“Us?” said Grandpa. “Very little, I think. I’m just a humble gatekeeper, after all.”
“Mirabella said you were a nobleman,” Sagandran pointed out.
Grandpa waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, yes. That. But it makes no difference. I wish I could think of some way I could help defend Sagaria against this menace, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Sagandran continued staring at the glow of the fire, not knowing either but wishing he did. In so many of the fantasy stories that he’d read, the land was in peril and a humble kitchen boy, ignored by all but sensing his own destiny, had the power to defeat evil. Through virtue, courage and integrity, the kitchen boy rose until he was able to lead a mighty army, win the heart of a beautiful princess, trounce the forces of wickedness and be recognized as the long-lost rightful heir to the kingdom. Sagandran knew it was a useful formula for fiction writers who couldn’t imagine much beyond the ends of their noses. But formulas in stories can sometimes be applied to real life as well. The only trouble was that he, Sagandran, lurking behind his thick spectacles, couldn’t even think of a way to cope with the malice of Webster O’Malley, so tackling a dark lord like the Shadow Master was definitely out of his league.
Was it out of Grandpa’s as well? Sagandran looked at the old man. How often had Grandpa told him that he could do just about anything, if he had faith in himself? Well, Grandpa didn’t seem to have much faith in himself right now. He was ready to let Sagaria go to ruin because he didn’t think of himself as anything more than a gatekeeper. But if kitchen boys could do it, surely gatekeepers could as well.
“Grandpa,” said Sagandran, leaning forward and reaching out to put his hand over the old man’s, “there’s got to be something we can do.”
Melwin shrugged. “I wish I could say yes to that, but I can’t.” He sighed. “It’s very late, Sagandran, and we’re not going to solve any of Sagaria’s problems sitting here growing tireder and tireder. Let’s get ourselves to bed. Maybe we’ll be able to think of something in the morning.” He got to his feet wearily. “Come on, lad.”
Sagandran was troubled as he climbed the stairs to his little room. There had been an awful lot of doubt in his grandfather’s “maybe.”
Sagandran lay awake long into the night thinking about all that Grandpa Melwin had told him and worrying about the danger that was looming over the bright land of Sagaria. Already, Sagandran felt that somehow the otherworld was his place. He was becoming as possessive of it as if he’d been there as often as Grandpa had and made friends with the people there. That was something else to ponder about. He felt as if he knew what Sagaria was like. He wouldn’t have been able to draw a realistic picture of a particular scene, but it seemed to him that already he had the scent of the otherworld in his nostrils and knew how the sunlight played upon its land. It was, like Grandpa Melwin had said, as though he’d been there but had forgotten all the details of his stay.
He was finally drifting off to sleep when there was a sudden noise from outside the house – from the outskirts of the forest, as far as he could tell.
All traces of sleep fled. He sat bolt upright in his bed and peered into the darkness of his room. A crack of faint, pale light under the door told him that Grandpa was still awake and reading in his room.
Sagandran swung out of bed and pitter-pattered to the door. The floor was cold to his bare feet.
Grandpa was stirring too. Sagandran heard the protests of bedsprings from the other room.
He opened his door at the same time as Grandpa opened his.
The old man clicked on the landing light. “I thought you’d be long asleep by now, Sagandran.”
“Yeah, well …” Sagandran trailed off, shuffling his feet. “Did you hear that noise?”
“A sort of popping sound?”
“Yes.”
“I heard it.”
“What do you think it could be, Grandpa?”
The old man gazed at him through bleary eyes. Though Melwin was still determinedly reading his book, he had obviously been close to giving in to the inevitable and switching off his bedside lamp.
“Probably an animal,” he replied, stifling a yawn.
“Is that all?”
“Just because” – he smothered another yawn – “Just because I told you about Sagaria this evening doesn’t mean that every unexplained noise or happenstance has to start being magical.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
“Well …”
“Would you feel safer if I went out and took a look?”
“Er, yes, Grandpa.”
Melwin didn’t say anything more. He just turned and rootled around beside his bed to find his slippers, which he put on. He trudged off down the stairs, leaving behind a few histrionic sighs for Sagandran to listen to. A few moments later, Sagandran heard the back door open and close. A little while afterwards, it creaked open again, and there was the sound of Grandpa shooting the bolts home – something he never normally bothered to do. It was clear that he wasn’t quite as unconcerned as he’d been making out.
“Nothing to see,” called Grandpa from the foot of the stairs. He began to climb. “Just an animal breaking a branch, was all it was.” He didn’t sound terribly sure, more as if he were trying to convince himself.
“Time for our beauty sleep, lad,” said Melwin, his hand on the jamb of his bedroom door, turning his head to give Sagandran a long, earnest look. He clicked the landing light off, then his wrinkled face broke into a grin. “Heaven knows I need beauty sleep more than most, at my age.”
Sagandran realized that there was no point arguing. An animal it had been, unless and until they found out otherwise – which they were unlikely to do until the morning brought sunlight to the forest.
“’Night, Grandpa.”
“Good night, Sagandran.”
This time, to Sagandran’s surprise, sleep came quickly. He’d hardly laid his head down comfortably on the warm, pine-smelling pillow when the darkness pulled him toward it. He just had time for a couple of thoughts to drift through his mind, both of them frayed at the edges like high clouds being pulled apart by a strong wind.
If I were a dragonfly with only one day to live, then I would like it to have been this day.
And, when he was far more asleep than awake: Since when did animals breaking branches in the forest make a sound like bubblegum popping?
He thought it was a crash from downstairs that jolted him out of sleep. For a moment, he thought it must still be the middle of the night, but the sunshine flaring in through his bedroom window immediately dispelled that notion. Almost burning his hand on the banister, he rattled down the stairs in his bare feet and pajamas.
The kitchen was empty. There was no sign of anything having been dropped or broken. There was a plate with crumbs and a dirty coffee mug on the counter by the sink, so obviously Grandpa had been up early and eaten his breakfast. There was no sign of Grandpa; he must have gone out to check if all was well in the woods. Perhaps he’d been a bit more suspicious about that strange noise last night than he’d been willing to let on to Sagandran. It was odd that he’d not left a note, though; he must have assumed that he’d be back before Sagandran awoke.
It was fun having the cottage to himself. He ran a deep, hot bath, and luxuriated in it for half an hour, holding his heavy book (a one-volume edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which he was reading for the second time) above the bath water with increasing difficulty until he finally gave up and washed, singing lustily as he did so. By the time he was out, dried and dressed – and filled with that sense of virtue a boy feels after having taken a bath without being told to – Grandpa still hadn’t returned, but Sagandran wasn’t worried. He knew how seriously Melwin took his voluntary job in the forest, even though he’d retired as a forest ranger.
His voluntary job in the forest. Now there was a thought. Maybe Grandpa Melwin had decided to look in on the gateway to check that all was well th
ere.
Strangely, this was the first time since waking up that Sagandran had thought about the things Grandpa had told him the night before. His mind had been so full of them as he’d been falling asleep. He was certain that his dreams had been filled with images of Sagaria and adventures there, though his memories of his dreams were now just a swirl of colors and fleeting impressions. Even though he’d been reading Tolkien’s powerful fantasy novel, which should have set his mind on the course of otherworlds and unusual adventures, he hadn’t thought of Sagaria once.
Now that he had, everything came rushing back: Grandpa’s journey in the column of blue light, discovering himself in a faraway land, worlds overlapping each other, meeting Queen Mirabella, the threat from the Shadow Master.
As he burned a couple of slices of toast for his breakfast, Sagandran thought a little more about the Shadow Master. Grandpa had told him next to nothing about this figure, probably because he had very little to tell, but just the name brought a flicker of dread into Sagandran’s mind.
Then the dread was gone, just like that. He rescued his toast and decided that, though black, it was still edible. He fetched creamy yellow butter from the fridge and slodged it on far thicker than Mom would ever have permitted. The kettle whistled at him, and he made a mugful of tea, adding four spoonfuls of sugar to it without a trace of guilt. Well, perhaps just a little trace, because he caught himself checking the doorway in case Mom should suddenly, impossibly, appear there.
Full and happy, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. His copy of The Lord of the Rings lay atop the crumpled bedclothes, where he’d left it. Since Grandpa still wasn’t back, he could use the time to get some more reading done. He flopped down onto the narrow but comfortable bed, propped himself up on his elbows, found his place in the story, and within moments was completely immersed in it. He soon noticed the plot taking some extremely weird twists, and also that he hadn’t turned a page for a while …
When he woke again, he could tell by the color of the sunlight through his bedroom window that it was late afternoon. Rubbing his eyes with his fists, he hauled himself off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom.
He felt a bit more alert once his face was washed and his teeth were brushed. His thoughts full of Sagaria, he ran down the stairs, full of questions he wanted to ask Grandpa. But Grandpa still wasn’t there. Sagandran could see that nothing at all had changed in the kitchen since he’d left it. The plates and mugs were still sitting by the sink, the chairs were unmoved. The room gave the impression that it had been entirely deserted while Sagandran had been sleeping with his nose in The Lord of the Rings.
He started to seriously worry. Grandpa popping out for an hour or two in the early morning without leaving a note to say where he was going was one thing, but Sagandran couldn’t believe that the old man would leave his grandson alone for almost the whole day. In fact, now that he thought harder about it, it seemed curious to Sagandran that he hadn’t been concerned about Grandpa earlier, and that he’d more or less forgotten about Sagaria this morning.
A chill crept over him like an invisible veil. It was unnatural that Sagaria had been so far from his thoughts.
The Shadow Master. If the Shadow Master could emerge from the Shadow World to threaten Sagaria, was it not possible the tendrils of his malign influence could extend yet further, right here into the Earthworld? Could the Shadow Master have been playing with Sagandran’s mind, distracting him from thoughts of Sagaria and making him sleep for a few extra hours during the day?
Standing by the kitchen table, his hand clamped onto it for support, Sagandran felt a rush of emotions, none of them pleasant. Guilt was a part of them – guilt that he’d so easily fobbed off any concerns he should have had about Grandpa’s safety. The sense of having been invaded: now he knew why people were so shocked when they discovered that they’d been burgled. It wasn’t the missing possessions – it was the fact that someone had invaded the most intimate part of their lives. How much more intimate an intrusion was the invasion of Sagandran’s mind?
But most of what he felt was fear. Fear that invisible forces could be at play around and within him, affecting him at the most fundamental level without him even being aware that they were doing so. What sort of defense could he mount against such forces? None at all. Yet, there must be a defense. If there wasn’t, Sagaria might as well just accept impending doom, and the Earthworld wouldn’t be far behind. Sagandran pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, his vision filled with the gray clouds of hopelessness, his mind filled with the knowledge of imminent catastrophe.
Sagaria.
And yet…
Sagaria had its own magic! That must be where Grandpa had gone – to get help from Sagaria. The old man must have realized his cottage was under unseen assault and ran to fetch magical help from his friend, Queen Mirabella, not even pausing to take Sagandran with him, so great was his hurry. It didn’t quite make sense. If unseen evils were invading the cottage, the last thing Grandpa Melwin would have done was leave his grandson to face them alone. Sagandran pushed this line of reasoning from his mind. He could sort out the details later. In the meantime, he should focus on the one important thing. Sagaria was the key to all this. In Sagaria, there surely lay the key to withstanding this attack.
Or the next one. His mind was functioning clearly now, his memories intact. As far as he could tell, no one was tampering with his thoughts any longer. For whatever reason, the minions of the Shadow Master seemed to have retreated, leaving him on his own once more.
Except that … except that this morning, if anyone had suggested that someone was fooling with his mind, Sagandran would just have laughed at them. How did he know, sitting here at the table, that his thoughts were really his own? They seemed to be his own, but so had his thoughts this morning. He wanted to scream in frustration, but suppressed it. In a wooly way, it seemed to him that screaming would be an admission of weakness that the forces of evil could capitalize upon.
The kitchen was growing gloomy. Sagandran glanced toward the window and saw that the sky had clouded over. Just as he did so, there was a colossal flash of lightning. Automatically, he began counting off the seconds to find out how far away the storm was. Every five seconds was a mile, near enough. He was up to nearly five hundred when he stopped. There hadn’t been a crack of thunder, not even a distant grumble. The storm that had generated that lightning bolt hadn’t been a hundred miles away. The flash had seemed so close that the thunder’s roar should have followed right behind.
While he’d been counting, the dark, ominous clouds had cleared. The sky was a rich, late-afternoon blue, as if it had been that way for hours. Birds were singing, unconcerned.
That was no ordinary lightning flash, he thought, frozen in place. That was—
Now he did yell. “Grandpa!”
The echoes faded away. Aside from them the house was silent.
The gateway.
Grandpa must have gone to the gateway – that was all Sagandran could think. Even if the old man hadn’t, even if he’d been seized and dragged off somewhere else, the only help Sagandran could hope to find was in Sagaria. The nearest humans were the O’Malleys in their big summer house, and he reckoned that the O’Malleys would be useless at the best of times and doubly so against unknown sorceries. Sagaria it had to be, then, and the only way to get help from Sagaria was to go there, which meant going through the gateway.
Which meant finding the well.
Sagandran didn’t know where to start looking, but he most certainly wasn’t going to find the well if he just stayed here in the kitchen. He grabbed his anorak from a hook on the back of the door and, pausing for a moment, jammed what was left of the loaf of bread into one of its pockets. He wished he could think of some way to take water with him, but there were streams in the forest, so he should be all right. The flashlight Grandpa had used last night was in its place on top of the fridge, so Sagandran grabbed that as well. Then he barged out of the cottage.
; “Grandpa!” he called as soon as he was in the open air. A couple of birds took fright and flapped away through the trees, squawking in protest, but there was no other reply.
“Grandpa!”
Feeling very alone and very small, Sagandran advanced nervously toward the dark shadows at the edge of the forest.
It didn’t take him as long to find the old well as he’d anticipated. It was as if he’d been coaxed in the right direction, though this time any unseen influences that might have been at work didn’t frighten him in the slightest. Besides, he told himself, it was much more likely he’d just been lucky in his search.
He wasn’t so lucky with the weather though. There had been a brief but heavy – and thankfully real – rainstorm since he’d left the cottage. The thick canopy of leaves had saved him from the worst of it, but he was still glad he’d thought to put on his anorak. After the rain, darkness had fallen swiftly. Fortunately, there was a full moon and enough silvery light penetrated the trees for him to pick his way through the undergrowth without tripping too often.
In the middle of a glade, he saw a pearly glow and he knew that he’d discovered what he’d been seeking. He hung back in the moon-tinged shadows for just a few minutes longer, watching. For all he knew, the servants of the Shadow Master might be here too, waiting and watching, just like him. Yet, once he settled, staying as still as he possibly could, he heard the small nocturnal forest animals moving around unconcernedly. Of course, the Shadow Master’s henchmen could be holding themselves as still as Sagandran was, so …
He shook and a drop of water fell from somewhere above and landed with a splat nearby, making him jump. If he kept on thinking about all the possible dangers he’d never get anywhere. Holding himself upright and trying to look fearless, even if he didn’t feel it, he walked slowly across the glade to the place where the pearly luminescence shone up from the hole in the ground. His footsteps slowed as he neared it, but still, he forced himself to keep going.
Sagaria Page 10