by Ellen Potter
“What is it, Otto?” Lucia asked. She was half afraid that he was going to bolt out of the folly again and head for the train station.
“I think we should go this way,” he said and he turned so suddenly that Chester sprang away. Swiftly, Otto made his way down the hallway and hurried down a staircase, followed by Lucia and Max. At the bottom of the stairs he turned left, walked some distance down the hallway, then turned around and walked back the other way. Finally they found themselves in the Great Hall. It was a bit of a disappointment. The Great Hall was their least favorite room, with its sneaky educational banners. Lucia couldn’t imagine a less likely place to stick a secret passageway.
Yet this appeared to be the room that Otto was looking for. He walked across the flagstone floor, past the long table, and he stopped directly in front of the grandfather clock.
“What? Do you mean it’s behind the clock?” Lucia said.
“There’s something behind it, I don’t know what,” he said. “I had that feeling the last time we were here, but I pushed it out of my head.”
“Well, the tap-tap-tapping might be the sound of a clock, I guess,” Max said thoughtfully. “It’s not working now, but it might have been when the Dusty Old Children were here. And the scraping . . . maybe they were pushing it and the passageway is behind it.”
So they started to push against the grandfather clock. It was heavy and awkward. Twice it tipped scarily, but they steadied it in time. Bit by bit they managed to shove it to one side, enough to reveal a small door set in the wall. The door was just big enough for any of them to squeeze through, no bigger. It had a curious brass latch with a yellowy white button on it that looked like it was made of bone.
After a moment’s hesitation, all three of them lunged forward to press the button. Lucia’s finger hit it first. The door flew open and a silver head burst out, carried on a long neck with spiked flares on either side. The creature’s glistening black lips were curled back to expose two rows of serrated teeth. Its eyes were cat yellow with rippled pupils under a lumpy brow pitched low with fury.
The Hardscrabbles dashed to the table and ducked behind the chairs right before the mouth snapped wide-open and spat out a long, furious flame. To their horror, Chester had stayed where he was by the hidden door, his back arched and hair on end as he hissed at the thing.
Otto lurched forward to rescue Chester but Lucia caught his shirt and held him back with all her strength. The dragon’s neck flailed about madly, the flame whipping through the air, as though it were desperately seeking out hair to singe and flesh to burn. Chester flattened himself against the ground—clever cat—and the flame whooshed over him. The dragon thrashed on and on, its fury seeming to increase as its attempts to burn were frustrated, until its head suddenly withdrew back into the depths of the little doorway. The door slammed shut.
Immediately, Otto ran for Chester. Lucia let him. She could barely stand up herself, she was that shaky. Max’s face was damp with sweat and quite pink, but his eyes had that stupid look that they got when he was thinking deeply and importantly.
A small keening sound came from Otto as he clutched Chester, his hand stroking the top of the black head over and over. Lucia had heard him make a sound like that once or twice before but he had always been asleep when he did.
“Oh, poor thing!” Lucia cried out and she rushed over to Otto and wrapped her arms around him. He stopped making the noise instantly—I don’t think he realized he was making it at all till then—and Lucia carefully added, “Poor cat!” So he let Lucia hug him, both of them pretending that it was Chester whom she was fussing over.
Once they had all settled down and had left the Great Hall and reconvened outside in the comforting sunshine of the courtyard, Lucia grew angry.
“They’re mad! The stupid Kneebones. Mad and cruel! Who puts something like that in a kids’ castle?”
“It wasn’t real, you know,” Max said. “It was just a mechanical toy, like the dungeon rat.”
“Well, obviously, it wasn’t an actual dragon.” Lucia’s nostrils puffed out. “But the fire was quite actual, thank you very much. We might have been roasted! And then there’s poor Chester who very nearly was.”
Poor Chester had recovered from the incident nicely and was now stalking something in the grass.
“And,” Lucia continued, “we’re still no closer to finding the secret passageway.”
“Maybe we should check at the birch trees again,” Otto suggested. “To see if The Kneebone Boy has eaten the food.”
Dragons and monsters. You see how easily they are talking about such things, when not a few days before the Hardscrabbles’ lives were rather boring and rubbishy? It’s alarming how quickly people adjust to adventures when they are in one. You have to really work at being astonished by life.
The Hardscrabbles set off for the woods once again, this time Max leading the way because he said he remembered how to get back to the right spot. He did. They arrived at the birch trees quickly and without any backtracking.
Someone had been there. The napkin had been unrolled and lay across the empty plate, and the soda and bag of crisps were gone. The Hardscrabbles looked all around them, even up at the trees, before they stepped closer. Their message on the rock had been wiped out and now there was a new message written with a wet finger in the Pixy Stix powder: GOOD CRISPS.
The writing was a little wobbly, which of course may have been because The Kneebone Boy had never written in Pixy Stix powder, but it might also have been because of misshapen hands, alias claws.
The Hardscrabbles looked at the rock then at one another with wide eyes. Lucia giggled. You’ll understand why if you think about it.
“Well, now we know he can read and write,” Max said, sounding relieved.
“That’s good.” Lucia felt the same way. If he could read and write, he was somehow more human, less monster.
“At least someone cared enough to teach him,” Otto said, which was of course the right and compassionate way to see it, and Lucia and Max nodded thoughtfully.
Otto glanced at Chester. His tail hung down in a very relaxed way.
“He’s not anywhere nearby,” Otto said.
Then they set out four more sandwiches and Lucia even picked a spray of flowers and laid it on the other side of the plate and they sat there and waited.
“I was thinking,” Max said, “about how this will all end.”
“What do you mean?” Lucia asked. She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Well, it’s all very well to feed him,” Max explained. “And maybe we can even make friends with him. But then what? We’ll have to go home tomorrow and what will happen to him when we do?”
“He’ll come with us,” Otto replied automatically.
“That’s ridiculous!” Max said.
“Why?” Otto said.
“For a hundred different reasons,” Max cried.
“Well, he can’t keep living the way he does, locked away in a room,” Otto protested.
“And what are we supposed to do with him in Little Tunks?” Max replied. “Everyone already thinks that you’re a monster! What happens when we bring him home with us?”
It was a dreadful thing to say, especially because it was true. Max regretted it instantly but it was too late, and anyway he was bound to say it sooner or later. Lucia was so outraged that she couldn’t speak, but Otto’s hands began to move very calmly and beautifully.
“I don’t mind people like The Kneebone Boy,” he said. “I don’t mind monsters.”
Max was silent for a good long while. He scratched at the nape of his neck, he tapped his fist on his thigh. He wasn’t thinking deeply and importantly; he kept very still when he did that. Instead he was imagining “how it would all end.” There are so many possible endings for an adventure. They are all interesting except for one: the one in which in the end, everything is pretty much exactly the way it was at the very beginning.
“It’s going to be dead cramped in our
bedroom with three people,” Max said finally.
So everything was all right. That is until they discovered that it wasn’t.
“Where’s Chester?” Lucia asked.
Chapter 17
I’m not telling you a single thing about this chapter because it will ruin everything
They searched everywhere for Chester, calling out his name. It was baffling. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t.
“He probably saw a squirrel and went off after it, then got lost,” Max said lightly. He was perfectly fond of Chester, but he wasn’t really an animal person.
Otto shook his head, troubled. “He wouldn’t have gone that far.”
“How do you know?” Max said. “He might be one of those cats that disappears for days then comes back smelling of dead things.”
“What bothers me is the traps,” Lucia said suddenly.
Her brothers looked at her.
“Saint George’s traps,” she explained. “Maybe Chester got caught in one of them.”
“What kind of traps were they?” Otto asked.
Lucia shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
“He must have dug holes,” Max said after thinking a minute. “Deep ones that are covered with brush and leaves, so he could catch The Kneebone Boy without maiming him.”
“Chester might have fallen in one of those,” Lucia said.
Now they kept their eyes on the ground as they walked, watching for holes and calling Chester’s name, then listening for an answering meow.
There was something that they were all thinking, but none of them wanted to say it. It was too horrible. Still, I’ll tell you what it was because I’ve told you everything else so far: They all wondered if it was The Kneebone Boy who had snatched Chester and had perhaps done something gruesome to him. They hated to think this thought because they all were cheering so hard for The Kneebone Boy, you understand, and they had already decided that they would help him at all costs, so it seemed very disloyal to consider that he might have gutted Chester. Still, they did consider it and it made them all feel very anxious.
After a solid twenty minutes of wandering, Max stopped and said, “This is silly. We should split up to cover more ground.”
Lucia said that Otto should stay with her, since he couldn’t call out if he got lost. But Max said that Otto should stay with him, because Max was no good with animals and if he should come upon Chester stuck in a tight spot, he wouldn’t be able to coax him out. It made the most sense, of course, even if Lucia didn’t like it.
We’ll stick with her now as she wades through the thick brush, all alone.
Lucia kept her eyes on the ground, watching for suspicious-looking clumps of twigs or leaves that might be covering a pit. She found a few clumps but when she pushed at them with the toe of her shoe, they really were only clumps. As she walked she called out and listened, until she gradually began thinking about that thing that none of them had wanted to think about. It’s one thing to not think certain thoughts when you are with other people; it’s a whole other thing to not think them when you are by yourself and the wind is picking up.
Lucia felt that defenseless sensation at the back of her neck again. She began to pay more attention to the shadows all around her rather than the clumps of leaves and twigs on the ground. Above her head, the branches began to slap each other fitfully and the leaves made ahhh noises, as though thousands of tiny people were hanging from them and sighing all at once. It was eerie and magical at the same time. Lucia stopped to listen, gazing around at the swaying green and silver underbrush.
If I were The Kneebone Boy, Lucia thought, this is where I’d want to stay. Right here, deep in the woods where there are no eyes to gawk at me. I could slip along the ground like a shadow, hidden because the woods loves to hide things, not because it’s ashamed of them. I wouldn’t want to go to Little Tunks, either, even if people were kind to me and I had a nice, soft bed. I’d just want to live here forever, with the foxes and hedgehogs and the wild mushrooms under my toes.
It was then that Lucia heard the voice from high in the treetop. It said, “Don’t look up.”
You can’t imagine how hard it is not to look up when a voice from the treetops tells you not to. Lucia lifted her head, just the smallest bit, and the voice said, “If you look up, I’ll go away.”
“I won’t, I promise,” Lucia said and she pointed her face directly at the ground. She was scared, but not as scared as you might expect her to be. It was all so unreal, you understand. It was almost like reading a story about yourself.
“Are you—” She almost said The Kneebone Boy, but stopped herself in time. That wasn’t his real name, after all. He did have a real name—Mr. Pickering had said it—but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was. Instead she said, “You live in the castle, don’t you?” she said.
“I don’t live there. I’m kept there,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Lucia replied and she started to look up without thinking. There was a great shuffling in the treetop and leaves fluttered down as The Kneebone Boy started to scramble away.
“No, no, please don’t go!” Lucia cried. The sounds settled and the woods grew quiet again.
Then The Kneebone Boy said, “The younger boy . . . he’s clever, isn’t he?”
“Max, you mean? Yes,” Lucia admitted. “Sometimes very.”
The Kneebone Boy’s voice was unexpected. Somehow, Lucia imagined it would be deep and garbled as though it were struggling out of a twisted body. Instead, his voice was soft and clear.
“I thought so,” The Kneebone Boy said. “And the tall, blond boy . . . something is wrong with him.”
Lucia bristled at this. “There’s nothing wrong with Otto,” she snapped.
“Good, good.” The Kneebone Boy’s voice soothed. “It’s good you stick up for him.”
Lucia remembered that The Kneebone Boy had nobody to stick up for him, and she immediately felt sorry that she had lost her temper.
There was a sudden scratching sound, like a squirrel scrambling down a tree and it took all of Lucia’s self-control to keep her eyes on the ground. In a moment, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a black shadow creeping toward her. Then she felt something rub against her ankles with a mewling sound.
“Chester!” she cried. She squatted down to pick him up and she buried her face in his fur. “Oh, sweet, sweet Chester,” Lucia said into his fur, smiling as she pictured Otto’s face when she returned with Chester in her arms.
“He was following me,” The Kneebone Boy said. “I didn’t take him.” Just as though he knew what she’d been thinking, which made her very ashamed.
“Listen,” Lucia said, “we’ve been talking, my brothers and I, and we decided that you should come home with us. Our house isn’t anything special, but we do have a garden and our dad’s quite nice.”
She had not forgotten her thoughts about how The Kneebone Boy should stay in the woods; but she had thought them before she had met him, and now that he was here and real and speaking to her, she couldn’t bear to think of leaving him to roam the woods only to be caught and locked up again, or to be made into a spectacle by Saint George.
The Kneebone Boy didn’t say anything for so long that Lucia asked, “Are you still there?”
There was a hiss of shifting leaves. “Yes,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?” Lucia asked.
“The garden. Do you think it’s big enough for a peacock to live in?”
“I don’t know,” Lucia said, surprised by the question. “I suppose so. Peacocks aren’t very huge, are they? So will you? Will you come back with us?”
“I think . . . yes, I’d like to,” The Kneebone Boy said.
“Good. Excellent!” Lucia fisted up her hands and they gave a little bob of happiness. “Our father will be here tomorrow. Meet us in the morning by the two birch trees, where we left the food. All right?”
“All right,” The Kneebone Boy said.
“Until then, mind about the traps—”
What made Lucia look off to the right at that moment, she’ll never know. Certainly there was no sound. Creeping stealthily through the woods, his rifle in hand, was Saint George.
“Go, go, go! He’s coming!” Lucia cried in a low voice, and in her alarm she forgot her promise and looked up at The Kneebone Boy.
He was lying across the upper branch of a tree like a leopard, dressed in a soiled white robe. When their eyes met he did not move a muscle but his eyes went wide. So did Lucia’s. His face was dirty, his hair wild-looking. Still, Lucia recognized him immediately.
From his high perch, the Sultan of Juwi brought a finger to his lips and in a moment he was gone.
Chapter 18
In which we find out something about Otto’s scarf and take a peek inside the Hardscrabbles’ brains
“What are you doing here?” Saint George demanded, glancing all around him suspiciously.
Still stunned by what she had just seen, Lucia looked at him without answering.
“Who were you talking to?” Saint George asked.
“Nobody,” Lucia said, finding her voice.
“I heard you. You were talking to someone.”
“To the cat,” Lucia said feebly.
There was the sound of quick footsteps approaching and Otto and Max appeared, looking pink in the face. Upon seeing Chester, Otto smiled broadly and grabbed him out of Lucia’s arms, then tucked him beneath his scarf.
“We thought we heard voices,” Max said. “Oh, hello,” he said to Saint George.
“Now you lot had better listen to me,” Saint George said, a thick finger pointing around at all of them. “You keep out of these woods. It’s property of the castle. If you need to get to the town, keep to the path, but quit stomping through here.”
“Oh, excuse me, Lord Kneebone,” Lucia said smartly. “I thought you were just a shopkeeper who, by the way, is also trespassing.”