Chapter Six

The Messenger Bee made its way into the cave, sticking close to the walls to avoid detection. Not that there was much chance of that; The large creatures didn’t seem to be that good at spotting … well, anything, really … but tempting fate seemed like a bad idea.
It passed the creatures who’d moved from the area around their rapidly drowning fire into the shelter of the cave mouth, just past where the heavy rain could reach. The ones lying further in hadn’t been disturbed at all by the change in weather, or, the bee noted, by the moss having grown much thicker underneath them while they slept.
It found an upside down perch on a stalactite and waggled a greeting at the nearest cave spider, which wandered over and gestured to the sleeping creatures.
“Intruders not invading, delvers not gathering, not-dwellers dragging … something?” It began. “Do Bees understand this?”
The Messenger Bee wriggled a no.
“Queen says the hive walls say nothing about this.” The Bee responded. “Not acting as an enemy, and they destroyed the nest of invaders, so … Maybe friends? Unlucky stupid young friends who don’t know about anything?”
The Bee pointed an antenna at the sleeping figures.
“Do Spiders know why the Moss is helping them?”
“We didn’t understand at first.” Replied the spider, delicately extended a leg for the bee to look along, pointing at the moss where the sleeping figures were lying on it.
“Look closely.”
—–
The Cave Spider squeezed out of its tunnel and found a comfortable position on the wall. That tunnel was bigger before; How did the intruders not invading make the tunnels shrink? They’d made a lot of other creatures shrink too, come to think of it.
The Cave Spider resolved to ask the Bees whether their Hive had any mention of things shrinking – it seemed important, but it felt like it was missing something about the situation – and settled in to observe the sleeping creatures and wait for the Goblins to arrive. The child had almost understood it, it was sure, and the bigger one was trying very hard and was getting the general idea. Unfortunately, it thought, looking out over the cave and the sleeping creatures and the baffling thing hovering just over them, the general idea just wasn’t good enough in this situation.
It stretched out a leg and gently touched a nearby strand of the roof-web, feeling the messages flowing past. Lots of talk about the new arrivals, some self-congratulatory bragging about who’d caught the most hornets, a description of what the Moss was up to … The Cave Spider let go of the rock in startlement and fell onto a patch of Toadstools.
—–
Tunnelfinder and Webfarmer made their way along the trail as quietly as they could, trying to keep the small group of goblins following them from making too much noise; The children who’d somehow tagged along couldn’t be blamed, but the adults should know better. Quite aside from it being a good idea to move quietly when there were strangers present, given that those strangers were sleeping, it was simple politeness not to disturb them.
The route Tunnelfinder had led them down had, after a lot of crawling and squirming, taken them out onto the cave floor, further back than the new arrivals, and they were now picking their way up the wide shallow stream which burbled its way deeper in. Not everyone had made it this far; Some of the crowd had seen the narrow tunnel and declared that maybe everyone didn’t need to go.
“Tunnelfinder?” Webfarmer muttered as she helped an elder goblin with a tricky bit of rock-hopping. “Was that the only way to get here, or did you pick something narrow deliberately?”
The child glanced back and flashed a grin.
“Just over there!” It responded, pointing to a cluster of moss and toadstool covered rocks.
“I don’t know about you,” The elder commented. “But I think that’s a yes; This one’s sneaky in more ways than one.”
“Even that huge cave spider agreed that we should be keeping a closer eye on what the children are up to.” Webfarmer agreed. “Which is making me wonder what they’ve been doing that the spiders know about but we don’t.”
The elder chuckled.
“No worse than what you got up to at their age, I’ll bet. Or what I was doing at the same age.”
They crept up the cluster of rocks after Tunnelfinder, moving quietly on knees and fingertips, and positioned themselves to peer between the toadstools. Further back, goblins found gaps between the rocks, or craned over each others shoulders, to see what the new arrivals were doing.
“I hadn’t thought bed-moss would grow this far from the deep.” Offered the elder. “I’ve never seen it this close to the outside before.”
“It doesn’t.” Came a flat response from lower down. “I was gathering moss up here a few days back, and I’d have noticed bed-moss.”
The speaker tried repositioning themselves, then gave up with an exasperated sigh.
“All I can see is the drenched ones by the entrance; Where can you see bed-moss?”
“Why are they still wet?” Asked one of the children. “Don’t they know how to make a fire?”
“Had one before.” Tunnelfinder replied. “But then the rain came. Maybe they don’t know fire-moss?”
“The bed-moss,” Said the elder in a firm tone, cutting off what threatened to be a long diversion. “Is only where the new arrivals are sleeping. It supports them, but not their belongings.”
Webfarmer saw motion off to the side, and spotted the Cave Spider climbing out of a patch of toadstools, it’s back covered with glowing smears. She nudged Tunnelfinder and waved, then pointed towards the sleeping strangers on their bed of thick moss.
The Cave Spider gave a multi-legged gesture somewhere between a shrug and disbelief, then pointed, first at the sleeping strangers, then at the moss. Then it looked straight at Tunnelfinder and made what could only be an eating gesture.
“Strangers eating moss? No, not that.” The child mused. “Moss eating strangers?”
It made its own gestures back, miming a mouth from below consuming a pair of wiggling legs with rather more enthusiasm than Webfarmer thought was necessary. The Cave Spider chittered a laugh while shaking a ‘no’ in response, then everyone froze as one of the strangers shifted slightly at the noise.
Webfarmer and the elder shot stern looks at the Cave Spider and Tunnelfinder, who both covered their heads in gestures of apology.
The Cave Spider cautiously gestured for attention, then made a series of gestures; A rapid fluttering of its legs, pointing both at the strangers standing at the cave mouth and at Webfarmer, a rapid circling motion taking in all the strangers, sleeping and standing, and then finally vigorous pointing at the moss.
It looked towards the goblins with what could only be a hopeful look, then slumped at the sea of blank expressions.
Tunnelfinder was muttering very quietly to themself.
“Hornets. Us outside the cave. Strangers. And the moss.”
They mimed swatting at flying things, then made a grabbing motion and pointed at the moss. The Cave Spider, watching intently, bounced up and down excitedly, while Webfarmer slowly came to a horrified realisation about what the spider was saying.
—–
The Moss hadn’t paid attention to any of that.
It had heard reports from deeper patches about goblins moving up from the deep but not gathering, which would normally be unusual but barely rated a mention by today’s standards, and it had listened to the complaints from a patch of Toadstools when a giant spider had crashed into them, squashing some and bruising others.
The Moss was focusing intensely. Somehow, these Invaders were invaders no more; They’d drawn in energy from somewhere, and the Moss was absorbing it as fast as it could, putting some into growth as a reward to the invaders no more, feeding some towards the Toadstools to quiet the complaints and stop them from trying to poison the giant spider, and spreading the rest out into the network of moss and fungus and slime and web and hive. It even directed some towards the sleeping one, just in case that could help.
It didn’t know how these things had become invaders no more, or why the energy they’d provided tasted so much like hornet, but it was determined to spread the unexpected boost as far as possible. Whatever would happen next, the Moss wanted everyone in the cave to be ready.