The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

  It was still pitch dark when Korman came to Shelley’s door with a beeswax candle in a red pottery candlestick. He looked like one of the villagers, in a hooded woollen cassock with a belt of leather and tall leather boots.

  ‘You look like a shepherd,’ she said sleepily, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

  ‘Now is the time to be strong and brave, Shelley. The Trackers are near. A little breakfast, then we must go.’

  Rilke jumped out of bed and danced around Korman as if to fight him.

  ‘I’m a Knight! On guard!’ he cried. There was a sharp growl from inside Korman’s pack, and Bootnip’s beady eye glittered out of the hole he had chewed.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Rilke, and put his hand out. The growling increased, and teeth appeared at the hole. Rilke jerked his hand back.

  ‘It’s Korman’s anklebiter, silly! It bites. I will too if you don’t be quiet!’ said Shelley, and hid her head under the pillow. But Rilke pulled the pillow away. ‘Let’s go, sleepyhead! It’s adventure time!’

  Shelley growled like Bootnip and pretended to bite Rilke’s arm, but that just got Rilke more excited and he started hitting her with the pillow. Finally she gave in and got up.

  After a breakfast of bread and honey and nuts, with sheep’s milk to drink – Shelley found it surprisingly mild-flavoured, though very creamy – Ira and Grim farewelled their son solemnly. They knew they were unlikely to see him again. Ira wept openly, but Grim hid his tears. He gave his son a little hand-forged sword in a black leather scabbard, and put it on Rilke’s belt.

  ‘This is an heirloom of our house, made by the sons of Calibur, the Smith of Edartha. Their forge was in Baz Apédnapath long ago. See, on the blade their sign: the sword in the stone. Do not draw it hastily. Obey the Lord Korman at all times, my son,’ he said in the archaic form of speech the Aedenites used at such times. ‘And respect and protect the esteemed lady, Shelley of Edartha. She may be the Jewel-Caller, the Kortana, who will one day save us all!’

  Korman farewelled them in like manner, hoisted the heavy pack onto his back, and said to Rilke, ‘Lead on!’

  Shelley looked into Rilke’s face, and wondered how he could be so cheery, leaving his loving parents and home village in such mortal danger, and becoming a hunted refugee. But she caught the hidden fear in his eyes, and knew he was just being extra brave for them. She smiled at him, and he gave her a slightly forced little smile.

  ‘Goodbye!’ he waved to his parents, and walking close by Shelley’s side he strode bravely away from the only home he knew. Shelley felt a sudden wave of sadness as she thought of her own parents, how they would have felt when she disappeared without a goodbye. ‘But they don’t really care that much, I suppose,’ she told herself. ‘They’ve probably separated by now. Serve them right really, trying to live a lie… I wonder if dad got Mark. He was always his favourite. Now I know why of course – he’s his. I’m only mum’s, not really his at all. Well, I don’t care any more.’ But she felt the tears welling up and stinging her tired eyes. She turned her face so Rilke wouldn’t see.

  They went down the street a little way then turned right, winding their way up the paths to the terraced gardens where rye and corn and carrots and cabbages, and many other vegetables Shelley had never seen, were growing. There were piles of thorny weeds heaped up by the path, and Rilke said they were from the floating seeds that came over the mountains from the Plateau. ‘Yippee! I’ll never have to weed them again!’ he grinned. Now the parting was over, and he was with his new friends, this kind girl and mighty Guardian, his boundless enthusiasm for adventure was filling his heart with exuberant joy.

  They passed the gardens – Rilke pointed out his parents’ patch – and came to the claypits. He told them breathlessly how he used to help the villagers cut the straw and trample it squishily into the mud and sand then slop the mix into moulds to make bricks. Soon they were climbing the steep hillside under gnarled olive trees, up and up towards the high canyon pass which Rilke had told them about.

  ‘Not even father knew about this pass I’m taking you to,’ said Rilke, proudly. ‘He doesn’t do much exploring. Not like me! Well, it’s more like a crack in the rock, really. But I can squeeze through. You just have to watch for spiders and cave hoppers. Sometimes there’s bats too!’

  Shelley did not like the sound of it, but expressed polite admiration for his exploring skills.

  Dawn was approaching in pearly splendour above the olive grove and the stony path was becoming even steeper, with the occasional step cut into the rock, when Korman heard a faint drone. Instantly, he responded. With some things, he knew, there are no second chances.

  ‘Tracker hornets! Lie on the ground and keep perfectly still!’ he whispered, and the children dropped down beside him, hardly breathing as the noise got louder. The hum was mostly overhead, but a single louder droning sound was coming through the trees at eye level, darting this way and that as if searching. It sounded like a very big bumblebee or a distant trail bike to Shelley. It was getting rapidly nearer. It passed by a little to their right, and she looked up in time to see a huge black hornet disappear down the slope. She looked to where the others lay, but she could hardly see them. They seemed to have merged with the earth. Even Bootnip was making no sound.

  ‘They are gone,’ said Korman, rising up as if out of the leaf-mould, brushing dead leaves from his cassock, ‘but the Trackers are not far away.’

  The children were shaky as they got up, but Rilke said bravely, ‘They weren’t so much bigger than the ones that stung me.’

  Down in the valley, two hooded figures, a tall man with a staff and a short woman, looking remarkably like Korman and Shelley, walked down the single street of Pebblebrook village and turned left at the far end. A few faces at windows watched them as they set off up the path that led to the hills.

  On the other side of the valley, much higher up, the real Korman and Shelley, and Rilke their enthusiastic guide, were still climbing. They were now out of the olives and picking their way up a rocky slope, almost under the line of huge blue-limestone crags at the top. Rilke was already looking out for his hidden pass. Shelley, panting, stopped to get a pebble out of her boot.

  Then Rilke called out, ‘Over here! I’ve found it!’

  Shelley looked up in time to see him disappear behind a tussock-covered mound at the foot of the sheer crags. She saw there was a crack between two huge rockfaces, but it hardly looked big enough for anything bigger than a rat. ‘Or a bat,’ she thought with a shudder.

  Korman beckoned for her to follow Rilke, and he brought up the rear as they pushed past dry bracken covered in climbing vines. The crack in the rock opened up as they approached, and Shelley saw it was just wide enough to walk through without having to go sideways. Looking back she saw the mountains of the other side of the Pebblebrook valley, and thought of the life Rilke was leaving behind, down there in the quiet valley. She hoped his parents would be all right. Then she turned and looked into the dark crack. She saw there was light around the corner, though hardly any above, as it was so far to the top and plants were growing in cracks all the way up.

  Then she saw a dark, leathery creature hanging from a ledge in the rock; then another and another. They were big bats, like the flying foxes she had seen in documentaries. One woke up and looked straight at her, its foxy face inquisitive and bright-eyed. Then it opened its mouth and let out a squeal, high-pitched like a dog-whistle. She screamed, and the whole line of bats opened their leathery wings, all of them squealing with thin piercing shrieks, and made for the open air, some flying away from her, others straight for her. She flung herself down as they passed overhead with a musky smell, their flapping wings fanning her body.

  ‘Wow, fun, lots of bats this time! I’ll protect you, Shelley!’ said Rilke, whooping and drawing his sword to slash at them.

  ‘Do not hurt the bats!’ said Korman, behind Shelley. ‘They are harmless, and also the smell of their blood will attract unwanted attention.�
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  ‘From the Trackers?’ said Rilke.

  ‘Not only the Trackers,’ said Korman.

  Rilke quickly sheathed his sword. ‘Father has warned me about the fierce creatures in the rocks, the ones that come from the Plateau,’ said Rilke, ‘but I’ve never seen one of those, those…’

  ‘Rog Tannax. No, we do not want to meet one, especially now when we must hurry into the Badlands and head for Ürak Tara before the Trackers find our trail.’ Korman stopped, motioning the others to wait. Then he raised his staff at the entrance to the crack. ‘This is only a hasty defence, but the narrowness of the gap makes it worth trying to conceal with a mindweb,’ he said. He chanted a short mindweb spell, waving his staff with a weaving motion. ‘Now, let us go on, into the trackless wilderness.’

  ‘There are tracks in there, I think,’ said Rilke seriously, ‘but I’ve never been past here.’

  ‘Then let us beware of whatever made the tracks,’ replied Korman, with a slight smile. Rilke who had been rushing ahead, stopped. Looking around nervously, he waited for the others to catch up.

  The walls drew in as they went forward, until Korman and Shelley were inching along sideways, with their packs off. Shelley tried not to think of spiders and cave hoppers in the dark above her, but her neck bristled, and she felt as though things were in her hair. She tried to wipe her face and cobwebs dragged stickily over it, catching in her eyelashes and mouth. She felt as if she would choke. ‘This is not a good start to the Badlands,’ she muttered apprehensively, spitting out cobwebs.

  Now Rilke was running, down a slope full of dead leaves that crunched under his feet, out into the light and air. Beyond him there was a panorama of wild mountains, jagged cliffs with gnarled trees clinging to their faces. They all blinked in the early morning sunlight.

  After a while Korman spoke. ‘We are looking down from the great Northeast Arm, the backbone and sacred pathway from the Tor Enyása to the Guardian World Mountain on the coast. When the Golden Jewel, the Heartstone, was in its place in the Tree, the beam of subtle light would pass this way, linking the Jewel in the Tree of Life to the jewel in the Northeastern Peak, then to the Jewel in the Guardian Tree, and from there all the way to the Guardian World. And all who walked the sacred pathway along the Spur would be bathed in the energy of the beam, and sense something of the spirit of the Guardian World.

  ‘Ahead of us now are the northern Badlands; beyond them is the beginning of the Northern Applefields (now wild and untended) and the Great Northern Fairy Forest and Lake Avalon, where the maidens of the Lady perhaps still live. But we only need to go a little way northwest, skirting the hills of the Badlands, then strike out west through the Vale of Applegate until we come to the great Northern Arm, where I think Ürak Tara is. We must also keep as far away from the Tor Enyása as we can, so we cannot go south. That is where the Traveller’s strongholds are, and the thorn thickets are most dense. Hopefully further north, near Ürak Tara, the thorns will not be impenetrable.’

  ‘Will we get there before dark?’ asked Shelley, not very hopefully.

  ‘No, it is not an easy path through the Badlands, and we will be at least another night and a day before we arrive at the Northern Spur. Then we will have to search for Ürak Tara,’ replied Korman.

  ‘Oh, goody, camping under the stars!’ said Rilke. But Shelley’s heart sank, and she felt a foreboding that this would not be an easy journey.

  After a lunch of Grim’s honey and Ira’s homebaked ryebread, washed down with springwater from their leather waterbottles, the little party began the descent into the Northern Badlands. They had to cross the great northeastern highway which ran almost straight along the northern flanks of the Spur.

  ‘This,’ said Korman, ‘is the road the Aghmaath take to transport prisoners, mostly Boy Raiders, from the Portal hills where you first appeared, Shelley. If you had not been rescued by the Boy Raiders, you would have passed here on your way to the Tor Enyása, then down into the Avenue of Despair in the Valley of Thorns.’

  Shelley shuddered at the memory, still vivid but almost dream-like, something that had happened to another person. So much had happened since then, and the mysteries of Aeden and its ancient history deepened with each passing day.

  There was a feeling of nostalgia, now, remembering the Boy Raiders, and Earth, and her own family so far away. She hoped she could get the journey over fast, find the Lost Heartstone, if that was really what she was expected to do, and then go home.

  ‘Do you think I’ll be able to get through the Portal again from this side?’ she asked Korman as he led them quickly across the road.

  He replied, without looking back, ‘When the time comes, I am sure the way will open up. More so when your mind is purified and you understand the Way of the Lady.’