The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic

by Jennifer Trafton

  Lucas kicked his leg against the side of the throne and shoved his crown out of his face. “Persnickety was supposed to come back and tell us if she saw a giant in the Snoring Cave, and she didn’t. So there! No giant. And by the way, whatever happened to Badly?”

  “Your servant Badly has returned from the Western Shore with a worse cold than before,” said the potter. “He says he saw a crowd of people running out of one of the caves and screaming about seeing the head of a giant. He doesn’t know what happened to the Rumblebumps . . . or Worvil.” The potter paused, and a worried expression crossed his face. “Persimmony Smudge has disappeared.”

  “Smudge? Her name is Smudge?”

  “Of course. Badly announced it when we arrived.”

  “No he didn’t. I distinctly heard him say SssM-MMMnnggggPHPHPH.” Lucas smacked his forehead. “It must run in the family.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the potter, startled.

  “Well, according to my father’s journal, some crazy man named Smudge came to him a long time ago and said he saw a giant’s head in a cave, and my father sure let him know what was what and who was who! And now we go and let his daughter—I suppose that’s what she is—go to the same cave! And she disappears too! It figures. No respect for the king.”

  The sky broke open in Theodore’s face. He stared down at his cane, nodding his head and mumbling, “Simeon Smudge saw the giant? So that was it. Aha. Yes. It’s all clear now.” Then he directed a piercing gaze at the king. “Your Highness, your father was a very foolish man to send away Simeon Smudge, and unfortunately he will never know all the consequences of his actions. I think that this kingdom will someday be very thankful that Persimmony is just like her father. I hope that you will not be like yours.”

  Lucas looked at the potter as if the wrinkled hand holding the wooden cane had just slapped him across the face. “How dare you? No one is leaving! I’ll bar the castle gates, I’ll tie your shoelaces together so you trip, I’ll hide your trunks where you’ll never find them ...”

  “Why don’t we see what the Lyre-That-Never-Lies has to say,” suggested Theodore.

  The royal musician came forward and strummed the beautiful instrument softly. The words that came out were tight and high-pitched, as if the heart of the Lyre were stretched nearly to the point of breaking.

  Beware of lofty places

  When a mountain has two faces.

  If you do not heed my warning,

  All your joy will turn to mourning.

  The music rang coldly in the throne room and faded away in an instant.

  “Well, that doesn’t help one bit!” cried Lucas. “Which morning? Tomorrow morning?”

  “I think it meant ‘mourning’ as in crying,” said Professor Quibble.

  “Of course it did. I always cry in the morning. There is nothing worse than getting out of bed. And whoever heard of a mountain having two faces?”

  “This one does,” said Theodore. “The face the world sees from the outside and the one that lies hidden on the inside.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Lucas.

  “Will you ignore the Lyre’s warning then?” Theodore shook his head and tapped his cane on the floor.

  Lucas was silent for a long time. His head hurt from all this thinking. His motto had always been “Eat first, think later,” and somehow he usually never managed to get around to the second part. “If you had done your job and made us a pot with something useful in it,” he said, “instead of feathers and flutes, this whole problem could have been solved by now.”

  “For the last time, I am not the one who puts gifts in the pots!”

  “Well, if you don’t, who does?”

  “I have no idea,” said the potter. “Who puts words of truth into the strings of a Lyre? Perhaps there are some things that we are not meant to understand. Without a few mysteries and a few giants, life would be a very small thing, after all.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Lucas said firmly. “Even if there is a giant, which there is not, how will I ever hold my head up high again if I give in now? Shall I disgrace the memory of my father by running away from my throne at the first sign of danger? No! Life is full of dangers. Why, just the other day, I burned my tongue while drinking my tea. Is that any reason for throwing out the teakettle? This has been the home of the kings and queens of the Island at the Center of Everything for hundreds of years, and I’ll be flibbertigibbeted—”

  “Excuse me, Your Highness, but there’s no such word as ‘flibbertigibbeted,’” Professor Quibble interrupted.

  “Well, there is now! I’ll be flibbertigibbeted if I stoop to the level of those who’d rather be crushed under a giant’s foot than thrown into the sky by an exploding belt buckle!”

  Lucas stopped to catch his breath, hoping his speech had sounded brave and noble enough to convince his listeners. But the truth was that King Lucas the Loftier had never gone down from the mountain in his entire life. It meant no longer being On Top of Majestic, no longer being Lofty. It meant descending into the world of Everybody Else. He would have no idea what to do, where to go, how to behave. He wouldn’t know who he was anymore.

  In the end, everyone did leave the castle. Everyone except the king. Lucas stood alone in the silence of the empty castle and listened to the rumble of footsteps and the rattle of wheels fade away. Then he began climbing the stairs of the highest tower.

  After a few steps he felt a familiar, soft body nudging his feet. It was the gray cat.

  “Go, Pepper,” he said with a stone weighing down his heart. “Everyone else has gone. Go and catch up with them.” But the cat stood still and stared up at the king lovingly.

  Lucas’s heart rose a fraction of an inch. “Aha! So there is still one loyal subject left in my land. Come along then, Pepper, and we shall look down upon those cowards together. Giant, my foot!”

  He went halfway up the staircase and stopped. “Wait. No, Pepper. You can’t come with me. I don’t believe there’s a giant. I don’t believe anything’s going to happen to the mountain or the castle. But still, it is possible. There is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny chance that I might be wrong. And if I’m wrong, and there is a giant, and the giant wakes up, then it would be a very bad thing for you to be in the tower with me. Go on down, you silly cat. Go and find a safer home.”

  And he turned again and walked the rest of the way up the stairs, but when he reached the tower the cat was still with him, close at his heel. Its purring was the only sound in the entire castle. Just inside the door of the tower room sat the pot Theodore had made for him, once full of milk, now empty.

  Beware of lofty places . . .

  Lucas sat down on the top step, picked up the cat, and held his face against its warm fur.

  “Oh, Pepper, what shall I do?”

  News spreads quickly on an island, and the bigger the news the more quickly it spreads. A barefoot basket maker’s daughter telling stories of a giant sleeping underneath the mountain was one thing. But it was hard to argue with nine shivering, horrified, bloodshot-eyed, respectable citizens who all swore up and down that they had stood nose to nose with, well, a Gigantic Nose. Not to mention a Tidal Wave of Hideous Eyebrows. Hysteria hovered over roof-tops like a storm cloud about to burst, terror whispered in the back of broom closets, and there was a general epidemic of fainting fits.

  Flack organized a campaign to protest the giant’s existence and posted notices all over the town of Candlenut: “Justice for the normal people! No creatures over twenty feet tall will be tolerated in the kingdom!” All members of the Citizens Against Giants vowed to turn their backs to Mount Majestic until their grievances were resolved.

  The sweet potato farmer who had once scoffed at Persimmony’s announcement put a cooking pot on his head, wore a sign around his neck that said, “IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD, TOOTELOO, TOOTELOO!” and roamed the town yelling, “Listen to me, all you reckless souls who think you will live forever, for the world is a bottomless bowl turned inside out and
the radishes will be made into mud pies and the banana trees will sprout pickles and the sky will rain oysters and two plus two will be seventeen forevermore! Woe, woe, woe to us who live to see this day!”

  Those who stopped to listen were met by Jim-Jo Pumpernickel selling his Super-Deluxe Extra-Resistant Giant-Proof Helmets.

  It certainly did not help matters when all of the servants and residents of the castle (except the king) swarmed down the mountain with trunks of all their possessions, carts of wounded soldiers, and rumors of battles and belt buckles. For hours the streets were haunted by the specter of a white-haired potter, hunched with age and worry, begging everyone to find a place of safety underground or out of sight, and asking if anyone had seen a little girl with mouse-colored hair or a woman wearing a purple and yellow handkerchief.

  Even Professor Quibble was forced to admit that the Facts were looking more and more unpleasant by the hour.

  The unpleasant Facts rushed into Persimmony’s head as soon as she woke up in the cupboard where she had hidden from the furious Leafeater cooks. How long had she been asleep? How did one tell time in this underground city? What if it’s already over? she thought frantically. What if I’ve slept through everything? What if the giant is up there walking around on the earth, and I’m the one who will be trapped underground forever? What if Mount Majestic has crumbled to pieces, and everyone is dead except me?

  And then she was ashamed of herself. She was acting just like Worvil. She climbed out of the cupboard and wondered what to do next.

  This room was exactly like every other room she had run through—the same leaves, the same spare furniture, the same beautifully painted walls. She was lost. She had no idea where the captain or the soldiers were. She had no idea where the Leafeater with the dandelion hat had gone. She needed a new perspective. She needed to see things from a different point of view. Her fingers and toes itched to move, but the mockery of the hat maker in Candlenut still rang in her ears. Well, no one was here now to make fun of her. She sighed, turned over, and stood on her head.

  The situation didn’t look any better upside down, but it did look a lot more interesting. The beds seemed much more comfortable. She imagined what the Leafeaters’ lives would be like if they occasionally read their rules of courtesy from this angle:

  She found herself face-to-face, so to speak, with the painted vines that ran along the bottom of the wall near the floor—hiding behind a bed or a chest or a chair, racing around the room, peeking into and out of corners, and then rushing up, up, over the frame of the door into a glorious tangle at the top. And then she saw it: a fish in a net.

  Persimmony lowered her feet to the ground and stood up straight. She stepped closer. In the center of the pattern of painted vines over the door was an oval, with one end narrowing to a point and the other end narrowing and then flaring out again into two longer points—a fish. Underneath, the vines wove over and under and over and under each other like a basket—or a net. There it was, exactly as Captain Gidding had said: a fish in a net. Now that she saw the shape amidst the chaos, it was obvious. How could she have missed it before?

  She turned around and stood under another doorway on the opposite side of the room. The arch of vines here was much more complicated to unravel. There seemed to be thick bundles of vines growing straight up, with thinner vines climbing up and around them. Growing out of the thinner vines were shapes that looked like leaves—yes, these were definitely leaves—and something else. Long drooping spikes covered with little round circles, like berries. No—like ripe peppercorns, ready to be picked and dried and ground into fine black pepper.

  Puzzling over it in her head, she opened the door and passed into a chamber much like the one she had just left. Across from her as she entered was another door with pepper plants above it. She turned back to look at the door through which she had just come. There was the fish and the net.

  So the Leafeaters painted fish and pepper plants above their doorways. What did it mean?

  But this room also had a third door on the wall in between the other two, to the right of the fish door and to the left of the pepper door. Here Persimmony stood for a much longer time, her eyes following the path of the vines over and over again but finding no pattern. Only swirls. Vines swirling in circles and melting away into tiny ripples. Great rolling bodies of green, at the very edge exploding into chaos.

  Smooth, billowing curves.

  Rolling and crashing.

  The sea.

  The sea! Very slowly she turned around where she stood. Fish in nets. Ocean waves. Pepper plants. The fourth wall was blank.

  This time she went through the door with the waves above it. The door opened onto a long corridor. Directly across the corridor was another door. When she opened it and burst into this new chamber, she hardly needed to look around her to know what would be above the three doors she saw first. Straight ahead, more waves. To the right, leafy stalks. To the left, a fish in a net. She turned and looked above the door she had just entered.

  There it was: the gentle shape of the mountain, and rising from its top the many spires of the castle.

  Four doors. Four directions. The fishermen with their nets to the north. The billows of the sea to the east. The pepper plants to the south. And to the west—Mount Majestic.

  Now she knew what to do.

  Chapter 23

  IN WHICH PERSIMMONY’S TALENTS ARE APPRECIATED, THOUGH NOT THE RIGHT ONES

  Even knowing which way was west, Persimmony found it harder than she had hoped to discover the precise path the Leafeaters had taken. The corridors twisted, forked, doubled back on themselves, and dead-ended. Sometimes she would take a west-facing door only to end up in a corridor that turned a corner and led her east again. Her thoughts were twisting and turning too. What if (oh, there was Worvil again!) . . . what if she got so lost in this maze of tunnels that no one ever found her again? If no one knows where you are, do you still exist? If her father could vanish the way he did, what would happen to her?

  But she kept choosing directions, and she kept running, and slowly she made her way farther and farther west. Finally, she came to a very wide corridor, almost like a main street, with torches lighting the path ahead.

  Paintings filled the walls—lush, sweeping strokes of color, as if someone had been painting in a hurry—and all of the pictures were of Leafeaters digging. Persimmony began to run. Painted figures whizzed past her, and here and there an image of Mount Majestic itself, until finally they stopped abruptly. She nearly tripped over the jars of paint lying idly on the floor. This must be where Rheuben Rhinkle was working before he went to Candlenut to buy more paintbrushes, she thought.

  And then she heard the sound she had been waiting for: the distant clatter of metal meeting earth and stone. Straight ahead, she could see a wriggling mass of colorless bodies.

  The entire Leafeater city was there—men, women, and children—attacking the earth with the blind zeal of a common mission. Some stood on wooden platforms, working high above the heads of the rest. Others hauled away dirt in big buckets. The Leafeater with the hat of dandelions stood apart from the rest, surveying the progress and barking out commands: “More to the left! Do not waste a moment, brave citizens of Willowroot, for your reward is close at hand!” This must be Chief Rhule, the one the Leafeaters in the corridor said would decide what to do with her and Captain Gidding. He certainly looked chief-ly.

  Persimmony stared at the wall of dirt and rocks nearly hidden by the diggers. As clumps fell away under the shovels’ goading, she could see large patches of something underneath, something that was smooth and slightly pink and definitely not dirt.

  “We’ve hit some sort of strange rock formation. Dig harder!” Rhule shouted. “Let’s clear as wide a path as we can. We must be nearly at the foot of the mountain by now.”

  The foot of the mountain indeed!

  Persimmony ran to where Chief Rhule stood, took a deep breath, and yelled, “STOP!”

  At leas
t, that was what she meant to do. But what actually happened was this: She took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to yell. And nothing came out.

  She cleared her throat and tried again—and choked upon silence.

  With all of the strength in her lungs she struggled to squeeze out a word, a sound, even a whisper. She squeezed and strained until her face turned red and her eyes watered. Chief Rhule turned around. “What under the earth? It is a Sunspitter! How did you find our secret entrances?” He stomped toward her, his dandelion hat quivering with indignation. “Are there more of you? Do you dare come with an army? Speak up, young lady, I can’t hear you.”

  Theodore’s words came back to her in a flash: If you or I were to drink the Leafeaters’ tears, we would be left speechless. We would not be able to say a single word.

  The stew!

  “Rhiddle!” Rhule roared. “Your aid is needed.”

  One of the Leafeaters at the back of the crowd came running.

  “Rhiddle, this insolent girl has invaded our city. Moreover, I believe she has been sent by the king to stop our digging and sabotage our quest for justice. Moreover, she refuses to speak when she is spoken to. Arrest her at once.”

  Rhiddle gazed doubtfully at the dirty figure standing before him, and Persimmony felt her cheeks grow hot. She motioned with her hands, she pointed to the wall of earth and then to the bottom of her foot, she jumped high and waved her arms and shook her head, but the two Leafeaters were utterly baffled. Then she remembered the giant’s hair and held the belt out toward Rhule.

  “You know best, of course, my chief,” said Rhiddle, “but I think if she were here to sabotage our quest for justice she would bring a sword, not a peace offering. And besides, a Sunspitter who doesn’t speak is a vast improvement, don’t you agree?”