I glanced off toward the passageway, rolling my pant legs down and standing up. Thorn seemed completely flustered by the idea that we'd want to travel so far -- and through such dangerous places -- but she said nothing.
"He's had you under his control since you were a cub," I continued. "What could he possibly have said to make you think you couldn't escape him?"
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She paced back and forth with uncertainty, her mind racing with what to do.
"It's dangerous out there for two children," she said. "There are bears and wolves, and they know easy prey when they see it. Where you seek to go is beyond the wild of Fenwick Forest, beyond even Mount Norwood ..."
Her voice trailed off, and it was clear she'd come to the name of her old home, distant memories clouding her mind.
"We have to go, Thorn," I said. "But we need you to come with us. We can't do it alone."
This seemed to crack Thorn's resolve, though something still troubled her. She listened carefully on the wind, trying to sense any oncoming danger, but there was nothing. After a long pause she began to speak in a quiet, cheerless voice.
"When I was small, my mother told me a story about a little bear cub that was captured by a man and taken away. The man tied the cub with a rope to a stake in the ground and the cub tried and tried to break free. After a while the cub gave up and the man trained it to do tricks. He lived at the edge of a large town where people threw coins at the man and the bear, and always the cub was tied to the rope attached to the stake in the ground."
Thorn stopped and listened, sniffing the air for coming intruders.
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"When the cub grew into a bear, it was much bigger than the man, much stronger," she went on. "But still the man kept the bear tied to the same flimsy rope tied to the same wooden stake pounded into the ground. The grown bear could have easily broken free if he had tried, but he had come to believe over the course of time that it could not be broken. The man had trained the bear's mind to think it couldn't break free, and so the bear lived until it was very old, tied to the rope, doing tricks for anyone who passed by."
"What happened to the bear?" I asked, saddened by the story but wanting to get to the point so that we could escape the Great Ravine.
"There was a young girl who saw the bear and felt sorry for it. This girl came in the night and cut the rope while the bear lay sleeping. The bear awoke with a start, seeing the rope had been cut."
"So the bear escaped then," said Thomas. "It ran off in the night and found its way home."
"No," said Thorn. "The bear looked all around and, not knowing what to do, woke his master and showed him the rope. Now the master knew he had trained the bear well. From that day forward, there was no rope, no stake, nothing to keep the bear at his master's side. And yet the bear never tried to leave. He died of loneliness, clutching the old cut
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rope at night like a child's blanket, wishing for the courage to leave."
"That's a very sad story," I said. "Why do you think your mother told it to you?"
"So I would never wander off and be captured, I suppose," said Thorn. "But my mother knew my headstrong nature. She knew I might roam into places I shouldn't go. Maybe she wanted me to know that if ever I was captured, the rope that held me was a lie, and that if I chose, I could escape."
"It's never too late to stop believing a lie," said Thomas. "You need only courage and friends, and you have both."
Thorn looked at Thomas and then at me. Neither of us could be sure what she was thinking. A long silence fell between us, until it was broken by an approaching, violent sound.
We had stayed too long in the Great Ravine.
"That will be much worse than the swarm of bees if it reaches us," Thorn warned, clearly alarmed. "There's not a lot of food down here, and the two of you would make a nice dinner for a pack of hungry wolves."
I felt a deep fear returning at the thought of wild animals tearing me apart, but Thomas seemed unmoved as he looked at Thorn. "Come with us," he said. "You can go back home, to the forest and the
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mountains where you belong, and Mister Clawson will never find you."
"The wolves are near," said Thorn, sniffing the air. "We have no choice but to make our way out of the Great Ravine."
Thomas smiled at Thorn's decision. He was most comfortable on a grand adventure, and it appeared that this one would continue deeper into the wild, to places we'd heard of but never seen. With the growing sound of wolves at our back we started into the narrow passage with Thorn close behind. I imagined the bellowing sound of Mister Clawson's voice becoming quieter and quieter the farther we climbed, up and away from his grasp.
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***
CHAPTER 16
THROUGH UNCHARTED LANDS
"I do not think it serves my story very well to tell you all of what happened on the journey from the Great Ravine through Fenwick Forest and into the realm of Mount Norwood," Roland told me and Yipes. The hour was getting late, but I was anything but sleepy. "So I will give a brief account of our passage to the Western Kingdom and the mystery of the Wakefield House awaiting us there."
"You will tell us something about Fenwick Forest and Mount Norwood in the olden days, won't you?" chirped Yipes. He'd been so quiet in the dark that I'd begun to wonder if he'd nodded off. I should have known he was only listening carefully, waiting on every word.
"It's getting on ten o'clock," said Roland, looking up into the sky, observing the stars. He took out his logbook and pen, scribbling something short and fast in the margin of a tattered page. "If we are to reach the end of this tale before we all have fallen asleep, I really must keep things moving along. However, I will not fail to give you a brief and colorful view of our journey through uncharted lands."
The wind had not returned, and there was a single candle sitting between us, its light bobbing softly over the
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wood of the deck. It was reflected in Roland's piercing eyes, and I sat up straight, unwilling to allow myself to grow sleepy and miss anything the old man of the sea might share with us. There seemed to be some reason for him to have chosen this night, some reason why he felt the whole story needed to be told before darkness passed into the light of morning. As if we might see something then that we would only understand in the telling of the tale.
"It was a long while before we found our way out of the Great Ravine. Day was like night in the deep and narrow crevice which held us, and there were times when the passageway became so thin we thought of turning back. The wolves had come only a little way in, howling angrily at missing a rare chance to capture such a fine dinner as two boys lost in the wilderness. There were places where we needed to climb and pull one another up, places where sharp corners turned us back and forth against jagged stones. All along the way, water trickled at our feet, and here and there we found small pools to drink from. Everything was damp and cold as we rose higher. Moss began to appear as we came nearer to the top and light wafted into the passage from above. There was plenty to drink, which kept us going, and we had the honeycomb in the bag. We broke off clumps and ate ravenously, and by the time we approached the top half, the honeycomb was gone."
"What did you find when you came out into Fenwick Forest? Was it the same as it is today?" broke in Yipes.
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He was very curious about the forest and what it had been like.
"This was a time before people had been into Fenwick Forest," said Roland. "It's quite possible that Thomas and I were only the second and third people to travel that way. As we entered the forest it certainly felt as though we were unwelcome, like we'd stumbled into a place we should not have come."
"Wait a minute," Yipes interrupted. "The second and the third? But who was the first to enter the forest?"
Roland smiled wryly. "Whoever left the circle and square images for us to follow."
"Who was that? Who do you mean?"
Roland took great satisfac
tion in his answer:
"Who indeed."
Yipes made a long hmmmmmmmm sound, carried away by the idea of who might have come before.
"We had a bit of good fortune there in the forest that made our passage less difficult than it might have been," Roland continued. "We weren't an hour into the towering trees and the sound of birds chirping all around us when Thorn told us to stop and remain very still. We listened carefully but heard nothing, and then Thorn motioned for us to continue on. There was something near, though I couldn't imagine what it was. I could feel it, big and deadly in our midst. We came through the trees into a rocky clearing, and Thorn looked off to one side, our gaze following hers. There, only a few feet away and standing on a large,
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round rock, was a gigantic grizzly bear. He growled ferociously, making his presence known to everything in the forest. There were no words and yet I understood, like I understood Thorn, by the sound of the bear's angry voice and the whipping back and forth of his huge head.
'"You know not to bring them here. Why have you done this wicked thing?' the bear roared. We were even more unwelcome than I had imagined. It sounded as though the bear would sooner bat us to the ground with its claws than let us retreat back into the Great Ravine from which we'd come.
"As Thorn and the bear spoke, Thomas and I listened. The bear was the Forest King of a time now long forgotten. Thorn told him of our plight and of her own capture by Mister Clawson so many years ago. As a gesture, she offered what remained of our honeycomb if only the great bear would let us pass through. The Forest King approached us, sniffing our hair so close I could smell his breath of pine and berries. It was the scariest moment of our journey so far, the powerful jaws of a grizzly close enough to chomp down on our necks.
"But the Forest King was touched by Thorn's story and intrigued by the prospect of honeycomb from the Great Ravine, for every bear loves sugary treats and honeycomb the very most. I took the honeycomb from my pack, sticky and heavy with sweetness, and I held it out. 'Put it down,' said the Forest King, and so I did. My hand was sticky, and the great bear licked it clean with a coarse
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tongue the size of my grown foot. I laughed nervously from the tickle on my hand and watched as the Forest King lay down and began working at the honeycomb, mumbling happily to himself."
I licked my lips on the salty sea air and looked over at Yipes, who was doing the same. Roland had made the honeycomb sound so sweet and tasty it was hard not to want some for ourselves.
"So he let you pass?" I asked.
"He did more than that," answered Roland. "He walked with us for three days, showing us the way we should go, warning off predators. Thorn told him the story her mother had told -- about the bear tied to the rope -- and this made the Forest King very sad and reflective. He told us again and again that he was only taking us through so that there would be no trace of humans in Fenwick Forest. 'If I kill you here in the forest, some part of you will remain, but if I take you through to the other side and let you free, it will be as though you were never here.' He was convinced that having us out of the forest entirely would be better than having us dead within it. Thomas and I were afraid even to relieve ourselves along the way, and had to sneak off to one side or wait until the Forest King slept to do our business in secret.
"When we reached the end of the forest that sat at the foot of Mount Norwood, the Forest King turned to us with a graveness not unlike that which we'd seen when we'd first come upon him and given up our honeycomb. 'A time is
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coming when humans will enter the wild and kill the magic,' he said. 'You won't understand me then, so listen to me now. Stay away from Fenwick Forest. You will be sorry if we cross paths again.' And then he left us all alone, his enormous shoulders rising and falling as if in slow motion as he stepped away through the trees.
"We were on our way into the mountains, into the realm of the mountain lion. From the very start, there was something different about this place. There was a feeling of being watched in a way I had never felt before. It felt as though we were tracked by something much bigger than ourselves, something even larger than the giant bear. Whatever it was remained close but unseen, following us like we were prey -- and waiting until it was ready to attack us.
"Our journey quickened on the second day, near the top of the mountain. At all times, Thorn seemed to know the way we should go. It was as if she had entered into a place that sparked a hidden knowledge, opening her memory to a time before the rope and the stake in the ground of Mister Clawson's home.
"Higher and higher we went, feeding on the wild berries and drinking from the crackling clear streams. It was cooler next to the water and we stayed near its edge or walked right in and splashed one another, which Thorn found annoying. She was not the sort of cat who appreciated getting very wet, and so we cooled ourselves and she kept our pace a few feet off.
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"We never went to the very top of Mount Norwood, though we came very near to it. There came a moment when Thorn suggested we'd gone high enough, and she turned to the side, away from the stream we followed, into tougher terrain. The ground filled with underbrush and the trees thinned out. It was hotter away from the stream, and we complained as boys will do, but Thorn would not waver in her resolve to head us in the direction she'd chosen.
"After hours of walking through low brush and wild-flowers, we came to an aspen grove. It seemed to pop up out of nowhere, a whole world of long white trunks speckled with black and brown and topped with bright green leaves. There was a slight breeze on the air and the million tiny leaves danced and sang as we entered the grove. It was instantly cooler then, with the leaves overhead and the cool white of the rising white trunks all around us.
" 'We have come to the very end,' said Thorn. Another mountain lion must have heard her purring voice, for a moment later we heard a roar. We could hear something bounding through the trees, coming toward us, and we began to run out of the aspen grove and down the mountain. I remember running in front of my brother and seeing the thing that stopped us before he did. We had darted off at our fastest, and found a mountain lion even bigger than Thorn standing in our path. I tried to slow down and change course, but Thomas was close behind. He tumbled into me and we both fell in a pile on the ground. When we
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looked up, it became clear that we wouldn't be running away whether we wanted to or not.
"There were three mountain lions standing in a circle around us. One was Thorn, who had come down the hill after us. Standing beside her was an older, slightly smaller mountain lion. And then there was the third -- the one that had stopped us in our tracks -- and this one was bigger and fiercer than the other two put together.
'"Thomas and Roland,' Thorn said. Her voice was shaking and there was something new in the look on her face -- something magical -- as if she'd found her way home after a long and perilous journey. 'Meet my father.' She nodded toward the hulking beast that stood over us, then looked at the creature standing next to her. And this is my mother.'
"Tears of happiness were shed and stories were told in the aspen grove that day. It is a cherished memory, the first time in my life I felt as though I had the power to change things for good. Me -- an orphaned boy picking garbage at Madame Vickers's House on the Hill -- I could change someone's life and make it better if only I had the courage and the will to do it. That day in the aspen grove changed my life -- changed Thomas's life -- in a new and profound way. Before then we had lived only for the adventure in the journey, for the sights and sounds and thrills of discovering the wild and hidden places of The Land of Elyon. But from that point on -- all the way through Thomas's life, and through mine on the Warwick Beacon -- our
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adventure came from abandoning ourselves to the desperate needs of others. And this, more than anything, gave us happiness."
"It must have been something else to see Thorn with her mother and father again after so long," I
said quietly. Roland, the battered old man of the Lonely Sea, turned away and I had to wonder if he was wiping away a tear.
"A terrible childhood like the one Thomas and I endured can be redeemed," he said over his shoulder, "if only we can hold on to a few good memories. A few moments of joy overcome a thousand lonely nights at sea."
Sitting on the deck of the Warwick Beacon, I could imagine how thoughts such as Thorn's release from captivity and reunion with her parents could keep Roland going through untold days and nights at sea, even if he was made to take the journey alone.
"And now we turn to the Wakefield House and the great mystery it revealed to me," said Roland.
"Wait just a minute." Yipes, quiet and reflective up to that point, was suddenly alert and questioning. "You can't jump all the way down the side of the mountain and out of the wild just like that. That's not fair! What about Thorn? What happened to her?"
"She was home, and we were but a day's journey from our destination," said Roland. "We needed only to make our way down the side of Mount Norwood and walk along the cliffs at the edge of the Lonely Sea. We stayed on in the aspen grove for a night and a morning, but it wouldn't have
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been right for us to stay there longer than that. And besides, we were eager to find the Western Kingdom and see the Wakefield House. Thorn and her parents walked with us down the mountain, but when we reached the bottom it was time for us to part ways. There was no question that Thorn would stay home. She had waited too long to return to it."
There was a silence in the night as Yipes and I both thought about leaving Thorn behind. It was one of the troubles with journeys and adventures -- we were always finding new friends and leaving others behind in the wake of our movements. I came to realize something then that I hadn't thought of before. Someday I would have to stop leaving and start staying, or I might find myself old and gray with an exciting life behind me and no one to remember it with on a porch with a cup of tea. It was something of a curse -- this need for always going farther, deeper into the wild. I wondered if I would someday outgrow it.