brine just needed to find them before the black-eyed monsters found him , otherwise the things with teeth in all the wrong places were going to hop from the shadows and pounced on his back , tearing at his clothes and ripping at a curtain of tongues was coming straight at him , a curtain he would have avoided earlier that day but which he now slammed into without a moments thought , ducking the tiny island of hair atop his head and barreling through the snaky barrier , staggering into a clearing and nearly tripping over the various bulbs protruding from the sands .