The Black Fortress

by E. G. Foley

  His back was toward them, but they could see the towering peasant man’s broad shoulders. He was simply dressed but built like a bear. He swung his ax again and again, mindlessly crashing it into the nearest tree trunk. Splintered bits of wood flew with each powerful chop.

  “Guess we get him instead of the ogre,” Brian whispered. “He seems slow.”

  “Really focused on his task, too.”

  “That’s good. He’s distracted. With all the noise he’s making, maybe we can just sneak past him and he won’t even notice us.”

  With a mutual nod, they decided to try. They gave the giant, husky man a wide berth, rounding behind him at a healthy distance while he continued chopping away at one of the massive trees.

  Of course, their effort to go around him took them off the path they had been following, and, as Dani recalled, in the old fairytales, leaving the path was usually a very bad idea.

  Unfortunately, they had no choice if they were going to slip past this ax-wielding woodcutter.

  Scrambling up a small, weed-covered hill, they were nearly clear of the woodcutter when, suddenly, Princess Pansy piped up: “Hurry, they’re coming.”

  “Shut up!” she whispered instinctively at the doll.

  It was too late. The woodcutter had heard it. Through the trees, they saw him leave off chopping wood. He turned around slowly, holding the ax in a murderous grip. But when they saw his face, both Brian and Dani gasped.

  His eyes were sewn shut!

  Dani recoiled. “Oh, that’s disgusting!”

  Brian grimaced. “It’s like the ogre’s blindfold, I guess,” he mumbled. “Well, at least it’ll make getting past him a lot easier.”

  “Hurry, they’re coming,” said Princess Pansy.

  Brian scowled at the doll. “Is there any way to shut that thing off?”

  Dani shook her head. “It’s supposed to drive us crazy. That’s the whole point.”

  The woodcutter lifted his chin and sniffed the air—a warning that, just like the ogre challenge, he, too, could track them by sense of smell.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Brian murmured. “I have a bad feeling.”

  Dani winced. “Oh, don’t say that.” Whenever a Guardian said, I have a bad feeling, mayhem usually followed soon thereafter.

  This time proved no different.

  Perhaps, as the fictional father of poor Hansel and Gretel, the woodcutter was used to dealing with children. And he clearly didn’t like them.

  He also must’ve adapted to living with his eyes sewn shut, for even though he couldn’t see them, he chased after them with horrifying speed.

  Dani bit back a shriek as she and Brian sprinted through the woods, the woodcutter in hot pursuit. She could hear his heavy footfalls crackling through the underbrush behind them.

  He was large and fast and on a mission, apparently, to chop them into bits. But, thankfully, he was clumsy.

  He ran into trees several times as he strove to home in on them. He kept swinging his ax, and half the time, it would crash into one tree trunk or another, sometimes getting stuck in the wood. Then he’d have to stop and wrangle it free.

  But as soon as he pulled the blade out, he’d keep trying to find them.

  “You don’t think the teachers would let him actually kill us, do you? I mean, Sir Peter isn’t evil!” Dani said, glancing over her shoulder as Brian and she raced on through the brush, far off the path now. “That ax is probably m-made of rubber or something, right? L-Like a stage prop!”

  “Let’s not stick around and find out.”

  Clumsy or not, the woodcutter knew this conjured forest far better than they did and managed to corner them in a small clearing a few minutes later.

  “I’ll distract him!” Brian cried. “You find the waypoint so we can get out of here!”

  “I’ll take that deal gladly. Be careful.” As Dani tiptoed away, praying Princess Pansy kept her painted mouth shut, she felt very proud of her partner’s valor.

  Brian sneaked behind the woodcutter, then poked him in the back with his quarterstaff. “Hey, ugly! You missed me!”

  The woodcutter turned around slowly with a guttural sound. Brian ducked and dodged as the ax swung. It was almost like the boy knew where the weapon was going to arc before it came at him.

  Still, Dani slipped away through the trees with her heart in her throat. She had to remind herself that this was just a training simulation. Their teachers would have a lot of explaining to do if somebody got killed. No, she told herself, they would never let that happen. Wood elves didn’t make mistakes, after all.

  Then Dani focused on finding the waypoint. It had to be here somewhere. Still hearing the sounds of the woodcutter trying to decapitate her partner, she scanned the woods for the column of white light.

  Creeping deeper into the forest, she opted to ignore the nagging thought that, in the old fairytales, the only thing worse than leaving the path was splitting off from one’s companions.

  “Hurry, they’re coming,” Pansy said.

  “Yes, I know!” Finally, Dani moved around a great, thick oak tree and spotted the light ahead.

  Still worried about separating from her partner, she memorized the spot and headed back in his direction, but in the next moment, she saw Brian sprinting toward her.

  “Run!” He waved her on.

  Dani bolted. “Follow me!”

  “Did you find it?”

  “It’s up ahead!”

  “Yes—I see it now!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just dandy,” he said.

  She smiled at his confident tone, tearing along through the trees. She glanced back and saw Brian racing after her, his cheeks pink with exertion.

  Several yards beyond him, she could also see the woodcutter falling behind. In the next moment, he stopped, as if he’d given up or maybe reached the boundary of his section of the medium-level playing field.

  Whatever the reason, he did not pursue them further, much to her relief. It seemed they had succeeded in getting past him.

  Lord only knew what would come next. Maybe nothing, she hoped, if she got them out of here quickly. But this would entail opening her very first portal with the Bud of Light. She started getting nervous.

  Following the light of the waypoint, Brian and she finally reached the edge of the woods.

  Alas, no pleasant meadow awaited them. No sunlight broke through here, despite the absence of trees.

  Instead, the same misty twilight that veiled the woods persisted here.

  Dani and Brian stopped to stare at what awaited them in the clearing: a small graveyard with about twenty old headstones.

  Around it wrapped a broken wrought-iron fence with creepy, rusted gates under an archway, whose metal sign warned: Hush, We Are Sleeping.

  Brian and she exchanged a wide-eyed look. He lifted his finger over his lips, but she hardly needed to be told to keep quiet at such a time. She had no intention of waking the dead.

  Silently, they began to sneak past the cemetery. This situation obviously called for the utmost stealth, because if they triggered this challenge, she barely dared wonder what might come out of that graveyard.

  Zombies? Unfriendly ghosts? The thought made her wish yet again that Jake were here. He wouldn’t even be nervous. Knowing him, he’d be having a grand time.

  Inspired by the thought of her hero, she shored up her courage as Brian and she crept past the graveyard.

  They made it as far as the rusty gates when Princess Pansy said, “Hurry, they’re coming.”

  Dani clapped a hand uselessly over the doll’s painted mouth.

  Immediately, the turf in front of every gravestone started shifting around. Something was moving underground in those graves.

  She gasped when a bony hand and forearm shot up through the grass.

  “Skeletons!” Brian cried. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Hurry, they’re coming,” the doll intoned.

  But Dani ju
st stood there, staring for a moment in astonishment.

  Skeletons were climbing out of the graves, dusting off the soil on their bones, and making sure they had their skulls on straight.

  She gasped as they started walking toward Brian and her, their white limbs clattering, their jawbones clacking as if they were trying to talk or shout.

  Dani knew the skeletons were only simulations, figments of Sir Peter’s warped sense of humor, but they were unnerving, nonetheless.

  Brian tugged on her arm. “Let’s go!”

  Thankfully, the skeletons were slow to get started. They seemed confused by the gate. This gave Dani and Brian and their bigmouthed conductee enough time to race toward the glowing beacon of the waypoint.

  Unfortunately, the bony crew got better at walking with a little practice, and began picking up speed.

  “Here, guard Princess Pansy.” Dani handed the doll to Brian as they reached the glowing waypoint marker. “I’ll dial in the coordinates.”

  He set the doll on the ground behind him and got into position with his weapon, ready to take on the skeletons shuffling toward them. “I like these better than those creepy little squirrels, anyway. At least skeletons won’t give you rabies.”

  “Good point.” Dani strove to focus and started punching in the coordinates she had memorized…

  Or thought she had memorized.

  The first two numbers were easy, fresh in her mind: 81 and 54. But at the third, she hesitated.

  Hold on, was that 19 or 91? She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to see the numbers scrawled on the slip of paper in her mind.

  Oh wait—what am I saying? She rolled her eyes. The minutes and seconds had to be a number under sixty. Dummy!

  She turned the dial confidently to 19, then flicked the latitude switch to South, her fingers trembling only slightly.

  Halfway there.

  She had made a little singsong of the numbers and sang it again and again in her mind. What’s next, what’s next?

  With all her will, she ignored Brian, who was shifting the quarterstaff in his hands to hold it like a bat. He changed his stance, planting his feet sideways, bending his knees.

  “Good thing for us I love baseball.”

  Dani refused even to look over. She didn’t know anything about this newfangled American sport, nor did she care at the moment. Her stare stayed fixed on the number dials of the Bud of Life.

  But when the skeletons approached, jaws clacking, she heard an odd, hollow thunk and looked over just in time to see Brian send one of the bony fellows’ heads sailing off into the trees with a hearty swing of his bat.

  The head went flying into the forest.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the body only needed a brief pause before regrouping, as though this were a minor inconvenience. The headless skeleton then continued moving toward them, along with his bony band of friends.

  Dani strove to block it all out, trusting her partner to keep them at bay.

  Several more thunks followed, while she forced the next number into focus in her mind’s eye: 41.

  “Hurry, they’re coming.”

  “Shut up!” Dani snapped at the doll.

  “How are we doing?” Brian yelled, whacking the legs out from underneath another skeleton.

  “Working on it!”

  He was starting to sound nervous. “Do you know the numbers or not, Dani?”

  “I only have two more to go! Let me think!”

  “I’m just saying, it’s ten to one here and more are on the way!”

  “Don’t mention numbers, you’ll confuse me!”

  Brian shot her a scowl and then shoved his quarterstaff into a skeleton’s ribcage to drive it back. “Go away!” he yelled at the thing.

  “Hurry, they’re coming.”

  Dani yanked the doll closer to keep it out of harm’s way, then pressed her fingers to her forehead. Come on, come on, get the stupid portal open, carrot.

  The next number blossomed in her mind. That’s right! Maddox’s age: 17. She dialed it in and quickly flicked the longitude switch to West; of that part she was sure.

  Just one more number to go.

  Oh, what was it?

  She inhaled slowly, trying to calm herself while another head went sailing. It didn’t matter if Brian reduced the skeletons to a heap of bones, because they just sprang up alive again. No wonder he was getting frustrated.

  “Can you please hurry up? Ow!”

  One of the skeletons had picked up a companion’s lost tibia and whacked Brian on the shoulder with it, its mandible working like it was laughing at him.

  “Hurry, they’re coming.”

  Dani racked her brain, but she simply wasn’t sure about the final number. Thirty-something?

  I think it’s 34. Or was it 32? Her fingertip hovered over the last dial while her heart pounded.

  Sweat formed on her brow as she agonized over the final number. Think, think, think. It was fifty-fifty as far as her memory was concerned, so, rather blindly, she opted for 34, and then pressed the all-important button that said Activate.

  Nothing happened.

  The portal didn’t open. Blast it! It must’ve been 32. Unfortunately, after a wrong number was entered, the Bud of Life needed one full minute to reset before you could try again.

  They were the longest sixty seconds ever.

  “Hurry, they’re coming,” Princess Pansy said again—and, this time, she was right.

  More skeletons were closing in on Brian.

  He was in the rhythm of it now, knocking back the skeletons as fast as they could come, using both ends of his quarterstaff like he was rowing a canoe. The odds against him were extremely unfair, however, so Dani sought to help her partner while she waited for the gauntlet to reset.

  She picked up a skull that had rolled past and hurled it at another approaching skeleton. The skeleton collapsed in a clatter of bones. Dani found the strike oddly satisfying, like some macabre form of lawn bowls.

  They went on like that for a little more, until she was confident that sixty seconds had gone by. Then, heart pounding, Dani tried again, turning the last dial anxiously to 32 and hesitating only for a second before pressing activate again.

  It worked!

  “I did it,” she whispered as the radiance of the portal flashed, enveloping them in its brightness amid the gloom of the woods. “I can’t believe it. I opened a portal. Me!”

  It was the prettiest thing she had ever seen, shiny and round, beckoning them to safety, but for a split second, she could only stare at it with a dazed smile.

  I did that. Not Jake. Not Archie, not Nixie. Not Isabelle.

  No one but me.

  “You did it!” Brian yelled, squinting over his shoulder at the light shining behind him.

  Dani grinned and grabbed Princess Pansy. “Let’s go get some ice cream, shall we?”

  Unfortunately, the skeletons had other ideas.

  Two of them reached out and wrapped their bony hands around Brian’s arms, preventing him from running through the portal.

  “Hey! Get off me!” He struggled against them, but more joined in the effort to keep him from going through the portal. He was starting to panic.

  “Let him go!” Dani shouted.

  The thirty seconds they had were ticking along, but her partner was having trouble extricating himself.

  “I said, leave him alone!” Angry all of a sudden, Dani set down their inflatable conductee, picked up a lost femur, and started batting the skeletons away from her partner.

  “Leave him be!” she hollered. Tick-tock. “We’ve got to go!”

  Brian kicked away the skeleton on his right but was unable to pry off the grip of the one on his left. Instead, he whacked its arm with his quarterstaff.

  Dani grimaced as the arm tore off the skeleton, but the bony hand stayed attached to Brian’s biceps.

  “Ew,” she said with a wince, but at least her partner was free.

  “Let’s go!” No doubt Brian thought he
was only following protocol when he pulled Dani into the portal.

  “Wait!” Frantic, Dani reached back out through the portal where the horde of skeletons crowded around, jaws clacking. “We forgot Princess Pansy!”

  Flailing, she grasped the stupid doll at the last second and pulled it halfway into the portal.

  “Hurry, they’re—”

  The portal closed, and Princess Pansy got cut in half at the waist.

  “Aw, cheese it!” Dani yelled.

  The next thing she knew, she was flying through the silvery tunnel of light, still clutching the deflated upper half of Princess Pansy.

  Brian was flying along ahead of her—or rather, below her. Their molecules had gone fuzzy and out of focus, so he looked blurry to her.

  In fact, her own body looked blurry too, but since this was just a simulation, she supposed they had not dissolved entirely, the way they would if this were a real trip through a real portal to the outside world.

  “Where are we going?” Brian shouted.

  “No idea, but I doubt there’s any ice cream there!”

  She was right.

  In the next moment, they discovered the destination Finnderool had prepared for the losers.

  The training simulation dumped them out in midair several feet above the ground, so that they each sent up a muddy splash when they landed unceremoniously in the menagerie’s mud-pen full of climbing fish.

  Dani shrieked and got a mouthful of swampy water for her pains.

  Brian punched the surface of the muddy water and let out a stream of words that kids were not supposed to say.

  The climbing fish stopped croaking and eyeballed them here and there from the dead trees.

  “Oh, I could strangle that wood elf! He thinks he’s funny, doesn’t he?” she shouted as she stood up, stewing. “Well, it’s not funny! It’s not funny at all!”

  Brian’s face was splashed with mud like war paint as he turned to her angrily. “What happened? I thought we made it!”

  “Not all of us!” Dani held up the severed trunk of their royal VIP.

  It was only then that she remembered the Bud of Life and yelped, lifting it higher to keep it out of the swamp water.

  A quick glance at the gauntlet revealed that somehow—surely it was sheer Irish luck—she had managed not to get it wet in the fall.