bulging with the effort.)

Both crews sitting in the moss, battered, laughing, alive. The stump with its peaceful face. The whole old root rising above them into the dark, unbitten. And Mingus trotting up to the little splinter-girl, and lying down across her feet.

Flisa, one metre exactly, sitting down slowly in the moss with a golden dog across her feet, putting both small hands into his fur, and leaving nothing behind in it.