A Perilous Pest

Chapter Five

" I say, now they do not look at all good," he muttered.
"No, no! Not there! Look over to the left!" said Fürgůïn.
"It can't be, can it?" replied Grimmbros slowly, squinting at an approaching figure beneath the clouds. It was Razzles, darting fitfully toward them, the moving clouds twisting and winding in pursuit of him.
"What is he on?" Fürgůïn wondered out loud. "It's... he's on a purple... chicken!"
The puzzled renling was not quite right. Razzles was, in fact, precariously astride a lesser-squalid rock-dodo. A semi-flightless creature with aviation potential akin to that of a farmyard hen and the intelligence of a barnacle. If it put its mind to it and the wind was right it could perhaps just about clear a house with assistance or struggle along a foot or so above ground for miles, again with assistance. As such, the knohm's little legs were skipping, scrabbling and hopping each time the malformed bird hit the earth. Scampering along, barely airborne, the jingle of bells mixed with protesting squawks, a jubilant Razzles wobbled up the last few hundred yards to rejoin his friends. However, any moment of welcome was drained as Fürgůïn and Grimmbros had their attention on the frantic knohm's pursuer.

As surprised as they were to see the knohm, after such an extended hiatus, that surprise could not compete with the alarm that barged in like a belligerent bailiff, seizing possession of their senses over the encroaching cloud. As the recumbent pair peered past Razzles and his dolorous-looking dodo to the horizon beyond they saw the cloud advance across the moor with a disconcerting rapidity and a disturbing, irregular fluidity. As it closed, indomitably toward them they found that they could not help but stare at the flying mass: there was an unnatural nature to it that held their attention for far too long. It seemed as though it was alive; it pulsed, it flickered: it fluttered.

As it got closer, it was evident that it was not so much 'alive' but consisted of living things, birds perhaps. They could see the surface of the cloud now: nebulous, a constant flurry of movement, edges amorphous, constantly changing, unable to keep a consistent shape due to the persistent flap and flurry of wings and the tussle and tangle of creatures shoving within. The beating of the cloud created a staccato sound that roared like a vibrating pride of lions. The density of the massed creatures blocked all light; the crescendo of their din drowned all sound.
Fürgůïn climbed to his feet; "What... is... that?" he breathed, his voice a cocktail of awe, bewilderment and dread.

"Ah!" gasped the breathless knohm, as if he had just returned from the shops with a box of groceries, but then remembered that he had forgotten the very thing that he had gone out for. "Yes, that is why I am on this." He patted the desperate dodo's flank. "We really can't hang around here chaps; I'm being chased."

Without waiting to hear if the renling had any further questions the urgh-bane launched to his feet, "I suggest we had better run," he grumbled and threw himself in the direction of the knohm with fast, powerful strides. He knew exactly what it was and he had no intention of hanging about for it to get close.

Fürgůïn was not so quick with his flight response. Every nerve in his body interested in preservation was begging to follow the other two, but they found that they were out-shouted by those more interested in investigation.* He turned back to get one last look at the distant living cloud, only to find that distance was a luxury he no longer had: the bird-cloud was now less than a hundred skips from where he stood. The conglomeration of crow-like creatures had abruptly stopped in their pressing advance like a charging black dog reaching the end of its chain. They hovered in front of the rooted renling bustling, jostling and rustling in front of him as the more distant birds pressed into the mass, making it pulse as might a great panting beast waiting to pounce.

*The curiosity of renlings had led many to their doom or injury. Hence the saying, "a renling in the bush is probably looking for something."

Then the bird-creatures at the bottom of the throbbing flock started to peel off from the rest toward the ground. As each body fell, one on top of the other, it fused with the one below to form the beginnings of a shape. The piling of bird bodies began to solidify into a compact trunk; simultaneously, a second formed beside the first. As the birds kept falling, more of the structure took shape; the columns grew into two great legs. As the structure towered upwards and outwards, the motion of the bodies seemed to change; as the bulk of the mass became rooted to the ground, the remaining creatures fell with an ever-increasing momentum drawn by the relocated gravity of the mass. Where they, at first, looked as though they were falling like a flock of grouse being blown out of the sky with grape-shot, now they appeared to be sucked down; drawn by a vortex of impulsion like a shoal of fish sucked into a whirlpool. More and more dropped till a huge torso was built; it was like watching the construction of a gargantuan statue from a million black rags poured into an invisible mould. By the time that the last of the flyers were sucked into its swelling head, the avian cloud had been transformed into a terrestrial giant. On legs the size of sequoias stood a tremendous behemoth of impossible proportions; and it glared, through deep set eyes of blazing fire, with furious intent, at the puny being cowering before it.