“I don’t think we should be talking to that thing,” I said. “We don’t know anything about it.”
The skinnier of the two black cats crept into sight and stood right on top of the giant lizard’s head. The other cat—the fatter one called Nimbus—also emerged from the side. The lizard began creeping across the landing and its full body came into view. It was even bigger than I’d thought.
“Do you think he’s coming down to eat us?” Yipes asked.
I heard a sound from somewhere far above, and the words of the giant lizard returned in my mind.
He will be surprised to see you.
I turned my gaze from the approaching lizard to the ceiling. To my utter astonishment, there was someone at the top of the tallest ladder, the one that leaned against the fifth pillar with its jagged rock walls. And this someone was coming down toward us.
I poked Matilda in the shoulder and pointed up. We both looked on in silence, wondering and waiting.
“Do you think it could be …” Matilda started to ask, but Yipes cut her off.
“That thing is getting really close.”
The lizard was stealthier than it looked. It had climbed all the way down a wood pole and was advancing toward us in long strides. Both cats had climbed on its back for the ride. The long tongue of the lizard zipped in and out. As it came within a few feet, we began to huddle together and move back as a group.
“I told you we shouldn’t trust those cats,” I said. “Look what they’ve gotten us into!”
We were about to turn and run as a group when there came a voice from above.
“Don’t mind Grump. He’s harmless.”
It was another ancient voice—slow and choppy. The man had come to the bottom of the ladder and turned to us. He shuffled silently in our direction and I saw that he was indeed very old, older than I thought anyone could be. His beard was tucked under itself, like he was trying to protect the flowing white strands at the end and wanted to keep them hidden. His face looked tougher or somehow harder than a face was allowed to be. It had the solid appearance of stone—a face showing its long past when it ought to have been buried in the ground already. How many hundreds of years old was he? If I was guessing his identity correctly and Roland’s story was to believed, he was at least three hundred, maybe four hundred, years old. And yet his cheeks were still flush with color, his blue eyes still darting back and forth with excitement at the sight of visitors.
“You have come to the pillar of yesterday,” said the man.
“Sir Alistair Wakefield?” I asked, for it could be no other that stood before us. “But you’re … you’re dead.”
The old man seemed to wonder about this idea for a moment, as if the thought of being dead or alive had long been beside the point.
He patted his own chest and shoulders with a boney hand, and rightfully replied, “Nope. Still here.”
“But …” I began.
“You of all people should know, Alexa Daley. Sometimes old people only seem dead to everyone else, but they’re very much alive.”
I was more than a little surprised to find that he knew my name, and I was about to ask him about it when Matilda broke in.
“But everyone thinks you’re dead,” she said, clearly astonished by this turn of events.
“Fewer distractions that way,” said Sir Alistair. “I’ve had a lot of work to do.”
Yipes glanced around the space. “I’ll say you have!”
Sir Alistair seemed very interested in Yipes upon hearing his voice. He turned his gaze on my friend and hobbled a few steps toward him.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said. He held out his thin hand and Yipes shook it vigorously.
“Calm down, Yipes,” I said. “You’re going to hurt him.”
“Not to worry. I haven’t had a good, hard shake in a long time. It feels magnificent!” said Sir Alistair.
Yipes took this to heart and began shaking poor Sir Alistair’s hand even harder until Matilda tapped him on the shoulder.
“I think that’s probably enough,” she said softly.
Yipes let go and Sir Alistair, relieved at being let go, turned his attention squarely on me.
“I see you’ve already met Nimbus and Midnight,” he said. “And I imagine you’re a little surprised to understand what they’re saying.”
I looked at the two cats and thought about this a moment.
“Are you the only one to ever come here, to the fourth pillar?” I asked.
“That I am,” he answered. “Roland has come around below on the Warwick Beacon and brought me things in a way that we have devised, but it has been only I, no one else.”
“Then I’m not surprised,” I said matter-of-factly. “People kill magic, and there has been only you, so the magic remains on the fourth pillar. It’s a wild place.”
“But now you’ve arrived, and I’m glad of it!” said Sir Alistair. “The time for this place to drift away has come. Let the magic fade if it must. Surely it will remain somewhere, in places we can’t find.”
I felt a concern that I hadn’t voiced at hearing Sir Alistair speak of Roland so casually, as if he were still alive.
“You know about our difficulties getting here, about Abaddon and the Warwick Beacon,” I said.
Sir Alistair Wakefield went silent and tucked the loose strands at the bottom of his silvery beard with slender fingers.
“He knows,” meowed Midnight. “Nimbus and I saw everything, then we came back here. It was not a good day on the fourth pillar.”
“I’ve stayed on far too long,” said Sir Alistair, his voice melancholy. “Many are waiting for me at the very end of the road, and yet I remain in the world year after long year, toiling alone.”
“Does the road you speak of lead to the Tenth City?” I asked, certain that it did. He nodded, piercing me with his blue eyes at the thought of going home.
“We’re here now,” said Yipes. “To keep you company.”
“And to ask for your help,” said Matilda. She was the only one among us that hadn’t lost sight of our purpose.
Sir Alistair Wakefield stood tall and seemed to have moved past his own self-pity.
“It’s time we turned our gaze in another direction,” he said, looking toward the massive opening to the outside. “To the monster that must be defeated.”
CHAPTER 15
FALLING PILLARS OF STONE
“Why do you have a giant lizard?” asked Matilda. We had moved to a table that looked out into the sea and we were enjoying fresh bread and cooked fish. Sir Alistair had a passable kitchen on the fourth pillar, the centerpiece of which was an imposing stone oven for baking, which, he claimed, was always cooking something. Next to the oven were complicated devices for dropping and raising nets in and out of the Lonely Sea.
“Grump,” said Sir Alistair, “is very good company. He hardly ever talks, which makes him a good companion, given that I talk all the time. Although sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether or not he’s actually paying any attention to me.”
“Where did he come from?”
Sir Alistair looked at Grump, who was staring at us with lazy eyes. I couldn’t say for sure if he was awake or asleep.
“Roland found him somewhere out there,” said Sir Alistair, nodding toward the Lonely Sea. “Grump was a lot smaller when he showed up twenty or so years ago.”
“So there are other places on the Lonely Sea besides The Land of Elyon and the Five Stone Pillars?”
“Not that I’ve seen. But according to Roland, there are a few.”
I instantly wanted to know more about where Grump had come from and what else could be found there. I made a mental note to ask Grump if he could remember from which direction he’d come.
“And the cats?” asked Yipes. “What about Nimbus and Midnight? Why are they here?”
Midnight was sitting on the corner of the table, licking her paw, and Nimbus was curled up next to Grump.
“Two girls looking for adventur
e,” meowed Midnight.
“Speak for yourself,” Nimbus meowed.
“The last time Roland pulled up to the bottom of the pillar with things I’d asked for, there was a wooden box among the supplies.” Sir Alistair explained. “These two were inside. I think he might have thought I could use a companion or two.” He stroked Midnight’s black coat and the cat purred thankfully. “They’ve got a fascinating story of their own, as we all do. Two curious cats that stowaway in other people’s things and end up on a very long trip.”
I still didn’t trust Nimbus and Midnight. I didn’t like the way they’d tricked us or the way they looked at me now. But it was so refreshing to hear them talking. I loved hearing them talk.
“How much longer do you think it will last?” I asked, knowing full well that the fourth stone pillar was now crawling with humans and the magic of talking to animals was likely to waver and burn out.
“You mean understanding them? Hard to say,” said Sir Alistair with an air of concern. “But I think our time on the fourth pillar is coming to an end anyway.”
As if to make his point, we all heard Abaddon below, enraged and slamming his monstrous tentacles into stone. Yipes looked to Sir Alistair with some concern.
“Why is he doing that? Why doesn’t he just climb to the top?”
“Because it’s too far, even for him. Those tentacles of metal and bone can only carry the awful weight of him so high. I believe it’s part of Elyon’s plan that this is so. Abaddon can’t climb high enough to reach the top of any of the pillars, so you can guess what he must be thinking.”
“That he can knock them down!” cried Yipes. He was thrilled at having discovered the answer and stood right up when he said it.
“That’s right,” said Sir Alistair. “And the fourth stone pillar—this pillar we sit on—is the thinnest of them all.” He looked directly at Yipes, who had just then stuffed a very large bite of bread into his mouth to reward himself. “And why do you suppose he’s trying to knock it down?”
Yipes tried to answer, but we couldn’t understand him.
“I like Yipes,” meowed Nimbus. “He’s amusing.”
“Wait,” said Matilda. “I know why. He’s only banging away at the pillar on the one side, the side that faces the third pillar, where we do all the skimming. He wants to knock more than just the one down. He wants to send them all falling down, one on top of the other.”
“If he can’t have them for himself, he’ll destroy them trying,” I mumbled.
“That’s probably true,” began Sir Alistair. “But I don’t think it’s the whole truth. I believe he thinks toppling the fourth pillar will do one of two things. Either it will bring one crashing into another and leave it at an angle that he can climb, or one will break in half and leave a short enough distance for him to climb. One way or another, he wants out of the Lonely Sea.”
“Sir Alistair,” I said timidly. I had a question I’d wanted to ask but wasn’t sure he would answer. It was a question that pertained to the things we were speaking of in an especially important way. “Did you make the Five Stone Pillars as you made the Wakefield House?”
“You know all about the Wakefield House, do you?”
I nodded that I did. It was one of the places I’d liked hearing about most when Roland told the story of his childhood. The Wakefield House had been like one of the Five Stone Pillars, only it was much more fragile and primitive in its design. Once a pile of stone rising high into the sky with hidden mazes inside, it had collapsed—served its purpose, Roland had said—after its secrets had been discovered.
“I’m afraid that was a little bit different than the Five Stone Pillars. I can’t say that I made this place. I found it. Although all of this in here—this is all of my own making.” He waved his arm across the room to indicate everything that was in the chamber.
“What’s it all for?” I asked. “All these strange things you’re doing don’t seem to make any sense.”
At these words, Sir Alistair became more serious.
“This was all for the moment we find ourselves in right now, Alexa Daley. I’ve been alive longer than anyone—hundreds of years. Generation after generation has passed, and yet here I am. And sometimes—though not for a very long time—Elyon has spoken to me. He has guided my hands in ways I don’t always understand, ways that people of this world would scoff at. But there is a purpose for all that I have made, even if I don’t understand for certain what that purpose is.”
I looked all about the room once more and had a very hard time imagining what this place could have to do with defeating Abaddon.
“How is it that you’re still alive at all? You’ve left the way of yesterday behind, and yet you still live.”
“My, you do know a lot about me!” said Sir Alistair, laughing gracefully. “Roland was a very quiet man most of the time, but if you got him talking he would say a lot, wouldn’t he? He told me all about you just as he told you about me. I guess a sailor has to talk sometime.”
I was a little embarrassed to think of what Roland would have said about me. Especially since he hadn’t been here for years.
“To answer your question—and bear in mind that this is only a guess—I think I’m aging at about half the pace as I’m meant to. I spent hundreds of years past the way of yesterday, and my clock is still running a little slower than it should. But even I can’t last forever.”
I looked around the immense cavern and had so many questions. My eyes lit on the giant balloon and I found I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.
“That’s for you,” said Sir Alistair. “It’s my crowning achievement, you might say.”
“For me?” I asked. It was frightening to think what he’d want me to do with a balloon that big. What was it even for?
Nimbus perked up from where she lay resting at Grump’s side, her ears pointing toward the tunnel where we’d entered.
“Someone’s coming,” she purred.
“Who could it be?” Matilda asked. “You don’t think Phylo would have tried to follow us here?”
I could think of no one else besides Jonezy who even knew we’d come across. Maybe it was him with news to report.
Grump slithered across the floor of the chamber toward the tunnel, his thick tail swishing back and forth as he moved. He arrived at the opening at just about the same moment the intruder found his way to the bottom.
“Can someone please tell this monster to back away from me?” the intruder asked.
It was a voice I neither expected nor wanted to hear. Marco, the one individual on the Five Stone Pillars I trusted even less than Nimbus and Midnight, had arrived on the fourth pillar.
CHAPTER 16
OF MOSS AND SALTWATER
“Go ahead, Grump,” Yipes said as we came up alongside Marco. “You can eat this one.”
Grump’s tongue darted out and almost touched Marco on the knee, which made him jump for the tube and try to escape.
“It’s too steep and slippery,” meowed Midnight. “You can’t get out by that way.”
Marco jumped free of the tube and moved in front of the row of towering fish tanks.
“What kind of crazy place is this?” he said, hitting the sides of his head and wondering how it was that he could understand the voice of a cat.
A shark the same size as Grump had moved in behind Marco in one of the tanks, staring at him from behind the glass.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” I said. And then, turning to Nimbus and Midnight, I asked, “Where’s the way out so we can send him back?”
Marco had swung around and was backing slowly away from the tank and the shark within.
“Yes … by any means. Show me the way out of here!”
“Not so fast!” said Sir Alistair. He was at the balloon, checking the ropes that were tied to the giant box on the floor. “You look like a strong young man.”
“Sir Alistair Wakefield?” said Marco. “But—but you’re dead!”
Sir Alistair shu
ffled up next to Marco and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just about the time it seems a man’s work is done and the world has used him up, he may find himself needed the most.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marco asked, gazing at all the oddities in the chamber.
“It means I’m not dead after all. And I need your help.”
After a flurry of questions about talking animals and the many strange attractions within the fourth stone pillar, Marco finally calmed down enough to consider making himself useful.
“I don’t trust him one bit,” I said. Between Marco and the cats, I was really starting to sound paranoid. But what could I do?
“It’s all of us against the one monster, and even then our chances are slim,” Matilda said to me. “You’re going to have to learn to trust him.” She looked at Midnight and Nimbus, who seemed to be taking a nap. “And them.”
I started to protest, but quickly realized she was right. There was no time for arguing as Abaddon continued to pound away at the pillar.
There was a quiet trembling under my feet, and the balloon rocked gently back and forth.
“The tower is weakening,” said Sir Alistair. He waved us all to a long table strewn with papers and instruments. One of the gadgets on the table appeared to be some sort of measuring device. There were globs of colored balls inside an oblong, clear box. The box was filled with thick liquid and the balls floated free.
“As I suspected,” said Sir Alistair. “We’re not as perfectly level as we once were.”
“Uh-oh,” said Yipes. “That can’t be good.”
“You mean the fourth pillar has moved?” I asked.
“That’s exactly it,” Sir Alistair answered with concern. “We may only have days, even hours before he has his way.”
We all stood in silence trying to wrap our brains around the idea that very soon the world of the Five Stone Pillars might come to an end.
“What do you need me to do?” asked Marco. I still didn’t think he could be trusted, but at least he was willing to help.
Sir Alistair directed us to follow him to the box beneath the balloon.