“I’m telling Dad,” he said in Davey’s ear, and began to frog-march him through to the cave mouth and down into the lake in the middle of the mountain. He didn’t even slow down when they reached the smooth shore of the lake, just pushed on, sloshing in up to his chest, Davey’s head barely above the water.
“He won’t stop,” Alan said, to the winds, to the water, to the vaulted ceiling, to the scurrying retreat of the goblin. “I think he’ll kill me if he goes on. He’s torturing me. You’ve seen it. Look at him!”
Davey was thrashing in the water, his face swollen and bloody, his eyes rattling like dried peas in a maraca. Alan’s fingers, still buried in Davey’s shiny blond hair, kept brushing up against the swollen bruises there, getting bigger by the moment. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Davey howled, screaming inchoate into the echo that came back from his call.
“Shhh,” Alan said into his ear. “Shhh. Listen, Davey, please, shhh.”
Davey’s roar did not abate. Alan thought he could hear the whispers and groans of their father in the wind, but he couldn’t make it out. “Please, shhh,” he said, gathering Davey in a hug that pinned his arms to his sides, putting his lips up against Davey’s ear, holding him still.
“Shhh,” he said, and Davey stopped twitching against him, stopped his terrible roar, and they listened.
At first the sound was barely audible, a soughing through the tunnels, but gradually the echoes chased each other round the great cavern and across the still, dark surface of the lake, and then a voice, illusive as a face in the clouds.
“My boys,” the voice said, their father said. “My sons. David, Alan. You must not fight like this.”
“He --!” Davey began, the echoes of his outburst scattering their father’s voice.
“Shhh,” Alan said again.