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rolling waves beneath me. When we came to the window we both looked out, standing next to each other, wondering why we'd been brought to such a strange place.
Far off in the distance -- straight in front of our eyes -- was the towering presence of Mount Laythen. We'd seen it off in the distance many times from the hill where we picked through garbage, and we were about as far away from it now as we had been then, only we were seeing it from an entirely different point of view. From the hill it had been cold and unknowable, but from here it seemed to invite us closer.
"Look." Thomas had pulled back from the window and was pointing to an oblong hole in the stone wall. It went deep into the thick stone to a shadowy place we couldn't see.
"Something's in there," Thomas continued, gesturing to the top of the rectangular opening where an image appeared. It was the very circle and square image we'd seen on the iron doors leading away from Mister Clawson, the same image we both had on our knees.
Thomas reached his hand inside, and when he pulled it out he had his fingers wrapped around something shiny with the gold and rubies look of a treasure.
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"It's a spyglass," I said. "A very expensive-looking one."
Thomas extended the spyglass back and forth like a toy, laughing a little at how perfectly engineered it was.
"All this time, just sitting there, and it slides on golden rings as if it were only just made," Thomas commented. "Shall we have a look outside?"
It seemed like the obvious thing to do, and so with the sun hanging low in the sky, Thomas put the spyglass to his eye and stared out at Mount Laythen. He took his time, and I nearly crawled out of my skin with curiosity. Finally he took the spyglass from his eye and handed it to me.
"Somehow, I don't think you'll be surprised," he said, letting the spyglass go and stepping aside. And I wasn't surprised. There on the side of the mountain, in all its natural beauty, was the place where the image had first presented itself -- the image on our knees, on the iron doors, on the way out of the Great Ravine. The image was there, a natural part of the mountain itself, exactly halfway up the side of Mount Laythen. A square and a circle, intertwined as one.
I looked at Thomas, who was smiling and jittery, clearly ready for what this meant.
"It's a long way off," I said. I was tired, thirsty,
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hungry. I wasn't sure I was made of the same stuff Thomas was, and for a passing moment I felt I'd reached the end of what I could do. "I don't know if I can keep going."
This might have taken the wind out of some brothers, but it only made Thomas more animated.
"Think of it, Roland! Scaling the mighty mountain! It will be the time of our lives!"
He was pacing the floor, arms waving in excitement. "We've been beneath the world and on the world, but we've never gone above the world." He came to the window and looked out. "Not like that. It's where we were meant to go. That's the right place for us to end our journey. I can feel it, Roland. That's the end." He pointed hard toward Mount Laythen and looked at it with such affection I thought he might jump right out the window and try to fly there.
"There's only one problem," I said. "We're still trapped in the Wakefield House, and darkness is upon us."
The sun was halfway gone and fading fast, turning Mount Laythen into a black shape in the distance that looked less inviting by the minute.
It had been a remarkably long and challenging day, and it turned out that we were both a lot more exhausted than we'd imagined. For a short while
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we tried to look at my knees and figure out how to get down, but the constant swaying of the Wakefield House felt like a slow rocking chair lulling us to sleep. It wasn't very long before we gave up, lay down on the wood floor, and both fell into a deep slumber. When we awoke, light was pouring through the one window. We blinked and stretched and stood, trying to remember how we'd come to be in such a place, trying not to think about how hungry and thirsty we were.
"I wish I had my paint and paper," said Thomas, walking briskly around the circular stone center of the room and re-emerging at the window. He seemed to be trying to memorize what it looked like so that he might draw it or paint it later. He had a memory like that, a mind I could not understand. Looking at made things, he could see how they'd been built, imagine how he might build them himself, catalog the ideas for some later use I couldn't begin to imagine.
"We need to get out of here," I said, watching Thomas take the spyglass in his hand and gaze through it. "It might take a lot longer to leave the Wakefield House than it took to find our way to its top."
"You're right," he said, moving away from the window and placing the spyglass in his pocket. "Better have a look at those knees of yours again."
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We spent a long time looking at the markings, trying to see how to get inside the center of the Wakefield House and make our way down, but there was nothing. The directions seemed to begin inside the center of the room, but there was no way to get inside the center of the room. It was solid, smooth stone and there were no doors or openings. We searched but could find no trick lever or knob that might unlock some hidden way through the stone.
"We'll have to think logically," said Thomas. "It's the only way."
Sometimes Thomas said ridiculous things like that to stop us from a downward spiraling frame of mind that he simply would not allow us to engage in.
"That's brilliant," I said. "Will we do it better if we stand on our heads, or should we jump out the window?"
Thomas laughed, but there was something about what I'd said that set him on a path.
"From the looks of your knees we are to start off from here by a new way, but we can't get into the new way because there's no door." He was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and this time it was all comedy. He began to talk as though he were a very smart old teacher about to tell me a thing or two. "Now, Roland, if you can't get in by way of a door, what other way might you get in?"
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I played along. "By way of a window."
"Exactly! By way of a window. There is only one way out of this room. The way we came in is closed to us now. The only way out is through that window." He looked suspiciously toward the opening where light poured in, and then we both went to the sill and stared out.
"We can't climb down the side of this thing," I said, leaning out and looking down at the crags and sharp edges of rock and plank.
"No, we can't," said Thomas. "But we could go up there."
He was craning his neck, looking up over the sill, and I joined him. There, just above the window, was a silver ring as big around as my neck. It was dangling from the wall at the end of a short chain that came to an end at a thick metal pin in the stone. Above it was another silver ring on a chain, and another. The rings stuck out from the Wakefield House and rose twenty feet above us to the very top.
"You can't be serious," I said, hoping desperately for another way. I looked up and down, seeing the harrowing distance to the bottom and the terrible climb that lay before us.
"Hold my legs," said Thomas. "I'll go up on the sill first, but when I do, you have to hold on to me. Hold on tight and don't let go!"
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"Not a chance," I said, feeling a sudden urge to prove to my brother that I could overcome my fear of heights and make the climb. "I'll go. You hold my legs."
Before he could protest, I was up in the sill, crouching on the smooth stone. Thomas grabbed me around the middle of my legs and held tight as I rose up, leaning out of the sill and grabbing hold of the first silver ring. It felt solid as I yanked on the chain, so I slowly lifted my legs and gave it my full weight, hanging limp in the sill with Thomas's arms wrapped around my legs.
"Don't look down," said Thomas, loosening his grip. "You just can't look down, not ever."
My breath came in starts and stops as I lifted myself up and took hold of the second silver ring. When I reached for the third I was free of the
win-dowsill, dangling a thousand feet off the ground in the open air. The rings were slick and my fingers were clammy, but I was a strong, wiry boy and I kept lunging for the silver rings until I had hold of the fifth one and I could put my foot into the first I'd left behind. After that, the going was easier. Step, grab, step, grab, until I was at the top, crawling over the edge, scared out of my wits.
"Here I come!" yelled Thomas. There was exuberance in his voice, as if he looked forward to
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getting out on the side of the Wakefield House and showing me what he could do.
"Be careful!" I yelled back. "This isn't a game where you get two chances."
Thomas nodded and set his face in a serious look as he jumped into the sill and held on to the stone walls. He had no trouble getting the first silver ring into his hand and seemed to gain confidence when he reached out for the second.
"These things are slippery," he said, but he lunged for the third one nonetheless, and his feet were dangling free in the air. I almost couldn't bring myself to watch. If only he could get to where his feet could find a silver ring, the rest would be easy. But on the fourth ring his hand slipped and he shot out against the wall, swinging crazily from one hand.
"Thomas!" I screamed, reaching down in his direction and wishing he wasn't so far beneath me that I couldn't catch him and drag him to safety.
"I'm all right," he said, steadying himself, then grabbing for the silver ring with his free hand and moving once again. It was the only real scare of the climb between the two of us, and soon enough he was with me at the very top.
"You gave me a terrible shock back there," I said, my voice cracking and full of emotion. "Promise you won't ever do that again."
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We looked at each other and a deep brotherly love passed between us.
"We're going to make it," Thomas said. "We're always going to make it."
I laughed and wiped my eyes, wanting only to get down to safety as quickly as we could.
"Let's get off this thing right now and never come back," I said, moving closer to the center of the top of the Wakefield House. It was flat and solid at the top, twenty feet across and littered with the past presence of birds that had made it their perch. Parts of nests lay scattered here and there, but we were utterly alone at the top of the world. In the very center of the top there was a large round opening, five feet across, and we crawled there on our hands and knees, the Wakefield House softly swaying beneath us as we went. When we reached the circle we lay down on our bellies and looked inside.
"This is the place," I said. "I wonder if anyone has ever come this far before."
"I think we're the first," said Thomas, a smile of excitement on his face. "Every step we take is one step closer to the bottom."
There was a chain hanging from the opening. Thomas reached down and grabbed it with both hands.
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"Me first this time," he said. Before I could protest he was in the hole, holding the chain, shinnying fast to the floor beneath.
"Roland?" he yelled up. I could see him in the light, looking back up at me, dangling in the air from the chain. "There's a big room down here, but you'll have to swing away from the hole in the middle." He looked down and I could see the top of his head. "The hole looks like it goes on forever."
Thomas kicked at the edge of the five-foot wide hole he was hanging over and swung wide from side to side. Then he let go and the chain dangled clumsily below me. I followed Thomas's lead -climbing down, swinging wide of the hole, and letting go -- and soon we were both standing in a well-lit room surrounded on all sides by jagged stone walls.
"It's not as pretty in here as the other rooms," I said, "And that hole must go all the way down the middle of the Wakefield House to the very bottom. It will light our way from the top, but it will get darker as we go."
The room had blown open at the bottom and was fifteen feet across. We stayed clear of the hole in the middle, and quickly saw that there were three winding stone stairways along the edge of the room. Each would lead somewhere different: one
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might come to a dead end; another might lead us in circles until we starved to death. We had not yet overcome the Wakefield House.
"Let's see those knees," said Thomas. We sat and looked long and hard before starting off. At first it was hard to tell which of the three descending stairs we should take, but soon the way became clear and we were off. Back and forth and down we went in wide and narrow circles. Sometimes we came close to the center and there were large openings where light poured through. There was a constant if very dim light throughout our bewildering circular voyage down the center of the Wakefield House. Many hours later - hours filled with checking my knees at light-filled holes in the walls, doubling back again and again, and stumbling over stones in the near darkness of some twisting portion of the way down -- we stood at the very bottom of a perfectly round room.
"We've done it!" shouted Thomas. "We've actually found our way to the bottom."
There was only one dark passageway in the room, and it was directly across from the twisting stairs we'd come down. Between us and the opening to the passageway came the last of the light from the top of the Wakefield House. The hole in the ceiling where the light came through was smaller than the others had been. It looked like, if I
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could reach it, my head might fit through but not my shoulders. Beneath the tube of light sat a black stone pillar that rose to the height of my waist.
"What do you suppose that is?" asked Thomas.
"It's the last of the light," I answered. And it really did look like the last faint tube of light in the whole wide world, as if it were a candle and I could blow it out with a soft breath. We walked to the column together and stood over it, and Thomas leaned his head in to get a closer look. This cast a dark shadow over the top of the pillar, and I pulled him back by his shoulder.
"There's something written here," I said. "But we'll have to stay back or we won't be able to read it."
Thomas and I came around to the same side and moved in as close as we could, peering at the flat top of the black column. There was a smooth wooden slab on the top, and into it was carved an intricate message in the style of the images on our knees.
Listen, two sons of Warvold!
The end of your journey draws near.
Through two iron doors you have gone.
Through one more you must pass.
Open the third iron door and leave the Wakefield House forever.
Its purpose is served. Its time has lapsed.
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Look to the Dark Hills, where help may be found.
And here is something more to spur you on!
In the 6 th Reign of Grindall came a man.
A man who rose up with force against an evil, and lost.
This man was your father.
You come now to finish what he began
Sir Alistair Wakefield
I read the last part twice before looking up, touching the carved word father, running my finger over the letters in the same way I'd moved my finger over the images on my knees for as long as I could remember.
"Can this really be true?" I stammered, glancing finally at Thomas beside me. He was uncharacteristically speechless, gazing at the message before him.
"I never thought of having a father before," he said after much thought. "I wonder if he was killed by this man Grindall. And what of our mother?"
The idea of having a father had stunned me, but something about the thought of a mother made me suddenly protective, as if I should rise up and find her -- save her from whatever peril she'd gotten
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into. These were the kinds of thoughts -- of a mother and a father -1 had never allowed myself. They were pitiable ideas I had always feared would weaken me if I ever let them get a foothold.
"Are you ready to say good-bye to the Wakefield House and find the man who built it?" said Thomas. "Whoever Sir Alis
tair Wakefield is, we must find him. It appears he knows more about us than we know about ourselves."
We stepped away from the black pillar and moved to the opening of the passage. It would lead out of the heart of the Wakefield House, past the outer rooms, and directly to the last of the iron doors. There was no speaking between us as we went, only the sound of our breath and the shuffling of our feet. The passageway turned dark as we kept on, each of us with a hand on the wall to our side and a hand out in front in search of the door.
We found it at the same time, fumbling for a handle or a latch that would set us free.
"I've got something!" said Thomas. "Here." He took my hand and guided it to a handle big enough for us both to place a hand on. "Let's open it together and find Miss Flannery."
We turned the handle counterclockwise, and it clicked into place horizontal to the floor. Then we pulled, and the door groaned open slowly. Light poured heavy into the passageway, and to our great
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surprise the door teetered on its edge and fell back, the full weight of thick iron threatening to crash onto our feet. Thomas and I both jumped to the side as the door smashed down onto the stone floor of the Wakefield House.
"We've broken it," said Thomas. "Now the whole place will fall over."
He said this as a way to lighten the moment, and I laughed nervously at the idea of two young boys kicking the foundation out from underneath the Wakefield House so that the whole thing would tumble down in a pile of rubble. And then something not so funny began to happen: The opening where the iron door had been started to crumble. First there were only a few specks of dust in the air, but then a large stone fell to the floor in the opening, like a decayed tooth falling from the mouth of a monster.