The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic

by Jennifer Trafton

  And with that King Lucas stomped down the tower steps, leaving behind an overjoyed cat lapping up the milk as fast as its little tongue could go.

  Chapter 12

  IN WHICH PERSIMMONY MEETS A VERY IMPORTANT PERSON

  Brave of heart and light of foot, the heroes ran over the western rocks with no thought but to find the giant. Nothing could stop them.

  Well, perhaps that was wrong. After all, if nothing could stop a hero, Persimmony thought, the story would be a boring one. Nothing could stop them—except, perhaps, a tidal wave. Yes, that was better. A tidal wave on a rocky shore was just the thing. A small one, at least. She would cling to a rock valiantly, with Worvil holding on to her legs and Guafnoggle paddling with his big feet until the wave had passed, washing away the large clump of seaweed that had been hiding the very cave they had come to seek.

  So far, however, the story was not going as she had imagined it. Instead of traveling on foot like any sensible person would, Guafnoggle had insisted on rolling down Mount Majestic. He grasped hold of his toes, and Worvil—carried inside the circle of the Rumblebump’s arms and feet—went spinning downhill like an animal caught in a rolling barrel. Persimmony ran as fast as she could to keep up. When the Rumblebump suddenly came to a stop, Worvil was catapulted through the air.

  “OUCH!” Worvil gingerly rubbed the swelling lump where his head had struck a rock.

  Guafnoggle, lying spread-eagled on the stone-riddled ground, laughed. “You shouldn’t have let go! I told you not to let go, so you shouldn’t have done it!”

  “Oh, my head! I’ll never count to ten again, thanks to you!” Worvil stood up dizzily and tried practicing on his fingers. Persimmony, arriving breathless a few minutes afterward, fell into a heap beside him and gazed out at the scene before her. They had stopped at the edge of the grassy headlands at the westernmost end of Mount Majestic. In fact, if Guafnoggle and Worvil had rolled a few feet farther they would have rolled right off the edge of a sharp cliff.

  As she climbed down the rocky slopes, Persimmony wished she had huge, leathery, flexible feet like Guafnoggle, who skipped easily over the surfaces and jagged edges. Her own bare feet felt every sharp point. “Guafnoggle!” she yelled above the roar of the surf. “Wait for us!” Below them, the sea lay like a great shining mirror, and Guafnoggle ran eagerly over the rocks to find himself in it. Behind them rose the stony western face of Mount Majestic. Along its rough surface were dozens of caves, some merely cracks, others gaping mouths.

  One cave would lead to a giant’s head.

  “Well,” she sighed, “if Guafnoggle deserts us, I guess we can go listen by each cave until we hear one that snores.”

  “I just remembered that I’m allergic to caves,” said Worvil, shivering.

  “That’s impossible. No one is allergic to caves.”

  “Bats. Every time I see one, I sneeze.”

  “When have you ever seen a bat?”

  “My grandmother once told me a story about bats. I sneezed the rest of the night.”

  She gripped a moss-covered rock and lowered herself down to another rock before she answered: “Isn’t there a single tiny part of you—anywhere at all—that is a little bit excited that you might get to see something no one else believes is there? That you’ve been chosen to do a task no one thinks you can do, and you have a chance to prove that you can?”

  Worvil looked down at his feet, rubbed his chest, and patted his bald head. “No, I don’t think so. I was chosen once to carry a pail of water for my father. I dropped it and broke my toe. I don’t like being chosen. Oh, I should have never left the castle! I should have chained myself to the bedpost, or dressed as a kitchen servant and spent the rest of my life peeling potatoes. But no.” He covered his face in one hand. “It would be no use. Because what if there really is a giant? What if he wakes up? Can you imagine, Persimmony? When he stood up, all of the earth and the stones on top of him would fall like rain onto the fields and the orchards and the beaches. Who could survive that? Farmers would be buried under the flying ruins of a falling mountain. The fishermen would hide in their boats, but what good are boats against a creature so big? And after he was awake! There would be no escaping from him. The trees would be like shrubs to him, and the houses like tiny mounds of dirt under his feet. And the people would be so little he would hardly notice if he walked right on top of them—he might even get down on his hands and knees and pick them up one by one, because after all he would be so hungry after sleeping underground for—”

  Worvil’s right foot slipped and he tumbled forward, grasping in vain for a place to catch himself. Persimmony saw his little body roll over a protruding ledge and disappear. A scream ripped through the wind.

  “WORVIL!” she cried in horror. She quickly and carefully crawled toward the ledge where he had fallen and looked over it, terrified of what she would see.

  Worvil’s rolled-up trouser leg had caught on a sharp rock jutting out from the ledge. He was dangling upside down, his head floating only about six inches above a large, flat stone surface. The many folds of his clothing hung like a sack over his head, and he was blindly shrieking as he imagined himself falling to his doom.

  Guafnoggle, who had heard the screaming and started bounding back up the slopes, took one look and burst into a fit of laughter. Persimmony had to laugh in spite of herself. Climbing over the ledge, she wrapped her arms around Worvil’s waist and lifted him up enough to loosen the trouser leg from the rock—surprised at how little he weighed. Then she lowered him till he lay on the flat surface. He stopped screaming and looked around, dazed. When he realized he was safe, he flung his arms around Persimmony’s neck.

  “You saved me!” he said joyfully. “I owe my life to you!”

  Persimmony had always dreamed of someone saying that to her, but she wanted to actually deserve it when those words came. “Well,” she admitted, trying gently to loosen his fingers from around her throat so she could breathe, “it was really your trousers that saved you.”

  “But you caught me! I would have plunged ten thousand feet into the sea.”

  “You would have fallen about six inches.”

  “I would have died!”

  “You would have gotten another bump on your head.”

  But Worvil heard nothing. “How can I ever repay you?” he asked, staring solemnly into her eyes.

  Persimmony had to work hard not to laugh again. “I’ll try to think of something,” she said as seriously as she could. Then she saw that Guafnoggle was waving to them, and that he was carrying a torch. She helped Worvil to his feet, locked arms with him to keep him from falling again, and slowly followed the Rumblebump.

  Guafnoggle led them past many large open-mouthed caves to a small one that was almost hidden underneath a large, protruding rock. Its opening was low and wide. Sure enough, as the little group drew close they could hear a SOUND coming from deep within the earth.

  Persimmony grabbed the torch from Guafnoggle’s hand. She didn’t like the thought of tiptoeing up to a sleeping giant with one companion whose big feet pounded the stone floor like a drum and another who was likely to scream in terror at any moment. “I’ll go in alone,” she announced. “Worvil, you can stay out here and stand guard with Guafnoggle.” Persimmony spotted an empty oyster shell and put it in the pocket of her dress. It was as sharp as a razor—perfect for cutting off a lock of hair.

  She flashed a wide smile to show she was not afraid, then turned toward the blackness and crawled inside.

  And the truth was, she felt no fear—yet. In fact, she was almost disappointed by her own calmness. Even the most courageous hero should be a little scared in the face of enormous danger. Every so often Persimmony stopped walking and jumped up and down a bit to try to get some butterflies moving in her stomach, but instead of fluttering they seemed to be huddling together into a tighter and tighter ball.

  The cave was dark and cold and wet and endless. The damp chill seeped into her bones. The torch in her hand ratt
led and cast an eerie path of light against the cave walls around her. The roar of the waves on the shore grew fainter and fainter, but the SOUND continued—deeper than any voice she had ever heard, louder and longer than the growl of any beast.

  There was not just the SOUND to deal with. There was the suction. Persimmony felt pulled forward with every step. At first she thought a strong wind behind her was causing this strange sensation, but as she got farther away from the cave’s entrance she realized that this force was coming from within the mountain. It was sucking her in . . .

  Toward what?

  Step by step she continued on, and with each step the world she knew grew more and more distant. Far behind her, Worvil was probably biting his nails anxiously waiting for her to return. Far above her, the king was probably sitting on his throne listening to the professor drone on about multiplication tables. Her mother and Prunella were probably sitting cross-legged on the floor of their cottage weaving willow wands into baskets as they did every morning. Farmers were plowing their fields, shopkeepers were counting money, and coconut pickers were climbing palm trees. But here on this stone road into the heart of the mountain there was only a young girl with bare feet and nothing to hold on to but a torch and no sound but the SOUND, wrapping itself around her, pulling her closer. And with each step a little piece of her bravery fell off and rolled away.

  She stopped once to catch her breath and looked down to find that she had tied the hem of her dress into a dozen knots without even realizing it. And then something strange started to happen to her feet. They decided they weren’t going to do a thing she wanted them to do. Keep walking, she told them angrily. But for every five steps forward, they took a step backward, and rubbed their cold toes against each other, and stuck stubbornly to the cold stone floor.

  Persimmony was concentrating so much on putting one foot in front of the other that she didn’t even notice that the walls on either side of her were growing farther and farther apart. All at once she became aware that she was no longer walking on stone but on something soft and cushiony, like a carpet. She knelt down and reached out her hand.

  Hair. There was no doubt about it. Piles and piles of it, like great coils of rope, or like mounds of fishing nets along a pier.

  It was only then that Persimmony knew that she was not in a narrow tunnel anymore but in an enormous space, and that she was not the only one there. Trembling so much that she could hardly hold the torch, she lifted the light higher . . . and higher . . . and higher . . .

  Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to her knees. She had not imagined big enough. She had only thought about finding the giant. She hadn’t thought about seeing it. She had believed in it, but she hadn’t really considered it being real. She had not stopped to picture in her mind what it would be like to be here, alone, looking at it—him.

  There weren’t enough words to describe him. There weren’t enough words to think him. How many different ways can you say “big”? Huge. Enormous. Gigantic. Immense. Colossal. Towering. Mighty. Majestic.

  Giant.

  The waves of gray hair under her feet poured out of a huge forehead above her. Deep wrinkles stretched far into the darkness. There was an eyelid—closed, oh, what a relief!—and another eyelid, and eyelashes sweeping onto a wrinkled cheek, pitted and creased with age. Could that tower rising high above possibly be a nose? The nostrils twitched with the force of a tremendous breath. And then she saw—nestled within another forest of gray hair, farther ahead, disappearing into the dark of the endless cave—a mouth, a shuddering lip, the white glimmer of teeth.

  She couldn’t see the whole face at once—she had to move her torch so that its light fell in patches on the rough, pale skin. Could all of those patches of face in the light belong to the same face? It was so strange and marvelous that she had an impulse to reach out and stroke the giant’s leathery cheek to see if it was real.

  The giant lay with his head turned slightly toward the tunnel from which Persimmony had come. The stone ledge above him had once shielded him from the glare of the sun when he had first settled down for his nap. Now it shielded him from the earth that covered him with its thick blanket. The tunnel had brought breezes from the sea to cool the giant’s face. Now it carried his breath and the sound of his snoring—a long, deep, rattling snore as the giant breathed in and breathed in and breathed in. What would it sound like when he began to breathe out, Persimmony wondered? He must have been sleeping peacefully for such a long, long time to be breathing so slowly and so deeply. And so he would sleep for another thousand years, or awaken at any moment and open his eyes and see—

  Fear coiled itself around her heart. This was the Person whose feet the Leafeaters were blindly digging toward, the giant feet that would trample everyone as if this were a kingdom of ants. The king didn’t believe it. Captain Gidding and the soldiers didn’t know about the giant as they went off to wage war. The people of the island had not been warned.

  Find the giant, Theodore had whispered to her at breakfast. Quickly. Everything will depend on you. Everything would depend on her? That was too much to carry. What if she failed? What if—?

  Persimmony buried her head in the folds of her dress and gripped the hairy carpet underneath her to keep herself from floating away. And then one of her hands touched something familiar.

  Bringing the torch closer, she saw that it was a basket. And not just any basket—the slender willow branches were braided together just as she had done so many times, and Prunella had done, and her mother had done. This was a Smudge basket. But she knew her mother had never seen the giant. Her mother couldn’t keep a secret that big. Inside were two small, brown lumps. She picked them up. They were made of pine needles, woven and knotted together carefully into two shapes. One was unmistakably a turtle. The other—what was the other? She couldn’t quite make it out.

  He made little animals out of twigs and pine needles, Prunella had said. He made me a turtle once. I don’t know where it went.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  Had he been here? Had he knelt where she was kneeling, and looked up at that same giant face, and felt this same knot of fear inside? What had he done? Had he run out again, dropping the basket in his hurry? Did he tell anyone? Or had he—She caught her breath and looked at the teeth in the distant shadows. No, it was too horrible to think of. She pushed it out of her mind.

  But she felt a little less alone. Carefully she wedged the torch between two rocks and took the oyster shell out of her pocket. Her hands shook as she lifted a lock of the giant’s hair and rubbed the sharp edge of the shell against it, quietly, firmly, breaking one strand and then another. Just as she cut through the last strand, the Snore suddenly erupted into a sputtering Snort, and Persimmony was so startled that she dropped the shell and nearly screamed. The giant’s nose wrinkled and his head shifted slightly—though slightly for him was like an earthquake around Persimmony. She felt the coils of hair buckle under her knees, and though the giant’s eyes were closed, she could see his great gray-bearded mouth moving, forming silent words. Finally, the giant sank back into his dream and was still.

  Persimmony breathed and waited until her frozen fingers had the strength to move again. Then she tied the lock of hair around her waist like a belt. This was her proof.

  Picking up the torch and the basket, and taking one last look at the giant’s closed eyes, she turned and quietly ran back toward the tunnel.

  When she emerged from the cave into the sunlight again, she felt as if she were waking from a dream.

  “Persimmony!” Worvil cried, flinging his stubby arms around her waist while Guafnoggle turned somersaults of joy beside him. “Oh, Persimmony, I thought I’d never see you again! I thought you’d been eaten by bats, or fallen into a bottomless pit, or—” He stopped and backed away slightly, staring at the belt of hair his hands had touched.

  Persimmony looked at the squashed little potato-faced man with his hands stuffed into his rolled-up sleeves. His forehead was sta
mped with the footprints of a hundred worries, and his wide eyes swam in memories of birthday candles and bee stings and falling turtles.

  “Seaweed,” she said, smiling in what she hoped was a convincing way. Her heart was thumping in her chest so loudly that she was afraid Worvil would hear it. “I got cold, so I wrapped it around me.” Guafnoggle looked doubtfully at her. If anyone knew seaweed, it was a Rumblebump. “There’s no giant,” she continued, trying to laugh carelessly, but the laugh came out as more like a hiccup. “The snoring sound is just wind blowing through a hole higher up the mountain. It’s just like the professor said: There’s a logical explanation for everything.”

  Worvil stared at her for a long moment. She knew he didn’t believe her, though he wanted to desperately. “Okay, that’s not exactly true,” she admitted.

  “Oh, I knew it, I knew it,” Worvil wailed, putting his hands to his head as if tear out his hair—if he had any hair to tear. “There is a giant under the mountain!” Guafnoggle had the sense to stuff his coat in his mouth to contain his glee.

  “Not a big one,” Persimmony said quickly. “Actually quite a tiny giant, so small I could hardly see it.”

  “A tiny giant?”

  “Big, small, what’s the difference? I mean, why is a person’s size important anyway? After all, look at you—most people may think you’re short, but I know that inside of that shrinking body there’s a giant waiting to burst out.”

  “There is?” he said in a small voice.

  “Of course! Why else would I trust you to guard the cave while I’m gone?”

  “While you’re . . . gone?” he said in an even smaller voice.

  “You asked how you could repay me for saving your life. Well, here is how. I’ll go back and tell the king what I saw, just as he asked me to do, and you stay here and keep watch so that no one else can go inside and wake the giant up. Guafnoggle will protect you. And remember, you promised not to worry until I did. Do I look worried to you?” She regretted ever trying to wake up the butterflies in her stomach, since they were now coming in swarms. “Don’t worry,” she told Worvil, taking his oversized sleeves in her hands and trying hard to look cheerful and deadly serious at the same time, “but guard it with your life.” She added, “You’re bigger than you think you are.”