“The lantern was dead,” Buttercup whispered. “Total blackness. Zamba’s hooves felt like lead as he fumbled with the lantern, his grip slippery with the cold sweat of a goat who knows time is running out.
In the dark, the only sound was the frantic clink-scrape, clink-scrape of stone against iron. Zamba struck the flint again and again to no avail. He was shaking too much.
His muscles, usually capable of the impossible, were now useless at a task a child could do. His panic was a cage. He wasn’t a hero; he was helpless.
Suddenly, a soft weight touched his shoulder. Zamba let out a strangled cry, his heart jumping so hard he thought his ribs might crack. He spun around, hooves skidding on the stone, ready to face his end.
But it wasn’t a monster. It was Willow.
She stood in the mist, her eyes wide. Her own heart was hammering. She was terrified, but she had come to find him anyway. She didn’t try to take the flint; she simply stepped forward and wrapped her steady hooves over his shaking ones.
Her warmth was a shock to his frozen body.
‘Don’t panic, Zamba,’ she breathed into his ear. ‘Just strike it for me. Just for me.’
The shaking stopped. Zamba adjusted the flint, felt her strength holding him steady, and struck.
CRACK.
A fountain of sparks hit the oil. The Big Lantern erupted, a pillar of orange fire tearing through the night.
The light hit the rocky path, but the pass was empty. No beast.
Zamba gasped, realising the heat on his face was just his own blood, and the red eyes he thought he saw had been a trick of the light and his own terror.
For the next few days, Zamba convinced himself he had been a fool. He told the herd the LooGawoo was just a story made of mist and imagination.
He grew bolder, walking deeper into the fog to prove his fear was a lie. Willow stayed at the lantern, her heart in her throat, watching him go.
‘Promise me,’ she would call out as the fog swallowed him up. ‘Promise me you will return.’
Zamba would promise. It’s just the wind, he would tell himself. No monster.
But one day, as he was deep in the grey mist, the ground suddenly buckled. An earth-shattering rumble, deeper than any thunder, broke the silence. The earth heaved. A massive crack yawned open right in front of Zamba’s feet.
Blinding flashes of white-hot light exploded from the hole. As the earthquake threw Zamba to his knees, he looked up through the stinging smoke. A deep, howling moan tore through the air.
It was no figment of the imagination. No trick of the mind. Was this going to be the end for him?
To be continued…
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