The Monster in the Hollows Page 14

He finished and looked up to see Kalmar, Leeli, and Nia staring at him, all with the same mixture of surprise and fear.

  “Come on,” Nia said. “Let’s get downstairs and talk with Rudric.”

  Rudric sat at the dinner table trying to comfort Freva. Her face was splotchy from crying, her bonnet sat crooked on her head, and her hair was frazzled. She held Bonnie in her arms. Podo, Oskar, and Bonifer stood nearby, whispering.

  All the lightness that had filled the house only minutes ago had been replaced by gravity, and Janner told himself he would never be safe again. Every time he let his heart believe that they were out of danger, something dangerous found them. Every time. He ignored the quiet inner voice that reminded him that the Maker had sustained him, had brought him safely to Chimney Hill through more danger than most people saw in a lifetime.

  “Any word?” Nia asked Rudric.

  “No, Highness. I’m sure I’ll hear something from Danniby soon.”

  “The beast is gone, sir,” said a man who, as far as Janner could tell, had materialized in the corner of the room when his name was mentioned. He was dressed in black, and stood as still as a statue. It took Janner a moment to realize it was the same Danniby who had led them to the Orchard Inn on their first day in the Hollows.

  “Goodness gravy!” Oskar shrieked, jumping into what he thought was a fighting stance. “Where did he come from?”

  “We’re Durgan Guildsmen, Reteep,” said Rudric with a chuckle. “Our business is sneakery.”

  “Some of us are sneakier than others,” said Danniby, aiming a sly grin at Rudric.

  Rudric flexed one of his gigantic biceps. “Only because our muscles get in the way.”

  “I don’t care if you’re guildsmen,” Nia said with a roll of her eyes, “you’re acting like children. Poor Freva is in shock and you’re parading. Now tell us if we’re out of danger. Has the cloven been caught?”

  “No ma’am,” Danniby said. “One of the men claims to have hit it with a spear, but it got away. I don’t know how something that big can move so fast. But you can rest easy tonight. The Durgans are keeping watch in every corner of Ban Rona.”

  Rudric nodded. “Danniby and I will remain at Chimney Hill for the night. I won’t sleep a wink, Your Highness,” Rudric said, and Janner noticed that he looked at Kalmar kindly. “The cloven was wounded, so it will either scurry back to the Blackwood or find some place to die. This is the first time one has come this far west, probably only because it fled the patrol last night.” He patted Freva on the shoulder. “She came face to face with the thing. It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed.”

  Nia brought Freva a hot drink, and the young girl’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t make us go outside again tonight, yer Highness!” she pleaded. “It looked me right in the eye! I tell you, ma’am, it weren’t like no animal! When it looked at me, itsawme. Saw through me eyes all the way to the tips of me toes.” She buried her face in Nia’s neck and wailed. “Maker have mercy, itknows me now! I’m so scared, ma’am.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here tonight, dear. Papa, can you get the children in bed? We’ll let Freva and Bonnie have Leeli’s room. Leeli, you sleep in the boys’ room.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Leeli said. “They might need my protection.” She whacked Kalmar in the leg with her crutch, and the tension in the room eased a little. Bonifer bade them goodnight and shuffled upstairs to his bedroom, and Oskar went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

  When the children were safe beneath their covers and the lantern was snuffed, Podo sat on the edge of Janner’s bed and said, “Yer ma tells me something strange happened up here.”

  Janner frowned and nodded. “Yes, sir. The same weird thing that happened before with the sea dragons.”

  “Only worse,” Leeli said. “This time it hurt.”

  “So was it the monster?” Podo asked. “The cloven?”

  “I don’t know,” Janner said. “The voice was like a monster’s, I guess. It sounded sick and wet. It said that it would find us, that it would never release us. I thought it was sea dragons at first, then I thought it was the cloven. Then I thought it was Gnag the Nameless. Could the thing out therebe Gnag? Could Gnag actually be a cloven from the Blackwood?”

  “What if that washim?” Leeli whispered. “Gnag the Nameless, right outside our window!”

  “That wasn’t Gnag the Nameless,” Kalmar said.

  “How do you know?” Janner asked.

  “I just know. I saw its eyes. It was—I don’t know. It just wasn’t Gnag the Nameless.”

  “What did ye see, lad?” Podo asked, and there was a long silence before Kalmar answered.

  “I saw a dungeon.” Kalmar’s voice grew so quiet that Janner held his breath to hear it. “Spiders crawled up the walls. They were as big as mice. Snakes and worms were everywhere. I saw people in chains. They were crying. And there were monsters too. Monsters chained in the darkness, licking the floor for food. I think they’re as scared of Gnag the Nameless as we are.”

  “That may be true, lad, but the cloven are still as dangerous as toothy cows. Worse even, to look at ‘em. All I know is, I’m glad Rudric and his Durgans are keeping watch. Me old bones are tired, and I ain’t fit for sittin’ up all night watchin’ for gobblers in the dark.” He kissed Leeli’s forehead and patted each boy on the cheek. Janner loved the feel of Podo’s cool, callused hand. “Now sleep. You’ve got yer puppies to tend to tomorrow, and you boys have got to learn to duck at the proper time. In a few weeks I bet old Brosa and Larnik will be sorry they ever met the Wingfeathers.”

  Janner tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw the monster in the yard and heard its ominous words. He knew Leeli and Kalmar were awake too, but no one spoke. Dogs barked in the distance, probably at the bitter scent of the cloven’s passing, but from time to time Janner heard Rudric’s voice drifting up to the window from the yard, and it brought him comfort.

  When at last he drifted to sleep, his thoughts were of his father, and of Anniera, and of Sara Cobbler.

  23

  The Light He Left Behind

  Sara Cobbler was starving. But she was used to that. She was cramped and sore, but she was used to that too. When Mobrik the Ridgerunner opened the coffin and let her out, she no longer felt the hopelessness that choked the air of the Fork Factory. She’d once been just another of the weary children mindlessly doing whatever the Overseer told them to do. But not anymore.

  Something had changed the day she saw a boy she recognized. A boy from Glipwood. His hands weren’t yet blistered. His skin wasn’t yet covered in soot. His name was Janner Igiby. His eyes shone with a sparkle of hope, and that faint light had rekindled something inside of her.

  All the children thought of escape when they first arrived—Sara too. She had been defiant, though not with her words; hers had been a rebellion of silence.

  The Fangs had kicked down the front door of her house and dragged her from her bed, and neither her mother’s pleas nor her father’s courageous struggle could stop them. Sara could still feel their moist, scaly hands ripping her from her father’s arms, could still smell the rot of their flesh, could still hear their hissing laughter. Nothing she had experienced since had been as awful as that night. She tried not to think about it, but when she was stuck in the coffin it was hard to think about anything else. She kept picturing her parents’ horrified faces shrinking into the distance as the Black Carriage creaked away.

  In the Carriage, she had screamed until her voice left her, and she knew in the helplessness of her own silence that she was utterly alone.

  When she was dragged from the Carriage the next morning and thrown at the feet of the Overseer, he asked her a single question: “What’s your name?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but she no longer had any voice with which to answer. He demanded that she answer him, but she couldn’t, and then she learned to fear the Overseer’s whip.

  That night she attempted to escape. She didn’t have a pla
n. She just ran through the double doors, down the long corridor, and into the carriage room—where the Overseer was waiting. He had learned to recognize which of his new “tools” would attempt to flee, he said. That night she learned the full extent of his cruelty. She never again tried to escape.

  Every child came to the factory clinging to defiance or hope, but the harsh sting of the Overseer’s whip or the Maintenance Managers’ chains or the long, lonely dark of the coffin eventually broke their will.

  It was different with Janner Igiby, though. Like others before him, he had defied the Overseer; he had defied the Maintenance Managers; he had been beaten and thrown into the coffin. But after he’d been punished multiple times, after he’d spent days in the awful coffin—hekept trying. That was what stirred Sara’s waters. Never had another child shown such strength. Sara knew the Overseer had tried to make a Maintenance Manager out of Janner, had tried to lure him with power. But Janner had defied him. He was like a candle the Overseer couldn’t snuff out.

  And after Janner left, after Sara had weathered her punishment for helping him escape, she was surprised to find that some of Janner’s candlelight still flickered in the Fork Factory. She noticed it reflected in the other children’s eyes and in the way the ridgerunner watched her. It took her a few days to realize the light was coming fromher. She was shining it. Janner Igiby had changed her. He was gone, but he had left some of his gift behind.

  When Sara passed the paring station, she thought of Janner and imagined that flecks of light sprayed the ground where he had walked, like glowing paint splatters only she could see. When she sat at the table where they had talked about his escape, she imagined blurs of gold stirring the air where he had been, ghostly trails that helped her believe in the world outside these walls.

  And so, without a plan, without purpose, and without even realizing it, Sara Cobbler became that light to the children around her. Because there was hope in her heart, there was courage too. Courage changed the way she moved among the other prisoners. Now she patted them on the back and smiled at them even when their eyes were blank. Now she tied her hair in a bun instead of letting it hang around her face like moss. Now she walked with a straight back and looked the Maintenance Managers in the eye when they bossed her around. It made them uncomfortable, and soon they stopped harassing her at all.

  Before Janner she had suppressed the memory of her parents and her home. Before, she had found it easier to bear the long hours of work if she didn’t think about the streets of Dugtown, just on the other side of the brick wall, where people still walked and talked and ate together, even if it was under the hateful gaze of the Fangs. But now, while she pared forks and swords, carted coal, cranked wheels, and stoked fires, she thought of her father’s musty, pipe-smoke scent and her mother’s bright laughter, of the books in her room and the bright mornings in late winter when spring stirred in the tall grass.

  One day as she sat sipping her soup and thinking with pleasure of Janner’s wild ride away from the Fork Factory, she felt someone tap her shoulder. She snapped out of the daydream with some difficulty and turned to see a little boy. He was so short he only came up to her shoulder while she sat. His face, like all the other faces, was dirty, and his teeth had begun to blacken. His fingernails were crusted with dirt, and his shirt was several sizes too big and hung from him like a rag on a clothesline.

  But his eyes! They werelooking at her. He wasn’t a tool but a boy.

  “Can I sit with you?” he asked, and his voice was as small and sweet as a piece of candy.

  “Of course you can.” She laughed. “I would be honored. What’s your name?”

  The boy looked around for the Maintenance Managers.

  “Oh, don’t worry about them,” Sara said. “They leave me alone. You can tell me your name.”

  He leaned in close and said, “Borley. I’m seven, I think.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Borley. My name’s Sara Cobbler.” Sara smiled at him and motioned for him to sit. He placed his soup bowl on the table, climbed onto the bench, and scooted close to Sara. He looked up at her and smiled, and flakes of ash broke from his cheeks and fell to the floor. He put his head on her shoulder for a moment, and Sara felt in her heart a joy so heavy it hurt.

  When Sara looked up, seven more children stood across from her, all holding their bowls, asking with their eyes if they too were welcome at the table. Tears spilled from Sara’s eyes and left bright trails on her cheeks, and she nodded for them to sit, thanking the Maker for Janner Igiby and the light he left behind.

  So began the quiet revolution of Sara Cobbler.

  24

  A Carriage Ride to School

  When Janner awoke, the first thing on his mind was the cloven. He wanted to know if it had been caught or killed, and he wanted to know if it could speak. If it was the cloven’s voice he heard in his head, then it must have been delivering some kind of message from Gnag the Nameless. On the other hand, maybe the cloven was hunting for someone or something else, and Janner had listened in on the beast’s inner thoughts.

  There was also the possibility that the cloven had nothing to do with Gnag and didn’t speak at all—maybe the strange flash of power and the voice in Janner’s mind were caused by something else entirely. Every time it had happened before, Leeli was making music, but in Kimera, when they tried to get the power to work again, Leeli had played song after song and Janner had concentrated as hard as he could, to no avail. They couldn’t make it work on their own. So why had it happened last night?

  At breakfast, Janner was so deep in thought that Nia scolded him for not answering her greeting. He apologized and made sure he gave her cinnamon hotcakes an extra dose of praise. By the time Kalmar and Leeli joined them, Rudric had also come inside for breakfast tea and a plate piled with crispy, batter-dipped bacon. He sat at the table in his black Durgan uniform and gobbled it up, moaning about how delicious the bacon was. He had patrolled Chimney Hill all night, but he looked wide awake, especially when Nia passed through the room.

  “No sign,” he told Podo. “It’s like the beast up and disappeared. My guess is that it grobbled its way back to the Blackwood when no one was looking. If it were still around, you’d smell its rot. Those things stink so bad we can’t even use the dogs to track them. The best dogs in Ban Rona take one whiff and set to whining. So I mean it when I say you can rest easy. There’s no cloven in Ban Rona.”

  “Will you send a guard for at least one more night?” Nia asked. “Just to be sure? I felt better knowing you and Danniby were standing watch.”

  “Aye, Your Highness. I planned on it. Danniby and I are at your service.”

  Janner just had time to wonder where Danniby was before he stuck his head out from a kitchen cabinet and said, “I’m happy to patrol, but I’ll need a nap this afternoon. And a bibe. I’d love a bibe, Your Highness.”

  Nia thanked them both, then clapped her hands and announced that they had to leave or the children would be late for their first full day of school. “Put these on,” she said and handed each of the children a jacket made of tough brown fabric. The outside was scratchy as a totato sack but the inside was lined with soft fur. The children’s initials were embroidered inside the collars: JW, KW, and LW. “Those are from Freva,” Nia told them. “She couldn’t sleep, so she worked on them all night.”

  The children thanked Freva, who somehow blushed and yawned at the same time and said, “It’s nothing, me lords and lady. They’re lined with flabbit fur. They say monsters don’t like to eat it, so keep ‘em on whenever you go outside. And if you do get eaten, hopefully the creature will spit out the jacket, and we’ll be able to tell which one of you it was by the initials.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” Nia said.

  “Oy,” Freva continued. “Even so, the initials might be hard to find. We might have to piece the jacket back together if it gets all torn up. That cloven’s claws were pointy. Oh, and we’ll also have to wash the pieces, ‘cause they’ll
be stained with monster spit and blood—”

  “Freva! Let’s just hope my children don’t get eaten, shall we? Why don’t you go see if Bonnie’s awake?” Nia shooed her upstairs.

  “You’ll be fine,” Rudric said to Janner and his siblings, brushing crumbs from his beard. “The monster’s gone. Besides, I’m pretty sure we’d be able to tell who you were without the initials in the jacket, just from the bones and such.”

  “Rudric!” Nia snapped. “These children won’t be eaten!”

  “Of course they won’t.” He turned back to his food with a shrug. “These eggs are good.”

  “Don’t forget these,” Nia said and handed each of the children the well-worn packs she had made them in Glipwood. She had removed their adventuring supplies and filled the packs instead with the necessary school accessories: books, quills, ink bottles, paper, and a jar of gadbalm to be applied after their Durgan training.

  When Janner hefted his pack over one shoulder and heard the familiar leathery creak and saw the dark, smooth spot on one strap where he had a habit of resting his hand, he smiled. He felt a quiet pride about the road he had traveled with this old pack—from Glipwood Forest, over Miller’s Bridge, past the Stranders, to Dugtown, then back along the Strand, over the Barrier, up through the Stony Mountains, over Mog Balgrik, to the Ice Prairies, then across the Dark Sea of Darkness. His anxiousness about another day at school shrank when he thought about how far the Maker had carried him. He may be scarred and worn in places, but like his pack, he believed he was better for it.

  The morning was chilly with the coming winter. The sky in the east was brightening, but the sun hadn’t yet risen over the Green Hollows. As the children found their seats in the carriage, Oskar stuck his head out the door and called, “Janner! Perhaps you can visit the library after school. Bonifer and I will be working on the translation of the First Book all day. In the words of Anjudar the Waif, ‘I’ve nothing better to do. You should come by!’”