I put all the books back one at a time, and ten minutes later I flopped down in the chair, tired and frustrated. I looked over my shoulder and realized that the chair was pushed up against the only wall I had not checked, a wall that was shared with a staircase on the other side. I got up and pulled on the chair, a heavy beast that clearly had not been moved for a long time. It took all my strength to slowly budge it out into the open space.
With the chair out of the way, I could see an otherwise covered section of the wood wall, with its paneled dark brown accents. Just below the middle trim, dead center where the back of the chair had been, was a small green figure of a mountain. I ran my fingers over the image and felt a dimple at its center, though I could see no change in appearance. I took the silver key out of my pocket and held it in my shaking hand. I looked over my shoulder and saw the cats perched on the top edge of the chair watching me.
“You two are awfully curious today,” I said. Looking over them I saw the hawk on the sill. “So is your feathered friend there at the window. Do you all know something I don’t?” I said it half expecting an answer, but I received only a blank stare from all three, along with a wimpy meow from Sam.
I felt again for the dimple, put the key to it, and watched as it slid into the wall. Then I turned the key and heard a light click. I removed the key and placed it back in my leather pouch, quickly looking around to make sure nobody was watching. I pushed against the wall with one hand, and a panel, about two feet by two feet, slid open on creaking hinges. A soft whip of cool, earthy air escaped, running over my face like a faint whisper.
With the light pouring in from the library, I could see a ladder going down into the dark. An old oil lamp, complete with a small box of wooden matches, hung from a rusty nail on the third step of the ladder. I could see only the first six rungs going down and the first few feet of planks covering the walls. After that, the hole was swallowed by a deathly still blackness.
The cool air continued to work its way slowly out of the small doorway as if a frozen, sleeping giant was breathing steadily through the hole. It smelled like the dusty road to Bridewell just after a heavy rain had given it a good soaking. I turned to the bookshelf on my right and browsed through the items at eye level. I chose the smallest book I could find, a little red-covered volume with white lettering on the spine. Adventures at the Border of the Tenth City by someone with a strange name I’d never heard before. I opened the book, read the first page, and was immediately captivated by the audacious subject matter.
Cabeza de Vaca was an explorer who left his home in the Northern Kingdom during the seventh reign of Grindall.
After surviving a hurricane near Mount Laythen, he turned back and headed toward The Great Ravine, where he was trapped for a week in a cave by a relentless pack of wolves. When at last the wolves conceded, a hungry and tired Cabeza continued his journey into The Sly Field.
Cabeza lived on what he could find and traveled among the oddities of The Sly Field (of which there are many), searching for a way through the mist and into the mythical Tenth City. But each time he tried to enter the mist, it so covered everything around him he could scarcely see his own hand in front of his face. And so each time he wandered about for days in the shroud of that place, and always he came out near the same spot he’d gone in.
Eventually he gave up his quest for The Tenth City and went instead to Mount Norwood, where he wrote of his travels. This book is an account of Cabeza de Vaca’s adventures in The Great Ravine, The Sly Field, and the mists that lie ahead of The Tenth City.
According to chapter titles for the book, it would go on to talk about de Vaca’s role in the government of the Northern Kingdoms, his later travels, and eventual death.
I closed the book and held it in my hand. “You didn’t do too badly for yourself,” I said. It was common for me to talk to authors this way; somehow it made them more real.
“Your travels are about to include one flight to the bottom of a creepy black pit.” I held the book out over the opening and let go, sending Cabeza de Vaca freefalling into darkness.
It took a lot longer than I had hoped it would for the book to hit bottom. Not being a scientist, I lacked the ability to calculate the time, speed, and distance, but my best guess put the bottom of the hole in the neighborhood of thirty terrifying feet. It was hard to imagine what I would encounter at the bottom. Maybe there actually was a sleeping giant waiting for a tasty young lady to warm his belly.
I turned and looked back at the library. The hawk remained, but the cats were nowhere to be seen. I stood up and tried to scare the bird off, flashing my arms out and banging my feet on the floor. But the hawk sat silent and still, eyes fixated on my every move.
I crouched down, reached into the darkness, and took the lamp from the nail. The glass that protected the wick was jammed and I had to force it off. I wet the wick with oil from the basin, then broke two matches before successfully striking the third. My lighting problem solved, I turned back to the passageway.
The eerie dark breeze remained. It made my lamp flicker and sent faint shadows across the walls. I hung my feet over the edge and swung them out onto the ladder. Then I slithered through the hole and caught hold of the top rung with my left hand. I took the lamp in my other hand and hung it by the old rusty nail. There was only one thing left to do — seal myself in so no one would know where I’d gone. I reached back into the library and grabbed the leg of the chair, then I moved it in little spurts as I lunged back again and again on the ladder. With the chair in place, I swung the secret door shut from the inside and it clicked into position. The locking mechanism was simple to use from the inside, but I clicked it in and out several times to be sure. I took the lamp and hung it down as low as I could, rehanging it on the fifth rung. I stepped down the ladder and repeated this process until I was standing on a dirt floor, twenty-eight rungs underground.
Looking up was much like looking down had been, the light evaporating into a starless black sky after only a few feet. There were walls on three sides and a tunnel heading west under the library, in the direction of the mountains. The book I had dropped lay on the ground. Cabeza de Vaca had landed badly, and it appeared I now had two items in my possession that would require Grayson’s attention. I was destroying books at an alarming pace.
One last look up, and then I started walking westward under the city. The walls were made of wood planks with earth peeking through the cracks; the floor was packed dirt. I passed old footprints, which sent my heart racing and even made me briefly turn back for home. I told myself over and over again that I was the only one in the tunnel, and eventually I began walking toward the mountains again. The tunnel did not change in height or width as I walked on, but my trek went uphill at an unexpectedly steep grade. After thirty minutes — about the time it takes to walk from one side of Bridewell to the other at a steady pace — the tunnel began to turn slightly to the right, then it straightened out and I walked at least as far again.
After a while I reached the end — a wall jutting straight up in front of me, another ladder hanging down, a familiar hollow blackness dripping on me from above. I was afraid to climb, and I imagined the sharp teeth of the giant closing on me if I went up into his gaping mouth. I was sweaty and tired, and I sat down in the dirt at the base of the ladder to rest before going up.
“Hey, Cabeza, how are you doing?” I said to the book in my hand. I wiped my brow against my shirt and looked back down the tunnel toward home. “Were there times you got scared and thought you might not make it? I bet there were. I bet you had those kinds of thoughts all the time.
“I think I’ll have to leave you here now, since you really provide no use for the rest of my journey, which will probably end on the tongue of a giant at the top of this ladder. You wait here for me, and if I make it back, I promise I’ll read all about you.” I had to give him points for listening; he was an obedient adventurer, if not a very talkative one.
I stood up, faced the ladder, and
began my climb. Twenty-eight rungs later, I bumped my head on boards at the top, and pushed with all my might to budge them out of the way. With no warning at all, the whole top flew up in the air, blinding me with an intense light that made me close my stinging eyes. Bits of dirt fell down onto my face and head. I nearly lost my grip and almost fell back into the hole. The lamp dangled precariously off the top rung and went out.
It was quiet except for noises I had heard only from a distance before — a breeze dancing through the trees, birds singing, bushes rustling all around me. I was terrified to emerge from my crouch on the ladder and look over the edge where the top had been blown off. Again, I contemplated turning back and running down the tunnel. I decided I would take a peek, and if it was scary, I would hustle down the ladder as fast as my feet could carry me.
I slowly moved up and peered over the edge. To my great surprise, the hawk was sitting on a large stone a few feet away, looking just as it had when I’d left the library.
“Well now, you are a small one, aren’t you?” I turned quickly in the direction of the voice behind me. Balancing open the trapdoor was the smallest man I had ever seen. He could not have stood more than two feet tall. “They were right about that much, you’re a little bugger, definitely small enough,” the man said. The trapdoor wobbled back and forth with the push of a light breeze and the overcorrecting pull from the man. If it came crashing down, it would smack my head and send me falling like a rock to the dirt floor.
“I’ll be needing you to come on out of there right quick,” the small man continued. “I can’t hold this door up much longer.” He gave a nod to the hawk, and it was gone in a flash of feathers and screeching. “Darius will be pleased I’ve found you. With some luck, we’ll be in the forest by midmorning tomorrow as he had hoped.” I was out of the hole and on my feet, confused and not sure what I should do next.
The small man pushed the door down, and it slammed hard against the ground. It was covered with moss and had a long thin rope made of braided tree bark attached to the top edge.
“We can’t stay out here in the open. Must be moving along. We have a ways to go, and hard climbing it is,” said the little man, leaving me behind as he walked at a brisk pace away from me, into the mountains. He glanced back with a scolding look on his face. “Well, come on, Alexa!”
“Wait! Who are you? How did you know my name? Come back!” But the small man just kept on walking, and so I followed, racing to catch up.
He yelled to me, continuing on, not looking back, “My name is Yipes. I live in the mountains, and I am here to take you to your appointed destination.”
We were in a closed triangle now, with the wall from Bridewell to Lathbury on one side, the wall from Bridewell to Turlock on another, and the wide Lonely Sea on the last. Mount Norwood stood prominently before me, filling much of the space between the walls and the sea.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw the walls getting smaller and smaller in the distance. I was surprised at how insignificant they looked, cowering at the foot of the mountains. Beyond the walls, The Dark Hills rolled on and on, into ominous and forbidding valleys unseen from Bridewell itself. I turned to the mountains and began walking again. The higher I went, the higher they seemed to go, ever farther and brighter in the sunlight, ever expanding to places I could never fully discover. I stopped and turned to look upon Bridewell again, and I saw it as I had never seen it before. It sat squarely between darkness and light, its roads a three-headed snake, bound at the center with a hideous head, dividing vast lands. It had a certain balance, a symmetry — as if each land were pushing against the walls, trying to bring them down, to dominate and to rule. As I began walking again, following the little man, I felt a profound sense of exhilaration and fear.
CHAPTER 11
THE GLOWING POOL
Yipes was a fast walker for such a small man, and keeping pace with him was hard work. My feet were blistering and my shoulders and cheeks were burned and tender to the touch. Sweat dripped down my nose and stung my eyes. I kept looking back as we climbed higher into the mountains, the walls diminishing into lifeless, stringy worms in the distance.
Yipes was not the talkative sort, or at least he was quiet during our trek. At first I asked him questions, but his lack of response and my exhaustion eventually wore me down, and we worked our way up the mountain in the heat of the day in relative silence. Now and then we would pass under a grouping of trees where the shade felt cool and leaves rustled high in branches beyond my view.
Watching Yipes scamper in front of me like a rabbit, it struck me that I was following a small, strange man into the wild. I might never return to my home, never see my parents or friends again, and never wander the rows of books in the Bridewell library. Even so, the reality of being outside the wall and the rush of the adventure were feelings that somehow comforted me. I felt as if I was doing what I was meant to do, and I knew no regret.
I don’t know how long I was lost in my thoughts, but suddenly I nearly stumbled right over Yipes, who had stopped and turned in my direction. If not for his cry of “Whoa, young lady!” I might have put my knee right into his plump little nose. I crouched down to get a better look at him and take advantage of a rare chance to confront my guide face-to-face. He had dark eyes, a dainty mustache, and slight lips before a row of yellowy teeth. His skin was dark and leathery, toasty brown as though he’d been taking heat from the sun in large doses for quite some time. He wore a tan-colored hat over flowing brown hair, leather shorts, a simple top, and leather sandals.
“Thank you for stopping. I thought you might go on all day. You’re quite the climber, aren’t you?” I said.
Chin high, chest out, Yipes answered me with a comic high voice, “I’m not allowed to talk to you just now, sorry, so sorry. I wish I could. Strict orders from Darius.” And then, looking all around him and leaning close to my face, he said, “Thank you for the compliment.” He seemed completely harmless, casually standing in the middle of the path, a slight grin on his face.
“Can you tell me where we’re going or who Darius is? We’ve been climbing for an awfully long time and I have no idea where you’re taking me,” I said.
He was back at attention now, stiff and serious. “Sorry, strictest orders. I must take you to the appointed destination as quickly as possible. Important meeting tomorrow, very important mee —” He stopped short, turned his cantaloupe-sized head to the left, and listened intently. In a flash he was through the bushes and scaling a nearby tree like a spooked squirrel. Seconds later, he was so high in the branches of the tree I lost sight of him. I looked back down the mountain and saw the thin, endless snakes of the walls far below. I imagined I could flick them with my finger and knock them all down.
When I turned back to the trail, Yipes was standing at attention, not winded in the slightest, with the same calm manner as before. “So sorry. I thought I heard something in the bushes. Can’t be too careful now, can we? Important cargo. Yes, very important cargo.” He led me to a stream where we drank. I began gulping and Yipes told me to drink only a little or I might become ill and weak. He gave me dried meat from his pouch and told me to sit and rest. Another sip of the icy water and a few minutes more rest, then we were off again.
“Not far now. Not far at all,” said Yipes as we meandered farther up the mountain, our pace much faster than it had been. The trees grew thick, but the heat remained stifling as we approached midafternoon. The minutes turned into another hour of treading time behind my stalwart companion. My feet ached with open blisters and my legs burned with every step, but I was determined to keep going without complaint.
The stream we had rested at earlier now ran alongside of us as we walked its bank. Only a few feet wide with a bright green underbelly, it offered the refreshing sound of water flowing over rocks. I saw flashes here and there in its depths — fish moving and reflecting as they sensed our presence along the edge. I was so tired I thought I might pass out, and again I lost track of Yipes in my
delirious wondering.
“Excuse me. You can stop now,” said Yipes. He was sitting on a large rock a few feet behind me, lacing his leather sandal, which had come undone. He looked annoyingly refreshed, as if the massive trek we had just made was nothing more than a sightseeing stroll.
“I’m afraid this is as far as I can take you. The rest you have to do on your own,” said Yipes, now lapping up water from the stream, which had shrunk to only a couple of feet across.
I hobbled over to the stream, now quiet in its slow movement, and I drank in large gulps until I thought I would burst. Then I sat at the water’s edge and felt it all coming back up again. Hunching over, soupy water poured out of my mouth. I fought off a sickly shiver, rinsed my mouth in the stream, and turned to face Yipes. Exhausted, I lurched forward and fell on my face.
Why am I out here in the dark? Something warm is beside me. Warvold, his mouth gaping, rotted teeth dripping yellow goo down his chin. He’s grabbing me by the shoulder, shaking me hard. Run, Alexa, run! Get away!
“Wake up, Alexa, wake up now. You must get on with it.” Yipes was gently nudging my shoulder with his clam-sized hand. It was late afternoon, maybe four o’clock. I must have slept for at least an hour. I stretched, let out a painful sigh, pulled my knees to my chest, and sat breathing heavy sobs, tears rolling down my kneecaps, running a wet track to the top of my feet. My body ached all over, and my mind continued to struggle with the surroundings. I had an unfortunate dull throb in my head. It felt like a man, one even smaller than Yipes, was standing behind my eyeballs with a club, swinging with all his might to bang his way out.
Bang, bang, bang! “Sorry, Mr. Yipes, sir, she won’t budge!” “Put your back into it, man! Give it all you’ve got!” Bang, bang, bang!
“Alexa, stop that now! Pounding your head against your knees won’t make you feel any better. On that, you can trust me,” Yipes insisted. “Come on then, on your feet!” He was in the stream now, splashing me with icy cold water. I jerked awake, jumping to a stand, and felt the shearing pain in my legs and feet. The open blisters were screaming back at me to sit down. Sit down or I’ll send the club through your forehead! I fell to my knees; Yipes continued the chilling barrage of splashes until I finally screamed.