Chapter 13 - Some Friendly Hermits

Not far from the camp, there was a cave. It was large, but well hidden behind a large rocky outcropping and an unusual clump of thorn bushes that camouflaged the entrance. It had been there many years, and the floor was worn smooth by the feet of generations. It was the home of a family of hermits.
This family were not hermits in the traditional style of hermit – they had not chosen a solitary life, but had been thrown into one by the eccentricity of previous generations. They were, as a whole, a very friendly bunch when given the opportunity, but this didn’t happen much, the nearest village being several hundred miles away, across seven wide, deep rivers (four of them racing through ravines), a mountain range, a glacier, and a large desert. They lived an isolated existence in the far eastern reaches because a long time ago, a man whose name nobody could remember had been outcast from society due to his habit of barking in public and wearing a chicken on his head. Anyway, this ancestor had been outcast with a number of others, all of them slightly mad. They had spread through the inhospitable territory, making homes in caves. The barking man had met a woman outcast for her unusual attachment to dogs, and they had produced six children together before they died. Their youngest child was the great-great-great-great grandfather of the man who lived in this cave.
The fact that this cave was inhabited was extremely fortuitous, because our heroes were in significant danger. They were inexperienced campers, and failed entirely to recognise the signs that identified their camping spot as the territory of the Enormous Angry Thing. No-one had ever got close enough to one of these creatures to identify its species – or if they had, they hadn’t lived long enough to tell anyone. From a distance, it appeared to be a cross between a sabre-toothed tiger and a very large rhinoceros. It was bright red and furry, inclined to moult in the summer, and extremely ferocious. As our heroes slumbered peacefully on the hard ground, heads resting pillows of red tufty fur they had found nearby, the Enormous Angry Thing hunted angrily in the dark. Orange light appeared in the east.
The eldest occupant of the nearby cave, a jovial chap of indeterminate age named Arnold, was out fishing for breakfast. He sat on his usual rock, which had been used by the family for years, and had worn into a comfortable seat shape. He baited his hook and cast off, determined to catch breakfast before the Enormous Angry Thing returned from its night of hunting. He glanced down the stream to its nest. Smoke was curling from the hollow. He grunted in a puzzled way and returned to his fishing. Suddenly, he made a loud, exclamatory remark. There was smoke rising from the nest of the Enormous Angry Thing. That meant there were people there. And they were in trouble, because when an Enormous Angry Thing becomes infuriated, it is very nearly omnipotent, and certainly inescapable. Arnold would have to warn them. He jumped up, forgetting his rod in his hurry. He grinned in excitement – there was nothing Arnold liked better than a good old heroic rescue.
As Arnold rushed to warn them, Sammy rolled over and awoke with a strange feeling that something was wrong. Then he realised he was just hungry. He took up Joseph’s sharp stick and waded into the stream. Something large and silver zipped around his legs. He stabbed it and tossed it on the bank. Fishing was a lot easier than it looked. Spearing another, he turned to toss it onto the pile. But the first fish was gone. Sammy looked over to his sleeping friends. Barney snored and clutched his pet rock. Joseph rolled over and mumbled something. Celia lay breathing slowly, her curls falling over her face. He gazed at her for a moment, then moved his eyes up. Standing beside her sleeping form was an enormous beast. It was as big as the mammoths Sammy had seen at the trading docks. Its red fur was thick and its teeth were as long as Sammy’s forearm but much sharper. Black beady eyes glared balefully at Sammy as it chewed a fish. A fin fell from its mouth and slapped Celia’s cheek. She stirred, sighing. The beast dropped the rest of its fish. It released a deep, menacing growl, and lowered its head to her.
Three things happened. Sammy leapt from the stream, brandishing his spear and bellowing. Joseph woke up and hid behind a rock. Arnold arrived.
As it turned out, Joseph’s cowardly act was by far the most effective of the three events. It confused the beast no end, for while Enormous Angry Things are very large, very hairy, and possess a great number of sharp, pointy teeth, as a species they are not well endowed with brains. This particular beast was well below average in the intelligence department. He took Joseph’s sudden disappearance to mean that his breakfast had turned into a large rock. Suddenly, where there had been four people (three sleeping and one standing in the stream waving a pole), there were four people (one sleeping, one cowering, one bellowing and waving a pole, and one standing behind him wearing an animal-skin loin cloth and holding a knife), and a large rock. It worried him. He snuffled at the rock. It squeaked. He opened his mouth to eat it, because things that squeaked were usually delicious. Something bit him. Right on the rump. It hurt.
Roaring, the beast turned on Arnold. Arnold was suddenly very aware that his knife was less than half the size of one of his foe’s teeth. He waved it nervously. The beast growled. Sammy dragged Celia and the peacefully slumbering Barney to safety and returned, bellowing heroically, to the fight. Joseph began to cry.
To an Enormous Angry Thing, nothing is tastier than something that whimpers. He stopped. He sniffed the air. He spun on his haunches and lunged at the rock that hid Joseph. Joseph scrambled backwards. The Enormous Angry Thing’s sword-like teeth closed on his hiding place. A loud crack split the air as the EAT’s teeth embedded themselves in the rock. The beast thrashed and struggled and roared in vain – it could not free itself. The party snuck away behind it, to the safety of the hermit caves.
And so it was that Joseph the cowardly navigator became a hero among the hermits of the Eastern Reaches. In a ceremony before the entire community of more than fifty, he was awarded both the title of ‘Joseph the brave, defeater of Enormous Angry Things’, and the hand of Arnold’s eldest daughter, a very pretty (if somewhat unwashed) lass by the name of Annie.