5.16: The next morning

The next morning, Lottie wakes up in her bunk and thinks through what happened on the previous night. It seems to her that after jumping on top of Moffat with pTravis and Masongill she was caught up in a kind of tornado, surrounded by the song of the Order of the Sponge. But very soon she heard a whisper telling her urgently “It is not yet! It will be. But not yet.” and she felt herself being pulled off Moffat and falling to the ground with anguish in her heart.

In the breakfast area, she finds pTravis and Masongill, looking very grey about the gills.

“When did you get back?”

“Dawn.”

“What happened.”

“Neither of us really remembers. It was like being in the eye of a storm. It was very noisy and we clearly travelled a long way very quickly. There was lots of activity all around us but somehow neither of us could quite see what was going on.”

“What about Moffat?”

“He’s feeling quite sick. Like motion sickness. We’ve promised to take him a pre-breakfast fruit juice in bed for the next couple of months to say we’re sorry for involving him. I cannot believe I jumped on his back without asking!”

“But what do you think happened.”

Masongill looks at pTravis and says after a pause: “I have a bad feeling that we went to the spider’s camp. I’m going to tell Alcock after breakfast.”