Chapter 2
I have no strength left for tears.
And anyway, I am too dehydrated to let any valuable fluids seep into the ground. Almost paralyzed, I approach the clearing. It’s possible that the ship broke into two halves when it crashed, and that I am now … but no. I see the jacket I took off the dead man. It is unusable now. Something with sharp teeth and an awful lot of acid-like slime has worked it over, probably attracted by the dried blood. I am lucky that I wasn’t wearing the jacket when the animal decided to feast on it.
When something rustles behind me, the blood freezes in my veins, and I don’t dare move. Something light as a feather, brushes my cheek, and I breathe a sigh of relief. They are just butterflies, and their size isn’t scary, either. They dance around me in a rain of color that glows, even in the darkness of the woods. I don’t know why, but the sight of these creatures fills me with hope. Not everything on Betania is terrifying and dangerous, after all.
I am contemplating if I should try to find a way out of the woods again. “You don’t happen to know the way to the nearest settlement, do you?” I yell after the butterflies. The absurd nature of all of this doesn’t worry me in the least. But when the dazzling cloud pauses mid-air, turns towards me, and then flies forward again, invitingly, I don’t think twice, and run after it. Tumbling would better describe what I was doing, but that doesn’t matter. A wild, silent laugh shakes my body, and I wonder if I am ill, or possibly dead already, and dreaming this. When I slow down, the winged mass of butterflies slows, as well. They split up, and while the red-blue specimens fly ahead, the yellow-orange ones bring up the rear. As we cross the clearing, avoiding pieces of wreckage, they save me from the sight of any body parts with clever flight maneuvers. Unfortunately, they can’t do anything about the smell, which is close to unbearable in this heat.
At the other end of the clearing, we dive back into the woods and into darkness. I follow them like I’m hypnotized, and they urge me forward with light flaps of their wings that feel like tender kisses on my skin. The darkness around me is much more bearable in the presence of these gentle creatures, I think. Even when I hear a hiss on my left, like from a huge cat, I am not concerned. However, it seems to agitate the butterflies, and the beating of their wings seems nervous. Now, both color variants mix together again, and they surround me in a thick cloud. I can feel their wings on my skin, the almost hectic beating of these fragile creatures. The sudden exhaustion that overtakes me is so deep that I close my eyes for a moment and imagine that a million butterflies are carrying me away to the safety of a human settlement.
The rustling next to me, up until now an unimportant background noise, gets louder. The hissing turns to snarling, as the flying jewels work together to give me a push in the right direction. Something sticky touches my forehead. Beyond tired, I reach my hand up to wipe it away. Then I notice that my fingers are also covered in something wet, and that I can’t put my arm down anymore. I want to take a step backwards, but my feet are also tangled in something that won’t let them go. The growling of the predator is taken up by another cat crashing towards me from the right. The sound of their paws on the soft forest floor drones in my ears, and I can’t resist when a jolt goes through my body, and I am pulled up towards the treetops.
The butterflies have disappeared. The thing that awaits me up there is something ... different. The horror I am now looking in the eyes of is so big that my brain can’t begin to grasp it. But reality catches up to me when the monstrous spider-like insect, with as greedy an expression as I have ever seen, pulls me up a little further. Skillfully, she uses only four of her way too many legs to do this, and I can only hope that my death won’t be a slow one.
In the meantime, the two predatory cats have gathered below me. They roar so loudly that the branches shake. One of them pounces, but instead of reaching for me with its paws, it jumps on the nearest tree trunk, and climbs it with incredible grace. I observe at least 400 pounds of muscles under bronze-colored fur. This cat is as graceful as a ballet dancer. The animal lies down calmly on a branch, next to which I will be dangling in just a few seconds.
The spider, who has noticed that the cats are competing for her prey, utters an ugly cry of indignation. If I had ever harbored doubts that a spider could get angry, I now know differently. She lets herself fall, securely anchored with her thread. This action comes with cracking and breaking of wood. The cats are relaxed and confident, but she uses the violent force of her weight.
Now that I know I am going to die, one way or another, I have second thoughts. All of the fog has lifted from my brain. I thrash around in my sticky net, back and forth. I hope that the swinging action will be enough to loosen the thread and tear it, especially since the spider is distracted and is circling the feline predator. The animal, on the other hand, is completely calm and is waiting for me to swing directly in front of its face.
With its hind paw, the cat takes the spider out of commission. The insect falls to the ground, where it is slaughtered by the other cat – that is what it sounds like, at least. I don’t know what is still holding the thread to which I am attached, but that is the least of my worries right now. The cat lifts a paw very smoothly, and I can see the sparkling claws sticking out of it. With one agile swipe, the razor-sharp claw tears through the thread from which I am hanging. As I fall, I could swear that cat is grinning smugly.
My fall ends abruptly, but softly in the moss. However, I don’t lose consciousness until the second the cat leans over me, runs its rough tongue once over my face, and utters a loud roar.
For the third time in a very short period, I am certain that I am going to die.
*****