The Kingdom of the Lost Book 1

  Returning to the cave at midday, he stowed the urns and pots carefully in his pack, using the bundles of mushrooms to stop them banging together. Then he made a fire and cooked some pancakes for the journey as well as for his long overdue supper. When he unstoppered one of the little honey jars to use on the pancakes, the three male bees came buzzing out of their jar, drawn by the scent. Zluty told them about the forest hive and they sang a song of sympathy for the doomed Queen before taking a sample of the unfamiliar honey to carry the memories in it back to their little Queen. One of the bees lingered to ask when they had got to the vale of bellflowers.

  Zluty told the bee he would leave that night and if all went well they would reach the cottage early on the fourth day of travel. Once the bee had returned to its jar, Zluty cleaned his dishes and filled the water bulbs, setting them in a neat row by the pack in readiness for his departure. Only then did he stretch himself out to sleep.

  He was just drifting off when he heard a loud rushing sound from outside. Feeling he had had quite enough of new things for a while, Zluty reluctantly got to his feet and went to the cave entrance.

  To his astonishment, he saw that it was beginning to rain.

  10

  Bily woke from a dream of rain to find he had not been dreaming. He could hear the unmistakable sound of it falling, and knew it must be coming into the cellar through the broken trapdoor.

  Sitting up, he shivered in the clammy air and wished he had not decided to wait until later to get some more ground cones from the pile behind the cottage. There was little left of the fire but glowing embers and they would soon go out if he did not feed them something to keep them alive. He thought of the basket of cones that sat beside the stove. They would be dry but he could not bring himself to go up and see the damage to the cottage just yet.

  Sighing, he sat up and lit the lantern, telling himself that the rain would not last for it seldom rained on the plain for more than an hour at a time.

  He thought of the monster and his heart ached with pity, for it must surely be dead. It had been racked with fever and feverish dreams the whole previous night, and nothing Bily had done had seemed to ease it. Then, midmorning, it had fallen into a deep sleep. Knowing it was unlikely to last the night, Bily had lay down himself and fallen into a deep sleep. He felt guilty at having slept while the monster died in lonely pain, and yet he had done all he could for it. He glanced up the cellar to where the monster lay and saw Redwing perched next to it on the bale of white fluffs, peering down into its face.

  Bily got up and carried the lantern closer, wondering what she was doing. He was astounded to find that the monster was still breathing, though each breath was swift and shallow. It was also shivering, and seeing that the rugs he had laid over it earlier had slipped off, Bily set the lantern down and very gently drew them back up, then he went back and got his own rug and laid that over it as well.

  The monster’s shudders gradually eased but its eyes did not open. Bily guessed that it must be very near death. The fact that it had lived so long was astonishing, but it was clearly in terrible pain and the sooner the pain ended the better. Bily could do nothing to ease it for he had no more lorassum leaves.

  He sat on a bundle of sweetgrass next to Redwing, wondering how late it was. The storm and the rain had muddled his sense of time, but he thought it must be very early in the morning. Hesitantly, he reached out and stroked the monster’s head. He had thought the darkness of its paws and muzzle were dirt, but now he saw that this was merely the way its pelt was coloured.

  Without warning the monster opened its eyes a slit. Bily was enchanted all over again by their shape and hue, and thought dreamily how wonderful it would be to capture the glowing colour in a weaving or a glaze. Then he felt guilty thinking about such things when the monster was dying.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked, wondering if it was awake enough to hear him.

  ‘Stiff … very weak,’ it answered in its soft husky voice.

  ‘I will get some more rugs,’ Bily replied, marvelling that it had not spoken of its pain. He hastened off to get the old rugs he kept piled in the cellar to be used for cleaning rags. It took four rugs before the monster pronounced itself warm. Then it asked for water.

  Bily carried the lantern down to get some water from one of the urns and saw that a great puddle had formed under the broken trapdoor. The rain must have been falling for some time before it had woken him. As he dippered water from the urn to a bowl, he thought how lucky it was that the cellar floor sloped down at that end, or he might have woken in a puddle of water! He shuddered at the thought for he hated to get his fur wet.

  Bily carried the bowl back to the monster and trickled water as best he could into its mouth, for it was too weak to lift its head. Quite a lot ran onto the ground and soaked into the hard earth, but eventually the monster said that it had drunk enough. Bily would have liked to put some rugs under it, for the cellar floor was cold, but they had tried that earlier in the day and it had hurt the monster too much. The best he had been able to do was to place pillows and blankets around it and under its head.

  Pity assailed him and he asked it gently if there was anything else it wanted.

  ‘Can you sing?’ asked the monster.

  Bily shook his head and said shyly, ‘It is a pity you cannot hear my brother, Zluty. He has a little pipe he made out of reeds and you would never imagine such sweet songs as he can make with it.’

  Then he had an idea. He asked Redwing if she would sing to the monster. Redwing obliged with her morning song and some of the others flitted over to join in. The monster’s eyes roved over the birds, and Bily thought he saw a glimmer of humour in their glowing brightness, though he could not imagine what the monster could find funny in such a moment. Yet maybe he had been mistaken, for when the monster thanked the birds at the conclusion of their song, its voice was very grave and sincere.

  The monster closed its eyes and Bily told himself there was no point putting off going outside any longer. The rain was not stopping and he would have to at least fetch the basket of ground cones, for the air in the cellar was growing colder now that the fire had all but gone out.

  Trying to prepare himself for the sight of the battered cottage, he went up the cellar steps and pushed at the cellar doors to open them. To his surprise, they would not budge. Puzzled, he pushed harder. This time red dust sifted through the gap between the two doors and he realised that some of the falling stones must have rolled over and covered them.

  He climbed up another step and used his back and the strength in his legs to heave at the doors more forcefully, but no matter how he strained, they would not budge. Only then did he remember the great thunderous noise that had occurred just after he had closed the cellar doors. The roof or part of it must have collapsed right on top of the doors! He tried once more to heave open first one and then the other, but neither gave way.

  Bily went back down the steps, shuddering with distaste at the knowledge that he would have to wade through the puddle of rainwater at the other end of the cellar to find the ladder. And what if there was something wrong with the rain? Who knew how a rain that fell in the wake of a stone storm would be.

  He decided he would just have to wait until the rain stopped. Surely it would not go on for much longer, and in the meantime he could burn some of the sweetgrass. There was more than enough in the cellar to fill the two new mattresses he would make once the cottage had been restored.

  Carrying an armful to the fire, he threw it into the pit. There was a crackle and then a soft whoosh as the sweetgrass caught alight, and Bily sat down on his makeshift bed and relished the little flare of brightness and sweetly scented warmth.

  Redwing came to sit with him and he leaned against her so he could feel the warm steady throbbing of her heart through her soft feathers. He began to think about all the things he would need to do to get the cottage back in order before Winter. Planning always comforted him, and soon he hardly heard the steady hissing
sound of the rain falling and falling.

  11

  Zluty gazed glumly out at the falling rain. Truly this was a season of dark wonders. It was midday by his reckoning and it had been raining heavily since the previous afternoon. Worrying about the mushrooms and the bees, he had decided to wait until it stopped to set off on the journey back to the cottage. But he had never expected that the rain would go on so long.

  When night came, he had tried to sleep so he would be rested enough to walk late the following night. But uneasy dreams had taken him back into the dark forest, where the enormous creature in the giant egg had come to life and had pursued him until he woke with a pounding heart, only to find it was still raining.

  Now Zluty was beginning to wonder if this rain were any more natural than the stone storm had been. It had gone on for longer than any rain he had ever experienced and he had already lost most of the time he had gained in setting the taps the night he arrived. If he did not leave soon, he would not even reach the cottage by nightfall on the tenth day.

  Zluty clenched his teeth and thrust his hand out into the rain. When it did not hurt him, he forced himself to step out into it, gasping a little at the pummelling it gave his sensitive ear tips. It was very heavy rain and in seconds his fur was completely soaked. The feeling of being so wet was horrible but it was only water.

  He splashed across to the forest to get some leaves and carried them back to the cave, noticing that the red stones which had fallen were beginning to dissolve and soften.

  He got a thorn needle and some thread from his pack and sewed the leaves together, then he bound them to his staff to make a parasol that would keep the rain off his pack. Lashing it in place, he settled the bee jar into it and pushed a little moss loosely into the top of it to make sure no rain would drip inside. Then, with a last glance around the cave, he shouldered the pack, slung the collection bag over his head and set off.

  So much rain had fallen that the ground was too sodden to absorb it. Great pools had formed, full of widening and overlapping ripples, and in between the pools the ground was soft and slimy from the dissolving sludge of the storm stones. But Zluty hardly noticed the wet or the cold or the slippery muddy ground.

  He was going home.

  It was afternoon when Zluty noticed a sodden digger standing up on its haunches. No doubt it had scented his approach for diggers had very keen noses. Coming closer, he noticed that the little creature’s fur was quite a different colour to that of the diggers that lived near the cottage.

  ‘Ra!’ it cried in greeting, blinking rain from its eyes.

  ‘Ra,’ Zluty responded. ‘Where did you come from?’

  In answer, the digger beckoned and splashed away to the East where it vanished over a low rise of ground.

  Zluty hesitated. He was anxious to get home, but he was curious what it could want of him and in truth he was weary enough from his dreary trudge to welcome a diversion.

  When he got to the top of the rise, he saw that there was a little delegation of diggers awaiting him, their fur plastered flat by the rain. Zluty bowed to them and asked if they had some need of him.

  The digger that had led him to the others nodded passionately and then an older digger explained with a few words and a goodly amount of gesturing and miming that its clan was hungry because rain had got into their burrow system. Zluty asked in dismay if their food store had been destroyed, knowing this would mean the difference between survival and death on the barren plain.

  The diggers gave a chittering giggle until the speaker quelled them with a severe look. Turning back to Zluty, he explained that the food storage was almost certainly dry because it was higher than the rest of the burrow, but it could only be reached by a long deep tunnel that had been flooded and had collapsed. The diggers only needed enough food to tide them over until they could dig a new tunnel to the store.

  Zluty was relieved and said he could give them some food. He was about to take off his pack but the speaker urged him to come and eat with the clan.

  ‘I will not fit into a digger burrow,’ Zluty said, but the speaker managed to convey to him that the clan had taken refuge in a place that was big enough for him to join them.

  Zluty asked where it was, but he could not understand what the digger tried to tell him. Finally, he simply gestured them to lead the way. If they had found some place where he could get out of the rain, he would be glad to rest for a while and eat something, for he had not stopped since setting out.

  The diggers brought him to a ground cave with such a small entrance that Zluty had to push his pack and his other burdens in first, then crawl in after them. But it was a great relief to be out of the relentless rain. The diggers called him to come deeper. When he obeyed he was pleased to find that the cave widened out, so that he could sit up.

  Now that he was not walking, he had begun to feel cold and he decided to light a fire and make a stew of mushrooms to share with the diggers. They did not traditionally cook their food, but the ones in the burrow near the cottage had liked anything Bily and Zluty offered. He set about finding a dip in the rocky cave bottom that would serve as a fire pit and laid his last three ground cones into it. He tore up some white fluffs, and struck his flint stones over them. A little spark fell and a thread of smoke curled up. He leaned nearer and blew the spark until the cones caught alight.

  Zluty sat back in satisfaction only to see that the little diggers had drawn back in fright. Realising they had only ever seen wild fire before, he made soothing gestures and tried to assure them that these flames were in his control, but he did not have Bily’s gentle skill at communicating with the little creatures and they continued to regard the flames with alarm.

  Zluty turned back to the fire and propped a pot over it and filled it with mushrooms and various herbs and the water from one of his bulbs. He would normally have been more careful with his water supply, but with so much rain falling it was hard to feel worried about running out.

  The fire soon warmed the cave and the scent of the mushrooms cooking was delicious. The diggers might never have tasted cooked food, but the smell must have been pleasing to them, for eventually they crept forward, their eyes shining hungrily. Zluty poured some of the stew into his bowl for them when it was ready, and ate his own share out of the pot.

  The diggers were still eating when he finished, so he got out his little pipe and played them a tune. The diggers at the cottage had always liked the songs he made with the pipe, and these diggers were no different. They listened with rapturous attention until he set the pipe aside, and then they made the same chittering sound of appreciation as the other diggers always did.

  Zluty thanked them and only then noticed that several of the younger diggers had been rummaging in his pack. They had got out the small metal egg and were crooning and stroking it. Zluty smiled, knowing how diggers loved to collect shiny things. The ones near the cottage were always dragging home smaller bits of metal to decorate their burrows.

  Deciding they would do it no harm, Zluty checked on the bees to make sure they had not been disturbed. He knew he ought to go, but the rain was still falling steadily and it was a pity to waste the fire. He stretched himself out with a sigh.

  His last sight was of a cluster of little diggers gazing gravely and worshipfully into the fire, the metal egg gleaming in their midst.

  As he slept, a memory came to Zluty of the time after he and Bily had emerged from their egg. They had been small and very helpless, but the egg had been filled with food, and voices inside their heads had told them about the spring, and had explained how to build a shelter from the egg. They had obeyed the inner voices and had lived in the egg house until they grew too large to fit into it. Then the voices told them they must build a new, larger cottage out of things from the plain.

  When at length they had run out of the egg food, the inner voice told Zluty of the wild rice and the roots that could be dug from the ground, but it warned that this food would not feed them through the Winter tha
t would come. Before that season, Zluty must go North to a great forest where he could find other foodstuffs.

  Zluty put the journey to the Northern Forest off for a long time because the voice inside Bily’s head said nothing about a forest or a journey, and his brother had looked frightened whenever Zluty spoke of going there to search for food to supplement their supplies. But the inner voice had been insistent and finally Zluty decided he must go before it was too late. Perhaps the voice had whispered something to his brother, too, for when he told Bily what he meant to do, Bily had not argued.

  In his dream, Zluty saw himself leaving Bily that first time, setting off across the plain too close to Winter, with too little water and no idea of how near he would come to dying. Then the dream faded and there was only a voice whispering urgently to Zluty that he must go before it was too late.

  Zluty woke in the stale smoke-scented darkness of the digger cave to find the diggers were asleep all around him in little furry piles. The pale grey light of pre-dawn was filtering through the entrance at the other end of the cave, and he could hear that it was still raining, but the memory of the whispered warning that had woken him would not let him go back to sleep.

  He swiftly repacked his flints and the pot licked clean by the diggers, wondering if the voice had spoken to him after all this time. It had once whispered constantly to him, telling him to do certain things, advising him what sorts of food could be safely eaten, but he had not heard it for many long years.

  He had come very close to dying on that first trip to the Northern Forest. This was one of the reasons Bily feared his trips there. Yet their lives had been so much improved by the things Zluty had brought back, that they had both known he would make the trip again. Of course, the next time Zluty had known what to expect and he had been far better prepared. He had not needed the voice. Maybe that was why it had fallen silent.