TRAVERSING THE Arbornican landscape during the time of the Green Moon was a terrifying thing. So was hunger, drowning in summer floods and being struck by creeper lightning, devoured by doodly bugs and hunted by the weirdy spirits that glowed and teased and led into swamps any unwitting soul nor awake enough to realise their danger. All in all, travelling in the land was generally avoided unless one intended to spread misery and despair.
Spider nests were to be avoided too, but they were rare things so little regarded. Only this summer it appeared the regular doomsayers, who happily traipsed the landscape in search of misery so easily found, were a great deal more right than the previous five and a half thousand times over the last century.
There were nests aplenty. And just like the little settlement of Moss Cleft, when population pressure encouraged migration, moon spiders did not simply migrate, they swarmed. And they made a quite pleasant rustly sound as they did so.
As for the Mossy Clefters, they had soon reached the limit of their resources. It was dark and sultry and silent in the glade they stopped at. Some of the youngsters sobbed as a feeble attempt was made to make camp. A wisdom, the only one wise enough according to their lights, who had chosen to join the expedition by the arcane instrumentality of a short straw, surveyed the tired figures before him. The adults had slumped down as if empty stomachs weighed so much more than full bellies. The children clustered together in tight little groups and squabbled and one of the elders seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep which looked nigh on fatal.
The moon was high and a ghostly green light filtered through from above, the light of another world. Manth Pollard saw this through despairing eyes and knew the end had been reached. They were passing over into that other world and Arbornica would know them no more.
Then the whisperings began.
Little sibilant sounds that sprang from the surrounding trees, first in one place, then another. Moving slowly amid the green shadows, merging, growing in volume and completing a circle of doom from which there could be no escape.
'We must gather,' Manth said in a cracked voice which sounded otherworldly already. 'We must all be together so that no one is left alone.'
The squabbles ended and the youngsters centred upon the elder wisdom. Their plaints were replaced by sobs of despair, monosyllables of farewells and prayers for forgiveness for any harm done in a life past and now about to cease. The sleeping elder was not forgotten. He was dragged to the circle and held by someone who cared, for even if there was no life left just then in that frail old body, there was something of the soul symbolised in the presence that would not be abandoned at the last.
Everyone who could was kneeling now, facing the centre where the elder wisdom shook a dry twig and intoned words of passing over. The whispering, rustly sounds were so loud they almost drowned out his words of appeasement.
'Let this be painless,' he said. 'Let this be quick so none feels abandoned and alone.'
He closed his eyes and bowed his head and waited.
And continued to wait.
The rustling, clicking whispering sounds abated a little and Manth Pollard, daring not to hope, opened his eyes nonetheless.
A figure stood on the edge of the clearing, limned in a ghastly greenish light which danced up and down a great staff held in the creature's hand.
'Are you a weirdy spirit,' the man choked out, 'come to lead us to our doom?'
'I hope not,' came a succinct reply. 'Well, this is as miserable a scene as ever I've stumbled upon. Would anyone like some cake?' and Sister Tinker Merryhop produced from her voluminous robes a tin so colourful it scattered the green light in a kaleidoscope of rainbow tints and chased rustling shadows away like as if they had never been there at all.