The Monster in the Hollows Read online

  “As soon as my intentions were known, I couldn’t go near Wendolyn without getting’ pounded. After a year—ayear, mind you—I finally figured out what I had to do to win her hand. I had to compete in the Bannick Durga.”

  “What’s that?” Kalmar asked.

  “It’s a week of poundin’, wrestlin’, chasin’, and hurtin’.” Podo winced at the memory. “Every three years the tribes of the Hollows travel to the Fields of Finley as they’ve done for an epoch. Any man fool enough to enter has a chance to be Keeper of the Hollows. That’s how Rudric come to be Keeper. Remember how big he is? He got the job because he won the Bannick Durga. And that’s what I set out to do.”

  Podo paused and puffed on his pipe, enjoying the surprise on his grandchildren’s faces. “That’s right. I signed up. What few friends I had told me I’d better back out if I wanted to live. They weren’t threatening me, mind ye, they were worried about me. But I figured the only way I could show me deep love for Wendolyn was to compete, and if I died tryin’, well, that was fine with me. I loved her.”

  “Mother tried to stop him, too,” Nia said. “She came to his window one night and begged him not to go through with it. She said she would marry him and run away with him.”

  “But I wouldn’t hear of it,” Podo said. “I was done running.”

  Oskar had left the table and joined the children on the carpet without Janner noticing. “What happened next?” he asked. He lay on his pillowy stomach, looking up at Podo like a bald toddler. “In the words of Fripsky von Chiggatron, ‘Do tell!’”

  “I traveled to the Fields of Finley. Alone. I set up me tent and waited for the whistleharp to signal the start of the games, praying to the Maker for strength and a sure and steady hand. But also for endurance. I didn’t think I could lick a single one of these giant, fruit-happy Hollish fighters, but I couldendure. That’s something that don’t take strength of arm but strength of heart, and my love for Wendolyn had given me that.”

  “Did you win? What happened?” Leeli scooted over and leaned her head on Kalmar’s shoulder. Janner thought his brother would squirm away, but he was too interested in the story to care.

  “The first games were about speed. They were races. I’m pretty good with me stump, but not that good. I fared pretty bad. The worst of it was, the Hollish don’t care much for sportsmanship. If you run a race, you’d better expect to get an elbow in the ribs or a fist to the jaw, and they try to trip ye the whole run. Not just me, either. They punched each other, too, and it was all part of the game.

  “The second day was about strength. They had barrels of water to lift, logs to throw, wagons to push. I did all right at that, but nothing close to the Hollish brutes. I was makin’ a right fool of meself. But the next three days were given to fights. I entered the field with fifty different opponents and lost nearly every fight. But I kept fighting. I could hardly walk I was so tired, but I kept swinging and dodging and getting back up.

  “The last day was the toughest. It’s about strength, speed, and sneakery too. It’s a race to find MacDollagh’s Boot. Somebody hides it the night before, and the first man to return it to the dais on the Field of Finley wins the day. I hardly slept the night before, partly because me whole body was bruised, and partly because I knew it was me last chance to win the hand of Wendolyn Igiby, me heart’s true love.

  “I woke at dawn with the rest of the men and waited for the whistle to blow. When it did, fists flew and men bellered just to get a lead on the others, even though no one knew which direction to run. I spent the day limpin’ across the countryside as fast as me stump would allow, looking in creeks and under boulders and even in big piles of horse biscuits for that blasted boot. Now and then I’d see another Hollish racer and he’d pile at me just to slow me down, whether I had the boot or not. I’d get back to me feet and traipse on, prayin’ with one breath to the Maker that I’d find the boot and with the next that I wouldn’t.”

  “Why pray that you wouldn’t?” Janner asked.

  “Because findin’ the boot was only half the fight. Think how hard it would be to get it clear back to Finley without getting’ caught and beaten! Well, the Maker seemed to curse me and bless me both, because I rounded a hill and saw MacDullogh’s boot on a stone in the center of a creek. I stood there a minute, waiting for some burly fellow to tackle me, but there weren’t a soul in sight. I whispered Wendolyn’s name, snatched that boot, and hoofed it with all my might over the hills to the Field of Finley. When I topped the last rise I saw the crowds all gathered around the circle of the field. From every direction giant bearded men snorted and raced at me like mad toothy cows, and I tell ye, I would have preferred toothy cows to the wrath about to set down on me. An outsider hasn’t won the Bannick Durga in a thousand years.”

  Podo stared at the fire and spoke in a low voice. “I spotted Wendolyn. She was like a white shore to a drownin’ sailor. I ran for all me life for that green circle of field in the distance. A stampede of cursin’, angry Hollish men followed me like thunder, and they were gaining. I didn’t even see the line of sneaky ones who had circled back to ambush whoever showed up with the boot. They come at me from both sides, and more from behind.”

  Podo leaned back in his chair and took his time relighting his pipe.

  “That’s all I remember.”

  “What?” the three children said in unison.

  “I didn’t win, of course,” Podo said with a wink. “They trampled me, snatched the boot, and fought over it for the rest of the day. You’ll see at the Bannick Durga in the spring that all the real action happens at that moment, when some poor fool shows up at the finish line with the boot. You can imagine how rough it gets, and how big the fella must be who finally manages to get that boot to the dais. Take Rudric, for example.”

  “But what about Wendolyn?” Janner asked.

  “I woke to her kiss on me lips.” Podo closed his eyes with a smile.

  The boys covered their faces and groaned. Leeli sighed with bliss.

  “I was so tired and battered I could hardly walk, but she pulled me to me feet and put me on her donkey and took me home. Her father Kargan came to see me every day, and he became one of me best friends. We married in the bright summer, right there on the front lawn.”

  The story settled over the room, and Janner’s heart was warm. “But Grandpa,” he said after a moment, “what does this have to do with school?”

  “Because you’ll all have to walk through your own Bannick Durga. The Hollish children don’t care if you’re the Jewels of Anniera. All they know is you’re outsiders. It’s like that all over Aerwiar, but in the Hollows that kind of mistrust involves more roughness than usual. So be ready. I don’t want you startin’ a single fight. The only time you’re allowed to swing first is in defense of the helpless. So stick together. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Janner said, and the children looked at one another. Kalmar looked worried, and Janner knew he had good reason. If the Hollish folk treated Podo that way, he shuddered to imagine how the children would take to a Grey Fang in their school.

  “It’s time to go,” Nia said.

  “You’re going to be with me, right?” Kalmar whispered to Janner.

  “I’m a Throne Warden,” Janner said. “Of course I will.”

  Janner remembered Artham leaping into the rockroach den in Glipwood Forest, talons cutting through the air, coming to their defense, heedless of his own safety.

  Janner gulped. He was scared to death.

  17

  The Ten Whiskers of Olumphia Groundwich

  The ride from Chimney Hill was quiet in the cool of the morning, and a mist hung over the creek in the valley. When they crossed the bridge and turned left onto the main road, Janner shivered with anticipation, excitement, and anxiety. Kalmar and Leeli sat with him in the carriage without speaking. Podo had stayed behind and waved from the lawn along with Bonifer and Oskar.

  “Where’s the school?” Janner asked as they crested the hill and Ban R
ona spread out before them.

  “There,” Nia said. “Beyond the field next to the Keep. See it?”

  Kalmar, Leeli, and Janner huddled together and squinted in the direction Nia pointed. A rectangular lawn lay flat and green, its borders marked with flagpoles. Next to the field was a cluster of stone buildings. Janner didn’t know what he expected—a castle with turrets and secret staircases? From this distance it was hard to see much, but it was still disappointing. Leeli and Kalmar “hmmphed” and settled back for the ride.

  “It’s where I went to school, and your grandmother too,” Nia said.

  “Will it be like our studies back in Glipwood?” Janner asked. “T.H.A.G.S., I mean.”

  “No. You’ll study your T.H.A.G.S. in addition to your schooling here.”

  “What?” Kalmar groaned. “Do the other kids have to study T.H.A.G.S. at home too?”

  “No. But the other kids aren’t the Jewels of Anniera,” Nia answered. “I have a feeling you’ll be begging me for T.H.A.G.S. by this afternoon.” Janner, Kalmar, and Leeli looked at one another nervously. “In the Hollows you’ll each choose a guild. That’s where you’ll spend most of your time. In the morning, you’ll be together at lectures, where you’ll learn history and puzzles and fruitery. Then you’ll move outside and learn punching—”

  “Punching?” Kalmar asked, perking up.

  “Yes. Punching. There’ll probably be a kicking class too. All in preparation for the Finnick Durga in the spring.”

  “What’s that?” Kalmar asked.

  “The Finnick Durga is like the Bannick Durga, only for guildlings. It’s a full day of races and wrestling.”

  Janner and Kalmar grinned at each other.

  Leeli groaned. “Do I have to?”

  “No, dear. Womenfolk don’t have to if they don’t want to, though many do. Neither do the boys, for that matter, but it’s unusual for a boy in the Hollows to opt out of it. Even the slightest young fellows enjoy a good tackle and smash. It’s in the Hollish blood. But you’ll have something else to do, if I can work it out. It’ll be something you’ll enjoy especially.”

  “What is it?” Leeli climbed over the bench and squirmed between Janner and Nia.

  “You’ll see. I need to make arrangements before I know for sure.”

  “What are guilds? How big are the classes?” Janner asked.

  Nia laughed. “You’ll see in just a few minutes. Now hush and enjoy the scenery. And pay no mind to these Hollish buffoons who peek through window shades and scurry like ridgerunners.”

  She shook the reins and urged the horses to a trot. They rode down into Ban Rona, among homes and businesses where the townspeople either studiously ignored the Wingfeathers or stared at Kalmar outright. After they passed through the busy streets, Nia drove the carriage through the shade cast by the great tree of the Keep.

  Janner stared at the roofline where he had last seen Artham. He wondered where his uncle was. Had he found a boat to sail back across the Dark Sea, or had he tried to fly the whole way? That seemed impossible, but in the last few months he had learned thatimpossible was a word that had little meaning.

  The carriage followed the lane past the rectangular field and through a gate, over which a wrought-iron sign hung. It read: The Guildling Hall and Institute for Hollish Learning. The wagon rolled past the gates and into a cobbled courtyard, which held a statue of a man mounted on a warhorse, holding his sword high. Beyond the statue stood a large stone building joined to several others by covered walkways. The buildings looked strong enough to last a thousand years, and the lichen and vine creeping up the walls suggested that they already had.

  It seemed a pleasant enough place—more interesting than it had looked from a distance—but Janner was unsettled by its strange silence. It wasn’t a dead silence, like the kind he felt at Anklejelly Manor or in the old Glipwood Cemetery, and it wasn’t the lonely silence of a prairie or an empty house; it was a living, waiting silence, as if he had just rounded a tree in Glipwood Forest and encountered a sleeping bomnubble.

  “Where is everybody?” Leeli asked.

  “In class. Down you go,” Nia said. “We need to speak to the head guildmaster.”

  Janner wanted to ask what a head guildmaster was, but he figured he would know soon enough.

  The three children were as skittish as thwaps in Podo’s garden as Nia marched up the steps and knocked three times on the main door. It swung open immediately, and before them stood a tall, hideous woman in boots and a blue dress. The sleeves were too short, so her knobby wrists and half of her forearms stuck out past the frills. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, which made her heavy brow and jaw seem even bigger. She frowned at them with a face that boasted exactly ten curly whiskers: two sprouting from her chin, six on her upper lip, one jutting out from the center of her nose, and one on her left cheek. Janner felt bad for counting them.

  “Oy! Nia Igiby Wingfeather!” the woman barked. Her voice was somehow shrill and husky at the same time. “I was expecting you. Follow.” She spun around and clomped away.

  Nia gave the children a surprised look and led them into the school. The floors and walls were polished stone, lit by lamps that hung from the arched ceiling. Paintings, tapestries, and framed poems hung on the walls between the many doors they passed. Behind some of the doors Janner could hear muted voices of teachers holding forth, while behind others he heard clanking, shouting, and hammering.

  The ten-whiskered woman stopped and held open a door labeled “Head Guildmadam.” Nia thanked her with a nod and herded the children through. The room was furnished with a small desk and several chairs. A big brown dog snored on a blanket in the corner. Nia gestured for the children to sit and waited until the whiskery dame closed the door and sat at the desk.

  “I figure you don’t remember me,” the woman said with a scowl. “I figure you’re Nia Igiby who up and married a king and left the Hollows. I figure you’re bringing your three pups here for a proper Hollish education. I figure you think you’resomebody now, don’t you?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact,” said Nia. “And I think you’re somebody too.”

  “Oy? Then who, Your Highness? Who is the woman who sits before you?” The woman leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. She stared at Nia and frowned with great effort, which caused the six whiskers on her upper lip and the two on her chin to flick about like the antennae of a bug.

  “Children,” Nia said, still looking the woman in the eye, “I’d like you to meet the guildmadam. Guildmadam Groundwich. I knew her many years ago as Olumphia Groundwich, the Terror of Swainsby Road.”

  Janner’s skin went cold. He was expecting the students at the school to be a challenge, but he had assumed that, like his own guardians, the adults there would at least be pleasant, even if they were firm. But this woman looked more than firm, and far less than pleasant. She looked scary.

  “I recall many an afternoon when children shook in their shirts as they passed Swainsby Road,” Nia continued. “They took dares to dash past the row of houses between Seaway and Apple Vale, afraid they’d be pelted with dog droppings or doornuts or chased by mad dogs. But what they were really afraid of was Olumphia Groundwich. Isn’t that right?”

  “Oy!” said Olumphia Groundwich, and she narrowed one eye. “Your mother knows me well. So well, in fact, that she had another name for me. Didn’t you, Nia Igiby? You called me something that no one else dared to call me.”

  “I did,” Nia said after a pause.

  “Tell them.” Mistress Groundwich scratched at a whisker and waved her hand. “Tell them now so we can be done with it.”

  Janner prayed that whatever name Nia called her wouldn’t lead to a fight right there in the guildmadam’s office. He desperately wanted to be on this woman’s good side, though he doubted shehad a good side.

  “I called you friend,” Nia said with a smile. “Mybest friend.”

  “Oy!” Mistress Groundwich said. She leapt to her feet and towered over them. �
��Oy!” she said again. It startled all three Wingfeather children, who nearly jumped out of their seats.

  Nia embraced Olumphia, who lifted Nia off her feet and made a noise like a growl, at which point the big dog in the corner woke and thumped its tail. Nia looked like one of the children being swung around in one of Podo’s hugs.

  “Nia, my heart is full of joy at seeing you again. I just knew you’d been killed or imprisoned or—or—Fanged.” She shot a glance at Kalmar and continued. “But you didn’t! You came back! And with children!”

  “It’s good to see you Olumphia,” Nia laughed. “And head guildmadam! By the hills and the hollows, I’m impressed! You hated school.”

  “I’m as surprised as you are. Never thought anyone would callme Guildmadam. I’m even more surprised that I love it. I always wondered why the Maker made me so tall and lanky, and why he gave me these rogue whiskers. Used to pluck them out every other day, but I found the students more terrified of me with them than without. I don’t have a husband—yet—so what do I care?”

  “Finding a man might be trickier with whiskers,” Nia said.

  “Oy! Hadn’t thought of that.” Olumphia plucked out one of the whiskers. Janner cringed. Olumphia blinked away the water that sprang to her eyes and chuckled. “There! I’ll find me a Hollish prince in no time. The blasted thing will be back by tomorrow evening, though.” Olumphia held up the whisker and inspected it with a frown.

  “I’ve come to enroll the children in school,” said Nia. “We haven’t had time to talk about a guild yet, so I thought you might explain the way we do things in the Green Hollows.” Nia turned to the children. “Guildmadam Groundwich, this is—”

  Olumphia flicked the whisker aside and silenced Nia with a wave of the hand, then advanced on the children. She towered over them with her hands on her hips.

  “Up! Stand up so I can see you.” The three children stood at attention while Olumphia Groundwich studied them each in turn.