The Tiger's Egg by Jon Berkeley Page B

nose.
    â€œIt’s true,” said Miles. “I’ve got all my education from Lady Partridge’s encyclopedia. I’m up to the letter ‘Q.’”
    â€œMy hometown begins with ‘Z,’” coughed Doctor Tau-Tau.
    â€œMaybe I’ll know the country,” said Miles, whohad always been fascinated by the pictures of far-off places in Lady Partridge’s richly illustrated encyclopedia.
    â€œAlso ‘Z,’” said Tau-Tau sharply. “Now if we don’t press on, the sun will come up and the path may no longer be available to us.”
    Miles scrambled to his feet. The night was still dark, but away on the eastern horizon he could see the sky beginning to lighten. They were entering a strange landscape of small hollows and steep hills, out of which there grew more and more of the tall jagged rocks like the one that had sheltered them while they rested. In the darkness they looked like giant stone teeth, some tilted at a crazy angle, and the faint path wound among them and dipped into the empty sockets in between. The wind whipped around them, shredded by the stone teeth into gusts and eddies that ambushed them from every direction and dropped just as suddenly. Doctor Tau-Tau moved more slowly now, and every now and then he stopped and squinted at a battered notebook that he produced from the pocket of his dressing gown. Miles kept close behind him.
    â€œWhat is this place?” asked Miles, as loudly as he dared.
    â€œThe locals call it Hell’s Teeth,” whispered Tau-Tau. “It’s been mined for thousands of years, which accounts for the holes, to an extent, but the wind and the rain have made most of it.”
    â€œIt’s not the kind of place where I’d expect to find royalty,” said Miles.
    Doctor Tau-Tau stopped so abruptly that Miles almost ran into him. He turned slowly and bent down until his face was inches away from Miles’s nose. “We are only here for your benefit, my boy,” he whispered hoarsely, “and we are getting very close, so you will oblige me by keeping your ceaseless chatter to yourself.” He straightened up and began to creep forward with all the stealth of a buffalo.
    If you have ever stood at the sink cleaning your teeth and become convinced that someone is staring at you from behind, you will be familiar with the feeling that came over Miles as he began once again to follow Doctor Tau-Tau through the forest of giant teeth. Perhaps it was the pajamas and dressing gown that did it, but he slowly became convinced that if he were to look around he would see a pair of eyes staring at him from somewhere in the shadows. The more the feeling grew, the more determined he was not to give in to it and look around. He was beginning to wonder if this midnight trip had been such a good idea, and he had toremind himself that it was his determination to find his father, or at least to discover his fate, that had brought him to this eerie place.
    They came to a hollow that seemed to dip steeply into blackness on its far side. They descended carefully, their feet slipping on the damp grass. At the bottom of the hollow Doctor Tau-Tau paused and put his finger to his lips. He produced his notebook and peered at it for a minute, then he took out a small flashlight. It gave off a feeble yellow light, which flickered and died within seconds. Tau-Tau muttered something ugly, and tried to shake the flashlight back to life.
    Strangely enough it was this attempt to pierce the darkness that made Miles finally lose his nerve and look behind him. Before his eyes had time to make sense of the shadows they had begun to move and break up, and a swarm of little figures was slithering down the steep sides of the hollow toward them, like the hairy outcasts of a hundred forgotten dreams.
    â€œDoctor Tau-Tau!” said Miles in an urgent whisper, tugging at his sleeve.
    â€œNot now, boy,” said Tau-Tau, still squinting at his