Boots and the Seven Leaguers

by Jane Yolen

  “We’re going to get out of here,” I said with more certainty than I felt. “Before moonrise.”

  “And take Windling and the lob with us?” he asked. I could still hear tears in his voice.

  “Of course,” I said. “What kind of a Kingdomer do you think I’d be if I left them behind?”

  “You’re the best!” he said, and threw his arms around me.

  Lucky it was dark and I had my back to the torch, or he would have seen me blush. Blushing is not something trolls do often. Or well.

  Just then Windling returned, circling and circling the light, and this time she was twittering.

  “Slow down,” I told her, and made a motion with my hand. When fairies get excited, they talk fast. And when they talk fast, they sound a lot like my megalodion on its highest speed.

  She took a deep breath and came over to me. Hovering in front of my face, she said in a high little voice:

  Here … here comes Huntsman

  With his knife

  To give the White Wyrm

  Life for life.

  Then she spun away, twittering and zigzagging in front of the torchlight and throwing wild shadows onto the stone walls.

  “What can we do, Gog?” cried my little brother.

  “Shut up—I’m trying to think,” I said, thinking only, Troll. Terribly. Thick.

  The White Wyrm began to slide toward us again, its scales whisk-whisk-whisking on the stone floor.

  I feel the rage,

  I sense the urge.

  The lightning strike

  That is the Surge.

  —“Surge,” from TROLLGATE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  FEEDING TIME

  I tried to think. Really, I did.

  But Magog was crying.

  Windling was twittering.

  The lob was whimpering.

  The Wyrm was whisk-whisking.

  And then the iron door opened and clanged shut behind the Huntsman. His footsteps echoed coldly on the stone, coming in our direction.

  No one could have done much thinking in all that racket. Especially not a troll. So, I stopped thinking and shrank back against the wall, trying to disguise myself in the shadows. Hoping that a big surprise like a troll—well, at least a half-grown surprise—might scare the Huntsman into letting us all go.

  In came the hawk-faced Huntsman, and this time he was not wearing his horned helmet. He carried a dirk with a jagged edge in his right hand, an enormous rope net over his shoulder.

  “Feeding time, Wyrm,” he called, and his voice was as cruel as his face. “Time to eat and to make your cocoon.”

  He grabbed Wyrm’s tail with his left hand and pulled it backward so that the scales sliding over the stone made an odd, troubling sound.

  “Ssssssstop, Huntssssssman!” cried Wyrm, trying to pull away. Its body curved like a big S.

  The Huntsman put the dirk between his teeth, then grabbed the net off his shoulder and lofted it, twirling it around three times, without ever letting loose of the Wyrm’s tail. Then he threw the net over the Wyrm’s uplifted head and laughed.

  “Don’t want you to get any ideas about me, Wyrm,” he said. He spoke softly, a harsh whisper, which seemed—somehow—more powerful. “I know your true name. You don’t know mine. Remember which way the power flows.”

  The moment the net touched its head, the Wyrm began to twist and turn. But that seemed only to set the net more firmly around it. Still, Wyrm kept writhing and wriggling until it was entirely entangled. At last—exhausted—it lay on the cave floor, its unblinking eyes staring up at its captor.

  With three quick slices of his knife, the Huntsman freed Wyrm’s head, but the rest of the creature he left caught in the net.

  Only then did the Huntsman look around, spotting Magog, who had been too scared to move into the shadows with me.

  “Well, little troll, and where’s that lob got to, eh?” he asked. Now his voice was low and sweet, which made everything he said sound even nastier.

  I was not the only one who shivered.

  “If you show me, I may let you live a little while longer. Wyrms don’t like trolls much, anyway. Something to do with the taste, I’ve found. But in the end, if there’s not much else, Wyrm will forget its disinclinations and eat you, too.”

  Magog whimpered, sounding more like a human than the little hairless troll I knew. I could tell that the Huntsman had scared him. Powers. The man scared me, too.

  The Huntsman smiled and the light of the torch made his teeth gleam horribly. “If it doesn’t eat you this full moon, little troll, then it may eat you next. But that’s a whole month more of living. Surely, you want to live a month more! Just tell me where that lob went to. I don’t have much time. If Wyrm doesn’t eat at moonrise, it won’t make its cocoon. My people won’t like that much. So it’s you or the lob. Your choice, little troll.” The Huntsman leaned over and grabbed Magog up by one leg. “Better talk soon.” He began swinging Magog closer and closer to Wyrm’s head.

  What an awful choice. For a second I was glad I didn’t have to make it, then realized what I was thinking.

  Upside down, Magog suddenly started crying out loud and wiped his dripping nose with the back of his hand.

  Nobody makes my little brother cry but me! I thought, which is really the only kind of thinking trolls do.

  And then I felt lightning shocking up through my body: feet, ankles, knees, thighs, fingers, hands, arms. Anger and fear and heartache all combined. The Surge.

  “YAAAAAH!” I screamed, and leaped out: a big, hairy, thundering shadow where the Huntsman least expected one.

  Still, the Huntsman was a strong, experienced fighter. And he had a knife. Quickly turning to face me, his stance sure, he dropped Magog onto the floor and never stopped smiling.

  The Surge didn’t let me worry about any of that, though. It didn’t let me worry about anything. I simply ran straight at the Huntsman, my arms wide.

  “YAAAAAH!” I screamed again.

  The knife flashed upward.

  I tripped over Magog, slipped on something else, then fell forward, and the weight of my body crushed the Huntsman against the hard stone wall.

  He struck at me with the knife and I felt it cut deep into my shoulder.

  I should have felt it burning. Cold iron in Fey flesh.

  But I felt no pain.

  No fear.

  No caution.

  Nothing.

  I was caught up in the Surge.

  “YAAAAAH!”

  The knife went deeper and deeper still, and then suddenly somebody let out a scream.

  I knew it wasn’t me.

  The scream went on and on.

  I thought it wasn’t me.

  The scream was high.

  My voice is low.

  “YAAAAAH!”

  The Huntsman screamed again and then he cried out in agony, “You little—”

  Now, I’m not little. Even in the midst of the Surge I knew that much. Ferocious in my rage, I glared at the Huntsman.

  At the knife in my shoulder.

  At Magog’s teeth in the Huntsman’s knife hand.

  “YAAAAAH!” I pounded my fist into the Huntsman’s face.

  He let go of the knife.

  “YAAAAAH!” I butted my head into his stomach.

  He let go of his dinner.

  “YAAAAAH!” I stomped on his head.

  He let go of everything.

  I lifted his limp, unconscious body up and flung him over my back, then sat down as the Surge slowly seeped away.

  One … two … three … I thought.

  I heard an awful crunching behind me.

  Four … five … six …

  I didn’t want to turn around.

  Seven … eight … nine …

  But slowly I did.

  Ten.

  Boy, did my shoulder hurt.

  But, boy! That was nothing compared to the way the Huntsman must have been feeling.

  If he could still
feel anything.

  All that was left of him was a pair of legs sticking out of the Great White Wyrm’s uncovered mouth. A pair of legs and feet clad in dark leather boots.

  A miracle had started inside that entanglement. Still covered with the netting, the Great White Wyrm began spinning its cocoon with long white silk as soft and as strong as dreams.

  Spin and spin the magic spell

  Till all the story’s bound up well.

  —“Wyrm,” from TROLLGATE

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  COCOON

  In the flickering torchlight, we watched the white silk thread run out of a tube under the Wyrm’s mouth, near where the last of the Huntsman’s boots was disappearing. The silk threaded its way on the inside of the netting and wrapped the Wyrm up in an ever-growing white cocoon that looked like bedsheets dipped in mortar.

  “Funny, that,” said Magog.

  “What?” It was all I could manage yet.

  “That something so beautiful can come from something so scary.”

  “Milk … from … cows,” I said. “And wool … from … sheep.”

  Magog laughed. Then he looked at me. “How’s that shoulder, big brother?”

  I groaned.

  Windling twittered.

  “We have to get home,” Magog said, “and get your shoulder bandaged.”

  Slowly I stood, though Magog had to help me.

  “Door,” I said.

  He took the torch from its holder and we walked down one of the stone corridors till we got to the iron door. It was built flush into the stone and had deep carvings on it of a Wild Hunt. The horned man, the dogs, a near-naked woman who was part deer running from them. It was unsettling, like too much dark chocolate.

  The iron door was locked.

  Tight.

  I couldn’t summon even a bit of the Surge to try and knock it over. And without the Surge, I didn’t even dare touch it.

  Iron.

  Cold iron.

  That burns the Fey.

  “Key?” I asked.

  Fluttering near the torch, Windling began her twittering again.

  “Slow …!” I said.

  She slowed down. Or at least to as slow as a fairy can go, and in her high little voice said:

  Huntsman’s key

  Is in cocoon.

  Inside out

  It will be soon.

  “What?” The end of the Surge and the pain in my shoulder kept me from speaking any more than that. Why can’t fairies speak straight? I thought. Like trolls?

  “The key was probably in the Huntsman’s pocket,” said Magog. He shifted the glasses up his nose again. “And the Huntsman is in …” His face suddenly paled, like an old moon.

  “… Wyrm,” I said.

  “… the cocoon,” he finished. He put his hand in mine and looked up at me, his face all shiny.

  None of us wanted to go back to the chamber where Wyrm was spinning his silken shroud. Instead we went to check up on the old shaggy lob.

  He was sitting up, looking frightened but very much alive. One of his little horns had been broken in the fight with the dogs, and it had jagged sides and a bit of marrow showing. There were deep toothmarks on his arms and shoulders. The fur on his goat legs was patchy and torn. He was a mess. But lobs, even at the best of times, are a mess.

  “It’s all right, old one,” I said, language returning to me at last. “The Great White Wyrm has fed.”

  He stood up on his dirty little hooves, eyes still moist with terror.

  “Nyaaaah, nyaaaah, nyaaaah,” he said, sounding just like a goat.

  “He doesn’t really speak,” Magog told me.

  “He doesn’t have to,” I said. “We all know what he means.”

  There was nowhere else to go. The cave was essentially five chambers—one large and four small—with a single narrow entry, guarded by the iron door.

  Once we had explored the lob’s chamber, the three smaller rooms, and the corridor—with the litter of boots, hats, jewels, jerkins, leather bags, reed baskets, gold coins—we were left with the Great White Wyrm’s lair.

  “I’ll go in first,” I whispered.

  Magog, the lob, and Windling trailed behind.

  I stuck my head around the curved stone entry, holding the torch up in front of me.

  I am not sure what I expected. But the room was absolutely quiet. From the ceiling hung a giant cocoon. What had been the long, snaky Wyrm was now a great silken bag still entangled in the netting.

  “Good-bye, key,” I said, stepping into the room.

  “Good-bye, Huntsman,” Magog added.

  “Nyaaaah, nyaaaah, nyaaaah,” said the shaggy lob.

  Windling began to circle the bottom end of the hanging cocoon, crying in her twittery voice:

  Soon,

  Cocoon,

  Soon.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she meant by that.

  I found the Huntsman’s knife on the floor, picked it up by its wooden handle, and went over to the cocoon. Fighting down my fear, I sawed away at the ropes until all the pieces were gone. Then I sat down with the others to watch what would happen.

  We waited for long minutes, maybe hours. And finally, with a sound like cloth tearing on a nail, a jagged line began to run slowly across the silken bottom.

  The line grew thicker, deeper.

  Became a crack.

  A crevice.

  A chasm.

  Something began to push its way through the opening, something dark and leathery.

  “The Huntsman’s boots!” Magog cried.

  “Not terribly tasty?” I asked.

  “Nyaaaah, nyaaaah, nyaaaah.” The lob’s comment said it all.

  Something else dropped through the hole.

  “His belt,” I cried.

  Then something small and shiny clattered to the cave floor.

  “The key!” Magog cried.

  Together we dove for the key and touched it. We tried to pick it up.

  It burned, burned, burned in our hands.

  We dropped it.

  The lob trotted over, carrying Magog’s bloody jerkin. “Nyaaaah,” he said.

  Using the jerkin to shield my fingers, I picked up the key and ran out the chamber, down the dark and twisty corridor, to the door.

  Magog followed right behind, carrying the torch in both hands.

  Carefully I inserted the key into the lock and—using Magog’s jerkin again—pushed the iron door open.

  A rush of fresh air greeted us, nearly guttering the torch.

  A rush of wings overhead nearly put it out as well.

  We looked up. Above us flew a gigantic butterfly with light green wings veined with orange and olive.

  “Free!” it cried in a voice that was both beautiful and fierce. “Free at lasssst.”

  As it passed over me, I saw that it was grinning, revealing about a thousand pointy teeth.

  “How about a little thanks!” I called after it. But I was glad that it didn’t turn back to answer.

  These boots were made for walking well,

  Through Heaven’s gates and info Hell.

  I have a pair that I can sell—

  The coin I want is bloody.

  —“Seven - League Boots,” from TROLLGATE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BOOTS

  We raced outside, and—once we were in the open air—the torch Magog was carrying went out for good.

  The lob galloped out a moment later, carrying a canvas bag with a picture of Rhymer’s Bridge embossed on the side. The bag was so heavy, he struggled with it, dragging it as he ran.

  “Hey—that’s the bag I was kidnapped in!” cried Magog.

  “Nyaaaah,” the lob said, and began a funny hoppity dance, spinning on his little goat feet. Around and around he went, till I got dizzy just watching. Then, as quickly as he’d begun his spinning, he stopped and held out the bag to me.

  I took it from him.

  “Nyaaaah,” he cried again.
Then he leaped away, over a hillock of heather, his little shaggy tail bobbing a good-bye.

  Windling circled my head, twittering.

  “I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” I told her. “Slow down. Please.”

  Beating her wings more slowly, she hovered in front of me and sang out:

  Some endings

  Are beginnings,

  Some failures

  Are winnings.

  Then, like a shooting star, she flashed away over the brow of a different hill.

  Above us the moon shone full and white, making the landscape as bright as day.

  “Guess we’re not going to get to hear the band now,” Magog said. “They were starting at moonrise. And we must be miles from home. I’m sorry, Gog. If you hadn’t come after me …”

  I nodded. “Then you and Windling and the shaggy lob—and the powers alone know how many others—would have been eaten by the White Wyrm. What’s a band compared to that!”

  Magog put his hand in mine. “You know,” he said, looking up at me through the one good lens of his glasses, “there may be something in that bag to bind up your shoulder.”

  My shoulder! At the mention of it, it began hurting again.

  A lot.

  “Maybe there’s something in that bag to keep us warm,” I added. It was going to be cold in the woods in the middle of the night. “Pook, too.”

  Magog looked down. His hand went to his mouth. “I’d forgotten about Pook.”

  I thought, Maybe geniuses don’t always remember everything.

  “Well,” I said, “Pook never forgot about you.” And then, to rub it in, I added, “That’s what got him into trouble in the first place.”

  I dumped the bag upside down to see what we had to work with.

  Evidently, while Magog and I had been opening the door, the lob had been gathering up as much of Wyrm’s treasure as he could. Bits of the silken cocoon and the Huntsman’s boots were there as well.

  “We can use that,” Magog said, ripping apart some of the cocoon bits with the knife—touching only the knife’s wooden handle, of course—and making a bandage. Then he unspun some of the silk and used it to tie the bandage onto my shoulder, around my arm, and then down across my chest.

  Then we picked through the rest of the stuff. There were jewels for Mom, the knife for Dad, silver and gold coins I put in my pocket.