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CHAPTER 12
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.
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