Boots and the Seven Leaguers

  “Because now I have no reason to be untruthful. The Law of Harmonious Balance compels me. My token shall be a mark on the map that shows where your brother is being held.”

  “You don’t know where that is,” I said.

  “I don’t,” she replied, “but the magic does.” She held out one greening finger. “Take the map out.”

  I drew out the map but kept my hand firmly in place on the parchment. I couldn’t trust her, but I needed to believe her.

  She made a gesture with the one finger, a slight circling in the air above the map. Then with a light laugh, she turned three times in place, her golden hair fanning out around her head, her eyes now as green as grass.

  And then she was gone.

  Only the ghost of her laugh lingered, like a kiss.

  When I was certain I was alone again, I opened the map. It crackled in my hands. A gilded × that had not been there before lay right over the Great White Wyrm’s lair.

  “Oh, great!” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Just great.”

  “I am indeed,” said someone behind me.

  I turned quickly.

  “But you—you are the slowest troll in three counties. Terribly thick. And terribly thlow.” He laughed.

  “Pook!” I cried, mad as blazes at him and happy to see him all at the same time.

  Wild hunt. Wold hunt.

  Wind and weather.

  Howl storms, break charms

  All together.

  —“Wild Hunt,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SMELLS

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Scouting ahead.”

  “Edges?”

  “I went halfway around, and then halfway around the other way.”

  “Halfway around what?” I asked.

  “The forest, T!” He shook himself all over. “No sign of Magog there. Along the edges, I mean.”

  “Then will we have to go straight in?” I asked.

  But I already knew the answer. The × on the map had told me. There was no doubt we were going to have to go to the very heart of the woods, to the Great White Wyrm’s lair, to find Magog.

  Pook nodded and his dog ears suddenly drooped, something that happens only when he’s really unhappy.

  Without saying a word, I took out the map and crackled it open, then pointed to the place where the gilded × glowed. I tapped the × three times with my forefinger.

  Without asking where I’d gotten the map, or how I knew where to point, Pook sat back on his haunches and howled.

  I dropped the map to the ground and grabbed Pook’s jaws, holding them together to silence him.

  “Hush,” I said. “There’s more out here than you know.”

  He stopped howling, so I let him go.

  “What more?” he asked.

  I told him about the Weed King and the woodwife. “And the Huntsman,” I added.

  Pook shivered. “Who’s that?”

  “I’m not sure. But whoever he is, he hunts woodwives with traps. And maybe other folk as well. So we need to be very very wary.” I bit my lower lip. The unintended rhyme made me sound just like the Weed King. “Very careful.”

  Pook nodded. “That explains the smells, then,” he said.

  “Smells?”

  “On your brother’s trail. I got a bit of Magog and a whiff of greenman. But there was … some other stuff there as well.”

  “Great White Wyrm stuff?”

  “Could be.” Pook shrugged. “But since I’ve never tracked a white wyrm, I’m not sure what one should smell like. The only wyrms I know are the small, wriggly pink kind who live underground, except when it rains.”

  I nodded, remembering the little pink worms that had fallen on my head in the Weed King’s house. Had they any particular smell? I couldn’t remember any. But then trolls don’t have very good noses, not like pookahs’ anyway.

  “What did what-you-smelled smell like?” I asked, picking up the map again, rolling it, and stuffing it back into my jerkin.

  Pook shivered again. “It smelled old.”

  “Old? What does old smell like?”

  “Like cobwebs, only not so definite a pattern.”

  “Ah.”

  “And dark.”

  “Dark?”

  “Heavy and deep and dreamless.”

  “Right! That really explains it.”

  He growled at me.

  I growled back. “Make sense, pookah!”

  “Something else, too. A different smell.” He hesitated.

  “What else?” I asked. “How different?” We were gabbling about smells and meanwhile Magog was getting farther and farther away.

  He looked up at me for a moment, then shrugged. “You’re a troll. How can I explain smells to you? It’s like explaining colors to a blind man or sounds to a deaf man.”

  I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck with one hand and hauled him up till we were eye-to-eye.

  “Don’t give me that pookah guff,” I said through gritted teeth. “Blind men can be told about colors and deaf men can dance to a beat. Besides, I got ‘old.’ I got ‘dark.’ So, stop the trolls-can’t-understand talk already and tell it to me straight. This is Magog we’re talking about, Pook. My little brother. And you know about trolls and their brothers, OK?”

  He nodded.

  “So, what else did the smell smell like?”

  I was on the edge of going splah again and Pook knew it.

  “It smelled … evil,” he said, his voice a little shaky. “Worse than anything I can imagine. And you know that pookahs can imagine a whole lot.”

  I let him go. This time I was the one to shiver.

  Pook sat down and gave his shoulder a hasty licking to show that he hadn’t been frightened of me at all. It’s a pookah thing, never admitting to fear. Trolls—we just get the Surge when we’re really afraid, so that way we can’t admit it.

  “Well, come on, then, Pook,” I said as casually as I could. “Just pop us over to the Great White Wyrm’s lair, and we can surprise it. Them. Whoever.”

  Pook scratched behind his ear, then looked up at me. “And waste my last pop of the day, Gog? We may need it to get the three of us out of the lair quickly. You’re being thick again.”

  This time I growled at him. The Surge really was beginning to well up in me. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, across my shoulders. I had to breathe deeply to control it. Dad had shown me how to fight it, saying, “Better than magic when it works.” And it wasn’t my first surge.

  “One … two … three …” I breathed slowly, needing a clear head. “Four … five … six …”

  Pook stared at me, ears cocked.

  “Seven … eight … nine …”

  The Surge backed down.

  “Whew!” Pook said.

  “Ten.”

  Then Pook looked at the ground and did his own deep breathing. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, it being a pookah secret and all,” he said. “But as you’re my best friend, Gog, you’ve probably already guessed it by now, anyway.”

  “Guessed what?”

  “Guessed I can’t pop into a place I don’t already know.” He scratched quickly behind his right ear.

  I pointed to the × on the map. “Well, then—know this!”

  “If I tried to pop us there,” said Pook, carefully, “we’d land on the map. Or in it.”

  “What?”

  “Honest, Gog.” He stood up and said, “It’s Legs R Us for now, I’m afraid.” Without a word more, he leaped ahead, going toward the heart of the forest.

  Sighing, I followed. What else could I do? I didn’t want to even think about what Magog might be going through.

  Fear.

  Hunger.

  Torture.

  Pain.

  And him only a hairless bridge-bound kid.

  My foot hit a stump that was iron hard and set my toes ringing. I caught my breath and whimpered. I’m not proud of that. But I think I was w
himpering as much for Magog as for the hurt toe.

  Fright.

  Cold.

  Torment.

  Agony.

  Pook heard and looked back at me over his shoulder. “He’s not dead, Gog. Trust me. The nose knows.”

  Then he bounded away over a stand of large elms and oaks that obviously had been blown down in a terrible storm.

  “Not so fast!” I called, wondering if he could hear me.

  The pookah race loves showing off, and Pook was no different than the rest of them. He leaped, he bounced, he raced along, never looking back. All I saw was his tail and his ears flopping like wings as he coursed without a pause over briary clumps, mossy rocks, ironwood stumps, and rings of mushrooms.

  Going deeper still into the New Forest.

  We came at last to an enormous felled oak, its root system looking like the tangled hair of some dead god of the wood.

  “This is all so strange, Gog,” Pook said, nose to the ground.

  “It sure is,” I said. “No birds around. No—”

  “I mean this scent. I get more from the air than I do from the ground. It’s as if whoever stole Magog is now taking enormous leaps as he goes.” He sniffed some more. “So what creature can do that? Surely not the Wyrm.”

  “Just keep sniffing,” I said. “Who knows how much time we’ve got.” I started to clamber onto the fallen tree, grabbing hold of some of the stronger branches to pull myself up.

  Pook nosed out a narrow place and leaped right over the trunk. “Look ooooooooo—!” he cried.

  Then he disappeared from view.

  I scrambled up the rest of the way and looked down, being very careful. We trolls may be tall, but we don’t like heights.

  Below was a vast pit that had been carved out of the peaty earth. It was not a natural hollow. I could see the marks of a shovel along the pit sides.

  Pook lay at the bottom, legs splayed, unmoving.

  Another trap, I thought, cursing the Huntsman under my breath. It had to be his work. What other pitfalls might he have planned?

  Then I called out, “Hold on, Pook! I’ll get you out.” I had no idea how to do it, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  And I wondered, too, how much time Pook’s rescue was going to take. Because time—unlike grass and trees and trunks and roots—was the one thing in short supply here in the woods.

  Witch-hunt, witch haunt,

  Cauldrons boiling.

  Newt eyes, fruit flies.

  Troubled foiling.

  —“Witch-Hunt,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PIT

  What I needed was a ladder.

  Or a rope.

  I had neither.

  I looked around carefully.

  Tried to think like Magog. Couldn’t.

  So I thought like me.

  What I had was forest.

  Then I remembered a book I’d once read. A book I’d found floating in the river. A book from the Out. In the book a boy lives in the jungle and swings from rope vines.

  Here I was in a jungle. Well, a wood, anyway. Surely I could make a vine rope. It had sounded dead easy in the book. Of course, I’d never actually tried doing any such thing. Not a lot of vines grow around our bridge.

  So, I grabbed a green vine that was hanging from a nearby tree and stripped it. The thing was greasy, like Grandma’s soap. And the vine itself didn’t seem thick enough to hold a troll. Not even a half-grown troll.

  Troll. Terribly. Thick, I thought.

  Or at least, Troll needs Terribly Thick rope to work.

  I grabbed a second vine. Then a third. By the time I had stripped them and braided them together into one long greasy strand, many minutes had passed.

  I glanced over the rim of the pit. Pook still lay unmoving at the bottom.

  Tying one end of the vine rope around a branch of the downed oak, I wound the other around my waist, tying it off with a strong knot. There was a little tail—like an exclamation mark—left hanging down behind me.

  I looked again over the side of the pit.

  Bad move.

  There’s a reason why trolls live under bridges! We really don’t do well with heights. As I looked down, things began to swim around me and I got very dizzy.

  “I’m coming, Pook!” I cried, closing my eyes. “I’m coming.”

  Below in the pit, Pook now was whimpering like a whipped dog.

  I turned and put my back to the pit. Then slowly I began to lower myself.

  Above me the top of the pit wall got farther and farther away. I guided myself by staring at the pit’s side and didn’t turn to look down again. I hung on with straining muscles, afraid to drop too quickly in case I should land on top of Pook.

  As I worked my way down, I noticed that the side of the pit bore clear signs of a digging tool. Roots had been hacked off haphazardly; some were short, some long. I remembered the carefully looped-up roots in the Weed King’s underground house. Whoever had dug here had cared little for the forest.

  Pook’s whimpering grew closer.

  “I’m coming, buddy!” I called.

  And then my feet—hurrah!—touched the pit floor.

  Glad to be on solid ground again, I turned around. There was Pook, sitting up and in human form, cradling his right arm in his left.

  “Oh, Pook!” I cried, going over to envelop him in a big hug. A best friend is family, too.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “I hurt everywhere.”

  I stepped back. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I’m here to get you out. Can you hold on?”

  He looked up at me, his eyes muzzy and glazed with pain. “On to what?”

  “To me.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think my right arm is broken.”

  It was at a funny angle.

  “Then I’ll put you up on my back,” I said. “And tie you on with part of the rope.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said again, then went silent.

  I took his silence as a change of mind. And really, we didn’t have any choice. He couldn’t just stay down here in the pit till …

  … Till what? Till the Huntsman comes and collects him?

  I shivered.

  “I’ll try to be as gentle as possible, Pook,” I said.

  “And I’ll try to be just as careful not to curse you,” he told me. His upper lip curled. It was and it wasn’t a grin.

  With Pook tied onto my back, I hoisted myself up the side of the pit just one hand’s worth, feet hard against the earthen sides.

  “OK, Pook?” I asked.

  “I think so …” he whispered in my ear.

  Then, hand over hand over hand, I began to climb.

  If climbing down had been hard, going up again with Pook on my back was all but impossible.

  Muscles I knew about strained.

  Muscles I didn’t know about strained.

  I got up three hands’ worth, slipped back two on the greasy vine. Up three, back two. Up three, back two.

  I didn’t want to think about how I was going to feel tomorrow. But at least I didn’t have to look down.

  We were halfway up the rope to the top when—with a sudden horrible snap—the oak branch broke in two and we began to tumble down and down and—

  “Oh no!” I cried. “Pook—look out!”

  Pop!

  With a sound like a clap of thunder, Pook popped us both to the top of the fallen oak, a place he’d been before.

  For a long moment I teetered there, then got my balance at last. Turning around so that Pook was no longer hanging out over the pit and dodging the broken limb, which had been popped up after us, I cried, “You saved us, Pook.”

  He was silent.

  “Pook!” I called again.

  He still didn’t answer.

  Then, in growing horror, I realized what his effort had cost. We had no third pop left to get away from the Great White Wyrm’s lair. And Pook was in no shape to help tr
ack Magog any farther.

  Whether I wanted to be or not, I was on my own now.

  I have walked five thousand ells,

  And I have cast five thousand spells,

  And I have crossed five thousand hells,

  To make my way back home to you.

  —“I Have Walked,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HOLLOW LOG

  I carried Pook away from the pit, still bound to my back by the vine. He didn’t get any lighter as we went along.

  As I was walking down the deer track, my mind was a mess of maps, pits, and traps.

  How odd, I thought. Only a few short hours ago, the only thing I wanted was to hear Boots and the Seven Leaguers play at Rhymer’s Bridge.

  Only a few short hours ago, I’d been finagling tickets to get Pook and me into the show.

  Only a few short hours ago, I’d eagerly put Magog into a holdspell and lied about my age.

  And now all that mattered was rescuing Magog and getting the three of us home.

  I had the beginnings of a plan. A slow-building, thick troll plan. But the only plan I had.

  What I needed for my plan to work was a swift-running stream.

  I took out the map and looked at it, but there was no water pictured nearby.

  I walked a dozen steps, listened, walked on. The woods were incredibly still.

  No whisper of wind fluttering the leaves.

  No trill of birdsong.

  No little feet scrabbling away in the undergrowth.

  And no sound of running water.

  Now, normally a troll can hear water from a long way away, and I was not hearing any. But we needed running water for my plan. So, on I walked, Pook getting heavier with every step.

  Finally, about half an hour on, when I was ready to turn back and try a different route, I suddenly heard the unmistakable trickling sound of water over stone.

  A stream! I thought, and headed off the path, right into a great green thicket. The tangle was severe; thorns tore at my trews and jerkin, leaving deep scratches in my boots.

  Several hares started up, bounding away toward the path I had just left. And after them went a little mab, a fairy no bigger than my thumb, her transparent wings beating quick as a heartbeat.

  Another time and I might have been stunned at seeing her. Wild mabs are all but extinct now. But I had no time for admiration. I was heading straight for that running water, and Pook was as heavy as a stone bridge.