Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures

was good at fighting.

At the beginning of his story, however, he still had no inkling of this, nor did he know that he was a Wolperting and would one day become Zamonia’s most illustrious hero. He had no name, nor did he have the faintest recollection of his parents. He didn’t know where he came from or where he would go. All he knew was that the farmyard where he grew up was his kingdom.

King of the farmyard

For Rumo, each day began when the farmer’s entire family, seven Hackonian dwarfs, formed a doting circle around the sleeping puppy’s basket and woke him with a melodious Hackonian song. Then they showered him with caresses. They tickled him behind the ears, rocked him in their arms, stroked his fur and kissed his tiny horns – marks of affection which he acknowledged with a pleasurable grunt. Wherever Rumo tottered on his four clumsy little legs, he instantly became the centre of attention. All his activities were applauded. He was even fondled and tickled for tripping over his own paws. The Hackonians set aside the freshest milk for him, barbecued him the most succulent sausages, reserved him the coolest place in the shade and the warmest place beside the stove. They went around on tiptoe when he was having his afternoon rest and regaled him with apple pie and whipped cream when he yawningly awoke. There were always volunteers ready to romp with Rumo or allow him to bite them with his toothless gums. And at night, when he had tired himself out with play, they groomed his fur with a soft brush and sang him to sleep. Yes, Rumo was the uncrowned king of the farmyard.

There were many other animals on the farm. The dairy cows, horses and pigs were all much bigger and stronger and more useful than Rumo, but none enjoyed the same popularity. The only creature that failed to acknowledge his supremacy was a black, long-necked goose twice his size, which hissed malevolently whenever he ventured too close, so he gave her as wide a berth as possible.

Pains in the mouth

One morning Rumo was awakened in his basket, not by the Hackonians’ melodious singing but by a sharp pain. There was a strange sensation in his mouth. The interior normally felt like a wet, slimy cave in which his tongue glided over soft, smooth, rounded shapes, but it had now acquired a new and alarming feature. In his upper jaw, just inside the upper lip, the gum had gone taut and something sharp seemed to be growing beneath it. This was the source of the throbbing pain Rumo found so disagreeable. He decided to invite due sympathy and caresses by informing a wider public of his condition.

But there was no one around. He would have to toil across to the barn, where the Hackonians were usually engaged at this hour – for reasons Rumo found unfathomable – in tossing hay around with pitchforks. Experience had taught him that the route to the barn was fraught with difficulty. Through the kitchen, across the veranda with its menacing splinters, down the steps, across the muddy farmyard, past the stupid goose, round the drinking trough, which was always surrounded by pig dung – it was a wearisome trip, and Rumo preferred to undertake it in the arms of one of the farmer’s children. If only he didn’t have to go down on all fours and trip over his own paws in the process! How lovely it would be if he could walk on two legs like the Hackonians!

Rumo climbed out of his basket, planted his hind legs on the floor and straightened up with a groan. He swayed first to the right, then to the left, and finally stood straight as an arrow. Hey, it was easy!

He set off, striding along like a grown-up Hackonian. He was filled with pride, a novel and inspiring sensation. Without stumbling once, he plodded all the way across the kitchen, pushed open the door, which was ajar, and even managed to descend the four veranda steps. Then he marched off across the farmyard. The morning sun warmed his fur, the air felt cool and refreshing. Rumo drew a deep breath, put his forepaws on his hips and walked past the black goose, which he now matched in height. She backed away, staring at him in astonishment, and started to hiss something nasty, but she was too flabbergasted to get it out. Rumo didn’t spare the bird a glance; he simply strode on, feeling bigger and more pleased with himself than ever before.

The Silver Thread

Rumo paused to enjoy the warmth of the sunlight on his fur. He blinked in the dazzling glare and shut his eyes, and there it was again, the world he saw whenever he did this. It was a world of smells that floated and flickered before his inner eye in hundreds of different colours: thin, fluttering wisps of red, yellow, green and blue light. The green light was given off by the luxuriant rosemary bush growing right beside him, the yellow by the delicious lemon cakes being baked in the kitchen, the red by the smoke of the smouldering compost heap, the blue by the cool morning breeze, which was laden with the tangy scent of the nearby ocean. And there were many, many more colours, some of them dirty and ugly like the brown of the dung in which the pig was wallowing. What really astonished Rumo, however, was a colour he had never smelt before. High above all these terrestrial scents floated a silver ribbon. It was thin and delicate – no more than a thread, in fact – but he could clearly see it with his inner eye.

Rumo was overcome by a strangely restless feeling, a vague and unprecedented yearning to leave everything behind and set off into the blue on his own. He involuntarily drew a deep breath and shivered, so strong and splendid was the feeling that arose within him. Deep in his childish little heart Rumo sensed that, if he used this silver thread of scent as a guide and followed it to its source, happiness would await him there.

But first he must go into the barn and make a fuss. He opened his eyes and strode on. When he was standing in front of the big red curtains that kept the sunlight from parching the straw in the barn and setting it ablaze, he came to a halt. A strange new sensation had prompted him to interrupt his triumphal progress: his knees went weak and he had to fight off an urge to go down on all fours again. The blood shot to his head, his forepaws trembled and sweat broke out on his forehead.

Rumo didn’t realise that the curtains marked a new chapter in his life and that he was about to slough off his animal heritage. He didn’t know, either, that if he walked into the barn on his hind legs he would be regarded quite differently, because a Wolperting walking upright was treated with considerably more respect than a wild Wolperting. All he did sense was that his entry into the barn would be an event of importance. Bewildered and intimidated by his own audacity, he felt his little heart beat wildly: Rumo was suffering from stage fright.

He did what every actor does when afflicted by this form of nervous tension: he peeked through the curtains to check out the audience. Cautiously thrusting his head through the crack, he peered into the barn’s interior.

One-eyed giants

It was dark inside and his sun-dazzled eyes took a moment to adapt themselves to the new conditions. All he made out at first were the shadowy shapes of wooden beams and bales of straw interspersed with shafts of sunlight slanting down through the barn windows. He blinked a couple of times, then saw that something wholly unexpected was going on in there. The Hackonians were not engaged in filling sacks with straw. On the contrary, they themselves were being stuffed into sacks by some huge, one-eyed creatures with horns and shaggy black fur.

Rumo didn’t worry too much at first. He was used to mysterious things happening daily in the grown-up world. Only a few days ago a Camedary had been led into the farmyard. What a commotion! Everyone had scattered in different directions like hens before a thunderstorm and the Camedary had bleated for hours like a mad thing. Now it was tethered there, placidly munching the fodder in its nosebag, and had become a boring everyday sight. The giants didn’t perturb Rumo either – Hackonian farmers kept animals just as hideous. For instance, the sight of an Ornian Swamp Hog was bearable only if one knew how delicious it tasted when stripped of its warty hide and roasted on a spit. But there was something about the horned giants that differentiated them from Marsh Hogs: the evil glint in their eyes. Rumo couldn’t interpret it because he lacked experience. He didn’t even know what evil was, so he parted the curtains and strode into the barn. His stage fright had evaporated, to be replaced by icy composure. For the first time ever, Rumo became aware of his ability to remain almost preternaturally calm in a tense situation. He took a step forward and announced his presence in the usual Wolpertingian manner: he gave two self-important sniffs.

No one took a scrap of notice, he had to admit. The giants continued to stuff the Hackonians into sacks, the Hackonians continued to wail and whimper. Rumo felt hurt. They were ignoring him – him, who could walk on his hind legs. Him, whose mouth was sore.

Suddenly he knew what to do: he would speak. He had learnt to walk straight off, so why shouldn’t he speak as well? He decided to attract attention by uttering two sentences.

First: ‘I can walk!’

Second: ‘My mouth hurts!’

That would make everyone take notice – that would make them shower him with congratulations and expressions of sympathy. He opened his mouth, drew a deep breath and uttered his two sentences.

‘Aa ha waa!’

‘Ma ma haa!’

The words hadn’t come out quite as he’d intended, but they’d emerged from his lips and sounded impressive. What was more, they worked. The shaggy black giants stopped stuffing Hackonians into sacks and the Hackonians stopped wailing and whimpering. Every eye turned in Rumo’s direction.

All of a sudden his legs went trembly and his backside felt as heavy as lead. He struggled to retain his balance for a moment, then toppled over backwards into the dust. Rumo had chalked up a new experience: he’d made the first big blunder of his life. One of the giants stalked over to him, grabbed him by the ears and thrust him into a sack.

The story of the Demonocles

Demonocles were a vicious type of one-eyed giant found only on Roaming Rock. It was regarded as scientifically inaccurate to classify these monsters as members of the Zamonian pirate fraternity, since pirates only sail the seas in ships, strictly speaking, and do at least obey the rules of navigation. Demonocles, on the other hand, sailed the seas on a natural phenomenon, the legendary Roaming Rock, a buoyant amalgam of oxygen and minerals the size of a city block, and obeyed no rules except the laws of nature. They drifted around at random on their hollow rock, spreading panic and terror wherever the tides happened to wash them ashore.

If asked what fate he hoped to avoid at all costs, the average Zamonian tended to reply: Being captured by the Demonocles. There were captains who scuttled their own ships merely because they had sighted Roaming Rock on the horizon. They preferred to drown themselves and their crews rather than fall prey to these monsters. No coastal region was safe from them and few of Zamonia’s seaside towns had not been raided by them in the course of the centuries.

Roaming Rock was originally a huge mass of lava vomited into the ocean by a subterranean volcano many thousands of years ago. There it cooled and rose to the surface because of the oxygen trapped inside it. From sea level it resembled a group of steeply jutting rocky islands, but it was really a composite structure, like an iceberg whose jagged extremities are visible while most of it is underwater. We do not know how and when the Demonocles settled on their floating island, but accounts in town archives of raids by vandals of Demonoclean origin suggest that it must have been several centuries ago. Presumably, one of their raiding parties sighted the great rock stranded off the coast of Zamonia, climbed aboard it and was unexpectedly swept out to sea when the tide turned.

It seems that the Demonocles abandoned themselves to their fate and made no attempt to influence the direction taken by their floating island. They were too uninventive to equip their bizarre vessel with sails, rudders or anchors, so it was left to the tides and ocean currents to determine which ill-starred stretch of coast they landed on. If washed up somewhere by a favourable current, the Demonocles immediately went ashore, raiding towns and villages, and taking prisoners until the waves bore them and their floating island away again.

Broadly speaking, such was the not particularly heart-warming story of the Demonocles and this time they had been stranded on the coast of Hackonia.

Rumo still had no forebodings, even when he was put into the sack. All grown-ups looked like giants to him, and he was used to them picking him up and carrying him around for unfathomable reasons. The sack seemed merely a new variation of an old game.

But his toothache was really bothering him. Persistent pain was something that conflicted with his cosy picture of the world. He had occasionally had to endure pain, but never for long: a tumble on the nose, a splinter from the veranda in his paw. Far from subsiding, however, this new pain was steadily becoming more intense. Worse still, another place in his mouth had started to hurt in the same way. Even so, he lay there quietly and scarcely moved.

The Demoncles’ diet

For some days, now, the Demonocles left behind on Roaming Rock had noticed how the rising waves were tugging at their floating home. Only another few hours and they would be back on the high seas once more. Nervously, they scanned the cliffs surrounding the muddy tongue of land on which they were stranded. Nearly all the other raiders had returned from their forays, but a dozen were still missing.

A spine-chilling sound, almost like a cry, pierced the mist that floated between the sea and the mainland. It was the note of a seashell horn, which sounded to the Demonocles’ ears like music. The dozen stragglers were returning at last.

The one-eyed vandals appeared on the clifftop, triumphantly holding aloft the bulging sacks in which their prey were still – they registered this with satisfaction – struggling and kicking violently.

What is the worst thing one living creature can do to another? Those brave enough to pursue that question to its logical conclusion might The Demoncles’ diet answer it as follows: Eating a fellow creature alive. It was quite all right to kill an Ornian Marsh Hog as quickly and painlessly as possible, strip off its hideous, warty hide, stuff it with rosemary and roast it on a spit; on that point all Zamonians – except the vegetarians among them – were agreed. But to cut the beating heart out of a live pig and devour it raw was quite beyond the pale – indeed, there were laws against it. Of course, not everyone obeyed those laws – werewolves, for example, and one or two other less sensitive life forms. However, no one could more blatantly have contravened the general agreement not to eat things alive than the Demonocles. Those one-eyed demons enjoyed their food only if what they devoured was still moving.

When on the high seas they ate live fish. If they captured a ship they wolfed its entire contents alive: captain, crew, passengers – even the last rat, cockroach and weevil in its hold. If they became stranded somewhere they ate the local inhabitants. It mattered little what form of prey they ate – Demonocles weren’t choosy. They would even have devoured a Spiderwitch provided it was still twitching nicely. Liveliness was the main criterion by which the one-eyed giants judged the quality of their fare.

They had developed some ingenious ways of keeping their victims alive for as long as possible while gobbling them up. They saved vital organs such as the heart, brain and lungs till last, but eventually devoured those too, together with toenails, bones, scales, claws, eyelashes and tentacles. The Demonocles thought it particularly important to keep any sound-producing organs and innards intact to the end: the tongue, larynx and vocal cords were regarded as special delicacies to be reserved for the culmination of a meal. Screams, groans or whimpers took the place of a pinch of salt, a hint of garlic, or the scent of a bay leaf. The Demonocles were gourmets of the ear as well as the eye.

They divided their food into three grades. The lowest of these, acceptable only in an emergency, comprised creatures that were alive but barely moved and couldn’t make sounds, for instance mussels, oysters, snails and jellyfish. In the medium grade were creatures which, although unable to scream, could twitch or wriggle: fish of all kinds, octopuses, lobsters, crabs and marine spiders. The highest category included creatures capable of speaking, screaming, yelling, screeching, crowing, twittering, bleating, or making noises of some other kind. The Demonocles didn’t care what their victims were – Norselanders or Hackonians, Gargylls or Wolpertings, coastal dwarfs, seagulls or chimpanzees – as long as they made a frightful din while being eaten.

If the Hackonians had only known how effectively they were whetting the Demonocles’ appetite by moaning and struggling inside their sacks, they would all have kept as quiet as Rumo, who was still wondering when this curious grown-up game would come to an end.

The giants’ larder

What surprised Rumo most, when he was finally released from his stuffy prison, was that he was no longer in the farmyard. He noticed to his astonishment that the ground beneath him kept rocking to and fro. However, he was quickly reassured to find that his family were all there too. Although the ground was unsteady, uneven and slippery, he managed to stand up on his hind legs, but he couldn’t grasp why everyone failed to notice this feat and congratulate him on it. Even his family were ignoring him, and their behaviour was very odd in general. Their usually amiable faces had turned into tragic masks and some of them had water trickling from their eyes. Rumo wondered where his basket was. Surely they hadn’t left his basket behind? No, that was impossible. He was sick of this game. He wanted something nice to eat, a Hackonian lullaby and a little nap.

The Hackonians took a different view of the situation. They had heard the rumours about Roaming Rock, and some of them had had grandparents or other relations abducted by the Demonocles. They knew what awaited them unless some miracle occurred.

To the Demonocles, on the other hand, the situation was neither mysterious nor tragic but simply satisfactory: they had just restocked their larder after a successful raid ashore. Now they were heading out to sea again, bound for a life of glorious freedom on the ocean waves.

Rumo and the Hackonians were herded into a big cave in the heart of Roaming Rock – in the Demonocles’ opinion the finest place on their island. This was where they stored their food, where they went first thing each morning to get their breakfast and last thing at night to get their supper. Many of them even visited the cave in the small hours, half asleep but eager for an unwholesome little midnight snack.

Embedded in the walls of the vast cave were iron rings to which the Hackonians were secured with chains round their necks, wrists or ankles. Basins hewn out of the rocky floor teemed with plump fish and octopuses. Wild animals – lynxes, bears and lions – were imprisoned in cages. Domesticated animals such as hens, pigs, horses or cows roamed around freely behind the sliding wooden grille with which the Demonocles shut off the mouth of the cave. Lobsters and crayfish crawled over and under each other in stone tubs and earthenware jars filled with sea water, which also contained oysters. The one thing Roaming Rock wasn’t short of was live food.

A sleepless night

Like most of the other inmates of the cave, Rumo didn’t sleep a wink that night. What with the incessant motion, the puddles of sea water sloshing to and fro, and the sobs and whimpers, grunts and cackles, whinnies and roars of his fellow captives, he had never before had to endure such uncomfortable conditions. The Demonocles hadn’t troubled to chain him up because they obviously rated him a harmless domesticated animal. What he found most shocking of all was that the Hackonians hardly spared him a glance when he tried to snuggle up to them. Chained to the wall, they wept continuously.

Feeling hurt, Rumo went looking for affection elsewhere in the cave, but the same depressing atmosphere prevailed everywhere. Nobody wanted to play with him; everyone was self-absorbed; sobs and cries of despair filled the air.

Rumo eventually took refuge in a niche with a narrow entrance. Originally formed in the volcanic rock by a fat round air bubble, it afforded some protection from the sea water splashing around. He curled up and shut his eyes, but that only seemed to aggravate his seasickness, so he opened them again and simply lay there, as dejected and frightened as everyone else.

It was the longest and worst night of Rumo’s life to date. Every now and then a Demonocle would visit the cave for something to eat: a hen, a lobster, a pig, or a Hackonian. The hens cackled, the pigs squealed, the Hackonians screamed – sleep was impossible under such circumstances.

The noise became really deafening when one Demonocle felt peckish for a lion. Rumo had never seen a lion before, but he sensed that the golden-maned creature in the biggest cage of all was a proud and dangerous beast. When the hungry Demonocle unbolted its cage the beast emitted a sound that made the other prisoners’ blood run cold: a low growl that seemed to emanate from a natural disaster, not a living creature. Although anyone with any sense would have put as much distance as possible between himself and that sound, the Demonocle entered the cage without hesitation. The growl gave way to a roar that shook the walls of the cave. The Demonocle’s hand shot out and grabbed the lion by the neck. Winding its tail round his other wrist, he slung the huge cat over his shoulder like a sack of coals and plodded out.

Rumo curled up again. What kept him awake, apart from the incessant din, was his sore mouth. The gum had swelled up in two new places and this perturbed him almost more than the goings-on in the cave. From one day to the next the world had become a hostile place – even his own body was turning against him. He whimpered for a bit and a few tears trickled down his nose. It was dawn by the time he fell into a brief, troubled sleep filled with wild and sinister dreams.

Breakfast time

The first thing Rumo noticed when he awoke was that the ground wasn’t swaying as much. His fur was sodden with water dripping from the roof. He badly needed a pee, so he relieved himself outside his niche. Then he went on a tour of inspection to see if the situation had taken a turn for the better. Perhaps someone would play with him at last.

To begin with it seemed unlikely. It was breakfast time, and grumpy, grunting Demonocles were stomping around the cave in search of ingredients for their first meal of the day. Most of them favoured pork for breakfast, so the squeals were ear-splitting. One Demonocle had decided on some octopus. He fished a huge, eight-armed specimen out of a pool and promptly got into a tangle, much to his companions’ amusement. The octopus wound its tentacles round the one-eyed giant’s body, neck and ankles, its suckers taking hold with a sound like someone smacking his lips. The Demonocle started to sway, lost his balance and crashed to the ground. His companions threw back their heads and emitted gurgling noises – their way of laughing, Rumo gathered. The fallen giant struggled to his feet, grabbed one of the tentacles and summarily tore it off. The octopus relaxed its grip, but it was too late for conciliatory gestures. The Demonocle gripped three more tentacles in both hands and swung the octopus round his head like a hammer thrower, then smashed it against the wall of the cave. It burst like a barrel of ink, spraying black liquid over everyone unlucky enough to be within range. Despite himself, Rumo vomited.

When the Demonocles left their larder at last, Rumo tottered over to a puddle on trembling legs and rinsed out his mouth. He was so frightened that he had gone back to walking on all fours – it seemed safer. The water was lukewarm and brackish, and tasted of fish. Rumo was just about to throw up again when he noticed a welcome development: one of the sore places in his mouth had stopped hurting, and something smooth and pointed had emerged there. He explored it with his tongue. It felt strange but somehow nice. Although the other places still hurt, they didn’t worry him as much, now that one of them had undergone such a pleasant transformation.

He, too, was hungry. He found a trough full of gooey mush and ate some, reluctantly at first, then more and more greedily as he noticed that the hollow sensation in his tummy was subsiding. Then he crawled back into his little niche for a closer inspection of his first tooth, exploring it with his tongue again and again. He felt as if he had been given a present.

Cries of mortal agony drifted in from outside. The Demonocles were taking time over their breakfast and some of them were clearly eating it in the immediate vicinity of their larder. The Hackonians clung to each other, weeping and wailing even more loudly than before. Rumo noticed that the head of the family was missing, but that didn’t surprise him. The farmer had often disappeared for days on end, only to return when he was least expected.

Rumo went on another tour of the cave, sniffing the air as he went. He was finding it hard to get used to the smells given off by the sea, which were so utterly different from those of the farmyard. Everything there had smelt of soil, herbs and life, whereas here the only scents were of rotting fish and death. He gave the cages containing wild animals a wide berth. Incredible how big and powerful many of them were! There was a red gorilla, a wild dog with two heads, another lion with only one eye, a huge polar bear with bloodstained fur. These beasts filled Rumo with a mixture of fear and wonder.

The murky pools

But what he found really sinister were some deep, dark pools in a side chamber of the cave: eight circular basins, nearly all of which were filled with murky water. Kept in them with other sea creatures were giant squid, and the colour of the water came from the clouds of inky black fluid they excreted like a smokescreen when alarmed. Slimy tentacles, pointed horns, black dorsal fins and glowing eyes on stalks broke the surface by turns, and issuing from one of the pools was a plaintive, sing-song cry. During the night Rumo had seen an inquisitive goat venture too close to the edge of one such basin. Without warning, a yellow tentacle equipped with fat suckers had emerged from the black, soupy water, wrapped itself round the animal’s neck at lightning speed and, with a low gurgle, dragged it into the depths before it could even bleat. Since then, Rumo had maintained a respectful distance from the pools.

Three of the artificial basins appeared to contain creatures which the Demonocles kept as iron rations for consumption when times were hard. Even they seemed to find them scary, because they kept well clear of the pools in question. They contained no squid, so the water in them was clearer. To his astonishment, Rumo sighted some small but awe-inspiring denizens of a dark world inhabited by creatures with heavily armoured scales and rows of fearsome teeth. They had grim faces with pugnaciously jutting lower jaws, and their eyes glowed and rolled wildly in their sockets as if they weren’t entirely sane. Many of them had long antennae tipped with glowing balls like miniature lanterns. Rumo saw a puffer fish as transparent as glass, with a red heart pulsating inside it. He also spotted a long, thin oceanic worm that continually changed colour as it wove its way along below the surface. He kept returning for another look at these fascinating prodigies of the deep and studied their mysterious modes of behaviour, because they were the only things in the cave that helped him, for a moment or two at least, to forget his depressing surroundings.

Most mysterious of all, however, was the furthermost basin, which was situated a little apart from the others at the back of the cave. Its water was dark-green, unlike that of the blue-black pools, but just as cloudy. It struck Rumo that none of the Demonocles went near it and that the free-range animals also kept their distance – mainly, no doubt, because of the foul stench it gave off.

Rumo would dearly have liked to know what sort of creature the oily surface concealed. For the most part, however, all that protruded from the murky soup was a big grey dorsal fin or a broad back that might have belonged to a whale or a fat sea cow. The baleful eye that sometimes lurked beneath the surface resembled that of a marine predator.

What particularly attracted Rumo to the furthermost basin were some faint vibrations he had picked up during the night, while trying to sleep. In his mind’s eye they had assumed the form of some concentric red ripples in the pool from which the dorsal fin occasionally protruded. The little Wolperting couldn’t interpret these mental images, but he felt that they were trying to tell him something – indeed, it was almost as if he could sense that this mysterious subaquatic creature wanted to get in touch with him. On the other hand, perhaps it was simply trying to lure him close enough to catch him. Rumo had refrained from obeying its signals and remained in hiding all night.

However, he felt braver now that everyone was awake and activity reigned throughout the cave. For a while he prowled around near the pool, but not so near that some slimy, sucker-studded tentacle could seize the opportunity to drag him into its murky depths. He gambolled around it on all fours. The eye beneath the surface revolved, observing his every movement, and when he had made two circuits the dorsal fin rose slowly out of the water. It rotated on the spot like the iron pointer of a sundial, following him as he made his third circuit.

This went on for quite a while. Sometimes the fin sank below the surface, sometimes it resurfaced. Rumo sauntered off and returned, sauntered off and returned, but he never took his eyes off the pool. Two creatures with no idea what to make of each other were engaged in covert mutual observation.

A small party of Demonocles entered the cave in search of a second helping of breakfast. Rumo always hid in his niche when the one-eyed giants visited their larder, so he scampered back there – only to find that it was already occupied by the black goose, the same bird that had given him such a hard time back on the farm.

With a roar, the leading Demonocle shooed away some hens while the others looked around enquiringly. One of them grinned when he caught sight of Rumo and came stomping towards the little Wolperting. Rumo growled at the goose, hoping to scare her away, but she stuck out her tongue and gave a menacing hiss. The Demonocle stopped short, distracted by a litter of piglets.

Rumo remembered the trick he’d tried before. He made himself as tall as the goose by rising on his hind legs. Then he growled again, louder and more menacingly than before, and bared his gums to display his solitary tooth. The bird did not hiss back this time, but waddled silently out of the niche so that Rumo could sneak inside. The Demonocle caught sight of the goose standing there at a loss. He licked his lips, reached her in three strides and seized her by the neck. ‘Quaaa—’ was the last Rumo heard of her.

The mysterious eye

A measure of peace and quiet returned once the giant had disappeared clutching the goose and a handful of piglets, so Rumo ventured out of his hiding place. As if magnetically attracted to it, he approached the evil-smelling pool with the mysterious eye in its depths. He prowled around in its vicinity for a while, waiting for the creature to emerge in its entirety for once, but all that happened was a familiar sequence of events: the fin emerged and submerged, the eye appeared below the surface, a few bubbles rose sluggishly and burst with a pop.

At length Rumo ventured a little closer, this time flat on his belly. He crawled nearer, inch by inch, until he was only a couple of feet from the edge. The unknown creature had submerged completely. Neither the fin nor the eye could be seen, just more fat green bubbles that burst with a pop and gave off a noxious stench.

Lying there undaunted, Rumo shut his eyes and strained his senses. Oh yes, the red vibrations were immensely strong! They seemed to pulsate in time to the beating of a mighty heart, slowly, steadily and reassuringly.

Unseen by Rumo, the water silently parted and a massive grey form emerged from the dark-green depths. It was a creature with the head and teeth of a big shark and the body of an abnormally bloated maggot.

‘Hello,’ the creature said in a sepulchral voice.

Rumo’s eyes snapped open. Horrified, he jumped back three or four feet and stood there on all fours, barking as viciously as a Wolperting whelp can. The creature made no move to leave the pool, still less attack him. Waving around on either side of its maggotlike body were seven pairs of puny little arms.

‘Come here,’ the creature purred amiably. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

Although Rumo didn’t understand a word, the creature’s gentle, sonorous voice inspired confidence. He kept his distance, but he stopped barking and merely growled.

‘Come here,’ the creature repeated. ‘Come on, I’m your friend.’

‘Graa ra graaha,’ Rumo replied. He didn’t know what it meant, but he felt bound to make some response.

‘You can speak? Better and better! You’re a Wolperting, did you know that?’

‘Waapaawaa,’ said Rumo.

‘Wolperting,’ the creature said again, pointing to him with several of its numerous fingers.

‘Walpaataa,’ said Rumo.

‘You learn fast.’ The creature laughed so hard that water slopped over the edge of the pool. ‘Say Smyke,’ it said coaxingly.

Rumo hesitated.

‘Go on, say Smyke!’

‘Maiee?’

‘Smyke! Say Smyke!’

‘Smaiee,’ said Rumo.

‘Excellent.’ The creature gave another laugh. ‘Smyke, Volzotan Smyke. That’s my name.’

Volzotan Smyke’s story

Smyke was a Shark Grub. As such, he was quite capable of Volzotan leaving the water and living on land, but while on Roaming Rock he thought it wiser to convey the impression that he was a sea creature pure and simple. At least five hundred years old, according to his own rough estimate, he had heard many things about the Demonocles in the course of his life to date, one of them being that they found land animals more to their taste than sea creatures.

When the Demonocles captured the pirate ship on which Volzotan Smyke happened to be a passenger, he had promptly thrown himself into a tank filled with drinking water and, with great histrionic panache, impersonated an obese and unappetising sea creature. Although the Demonocles were taken in by his act, they transported him back to their cave and stored him in one of the pools for consumption in an emergency. They devoured all the pirates within a month, but Smyke miraculously survived.

However, he was feeling rather unwell in his watery element. True, he could breathe underwater if he chose, but that was just an embarrassing legacy inherited from his aquatic ancestors, whom he despised. He would have preferred to disavow that part of his family tree, but in his present predicament he clung to it desperately, because his ancestors were – so to speak – saving his life every day. Smyke had been living in this pool on Roaming Rock for two and a half years – by far the longest period any creature had ever spent in the Demonocles’ larder. This had given him time to study their habits – or, at least, those they indulged in when visiting the cave. He had been compelled to listen to their gruesome singing, the discordant din made by their seashell horns and their totally unrhythmical drumming. Smyke estimated that these performances occurred every six months at particular phases of the moon and went on for days, so he could tell when their next festivity – or orgy – was due. This knowledge was vitally important, because the Demonocles’ gluttony on such occasions could spell the premature end of every living creature in the cave. Smyke had had to witness the disappearance of several captured ships’ crews in quick succession. Indeed, one or two prisoners had been eaten alive before his very eyes. When these festivities were at their height, it was not uncommon for a drunken Demonocle to come storming into the cave, tear a shrieking victim to pieces and devour him in the presence of his horrified fellow captives. At such times blood seemed to affect the Demonocles in much the same way as high-proof liquor.

While these atrocities were in progress, Volzotan Smyke dived as deep as he could and excreted a substance from his sebaceous glands that dyed the pool dark-green, transforming it into a malodorous soup so unappetising that even the Demonocles found it repulsive. He hated doing this, because it reminded him of another, still more unpleasant branch of his family tree, at the lower end of which came the primeval Sulphur Grub, a creature whose offensive smell was all that had enabled it to survive in a world full of voracious dinosaurs. Smyke could hardly endure the stench himself, but in this case the end really did justify the means.

So as not to become demented under these conditions, Smyke had created a fantasy world of his own. He regarded his sojourn on Roaming Rock as an ordeal imposed on him by fate and designed to toughen him for his further journey through life. He was like a sword being tempered in the furnace – that was his favourite image of himself, little though it accorded with his physical appearance. Nothing in the world was more terrible than the constant fear of being eaten alive. Equally, and of this he was just as convinced, nothing could better steel one to resist terrors of all kinds. If he survived Roaming Rock, he kept telling himself, death would have lost its sting.

Smyke’s memories were another powerful aid in his fight for survival on Roaming Rock. It was only in captivity that he had learnt to appreciate moments of happiness experienced in the past. In the corridors of his brain he had constructed a chamber to be visited whenever his hopes had been dashed yet again, when his fear was at its greatest and his despair overpowering. This was the Chamber of Memories.

Major and minor incidents in his life hung on its walls like oil paintings, frozen in time and waiting for him to reactivate them. These mental images would have meant nothing to anyone else. They could be a view across a gloomy bay or a little hillside inn at dusk, a battlefield in turmoil, a chessboard bearing an exceptionally complicated arrangement of pieces, or a leg of roast pork with a knife about to carve it.

When Smyke stood in front of one of these pictures and devoted his attention to it, it seemed to come to life, expand and literally suck him in. He then experienced some pleasurable memory as if for the first time. Such was the solitary skill he had developed at the bottom of his pool. It was neither thinking nor dreaming but a mental activity that lay midway between the two – one he immodestly termed smyking. It was the art not of remembering, but of reliving a remembrance.

Smyke used to reactivate these memories as required. Some of them were big and dramatic, others small, simple and intimate. If afflicted with hunger and a yearning for something more varied to eat than the seaweed and plankton the Demonocles tossed into his pool, Smyke would summon up the image of a little inn at dusk. There, over a hundred years ago, he had enjoyed one of his life’s most satisfying gastronomic experiences. He had dined outside on the terrace, which afforded a panoramic view of a bay that glowed orange at night, thanks to the phosphorescent jellyfish that congregated there at that season of the year. Smyke started with the Whole Baked Truffle Encased in Pâté de Foie Gras, went on to the Slaked Jellyfish on a Bed of Algae followed by a Venus’s-Shell Risotto and Ginger Salad in a Cream Dressing Scented with Lemon Grass, and rounded off the meal with some Five-Year-Old Grailsundian Blue and a bottle of Cataclysmian Port. Although this was a rather trivial memory, Smyke revived it more often than any of the others.

Only one mental image in his Chamber of Memories – an exceptionally large one – was permanently covered up. Smyke always hurried past this picture, which was draped in a black cloth, but he couldn’t delete it from his mind.

Other memories were preserved in urns. The walls of the chamber were lined with little pillars bearing urns of various colours. If Smyke opened one of these vessels a smell would issue from it: The scent of fresh snow. The dusty odour of an ancient book. Rain falling on a city street in springtime. The smoke from a campfire. A wine cork straight from the bottle. Oven-warm bread. A cup of coffee.

Each of these smells set off a chain reaction of memories in which Smyke could lose himself for hours. If only for a while, they made him forget his fear and despair – until the blare of a seashell horn or the rattle of the grille over the mouth of the cave jolted him back to reality.

And now, into this harsh reality had stumbled a Wolperting puppy that still walked on all fours, hadn’t yet learnt to speak and was seasick from time to time. Smyke knew that this little creature personified the reason why he had constructed his Chamber of Memories. It embodied the hope that had kept him going in the depths of his stinking pool, the one remaining desire he still cherished in this dreadful world: to escape from Roaming Rock. This personification of his desire required a name, Volzotan Smyke decided. He didn’t take long to think of one. There was a Zamonian card game, a particular favourite of his, in which the most important card, and the one that gave the game its name, was known as the rumo. If you played a rumo you were challenging fate and risking everything – absolutely everything. On the other hand you could score a resounding victory. And that was how Rumo got his name.

Words and pictures

‘Rumo!’ said Rumo.

‘That’s right!’ Smyke exclaimed. ‘You Rumo, me Smyke.’

‘You Rumo, me Smyke,’ Rumo repeated eagerly.

‘No, no.’ Smyke chuckled. ‘You Rumo, me Smyke.’

‘You Rumo, me Smyke!’ Rumo said defiantly, slapping his chest with his forepaw.

Smyke taught Rumo to speak. Or rather, Rumo could already speak. All he needed were the right words, and those he learnt simply by sitting beside the pool and listening to the Shark Grub. At first it seemed to him that the creature was emitting a hotchpotch of hisses, croaks and noises that made no sense, but he soon noticed that many of these sounds conjured up mental images, while others generated emotions like fear or bewilderment or gaiety. Still others filled his head with geometrical shapes and abstract patterns.

The little Wolperting soaked up these strange sounds like a sponge. Certain of Smyke’s utterances made heavenly music ring out in Rumo’s ears and suffused his whole body with an unaccountable feeling of happiness. Sometimes he pictured things he couldn’t put a name to: a big, dark city in which many fires were burning, or a mountain range agleam with snow, or a desert valley shimmering with intense heat. Then again, he would fall into a trance, dreaming with his eyes wide open and his heart beating wildly. He could still see Smyke swimming in the pool and gesticulating with his fourteen arms, but a stream of events, sensations and presentiments flowed through his body. He felt as if the words were penetrating his brain in a thousand places and exploding there, and the images they conjured up formed themselves into confused, incoherent scenes that followed and obliterated each other in quick succession. It was as if an immense wealth of age-old experience had been slumbering within him. Now it had awakened and sprung potently to life. No, Smyke didn’t teach Rumo to speak, he merely roused the words inside him from their sleep.

‘Yes! Yes!’ Rumo kept exclaiming. ‘Go on, go on!’

Words, images, sensations – Rumo couldn’t get enough of them.

Smyke’s favourite topic was fighting. He himself was no fighter, that was obvious, but his knowledge of the theoretical aspects of the subject was second to none. He had made a meticulous study of all forms of fighting: sporting contests, pitched battles in the field, duels to the death with sabres, boxing matches with padded gloves, rapid-fire shoot-outs with crossbows, the Marsh Dwellers’ ancient art of cudgel-fighting, the Bluddums’ appallingly sanguinary affrays with ball and chain. Smyke had witnessed duels in which adversaries daubed with pitch set each other ablaze with flaming torches. Armed with a magnifying glass, he had spent days watching the incredibly bloody battles waged by rival ants’ nests. He could tell of contests that brought you out in a sweat at the sight and sound of opponents breaking each other’s bones. Rumo was so enthralled by Smyke’s anecdotes that he sometimes sat beside the pool like a spectator at a prizefight, punching the air with his little paws clenched.

Smyke had refereed the Fangfangs’ professional boxing matches. He had also been a military adviser during the Norselanders’ guerrilla wars, an officially licensed second at duels between Florinthian aristocrats, and a timekeeper at the Wolpertings’ chess tournaments in Betaville. Other professional capacities in which he had served included cockfight organiser, treasurer of the Zamonian Vermiluct (an annual wrestling match between Ornian Strangleworms), cheerleader at the Midgardian Dwarf Joust and croupier at Fort Una, the city where gambling went on round the clock. No, Smyke was no fighter; he was a gambler, which was why he studied contests and contestants, and analysed victories and defeats of all kinds. Anyone who knew how contests functioned could bet on their outcome. That was Smyke’s ruling passion, his raison d’être: steadily improving his ability to know who would win.

‘I once watched a fight between two Hydroscorpions,’ he remarked one day, out of the blue, and Rumo pricked up his ears. Hydroscorpions, he thought, and something small with lots of legs went scuttling through his head.

‘Hydroscorpions are tiny but highly venomous creatures with seven extremely mobile tails, each of which is tipped with a poisonous sting,’ Smyke went on.

Rumo shuddered.

‘Would you like to hear how the fight turned out?’

‘Yes, please!’ Rumo said eagerly.

The Hydroscorpions

‘It was in a desert and I happened to be at a loose end, so I watched those two venomous creatures and made a bet with myself. I bet on the smaller, more agile scorpion. At first they merely danced around each other in the sand – a stiff, decorous dance, like that of two courtiers in olden times. Then, all at once, it happened: the larger scorpion feinted, lashed out, killed the smaller one in an instant and devoured it. Crash, bang, wallop – all over! I’d lost my bet with myself and won it at the same time.’

Rumo knitted his brow and thought hard.

‘But the most surprising thing of all happened after that. Having devoured its opponent, the victorious scorpion stung itself in the head, went into convulsions and died in agony.’

‘Ooh …’ said Rumo.

‘Later I had this explained to me by someone who knew all about Hydroscorpions. He explained that they were male and female.’

‘Male and female?’

‘Yes, they were a couple,’ said Smyke, as if this concluded his story with a satisfactory moral. ‘They were in love, you see?’

‘No,’ said Rumo, ‘I don’t.’

‘Neither do I.’ Smyke sighed. On that note he submerged.

Rumo lay awake for a long time that night, trying to read some meaning into the words ‘male’ and ‘female’. He failed, and besides, new teeth were about to emerge at three different points in his mouth. On the other hand, four more had already done so. He enjoyed running his tongue over them, delighting in their smooth sides, and sharp points and cutting edges. His mouth would soon be as full of such teeth as that of the big white bear in its cage.

Then he fell asleep after all. He dreamt he was an immense, muscular, menacing bear with snow-white fur and silver teeth. He rose on his hind legs and emitted a fearsome roar, and swarms of shadowy figures fled from him in terror. The little Wolperting laughed in his sleep.

Smyke’s five rules

By now, Rumo was moving around the cave with somewhat more self-confidence. There were five rules which Smyke had impressed on him and which he strictly observed:

Rule No. 1: Keep away from cages containing wild animals!

Rule No. 2: Keep away from pools containing creatures with tentacles!

Rule No. 3: Never try to climb over the sliding grille!

Rule No. 4: Hide in your niche when Demonocles appear!

Rule No. 5: If you fail to make it to your niche, keep as still as you can when Demonocles are around!

Rumo enjoyed more freedom than any other prisoner in the cave. He wasn’t locked up, tethered or chained, and he didn’t have to hide underwater. He could help himself to any of the food or water troughs – apart from those of the wild animals. He could explore every nook and cranny, and was the only free-range inmate of the cave with a sleeping place hidden from the Demonocles’ gaze. He also enjoyed the privilege, when fear threatened to overwhelm him, of being able to call on Volzotan Smyke for a story. Particularly when the Demonocles made a racket with their conch-horns and drums – an increasingly frequent occurrence of late – Rumo used to sneak off to Smyke for something to take his mind off the alarming din.

‘Tell me a story!’ he commanded on such occasions.

Smyke enjoyed telling Rumo stories because, figuratively speaking, they transported him as far from Roaming Rock as they did the little Wolperting.

‘Would you like to hear the story of the battle of Lindworm Castle?’ asked Smyke.

‘A battle?’ Rumo exclaimed. ‘Yes, please!’

The story of Lindworm Castle

Smyke inhaled so deeply, he might have been intending to recount the story in a single breath.

‘The story of Lindworm Castle is the oldest story in Zamonia – possibly the oldest story in the world,’ he began. ‘Are you ready to listen to Zamonia’s longest and oldest story, my boy?’

Rumo nodded.

‘It’s billions of years old.’ Smyke waved his fourteen arms dramatically.

‘Billions?’ Rumo wasn’t expressing surprise, just imitating the word.

‘Yes, billions! A billion is a thousand million and a million years are a thousand thousand – but you’ll learn all that soon enough. What matters is, a billion years ago a very small animal appeared in the ocean: the world’s first living creature.’

‘Out there in the water?’

‘Yes, out there in the ocean.’

‘What kind of animal?’

Smyke racked his brains. The youngster was starting to ask some disconcerting questions. What kind of creature? Something beginning with … It was on the tip of his tongue. But anyway, was ‘animal’ the correct term for the creature he was thinking of? Smyke was shocked at himself. After all, he’d once done a three-week course on Zamonian palaeontology at the night school in Florinth. That was … Good heavens, that was a hundred and fifty years ago already!

‘What kind of animal?’

Smyke couldn’t remember. Hadn’t the first living creatures been cells? Cells that divided and … Or didn’t cells count as living creatures? Didn’t two cells have to combine in order to produce a living creature? Which then divided, or something like that? He really must brush up his knowledge of palaeontology. And biology. And science in general.

‘That’s immaterial. What matters is, the animal was very small and it, er, divided into two.’

‘Divided into two?’

‘Yes, divided into two! What are you, a parrot?’

‘A parrot?’

Smyke became aware that it was quite some time since he had told a long, coherent story. He had definitely gone back too far.

‘Anyway, the animal divided into two and formed other animals. Those animals developed jaws, grew scales and teeth—’

‘Teeth!’ cried Rumo, proudly baring his little stumps, but Smyke ignored the interruption.

‘They grew bigger and bigger, and then they went ashore. They were the dinosaurs.’ That’s one way out, thought Smyke. Short and painless.

‘Dinosaurs?’

For the first time ever, Rumo was rather getting on the Shark Grub’s nerves. Until now his questions had always amused Smyke and provoked him into giving detailed explanations, but today his patience was being sorely tried. The drumming had started again some days ago. He was the only one who realised that terrible events lay in store – events that could seal the fate of every living creature in the cave – and this knowledge was preying on his mind. The story of Lindworm Castle had been meant to distract himself as well, and now Rumo kept interrupting.

‘Yes, dinosaurs. Or dragons. Or lindworms, if you like. Big, powerful lizards. Some of them – the herbivores – were merely big. Others were vicious, predatory carnivores. They had huge claws and teeth, were encased in scales and gristle, and could be up to a hundred feet long. The dinosaurs were enormous monsters.’

‘Oh,’ said Rumo.

Now I’ve captured his attention, thought Smyke. Monsters always do the trick …

‘So these monsters, these dinosaurs, went ashore all over the world. The one place where they remained in the water was Loch Loch, the big volcanic lake between the end of Demon Range and the Dullsgard Plateau. Unlike the oceans, which were cooling, Loch Loch retained its warmth because of the volcano that heated it from below. It also had large underwater caves in which the monsters could dwell in safety. The dinosaurs of Loch Loch thought: Why should we traipse around outside when it’s so nice and warm in here? So they remained in the lake while the other dinosaurs conquered terra firma. Then came the great catastrophe!’

‘Catastrophe?’ What a great big word, thought Rumo. It seemed to portend something bad.

‘Yes, some huge meteorites came crashing down from outer space. A gigantic dust cloud enshrouded the whole of Zamonia for millions of years and the dinosaurs died out – all except the ones in Loch Loch. They went on living in their underwater caves, mated with the surviving dinosaurs of other breeds and developed bigger brains. It was only then that they went ashore.’

Rumo opened his mouth to ask what ‘mate’ meant, but Smyke went on quickly, ‘So there they were, standing around on dry land and wondering what to do next. It was cold and draughty, and winter was on the way, but right beside Loch Loch stood a mountain riddled with caves and tunnels. It was warm and windproof inside, like a huge tiled stove, because it had been heated for thousands of years by the waters of the lake. So the dinosaurs crawled inside. That’s to say, the ones that could squeeze through the openings did so. The others, the really big ones, had to remain outside and were frozen to death.’

‘Frozen,’ Rumo repeated in a whisper, shivering.

‘The mountain was swarming with blind marmots. They were easy to catch and didn’t taste too bad, so the dinosaurs survived their first winter on dry land. To begin with they ate the marmots raw, but one day a shaft of lightning ignited some straw and they discovered fire. They learnt how to cook. From then on their menu included barbecued marmot kebabs and marmot soup, or marmots encased in clay and baked in glowing charcoal until they were done. All soft and juicy inside, and on the outside …’

Smyke broke off. A distant blare of seashell horns came drifting into the cave and the drums resumed their nerve-racking, thunderous din. Smyke cleared his throat.

‘The dinosaurs hollowed out the mountain some more and made it habitable. Because the winters were so cold and they were used to living in warm water they started to wear clothes. Marmot-skin cloaks at first, but then they stole some sheep from the neighbouring farms, invented spinning wheels and looms, and wove garments of wool. They also learnt how to smelt iron from the