The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic

by Jennifer Trafton

  Finally, with a long, sad, vanquished moan, the castle crumbled. The highest tower lasted longest, holding on desperately to the sky, poised precariously on a heap of rubble, until with one last bounce it shot up high into the air and—while all those watching held their breath—fell into a cloud of dust.

  And still the mountain shook. Deep cracks gouged the surface of the green slopes. Clearly, whatever was inside of Mount Majestic was not going to stay there much longer.

  It was now obvious that the end of the tunnel was convulsing far beyond what an army of Leafeaters with shovels could accomplish. Torches clattered to the ground and went out, and one of the wooden platforms fell over as the earth in front of it wrinkled and jerked. Persimmony stared in alarm at a lined, leathery bulge of flesh. Was that a toe?

  “Stay, stay a moment, my friends,” called Chief Rhule as the tunnel lurched and more and more dirt rained down upon their heads. “A slight earthquake seems to be disrupting our work, but it will surely pass soon.”

  The Leafeaters paused in their digging and leaned on their shovels to rest.

  There was no point in sitting still now. With a mighty burst of despair and determination, Worvil tore at the tangles of hair around him and scrambled away from the giant’s face, tripping and rolling and pulling until he was free. He grabbed the torch and started toward the tunnel that led outside. All at once, it seemed, the quaking settled, and the roar ceased. The only sound was the giant’s breathing, but this time the breathing sounded different.

  Then Worvil nearly dropped the torch, because there was another light in the cave—another person with a torch beside him. He moved slightly, and the other light moved too, and he realized that it was his own torch and the faint glimmer of his own form reflected as in a mirror. But there was no mirror. There was a black hole, and a dazzling ring of blue, rimmed with white.

  He turned fully toward it now and lifted his torch, and a magnificent eye stared back at him.

  There must have been a second open eye farther above him too, but Worvil couldn’t move, or take his own eyes away from the one. All of the wild fear inside him froze into an icy horror. The giant was awake. This was the end.

  He had never in his life seen anything like the beauty and awfulness and stillness of that great eye. It blinked slowly in half wakefulness, fanning the cave with its lashes, and the wrinkles of age rippled at its corners. It wasn’t at all like looking into the eye of an animal. This was the eye of a person, whose mind took Worvil in and measured him.

  There was nothing to do but wait to be crushed and swallowed. Worvil couldn’t breathe. He stared into the eye’s blue depths.

  The shaking had stopped. The Leafeaters picked up their shovels again and began approaching the wall. “Now, friends,” Chief Rhule shouted with enthusiasm. “Once more! Dig deep! Dig hard!”

  It doesn’t matter whose fault it is now, thought Persimmony. I’ve got to stop it.

  Oh, how she wished Theodore were here! He would tell her what to do. Was he still in the castle? Had he found a safe place to hide? Then she remembered the feather from the Giving Pot. Glancing down, she spotted it protruding from the pocket of her dress. She pulled it out of the pocket slowly. It was such an ordinary little thing.

  She glanced up again and saw Rhiddle, the Leafeater who had been called over to arrest her, striding solemnly toward the giant’s bare toe. He was holding a pickax. With wooden resolve in his face and steady, deliberate aim, he swung his arms upward and prepared to strike.

  No!

  Persimmony ran to him and rubbed the white plume of the feather softly against the pale skin of his neck.

  “Hoo-hoo-hoo-HOOOOOOOOOO!” exclaimed Rhiddle, jumping as if he’d been bitten and landing flat on his back. The Leafeaters dropped their shovels and turned around with astonishment in their eyes.

  Persimmony knelt closer to Rhiddle and tickled his stomach.

  “Hee-hee-hee! Ha-ha-HAAAAAAAA-ha-ha! Whooooooooo!” Rhiddle convulsed with giggling on the floor beside her, flailing his arms wildly but unable to fend off the feather.

  The Leafeaters had never heard the sound of laughter coming from one of their own people. It echoed in the wide corridor, and one by one they came rushing over to see the source of this extraordinary behavior. “What is going on here?” yelled Chief Rhule, running toward the commotion. “What is the meaning of this rude, vulgar, indecorous, unseemly, ill-mannered—”

  Three other Leafeaters got to Persimmony first and tried to take the feather away from her. But the feather floated above their heads, tossed this way and that by their grasping hands, until it landed in the towering, braided wig of the woman she had seen in the corridor. Persimmony squeezed through the confused crowd and jumped onto the woman’s back, grabbing the feather and tickling every spot of skin she could. The woman squealed and giggled and threw out her arms. Her thick grass skirt whipped around. Her wig fell off, and Persimmony tickled the top of the bald head. Those standing by tried to pull her away, and she tickled them too. The feather escaped again, so she used her fingers instead.

  “Stop laughing, this instant!” roared Chief Rhule. “Stop laughing! STOP LAUGHING!”

  The feather caught him behind his left ear, and he broke into a chuckle that turned into a snicker that turned into a cackle that turned into a roar, until he was laughing so hard that his dandelion hat flew away and he was leaping above the heads of his subjects.

  Then from the lamp-lit corridor at the back of the chaos of flying shovels and wriggling bodies came Captain Gidding, bristling with perseverance and pine needles, undaunted by whatever battle of strength or poetry he had faced with his two Leafeater captives. The soldiers followed, leaves toppling off them left and right. They took one look at the commotion before them and raised their swords to attack. But the captain was watching Persimmony carefully, and he held them back. “Don’t fight them,” he ordered after a moment. “Tickle them!”

  The soldiers rushed into the crowd and did as they were told.

  Something inside of the Leafeaters burst open. Their severe wooden faces cracked. Their colorless skin blushed into a rosy glow. Their mouths stretched into new shapes. And then an even more extraordinary thing happened: They began to tickle each other. The feather passed from person to person, and a mighty chorus of hilarity swelled inside the dim underground space. The roof rang with full-chested guffaws. Stopping for breath and looking around, Persimmony discovered that she was nearly the only person in the whole room who was not laughing.

  She was torn between relief and amazement, but she couldn’t laugh. The tunnel was no longer shaking, but what was happening aboveground? Were her mother and sister all right? Were they safe at home in the cottage, hiding in the cellar, wondering where she was? What was happening in the cave? How scared Worvil must be! She closed her eyes and imagined his face, the squashed potato face of a man whose imagination was too vast for his courage. You’re big, Worvil, she told the frightened face in her mind. You’re big.

  The giant looked at Worvil. Worvil looked at the giant. I am not big, he said to himself. I am small. I am very, very small.

  You’re bigger than you think you are, said Persimmony.

  Maybe he was. Maybe Persimmony was right. Maybe he had sizes all wrong. She had trusted him to watch over the giant. She wouldn’t have trusted him if she didn’t think he could do it, would she? Worvil patted his arms and legs—were they shrinking? Beneath the folds of his trousers, he felt the hard, thin form of the flute. Without daring to tear his eyes away from the Eye, he pulled the flute out with shaking hands. The last time he ever remembered not being afraid—before the fire and the tidal wave and all the other terrible things that had happened—was when he sat on his mother’s lap while she sang a lullaby and rocked him to sleep.

  To sleep. He would put the giant back to sleep!

  What was that tune his mother used to sing? He was so little then, and he would press his ear against her chest and hear the song echoing inside of her as in
a cave. He put the instrument to his lips and tried to take a deep breath and blow hard. No deep breath would come.

  Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate! he told himself. He held the flute tightly, gathered what little breath was left in his lungs, and let out aslow

  steady

  solid stream of air.

  A soft note floated out the other end of the flute. More startled at the quiet sound than he had been the day before at the piercing screech, Worvil blew again, gently, and held his fingers over the holes on the wooden surface.

  The note changed—and changed again—

  Like a dove softly singing its greeting to the sun.

  Like the Lyre wrapping its music around his beating heart.

  But what was that? The giant’s lips quivered as a new sound poured out of them. It was rich and deep. It was humming. The cave was flooded with a song, but it was not the melody Worvil had been playing on his flute. It was like no song Worvil had ever heard before. It reminded him of the Lyre, just a little. It seemed to echo in his very bones. It was a big song—too big for such a small island. It sounded like distant seas and suns and mountain summits. It sounded like Beyond.

  Worvil’s breath faltered for a moment, but he began to play again—gently, gently, as gently as a mother—and this time he played the notes that the giant was humming. The music from the flute and the music from the giant’s lips waltzed together in the cave like the call of a seagull and the roar of the ocean. The creases around the giant’s eyes softened into the faintest smile, and there was a peace in his face that was deeper than the peace of a star.

  Across the island, those few who were not screaming thought they heard a strange sound on the wind—unfamiliar, unsettling, and yet beautiful. They strained to hear it, as though they were straining to reach for a hand that would pull them from the waves.

  Persimmony felt it more than she heard it—a vibrating all around her, like the Lyre’s strings when they were plucked, causing the castle to ring with song. But that’s silly, isn’t it? she thought. Could the earth be singing? She stared at the wall of tingling skin. She listened.

  The giant’s eyelids began to droop. The billows of gray hair rose and twisted and settled again as the giant turned his head to hear the flute better, and his humming faded. The rocks groaned under the weight of his weariness. The deep furrows in his forehead became smooth. His lashes swept the cave one last time and shivered on his cheek. His mouth opened wider, wider, wider into a tremendous final

  then shuddered and sighed and shut.

  Worvil closed his eyes too. Buried fear will fly away, the Lyre had said. His heart was soaring. He breathed the lullaby, covering a world of fears and mountains and giants with the soothing blanket of sleep.

  There was no more digging, and no more laughing. The Leafeaters lay exhausted on the ground, gasping for breath. The soldiers (their work done) were quietly straightening their collars. Persimmony and Captain Gidding sat tensely watching the giant’s toe.

  And watching.

  And watching.

  And watching.

  All was still.

  Chief Rhule lifted himself slowly from the ground and gazed in wonder at the grinning lumps that were his people. He glanced at Persimmony and the captain, then followed their eyes up to the strange wall.

  “Well, look at that,” he said. “It’s a foot.”

  Chapter 26

  IN WHICH MOURNING COMES IN THE MORNING

  The sun rose on a silent, shocked kingdom. Those who emerged from their hiding places and blinked in the early light felt as if their hearts had been put in a jar, shaken into a hundred pieces, and spilled onto the ground again. Now all the pieces were out of order. The islanders looked at one another, wondering how to feel. No one dared to look at the mountain.

  How could they ever go back to milking cows and baking bread and farming fields after this? What did ordinary things matter now that they knew such an extraordinary thing could happen—and might happen again?

  Candlenut was bruised and battered. The worst of the mess was in the center of the town. The battle of food had littered and splattered the main square with a slimy, gooey, sticky, slippery, mangoey, jammy, juicy, turnipy slop.

  Rheuben and the magistrate emerged from underneath the stage and helped the king’s steward to his feet. The steward quietly pointed, and only then did anyone turn their gaze upward toward Mount Majestic. The mountain looked like a tossed salad. All of the ingredients were still there—grass, dirt, rocks, wildflowers—but mixed and scrambled and settled again into a new mountain. To the islanders’ eyes it looked less like something smooth and hilly and more like—someone—under a blanket. The steep, pointed slope on the eastern side—was that a knee? And the western side had rolled over a bit, creating a high cliff that resembled a gigantic shoulder. The castle was gone. There was nothing left but a pile of stones and a single flag waving crookedly in the breeze. “The king,” whispered the steward, kneeling in a mound of squashed sweet potatoes.

  At that moment, as quietly and gracefully as a fog moving over a field, a great company of slightly rosy faces drifted into Candlenut, serene and dignified—except for their mouths, which had a stretched appearance. The Leafeaters stopped at the edge of the crowded square and stared at the distraught townspeople. The townspeople looked wearily back at them, unable to be shocked by anything anymore. What were Leafeaters compared to a giant? What was a stolen rooster or a few broken eggs compared to a mountain roaring with life? Chief Rhule stepped toward the stage, respectfully removed his dandelion hat, and asked in a loud, polite voice, “Excuse me, but where is King Lucas the Loftier?”

  As Persimmony followed the Leafeaters, Captain Gidding, and the soldiers out of Willowroot up into the sunlight, it seemed to her that the world had turned a hundred different colors she had never seen before. The island was still there. Mount Majestic was still there. The oaks and cedars were still standing, and she was standing among them. As she and the others brushed beside the bowing, whispering welcome of willow branches, she wanted to kiss the earthworms. As they emerged from the woods and passed her own cottage, she wanted to run inside and count the soupspoons or peel a potato. And as they marched into Candlenut, she had an irresistible urge to find a cow and milk it, just to know she could.

  But instead of a cow, someone else greeted her. “Persimmony!” her mother screamed. “It’s just as I thought—those dreadful Leafeaters kidnapped you! Did they hurt you? Did they—”

  “Oh, Persimmony,” cried Prunella, “how could you go running off like that when all I asked you to do was—”

  “Do you have any idea what you have put your mother and sister through? How dare you go and—”

  “It’s been so horrible and my feet hurt so much and I was so scared—”

  “Oh, my dear, delightful, disobedient, darling daughter! Why don’t you answer me?”

  Persimmony smiled and closed her eyes and felt herself being folded in giant arms and washed in enormous kisses. She was home.

  Meanwhile, the Leafeaters were conferring with Rhedgrave and Rheuben, now gladly restored to their company. Centuries of wisdom and tradition had never prepared them for a situation like this. They had no “Morning-After-the-Giant-Almost-Woke-Up” Ceremony, no “We’re-So-Sorry-for-Almost-Destroying-Everyone” Ceremony. In their entire Code of Courtesy there was no rule for what to say to those who have watched a mountain nearly erupt and a castle fall into dust with their king inside.

  “We should have a funeral for the king,” pronounced Chief Rhule. Funerals, at least, were something Leafeaters did well, and they had plenty of tears stored up for the purpose. And the people in Candlenut numbly agreed. Someone set up a table on top of the stage to serve as a bier—something a coffin would be put on, if they had a coffin. But since they didn’t, the steward brought out a portrait of King Lucas and placed it on the bier. The rest of the islanders gathered in their arms all of the torn flower petals from the gardens that had been trampled th
e night before by people running for hiding places.

  Persimmony was very sorry about the king, of course, but she couldn’t help feeling that the people around her were missing the point. After all, they were still alive. The giant was still asleep under the mountain. There was delicious bread to be baked and fresh coconuts to be picked and thousands of fish to be caught.

  “Today,” Chief Rhule said solemnly from the stage, “we mourn the death of our illustrious if somewhat misguided (but we will not speak ill of the dead) monarch, King Lucas the Loftier. Bravely refusing to flee in the day of peril, he chose the way of sacrifice, believing that he who would be a true leader of his people must be the first to fall.”

  Then Professor Quibble, standing next to him on the stage, closed his eyes and stretched his arms forward toward the crowd. “What is life?” he said. “What is death? What is happiness? What”—here he pounded his fist on the edge of the bier so hard that the king’s portrait fell over and the steward had to set it aright again—“is the square root of nine?”

  Then he bowed and the crowd clapped politely, but some of the people wept.

  Chief Rhule continued, “We will now hear testimonies of the valor, generosity, nobility, and unsurpassed wisdom of our honorable, deceased liege.”

  A hush fell over the people, and there was a long, awkward pause. Then all of the people gathered in the square gasped. Behind Chief Rhule and Professor Quibble, a filthy, bareheaded boy with feathers stuck in his hair was climbing clumsily onto the edge of the stage. One arm was wrapped around a clay pot, and a scraggly gray cat inside was licking his chin. It was King Lucas.