Drindel Zildith? The Day of 23?" said Mr Mouse, frowning. "This is getting kinda hard to understand!"
"Oh yes, it must be" said Cambor. "Very hard to understand!" As if to try and make it easier, he spread his arms out so that all the moving picture dragons on his coat woke up - one shot a huge tongue of fire round the side of the coat, another looked straight at Dot and hissed (scary) and a third rolled on his back as if he was waiting for a tickletummy, just like Wiz.
Cambor didn't seem notice any of it - not even the flame from the dragon's mouth. "You see" he said, bringing his hands together "All computers work by clocks, don't they - there's one on every screen."
There is too - look down to the bottom right hand corner. There. See it?
Right!
"Now if a day goes missing, that means our memory has got a gap in it - a gap that can't be crossed. It means we start losing memory, because each day passes what it knows onto the next - and every Zildith has a day he or she must guard. Drindel is The Day of 23. That's why there are 365 of us, one for each day of the year. So we have a gap we can't get past if we lose a Zildith - and a day."
Mr Mouse yawned. Honestly! He lay back on Dot's shoulder with his hands behind his head. A little wind made the branches of the book tree next to them move. It made a kind of rustling sound. Creepy!
But Dot was thinking too hard to notice. She scratched her head. "You mean..." she said "It's a bit like trying to cross a lot of rivers... if you haven't got a bridge over one, you can't cross to the next?"
"Exactly!" said Poolbear. "And, as Cambor Zildith said, we each have a day. I'm The Day of 103."
"And I" said Cambor proudly "am The Day of 298. We believe the best days are the ones nearest to the end of the year."
"You do, anyway" muttered Poolbear.
The wind was a bit louder now. It made a kind of sighing, whistling sound, Dot noticed. And it was cold.
"So... Drindel looks after the 23rd of January?" asked Wiz.
"Exactly!" said Cambor again, with a smile. Then his smile faded. "But now, we... "
"LOOK OUT!" shouted Mr Mouse.
While they'd been talking, Canada's No 1 cheesehunter had been looking around. Bored, you see. Couldn't be bothered to listen. Rude mouse!!
But it was lucky that he did - because he saw what was happening just in time!
A huge tree just by the pathway they'd come along was falling! Silently, slowly, but it was coming STRAIGHT down towards them! Suddenly, it let out a groaning, creaking sound, as if it was in pain - then the books started to fall off the branches - thousands and thousands of them, crashing down all around them.
It was like a hailstorm of books - but instead of crashing to the ground they seemed to float and bounce. Wizzie let out his warning bark and grabbed Dot's T-shirt, trying to pull her away from the huge tree as it leant further and further over, the creaking sound getting louder and louder!
"RUN!" shouted Cambor. "I'll catch you!" To her amazement Dot saw two little jets of flame shoot out from the heels of his 'Deputy Dawg' slippers, and the next moment he was lifting off the ground flying away from the terrible danger of the falling tree, straight towards Dot and Wiz.
They turned and ran - but now Cambor was above them, his arms reaching out, the little rockets in his heels spitting out red and gold flames.
"Take my hand!" he yelled, as loud as he could - it was hard to hear him through the fluttering noise of the books as they fell to the ground. The tree was right over them now, its dark shadow blotting out the light of the book forest.
Dot grabbed Wizzie's collar and reached up to get hold of Cambor's hand. As she did so, she saw Poolbear out of the corner of her eye, standing frozen to the spot with his mouth open in horror - but there was nothing he could do to help, he was on the other side of the huge trunk of the tree, which was now almost on top of them!
JUST in time, Cambor scooped Dot and Wiz up into his arms and they shot forward and upward, scraping past the giant tree's huge branches
- and its thousands of books, which were falling faster and faster now. Even then the tip of the tree just caught them, and dozens of tiny memory books pattered down on the three of them as they zoomed away.
STRAIGHT up into the sky of Phargon they zoomed, the roof of the giant cavern inside the black mountain far far above them. Then...
CRASH - KERBANG - SMASHCRASH!!
The tree was down!!
