by Lari Don
As he walked, Helen heard Rona whisper again, “We must be quiet now. We may not be alone.”
Then Yann walked straight into a cliff.
Helen flinched, but the cliff opened suddenly into a narrow chasm, then a wider cave.
“You can get down now,” said Yann.
Rona slid down, and so did Helen, her legs a bit wobbly and her arms stiff. Rona gave her the rucksack.
Yann turned to Helen. “You didn’t dig your feet in. Thank you. Perhaps I won’t make you walk home.” It was very dark in the cave, and Helen couldn’t tell if he was smiling and making a joke, or if he was serious. Perhaps he never made jokes.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“This is the back entrance to Sapphire’s cave. Catesby thinks that something may have followed her after she was attacked, so we can’t go straight in the front door. There is another way to her chamber through that tunnel there.” He pointed to a black jagged oval at the back of the cave. “But it’s too narrow and low for me, so I will leave you here and go round the front. If the front entrance is being watched I will lure or scare away the watcher. If it isn’t, I will join you inside. Hurry, please. Sapphire was scared and in pain when Catesby left her.”
Yann squeezed back through the narrow entrance, with Catesby fluttering after him.
“All girls together,” said Lavender. “That’s nice. If only we had time to talk about how annoying boys can be.”
Helen was looking doubtfully at the blackness round her. “Do we have any light?”
“You have no light in that magic bag of yours?” asked Lavender.
“I didn’t realize we were going under a hill, or I’d have brought a torch.”
“Never mind. Even fledgling fairies can do light spells.” Lavender produced a tiny stick from her dress and blew on it. The end blossomed into a ball of gentle light, not bright enough to make you squint when you looked directly at it, but bright enough for Helen to see the walls of the small cave. Now she could see dark scuttlings and shiftings on the rock around her.
She jumped. “What was that? Are there living things in here?”
“There are living things everywhere,” said Rona. “These ones don’t like light. They won’t bother us. Let’s go.”
“Do you know the way? Have you used this back door before?”
“No,” answered Lavender. “But Catesby says that Sapphire says that a knight looking for treasure got in this way when her grandfather was young. So I’m sure it will be fine.”
Helen looked at Lavender. It was now bright enough to see her face. She was smiling. Did that mean she was joking, or that she was laughing at Helen’s fears?
Helen said cautiously, “I suppose if the tunnel’s blocked by a rockfall or something we can just turn round and come back out.”
Lavender smiled even more charmingly. “Absolutely. So long as the rockfall is in front of us.”
They entered the narrow tunnel. Lavender first with the light, then Helen, carrying the rucksack, then Rona.
Helen knew that most caves were formed by water dissolving holes in limestone. Every time she heard or felt a drip, she was sure that the water was dissolving the whole hill around her. The rocky ceiling looked as if it could crash down on her head any moment.
The threatening rock was a dull pencil-grey colour, but sometimes Lavender’s light lit up a seam of a brighter mineral, slashing across the floor, walls or ceiling, looking like the rock had been torn apart and glued back together. Helen ran her finger along the tunnel wall. It seemed solid enough.
The tunnel had started too narrow and low to let a centaur through, and it kept getting smaller. The ceiling sloped down, the floor rose up and the walls came inwards. Soon Helen was walking with her head and shoulders stooped, her knees bent and her elbows pulled into her ribs to stop them banging on the bumpy walls. Adventures were more awkward than she had expected.
Lavender was dancing and swirling ahead of her, but then she could fit through a letterbox without ruffling her dress. Behind Helen, Rona was grunting with effort.
The tunnel wasn’t level either. Sometimes the ache in Helen’s thighs told her they were climbing uphill, and sometimes the ache in her knees told her they were walking downhill.
After a particularly long downhill trudge, Helen’s feet began to splash through little puddles. As they went lower the puddles became a stretch of water. The water reached higher, over the top of her ankle boots, then up to her shins. It was so cold that she was surprised the surface wasn’t crackling with ice.
“Can either of you swim?” Rona panted from behind her.
“No,” replied Lavender.
“Yes,” said Helen, “but I’ve never swum in a cave, nor in water this cold.”
“My light would go out underwater anyway,” said Lavender, “and if there isn’t enough air between the water and the rock for me to fly, there won’t be enough air for you two to breathe.”
“Was the knight’s armour rusty when he reached the dragon’s chamber?” asked Helen.
“The story doesn’t say, but that was hundreds of years ago, and caves can change quite quickly. Should we turn back?” Lavender looked at the two bigger girls behind her.
“We must be nearer the front door than the back now,” said Helen, “and we don’t want to turn round and go all that way again unless we have to. Perhaps you could fly on for a few moments, Lavender, and see if the tunnel goes lower into the water, or if it slopes back up to dry stone?”
Lavender didn’t answer for a moment. Then she sniffed a little. “I suppose I have to. Don’t go away.”
She took a deep breath, and flew on ahead. Helen and Rona saw her light reflecting off the wet walls and water for a few moments, then the fairy turned a corner and they stood together in the bitter cold dark.
There was a gentle splashing as Rona moved nearer Helen, and the two girls held hands.
“Are you scared?” Rona whispered.
“Yes, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Lavender must be more afraid. She’s on her own,” Helen pointed out.
“She has the light. We should have asked her to leave us some.”
There was a long pause, during which they could hear only drips and their own breathing. Helen imagined the drips slowly filling the pool until it reached their necks, mouths and noses. She was almost too numb to move even if the water rose over their heads.
“Why did you come with us?” Rona asked.
“I thought I could help. And Yann hasn’t really finished his story. What wall did he leap over, and how was your dragon friend injured, and what clue has the Book left behind? I want to know how the story ends. Also, I don’t think Yann likes me, and I wanted to show him that … Och, I’m not sure … that not all humans are bad. Not all people pamper ponies.”
“Don’t mind Yann. Everyone gets scared in different ways. Lavender gets all fluttery and bursts into tears, then takes tight hold of her wand and gets on with it. Catesby, as you saw, gets a bit clumsy. Yann gets very rude and touchy. But he feels responsible for all of us. If we fail to get the Book back, he will take all the blame on himself, even though he knows his father would never forgive him for shaming their tribe. And you fixed his leg, so he feels in your debt, which is always awkward. Also, you’re a human child, and he’s been taught that humans are dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. It’s surprising he’s talking to you at all really.”
“So if I wasn’t human, and I hadn’t fixed his leg, and he wasn’t scared and guilty, he would say please a bit more often, and maybe even tell jokes and do some juggling?”
Rona laughed. “Well no. Centaurs are always a bit stiff and proper. But he wouldn’t be quite so rude if he wasn’t quite so worried. And he definitely wouldn’t have let you ride on his back if he didn’t like you just a little bit.”
“So, if Yann is rude, and Lavender cries, and Catesby gets tangled in people’s hair, how do you deal with being scared?”
&
nbsp; “I’m trying very hard to be calm right now,” Rona said softly, “but when I get home I will need to do a lot of very loud singing.”
“Singing?”
“Yes. Among my people I am learning to be a singer. And when I am happy or sad, or scared or worried, I sing about it until it becomes part of me and part of the sea and part of my people. Then it isn’t so overwhelming.”
“What songs do you sing?” Helen asked.
“Old songs about when fish were made of silver and gold. Ballads about humans and seals falling in love. Battle songs about killer whales and sharks. But I write my own too. I might write the story of our quest for the Book. If we ever find it.”
The warmth and enthusiasm in Rona’s voice made the cold water round Helen’s feet easier to bear. “Would you sing the quest song to me, when you’ve finished it?”
“Yann said that you want to be a music-maker, not a healer like your mother. Do you sing?”
“A little, but mostly I play the violin. I like old tunes too, and I’ve written a few short pieces of my own as well. Right now I’m searching for a perfect piece of music; not perfect for everyone, just the absolutely right one to show how my violin and I play best together. It’s … it’s hard to explain.”
“You shouldn’t try to explain music. Just play it. I know … when we find the Book, I could sing the story and you could play it,” Rona suggested, “Just for our friends, even if we can never tell anyone else.”
“For our friends? That would be great. But will we find the Book?”
“I think so. I think with your help we will. Lavender was right. In the old stories, it has always been when the fabled beasts worked with humans that we defeated evil. And many of our best adventures have happened in the company of a human bard, musician or storyteller. You may be our bard. When we have healed Sapphire, and she has given us the clue, we will see if you can help us with that too.”
Helen, who had never been any good at crosswords or quizzes, made a sceptical face in the darkness, but for this girl who talked so easily of ‘our friends,’ she would certainly try.
She squeezed Rona’s hand, and they waited in the creeping black cold.
Then the black slowly lightened. At first the dark shadows got darker, then the wet areas shone, then Lavender and her light came round the corner.
“Hello! Are you there?” her little voice called.
“Here we are!”
“Oh, thank goodness. I thought I would never get back to you.”
Lavender hugged Rona’s neck, then flew to Helen and kissed her cheek.
“I’m not going ahead on my own ever again. Next time one of you can take some light and go and look.”
“What did you see?” asked Helen.
“Well, the tunnel keeps going down for a short way, but then it definitely comes back up again, and the floor rises out of the water. But I can’t tell how deep it gets first. Do you want to risk it?”
“Yes!” said both girls at once. Now they had light, and they were all together again, it seemed that they could do anything.
So they set off along the tunnel.
The water rose quickly now. Before they were round the corner, it was above their knees, then nearly to Helen’s waist. It was very hard to push through its swirling cold heaviness.
“It goes uphill again soon, I promise,” insisted Lavender. She repeated this promise several times, as the water got higher and higher.
“Do you want to turn back?” asked Rona.
Helen, concentrating on each slow step so she didn’t slip into the deep water, just shook her head.
Finally the water started to get shallower. It was down to Helen’s knees, her ankles, then just her toes again.
After that, the dry tunnel, however narrow, seemed like a footpath on an easy walk.
The girls strode along, whispering and laughing quietly. Wondering if they would get to the chamber before Yann and Catesby, wondering if Sapphire would have any food they could eat, hoping that she could light a small fire to dry them.
But then the tunnel came to an abrupt end. Suddenly, the only way forward was a tiny opening in a blank wall of rock.
“I’m not going through myself,” Lavender sniffed, “Not on my own, not again.”
Before Lavender could start to cry properly, Helen said, “Give me the light. If I can fit through, so can Rona.”
“And if you can’t? If you can’t turn round, you might be stuck.”
“You can just pull me back out again.”
Helen took the rucksack off and handed it to Rona. “If I get through, just shove this after me.”
Then she took the tiny glowing wand from Lavender and held it delicately in her right hand. It felt very fragile.
“No.” She gave it back. “You two keep the light. I’ll need both hands. I’ll just feel my way through.”
But Lavender said, “I can give you some light you don’t need to hold.” The fairy flicked her wand, and the light ball flew off. It streaked through the air, bounced off the wall of the cave, and came to a halt, hovering just in front of Helen. She blew at it, and the bright white ball bobbed away from her, then slowly returned.
Helen grinned. “Thank you.” She crouched down by the gap, and heard a faint noise. A groaning or croaking.
“Is that your dragon friend?”
Rona crouched beside her, listened, then nodded. “We must be near her chamber now.”
Helen put her arms, head and shoulders into the gap, and tried to push the rest of her body up and in. At first she thought she was stuck, and wondered how much it would hurt to be dragged back across all this rough rock. But with a few wriggles she got inside and then pushed herself further on with her toes.
In the light of the little ball ahead of her, she saw cracks into which she could fit her fingers to drag herself forward. Then the space widened a little and she could get up from her tummy and use her knees and elbows too. She edged round a slight bend, and saw a grey circle ahead. The way out! The air seemed slightly warmer too.
She called behind her, “I think I’m nearly there. Give me a couple of minutes, then follow me.”
She forced herself towards the exit, and the grey circle widened to reveal that the tunnel opened out just above the floor of a cave, which was dimly lit by a hole high in the ceiling.
At the other side of the cave, on a raised platform of rock, a lizard crouched on a nest of wire and bricks and pebbles.
As Helen got an idea of the size of the cave from some bats fluttering in at the hole in the roof, she realized that the cave was bigger than her school gym hall; the nest was made from metal swords, gold crowns and jewels; and the lizard was the size of a small van.
This was the dragon. And the dragon was crying. Not delicate little sobs like Lavender, but great roaring howls.
The dragon was bright blue, with long silver claws, and a vast tail coiled round its whole length. Its eyes were closed, but its jaws, resting on its front legs, were open. It was breathing out ragged clouds of smoke as it wept. It had long curved white teeth and a forked tongue which vibrated with every gasping cry.
Helen couldn’t see any sign of Yann or Catesby. But she had to get out of the hole, so that Rona and Lavender could fit through.
There was no elegant or quick way out of the narrow tunnel, because she couldn’t get her feet out until she had lowered the rest of her body down to the ground. She tried to be quiet, but as she bumped onto the rocky floor of the cave, she dislodged some stones. That set off a flurry of bats from the ceiling, and the dragon lifted its head and roared.
Helen yelled, “I’m a friend of Yann’s!” as the dragon clattered off its metal pile and stumbled in her direction. It didn’t look very seriously injured; all four legs were working and so was its fire-breathing equipment.
It blasted jets of flame through the air towards the flying bats and the rolling pebbles, towards anything moving and making a noise. Helen scrambled behind a pile of rusty metal and h
id there, hoping the dragon couldn’t see her.
She smelt smoke and heard the scrape of claws getting nearer. All of a sudden, Helen wished she hadn’t tried quite so hard to persuade her strange new friends to take her with them tonight.
Chapter 6
“Frass! Frass!”
“Master, I am here.”
“Where are the young idiots now?”
“They have left the human house, and gone to the dragon’s lair. But the dragon is badly injured. They won’t be going anywhere else tonight. I have a family of weasels stationed at the cave entrance, and another at the human dwelling, so we can keep track of them all.”
“And you drove the dragonling off before she found the clue?”
“Oh no, she had the clue with her when she fled.”
“What! Why did you allow that to happen, you flea-bitten goat-legged failure?”
“We already know what the clue says, Master, and I thought that if the children of the fabled beasts had it too, then if they managed to work it out before we do, we could simply follow them to the Book.”
“You thought that a gang of half-grown half-witted half-beasts would work it out before me? I am the Master of the Maze, the Lord of the Labyrinth, the prince at the heart of the puzzle. Do you doubt that I can best them at a simple riddle?”
“No of course not, Master, of course not. But the clue is meant for them, sir, not us, and the Book may have designed it so that only they can work it out.”
“I see. And the human girl? Does she know anything valuable? Will they be going back to her abode? Is it worth keeping watch?”
“The weasels report that the fabled beasts have taken the girl with them to the cave. She is still helping them. Perhaps she now knows their secret?”
“A human child? Working with the centaurs and fairies and other fluffy beasts? That is not auspicious. Watch her. Watch her family. Find out who her friends are, and what is precious to her. But do not be seen. Use native creatures where you can. And bring me the copy of the clue again. Then give me peace and quiet to think.”