by Ken Brosky
“Leo Vontescue.”
A low growl escaped his throat. “You no trust that man. I hear stories of him and I no like. He is a dark man.”
“Dark …” Corrupted? Or just another evil human being? I wondered.
“I trust no Romanian princes.” Attila pretended to spit. “Especially not that one. I hear stories of his family. They kill Hungarians long, long ago.”
“Perhaps you should tell her about your family,” Briar suggested.
“Quiet, rabbit! I speak now.” Attila took a deep breath, turning left at the next intersection. We were at the edge of town now, heading north. The car’s headlights illuminated only a bit of the road ahead, but we were clearly entering farm country. Farms and lots of rolling hills.
Somewhere beyond those hills was a giant. And a tiny, scheming little man who knew I was coming.
“Two hundred years ago,” Attila began, “a strange young woman came to our town, begging hospitality. She kept red scarf wrapped around face and dressed like man, fooling many. But not my ancestors. She asked them to keep her secret, and my ancestors promised to do so. Our family is honorable.”
“A woman?” I said, mind reeling. That meant …
“It was actually the year 1822 or so,” Briar interjected.
“Silence, rabbit! Attila speaks.” He took another deep breath, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “My ancestors gave her spare bed, asking only in return that she assist with the chickens. She stayed for many days, suffering terrible dreams that caused many screams. My ancestors did not tell her about the great wolves that were terrorizing our land, hoping she would be spared their terror. But she was not so lucky. On the third night, the wolves came. They were relentless creatures, using the night like blanket. They stole away a poor family, devouring them in the darkness.”
The car rocked as its wheels bounced over a pothole. Attila grumbled something to the car in Hungarian.
“This woman,” he continued, “she told my ancestors she had seen wolves in her dreams. She told them she could not kill them all, but perhaps she could drive them away. My ancestors begged her—begged her!—to leave the wolves be. They could not be killed. What could one woman do?”
“And even if they were killed,” Briar said, “werewolves come back as vampires, no?”
“Bah!” Attila waved his hand wildly, dismissing the rabbit. “That is children’s story, rabbit! I speak again.” He cleared his throat. “Where was I …”
“The wolves,” I said.
“Ah, of course! This woman had a plan, and she shared it with the people of the town. The next night, the wolves returned, growling and chasing those who ran to the cathedral seeking solace. Then, suddenly, two dozen men ran out of their homes clutching torches, lighting great bonfires all around the town.” He wiggled his finger in a wide circle. “Entire town was lit up! And wolves … had disappeared.”
“How?” I asked, on the edge of my seat now. Still buckled in, of course.
The man chuckled. “In the firelight … wolves became men. The hero emerged from my ancestors’ home with my ancestors’ bow and a single arrow. Word has traveled from generation to generation about this arrow. My father said it was glowing so bright that it was as if sun had risen at night. My grandfather said tip of arrow was so sharp it sang as it soared through the air … landing in the chest of one of the men.”
“Then he burned away,” I finished. “Like paper.”
Attila nodded. “The rest of the men fled, transforming into monsters once again after leaving town. The woman stayed another day, then traveled north and was never seen again.”
The pieces clicked together. The hero in my dreams … Tom Thumb had said it had been a man ... but he was wrong. It was a woman. A woman with a red scarf. The same hero who’d saved this town.
“Now … look,” Attila said. “Behind you.”
I turned, peering through the rear window. There in the distance: a circular row of hanging lanterns at the edge of the town. The reddish glow of each lantern seemed to kiss its neighbor, creating a ring of protection that looked distinctly like a beaded necklace.
“Ah!” Briar exclaimed. “Quite impressive.”
“The bunny speaks truth,” Attila said. “And so you see, hero, you are most welcome here. It has been two hundred years, and the monsters have not returned. My very lifeblood depended on this mysterious stranger.” He regarded me in the rear-view mirror. “I do not fully understand mask, but I do not question.”
“It’s a really fancy, expensive clay.” I looked at Briar. “Good disguise, too.”
“Given that this resort is a spa, you might not look too out of place,” Briar offered.
I grinned at him. “Oh, we’re not going to the spa. We’re going spelunking.”
“Spelunking?” Briar asked, tapping his paws nervously together.
“Cave diving,” I said.
Attila grunted. “I must admit, I did not expect hero to be quite so peculiar.”
Chapter 9
The giant … thinking that the tailor had killed seven men, gained some respect for the little fellow. But he did want to put him to the test, so he picked up a stone and squeezed it with his hand until water dripped from it.[iii]
The highway road took us right through the forest in my dreams, its natural beauty marred by white one-story homes cut right into the woodland. As we descended into the wide valley, I could see the massive spa resort ahead, the lights in the windows beckoning new guests searching for some good old-fashioned relaxation. It looked almost medieval with its stone exterior and tall, arcing windows outlined by the bright curtains within. Two tall towers with sharp steeples flanked the front of the resort, each one with an opening near the top. Only instead of bells, there were cannons. According to the brochure, the cannons fired during every festival. They did not, however, fire actual cannonballs.
“It reminds me of the cathedral in town,” I said.
“Yes.” Attila nodded approvingly. “They take design from cathedral, which was once used as protective fortress. Try to make it look like it has been here for long time. Bah! If you ask me, it looks too Americanized. No offense.”
“None taken. Pull around to the back,” I ordered. Attila followed the parking lot to the rear of the building. He took us to the far edge, where the ground began its gentle incline. The incline grew sharper just beyond, grass quickly giving way to flat rocks that looked as if they’d been broken up and then glued back together. There were a few fancy-looking black streetlamps lighting up the mostly empty parking lot, and the very edge of their light kissed the very spot where the giant had crawled inside the old entrance to the cave.
“There,” I said, pointing to the old entrance. Nearly two centuries of weather had disguised the cave-in, making it as natural as any other part of the hill.
Briar narrowed his eyes, searching. “I don’t see anything. Are you sure?”
“She is hero, bunny!” Attila shouted. “She knows!”
I stuck out my tongue at Briar. He frowned. “Well. Of course I believe you.”
“We’ll get out here,” I said. “Let’s go, bunny. Thank you, Attila.”
“I shall wait for you,” Attila said. “On other side of parking lot. I will look for gift shop.”
“OK.” I opened the door, then turned back to him. “Hey, don’t you find it strange that I’m with a giant rabbit?”
“Of course not,” the big man said. “Many animals speak to me.”
“Out, out, out we go now,” Briar urged, pushing me aside. I shut the door, returning Attila’s very American thumbs-up.
The van disappeared around the front of the resort.
“There used to be trees here,” I said, kicking the fresh asphalt. “It was a beautiful little valley.”
“People love their hot springs,” Briar murmured, smoothing out his vest. “Very therapeutic and whatnot. Now, shall we?”
I nodded, leading the way off the parking lot asphalt and onto the s
oft ground. Thanks to the natural hot spring, the entire valley had a warm, balmy feel. Just a hint of sulfur, tickling my nose.
“Pascal,” I said, repeating the mathematician’s name over and over and over. My breath came out in steamy clouds. Little snowflakes fell around us, melting when they landed on the ground. “What do we know about him?”
“Pascal was the hero in the math world,” Briar said, hopping beside me. “He was one of many who discovered a quite peculiar triangle. An array of binomial coefficients, to be exact. What’s that, you ask? Why, Alice, I would be positively delighted to tell you all about it!”
“Just give me the gist,” I said, navigating us around the old entrance. I was sure this was the place. Just as I’d suspected, the cave-in had been thorough, with no chance of slipping through. But there was another entrance somewhere …
“The gist of it, dear hero, is that Pascal’s Triangle is a set of numbers, and each number in the triangle is the sum of the two directly above it. Looks like a pyramid if you were to draw it on a piece of paper. A pyramid with numbers for bricks.”
“Numbers for bricks,” I said. “Briar, I think I know what we’re looking for. Come on!”
We jogged our way along the base of the steep incline, navigating around the rocky outcroppings and staying close to the steep edge of the hill. We were near the end of the large parking lot now, and there were fewer light posts this far down. Still, they were bright enough to provide some illumination on the rocky hill. And that was all I needed.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t be scaling this mountain?” Briar asked.
“It’s not a mountain,” I said. “And no. Think about it, Briar. The guy from the train, Hans … he couldn’t have scaled these rocks every time Tom Thumb needed him to run errands. The entrance has to be along the base.”
The rabbit grunted. “That’s smart deductive reasoning. I have no snide comment to make.”
“For once.” Something caught my eye up ahead. “Hey, look at this!” I hurried to the edge of the parking lot, nearly slipping on the wet grass as I made my way to the strange-looking rocks piled up between two much larger boulders. I blew warm air into my hands, studying the strange design.
“I’d never have spotted it unless we knew what we were looking for,” Briar said, stuffing a paw in his pocket. His thoughtful pose. “This Tom Thumb is quite ingenious.”
“Too ingenious,” I said, running my finger across the strange triangle-shaped blocks. They were stacked directly beside a large boulder with a smooth surface. Hairline cracks ran across its exterior. “Briar, I could draw a door here. We might not even need to figure this puzzle out …”
“No. No, you couldn’t.”
“No. I can.” I pulled out my pen, drawing a square-shaped door into the smooth surface. “This is just like my first trial, when I fought that gross white snake. I drew a door.”
“Yes, but …”
I turned the doorknob. It instantly materialized, clicking a few times. Then the golden outline shimmered before disappearing.
“You must understand that Juliette drew the entrance long before you arrived,” Briar explained. “That is why you could draw a door in the basement of the library. You cannot simply draw a door here because you have no idea what is beyond this boulder. Now, if you’d seen it in a dream, that’s an entirely different story.”
I turned back to the strange triangle-shaped design beside the boulder. “Then we need to figure this out.”
“The design does seem to represent Pascal’s triangle,” Briar murmured, running his paw along the rocks. They definitely were arranged into a very crude sort of pyramid, squeezed together on all sides by the much larger boulders and a whole lot of densely packed dirt. He pressed down on one in the middle.
Click.
“Oh!” Briar hopped back a step, cringing. When nothing happened, he stood straight and tugged on his vest. “I do say, I expected something terrible to happen.”
“Wait.” I pulled out my pen. “OK. If this is Pascal’s triangle, then the top of the pyramid is the number one. The next two are both ones as well, right?”
“Right.”
“But the next row is different. It would go one, two, one.”
“Yes. Because the sum of the two numbers above is 2.”
I ran my hand along the smooth stones, imagining numbers:
1
1 1
1 2 1
“OK, so if each number in this triangle is the sum of the two numbers directly above it …” I worked it out in my head. “Then this last row would be one, three, three, one.”
“Indeed!”
I pushed the top rock. It made the same clicking noise as before. I pushed down once on the next two directly below it. On the third row, I pushed down once, twice, once. On the last row, I pushed down once, thrice, thrice, once.
The boulder to our right shifted ever so slightly. From somewhere deep within came a dry, cracking sound.
“Brilliant!” Briar exclaimed.
“Hooray for math!” I said with a smile. I carefully put one hand on the boulder and gave it a push. It slid back, then left, revealing two strips of rotted wood along the ground, half-buried. “It’s on rails. That’s why it’s moving so easily.”
Briar’s ears pulled back. “Tom Thumb is scary smart, Alice. This kind of technology simply did not exist two centuries ago.”
“That’s why you’re staying right here,” I said.
“But, but how will you survive without me?”
I tilted my head, giving him the stink eye. “Look … just, would you do this for me? Maybe I’m being a little neurotic, but Agnim’s prophecy specifically mentioned me stuck in a cavern. I’d rather his prophecy not come true.”
I see the death of your loved ones …
Briar nodded. “Understood, dear hero. I shall guard this entrance with my life.”
“Good.” I stepped inside. “This little creep is so dead.”
Briar’s paw grabbed my shirt. “What is your plan?” he asked.
“I’m going to poke him with the pointy end,” I answered simply. “That’s what I’m good at, if you haven’t noticed.”
Briar’s fur bristled. “Don’t you at least want a light of some sort?”
“No.” I shook my head sadly. “I have a feeling that won’t be necessary.”
Chapter 10
I made my way down the cramped tunnel, keeping one hand on the slimy wall as I descended deeper into the earth. I could smell the sulfur. The cave was warm, the air wet, the path lit by a very narrow track of lights running along the edge of the path. Track lighting, like on the aisle floor of an airplane. Totally a 1970’s style.
“You’ve been busy, Tom,” I whispered, bending down and drawing a saber in the hard rock. I pulled it out, hefting its weight in my hand. I was getting better with the weight. The bell guard, too, was more decorative, curved to protect my knuckles, like the kind you might find on a pirate’s cutlass. The more experience I had with a real saber, the better I could draw one. It made me confident.
Too confident.
There was brighter light father ahead, around a sharp corner that was made up of a scaly rock no doubt worn down by centuries of trickling water. I followed the path, stepping in the first puddle I came across and then avoiding the next three. The path wasn’t man-made: it had been cut into the cave by centuries of rushing water coming from somewhere farther ahead, then decorated by Tom Thumb. I could hear the cascading of liquid, an underground waterfall that was slowly carving out this place somewhere deeper within.
The water must have once escaped through the very entrance Tom Thumb had so carefully hidden with his little triangle key. Maybe the water had traveled all the way to the hot springs lake way back in the day. Then, it had been diverted at some point, maybe by Tom Thumb himself.
Water for the giant?
No, I realized as I reached the end of the tunnel. That definitely wasn’t it.
I gasped, starin
g into the much larger cavern. For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It couldn’t be real. It was impossible.
A skeleton. A giant skeleton.
It was laid out just like in my dream … only, you know, minus the meat and stuff. A massive skeleton nearly twice the size of a fully grown pine tree, one bony hand stretched out toward me. The skull was the size of a truck, resting on its side, its empty sockets staring up at me. The mouth hung open in a silent roar, no doubt expressing frustration at Tom Thumb’s trickery.
A string of small light bulbs hung from the roof of the cavern, strung around stalactites. Some of the bulbs were burnt out, casting shadows over the giant’s rib cage. Cool air entered my lungs, chilling my insides.
The sound of clinking glass bounced off the glistening walls. I walked carefully around the skeleton, clutching the giant’s massive ribcage as I navigated my way between two stalagmites. Not much room to maneuver. Lots of shadows.
“Yes, yes … just wonderful. Oh, huh. Where were you yesterday when I was hungry, little bug? How did you get in here, anyway?”
There, near the skeleton’s feet: the shoddy table from my dreams, lined with beakers and glasses and a smattering of old parchment paper, two lit candles illuminating the science experiment.
And Tom Thumb, itching absently at his golden dandruff.
“What, little bug?” He cocked his head, stepping between two empty beakers that were coated with a dried red syrupy liquid. “You say a hero is here? Why, thank you!”
He picked up something on the table. It wiggled in his hand as he brought it to his mouth, crunching down.
“Oh that is totally gross!” I shouted.
The little man turned and, horrified, fell back. “Gaaah! What’s wrong with your face?”
I couldn’t stifle the smile, cracking the dry clay near the corners of my lips. “It’s a clay mask.”
He clutched his chest, taking a deep breath. “Kudos to you, hero. I assumed I would have the upper hand when you arrived … I certainly did not expect you would fall face-first into a sewer before arriving.”