Before they could stop her, Jay had moved forward and reached out to touch the long snout of the creature, which was still waving about. There was little reaction to her contact, except for the long thin snout curling around her hand for a moment, and then letting it go. It repeated this action several times, and then moved forward to almost brush up against Jay, who seemed to show no fear whatsoever.
‘That was a dangerous thing to do,’ commented Moss, his stave at the ready, ‘it may have thought you were a meal on legs, and there would have been little we could do about it, considering its size.’
‘I just knew it safe,’ Jay replied, ‘I always know.’
‘That’s a useful thing to be able to do.’ Kel said, realizing the possible future benefits of such a skill.
‘Yes,’ Moss replied, ‘and you can only make one mistake.’
The fat grey creature had now stripped a bunch of leaves off a nearby bush with its nose, and turning to Jay, seemed to be offering them to her.
As her hand took hold of the leaves, the snout let go, swung around to strip off some more leaves, and then stuffed them into its mouth.
‘Pity you aren’t a leaf eater, you wouldn’t have to work very hard to get your food with one of those around.’ Kel said with a laugh, and the whole atmosphere on the river bank changed to one of peace and friendliness.
Somehow the creature engendered a feeling of well-being among the trio, and they relaxed to lay down on the short grass, and give their tired muscles a rest before continuing their journey.
Moss woke up from a long doze, and realized that Kel was missing, although Jay was still lying on the bank, fast asleep.
He was about to call out his name, when Kel came pushing through the bushes, his arms laden with fruits and pods.
‘You should have told me what you were about to do.’ chided Moss, trying to look cross, but failing, due to his relief upon Kel’s return.
‘You were asleep, and I thought you might need the rest, anyway, our grey friend followed me, keeping quite close at all times, so I don’t think anything else would have stood much of a chance.’
As the light had dimmed a little, it was decided that they would stay on the river bank for the night, and resume their travelling next day, there being little point in going on now as they wouldn’t get very far before it was dark, and finding another safe place in time couldn’t be guaranteed.
What did surprise them as they settled down for the night, was the grey creature which had befriended them, also curled up as close as it could. It showed no fear at all, but made snoring noises until Jay got up and stretched the snout out into a straight line, and then they all slept peacefully until the dawn broke.
Moss was the first to awake, yawn, stretch, and then notice that their grey friend of yesterday had gone. Jay seemed saddened at its departure, but soon cheered up when they prepared the raft for the next leg of their journey.
They hadn’t been afloat for long when the raft ground to a halt on a mud bank just below the surface, and it took a lot of heavy poling to get it off and into deeper water.
The further downstream they went, the further out into the river they had to go to get water deep enough to float the raft, until the shoreline was only just visible as a hazy smudge on their left, and nothing but open water on the other side.
‘I don’t like the idea of being so far from land.’ Moss said, as he pushed on the pole to try and increase the speed of the sluggish raft.
‘If anything happens out here we won’t stand a chance of getting back to solid ground before it’s too late, that’s if we can get there at all.’
‘What do you suggest then?’ Asked Kel.
Before he could answer, Jay had gone to the edge of the raft to check on the water depth with a stave, and gave a little cry of surprise as her foot went straight through the surface of one of the logs to reveal a seething mass of chewed up wood and a large number of the white worms.
She pulled her foot out quickly, scraped off several squashed worms and put her foot over the side to wash off the remaining mess.
Moss and Kel rushed over to see what the trouble was, and stared in horror as they realized just what had happened.
‘It must be those white thread like worm things’ said Moss. ‘When we stopped on the bank for a rest, they must have sensed the logs above them, cut their way in and have been chewing away ever since.’
‘We’ll have to make it to the shore now, we have no alternative, the whole lot may fall apart at any time, and then we’ll be in deep trouble.’
They spread their weight as evenly as possible on the logs, ever fearful of a foot disappearing into a mass of sticky white worms, or even worse, going right through the weakened logs into the water beneath.
They poled on, not really sure they were still going down because it was so spread out now and the water seemed to be almost still. Kel noticed that the logs were now flexing in rhythm to the small waves which had become apparent of late, and he thought about tightening the vines.
‘The whole structure has weakened almost to breaking point,’ Kel said, ‘and we’d better get to the bank soon, I don’t think it can last much longer without retying it all.’
‘I agree, but how?’ Moss didn’t have any ideas either.
They pressed on, steering the raft towards the distant bank as far as the mud banks would allow, but getting no
