More Creatures
One day from morning till night they had been passing through a forest.
As soon as the sun was down Curdie began to be aware that there were
more in it than themselves. First he saw only the swift rush of a
figure across the trees at some distance. Then he saw another and then
another at shorter intervals. Then he saw others both farther off and
nearer. At last, missing Lina and looking about after her, he saw an
appearance as marvellous as herself steal up to her, and begin
conversing with her after some beast fashion which evidently she
understood.
Presently what seemed a quarrel arose between them, and stranger noises
followed, mingled with growling. At length it came to a fight, which
had not lasted long, however, before the creature of the wood threw
itself upon its back, and held up its paws to Lina. She instantly
walked on, and the creature got up and followed her. They had not gone
far before another strange animal appeared, approaching Lina, when
precisely the same thing was repeated, the vanquished animal rising and
following with the former. Again, and yet again, and again, a fresh
animal came up, seemed to be reasoned and certainly was fought with and
overcome by Lina, until at last, before they were out of the wood, she
was followed by forty-nine of the most grotesquely ugly, the most
extravagantly abnormal animals imagination can conceive. To describe
them were a hopeless task.
I knew a boy who used to make animals out of heather roots. Wherever he
could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a head and a tail.
His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right fruitful of laughter.
But they were not so grotesque and extravagant as Lina and her
followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa constrictor
walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail. About the same
distance from its head were two little wings, which it was forever
fluttering as if trying to fly with them. Curdie thought it fancied it
did fly with them, when it was merely plodding on busily with its four
little stumps. How it managed to keep up he could not think, till once
when he missed it from the group: the same moment he caught sight of
something at a distance plunging at an awful serpentine rate through
the trees, and presently, from behind a huge ash, this same creature
fell again into the group, quietly waddling along on its four stumps.
Watching it after this, he saw that, when it was not able to keep up
any longer, and they had all got a little space ahead, it shot into the
wood away from the route, and made a great round, serpentine alone in
huge billows of motion, devouring the ground, undulating awfully,
galloping as if it were all legs together, and its four stumps nowhere.
In this mad fashion it shot ahead, and, a few minutes after, toddled in
again among the rest, walking peacefully and somewhat painfully on its
few fours.
From the time it takes to describe one of them it will be readily seen
that it would hardly do to attempt a description of each of the
forty-nine. They were not a goodly company, but well worth
contemplating, nevertheless; and Curdie had been too long used to the
goblins' creatures in the mines and on the mountain, to feel the least
uncomfortable at being followed by such a herd. On the contrary, the
marvellous vagaries of shape they manifested amused him greatly, and
shortened the journey much.
Before they were all gathered, however, it had got so dark that he
could see some of them only a part at a time, and every now and then,
as the company wandered on, he would be startled by some extraordinary
limb or feature, undreamed of by him before, thrusting itself out of
the darkness into the range of his ken. Probably there were some of his
old acquaintances among them, although such had been the conditions of
semi-darkness, in which alone he had ever seen any of them, that it was
not like he would be able to identify any of them.
On they marched solemnly, almost in silence, for either with feet or
voice the creatures seldom made any noise. By the time they reached
the outside of the wood it was morning twilight. Into the open trooped
the strange torrent of deformity, each one following Lina. Suddenly
she stopped, turned towards them, and said something which they
understood, although to Curdie's ear the sounds she made seemed to have
no articulation. Instantly they all turned, and vanished in the
forest, and Lina alone came trotting lithely and clumsily after her
master.