The Golden Anchor. Cameron Stelzer

you hear that?’

      ‘Aye,’ Ruby said, throwing back her hood to hear more clearly. ‘Something is following us.’

      ‘What kind of something?’ Horace asked.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Ruby said. ‘But whatever it is, it sounds big.’

      ‘Like a dragon,’ Horace gulped.

      Ruby rolled her eye. ‘This isn’t one of your fairy tales, Horace.’

      ‘Well, dragon or not, I don’t want to be stuck out here when that thing arrives,’ Horace argued.

      ‘Alright,’ Ruby said, peering around the fog. ‘We need a place to hide.’

      ‘There’s a pine forest between the town and the prison,’ Whisker suggested.

      ‘A cosy tree sounds good to me,’ Chatterbeak squawked, veering sharply towards the western riverbank.

      ‘Wait!’ Whisker hissed tugging the parrot’s feathers. ‘We can’t just go bumbling into the forest. Our pursuer will hear us change course and follow us in an instant.’

      Chatterbeak straightened abruptly and the rats lurched in their seats.

      ‘Make up your mind,’ Ruby hissed, trying to regain her balance.

      ‘Sorry,’ Whisker said, ‘but we need to be smart about this.’ He pointed a finger into the fog ahead. ‘White-water rapids run all the way down this river. If we enter the trees at the first group of rapids, the roar of the water should mask our escape. With any luck, our pursuer will continue following the river while we find a safe place to hide.’

      ‘Just like our clock tower stunt,’ Chatterbeak cooed. ‘We fly one way and hope our pursuer goes the other.’

      Whisker nodded. ‘Something like that.’

      ‘Okay, it’s worth a shot,’ Ruby said, glancing warily around her. ‘But you’d better hope we reach the rapids soon. The fog won’t last forever and I can hear that creature gaining on us.’

      The companions fell silent, waiting for the first sign of the rapids and hoping the fog would hold out. The occasional muttered word about dragons escaped Horace’s lips but no one else dared to speak.

      The thrumming wingbeat of their pursuer grew louder. VROOMP, VROOMP, VROOMP.

      Growing weary, Chatterbeak’s strokes began to falter.

      Keep going, Whisker silently encouraged.

      And then he heard it – softly at first but then growing louder, the unmistakeable gurgle of rushing water.

      Chatterbeak found a new strength and the race to reach the rapids was on. He moved low through the fog, oblivious to the loud flapping of his own wings.

      Smooth-topped rocks appeared beneath him, protruding from the surface of the river. Foaming bursts of water sprayed into the air.

      The gurgle transformed into a roar as fast-flowing streams cascaded over rocks, splashing into pools at their bases. Whisker waited until the roar of the rapids had drowned out every other sound and then reached out and touched Chatterbeak on the neck.

      Instantly, the parrot swerved to his right, cutting across the rapids. Rushing water and swirling fog concealed his escape. He swept up the grassy slope of the riverbank and disappeared into the murky shadows of the pine forest.

      The trees were black and silent, rising high into the air like enormous mountains of coal, their dense branches blocking out the sky. Low patches of mist drifted across the forest floor, wrapping their wispy tendrils around the mighty trunks.

      Whisker looked back as they passed through the outer line of trees, but there was no sign of their pursuer.

      The air grew colder as the companions continued deeper into the heart of the black forest. Soon the roar of the rapids was nothing more than a faint echo in the distance. Thin rays of sunlight shone through gaps in the foliage, slicing through the mist like long golden knives.

      Chatterbeak rounded a trunk and Whisker glimpsed an enormous threadlike structure glistening in front of him. He opened his mouth to cry out in warning, but it was already too late.

      With a sudden, jarring impact, Chatterbeak’s body lurched to a halt in mid-air, catapulting Whisker forward. He had barely left the parrot’s back when he felt himself colliding with something sticky and springy. It flexed under the impact and then bounced back, taking Whisker’s body with it.

      Thin, silky strands gripped his arms and legs like glue as he vibrated back and forth. Limbs splayed wide and with his face pressed flat against the web of silk, he was powerless to escape.

      A Sticky Situation

      Looking around the quivering web, Whisker saw that his companions had all suffered the same fate. Anna’s small body hung beside his, her eyes wide with shock. The folds of her baggy cloak, flattened against the web, gave her the appearance of a giant squashed cockroach. Further to Whisker’s right, Ruby was suspended sideways with her arms angled awkwardly like the hands of a clock. She was trying in vain to reach for her scissor swords, but her arms stuck fast.

      Below Ruby, Chatterbeak was stretched across the entire diameter of the web, his feathers caught in countless silky strands. His beak was wide open and overflowing with sticky, broken threads. One of his claws was wrapped around Horace, who dangled upside down with his head hanging low to the ground.

      ‘Rotten pies to spider’s webs,’ Horace murmured in a daze. ‘And putrid pastries to crash landings …’

      Whisker remained silent. His mind was working overtime, assessing their predicament. He didn’t need to be an arachnophobe to know that being stuck in a spider’s web was a bad thing – a very bad thing. Common sense told him that where there were large webs, there were sure to be unpleasantly large spiders.

      His eyes darted from left to right, scanning the edges of the web for any signs of eight-legged activity. The web was enormous and he feared that whatever species of spider had woven it would be of giant proportions.

      Seeing nothing in his peripheral vision, Whisker shifted his attention to the web’s construction, hoping the combined weight of its captives would send it crashing down. From what he could see, the web was suspended between two pine trees by a sturdy bridging thread and anchored to the ground to form a triangular-shaped frame. Radial threads ran from the edges of the frame to the centre of the web, where a sticky spiral of capture thread rotated outwards. The pristine condition of the web told Whisker that it had been built recently and that it had been built strong.

      ‘I thought spider’s webs were supposed to be silver,’ Horace said, raising his head to study the structure. ‘From down here, this one looks gold.’

      Whisker glanced across at a sunlit strand of silk. It shimmered gold in the morning light.

      ‘You’re right, Horace,’ he whispered, recalling a spider his mother had once told him about. ‘I think this web was built by a golden orb-weaver.’

      ‘And what does this golden orb thingy eat?’ Horace asked warily.

      ‘Whatever is stuck in its web,’ Ruby hissed, struggling in vain to wrench her arms free. ‘Rat, bird, you name it.’

      Horace gulped and looked uneasily into the trees. ‘So where is it now?’

      ‘Don’t know. Don’t want to know,’ Ruby said, continuing her struggle.

      ‘Perhaps it’s building another web in a far corner of the forest?’ Whisker offered.

      ‘Or maybe it’s watching us right now through its eight spidery eyes, deciding who to eat first,’ Horace shuddered.