Then she turned to the Rumblebump. “Guafnoggle, can you remember anyone else ever going into this cave?”
Guafnoggle’s brow wrinkled, and he twisted a lock of hair several times around his nose to think. Then his eyes lit up. “The Grandest Grand Stomper of All! Yes, yes, I remember! We called him that because he once saved twelve starfish from being eaten by a very hungry sea otter, which is more than any other Grand Stomper had ever saved, and he was our Grand Stomper for months and months and was the very best saver, until he went away for a long time, but then he came back and we laughed and waved to him as he went into the Snoring Cave, but that was many years ago, and come to think of it, he looked a lot like you—same color hair, same eyes, same nose, same mouth, same—”
He had been here! The mad swarm of butterflies in her stomach began to dance. He looked like me! Her numb fingers and toes tingled with a new warm glow. And suddenly, against all reason, she wanted to run back into the cave again. She had the strange feeling that this time it would be her father lying there asleep, and not a giant. His was the face she longed to see.
“But”—she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer—“did you see him come out of the Snoring Cave again?”
“Don’t know. We all decided to go swimming, and I was the very best swimmer then, and I still am, and I was teaching everyone else how to ride a wave backward and forgot all about him. But why wouldn’t he come out again? Everyone who goes into a cave comes out again, unless you fall asleep, which I did once, because I was very full from eating so many seaweed sandwiches for supper, and it was hours and hours before I ...”
Persimmony didn’t wait for Guafnoggle’s cyclone of words to end. She bounded up the rocks toward the cliff face. But when she was out of their sight, she turned to the right and began heading south, around the mountain instead of up. There was no time to waste. She was the daughter of Simeon Smudge, Discoverer of Giants, and she had a job to do now. She was going straight to the Willow Woods to find the soldiers.
Chapter 13
IN WHICH PERSIMMONY DRIVES A HARD BARGAIN AND WORVIL CATCHES A STAR IN HIS POCKET
Mount Majestic! Persimmony had seen it in the distance every single day of her life—like a huge, watchful guardian. Trees would someday fall, the waves would wash away the sand, but Mount Majestic would always be standing solid and dependable—rising or falling, but there.
At least, that’s what she had always believed.
Now the flags atop the castle seemed to shiver and nod and whisper to each other in the wind. And so they should, for they were flying above a great and terrible secret.
Before long she had left the western rocks behind her and had come to a road leading east through the small village of Bristlebend. She could smell the fresh bread baking and hear the mooing of a cow as its owner milked it—as if this were just an ordinary morning. As if the sun were shining on an island with nothing to hide and nothing to fear. But Persimmony felt as if someone had turned her upside down and started shaking her, till her head was a jumble and the earth was falling into the sky.
“You look like a young lady who knows the value of a good colander. You never know when you’re going to need to rinse your spinach.” A peddler stood before her, smiling broadly and holding a large round bowl with holes in the bottom for washing vegetables. He wore four hats stacked on his head and a belt with pouches in which were stuffed dozens of bottles of varying shapes and sizes, holding mysterious liquids. Beside him stood a donkey that was carrying the rest of the merchandise in two enormous bundles on either side of its back.
Persimmony couldn’t hold in the news a moment longer. “There’s a giant sleeping under Mount Majestic, and the Leafeaters are digging toward his feet, and if the giant wakes up we’re all going to die,” she said in a rush.
“Now how about that!” said the peddler. “A giant, you say? Very exciting indeed. In that case”—he flipped the colander upside down—“perhaps I could interest you in a Super-Deluxe Extra-Resistant Giant-Proof Helmet? Whatever the problem, Jim-Jo Pumpernickel has the cure!”
“You don’t believe me!”
“Why shouldn’t I believe you? I have no reason to think you are a liar.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “My dear, you are obviously in a great hurry to tell people about this giant. You could waste time in this little village trying to interest people who are only concerned about baking bread and milking cows. But you look like a smart girl, and my guess is that you’re heading east to Candlenut, which is known for being full of gossips. Drop a piece of news in Candlenut, and the entire island will know the next day. Therefore you should have said, ‘There’s a giant under Mount Majestic, and if you’ll take me to Candlenut on your donkey so that I can tell people about it, I will make it worth your while.’ A friendly wink wouldn’t hurt either.”
Persimmony thought hard for a moment. “Could you take me to the Willow Woods on your donkey?”
“Ha-ha! A girl after my own heart, always looking for a better bargain. But no, I have no business with the poison-tongued jumping tortoises today. I have a feeling they would prefer the blood in my veins to the merchandise in my pocket. Candlenut is near the border of the woods, and that’s as far as I’ll take you. For a price, of course. For example, that fascinating belt around your waist could make me a fortune at the wigmaker’s.”
“I can’t give you this,” Persimmony said, clutching it protectively. “This is the hair of the giant, and I need it to prove that he exists. But ...” She had nothing of value to offer him. Her pockets held only a spool of thread, a few stones, and the feather Theodore had given her. She wouldn’t give up the basket or its contents for the world. She thought quickly and swallowed hard. In desperate times, sacrifices were necessary. “But I do have a hat. It’s a very nice hat—blue, with embroidered fruit on it. It looks a little like a drowning apple tree.”
“A drowning apple tree hat would be a fair trade for taking you to Candlenut. But forgive me for saying that I can’t seem to find it on your head.”
“I don’t exactly have it with me at the moment.” But perhaps—after this crisis had ended—if it ended well—she could return to the woods and look for it. And if it didn’t end well . . . “If you can get me to Candlenut as soon as possible, I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to find you again and bring you the hat.”
The peddler looked shrewdly at her and her belt of giant’s hair through two pairs of eyeglasses. “Very well, then, I will take you on credit. This is not normally good business sense, since you could be bluffing and I may never see you or the aforementioned hat again. However, since the monetary benefits of being with you when you break the news of the giant to the generous citizens of Candlenut far outweigh the risk of giving you a free ride on my donkey—yes, I will take you. Up you go!” Before she could answer, he had swept her up and set her on the donkey’s back between the two bundles, then climbed behind her and settled into his seat with a happy sigh. “Yes, yes, this is going to be very good for business. Onward, Toddle!”
And the poor overburdened donkey, evidently knowing that the benefits of obeying her master far outweighed the risk of a bruised rear end, used good business sense and trotted as quickly as her wobbly legs would carry her on the dusty road toward the green and gold blanket of farmlands beyond the village.
After Persimmony left, Worvil spent an entire hour with his eyes squeezed shut, hoping that he would wake up from this nightmare and be safe at home. But then he wondered where home was anymore. Not his house that the mangrove tree had run off with, not the potter’s cottage under the willow tree with a tortoise that might return, and certainly not the castle.
He was deep in the middle of pondering this dilemma when suddenly Guafnoggle jumped up and took off running across the rocks toward the sea.
“Wait! WAIT!” cried Worvil, terrified of being left alone with a cave that snored. He scrambled over a boulder and splashed into what he thought was a shallow tide pool between two rocks. A
fter two steps he found himself up to his neck in sea water. A crab scuttled over his foot, and a school of fish swam into one shirt sleeve and out the other. Worvil screamed for help. There was no answer. Holding on to a clump of seaweed wedged between the rocks, he managed to pull himself out of the pool.
Where was Guafnoggle? Worvil remembered the potter’s gift and felt in his pocket for the flute. It felt so powerless in his hands. He put his mouth on the narrow end, took a deep breath, and blew as hard as he could.
SQUAAAAAAWWWWK!!!!!
He jumped at the noise and thrust the flute as quickly as he could back into his pocket, vowing never to take it out again until this whole fiasco was over.
The roar of the surf grew louder, and he was hit by a wall of white foam.
“I’m wet!” he said aloud. “What if I come down with pneumonia?” For the next few minutes he forgot about the Snoring Cave and began looking for a sheltered place away from the breaking waves. He made his way over the slippery stones toward a little cove he had spotted on his way down. The surface of the water there was almost entirely hidden by huge, tangled clumps of seaweed—a blanket of reds and greenish browns that gently swelled with the current. Worvil found a flat rock in the sun and sat down to dry off and to worry.
No sooner had he done so than the entire blanket of seaweed erupted and came splashing out of the water toward him. Worvil let out a shriek, then he recognized one particular clump as the long, wet hair of Guafnoggle. Dripping and giggling, a wave of Rumblebumps rose out of the water and poured onto the rocky shore, leaving wet footprints and trailing long, tangled locks of hair that Worvil had mistaken for seaweed.
“Did we fool you?” cried Guafnoggle in delight at Worvil’s startled face. But he didn’t stop to talk, for the Rumblebumps were already racing off to their next game.
The Rumblebumps were no bigger than Worvil himself (though their feet were so large that if they stood on their tiptoes they would be the tallest people in the kingdom). With all of their layers and layers of shirts and coats and vests and dresses, covered with pockets of all shapes and sizes, they had that lumpy-potato look that Worvil had in his too-big trousers and rolled-up sleeves. But there the similarities ended. The Rumblebumps’ round faces (slightly bluish from spending so much time in the water) were shining with excitement and curiosity, and their seaweed-hair billowed around them like wings as it dried in the sun. Worvil almost believed they would start flying at any moment. They ran from one tide pool to another—anywhere the waves had touched and left water to linger among the rocks—scooping their hands into each one and letting loose great peals of laughter.
One elderly Rumblebump whom the others called Barnacle hobbled by Worvil with his many pockets bulging and squirming. He reached into them one at a time and took out a jellyfish, a sea urchin, two fiddler crabs, clams, mussels, scallops, and a handful of tiny silver tuna, and laid them gently in the water to be washed out to sea again by the tide.
“What are you doing?” Worvil asked.
“Saving them, of course! Are you blind as a bat that you cannot see all the creatures left to die on the shore? We are the savers, and if we did not save them, what on earth would we use all our pockets for?”
And then Barnacle was off again to fill his pockets with more sea creatures in need of rescue.
“I’ve found a horseshoe crab!” came an excited voice from the throng.
“Here’s a snail!” squealed another.
But Worvil was more interested in finding Guafnoggle than in paying much attention to what the rest of the Rumblebumps were doing. He finally spotted him leaning over a shallow pool trying to catch a very nervous seahorse.
“Please,” Worvil said timidly, “couldn’t we go back to the Snoring Cave now?”
“Shhhh!” whispered Guafnoggle. “What did you do that for? You just scared him off again!”
“Persimmony said not to leave it. She told us to guard it with our lives, and—why are you looking at me like that?”
Guafnoggle was staring at him with his eyes wide open and his mouth agape. “You found it.”
“Found what?”
But Guafnoggle had already leaped to the top of one of the boulders and was yelling as loudly as he could, “He found it, he found it, he’s been chosen, come quickly, come and see!”
The Rumblebumps came running to where Worvil stood and gathered around him with a kind of quiet, reverent delight.
A young Rumblebump girl, whose hair was wrapped around her head in a crown of red braids, touched his arm softly. “You’ve been chosen,” she whispered.
Worvil’s nose trembled. “Chosen for what? Why is everyone looking at me? What did I do?”
Guafnoggle pointed solemnly (as solemnly as possible for a Rumblebump, anyway) toward Worvil’s right foot. Worvil looked down. Tucked in the rolled-up cuff of his trouser leg was a small orange starfish, hardly bigger than the palm of his hand. “A starfish is rare and precious and the most beautiful thing there is, and anyone who saves a starfish is the new Grand Stomper of the Rumblebumps—that means you.”
“No, no, no! I didn’t save the starfish! I just accidentally fell into a tide pool and the starfish must have gotten stuck inside my cuff. Here—you can have it!” Worvil picked up the starfish and pushed it into Guafnoggle’s hands.
Guafnoggle burst out laughing and handed it back. “No, silly, the starfish chose you, not me!”
“But I can’t possibly be the Grand Stomper of the Rumblebumps!”
“Why not?”
It was so obvious why not that Worvil couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He grasped for a practical reason. “Because—because I’ve got to guard the Snoring Cave, remember?”
“What’s in the Snoring Cave?” asked the red-braided girl eagerly.
Guafnoggle was very famous among the Rumblebumps because of the vast amount of knowledge he had picked up while working at the castle, and he was not about to miss this opportunity to show some of it off. “Oh, Sallyroo, you will never guess if you guessed as many times as there are fish in the sea,” he said, doing a somersault. A button popped off his coat. “The archaeologist lost his belt buckle and had to dig up the whole dungeon to find it again, and since the king is the center of the world he is tied to the sun by an invisible string and so he had to get the potter to come and pour milk on the pancakes, but then the Leafeaters starting tickling the historian’s feet, so he hid in the Snoring Cave, and if one plus one equals three and there is no proof to the contrary, then there is a giant taking a nap under Mount Majestic!”
“That wasn’t right at all!” protested Worvil. “Well, the last part was right—about there being a giant asleep under the mountain, but—”
He couldn’t finish because all the Rumblebumps suddenly burst out laughing—not in a mocking way like the professor and the king, but as if someone had told them the most marvelous story they had ever heard.
“We must wake him up!” said one. “What fun it would be. He must know some awfully big games.”
“NO!” cried Worvil. “That’s exactly what we can’t do. Don’t you see that the mountain might break into a thousand pieces and the castle might be destroyed and rocks might start falling all around us and—oh! What if we were trapped underneath the rocks? What if we didn’t have any homes anymore?”
“Then we would find new caves and build new houses.”
“But the giant would have very big feet!” said Worvil.
“So do we!” said Barnacle, proudly shaking one of his own. “Are you dumb as driftwood to be scared of someone just because his toes are larger than yours?”
“But he might have such big feet and stomp so hard that the island itself would crumble and fall into the sea, and everyone would be drifting out in the middle of the ocean!”
“Then the giant could save us. He could—” Sallyroo’s eyes lit up as the idea came to her: “He could put us in his pockets!”
The thought of riding in a giant’s pockets was so excit
ing to the Rumblebumps that for a few moments Worvil could hardly get a word in edgewise. Everyone was talking at once about how many of them might fit into one pocket, and who would stand on whose shoulders so that the Rumblebump on top could peek out of the pocket and see what was going on and describe it to the rest.
“There would be nothing fun about it,” Worvil pleaded, wishing for the hundredth time that Persimmony had stayed with him. “There is so much to worry about, and—where are you going?” But he knew immediately where they were going. The Rumblebumps were bouncing merrily over the rocks toward the Snoring Cave to wake up the giant and ride in his pockets.
“Stop, stop!” he yelled desperately. “Your Grand Stomper says stop!”
And to his great surprise, the Rumblebumps did stop. They turned to look at him, disappointed but respectful.
Worvil stood still, his mind whirling. What had he just done? From what deep down, secret, rash, foolishly daring part of him had that outburst come? It was too late now to take it back. “I—I—” he stammered, and said apologetically: “I forbid you to wake up the giant.”
Sallyroo climbed over the rocks and clasped his hand. “So you will be our Grand Stomper?”
In his mind Worvil saw the giant, the real Grand Stomper, grand and enormous and towering over the world, stomping the island into mango pulp. He closed his eyes and nodded.
Guafnoggle yelled, “Hail, Worvil!” and the Rumblebumps echoed, “Hail, hail!” Before he had time to protest, Worvil was being hoisted onto someone’s shoulders and paraded down the shore.
The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic Page 9