Search for the Sunlight
Chapter 57

Freed at last from the clutches of the evil crones, Basil was anxious to move on. Searching for a means of escape, he looked out of the window and gasped. The smooth rock face outside was sheer and through intermittent gaps in the fog, he could see that the ground was a long way down. Could this be the witches’ legacy? he wondered. Would their evil memory live on in the form of a slow painful death, with all five imprisoned within the confines of this empty soulless chamber until they finally succumb to the ravages of cold and starvation? Even Herbert, who was normally sharp when it came to problem solving, was at a loss. He had considered the big oak door where they first entered the chamber, but on reflection he quickly cast that idea aside. To attempt an exit via the slime pipe would only result in a messy return back to where they had started from and there was the added danger that they might be eaten by the giant snails as they plopped out onto the ground below. Nobody was sure whether gastropods were carnivores, vegetarians or both, but they all agreed that with the witches’ demise and the consequent cessation of their regular food supply, cannibalism and/or extreme savagery involving flesh, bark and leaf eating, were a distinct possibility within the colony. It was therefore more than feasible, that in the name of survival, the slimy creatures would turn their greedy gnashers to anything edible and that ‘anything edible’ could quite easily be a Treewood.