by Andrew Symon
He tried hard to remember what Rana had said about using the beetler when she had listened in to the Congress discussions in the same front room the year before. There was something you had to avoid: but what? Jack had just got to the base of the door when he became aware of movement to his left. He froze, and looked over. There it was again, at the very base of the door hinge: an enormous spider. Jack hurriedly moved in the opposite direction and passed under the door.
This room is gigantic, he thought, as he looked up at the ceiling. Everything seemed so far away and so high up. He was aware of voices, but found the sounds hard to make out: a bit echoey. Were they arguing? After a moment or two his ears tuned in to the sounds, and he realised that it was just more than one person talking at the same time. The skirting board, he thought, that’s where Rana said she hid. He scurried over to the side of the room and settled down to listen.
“What else can it possibly mean?” demanded Murkle angrily. “The paper quite clearly talks about a saint’s cave.”
“Have you any idea how many saints there are?” replied Cosmo heatedly. “And how many caves are linked to saints? The humans have wandered about for centuries naming places, often without any real idea of why. It would be like – how do they put it? – looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Most of these papers are of human origin,” said Daid quietly. “I do have some understanding of how they think.”
“Then explain to us, please, what this bit here means.” Murkle sounded annoyed.
“It’s complicated; these parchments are very old, and the script is not of our age.” Daid’s voice was weary. “It will take time to read them and put them together in the right order. We don’t even know if this is the full set.”
“Well, let me look at the Shian papers then,” demanded Murkle. “It is my area of expertise, after all.”
“But the whole point is that they’re together, don’t you see that?” Cosmo tried to keep the heat out of his voice. “We can’t look at one part without the other.”
“Then for goodness’ sake let us decide on a strategy, otherwise we will get nowhere,” snapped Murkle. “I propose that we meet each evening to read and discuss.”
“There are dozens of parchments,” pointed out Uncle Doonya. “That will take weeks.”
“Then let’s make an inventory of what we have and divide up the work,” said Cosmo. It was more a command than a suggestion. Taken aback by his tone, Murkle muttered under his breath something about knowing your place, but he found he could not disagree.
An hour later they had sifted through most of the parchments and were beginning to put them into piles. Jack was getting bored. He had hoped to catch some vital information, but it looked like they were a long way off getting that far. Warily, he moved back under the door, taking care to note that the spider had not moved. Once he was back in the hallway he reached up and dislodged the cap from his head. In a second he had regained his normal height, but as he stood up …
“Oww!” screeched Rana, and she thumped Jack on the side of the head.
As Jack stumbled he felt the beetler cap catch on the edge of a shelf. He quickly pushed the cap down into his pocket.
Aunt Katie came running out of the kitchen. “Honestly, I can’t let you out of my sight for a minute.”
Rana glowered at Jack as they trudged into the kitchen. Jack tried to indicate that she should shut up, but Rana’s back was up.
“He stood on my foot, Mum,” she claimed loudly.
“Rana …” Jack’s voice was hushed, but urgent.
Luckily, Aunt Katie appeared not to notice anything untoward, and she admonished both. There was a moment’s silence. “How’s Lee-Brog, then, dear?” enquired Aunt Katie of Jack.
“Oh, er … fine. He wasn’t in. I mean, we went up to the High Street, er … for a walk.” Jack stuttered through the first excuse he could think of. His aunt had started to wash some vegetables at the kitchen sink and was only half listening.
“That’s good, dear,” she said absent-mindedly. “Now, where did I put those ash berries? I need to rinse them …”
Jack took the opportunity of his aunt’s preoccupation to slip out of the kitchen. He stole upstairs and quickly replaced the beetler cap in Rana’s drawer. Coming back downstairs, he found that Cosmo and the others were just leaving.
“How’re you getting on?” he asked, as innocently as he could.
“Murkle doesn’t want to let the manuscripts out of his sight,” admitted Uncle Doonya. “But we’ve made some progress.” His voice tried to sound cheerful, but it was less than convincing.
“Is it going to take ages then?” asked Rana.
“We’ll have to see,” was all her father would say.
Depressingly, that set the tone for the next two weeks. Each evening Murkle would bring the manuscripts around, Daid following sombrely behind him. Cosmo and the others appeared from the low road entrance, and together with Uncle Doonya, they would shut themselves in the front room and pore over the papers. They gave little away as they broke up a couple of hours later.
The lack of urgency partly reflected the news from Keldy. Malevola had not been heard of since her encounter with Jack, and life – according to Uncle Hart – had returned to normal. Closer to Edinburgh, the Kildashie were posing no obvious threat either. They kept themselves to themselves in their camp just outside the city. All in all, the task of deciphering the manuscripts seemed to become less urgent.
Nevertheless, Jack was restless: like the others, he wanted to find the cave and the bridge, but he especially wanted to know if the Phineas in the prophecy was his father. Jack had considered using the beetler cap again, but to his annoyance found that Rana’s suspicions had led her to tidy her things away more carefully. On asking her where the cap was, she had simply repeated that what was hers was hers, and he could go whistle.
Jack’s frustration at the slow progress with the manuscripts was mirrored by his grandfather’s tediously slow recovery. The youngsters could visit most days now, but Grandpa Sandy remained weak, and the acrid smell from his wounds made the visits less than pleasant. Jack and the others would come away from Armina’s house glad to get some fresh air again.
“Poor Grandpa,” said Lizzie for the umpteenth time after one such visit. “I wish we could do something for him.”
“Is Armina making him any better?” asked Petros. It wasn’t an accusation, more a casual enquiry.
“There’s no one else knows how to heal wounds like he’s got,” stated Rana emphatically. “And anyway, he trusts her.”
“D’you think he’s told her what Tamlina said?” wondered Rana.
“Shouldn’t think so,” replied Jack. “He probably can’t remember much except the pain.”
“He wasn’t so bad to start with,” pointed out Rana. “Before the Phosphan burnt deep he asked her questions.”
Jack thought back to the time they had been in the woods at Keldy. Rana was right. Their grandfather had been clear-headed to begin with, but since getting back he’d been so weak. It was inconceivable that he could have been having detailed discussions with Armina.
Jack decided that it was time to use the beetler again, but he knew that he would have to persuade Rana and Lizzie. He tried an indirect approach.
“I bet we know more than you do about the manuscripts.”
“Oh yes?” replied Rana scornfully. “All you’ve found out is that children will cross a bridge and rescue a dead man.”
“Called Phineas,” pointed out Jack. “You think that’s coincidence? Anyway, we had a bet. But we’ll forget about the money if you’ll share the beetler with us. That way we can listen in.”
“What makes you think the beetler will work?” demanded Rana.
“You used it last year. Why can’t we use it again?”
“Because you tore it, and Freya can’t get the silk thread she needs to mend it.”
“All right, but when you get it back we can all use it. And we’ll
call it quits over the bet.”
However, it was more than a week before Freya obtained the necessary thread, and news about the manuscripts was rare. None of those poring over the papers was inclined to share their findings – if indeed they had any to share.
Once Freya had finally presented Rana and Lizzie with the mended beetler, it was decided that Jack would get to use the cap again, because the name Phineas had been linked with the manuscripts, and he probably had most to gain.
That evening, when the Cos-Howe crew arrived, Jack and the others were all in the kitchen. As ever, they made a point of greeting the visitors, in the hope that they would be asked to join in. But, as usual, Cosmo and the others quickly secreted themselves in the front room with Uncle Doonya, Murkle and Daid.
“We’ll give them twenty minutes,” said Jack. “The speed they’re going, we won’t miss much.”
However, even this short time proved too long for their patience. After fifteen minutes, Rana and Lizzie distracted their mother in the kitchen while Jack went out to the hallway. As he had done before, he gently placed the beetler cap on his head. The shrinking sensation was no less strange, but Jack quickly scuttled towards the base of the front room door. The spider wasn’t there, thank goodness; he could do without that. Once inside the room, Jack took up the same position by the side wall.
It took a minute or two for him to tune in to the voices again. They weren’t arguing this time. If anything, they seemed excited.
“The clue’s in the overlap.” It was Daid who was talking. “These Shian manuscripts talk of the giant’s bridge, and these human papers mention the saint’s cave. But this one here is the only parchment that mentions both, and it talks of the Sphere. For the humans it’s a flag map, but for Shian it’s a globe that shows your true path. It’s the third treasure.”
“This torn bit even gives the cave a name – or part of it: Fin-something,” said Cosmo emphatically. “But this bit here isn’t human, it’s Low Elvish; it describes the bridge, and a Taniwah in the pit of torment at the end.”
Murkle grabbed the frail parchment, causing Uncle Doonya to exclaim, “Careful! That’s hundreds of years old!”
Murkle examined sections of it minutely, then silently put the manuscript down. “It is mixed,” he conceded. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of something that was both Shian and human.”
“The pit of torment must be significant,” said Cosmo. “What do we know about Taniwah lizards?”
“Their gaze is fatal, but they are powerless in sunlight or moonlight,” snapped Murkle. “Any fool knows that.”
“The Sphere is the real prize,” stated Daid firmly. “Whoever has that will be powerful, especially if he can put it together with the Stone and the Chalice.”
“So now we need to find St Fin-whatever’s cave,” stated Oobit.
Jack heard no more. He was suddenly conscious of something moving to his right. Looking round, he saw to his horror that a huge spider was advancing slowly towards him. Panicking, he reached up and grabbed the beetler cap that perched on top of his head. Instantly, he grew to his normal size.
Jack was briefly aware of a shocked silence in the room. Six sets of eyes turned towards him. Instinctively, he made a dash for the door, but Murkle’s hand shot out. Jack yelped in pain as a ragged, grimy fingernail scraped across the back of his left hand. Blood welled up instantly.
Murkle had moved swiftly forward; he reached out again, and this time he made no mistake, gripping Jack firmly by the collar.
“Gotcha!”
11
Household Chores
Jack nearly lost his nerve. Murkle’s grip on him was fierce, and although his first impulse had been to try to squirm free, he realised that this would do no good. Looking calmly up at Murkle’s triumphant features, he said quietly, “Are we going to St Fin’s cave, then?”
Murkle exploded.
“Why, you young …” But as he made to swipe Jack with his free hand, Uncle Doonya stepped in.
“That’s enough, Murkle. Let’s see what Jack has to say for himself.”
Murkle relaxed his grip, but did not let go altogether. Uncle Doonya spoke again.
“Jack, you owe us an explanation.”
“You’re trying to find out about my father,” said Jack simply. “I’ve a right to know what you know.” He looked at his uncle, who stared fixedly back.
Alerted by Murkle’s shout, Aunt Katie now burst in. “Whatever’s happened?” she exclaimed. Then, seeing Jack, she stopped abruptly. “Jack, what on earth are you doing here?”
“This impertinent pup has been hiding in here,” snapped Murkle. “If others were to find out that he knows something …” His voice trailed off.
“Murkle’s right, Jack.” Cosmo stepped forward. “You’re putting yourself in danger.”
“I’ve a right …” started Jack, but he got no further. A shout from Aunt Katie surprised everyone.
“Your hand! It’s bleeding!”
To an outraged gasp from Murkle, she dragged Jack away to the kitchen, where she deftly wrapped a linen bandage around the hand.
Rana and Lizzie watched in silence, unsure how they could help. If they admitted knowledge of what he had been doing, would they end up in trouble too? Jack glanced over at them while his aunt bandaged his hand, but said nothing.
His hand throbbing, Jack was marched back to the living room to face the others. While he had been in the kitchen, they had clearly consulted about the most appropriate course of action. Uncle Doonya spoke.
“Jack, we appreciate that you want to find out about your father, but you must be patient. The information in these papers may be dangerous in the wrong hands. You’re grounded for a fortnight, and for the next week you’ll report to Murkle’s house after supper to help clean it. After that we’ll review matters.”
“That’s not fair …!” began Jack, but he was silenced by a ferocious bark from his uncle.
“Enough! Now, go to your room. We have been delayed too long already.”
Jack found out the next day how bad things were. His morning in Gilmore’s workshop was difficult: his left hand hurt badly and he found stitching almost impossible. He could feel his hand pulsing, each thud a reminder of his wound. The worst, however, was the treat in store for Jack after supper.
Murkle opened his front door and motioned for Jack to come in. Going through to the kitchen, Murkle pointed to a bucket and a pile of cloths.
“The wall around the stove needs cleaned,” he said matter-of-factly.
Jack peered in the bucket of water and saw a bar of soap at the bottom.
“There’s a room to do upstairs when you’ve finished that.” Murkle turned and left.
Jack looked around. The dingy, cluttered kitchen was even grimier than he’d remembered. The stove showed signs of cooking, but not cleaning. Smears of fat and grease decorated the wall behind it. Beside the stove, several dirty pans were piled up on sauce-encrusted plates.
After thirty or forty minutes, Jack felt he had got as much grime off as he could. He looked with satisfaction at how dirty the water had become. Feeling pleased that he had done so well, Jack went to find Murkle.
His tutor was in the front room, reading, but there was no sign of Daid. Seeing Jack at the door, Murkle stood up and wordlessly followed him to the kitchen.
“You haven’t done the dishes,” snapped Murkle, turning round and going back to the front room.
Jack was speechless and briefly considered just walking out. Then, realising that he wouldn’t get far unless Murkle was satisfied, he set to his task. Washing dishes with only one hand was harder than he’d realised, and Jack took some time to accomplish this. When he asked Murkle to come through and check that the task had been done, Murkle merely glanced at the stove and sink and muttered, “You can do the upstairs room tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Jack trudged home, weary after his efforts, and dreading the thought of a whole week of housework in the dirtiest house he’d eve
r been inside.
When he got home, Aunt Katie asked how he’d got on.
“All right,” he mumbled. “My hand’s sore, though; I couldn’t use it.” He showed his bandaged hand to his aunt. Carefully, she peeled back the layers of the bandage and uttered a shriek of horror as she saw the mess underneath.
“It’s infected!” she exclaimed. “Och, I should have cleaned it better.”
She sat Jack down at the table and got to work with cleaning his wound. The edges were red and inflamed; a yellowy-green gunge oozed along the length of the cut.
“Well, there’s no question of you going back to that filthy house,” she stated. “The last thing you need is to get that wound any dirtier.”
Jack smiled. There’s always a silver lining.
“And stitching at Gilmore’s was really difficult too,” he announced, in the hope that he would have the whole day free to himself. His aunt looked at him sternly.
“I know what you’re thinking, Jack. This is supposed to be a punishment. We’ll see what your uncle says when he comes in.”
She dusted some hyperox powder onto his hand and tied a fresh bandage around it. His hand still hurt, but the knowledge that he didn’t have to go back and clean any more of Murkle’s house was some compensation.
However, Jack’s hopes of free days were dashed as soon as his uncle returned. It took Uncle Doonya only a few minutes to make alternative arrangements, and he announced with satisfaction that for the next week Jack would have day and evening lessons with Finbogie.
At Finbogie’s house the next morning, Jack was subjected once again to a list of charms that had to be learnt. Laboriously, he tried to commit them to memory, but his painful hand and sense of grievance about his punishment combined to destroy his concentration.
When he returned that evening, Finbogie decided to test him on what he knew. Picking up Morven’s Book of Defence, he started asking Jack questions.
“How do you defend yourself against a Taniwah?”
Jack wracked his brains. He knew he’d read something about Taniwahs, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall what it was. Finbogie interpreted Jack’s silence correctly and moved on.