Chapter 12 - A Surprising Development

When Sammy opened his eyes, they were soaring over craggy hilltops. This was a most unexpected development, because although he had a rather limited intellect, he had managed to acquire the basic rules of logic. The first and most important of these was this: Boats do not fly. Secondly, it was impossible to travel faster than a tidal wave. He thought for a moment that they had died and gone to be with the Gods, but he dismissed that immediately because a) if they were with the Gods, why would they be in a flying boat, and b) his father was a God and he had seen the land of the Gods. It was all palaces and grapes, not empty hills with scraggy grass growing on rocks.
The land they were flying over was in fact the Eastern Reaches of Lamburg, the land they had set out for on their journey across the sea. Lamburg was an enormous land, and they were as far away from their destination as they had been to start with, but this time they had a flying boat and didn’t have to cross the sea. The Eastern Reaches were wild and lonely and dangerous. No-one lived there except hermits and bandits. There were terrible stories of men who had wandered unsuspectingly into the Eastern Reaches and never been heard of again. The landscape was treacherous, full of sudden cliffs and rushing rivers. In the winter, snow fell six feet deep. But when it comes down to it, cliffs and rivers and hermits are an enormous improvement on slave traders and active volcanoes.
The boat drifted down slowly to land with a slight bump on a rocky outcrop with a large and scary cliff falling away on one side and a steep descent to a river on the other. Barney, Joseph and Celia opened their eyes. They spent a moment staring in horror at the ground at the base of the cliff. It was so far down that it had become hazy, and only a few of the sharper and pointier rocks could be seen. They looked a little like teeth to Joseph. Barney would have rather liked to have a closer look, as long as it didn’t involve falling from the top of the cliff. Celia’s sensible nature took over immediately. “I suggest we find another way down,” she announced.
It did not occur to any of them to wonder how they had got there. Joseph thanked the Gods, while Barney assumed they had been propelled there by the water (Celia would have immediately denounced this idea as being illogical – there was no water to be seen except the river, and that was far below them). Celia knew in her heart that Sammy had got them there – he was the most brave, heroic, handsome boy, and half God too. Gods must be able to fly, surely.
You, as the reader, may have realised that by this point, our intrepid adventurers had not eaten for several days. They had been given water in the slave pen, because the operators could not have their slaves dying. They had at one time run the auctions like this, but it had been very bad for business. Food, however, was another story. Celia’s suggestion of finding a way down was leapt at, and improved upon with the suggestion that once they were down, they should find some food.
After several minutes of searching, a rather difficult and dangerous way down was discovered. The descent to the raging river was almost vertical, and covered in rocky overhangs and loose stones. A few hardy thorn bushes clung to the hill. The path was narrow and almost invisible, but it was definitely a path. Someone had climbed down here before. Celia stepped onto the path. It zig-zagged, so that following the path meant walking ten times as far as going directly down the hill. It also took a lot longer than going directly down the hill, because going directly down meant slipping and tumbling at great speed into the river, and almost certain death. This is not to say the path was easy, though. Barney lost his footing twice, the result of being not so very coordinated, and nearly took all his companions down into the river.
Many hours, and lots of sweating later, they reached the river. It was full of jagged rocks and white water. They decided against attempting to cross it, and had a loud and violent argument about which direction to walk. In the end, mostly because Celia was very persistent and would not take no for an answer, they began to walk upstream. The logic behind this was that rivers run to the ocean, and they wanted to be as far away from the ocean as possible.
When they came to a less lively part of the river, they stopped to make camp. There wasn’t much camp to make. All they had with them were the clothes on their backs (and on their arms, legs etc), and a few remnants of chain. They had been forced to leave the boat where it had landed, because carrying it down the hill had been impossible. So, they sat by the river, and Joseph, who had been a boy scout, collected some stones and arranged them in a circle. Barney was puzzled by this, because stone circles, in his experience, went around people. Joseph collected a few sticks and put them in a pile in the circle. He then sat by the circle and rubbed two sticks together for half an hour. Approximately half an hour, anyway. All of their watches had been soaked by the wave and no longer worked. When no spark appeared, Celia attempted to make a fire by reflecting light from her watch. Making fire with a watch was a neat trick she had read about in her favourite book, Doris Saves The World, And Is Made Head Girl. But that didn’t work either, and she gave up in despair. Sammy, at last catching on to what they were trying to do, pointed at the circle of stones and closed his eyes. A large fireball shot from his hand, narrowly missing Joseph. The sticks finally caught fire.
Joseph, a little embarrassed about his lack of success at making a fire after bragging about his expertise, set about making a spear to catch fish with. He sharpened a long stick with his pocket knife (the guards at the slave yards, who were very complacent and not very bright, had neglected to check his pockets), heated the end in the fire, and waded into the river. Astonishingly, after a lot of misses, one instance of falling over, and one stabbed foot, he managed to catch a fish.
Celia cooked it, and they settled down to a very small dinner as darkness fell.