Boots and the Seven Leaguers

by Jane Yolen

  Long minutes later, when I looked up again, something big and black and monstrous loomed before me.

  The great maw of a rock cave.

  The Great White Wyrm’s lair, I thought. I didn’t dare say it out loud.

  Drawing the map out of my jerkin, I unrolled it. The woods around me were so quiet, the crackle as I opened up the map was startling. I glanced around to see if it had alerted anyone.

  The forest behind me remained still. There was no other being to be seen. I breathed a sigh. Not of relief. There could be no relief here. Not in this place where fear was king.

  In the low light, I could barely make out the writing on the map, except for the gilded X, which was now luminescent and pulsing.

  I drew in a deep breath, rolled the map back up, jammed it down the front of my jerkin again, and without thinking about anything—for fear of fear itself—I stepped into the cave.

  The way in took a turn.

  Dark.

  A second turn.

  Even darker.

  Trolls don’t like caves. Dwarfs do. Ogres do. Dragons do. Wyrms.

  Now would be a good time to leave, Gog, I told myself. To get out of the cave.

  But my body didn’t listen. As if it had its own mind, it marched forward.

  One foot.

  Another foot.

  I shuffled along, my right hand on the wall and my left jammed up against the roof of the cave to keep from bumping my head. Surprisingly, for all that the cave had looked enormous from the outside, inside it was not even troll sized.

  Suddenly, as if coming back from vacation, my mind said, What about that, Gog?

  And I thought, Could there be magic at play here?

  Like a pookah’s glamour? Like a seeming? Or are caves just built that way?

  Trolls are not great thinkers, but we are long thinkers. We consider things slowly.

  I considered.

  And considered.

  Not enough information, I told myself at last.

  So I squinted and spun around, staring in four directions, one right after another. But everything was still dark and I could still see nothing.

  Well, even if you can’t see anything, maybe you can hear something, I told myself.

  I stopped spinning and strained to listen.

  This is what I heard:

  a metallic click, as if a door was opening

  a whisk-whisk-whisk, like Mom makes when she’s sweeping

  a whimper, which could have been from a puppy or a captive lob or even a little troll far from home

  “Magog!” I whispered. Loud enough to be heard. “Magog!”

  I took another step forward, and my foot struck something that went clattering and skittering away into the darkness.

  I ran forward, scattering other things before me.

  I galloped forward, heard a strange clang behind me, and …

  … something troll height, but smelling musky and rank and sweet all at the same time, touched me high up on the arm.

  Did I jump?

  I jumped.

  Cracked my skull on the roof of the cave and went down as if I’d been poleaxed.

  High as a gibbit,

  Hard as a bone,

  Horned as a huntsman

  Who’s calling me home.

  —“Gateway,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SURGE

  I woke up minutes … hours … maybe even days later, in a chamber carved out of the rock cave. I could see, but only because there was a single torch somewhere above me.

  Someone was bending over me.

  I was so angry—with myself for being clumsy and stupid, with the Huntsman for being cruel, with Magog for getting himself taken, with Pook for leaping without looking—that there was a sudden rush of power to my hands and feet. I felt lightning shocking its way into my fingers. Suddenly I had the strength of ten.

  I leaped up to grab whoever was bending over me.

  I wanted to throttle him. It. Whoever.

  I wanted to dig my long nails into his eyeballs.

  I wanted to sink my sharp teeth into his throat.

  I banged my head once again on the stone roof.

  Strength ten.

  Brains zero.

  Funny way to be a hero.

  That’s the Surge.

  This time as I struggled back to consciousness, I heard a voice I recognized.

  “Gog, Gog, count to ten.” It was my little brother.

  “Magog!” I cried, sitting up. I didn’t need to do any counting to calm me. His voice—and the hard stone roof—had knocked away any remnants of the Surge. Had knocked sense back into me. “How long have I been out cold?”

  “A couple of seconds,” he said.

  “It feels more like hours,” I said, hand on my head.

  “Trollsssssssss,” came an awful hissing to my left, “ssssssseldom thhhhhink.”

  Troll. Terribly. Thick.

  I started to get angry all over again. Squinting into the gloom toward the place where the hissing voice came from, I could make out something large and white and twisty curled up in a corner on a big pile of stuff. It had many, too many, shining teeth and a long tail.

  The Great White Wyrm!

  “Get behind me, Magog,” I said, struggling to my knees.

  “But, Gog—”

  “Now!”

  “But, Gog—”

  “It’ll have to go through me first,” I said.

  “Who would want to do that?” Magog asked.

  “It!” I said, pointing. Then I turned and looked at him in the flickering torchlight. Magog. My little brother. Hairless. Bridge-bound. I felt a sudden wave of fondness pass over me, quickly followed by a wave of pure annoyance.

  “You’re not that blind, kid.”

  “I lost my glasses,” he said, “when I was bagged.”

  Then I remembered. His glasses! I reached into the pocket of my jerkin and there they were. By some miracle only one lens was broken.

  “Here,” I said. “One lens is better than none. Take them and look over into that corner. The one with the big white snaky blob. It’s the Great White Wyrm, stupid.”

  “Stupid? I may be nearsighted, Gog, but I’m not stupid. Mom won’t like you calling me stupid. And I know something you don’t know.” He said the last in that awful nyah-nyah singsong he sometimes uses.

  I wanted to hit him, but Mom would have killed me if she’d heard. And he’d surely tell. So I said in a calm voice—more calmly than I felt—“What do you know?”

  “Wyrm is as much a prisoner here as we are.” He blinked up at me and the single torch reflected in the unbroken lens.

  “The Wyrm—a prisoner?” I turned to stare at the white undulation in the corner. It shifted and twisted on its pile, and the movement gave me a sudden funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I took a deep breath before asking, “Why?”

  Before Magog could answer, the Great White Wyrm uncoiled itself and slowly, sinuously slid over to where I was standing. As he came toward me, he made a whisk-whisk-whisk sound.

  Scales on stone.

  My stomach turned over.

  Maybe, I thought, some trolls are afraid of things besides fire, drought, starvation, solitary confinement, and dead people. Maybe some trolls are afraid of snakes.

  “Ssssssssilk and physssssicksssss,” the Wyrm hissed.

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “That’s why he’s a prisoner, Gog,” Magog said.

  “Silk and physics? That’s stupid!”

  I knew that silk was pretty enough. Mom had a silk blouse that was the deep blue of the river in full spate. She wore it only on special occasions.

  And I knew that there were some humans who studied physics in the Out. The Crown Prince of the sidhe—Prince Malapro—had gone to a human university to learn physics. He’d come back no smarter than when he’d left, or so I heard.

  But silk and physics as the reasons the Wyrm was a prisoner? That made no s
ense. At least to a troll.

  “Silk is the most expensive cloth known to humans,” Magog explained, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. “And by physicks, Wyrm doesn’t mean he’s studying about the universe, Gog. It’s just the old word for drugs.”

  “Yessssssss. Drugsssssss,” hissed the Great White Wyrm. “Physssssickssss.” Then it whisked itself back to its pile, where it curled up again in a white twist.

  I really did feel terribly thick then, and just stood there shaking my head.

  Magog put his hand on my arm. “It’s like this, Gog—the Huntsman keeps Wyrm prisoner here, feeding him fairy folk.”

  “Like the missing little Windling on the milk carton?”

  Magog nodded. “Yes—only she’s not been eaten. Not yet, anyway. Wyrm only eats on the full moon.”

  The full moon? I shuddered. “Why—that’s … that’s tonight,” I said.

  Magog nodded.

  “But why so … so many?” I whispered, thinking about Magog and the fairy Windling and the lob.

  “Well, Wyrm’s pretty big to begin with,” Magog explained patiently. “And then, the Huntsman likes to give him several choices for dinner.” He sounded so … so unafraid. And I was sweating with fear.

  Suddenly I remembered that clanging. Now I knew what it was with an awful conviction. A door shutting. Behind me. I was going to be one of the choices, too. And I would make the biggest meal.

  I shuddered again.

  Then I looked around the cave floor. There were strange things winking and blinking up at me. I remembered the clattering, scattering noise I’d made, kicking something from me.

  “What are those?” I asked, pointing at the stuff on the floor. I hoped that there might be something we could use in an escape.

  “Treasures,” Magog said. “The Huntsman brings them to Wyrm to make him comfortable. Gold goblets. Silver teapots. Aluminum siding.”

  “Comfortable …” I said slowly, then noticed that what Wyrm was lying on was more of the stuff. “He’s nesting.”

  Magog nodded, adding, “On things of precious metal. And jewels.”

  “So wyrms are like dragons,” I whispered.

  “Exactly like dragons,” Magog said. “I think they’re cousins. Only without any fire.”

  No fire, I thought, that’s good.

  “Sssssssecond cousssssssins, actually,” came the sibilant answer, “but who’ssssss counting.” Then the Wyrm made a sound like a teakettle, hissing and rattling.

  I shuddered a third time, then realized the sound the Wyrm was making was laughter.

  “Wyrm doesn’t mean to make drugs and physicks,” Magog said, his arm still on mine. “But the Huntsman then picks apart Wyrm’s cocoon for the silk. And the Huntsman milks Wyrm’s blood during the cocooning for dream drugs. Then he sells everything he gets here in the Out.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  The Wyrm coiled himself in a corner. “Sssssssseven timessssss ssssseven,” he said.

  “Days?” I asked. “Months?”

  “Yearsssssssss,” Wyrm said, uncoiling again.

  I took a deep breath. I couldn’t count that high. “And all that time you’ve been a prisoner here?”

  The twisty white blob was silent.

  “Wyrm is probably exaggerating,” Magog said.

  “Not by much,” I suddenly realized. “Dad told me stories a long time ago about a white wyrm. And his dad told him. And his dad …”

  “Probably not the same wyrm,” Magog said. “A great-great-grandfather of this one.”

  See—sidhe blood. Lets you know more than you want to know.

  “Have they been eating fairy folk all those years?” I asked.

  “Well, a wild wyrm would eat less than a captive wyrm, because …”

  “Well—the Wyrm won’t eat you,” I said loudly to Magog, as a kind of warning—though I didn’t look terribly tough there on my knees. “I won’t let any such thing happen. Not to my little brother.” I shook my fist at the Wyrm. It made my head hurt.

  “Trollsssssssss ssssssseldom tassssssty,” said the Wyrm. It slid forward several lengths and then raised itself up till it towered over me. It had three pairs of jointed, clawed legs that clicked and clacked. Six eyes, three on each side of its head, that winked on and off.

  Any sorrow I felt for it melted away.

  And when it grinned—revealing about a thousand little pointy teeth—and flicked out its forked tongue, my stomach lurched once more.

  Lucky I hadn’t eaten more than a couple of pieces of bread and honey for lunch, or I would have lost it all.

  I have plucked the Devil’s hair.

  I have braved the White Wyrm’s lair.

  I have ridden night’s own mare

  To make my way back home to you.

  —“I Have Walked,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WlNDLING

  Suddenly something white and wispy fluttered on little transparent wings into the light of the torch. It was too big for a moth, too small for a gull.

  “Windling,” Magog cried. “I told you my big brother would come.”

  The way he said that gave my fear a little shake, like wind through laundry on a line.

  The fluttery white presence made its way over from the flame to me, then circled around my head three times before dropping down to my eye level.

  She was a lovely thing. Her picture on the milk carton had not come close to showing how gloriously that mop of white-gold hair shone, how piercingly blue her tiny eyes were. Like all fairies, she had wings that were as transparent as glass, with small meandering veins running through, branching like rivers. She had the antennae that all young fairies have, shining like crystals of light.

  For a long moment Windling stared at me, then—as if satisfied with what she found in my face—she took off past the flame into the darkness beyond.

  “She’s awfully shy,” said Magog.

  “And not much of a meal, either,” I whispered. “For a Great White Wyrm.”

  “Oh, Gog!”

  “Oh, Magog!”

  “Oh, Gog!”

  We were at a standstill. At home our conversations often went on like this endlessly. But this time Magog broke first.

  “That’s why the Huntsman went out and got the lob, I think,” Magog said. “Because Windling is too small for a full meal.”

  “You’re bigger,” I pointed out.

  “Well, evidently he thought he was getting a cat or dog. Because when he emptied me out of the bag, he said, ‘Blast! A troll! What happened to that moggie?’”

  I nodded. “Trolls seldom tasty?”

  Magog nodded. “So off the Huntsman went—into the woods, I guess, to get something tastier. That’s when he came back with the lob. He was a bit frantic, this close to the full moon and all. I guess he’s had trouble with his traps lately.”

  I nodded and said, “I know about those traps.”

  He clapped his hands. “Tell me. Tell!”

  So, I quickly told him about the traps I’d seen—the one the woodwife had been caught in, the pit that Pook had fallen into. He listened with his mouth open, gaping at me as if I’d been some sort of hero when all I’d done was bumble along.

  But then something he’d said earlier began to bother me. I stopped talking and scratched my head. “Say that again, Magog.”

  “Say what?”

  “What you told me before, before I babbled on and on. About the lob and about the bag and about what the Huntsman said.” I was still thinking in my slow troll way.

  So, he repeated everything word for word, which was eerie. He can do that sort of thing. Sidhe blood, not troll.

  “Again,” I said.

  When he’d repeated it a third time, I finally got it.

  “The Huntsman caught the lob. I saw that. But …” I said carefully, “I don’t think he was the one who put you in the bag. Otherwise he would have known you were a troll before dumping you out.�
� I was extremely pleased with my reasoning. Maybe I had some of that sidhe blood in me, too!

  “Of course he wasn’t the one,” said Magog. “The Huntsman is human. He has no magic. He only has skill. So, he couldn’t have broken the holdspell. But whoever grabbed me didn’t know I was a troll. After all, he’d seen me with Pook’s glamour on me. I looked something like a fox and …”

  Only then did I remember the glamour. “And something like a feather boa.” So much for my being part sidhe.

  “But you knew that,” Magog said. “Just with the bump on your head, you forgot.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t lie to my brother. Even though in this cave he’d scarcely see me turn grey.

  But then I understood something else. “That means the Huntsman has”—now I was really excited—“an accomplice!” I started to leap up, suddenly remembered the bump on my head, and forced myself to stand carefully. “So that means …”

  And just as I was about to put the whole thing together—every part of it—there came a faraway groan.

  “The lob,” whispered Magog. “I picked him up and carried him around the corner into the other chamber, hoping Wyrm wouldn’t smell him. Blood probably excites him. It does dragons. And the lob was all bloody, poor thing. And afterward I pulled you in, too. You’re lots heavier than the lob.”

  “And now,” I told him—still being slow and careful about everything—“you’re all bloody, too.”

  For the first time Magog looked scared. He glanced down at his clothes, at the dark patches on his jerkin.

  I slipped off my own jerkin, jamming the map down the front of my trews. “You’d better wear this. And take yours off. We’ll get rid of it around a corner or something.”

  My jerkin was miles too big for him. He’s pretty small for a troll. The bottom came down past his knees.

  “That’s better,” I said.

  “Not much of a disguise,” he said. He shrugged and tried to look brave. “It doesn’t matter. Wyrms don’t find trolls all that good to eat. Besides, you’d make more of a meal than me.”

  “Much more of a meal,” I said heartily, trying to keep up his spirits.

  But he broke down and began crying. “What are we going to do, Gog? What are we going to do?”