9. Lifeline of Slumberland

Sotho and Didrik combined forces to snatch Ismaraldah, just before she could attach the Wish Fulfiller to herself. A device that, in reality, simply took away your real wish and replaced it with something that made a company money.

It hurt the sun badger to treat his lover like a small child. Still, he had to drag her from the room, ignore her screams, at least until they were safely—

Her screams had woken up the camp.

Most were already awake, of course, for their plan to destroy Slumberland was in full effect. At the sight of the three burglars, the soldiers yelled they couldn’t delay any longer. They had to speed up, whatever the cost. However often the engineers said the machines weren’t ready and the cables too short—the humans decided to attack now.

Sotho stumbled into Slumberland and didn’t know what he saw. All sloths, young and old, large and small, had left their comfortable beds and gathered here. Some still rubbed the sleep from their eyes. Most leaned against branches as if their legs were still asleep. But they were here.

He was certain there were even more sloths, but he’d forgotten the others because of the Curse.

“The humans come,” he screamed. “You see it. You hear it. They have their own armor, their own protection against the curse, so this time won’t be like all the other times. This time …”

He swallowed. His eyes jumped between the blackened hole that held Treetower 05 not so long ago, and the beautiful colorful part of Slumberland that could still be saved. “This time we have to chase them away ourselves.”

“Madness!” yelled an old sloth. “What ever can we do against weapons?”

“Too much work,” said younger sloths in chorus. “Our children should do that. They have the energy.”

“We couldn’t even move a cursed stone out of Slumberland,” said another sloth sadly. “Some things you can’t fight, Sotho. Sometimes you’re unlocky—and you’ve just lost.”

The ground shook. Machines were on their way to Slumberland, accompanied by breaking branches and blinding flashlights. Sometimes Sotho was lit from behind, sometimes from the front, and the dance of lights threw ghostly shadows over their wooden structures that—

“That is madness!” yelled Sotho. “To give up and spend the only life you have doing nothing and hiding! Avoiding those you love and wishing things were better, alone, because life is so unfair and you can’t do anything about it.”

The sloths remained silent. Sotho feared they’d fall asleep again, or pretended to do so. But their eyes were wide open and overflowing with tears as they studied him. Several sloths came alive and met each other for an embrace. Ismaraldah nodded her agreement; as if Sotho had held a speech she’d written for him.

Sotho stepped aside and grabbed a long branch overhead, part of the wooden network that raised the elevator. He broke part of the branch, to everyone’s disgust.

“Especially,” continued Sotho, “because we have weapons too.”

The old sloth had a sour face. “Yes. Sure. Let’s defend ourselves with wooden sticks—”

“No. With wooden machines.”

Sotho returned the wooden beam into a different part of the network. Now it was a lever, on the ground, that you could easily pull in any direction. And when you did, the elevator suddenly jerked upward like a catapult that fired.

The first humans entered Slumberland.

The first sloths sprung into action. They followed his example and reconfigured other machines. Though they didn’t understand everything, they could clearly see where parts connected, and knew from experience what happened if you bent a specific branch.

They forcefully bend the wooden water tubes the other way. Normally, those sucked water out of the ocean to help sloths take a shower. Now they pointed the ends forwards and sprayed the human machines with an endless supply of water.

Other sloths did the same for the message system. They climbed into their Treetowers and moved the bridges and tubes, until all of them looked at the Treetower 02—which was currently being cut down.

The youngest sloths were allowed to fall down, or take the slide, from maximum height. They activated all the right branches and levers on the way down. All that were needed to build air pressure in the tubes and shoot messages through them at high speeds.

Messages that could be made of paper, of course, or leaves, or … massive stones.

Their projectiles clambered into the metal machines. Three people went down from a stone against their back, until they all pressed their chest and activated their armor. A gigantic stone between the wheels completely disabled one machine.

“Spread out!” yelled their leader. “Multiple trees at once!”

Sotho himself entered Treetower 06. It contained the highest station of all the cable cars. From there you could only go down, and down, and down, although the final station—Treetower 18—was still quite high.

But not for long, as Didrik had the task to cut the ropes and reattach them near the ground.

Now Sotho jumped onto the first cable car and traveled that path. Hundreds of meters, down and down, faster, and faster, and faster, spiraling out of control. Along the way he activated a few branches to launch the elevator again. The short burst of energy could shoot an entire sloth at high speed, straight into the heart of the human invasion.

If the sloths could do one thing right, it was fall from great heights without breaking any bones.

Until he moved too fast for that too, and simply broke all the branches he touched.

Faster, faster, until his fur was glued to his face, his strong claws suddenly uncertain if they could keep hold of the cable car, until he reached the end of the rope just above the floor.

He shot loose, at a mind-numbing speed, straight at the human vanguard.

He’d collected wooden blocks as his shield. That became a silly idea when he rammed into the first machines and disabled three of them immediately, but also gave himself a concussion. Lying on the floor, dizzy and bruised, he saw how all of Slumberland fought the machines.

A machine spun out of control on his left. Another was flattened by a falling rock. Machines got stuck in the dirt, were cut loose from the electricity, or were covered in leaves that made the driver uncertain where to go.

Still they persisted. Any reasonable animal would know this was dangerous and walk away. But not humans, no no, their pride and stubbornness would not survive being beaten by a bunch of sloths.

So they advanced to the next Treetowers. The others had been set on fire, or felled with haste and imprecision. Most trees hadn’t fallen cleanly and became a new Branchbridge connecting treetops.

Sotho heard a crackle and a whisper. He looked to the side and noticed the moment a human’s armor shut down. Followed by a machine that shut down without being attacked, accompanied by a sound similar to a crash landing bird.

The electricity. They were moving too far away from the source!

Sotho jumped upward, but cringed when someone shot at him. Those black objects in their hands were no tools or cameras, no, he was certain now.

A human jumped on top of him. But she missed him entirely and their grip was laughable compared to his claws.

When he wanted to hit back, though, he missed too. Both were out of breath after one swing, and didn’t know how to continue. The human pointed their gun and pressed the lever—nothing happened, lights went out. She eventually threw the weapon at Sotho’s head, but missed again, after which Sotho’s attempt to grab her throat merely ripped her clothes.

Everywhere he looked, the same lackluster fight happened. The sloths had never known true danger, never fought. The humans had also lived a comfortable life. In this darkness, merely lit by fires and rare lanterns with electricity, the biggest battle was hitting your enemy at all.

Sotho saw this—and ran away. He had a more important message. He asked after Ismaraldah five times before he heard she was in Treetower 20.

Why? The reason became apparent when several massive objects fell from the sky and nearly crushed him.

They had attached all Branchbridges, the gigantic horizontal trees beween canopies, to only a handful of levers. Now they could make all bridges slam into the ground with just a single fall, like a giant who tries to catch tiny humans running on the ground.

Once inside Treetower 20, panting, he said: “The humans are overreaching. Their armors are shutting down, lacking energy.”

“That might be good news,” she said. “But they’re too strong to underestimate, Sotho, it—”

“Don’t you see? We don’t need to win. We only need to delay them, until they …”

Her eyes widened. She swung from the Treetower, past the remnants of the cable car rope that was missing three stations now, and landed near the Curse.

Humans had surrounded the area. They were certain that a good burning and night of destruction would certainly pry loose that shiny object from its pillar.

Ismaraldah stood in the center, but did nothing. She let the humans come. She let more and more filthy human creatures step closer and almost steal the Curse. She let their machines drive close to it, until their metal arms could hit the pillar.

Their harnesses shut down, one after another. Most had already discarded theirs, for now it was just dead weight that slowed you down. Several thick cables had extended the electricity network, all to make one machine, of the few that were left, able to reach the Curse.

Slumberland had lost many Treetowers, but the sloths continued fighting. Their bodies might have been weak and exhausted, but even then you could fall down, or lean on a lever to move it, which would, somewhere, somehow, activate a wooden machine to protect Slumberland.

They’d delayed the humans, that was something. They’d reduced their numbers and weapons until they might be able to save the final Treetowers, for now. They’d done well, but—

Once all the humans were close enough, Ismaraldah closed her eyes. A bubble formed around her, as a red breath left her mouth excruciatingly slowly, as if she breathed out in slow-motion.

Not as if. That’s exactly what she did.

All the humans around her were caught in the same slowdown of time. They didn’t blink anymore, for the time between blinks was stretched to an eternity now. Their fastest vehicle, the machine, moved as if it had to drive through thick layers of mud. What Sotho saw as a single second, became hours or even days for everyone inside the bubble. Such powerful magic that Ismaraldah could not execute it for long, or in a large area at all.

She could merely sustain the bubble for as long as she could hold that breath, and only reach everyone inside the Curse Circle.

Ah yes. Goddess of Time. Sotho had almost forgotten.

Just as, when the bubble popped and Ismaraldah came to her senses again, all the humans had forgotten Slumberland.