Beyond the Valley of Thorns Read online

  It falls to Alexa now to defeat Abaddon.”

  CHAPTER 10

  JOURNEY ACROSS THE DARK HILLS

  As you might imagine, I was speechless. I sat silently contemplating what it all meant. If this tale was true then I held the last Jocasta, and this band of misfits I’d surrounded myself with was all I had to help me. It struck me then that this was the same sort of group that had managed to bring down the walls around my kingdom and save Bridewell from the evil plot set against it. John Christopher, Yipes, Murphy, Odessa, and Squire — whatever trouble I’d fallen into, I had to believe these companions would protect and help me to the end. As I looked around at the faces before me I was comforted — even excited — to walk the paths old Warvold had tread, into places I could only imagine. I smiled.

  “BOO!” I yelled.

  Yipes jumped up so fast he bumped his head on the ceiling, while Murphy spun and rolled off Odessa’s back, landed on his feet, and scampered into a corner of the room. John and Odessa only flinched and remained where they were.

  “Why must you do things like that?” pleaded Yipes. “You’ve scared poor Murphy half out of his wits.”

  I chuckled, then John joined in, and pretty soon we were all laughing, our nervous energy released into the small room. When everyone became calm and quiet again, I showed the back of the last page of Warvold’s notes.

  “There’s another map here,” I said. “It looks as though it will be our guide for the next few days.”

  It was a crude drawing of markers and lines with a title scribbled across the top that read Across the Dark Hills to the Valley of Thorns — route void of BATS.

  “That’s encouraging,” said Murphy from his new perch atop my shoulder. Squirrels have surprisingly sharp claws, and he was digging in more than usual.

  “You’re holding on a bit tight, Murphy,” I said. “Not scared, are you?”

  Murphy loosened his grip and put his wet nose in my ear, something he did when he’d had enough of my pestering.

  “Best to get some rest,” said John. “By the looks of that map, we’ve got at least three days of travel through harsh lands in front of us. We should get some sleep while we have the safety of this room.”

  Everyone seemed to agree. The Jocasta was put away and the rock rolled back just enough to let in a trickle of fresh air again. Before long I was the only one awake. The deep darkness of the room scared me. To comfort myself I thought about my desk back home in Lathbury — its top the color of walnut shells, the aged wood somehow soft and hard at the same time, the smell of old books all around me. I rolled onto my side and held Murphy against my chest with one arm, his slight breathing and warm coat comforting me. It wasn’t long before I, too, was fast asleep like the rest.

  The predawn hours were colder than expected, and everyone woke early the next morning. We packed our few belongings quickly and began walking north, the presence of the sun known only by a delicate tint of orange along the horizon. Right away I felt the first burning scratches of dried brush along my legs, the dusty earth beneath my feet. Murphy sat on my pack, nibbling on a few nuts while I ate from a handful of dried apples and figs.

  For the next three days we followed the map, ever wary of intruders, an endless trek into barren lands. I could only guess, but by the end of the fourth day I thought we must have been a hundred miles from Bridewell, miles that would have been impossible to cross on horseback with the many crevices and climbs. As the sun was setting I looked back toward where we’d come and realized with some astonishment how far away from home I was.

  “We should keep moving as best we can until night falls,” said Yipes. “We’re nearing the end of the map, but we’re also running low on food and water.”

  I’d forgotten how determined Yipes could be when he set his mind to something. By the look of the map we would arrive at the edge of the Valley of Thorns sometime the next day. We were all terribly curious what the Valley of Thorns was, but the mere sound of it worried me.

  “The days get easier for me as we go,” said Odessa. “Less water is less for me to carry — that and Murphy every now and then, but he’s as light as a feather.”

  The evening light passed quietly as the heat let go of its grip on the land. Squire rejoined us, alighting on John’s pack and looking around nervously for field mice she might have the good fortune to discover. John took a piece of dried meat from a small pocket on the side of his tunic and held it behind his head. Squire immediately snapped it away and ripped it into small bits between her claws and her beak. Not long after that she flew off again. I made a game with Murphy of trying to track where Squire had gone, until she flew into the horizon and we both lost her.

  Soon after, we fell into a conversation about the merits of having a body covered with hair. It became quite lively, the two animals extolling a lengthy list of reasons why hair upon one’s body was to be envied and insisting that a hairless beast walking upright on two feet was a disgusting thing indeed, a sight which had been largely spared them by the use of clothing. Yipes, John, and I were victorious in the end, but only because the oppressive heat emphasized the inherent problem of having a coat you could never take off.

  When I looked up again the sun was only a far-off sliver, and we found a clearing surrounded by a thicket to shelter us for the night. We were now only hours from the Valley of Thorns, and everyone was concerned about what we might encounter there.

  “The sooner we get to the Valley of Thorns, the sooner we can find out what all this means,” said John. “The best we can do now is rest and rise early. By tomorrow afternoon we’ll be there.”

  “I wonder what became of the girls,” I said, already lying down with my head resting on my pack.

  “Catherine and Laura,” I whispered, already drifting off to sleep, exhausted from the long day. “I wonder where they went, or if we’ll ever find out.” I tried to stay awake and think more about the mystery, but a moment more and I fell into a deep sleep.

  Sometime later, in the full of night, I was awakened by Odessa. She had been guarding the camp for several hours, and it was my turn to do the same. The night air had gone cold and I shivered in my effort to sit up, placing my arms around my knees.

  “All’s quiet?” I whispered.

  “Squire flew in an hour ago and startled me, but she’s resting by Yipes now,” the wolf answered. “Otherwise it’s been silent but for John. He’s more restless than usual tonight, waking often and looking around to see if I am still at my duty.”

  I got up and walked to the edge of our camp, looking out across what remained of the Dark Hills. So bleak, so desolate. Even in the night I clearly understood its awful barrenness. I looked back and saw that Odessa had curled up next to John, the two of them whispering. And then I saw Murphy sneak slowly across the camp and curl into a ball of fur at John’s feet. The hours of my watch drifted by, filled with thoughts of Castalia and all its strange wonders, until the first orange glow of morning touched our camp and all at once everyone was stirring, wakeful, slowly preparing their things for our final walk on the ground of the Dark Hills.

  CHAPTER 11

  MY SPYGLASS GETS SOME USE

  “Someone is near,” said John.

  “What do you mean?” asked Odessa, sniffing at the air to catch an unknown scent. But John continued ahead without offering an answer. When I probed him further he turned and addressed all of us at once.

  “There’s something not right about this place. It’s like the feeling I have when it’s dark outside and I think maybe there is someone watching me. And then I hear a twig snap and my heart jumps. That’s the feeling I’ve had all morning.”

  “What do you suppose it is, John?” Yipes asked. His voice expressed the concern we were all feeling.

  John shrugged, turned, and began walking again. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  We had been walking all morning, mostly in silence, and the anxiety we felt was only heightened by what John had said. I wished then that J
ohn had kept his feelings to himself. But he hadn’t, and I was left to imagine all manner of beastly monsters overtaking us in the gloom of the Dark Hills.

  We had been moving in the direction of a great hill for some time, and in due course we found ourselves at its edge in a dry ravine. Though I would not call it a mountain, the hill before us was both steep and of great length from side to side, running off at both ends well beyond where we could see. Since we couldn’t see a way to get around it, we knew we’d have to go over the top. We thought it best to stop and review the map while we indulged in a few minutes of rest before starting the climb.

  I looked across the parched earth and watched as Murphy cleaned between his paws and ran his little forelegs over his head and back again. Standing as I was between Yipes and John, it struck me how filthy they were. Stubble marked their faces and dirty hair hung down on their heads. Also, they stank. It occurred to me then that I had to look and smell as awful as my companions, and I became momentarily depressed.

  “We smell bad,” I said.

  Yipes and John looked at each other. Then each raised an arm and sniffed in the general direction of the exposed area. Unsatisfied, they stepped closer to me, sniffed at the air once again, and turned away.

  “I’m afraid it’s you, my dear,” said Yipes. “You’re as ripe as a July tomato.”

  John nodded his approval.

  “Really?” I said, and I began sniffing the air around me.

  Murphy, who was always my advocate in such matters, immediately darted up Yipes’s leg, grabbed hold of his vest with all four claws, and dug his little head into Yipes’s armpit. Yipes squirmed about, spinning this way and that, until at last Murphy came up for air, a look of disgust on his little face.

  “This one smells terrible,” cried Murphy. “And that one.” He looked over at John, whose arms were folded firmly across his chest. “That one there is three times the size of Yipes and sweats by the bucketful.”

  At least I wasn’t the only one in need of a bath. This was a small if meaningless comfort.

  We were all looking at the map when John spun around and looked up to the right on the barren hill in front of us.

  “I feel it again,” he said. “Someone or something is near.”

  He pointed across the ravine at a clump of half-dead bushes next to a small rise of dirt. “Let’s huddle down beneath the brush and stay out of sight until we figure out what to do. I fear the Valley of Thorns may be just over that hill.”

  We hurried to where the bushes were and crouched together in the dirt. The cover it provided was not sufficient to hide us entirely, but at least we were out of the wide-open space of the ravine. The day had crept into early afternoon and the sun was hot, but not so much as it had been thus far on our journey. There was a faint breeze, and though it was not altogether cool, it had a freshness unlike the baking heat of past days, as if this wind had its origin in a colder place.

  “If it’s true that we find ourselves at the base of the Valley of Thorns, do we have any idea what to do now?” asked Odessa, the ears upon her mighty gray head sticking straight up and alert.

  “Where’s Murphy?” I asked, not finding him among us in the thicket. We were all looking back and forth when the sound of pebbles sliding down the hill came from above us. At first I was terrified of what I might see, but when I looked up, I saw that Murphy had darted away and was scampering up the hill, his tiny legs sending him on a zigzag course as he hid beneath tufts of weeds. He was quickly halfway up, where he looked back, jumped, and waved his limbs all around. Then he turned and raced off again.

  “I don’t know what to do with him,” said Yipes, shaking his head slowly. “He hasn’t a shred of common sense.”

  “Maybe the smell of your armpit scrambled his brains,” I said.

  “Quiet, you two,” said John. “I’ve lost him in the brush near the top.”

  I removed my spyglass, the same one I’d taken from my mother and used in Bridewell the summer before. The lens that Pervis had broken out had been replaced, and it seemed as good as new when my mother offered it to me as a gift on my thirteenth birthday. I slid it open with a snap and handed it to John. The spyglass had been of some use along the way already, but this was the first time I was truly relieved to have brought it with me.

  We were all quiet for a moment while John tried to find Murphy on the hill.

  “There, I have him. He’s just reaching the top now.”

  I waited in silence, watching as Yipes secretly raised his right arm and smelled the air beneath it, and then I could hold my tongue no longer in my worry over Murphy.

  “What’s happening? Can you still see him?” Just then we all heard a shriek from above and looked into the sky. Squire was circling the air, watching as the scene unfolded. I wished then that I, too, could fly, if only for a moment, so that I could see everything that lay before us on the other side of the hill.

  “You know, this really makes very good sense, now that I’ve had a moment to consider it,” said Yipes.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, ignoring Yipes in my worry over the plight of our friend.

  “No, really,” Yipes continued. “I don’t think he’s gone mad, at least not completely. When you think it through, who or whatever lies beyond the hill might well be watching for intruders. A squirrel poses no threat. In fact, he probably goes entirely unnoticed. I only wish he would have let us come to that conclusion together before dashing off on his own.”

  John closed the spyglass and held it out to me without looking in my direction.

  “He’s halfway back down. There,” he said, pointing to a small brown clump flitting this way and that down the hill.

  Murphy rejoined us, completely out of breath and momentarily unable to speak. We gathered close around him until finally he was able to tell us what he had seen in a single well-chosen word.

  “Giants,” he said. He took a few more labored breaths, looked around at the group, and added a bit more.

  “Lots of them.”

  CHAPTER 12

  THE VALLEY OF THORNS

  We all sat silent and still as Murphy told us what he’d seen from the top of the hill, a long pause every now and then as I shared this information with Yipes. Though Yipes seemed perfectly happy to hear the details secondhand, I felt bad for him only hearing a long trail of squeaks as Murphy spoke.

  There was a steep drop-off on the other side, followed by a hundred yards of valley with terrain much like the Dark Hills. After this came a large swath of what appeared to be thin tree stumps sticking up out of the earth from side to side as far as Murphy could see. Beneath the stumps was a gathering of brown stubble, and walking upon the stubble were ten or so men of remarkable size, who Murphy took to be giants. In his further description, it appeared to Murphy that the trees had not been cut where they stood, for they were too closely placed together and arranged in a perfect pattern. The trees or wooden poles — Murphy was less sure of their nature the longer he spoke — stuck out of the ground at varying heights, some so low to the ground that one would measure them in inches, others several feet high, and still more that were five feet and above. In all cases, the stumps or poles were black at the base and carved to a sharp point at the top, where the tips were the color of blood.

  The stumps continued along the valley floor for something on the order of a hundred yards more, and past these the valley became alive with abundant shades of green. Not far beyond the green was the striking presence of a bright blue lake. Murphy called it “magnificent in its size and color.”

  “Castalia,” said Odessa. The word hung in the air until it was pushed away by a question from John.

  “Are the giants too far from the edge of the hill to be reached with a well-placed arrow?”

  Murphy looked thoughtfully back up at the hill, trying to remember how far off they had really been.

  “You might be able to hit the edge, but the giants walked among the poles toward the middle. Plus I thought I
saw a head appear from the earth, so they might have dug trenches, too. Either that or there are some very short giants down there scattered among the big ones. I think a sky filled with arrows, shot down from the top of the hill, would only fall wasted in the valley.”

  John and Yipes were the only ones with bows and a small reserve of arrows, so it didn’t seem likely that we’d be able to fend off even a single giant.

  “One thing is for sure: We have to find a place to hide,” said Odessa. “They must be in the habit of sending scouts to the very ground we stand on.”

  We looked as far as we could in every direction and found with unfortunate clarity that the only shelter to be had was back in the direction from which we had come. We’d be seen by anyone patrolling the top of the hill.

  “There are at least three good sets of large rocks a half mile back,” said Yipes. “We could stay here until night and move back to one of them, or take our chances in broad daylight.”

  Neither option sounded very appealing to me. Where we sat, we only had a few miserable bushes to hide behind. And yet venturing out into the wide open of the Dark Hills in the middle of the day seemed foolhardy with giants milling around so close by.

  “Can you hail Squire?” John asked Yipes.

  “I believe I can,” said Yipes. “But to what purpose?”

  “I have an idea she might be useful.”

  Yipes stood up and pulled a red cotton handkerchief from his vest pocket. He held it over his head and waved it to and fro for some time, careful to stay behind a bush so he could only be seen from the sky. Squire ignored him entirely and continued circling high in the air above us.

  “You’ve trained that one well,” said Odessa. “Can you make her roll over and play dead?”

  Yipes waved the red handkerchief more furiously until at last he agreed that Squire was indeed ignoring him. He looked around nervously until he caught sight of Murphy, who was absently working on a walnut I’d given him upon his return.