Armon turned back to me as if he knew what I was about to ask of him.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked.
Just then Squire shot out of the mist once more between the Warwick Beacon and the cliffs, where she hung in the air over the Lonely Sea.
“Can you swim in these waters? Can you make it to the cliffs with me riding on your back?”
“And me!” squeaked Murphy.
Armon stood up and seemed to size up the task.
“I take it only the three of us can go?” he said.
I looked down at the little bag holding the Jocasta and nodded. Without another word spoken, Armon looked once more at the group by the wheel. The only one looking our way with some interest was Odessa. The rest were talking among themselves. Armon picked me up and threw me over his back. Murphy held tightly to my clothing with his claws, and I wrapped my arms around Armon’s neck. Then the giant leaped into the air so high and so far it was as though we were flying. I looked back and saw Warvold staring at us in wonder, alarmed at this new development.
We hit the water, Armon taking the full blow, and then he was swimming fast for the cliffs. I held on and felt the salty chill of the sea. Murphy was digging in a little too much and caught hold of my skin.
“Murphy, not so tight!”
“So sorry — it’s all so exciting, isn’t it?” He let go his grip enough for my skin to escape his little claws.
Squire flew out of the mist ahead and down over us, screeching loudly. Then she circled low over our heads and darted for the cliffs. She landed, and I knew for sure what we were supposed to do.
“Elyon said to follow Squire — that she would lead us where we need to go.”
Armon seemed to understand and changed his course slightly. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Roland was trying to turn the boat and come after us. I waved him off, but it was no use — he kept fighting the storm, trying to right the ship in ways that forces around him would not allow. The winds came up once more, and the storm billowed heavier, pushing the ship out to sea even as Armon pulled us over the last of the big waves toward the cliffs.
Squire was sitting on the rocks screeching over and over as we approached. Armon gave one last stroke, then braced himself as a wave threw us onto the rocks. He held on to the jagged stone, wind roaring down the face of the cliff. Squire was just to our left, and she kept up her screeching until Armon sidestepped over to her and we discovered for the first time that she sat in front of a rather large, dark opening in the rocks. Armon quickly jumped inside the space as Squire flew away. Armon’s back was heaving up and down as he tried to catch his breath. The cave we’d found protected us from the wind and allowed us to rest a moment.
“The Lonely Sea just about took all the strength of a giant,” said Murphy. His matted, wet fur made him look scrawny, like a soaked kitten.
“That it did,” grunted Armon. He was regaining his strength, but the swim had been more of a challenge than even I’d thought it would be. It had tested the giant’s strength, and he’d almost come up short, which worried me as I looked out to the sea. Would he have the strength it would take to get us back to the Warwick Beacon?
Squire re-emerged, flying straight at us. I had an uneasy feeling about where she would be flying next. My worries were confirmed when she turned sharply upward the moment she reached us. We peeked our heads out into the storm and watched as she labored against the wind all the way up the side of the cliffs and into the mist, where we could see her no more.
Armon looked over his shoulder at us and found Murphy and me hoping for some reassurance that he could scale the cliffs. He sighed mightily and looked at his own hands in the weak light of the crevice — we all looked at them. I leaned over and put my hand against his, then Murphy ran down my arm and put his paw on the back of my hand — my hand so much bigger than Murphy’s paw, Armon’s hand that much bigger still than mine.
“If I had hands that big I could do it,” said Murphy, and for some reason Armon thought this was very funny, and he began to laugh. He stretched out his arms and his back rumbled and cracked against my chest.
“Off we go then,” he said. “Before the light starts to fade.”
Armon crept out into the wind and took hold of the side of the cliff. Then he began climbing, the two friends on his back shivering with fright at each new step.
CHAPTER 5
TELL NO ONE WHAT
YOU’VE SEEN
We were high on the cliff — almost into the mist — when I looked down for the first time. That was a mistake.
Armon had lost his footing and his big leg swung free in the wet air. Looking down made me gasp, but I couldn’t stop looking. We were far above the ground, and I could see the waters crashing along the rocks below. I also saw the Warwick Beacon, and I hoped Warvold and the others could see us. They had drifted farther out to sea, and I suddenly felt we’d made a terrible mistake. Our companions must have thought we’d lost our minds, but there was nothing they could do to help us or stop us, and it looked as though we might not be able to get back to the boat as it drifted away. A lump caught in my throat, and I began to feel dizzy. I buried my head into Armon’s back and promised myself not to look down again.
As Armon lumbered farther up the cliff, struggling for every footing and gasping for air as he went, I tried to take my mind off the fact that the three of us would fall to our deaths if Armon lost his grip on the slippery rock face. I imagined that Warvold and Roland were standing on the boat feeling a little jealous, which actually made quite a bit of sense. The two of them would have wished it were them on the back of a giant, scaling a seemingly unassailable cliff to places no one had ever seen. It put a smile on my face to think that in some ways I’d become their equal, ways I would not have dreamed possible growing up in Lathbury. And then I opened my eyes again and looked up.
The air was thick and moist. We had entered the mist — which meant, I hoped, we were nearing the top of the cliff. We weren’t able to see more than a few feet in any direction — an alarming development, since Armon was having enough trouble finding the few places where he could hold on. Now they were even fewer to choose from. But there was one wonderful thing that happened when we entered the clouds that I couldn’t quite understand.
The storm was gone.
The higher we rose in the mist, the less wind and rain there was. We could hear the storm below us, but it was strangely peaceful now, as though we had entered another realm entirely. I watched as Armon’s arms extended beyond where I could see, his hands crawling from place to place along the cliff, looking for a hold above.
“I’m scared, Armon,” I said. “What if we can’t get back down?”
He didn’t answer me, and it seemed he’d sensed something above that gave him a new strength that only made him move higher and higher at a startling pace. Time passed quickly, and light began to pierce our world of mist. And then, without warning, we were out in a perfectly cloudless afternoon, another fifty feet of cliff above us that was dry to the touch and full of good holds in every direction.
“I have a feeling about this place I can’t explain,” Armon told me. “Something I haven’t felt in a very long time.”
Murphy chimed in: “The only feeling I have is that a squirrel shouldn’t be climbing so high. This altitude makes my fur feel funny.” He held on with three paws and used the fourth to scratch behind his ear like a dog.
Armon wasn’t breathing so hard now, and he seemed all the more superhuman to me as he practically leaped from hold to hold on the rock face, taking us higher and higher until we were all the way to the top, and he crawled over the edge and onto The Land of Elyon.
“Stay on my back,” he said. He crawled on his hands and knees away from the edge, and I wondered if he was afraid a gust of wind might blow us into the air and down to the jagged rocks below. When he was well clear of the edge, Armon stood up. I looked over his shoulder at the place we’d arrived.
What we saw was both magnificent and frightening in ways I had never experienced before. I had hoped we were being led to a city or a mountain, but what I saw wasn’t that at all. Murphy darted back and forth between Armon’s shoulders, trying to see everything in front of him. I only stared in disbelief, my breathing choppy as though the very air around me had gone thin and hard to find.
Armon was walking ever so slowly forward, as though a force beyond his control was drawing him. No one spoke, not even Murphy, and then out of the air came a crystal voice with words I hadn’t imagined I’d hear — words I didn’t want to hear.
Tell no one what you’ve seen.
The voice was clearer than before, not on the wind as it had been in the past. I almost expected Armon and Murphy to hear, too — but they didn’t. I hoped there would be more for me to tell them, but there was nothing.
Armon continued to walk closer to what lay before us, and then a brutal wind came up and nearly knocked him off his feet. A great cloud of white rushed over the land and began covering everything in front of us. A few minutes later, as we braced against the wind at the edge of the cliffs, what we’d seen was gone.
“Armon, you can’t tell anyone about this place,” I said. “You, too, Murphy. No one can know.”
Neither of them spoke, and it seemed to me that we all understood Elyon had brought us to this very place for his own purpose.
He said something else to me then. Something that, if I followed, would be the start of a plan. I was afraid to share it with anyone when I heard it, but I knew I would have to tell Armon later. I had to think about it first. I had to figure out the exact meaning of Elyon’s words.
“We have to go,” said Armon. “If I don’t leave now, I won’t be able to.”
Armon turned away from the land before us and craned his neck to look at me where I rested my head on his shoulder. It was clear from the glimmer in his eyes that turning back was very difficult for him. He swung his whole body around and looked out over the mist that covered the Lonely Sea.
“I only hope we can make it back to the Warwick Beacon,” he said. Then we were over the side heading down, visions of what we’d seen lodged in all our heads as we went.
The descent was much faster than the way up, as Armon moved like a giant spider along the sheer cliff wall, down through the mist, back into the storm below, and finally stood among the rocks at the base. Armon only rested for a few seconds before stepping into the Lonely Sea and swimming for the boat. It was a long way off, but we could see it in the distance, bobbing on the waves. The storm seemed to push us out to sea, so Armon had only to guide us in the right direction. The light of day was almost gone as we approached the Warwick Beacon, Warvold and Roland and Balmoral yelling our names and waving us in. In the weakening light, a rope was thrown into the sea, and Armon took hold of it.
When Armon finally climbed over the edge of the Warwick Beacon, he set down Murphy and me and collapsed on the deck, his huge body sprawled out before us, chest heaving as rain pelted his face.
Murphy was so pitiful-looking with his wet, matted fur. All his bones were showing through and his little face looked exhausted, as though he might fall away sleeping and roll down the deck of the ship.
“Wait till I get back home and tell everyone I went swimming in the ocean and climbed to the top of the cliffs,” he said. “They’ll never believe me.”
Warvold picked me up and hugged me so hard I thought I would burst.
“Please don’t ever do anything like that again,” he whispered in my ear. Then he turned to his brother and yelled, “Get us out of here! We’re nearly around the edge of the cliffs.”
He carried me belowdecks and threw a soggy blanket around me.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt? What did you see? What’s up there, Alexa?” He was overcome with curiosity and concern, and it nearly broke my heart to sit there shaking my head, unable to tell him what I longed to share.
I sat shivering with Warvold’s arms around me as the Warwick Beacon carried me away from a place I would never forget and could not understand — a secret place I could tell no one about.
CHAPTER 6
SEPARATED
I remember getting sleepy. I was wet and miserable and dreaming I was in the smoking room at Renny Lodge, curled up on a velvety couch with a good book and a cup of tea, a big fire burning, pipe smoke swirling around the room. And then I don’t remember much of anything until I awoke with light peeking through the door that led up the stairs to the deck of the Warwick Beacon.
I sat up, awake at the sight of it, thinking the storm would blow in and rouse everyone. Then I realized I was no longer cold and the storm no longer raged outside. There was a warm light pouring down the stairs and a soft morning breeze fluttering around the room. Someone had picked me up in the night and set me in a hammock, where I was warm but still a little moist. I jumped down from the hammock, awake and running for the stairs, excited to see a peaceful day unfolding.
The air outside was right between cool and warm, the crispness of the morning passed but the heat of the day yet to stir. The Lonely Sea was calm but for a few waves drifting lazily on the surface. I looked to my left and saw the cliffs rising into the mist a hundred yards off.
“Ahhh, you’ve finally woken up.” Warvold’s kindly voice came from the wheel where he stood with Roland, wind dancing in their hair, ideas of adventure evident on their faces. The two of them had known only risk and danger all their lives, and the reward was the look I saw in their eyes. They were two people full of life to the point of bursting, and I wanted only to be more like them.
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” said Roland as he turned the wheel ever so slightly toward the cliffs.
“She looks well,” said Warvold. “Much better than she ought to after the perils of only a day ago.”
He walked over to me, and we strode hand in hand to the very front of the Warwick Beacon, where we stood looking out into the sea. I turned back to see Armon and Balmoral mending the sails, Murphy sitting on Odessa’s back as the great wolf slept at their feet.
“Alexa,” said Warvold. “We’re nearing Ainsworth, where things will get more complicated. Will you stay with me a moment and let me tell you a few things?”
I was glad to hear we were close to a place where we might regain our footing on land and go after Yipes. We were already starting our third day’s journey from Castalia. Only two days remained before Grindall expected me in Bridewell with the last stone.
“Will we be able to reach land, to rescue Yipes?” I asked Warvold.
“That we will. There are a few more surprises I have yet to reveal.” He stared out to sea and smiled serenely.“My years in Bridewell may have been lacking in adventure, but they were an important season. I contemplated many things behind the shadows of the walls. I laid many plans.” He turned away from the Lonely Sea and looked at me. “Before that — during all those years of my youth, wandering in The Land of Elyon — do you know why I searched, Alexa?” he asked me. It was a question he strained to produce, and he seemed desperate to tell me the answer.
“Because you love adventure, you and Roland both,” I answered.
He looked back out to the sea once more, and his voice trembled as he spoke the true answer.
“I was seized by the power of a great affection.”
It seemed as though Warvold had given me the key to his entire life in that one statement, and yet I struggled to understand what he meant. I rolled the words over in my head, trying to see in them what had driven him to live such a dangerous life. I was seized by the power of a great affection.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” I admitted.
Warvold looked deep into my eyes, the wind blowing strands of white and gray hair across his worn face.
“Elyon has only one hope for us, Alexa. That we would know he loves us. Do you understand? The one who made you, the one who made everything.” He swept his hand across the sea. “He loves yo
u. And more than that, there is nothing you or I need do to earn his reckless affection for us. That love has driven me to fight his enemy, the enemy of us all.”
“Abaddon,” I whispered.
He stared at me then with such intensity I could hardly hold his gaze.
“No evil can resist the power of love forever.” He winked at me and smiled, as if he thought that somehow our band of misfits might yet overcome Grindall and the ogres — even Abaddon himself.
“I have failed, and failed, and failed again,” he said. “But no amount of failure can move Elyon’s hand of affection away from me. It’s inescapable. To live boldly for that kind of love is the least I can do.”
I suddenly felt that I, too, was seized by this power of great affection, and I understood why I longed to search and search for adventure. What I’d seen with Armon and Murphy at the edge of the cliffs only gave me more strength to carry on.
“We’re nearing the cliffs,” he said.
I was surprised to look over and see that we were indeed much closer to the rocks. Everyone on deck seemed to be preparing in one way or another for our departure from the Warwick Beacon.
“Find your bag, Alexa. We’re soon to leave the Lonely Sea.”
I gathered my things quickly and joined Armon near the back of the ship, where he stood with Odessa, Murphy, and Balmoral. Everyone but Armon seemed nervous as they looked at the face of the cliffs, wondering what dangers awaited us as the day unfolded.
“There, to the right,” said Balmoral. I strained to see where he was pointing and saw the red flag dangling at the bottom of the rope. Warvold crept up behind us and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Our escape from the sea,” he said. “I must say I surprise even myself sometimes.”