“You know where it is?”
“Yeah.”
Gil said, “Why? Because you are a spy for the elfs? Is that it?”
Ruff heaved a sigh as if his canine heart would break. “Yeah. That’s it….”
“What have you told them about me?”
Now Ruff perked up a little, “I was pretty clever about that! I told them that some human was talking to the rabbits and the wolves, trying to be a knight, and that he wrestled a bear, but I did not give them your name. I figured they would see you were trained by a bear because you roar like a bear and fight like a bear.”
“Hmm. You said it was because of who I am. Who am I?”
“I hate to break it to you, Gil. You are some sort of freakish and unusual magical boy. Probably not a demigod, but you are a demi-something. I know you won’t believe me.”
Gil said patiently, “No, when a talking dog tells me I am a freakish magical guy, it is a good idea to believe it. Were you sent to spy on me?”
“No. They don’t know you exist. Not you, you. They know the Swan Knight exists, but they think he might be the one who fought Guynglaff all those years ago in Goose Lake, California, and buried him alive. But they don’t know about Gilberec Moth.”
Gil felt weary from the hiking he had done that day, the weight of the armor, and the cold. Some of that weariness was in his voice. “Were you sent to spy on my mom?”
Ruff hunkered down and put his paws over his nose. “Yes…”
“Do they know where she is?”
Ruff stood up, his ears and tail suddenly standing up straight. “Nope! Nope! I never told them! I kept them busy with reports on what Mr. Yung was up to because some stuff that he sold had her scent on it, and some of the Headless Hunters found it, so they know she was in Blowing Rock at some point.”
“Who are these Headless Hunters?”
“They are the Dullahan. The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow is the one you’ve heard of. But he was kicked out because he lost his head and has to use a pumpkin with a candle in it. They hold their heads up on poles sometimes, so they can see over hedges and stuff, or they roll them into small places. They don’t eat, so they are always hungry, but their hunger keeps them awake, so they never sleep either. The good news is that they cannot eat you alive. The bad news is that they always try. Lots of biting.”
Gil said, “Those are the creatures looking for my mom?”
“Not where people are! They only come across their victims in lonely places, wastelands, and moors, in the dark, where no one can hear any screams.”
“That is not exactly comforting.”
“In human villages, or along human roads, especially near a church, the elfs send folk like me. Men love dogs!”
“So why didn’t you turn my mom in?”
Ruff looked miserable. “Um. Um. Do you remember how we met?”
“Sure. You were in the road. I was suspended from school again that week and walking home. I had seen you once or twice before. Since I was expelled before lunch, and not really in the mood for a spam and lettuce sandwich, I got it out and tossed a bit of the meat, if you can call it meat, a little way down the road ahead of me. And you ran up and got it. And then I tossed another bit, and I kept walking, and you were still shy, so I did it again and again. After a while, you were walking along with me, dropping the hint that I should throw more food away. And I said I liked walking along with a dog like he was my dog, and you said you liked walking with a boy like he was your boy. I said you could be my dog. And then we had a footrace.”
Ruff said, “That was the day I had finally figured out where your mom was, and I was going to follow you home to see if she was there. But then…”
“Yes?”
Ruff said, “Well… Well, you fed me! You walked along with me! Side by side! I like walking! Dogs like to walk! And I won the footrace!”
“It was close.”
“It was not! I won by a mile!”
Gil said, “How do you know I did not let you win?”
“Because we then ran best two out of three, best three out of five, best five out of seven, and then had a wrestling match! And so… and so…” Ruff voice trailed off, and he heaved a great sigh.
“…And what?”
“…And good golly, Gil! You looked so pathetic and lonely walking along! You had that terrible lettuce in your sandwich! It’s rabbit food! How many times had you been kicked out of school for fighting? I had been watching, so I knew. Even when you won, you were still all bruised and scraped. Once you were my boy, we were a pack! I mean, even a wolf would not turn on a packmate! And so…”
“…And what?”
“…and so I lied…”
“What?”
“I lied to Sheila McGuire. She is a mistress of spies for the fortunate elfs. I told them that I had seen a silver-haired woman getting on a bus to Keatchie, Louisiana, which is one place elfs hate to go because of the Confederate cemetery there and all the unmarked graves. Smart, huh? But the Elf King placed a portal to his underground realm here on Brown Mountain anyway.”
Gil felt, at that moment, the same way he had felt the first time he was in an elevator in one of the fancy stores he and his mom could never afford to buy anything from, and the motion upward caught him by surprise.
It seemed that his mom had not been too paranoid. In face, she was not paranoid enough. It was just an accident that she had not been found and caught; a happenstance, a mistake. Gil had been walking the long, tiresome route home with a fat lip and a bloody nose and skinned knuckles, feeling lonesome and not feeling that hungry. And he threw some leftovers to a stray dog.
That was all. That was all that had saved his mom. A spam and lettuce sandwich.
4. Dog and Boy
Gil said, “So the Elf King does not actually live in a cave under Brown Mountain?”
Ruff said, “You told me all about King Arthur in his cave in England. It had a door that led to a police station in North Carolina. The detective said he could put his door anywhere. This is the same sort of trick.”
“How does the trick work?”
“By magic. I don’t know.”
“Who makes them?”
“One of the Old Ones. I don’t know.”
“And now what? What do you know?”
Ruff looked up, hope and puzzlement warring in his eye. “Uh. Can you repeat the question?”
“Why did you work for the elfs to begin with? Sheila, or whatever her name is?”
“She’s a true human, she is. Doctor McGuire, she insists we call her. She just works with them. She read some old books and used a lens to magnify the starlight, so she could see what they really said.”
“Why, Ruff?”
“Well…” Ruff whined. He looked as pathetic as only a guilty dog can look. “It was cold! I was hungry! So I ate the elf food. She gave it to me. Free of charge, she said. The first bite is always free, she said.”
“And then?”
“Then my taste buds were ruined! Normal, healthy, nutritious food like dead rodents and garbage lying in the gutter began to taste terrible! And, and, then I was trapped! I couldn’t force myself to eat normal food. I had to keep going back to her!”
Gil said, “But I saw you pawing through those thrown-out chicken bones like a tiger! And you ate my sausage! And… heck, every time I’ve seen you eat.”
“Your spam and lettuce sandwich tasted good to me. Remember how thin I used to be? It tasted good. All food tasted normal again after that. And I could eat the elf food or leave it alone as I liked. I beg it from Dr. McGuire just like normal and take it in my mouth, and then I go bury it.”
Gil said, “I broke the spell… how?”
Ruff looked up at him, with a strange expression in his eye. Ruff said, “I don’t know. Magic.”
“I don’t know any chants or charms or anything like that,” protested Gil.
The dog said, “That is not real magic. That is a cheat. What you did was real.”
r /> Gil realized what that strange expression was. It was friendship. It was worship. It was love.
Gil sat down in the snow, not caring if it got his mail skirt wet, and he put his arms around his dog, and hugged him tight.
Gil whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Any of this?”
The dog said, “I felt bad. I thought you sort of knew. You know everything!”
“I don’t know everything….”
“You know everything important!” said Ruff in a voice of fierce loyalty. “I will show you the way to the door.”
“Good dog.”
“But I cannot go in with you. I mean, it would be dangerous. For you! I mean it would be dangerous for you. Because they know me.”
“I understand.”
“You understand…?”
“Yes, Ruff,” said Gil. “I understand.”
“Do you… forgive…” Ruff choked up, and his voice dropped to a near inaudible whisper. “I mean, is everything all okay? You still… like me?”
“Ruff,” said Gil solemnly, “Of course I like you. I would die for you.”
“I would die for you, too, Gil.”
The boy hugged the dog again, and the dog thumped his tail against the ground in pure canine bliss.
“Gil…?”
“What is it, Ruff?”
“Can I still be your police dog?”
“We are a pack, Ruff. You have to be my police dog.”
The dog leaned in closer to him, tongue lolling happily. Ruff said quietly, “You really are a truly magical boy.”
Tears had somehow gotten in Gil’s eyes. Gil did not want to wipe his nose on his surcoat, so he buried his face in the dog’s warm fur so that Ruff would not see him tearing up, and he wiped his nose there.
“Good dog,” he whispered. “Good boy.”
Chapter Four: The Hall Beneath the Mountain
1. Landmarks
On Christmas Day Gil arose from his sopping and uncomfortable cloak, shivering, and out of bread, and his dog was gone. Ahead and above him was Brown Mountain, including the landmarks Ruff had so carefully pointed out, to tell him where the hidden door to the buried elfin stronghold would be that day.
“Go toward that cleft in the peak. Walk right between a rock shaped like a sombrero and a rock shaped like a beehive and take one hundred steps toward a larch with no branches on one side; then, turn left at a right angle, and take exactly fifty steps in the direction of the spot where the stream falls over a little drop. There is a round spot that had a ring of toadstools growing there where no grass grows. Such rings gather wherever faeries might dance, or their doors might open.”
However, as he trudged up ever-steeper slopes, the sun was smothered by gray clouds, and colorless snow filled the air. The snow was heavy, and soon he could not see the cleft in the peak which was his first landmark; and when the snow got heavier, he could not see two hundred yards ahead of him. Then a driving wind came up, blustering and howling, so that the snow seemed almost to be falling sideways, and, whichever way he turned, the wind contrived to turn as well and kept blowing in his face. He was not able to see even twenty yards ahead.
If there were rocks shaped like sombreros or beehives, they were buried in the snow, and any stream, going over a drop or not, was probably iced over and also buried. How the dog had expected him to find in winter a ring of absent grass where toadstools used to grow was a question he wished he had thought to ask. Maybe the dog expected Gil to detect the months-old traces of toadstool spores by smell.
His landmarks lost, Gil kept trudging stubbornly forward, always trying to find whichever direction was uphill. He kept hoping to come across some non-migratory bird or white-coated rabbit to ask directions, but the bad weather seemed to have sent all the wildlife to seek nest, den, or burrow.
The wise thing to do would have been to hole up, build himself a snow shelter, try to stay warm, and wait out the storm. But that would mean missing the Christmas feast of the elfs.
So he kept walking until he lost sensation in his fingers and feet, and every breath was a pain to draw.
Dispirited, Gil sat down beneath a pine tree. The branches hung low to the ground and formed a little space free from the biting wind. Gil sat with his back to the bole, shivering.
He said aloud, “My dog is just dumb. He has got a good heart. I do not believe he would betray me or trick me.”
Gil shivered some more, wondering how to make a fire under these conditions or how to survive. He was a little worried that he could not stop shivering.
“That crow said I was not alone when I was in the woods,” Gil said. “Well, it sure feels… pretty darned… lonely…” Then, his teeth chattered too much for him to speak. “…but if there is any friend out there listening to me… what was that name the bird outside the jailhouse window said…? Saint Bernard? Saint Boniface? I need some help. Please…”
The wind tossed one of the branches so that it tapped him on the shoulder. Gil looked up. No one was here. The wind tossed the branch again. Its needles were blown and flattened so that the twig at the end of the branch pointed like an arrow to an almost-invisible hump of snow that might have covered a large stone that actually did look a bit like a beehive. The smaller heap next to it could have been the crown of a sombrero. Or it could have been nothing. What did a stone shaped like a sombrero look like anyway?
“Get up, Gil,” he said to himself. But his arms and legs were too heavy to move. “Get up!” he said again. “If you want to be a knight, you have to be tough. You have to fight. You can die, but you can’t quit. Get up. Do what is right and never shirk….”
But it was really cold, and he was starting actually to feel a bit warm and cozy here sitting under the branches.
“If you start to feel warm and sleepy in the snow, that is a bad sign. You are dying. Get up, or you will die! Get up!”
Gil realized it would take his every ounce of strength just to stand up. It would be the hardest fight in his life, just to stand.
If he got up, he would just have some other problem, some other fight to face in the days to come, and one after that, and another after that. Each one would be the hardest fight in his life, and they would just get harder and harder.
He could not be expected to fight each fight with all his strength and all his soul, with nothing left, could he?
“Get up! For Christ’s sake, get up!”
The wind did not move, but one of the pine branches came under his shoulder and lifted Gil to his feet. Gil, taken unawares, stumbled a step or two forward and was slapped by the wind so fiercely that it shocked him awake. He looked back, astonished. But the tree behind him looked like it was just a tree. The branches were tossing in the wind, but it was just the motion of the wind. What had happened?
Gil drew his sword and saluted the tree. “Thank you, and may God bless you, Sir Pine Tree.” He sheathed the sword again, turned, and marched between the two humps of snow he hoped were the landmarks he had sought.
As he walked, Gil said to the wind and to the snow, “I think I have to decide right now that whenever total weirdness happens to me, to treat it like it was real. After all, talking to a tree to thank it might look stupid, but on the other hand a normal tree would not notice and would not care. But if I fail to thank a tree that is somehow awake and took the trouble to help me, that would be downright rude.”
With the snow in the air, it was impossible to see which of the trees ahead of him had been the larch with no branches on the side, so he picked one, walked close enough to it to see if it had branches on all sides, turned around, walked back to the two snow heaps he hoped were rocks, picked the next tree in view, and did it again. And then again, and then again. Finally, he found one that looked like a tree with branches only on one side: the huge masses of snow clinging to its branches give it a distinctively lopsided look.
He went back and counted his paces. He was very tired now, and very cold, and feeling lightheaded from hunger and wea
kness, but he did not give up.
Finally, he stopped in a spot he thought was the right one. He looked right and left. If there were a stream anywhere, it was invisible under the snow. He paced out fifty steps in a random direction and tried to walk in the snow in a circle, keeping the same spot at the center. With each ten steps, he called out, “Titania is risen!” because he could not remember the longer rhyming password anyway.
His voice got weaker and weaker, and his steps slowed. Therefore, as he was standing almost still, or only stumbling along in a slow shuffle through the howling wind blasts and freezing slush underfoot, it was no louder than a whisper the last time when said, “Titania is risen….”
And the ground tilted down under his feet, catching Gil by surprise. He tumbled down the slope thus formed and gathered a sliding rush of snow to tumble with him.
He was fetched up against the bars of a portcullis with a jarring crash, face-downward on the cold marble lip of the threshold. Only the fact that he was wearing his helm saved him from a scalp wound, perhaps a concussion.
Through the bars of the portcullis came a warm and golden light, dancing and flickering like light seen reflected from a pool, and also came the sound of laughter, the echo of strings and horns raised in cheery music, voices raised in song, and, best of all, the smells of freshly baked bread, savory meats, and spices.
He raised his head.
Two tall and splendid warriors in gleaming armor stood to either side of the portcullis, plumes as bright as torches, lance and shield in hand. Both had their faceplates turned toward where Gil lay in a heap, but only one allowed himself to laugh, and it was only a quiet snort.
2. Corylus and Lemur
The one on the left was dressed in black and silver, and on his surcoat was an image of a snowy owl roosting on a scimitar on a blue field under a crescent. The other was dressed in green and gold, and his shield was red painted with a hazel wreath.
Merely the heat from the air escaping between the bars was reviving Gil. He groaned, took the bars of the portcullis in his right hand, drove the point of his shield into the marble with his left, and rose to his shaky legs. The two elfin men-at-arms stood stiffly, their faceplates toward him, watching him from unseen eyes, not laughing aloud, making no move to help or to hinder.