The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy - Страница 32

They ran. Sand stuck to the slime on Jack’s feet and mired him down. He had a stitch in his side. He thought his knees would collapse, and still he ran, pulling Pega along. When at last they fell, gasping and coughing, to the ground, Jack could hear the roar of the flames behind them. A dire light flickered on the walls. “Is it coming?” Pega said fearfully.

Jack braced himself for another effort, but as the moments passed, the light grew no brighter and the roaring no louder. “The wind is blowing it away,” he said. And, indeed, the fire drew air toward it so fiercely, a near gale moaned down the passage. A distant rumble told Jack that something had collapsed. “We can’t stay here. Can you walk?”

“An hour ago I’d have said no,” admitted Pega. “Amazing what mortal terror can do.”

Jack nodded soberly. They went on again, slowly, with the sand weighting down their feet. The light faded until it died away altogether, and they had to feel their way along the wall.

“The food’s gone,” Pega said.

“The cider, too,” said Jack.

“I’m trying not to think about that.”

“Would you believe it? I’m cold,” said Jack. The wind had a touch of ice that went straight through him. His cloak had been with the carrying bags and was now ashes. “If we found wood, I could start a fire.”

“Don’t you dare!”

They trudged on, following the wall. Jack probed the ground ahead with his staff. His feet were scorched, and he guessed Pega’s were too. He wondered what the bats would do when they tried to fly back up the passage. On the positive side, the fire must have cleaned out the wyverns, hippogriffs, cockatrices, manticores, basilisks, hydras, and krakens. And knuckers.

Especially knuckers.

“Where do you suppose Brutus got to?” Pega said.

“I wonder,” said Jack as all his bitter suspicions of the slave rushed back.

Chapter Twenty

THE ENCHANTED FOREST

“I wish I could light my candle,” murmured Pega, lying on the sand.

“What candle?” said Jack, lying beside her. Exhaustion and thirst had finally overtaken them. Jack thought he could struggle on, but Pega was clearly at the end of her strength.

“The one your mother gave me.”

“You still have it?” said Jack, surprised.

“Of course. It was given to me on the best day of my life. The day you freed me.”

Jack knew she always carried it in a string bag tied to her waist. He thought it had been lost with all their other possessions.

“Your mother said, ‘When you feel the need, it will brighten your nights.’ And I said, ‘When I die, I’ll be buried with it.’ So I shall.”

Jack felt the prickle of tears. He was too dried out to produce them. “I’m surprised it survived the fire.”

“Me too. It’s slightly flattened.” Jack heard Pega moving, and presently, he felt something brush his face. He smelled the honey-sweet wax. “Isn’t that wonderful?” the girl said. “It’s like being outside.”

Jack remembered how Mother talked to the bees, telling them what was happening in the village. Bees wanted to know everything, she said, and for the first time the boy wondered if she was also listening to them. Mother sang when the weather was thundery, to keep the hives from swarming. “Sitte ge, sigewif. Siga? to eorpan,”she sang. Settle, you warrior women. Sink to the earth.

It was her small magic. It wasn’t as impressive as the Bard’s large magic, for he could call up storms and drive people mad, but it might be just as important. Jack hadn’t thought of that before. Pega’s candle, gathered patiently in field and meadow, had its own quiet power. It, too, had drawn fire from the earth.

He blinked his eyes. A pale, blue light hung in the distance. The hair stood up on his arms. He felt for his staff.

“Is it a ghost?” Pega whispered.

The blue light neither advanced nor retreated. It simply waited. Is Brutus dead? Has his spirit come back to haunt us?thought Jack. But, no, if it were Brutus’ ghost, it would be moaning. The boy smiled in spite of himself. The light didn’t move, but it became brighter. All at once Jack understood what he was seeing.

“It’s the moon! I’m such a fool!”

“What?” Pega said drowsily.

“We’re there! That’s the entrance. Come on, Pega. You can make these last few steps.” He pulled her up and half dragged her along the sand. When they got to the light, Jack saw it was falling from a hole at the top of a heap of rocks. That was why he hadn’t seen it before. The moon had to be in exactly the right place to shine down.

“You go. Tell me if it’s nice.” Pega collapsed on the sand.

“I knowit’s nice. Come on!”

“Too tired.” She sighed.

Jack knew he couldn’t carry her. “I can’t leave you here for a knucker to find.”

“A knucker?”

“That thing we saw in the cave.”

“That,” said Pega with slightly more energy, “was a giant bedbug.”

“It was a tick,” said Jack, who hated ticks.

“It was a bedbug.A bedbug! I’ve seen thousands of them, only not so… huge.” Pega’s voice was edged with panic.

Jack thought for a moment. “There could be hundreds of them down here.”

Pega grabbed Jack’s arm. “You’re making that up.”

“It makes sense that there’d be more than one of them. Everything comes in pairs, and some creatures have a lot of babies.”

Pega pulled herself up. “You’ll have to help me,” she said tensely. “I don’t know if I can make it, but I’d rather fall and break my neck than…” She didn’t finish, but Jack understood what she meant.

The rock pile wasn’t stable. More than once a boulder shifted and sent a cascade of dirt and pebbles over them. More than once Jack and Pega had to cling to the side while they waited to see whether the whole pile would come down.

But at last they struggled out onto a steep hillside. They lay panting and stunned under a sky strewn with stars. A full moon hung overhead and painted the rocks with a lovely blue light. From below, where giant trees stretched their branches over unseen dark glades and meadows, came the music of a rushing stream.

The air was surprisingly cold, though its freshness made up for it. Jack had been in the fug of bat guano so long, he’d forgotten how good clean air could be. He breathed in long drafts of it, but as delightful as it was, it of course couldn’t take the place of water. “It isn’t much farther,” he whispered to Pega.

Jack saw that they were halfway down a vast rock slide. An entire cliff had collapsed, sending stones and dirt all the way to the edge of a deep forest. The boy and girl slid down on loose gravel, occasionally coming to rest at giant boulders that stuck out like plums in a pudding. But it was far easier going down than up. The moonlight shone all around with a dreamlike radiance, so bright the hillside seemed to glow.

At the bottom they came to a narrow strip of meadowland before the trees.

“Ohhh,” said Pega, sinking her scorched feet into grass. Buttercups, oxeye daisies, and primroses spread out in drifts, though their colors were hidden in the silvery light. Beyond, complete darkness loomed, and in that darkness the water sang.

“Do you think there’re wolves?” whispered Pega, pressing against Jack.

?It doesn?t make any difference. We have to go,? the boy said. They edged through the cool grass, Jack in front with his staff at the ready. He heard nothing except the stream, yet he felt a watchfulness in the air. I wish I had a knife,he thought, but his knife had vanished with the rest of their supplies in the fire.

“It’s so dark,” Pega murmured.

Jack thought about shouting for Brutus—he must have come this way—but the watchfulness made him hesitate.

Only a dim echo of moonlight penetrated beyond the edge of the forest. Roots snaked around humps of moss, and branches twisted awkwardly. They seemed, to Jack’s mind, to have frozen into place and were waiting for him to look away before moving again. He listened for the usual night sounds—frogs, crickets, or even an owl muttering as it glided after prey. There was nothing except the stream. “Well, here goes,” Jack said.