The Farthest-Away Mountain

  The witch tottered for a moment on the brink of the pool and then, with a horrible shriek, fell in.

  There was no splash. The waters opened to receive her and closed over her again. Dakin’s feet were soaked by the wave that came out all around the edge. In the last of the magic light, Dakin saw what Drackamag had meant.

  The witch—the Evil Master—did indeed go “poof.” In eerie silence, a cloud of green smoke puffed out of a little whirlpool which was all that was left to show where she had gone.

  Then the water settled down to glassy calm again in the peaceful starlight.

  19

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Trolls

  Suddenly everything was different.

  It was impossible to say how, but it was as if some great weight had been lifted off everything. Dakin picked herself up and looked around. The smoke was thinning and blowing away in the breeze. The stench was still there, but growing less every moment. The air seemed to beat like a pulse. Dakin felt overwhelmed with some feeling that might be called happiness for lack of some stronger word. She simply stood there, breathing lightly, enjoying this feeling in every part of her.

  Something touched her knee.

  She looked down. A little man stood there, and another, and a third. Their faces in the moonlight looked familiar.

  “It is me, Og,” said the first in a voice of wonder and joy. “And look! I am free!”

  “And I!”

  “And I! We are all trolls again—ourselves, as we used to be. Oh, what did you do? We thought we were to die, and instead we are restored!”

  Dakin crouched down, and the three brothers, sad imprisoned gargoyles no more but flesh-and-blood little men, stood close to her, looking shyly and marvelingly into her face. She touched each one gently, and each one in turn blushed deeply and murmured, “Ahhh...”

  “My little friends!” she said softly. “I’m so glad!”

  And suddenly they all flung themselves on her and hugged and kissed her.

  “But how? What? How?” they all asked breathlessly, and Vog added, “We were coming back, very, very slowly, thinking we were living our last moments, when suddenly there was a loud noise, and the next minute—we were standing here.”

  Dakin told them all that had happened.

  They stared at her.

  “How brave,” murmured Zog.

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Dakin. “I simply had to. And after that strange voice spoke inside my head, it wasn’t so difficult.”

  “But that voice must have been the voice of your own thoughts,” said Og.

  “No! Not at all. It was nothing to do with me. I’m sure of that.”

  “You say it was the same voice that called you to come to the mountain?” said Vog slowly.

  “Yes, I’m sure it was the same. I heard it in my sleep.”

  “And afterward you saw the mountain nod?”

  “Yes.”

  The three brothers looked at each other.

  “I wonder...” said Og.

  “It couldn’t be,” said Vog.

  “Are you certain of that?” said Zog.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Dakin.

  But they wouldn’t tell her.

  “I wish our brother Gog were here,” said Zog.

  Suddenly Vog jumped up. “Gog will be like us! The spell is broken, he will be a live troll again!” he cried.

  “What will he do?” asked Dakin.

  “Surely he will come back? This mountain was our home in the good days before the Evil One came.”

  “Well, he’s got a long way to come,” said Dakin. “Meantime, I wish you’d tell me what you were talking about before—about the voice.”

  “We are probably wrong,” said Zog. Then he pointed through the window. “Look, the moon is setting! It will soon be morning. Let’s sleep. Oh, how lovely it will be to sleep again! We haven’t slept for two hundred years.”

  The trolls lay down in the cabin then and there, yawning and stretching, and in a moment they were all snoring blissfully.

  Now Dakin had time to look for Old Croak.

  All through the rest of the night, she called and searched for him. She turned over every leaf, groped into every shadow. She even lay down by the pond and reached her arms in as far as they would go, stirring the water and calling all the time:

  “Croak! Croak! Where are you?”

  Nothing.

  The dawn crept across the meadow, the first bird notes sounded, and in a few minutes, as if those first-awake birds had realized that all was changed, every living creature in the meadow and wood seemed to burst into song. As the sun began to flood the mountain, Dakin took a last look around. She still felt that powerful joy underlying her awful disappointment that Croak had vanished. Nevertheless, tears poured down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Croak,” she sobbed. “Don’t be dead! I can’t bear it if you’re dead!”

  Croak—or, rather, Ravik—had been turned into a frog two hundred years ago. When the witch’s death broke the spell, Croak might have changed back into a man—a two-hundred-year-old man. He would die at once from old age.

  But then, where was his body?

  And if it worked like that, why weren’t the brothers old? But trolls live longer than people and don’t age in the same way.

  At last Dakin got up. It was no use sitting there crying. She had to find Gog and get the Ring of Kings back to the palace. She wished she felt more excited about seeing the Prince, who, she felt sure, was destined to be her husband.

  She had never seen him. But of course he must be tall and handsome and so on—who ever heard of a prince who wasn’t? Nevertheless, she really felt, as she climbed up the chimney, that she’d rather have seen her dear Croak at that moment than the handsomest prince on earth.

  20

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Changes

  AS THE SUN ROSE CLEAR OF THE PEAK, DAKIN RAISED her eyes and nearly laughed with relief. All the snow was white! That much, at least, of the evil magic had died with its maker.

  Suddenly her smile froze. Somebody was coming down the mountain.

  It was a man, rather undersized but not a troll, wearing shabby green trousers and thick boots; he had an untidy, bushy beard and thick, uncut hair. On his rather stupid-looking face was a dazed expression, as if he’d only just wakened and couldn’t remember where he was. On his shoulder was a dark gray parrot.

  Of course, you will guess at once that this was all that was left of the terrible ogre and his pet. But Dakin, though she knew it too, really, could not believe it at first. After seeing him in his gigantic state, and having been nearly frightened out of her wits by Graw, it took some time before she could realize that this perfectly harmless-looking fellow and the blinking, fluttering parrot were these same two monsters of only the day before.She stood still in the meadow, and the man, seeing her, turned and came slowly up to her.

  “Excuse me, miss,” he said. “Do you know where we are?”

  “We’re on the farthest-away mountain,” said Dakin faintly, staring at him.

  “I dunno... It’s all very queer,” muttered the man. “I just woke up in some sort of huge cave up there. Pitch dark, it was. And I had this here bird in my hand. It bit me. Frightened me half to death, it did... Now it won’t leave me... Funny, I can’t seem to remember how I got there. Where are you from?”

  “That village in the valley,” said Dakin, pointing downward.

  “Village?” said the man. “That’s right, I come from a village, too. I remember now. I was out walking and I had a sudden fancy to explore this mountain. Just kept walking and walking, and...” He frowned and shook his head. “No, it’s no use. I can’t remember anything more. Funny... Maybe I’d had too much to drink... There’s something wrong with my eyes, too. Everything looks big to me this morning... Well, I think I’d best be walking back down again.”

  He nodded to her politely and set off downward toward the wood.

  21

  ??
? ∞ ∞ ∞

  Home

  The meadow had been a happy place even in the time of the Evil One, because of the good influence of the Lithy Pool, Dakin supposed. But now it was like paradise. The sun shone, and even,’ part of the meadow seemed bursting with life. Even the dark wood at the far end no longer looked sinister, and when she reached it she found that the branches overhead no longer entirely kept out the sun’s rays. It was quite bright in there, and lots of little woodland creatures had already invaded it. The branches were laden with birds, and small animals scurried here and there, almost under her feet as she hurried along, half expecting to meet Gog at any moment.

  She didn’t meet him. Instead she walked on and on, following the direction of the pine needles as before, until, after about three hours, she suddenly felt very faint and sat down sharply.

  “What’s the matter with me?’’ she thought. She put her head on the forest floor, but still everything spun, around and around. What was it?

  “I’m hungry,” she thought. “Of course I must be! I haven’t eaten a thing for two days. Goodness, how silly if I were to die of hunger here in the wood after all that’s happened! I feel so weak I can’t go on...”

  The next thing she knew she was being lifted and a man’s voice was saying, “Poor child! She’s fainted. How lucky we came this way to look for her... No, I’ll carry her myself. Her mother will be so happy to see her...”

  She opened her eyes a little, then closed them again. She was being tenderly carried in strong arms. She seemed to sleep. When she opened her eyes again, she was lying in the living room at home, and her mother, and father, and Triska and Margie and Sheggie and Dawsy were all standing around her, looking at her anxiously and solemnly.

  “I’m fine,” she said at once. “Don’t look so worried.”

  Then they all seemed to change. Her mother burst into tears and so did Sheggie. Triska jumped up and down and squealed. Margie and Dawsy hugged each other and did a sort of men’s dance around the room. And her father just kept shaking his head and blowing his nose.

  “Where were you? Where were you?” they all kept asking.

  But before Dakin could answer, another face appeared beside her, the kind, stern face of the village doctor.

  “Now then, no tales just yet,” he said. “She must rest, and drink her warm milk. Come along, my girl, get this inside you. The talking comes later.”

  So Dakin drank her milk, and Margie carried her up to bed, and she lay there for a while, looking out of the window at the farthest-away mountain. The snow looked pure white now. Just before she dropped off to sleep, she thought she heard the strange voice in her head, now bell clear, say:

  “Thank you, child. Sleep well. Your task is done.”

  22

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Ring

  In the middle of the night, she woke up.

  She sat up sharply in bed and, with fumbling hands, lit the candle. She had been dreaming of the ring. There was something she had to know. Moving as quietly as she had the morning she set out, she tiptoed down the stairs in her bare feet and went into the kitchen. She held the candle high as she approached the mantelpiece. The little light caught a gleam of brass at one end.

  It was Gog.

  It was really Gog, but still small, still brass, and now—unmoving, a little lifeless figure as he had always been!

  “Gog!” she whispered. “The spell’s broken! Why aren’t you a real troll again, like your brothers?”

  He neither moved nor spoke. She touched his belt with her fingers. Yes, there was no doubt about it. It was the Ring of Kings. It was loose—she could twist it around his waist. But it wouldn’t come off.

  How was this possible? In the wood, he had come to life and spoken to her. Then he had run away.Then what? He had come back here, jumped onto the mantelpiece, and—become a statue again? She shook him sharply.

  “Gog!” she almost shouted.

  “Dakin? Is that you?”

  It was her mother’s voice. In another minute her mother was beside her.

  “Daughter, what are you doing out of bed? Come, child, you’re not well yet. Let me take you back upstairs.”

  “Mother! Our troll... Was he missing?”

  Her mother stared at her.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “Triska noticed it, the morning you disappeared. And that same evening, she found him out in the garden. She went on and on about it, because she said he was quite different, that all the tarnish was gone, and that he was in a different position. She even said his face was different. I must say I was too upset to look closely. Though now I notice,” she added, taking the figure out of Dakin’s hand, “it is very odd, for as I remember he was seated before, and now he is standing up. Perhaps it is another one altogether?”

  “No, Mother. It’s the same one. I know by his belt.”

  “How strange! It is not part of him—see—it turns around. It would make a fine ring if one could get it off. One might think it was gold. But one couldn’t get it off except by cutting the figure in half, and you wouldn’t want—”

  “No, no!”

  “Come. Up to bed, and I’ll sing you to sleep.”

  Dakin took Gog to bed with her and kept him warm all night in her hand. She half hoped to bring him to life that way, but when she woke in the morning he was just as before.

  23

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Palace

  Dakin stayed in bed for several days until she was quite well and strong again. All the time she was thinking. She knew the next thing to do was to take the ring back to the palace, which was at the farther end of the valley, in the middle of the royal estates. But one thing troubled her. How could the ring be got off? If there was no other way than by cutting Gog in half, the King and Queen would want to do that, and how could Dakin explain that that was quite out of the question?

  At last she was well enough to get up. That day nobody in the family did any work. They ail sat around Dakin and listened breathlessly while she told them her story. At first the older ones would not believe. But there had been a lot of talk in the village about strange differences in the mountain. The villager who had found Dakin in the forest said that something had almost seemed to pull him forward to where she was lying. Others said they were not afraid of the wood any more, and many children had begun to cross the river (which had always been forbidden) and play under the trees. None had gotlost or come to any harm. Everyone had noticed that the snow no longer changed color.

  The pastor was sent for, to hear Dakin’s story. He listened very gravely and then went away to look up the old books, kept locked in a cupboard in the church, in which were written the names of all the people who had ever been born in the village and what had happened to them; these were called the pastoral records. He returned with one of the books, surely the oldest book Dakin had ever seen. He opened it at one yellow page, and pointed to a name written in ink—which had faded to pale brown with age.

  The name was Ravik.

  The record said he had been born two hundred and twenty-two years ago, and that at the age of twenty-two he had walked up the mountain and never been seen again. The record of the Evil Boy and his father, the magician, was there, too. The pastor would not let Dakin read about the things they had done, but he showed it to Dakin’s father, and they shook their heads and looked very grim. The boy had disappeared on the same day as Ravik.

  So then they all believed her.

  Margie spoke for them all when he said, “Our Dakin is a heroine.”

  They treated her like a queen for several days until Dakin thought she would scream if it went on any longer. So she did a number of naughty things on purpose until her mother lost patience and gave her a smack on the bottom, and after that everyone forgot she was a heroine and remembered that, after all, she was only their own Dakin, and began to treat her normally. After that she was much happier.

  But the matter of the ring was not settled, and at last her father
said:

  “Dakin, the royal family must be told we have the ring. Come, I will take you there. We’ll explain everything to the King. He is a good man, and won’t do anything to your troll.”

  Dakin was not so sure, but indeed word had reached them that the royal family was getting more and more upset about the missing ring as Prince Rally drew near to his eighteenth birthday, which is the age when, by tradition, the princes of that land got married. A huge reward had been offered to anyone who found it, and though Dakin didn’t care about the reward, she was nearly fifteen herself and knew that if she were going to marry her prince there was no use putting it off.

  So her mother dressed her in her very best, and brushed her hair till it glistened, and she and her father drove down the valley to the royal estate in a pony trap.

  It was a glorious summer’s day. The valley was blooming; all the farmers were out in their fields, and the women were finding excuses to work outdoors, too. As they drove past, Dakin waved to friends and strangers alike, thinking gaily: “If only they knew that soon I shall be a princess!” Now the time was near, and that was exciting, though her sadness about Croak did keep coming back to her every now and then.

  Gog was in the pocket of her best apron. She kept touching him as if to reassure him. “I won’t let them do anything to you,” she whispered as they reached the palace, and, giving the pony to one of the royal grooms, walked boldly up to the great gates and knocked.

  A uniformed guard opened a small door in the gate.

  “We’ve come to see His Majesty,” said Dakin’s father.

  “What is your business?” asked the guard haughtily.

  “We have found the ring,” was the answer.

  That changed everything, and very quickly too. The guard turned pale. He stepped back and gave a signal. At once the great gates swung open, and an armed guard of six soldiers stepped forward to escort them to the King.

  Now Dakin really did feel excited. Up the long flights of steps they marched, with the guards’ bright silver breastplates and helmets gleaming and their white plumes nodding, and when they reached the end of a long carpeted corridor the first guard had a word with two other soldiers, who immediately raised trumpets to their lips and blew a fine, tuneful blast on them which said without words: