Chapter 18 Only Silence Answered his Plea

Squirmy found a small hole: a place near the floor where a root had rotted away, leaving a gap just big enough for a hatchling to squeeze through, packed with loose, dry peat.

“Tunnel! I found tunnel! We can go outside! Yupee!” Squirmy squeaked, and without a backward glance at sleeping Dada Trog, he pushed his head into the soft peat and wiggled. In a shower of dirt, he popped out outside.

One by one, they followed, a parade of tiny escapes. Slosh went last, getting spectacularly stuck for a moment before bursting free with an oomph!

They stood in a ragged line, knee-deep in the firm moss at the stump’s base, and looked up.

The world was huge.

The sky was a living thing, churning. The air smelled of a thousand smells, not just moss and clay. It was terrifying. It was wonderful.

“We explore! We go into big outside!” Bog yelped, taking a wobbling step forward. His legs, still new, didn't quite agree. He took three steps and fell face-first into a patch of soft, dewy moss.

They moved as a clumsy, chattering unit. Puddle stopped to taste everything.

“This leaf… bitter! This mud… also bitter! This shiny rock… ouch! Not food!”

They found a wide, flat puddle left by the last rain.

“Shiny water! We play in water!”

They all stomped in it, splashing each other, chirping with laughter. They didn't see the long, shadowy shape detach itself from the murk beneath a sunken log and begin a slow, sinuous glide toward them.

They grew braver. Bog led them away from the stump, toward a tempting area of open, black mud dotted with pretty, red flowers. The mud here was warm and soft.

“Squishy! Fun!” Bog giggled, putting a foot in. It sank to his ankle. He pulled it out with a shloop.

Silt joined him. Then Puddle. They played, stomping, sinking, pulling their feet free with hilarious, wet sounds. They didn't notice the consistency changing, growing softer, hungrier, with each step toward the red flowers.

Slosh had found a different fascination: a large, beautiful spiral shell, striped in orange and black, resting on a broad leaf. It was the size of his body. He reached out a curious hand to touch its glossy surface.

Back at the playing mud-hole, Bog took a step toward the flower. His foot sank. Not to the ankle. To the knee. A cold, firm grip closed around his leg.

“Hey! Hey! Mud is grabbing!” he yelped, trying to pull back. The mud did not let go. It sucked. It pulled.

Silt tried to pull him. His own feet sank deeper. Mire, trying to help Silt, felt the world give way beneath him. They were not stomping anymore. They were sinking.

“Dada Trog! Help us! Help!” Puddle shrieked, the fun suddenly gone, replaced by a cold terror he had no name for. His cry was cut short as the mud reached his chest, the pressure squeezing the air from his tiny lungs.

At the leaf, Slosh’s finger touched the beautiful shell.

The shell was not empty.

A fleshy, gelatinous foot, dripping with clear, burning slime, shot out from the opening and wrapped around Slosh’s hand. It was the acid snail. Where the slime touched, Slosh’s skin sizzled and smoked. He screamed, a high, pure sound of shocking agony, and tried to pull away. The snail, deceptively strong, held fast, beginning its slow, corrosive consumption of his hand.

From the puddle, the shadow struck. The mud-fish, a blunt-nosed, mottled monster all mouth and muscle, exploded from the water in a shower of silt. Its jaws, lined with needle-teeth, closed around Squirm, who had been staring at his sinking siblings.

There was a single, wet crunch. Only his tiny legs were left standing in the mud.

Puddle was the only one still partly above the surface, his mouth and one terrified eye staring at the sky as the swamp filled his lungs. The last thing he tasted was the bitterness of the deep, black mud.

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Trog’s head snapped up. A string of drool broke from his lip to his chest. The stump was silent. Not even the breathing of sleeping hatchlings.

“Bog? Puddle? Where little ones at?”

No cheerful chirp answered.

Panic, cold and slick, shot through his veins. He scrambled up, eyes darting.

 “Hide and seek? Little bug, not funny! Come out! No hiding from Dada Trog! Little… ones? Not funny time, come out for Dada Trog.”

He searched the mossy nests, behind the woven root-screen, in the empty pottery. In the empty hatchery basin, in the shadowy alcove where the tools were kept. Nothing. Nothing but dust.

“No no no no… where… where did little ones go? Who took them? Did a shadow come in? A quiet snake? No, no, the hole is covered, the moss is over the door, no one came in, no one could get in…”

 He scurried to the entrance, patting the solid wall. 

“No one came in. So… so you are here. You are hiding. Very good hiding. Now come out, please, Dada Trog’s heart is beating too fast, it is a bad drum, come out now. I beg! I do!”

Only silence answered his plea.

The terrible, impossible truth began to drip into his mind, cold and sickening.

 “No… no, you are clever, but not that clever, you are small, you cannot move the stone, you cannot… but the wall… the roots…” 

He scrambled back to the inner wall, claws scrabbling. He found the loose peat. He saw the tiny, perfect hatchling-sized tunnel leading to the outside world. 

"Did they… go out?" A sound escaped him, a whimper of pure, undiluted horror.

 “Little feet leading outside. They went outside. Oh no, no, no, no, no, that is a disaster! That is the end of everything, what have I done! How could I close my eyes! How could I let the sleep-monster take me when I was their caretaker, I was their Dada, and I fell asleep!”

He stumbled to the entrance, shoving aside the moss curtain. The grey light outside was empty. No signs of a struggle. No human tracks.

“Little ones!” he screamed, bursting from the stump.

“Where are you? Answer me! Dada Trog is worried! Come back!”

Only the swamp answered with a drip and a croak.

 “LITTLE ONES! WHERE ARE YOU? LITTLE ONES! WHERE DID YOU ALL GO? ANSWER ME! PLEASE! DADA TROG IS WORRIED, COME BACK, COME BACK TO THE STUMP, IT IS SAFE, I AM SORRY I SLEPT, COME BACK!”

Then, from the direction of the open mud flats near the pretty red flowers, he heard it. A faint, wet, gurgling chirp. It was the sound of a lung half-full of mud.

He stumbled forward, legs trembling. 

“I hear you! I come! I come!”

He saw the little legs first. Two, small, green legs, sticking out of the mud near the water’s edge. Just the legs. Feet pointed to the sky, perfectly still. Trog skidded to a halt, his heart a frozen stone. He knew those legs. They belonged to Squirm.

Trog froze. His mind refused to understand the picture. 

“You… you stuck? Stuck in mud? Dada Trog will pull you out, foolish one, playing in deep mud…” 

He took a step closer.

“No,” Trog whispered, “No, that is just… that is just his legs, that is not… the legs are just stuck, the rest is hiding…”

His eyes darted away, seeking another hatchling, any other hatchling, to prove him wrong. They landed on the beautiful, striped snail shell on a leaf. And the little body beside it.

He stumbled over. It was Slosh. Or it had been. One tiny arm was outstretched, the bones of the hand gleaming white and clean, stripped of flesh by the corrosive slime. The other arm was wrapped around the shell in a final, gruesome embrace. His head was inside the shell.

What he pulled free was not Slosh. It was a headless torso, the neck ending in a melted stump that reeked of acid and cooked meat. The little body was still warm.

Trog’s world shattered. A scream tore from his throat, “NOOOOOO! NOT THE LITTLE ONES! NOOOOOO! NOT OUR LITTLE ONES! NOT AGAIN! NOT THE BRIGHT-EYED, BIG-EARED ONES! NOOOOOO!”

He dropped to his knees, clutching the ravaged corpse to his chest, rocking back and forth.

 “What have I done… how could I have left them… I slept… I slept… what have I done, how could I have left them alone, I was caretaker... I was Dada... I napped. I let them die. I am the disaster, I am the horror, it was me all along!”

His tears fell on the acid-eaten flesh. Then his streaming eyes lifted, scanning the mud flat.

He saw them.

 Four tiny, green hands, fingers curled, breaking the surface of the black, hungry mud as if reaching for a sky they would never see. 

For a moment, Trog was paralyzed, his sorrow so vast it became internal scream that locked his joints. His sobs choked off. This was his doing. Then it exploded.

With a guttural roar of anguish, he dove forward, not caring for the suck, not fearing the mud that had taken them. He plunged his own arms into the cold, clinging ooze up to his shoulders, scouring, digging, pulling. 

It was Bog. His sail-ears were clogged with mud. His eyes were open, unseeing, his mouth and nostrils packed with black peat. He was bloated, cold, a goblin-shaped sack filled with swamp.

He hauled out Silt, then Mire, and finally Puddle. One by one, he dragged them from the mud.

They were cold. They were bloated with swallowed muck. Their bright eyes were sealed shut with black peat. Their wonderful, sail-like ears were clogged with the stuff of their grave.

Trog collapsed on the firmer ground, he gathered them all in, a pitiful, filthy bouquet of lost futures, and hugged them to his chest. He buried his face in their cold, wet skin.

“I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry,” he sobbed, “My fault, my fault, my fault! I slept! I closed eyes! I was bad Dada! Stupid Trog! Useless Trog! Let the shiny-shell-monster ate their bright faces! My fault! I told the sleep-monster yes, come in, while the littles crawled into the bad! I am a bad Dada! A rotten stump! My watch was a nap! My care was a hole! I let the swamp eat you! I fed you to it with my stupid, sleeping face!"

He rocked them, his whole body shuddering.

"Grub carried you in his guts, kept you safe and warm in the dark, and I… I gave you the cold dark that eats. Hermit talked to you in the egg, poured smart into you, and I… I poured mud into your mouths. They will come home. They will see. They will see what Trog did. They will see Trog’s harvest. Not fish. Not roots. Just… cold little ones. And it’s my fault. All my fault. I broke the new things. I broke everything."