“Off with you then!” Jonezy yelled from below.
I saw the bright glow of the tracer line on the hill to my right and jumped free into the sky, flying down the side of the mountain. Both boys howled with delight, shooting quickly out in front of me. I was so happy to be flying, it didn’t cross my mind to reach for a flag until I’d gone past the first two. When I was about to reach for the third, I realized I’d have to hold the slider with one hand, which would tighten the slider on the vine and indeed slow me down. I made the transition, reaching out when I passed the lamp at my side, and fwump! I jerked the flag free. I tucked the flag into my belt and went on, sailing for the next flag. Down into the center of the second stone pillar I flew, grabbing flags as I went and wondering where I might find the tracer at the bottom.
I was gaining speed, nearly neck and neck with the two boys as we neared the bottom. There was still one more flag for each of us to reach for, but the two boys ignored theirs, more interested in getting free of the vine and finding the tracer. When I reached out and clutched the last flag I felt my slider give way, as if I’d somehow let it slip from my fingers. I was still fifty feet from the ground and felt a chill of fear at the thought of falling so far. There were vines zigzagging like a web beneath me, and I would have to reach out and catch one with an arm or a leg in the dark. It wouldn’t be easy.
I still had a hold of the flag and when it popped free from the lamp I careened through the open air. I missed the first safety vine, but I caught my legs from the back on the second rope. I found that it rather gently broke my fall and bounced me up and down until I was hanging upside down in the air like a sleeping bat in the night. The judge came running up beneath me, and glancing over his shoulder I saw that Ranger was in hot pursuit. The dog had run down the hill and was nearing the field.
“Catch!” cried the judge, throwing me a new slider. It flew toward me in the night air, flipping and spinning as it came. When it was within an arm’s length, I lashed out and caught it.
“The competition continues! You’re docked one flag for falling, but you may yet find the tracer!” cried the judge. He ran off toward the edge of the field as if this were a more common occurrence than I’d imagined. I flipped up on the vine and attached the new slider, but I’d lost all my momentum. I drifted down the rope slowly, taking in the view of everything below.
Ranger had made it down the hill and was racing toward me. The two boys weren’t much more experienced at finding the tracer in the dark than I was, and they ran around in circles trying to find it. People were yelling down and pointing, but this was of little help. Finally, one of the boys shouted that he’d found the tracer and the judge ran out onto the field again.
By the time I touched bottom, Yipes, Matilda, and Jonezy had caught up. Ranger had fallen behind, searching the field for something in the dark. A group of girls led by Crystal were making their way down the hill, still well off from the field.
“What happened up there?” asked Jonezy, gasping for air. He was the oldest by far, and it had been a long run. “You were skimming so beautifully and then …”
“I guess my hands must have slipped,” I said. “I don’t remember exactly. It happened so fast.”
“It looks as if you got five flags,” said Yipes, counting them where they hung from my belt. He knew how to make me feel better at a moment like this. “That’s one more than I got!”
“I’m just glad you’re all right,” said Jonezy. He looked at Matilda. “Maybe a bit more practice on holding the slider would be worthwhile before she competes again.”
Ranger came bounding up beside us as we spoke. He had something between his teeth, which he dropped at my feet, barking for me to throw it for him.
“What have you got there?” I asked the dog, picking it up. To my surprise, it was exactly half of my slider. It had been torn at the middle, and I held it by the one knot that remained.
“That’s odd,” I said.
“Let me see that,” said Matilda. She took the broken slider in her hand and examined it carefully as Jonezy looked on. The two glanced at each other with some concern.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Matilda hesitated, but Jonezy nodded as if to say it was all right.
“Someone wanted you to fall.”
“What do you mean, wanted me to fall?” I asked.
Jonezy looked back and saw that Crystal and the other girls were about to arrive and make a fuss over me.
“I think it was a warning of some kind,” Jonezy said quickly. “No one dies falling on a night skim. There are too many vines to take hold of on the way down. But you might have been hurt, or scared off.”
Yipes was the first to react, and it was clear to everyone that he thought Marco was responsible.
“Where is he?”
Matilda couldn’t help a smile at the scowl on Yipes’s face and his tiny raised fists. He was fighting mad, and there was something about a very angry Yipes that was hard to take seriously.
The girls arrived and a clamor ensued, but even through all the noise they were making I was aware of only one voice. It was the sinister voice of Abaddon in my mind, a voice only I could hear. It was calling from somewhere far below.
How I love to toy with you, my little princess. It warms my cold heart at the bottom of the Lonely Sea! You should pay more attention to me. Soon I’ll rule this place, and you’ll be the same as Roland—a distant memory.
CHAPTER 10
RETURN TO THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
Jonezy could see that the fall had rattled me, and after a few minutes he shooed Crystal and the other girls away. They ran off, disappointed that I would not be joining them, but equally excited about all the races yet to be run in the night skim.
We moved off on the opposite side of the hill and soon we were in a private place that looked out over the competition. We sat together—Yipes, Jonezy, Ranger, Matilda, and myself—on a soft patch of level moss high on the hill. That is, everyone but Yipes sat. He paced, mumbled, and once in a while raised his fist in the air and yelled into the night where no one but us could hear him shouting.
“Coward!”
“Lunatic!”
“Brute!”
Matilda and I looked at each other just exactly like I thought two sisters should. There were unspoken words between us, but we each knew what the other was thinking.
You like him, don’t you? These were my unspoken words.
I do. He makes me laugh. These were hers.
We need to calm him down. These unsaid words belonged to us both.
“I’m fine,” I said. “There was never any real danger. Like Jonezy said, he was only trying to scare me. And honestly, we have more important things to talk about.”
Yipes begrudgingly sat down with the rest of us and Jonezy breathed deep the night air.
“This is my favorite place to watch a night skim,” he said. Lamps sparkled and bounced above and below as competitors zoomed down vine courses. “The lights and the sounds are marvelous from here, but it’s private and peaceful, too, away from the crowd.”
There had been something on my mind off and on all day, and hearing Abaddon’s voice at the bottom of my skim had spurred me to ask about it.
“Don’t you think we should be doing something more about the sea monster?” I asked. “It’s still down there, trying to climb up one of the pillars.”
Jonezy rubbed his temple and the ends of his fingers disappeared into wisps of hair.
“Let’s enjoy this one night, shall we?” he said at length. “Tomorrow will come soon enough with its sea monster and its many worries.”
I felt he was trying to escape the unavoidable.
“But we’re wasting valuable time. We should be doing something.”
“What would you like us to do?” asked Jonezy. He was staring at me as if this were a challenge, like he wanted to see how I would handle a sea monster if I were in charge.
I hesitated, both uns
ure of how we should proceed and unwilling to hint to Yipes and Matilda that I actually was in charge.
“You’re full of energy, Alexa Daley,” said Jonezy. I felt a Thomas or Roland Warvold speech coming and wanted to plug my ears. “But sometimes you have to wait for an answer to come to you. Especially when the questions are difficult ones.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“The truth is we’re not equipped to fight off an average-sized lobster, let alone a sea monster bigger than the Warwick Beacon. No one here is trained to fight. There are no weapons, unless you count fishing nets and wooden harpoons. There’s never been any reason to protect ourselves. We must come up with a plan, and I know you will be a major part of it.”
He gazed out into the night skim with some nostalgia.
“It would be a shame to lose all this. It’s a beautiful place.”
He glanced back and forth between Yipes and me.
“Do either of you have any experience with this sort of thing?”
It occurred to me then that maybe Roland had planned our coming here all along. I certainly wouldn’t have put it past him. Maybe he knew Abaddon would follow him to the Five Stone Pillars no matter when he chose to go, and that was why he’d waited as long as he did. But he couldn’t wait forever. He had to return at some point, and who better to bring along than two people who had already been caught up in a great fight against an evil force?
Yipes took this moment as an opportunity to impress Matilda.
“Now that you mention it, I have been in a skirmish or two.”
“Have you now?” said Jonezy, looking at Yipes as if he was hard-pressed to believe someone of Yipes’s stature could carry a sword, let alone carry the day on a distant battlefield.
“It’s such a perfect night,” said Matilda. “What about a walk before talking about weapons and fighting off monsters.”
She was looking directly at Yipes with an expression that asked, Will you walk with me? But for all his adventurous experience, Yipes seemed not to understand. So I kicked him and nodded in Matilda’s direction.
Yipes looked at me, then at Matilda. He took off his hat and said, “I’d be delighted to take a walk.”
Matilda jumped to her feet and moved off without him; Ranger pranced alongside.
“Yes, that’s just the thing,” he said, getting up himself. “A walk will do us good.”
I shooed him with my hand, and a moment later Jonezy and I sat alone watching the skimmers zoom across the open expanse of the third pillar. After a long silence, he spoke.
“I remember Thomas and Roland when they were your age,” he said. “They looked a lot like you then. Bright eyes full of longing—eyes that wouldn’t rest until they had lit on some means of escape. I was a shy boy when I met them, and small besides. I was frightened half out of my mind when I arrived at the House on the Hill, but I knew right away when I met the Warvolds that Madame Vickers and that terrible boy of hers—Finch was his name—could never hold them. I felt sure that my knowing them would be brief, that they would soon be gone. And so it came to pass.”
The story of Thomas and Roland leaving the House on the Hill weaved its way across my memory.
“What else do you remember about that time?” I asked, curious about a past I knew so little about. “What else do you remember about them?”
“They didn’t smell very good,” said Jonezy, smiling weakly in the dim light of the third pillar. After a moment, he turned more solemn. “I remember a certain feeling that has never gone away. Back then, everything before me was misery and fear, but when I looked at Thomas and Roland, I knew everything would be all right. They had that effect on everyone around them.
After they left, a lot of the children lost hope, but I didn’t. I knew someday Thomas and Roland would return to rescue us.”
Jonezy had been looking down at the racing skimmers, but he turned to me now.
“And, of course, they did. They returned with Armon, and then Roland and Sir Alistair took us far away across the Lonely Sea. Now all of them are gone—Roland, Thomas, Sir Alistair Wakefield. All gone, as you so rightly put it, into the secret realm of the Tenth City.
“There is a new evil that threatens to overtake me—to overtake everyone. The problem with those of us who came here from The Land of Elyon so long ago is that we weren’t meant to lead but to follow. It takes both kinds. And so this is a time that feels familiar to some of us—as if the world is about to turn dark and dangerous.”
“I wish I could go back and change everything,” I said.
“No need to do that,” said Jonezy, standing and taking his skimmer out of his belt. “Seeing you here now, I have that same feeling I once did—that everything will be all right.”
“You shouldn’t count on me for anything,” I blurted out. “I’m not like them.”
No matter how many times the world had attempted to show me how special I was, I had always remained sure that it was all a hoax, that I really wasn’t special after all. That I had nothing to offer.
“Well, you certainly do have that look in your eyes,” Jonezy observed.
“What look do you mean?”
He watched me intently, holding the knots of his skimmer in his hands.
“The same as them, as if you’ll find a way off the stone pillars no matter who tries to keep you here. And you smell a lot better than they did way back when, which is a nice change for the better.”
This made me smile as I watched Jonezy walk a few steps to the nearest vine and toss his skimmer over, looking for all the world like a young champion about to fly for the bottom.
“You know, Alexa,” he said, “there are a lot of people who don’t want to leave this place. Take Marco, for instance. He was born here. He’s never seen the land of his ancestors. This place is his home. Seeing you makes him nervous about the future.”
“But why? I can’t imagine how I’m ever going to leave this place, let alone take anyone with me against their will.”
But Jonezy was already gone, racing for the bottom with a howl of laughter. I was left alone with my thoughts, which quickly went from all the big things we’d talked about to the simple pleasure of skimming. I was fantasizing all about how I’d taken every one of my ten flags and the tracer ball, too, when Matilda and Yipes appeared out of the darkness. I jumped to my feet.
“Jonezy’s gone thataway,” I said, pointing down to the village. Ranger tossed half of my old skimmer at my feet and barked. I picked it up, tossed it, and watched Ranger chase after.
“Where did you walk to?” I asked.
Yipes and Matilda kept glancing back and forth at one another in a way that told me there was something else on their minds. Yipes finally broke the silence.
“Matilda and I have been talking.”
Matilda put a hand on my arm.
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“Tell anyone what?” I asked.
Matilda looked down the hill in the direction Jonezy had gone to make sure we were alone.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s something I need to show you.”
She walked up and out of the third stone pillar, all the way to the very edge.
“Is this where you walked before?” I asked Yipes.
“It is,” he answered. “Only a little farther.”
I tossed the broken skimmer down the side of the mossy hill and Ranger darted off once more. It was growing darker the farther we moved away from the night skim, and Matilda bent over, tearing a chunk of moss from the ground. The underside glowed a whitish green and gently illuminated our way. We were closer to the edge than I’d thought.
“Is it safe to be so close?” I asked. “What if a gust of wind comes up and blows us off?”
Winds on the Lonely Sea could be unpredictable. I could easily imagine being picked up off my feet and carried out over the water.
“This is far enough,” said Matilda. “We can see it from here.”
“See wh
at?” I asked. Ranger was back, nudging the skimmer closer and closer to my foot to get my attention.
“There,” said Yipes, pointing out where the light shone.
Sitting on the border of the third stone pillar was a great pile of rope that looked as if it hadn’t been touched for a long time.
“What is it?” I asked.
There was a pause in which Ranger barked for attention, but I didn’t take my eyes off Matilda.
“It’s a way across, to the fourth pillar,” said Matilda. “A way to some answers.”
I picked up the skimmer once more and threw it back into the darkness as hard as I could.
“That’s where Sir Alistair Wakefield disappeared to for long stretches of time?” I asked.
“The very place,” said Yipes.
“There was once a rickety rope bridge that ran across, but it was hardly ever used,” Matilda explained. “Roland brought the rope a long time ago, because there were no vines leading across. Sir Alistair Wakefield didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing. And then, after he was gone, the children used to dare one another to go across. It was too dangerous, so the bridge was cut.”
“Have you been there, to the fourth pillar?”
“Only once, a long time ago. I didn’t find anything but dirt and rocks, and it’s not an easy place to explore because of its shape. It would be easy to roll down the hill and fall off.”
“But maybe if the three of us were to go together, it would be okay,” said Yipes. “He had to have a secret place where he spent all that time, someplace we can’t see. Maybe there’s something hidden on the fourth pillar that will help us.”
“We’ll have to wait until morning, when there’s light,” said Matilda. “It won’t be easy, but I think we can get across.”
I looked again at the coil of rope and couldn’t envision how we’d ever get across. Ranger appeared with the skimmer and we started back in the direction of the night skim. We watched a while longer, then Yipes left me and returned to the village beneath the web of ropes in the sky. He had settled into a small cottage there that reminded him of home. Jonezy, Matilda, and Ranger accompanied me back to the second pillar. And it was easier getting back—a lot easier, as they’d said it would be. There was a nice and thick vine running down to the second pillar. Because it was lower than the third pillar, we were able to skim over the water after Ranger went across in the basket.