The Lost Years

by T.A. Barron

  Then, for the first time in his life, Shim had a very giantlike experience. He saw his attackers running away from him. And the gleam in his enormous pink eyes made it clear that the experience was one he just might enjoy.

  “I is bigger than you,” he bellowed. “Muchly bigger!”

  Shim, whose hairy feet alone had swelled bigger than boulders, stood up. He stretched his body to its fullest height, bringing down another piece of the ceiling. With a vengeful grin spreading over his gargantuan face, he began stomping on the ghouliants. Each of his stomps shook the entire castle, and sections of the floor itself began to give way.

  But the deathless soldiers survived even these crushing blows. After each attack, they merely stood, shook themselves, and resumed slashing at Shim’s feet with their swords. Shim’s eyes flamed with rage. He stomped harder than ever. The more the ghouliants scurried beneath him, the more weight he threw into every step.

  As I sat with Rhia in the corner, fervently hoping that Shim would not move to our end of the hall, I watched crumbling pieces of the ceiling crash around him. He was clearly angry—and clearly enjoying himself.

  Then, beyond the sound of splintering stones and stomping feet, I began to hear a strange, rhythmic sound coming from somewhere beyond the castle. Distant at first, then closer, the sound swelled steadily. I suddenly realized that it was the sound of voices, the deepest voices I had ever heard. They were singing a simple chant, consisting of three profoundly low notes. And there was something else about the chant, something familiar, that stirred in me a feeling I could not quite identify.

  Then an enormous face, craggy as a cliff and wearing a shaggy red beard, appeared in the gap in the ceiling. It was followed by another, with curly gray hair and full lips. And another, with skin as dark as a shadow, a long braid, and earrings made from chariot wheels. Each of them nodded in greeting to Shim, but remained outside the castle walls.

  “Giants,” said Rhia in wonderment. “They have come.”

  Indeed, rising from their secret hiding places all across Fincayra, the giants had come. Responding to some long-awaited call, perhaps the explosion from the Cauldron of Death, they had lumbered out of the darkened canyons, remote forests, and unknown ridges of this land. Bearing huge, flaming torches, they arrived from many directions. Some wore heavy nets of stones, which would have allowed them to rest unnoticed in fields of boulders. Others still carried branches, even whole trees, on their flowing manes. And others, perhaps because they were too foolish or too proud to disguise themselves at all, wore vests and hats and capes as colorful as the fruited trees of Druma Wood.

  Swiftly, the giants arranged themselves in a circle around the castle. Following Shim’s example, they began stomping the ground together, with the combined force of an earthquake. All the while, they lifted their voices in the rhythmic chant, singing in their most ancient language, the language of Fincayra’s first people:

  Hy gododin catann hue

  Hud a lledrith mal wyddan

  Gaunce ae bellawn wen cabri

  Varigal don Fincayra

  Dravia, dravia Fincayra.

  In a flash, I recalled hearing my mother sing the very same chant. But was that memory from our time in Gwynedd, or from sometime before? Had I, perhaps, even heard it as a baby? I could not quite tell.

  Somehow I caught the feeling, perhaps from that vague, uncertain memory, that the meaning of this chant had something to do with’ the timeless bond between the giants and Fincayra. With the notion that as long as one lasted, so would the other. Dravia, dravia Fincayra. Live long, live long Fincayra.

  The more the giants danced by the light of their great torches, the more the castle crumbled. While the stones behind Rhia and me continued to hold, other sections of the wall were buckling. And as the castle’s walls weakened, so did its enchantment. The spinning started to slow, the rumbling to fade. Then, with a grinding scrape of stone against stone, the castle came to a wrenching halt. Pillars and arches collapsed, filling the air with dust and debris.

  At that moment, the ghouliants, whose power had sprung from the turning castle itself, released a unified shout—more of surprise than of anguish—and dropped wherever they stood. I could not help but think, as I viewed their bodies sprawled among the stones, that their faces at last showed a touch of emotion. And that the emotion was something akin to gratitude.

  With the death of the ghouliants, Shim climbed through a missing section of wall and joined the rest of the giants outside. As I listened to the pounding of their heavy feet all around the castle, I remembered more ancient words. Words that had foretold this Dance of the Giants:

  Where in the darkness a castle doth spin,

  Small will be large, ends will begin.

  Only when giants make dance in the hall

  Shall every barrier crumble and fall.

  Shim, I realized, had been saved by an older form of magic. Older than the Shrouded Castle, older than the Cauldron of Death, older perhaps than the giants themselves. For even as his act of courage had destroyed the Cauldron, his very footsteps in running across the stone floor of the hall had begun the dance that would destroy the castle in its entirety. Small will be large, ends will begin. The Grand Elusa had told Shim that bigness meant more than the size of his bones. And now, through the bigness of his own actions, he towered above the battlements of this crumbling castle.

  39: HOME

  The wall behind us started to groan. I turned to Rhia, whose tattered suit of vines still smelled of the forest. “We must go! Before the whole castle collapses.”

  She shook some chips of stone from her hair. “The stairs are blocked. Should we try to climb down somehow?”

  “That would take too long,” I replied, leaping to my feet. “I know a better way.” Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shouted above the din. “Shim!”

  Even as a crack split the wall, a face appeared through a hole in the ceiling. The face would have been familiar if only it had been many, many times smaller.

  “I is big now,” boomed Shim with, pride.

  “You got your wish! To be as big as the highlyest tree.” I waved to him to bend closer. “Now put your hand through that hole, will you? We need a ride out of here.”

  Shim grunted, then thrust his immense hand through the hole in the ceiling. The hand came to rest on the floor beside Us, though so near to a chasm that only one of us at a time could squeeze past to climb into Shim’s palm. Rhia chose to go first.

  While she carefully worked her way around the chasm, I hefted Deepercut in my hand. Although its silver hilt still felt cold from the clutch of Rhita Gawr, the twin edges gleamed with a luster that reminded me of moonlight on the rolling surface of the sea.

  Suddenly I remembered the Treasures of Fincayra. They too must be saved! Whatever time remained before the final collapse of the castle, I must use it to find the Treasures that had not already been destroyed by falling debris.

  “Come on!” called Rhia, holding onto Shim’s thumb.

  “You go first,” I answered! “Send Shim back for me.” As she watched me worriedly, I cupped my hands and shouted toward the ceiling. “All right, Shim. Lift!”

  As Rhia rose through the ceiling, I placed Deepercut on the safest looking slab of stone I could find. Immediately, I began prowling around the remains of the once-cavernous hall. Crawling over tumbled columns and the corpses of ghouliants, dodging falling chunks of stone, stepping over fissures snaking across the floor, I moved as swiftly and carefully as possible. All the while, beyond the groans and crashes of the castle, I could hear the ongoing pounding of the Dance of the Giants.

  In short order, I found the Flowering Harp, with all but a few strings intact, and a glittering orange sphere that I guessed must be the Orb of Fire. Quickly, I carried them over to Deepercut and returned for more. Near the toppled red throne, I discovered my own staff, a treasure at least to myself. At the far end of the hall, I uncovered the half-buried Caller of Dreams, as well as the hoe that
Honn had said could nurture its own seeds.

  All in all, I found only six of the Seven Wise Tools. After the hoe, I located the plow that tills its own field, although it proved almost too heavy for me to lift. Then I discovered a hammer, a shovel, and a bucket, whose powers I could only guess. Last of all I turned up the saw that I knew from Honn’s description would cut only as much wood as needed. Although part of the handle had been crushed by a huge chunk of stone, the tool remained usable.

  I had just deposited the saw with the other Treasures when Shim’s face reappeared through the hole in the ceiling.

  “You must comes!” he thundered. “This castle is readily to fall in.”

  I nodded, though I still wished that I had been able to locate the missing one of the Seven Wise Tools. Not knowing what it might look like had only made my task of finding it more difficult. Even so, as Shim lowered his great hand and I began loading it with the Treasures, I occasionally paused to scan the hall for any sign of the seventh Wise Tool.

  “Is you done yet?” Shim bellowed impatiently.

  “Almost.” I hurled the last of the objects, my staff, onto his palm. “Just one more minute while I climb on.”

  “Quickerly!” called Shim. “You might not haves another minute.”

  Indeed, as he spoke, I felt the stones of the floor under my feet shift drastically. I started to climb onto his hand, giving a final glance to the hall.

  Just then I spotted, in the shadows behind a smashed pillar, something that made my whole body tense. It was not the missing Wise Tool. It was a hand, groping helplessly. The hand of Stangmar.

  “Comes on!” Shim implored. “I can sees the ceiling about to fall.”

  For an instant I hesitated. Then, even as a section of the ceiling came crashing down beside me, I turned and raced across the floor of the foundering castle. The crumbling of the walls, floor, and ceiling seemed to accelerate, as did the chanting and stomping of the giants outside.

  When I reached Stangmar, I bent over him. He lay chest down on the floor, the gold circlet still on his brow. A large slab of stone had fallen across his lower back and one of his arms. His hand, now clenched into a fist, had ceased groping. Only his half-open eyes revealed that he was still alive.

  “You?” he moaned hoarsely. “Have you come to watch us die? Or do you plan to kill us yourself?”

  I gave my answer by reaching over and gripping the slab. With all my strength, I tried to lift it. Legs trembling, lungs bursting, I felt not even the slightest movement in the stone.

  As the king realized what I was doing, he eyed me with scorn. “So you would save us now to kill us later?”

  “I would save you now so you might live,” I declared, though the floor beneath us started to sway.

  “Bah! Do you expect us to believe that?”

  Concentrating hard, I heaved, calling on all the powers within me. Perspiration slid down my brow, stinging my sightless eyes. At last, the slab budged just a little, though not enough to free Stangmar.

  Before I could try again, the floor burst open. The two of us tumbled into the darkness below, amidst the rising roar of the castle’s final collapse.

  All at once something broke our fall. Stangmar and I rolled together in a heap. At first I had no idea what had caught us, except that it was far softer than stone. Then, as the light from the giants’ torches returned, I viewed the ruins of the castle below us, as well as a familiar face above us. And I understood.

  “I catches you!” crowed Shim. “It’s a goodly thing I has two hands!”

  “Yes,” I replied, sitting in the center of his palm. “A goodly thing.”

  The giant’s enormous mouth frowned. “The wickedly king is with you.” He roared with rage, “I will eats him!”

  A look of terror filled Stangmar’s face.

  “Wait,” I cried. “Let us imprison him, not kill him.”

  Stangmar gazed at me with astonishment.

  Shim growled again, scrunching his mountainous nose with displeasure. “But he is bad! Completely, totally, horribly bad.”

  “That may be true,” I replied. “But he is also my father.” I turned and looked into the dark eyes of the man beside me. “And there was a time, long ago, when he liked to climb trees. Sometimes just to ride out a storm.”

  Stangmar’s eyes seemed to soften ever so slightly, as if my words had cut almost as deep as the blade of Deepercut. Then he turned away.

  Shim set us down on a knoll of dry grass at the edge of the hill where the Shrouded Castle once stood so formidably. Then he stepped away, the ground shaking under his weight. I watched him sit down, propping his back against the hillside. He stretched his immense arms and gave a loud yawn, though not so loud as the snore that I knew would soon come.

  Seeing Rhia nearby, I left the crumpled form of Stangmar to join her. She stood looking westward, beyond the castle ruins, toward a faint line of green on the distant horizon.

  Hearing the crunch of my footsteps, she spun around. Her eyes, wide as ever, seemed to dance. “You are safe.”

  I nodded. “As are most of the Treasures.”

  She smiled, something I had not seen her do for some time.

  “Rhia! Am I mistaken, or is it growing lighter?”

  “You are not mistaken! The Shroud is going the same way as the castle and the ghouliants.”

  I pointed toward the giants, who had ceased their chanting and stomping. Singly and in clusters of two or three, they were beginning to drift away from the ruins. “Where are they going?”

  “To their homes.”

  “To their homes,” I repeated.

  Peering across the hillside, we observed what was left of the Shrouded Castle. While much of it had been crushed in the Dance of the Giants, a ring of mammoth stones remained standing in a stately circle. Some of the stones stood upright, others leaned to the side, and still others supported hefty crosspieces. Whether the giants had placed the stones in this fashion, or had simply left them standing, I knew not.

  In silence, as the first rays of sunlight started piercing the sky above the Dark Hills, I contemplated this imposing circle. It rose like a great stone hedge upon the land. It struck me that this ring of stones would make a lasting monument to the fact that no walls, however sturdy, can forever withstand the power of what is true. Vision that is true. Friendship that is true. Faith that is true.

  All of a sudden, I realized that I could remember my own childhood in this very place! On this very hill! Only when giants make dance in the hall, Shall every barrier crumble and fall. The prophecy, I now understood, had not applied only to walls of stone. My own inner walls, that had cut me off from my past since the day I washed ashore on Gwynedd, had begun to crumble along with those of the castle.

  First in gentle wisps, then in surging waves, memory after memory came floating back to me. My mother, wrapped in her shawl before a crackling fire, telling me the story of Hercules. My father, so confident and strong, leaping astride a black stallion named Ionn. The first time I ever tasted larkon, the spiral fruit. The first swim in the River Unceasing. The final, sorrowful minutes before we fled for our lives, my mother and I, praying that the sea might somehow deliver us to safety.

  And then, from my distant childhood, came the words of a chant called the Lledra. It was a chant that had been sung by my mother long ago, just as it had been sung by the giants themselves today:

  Talking trees and walking stones,

  Giants are the island’s bones.

  While this land our dance still knows,

  Varigal crowns Fincayra.

  Live long, live long Fincayra.

  “Rhia,” I said quietly. “I’ve not yet found my true home. Nor am I sure that I ever will. But, for the very first time, I think I know where to look.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And where is that?”

  I waved toward the circle of stones, luminous in the swelling rays. “All this time I’ve sought my home as though it could be found somewhere on a map. An
d now I remember a home that I once knew. Here, on this very spot! Yet, at the same time, I have the feeling that if my true home exists anywhere, it isn’t on a map at all. More likely, it’s somewhere inside of myself.”

  Her voice wistful, she added, “In the same place that our memories of Trouble are found.”

  I reached my hand into my satchel and pulled out the feather. Softly, I stroked its edge with my finger. “I have an idea of what happened to him when he vanished. I can’t quite believe it—but I can’t quite dismiss it, either.”

  Rhia studied the feather. “I have the same idea. And I think Arbassa would agree.”

  “If it’s true, and his bravery opened the door to the Otherworld—then he and Rhita Gawr must have fallen through that door together.”

  She smiled. “It wasn’t a journey Rhita Gawr had planned! But it gave us the chance we needed. So if it’s true, Trouble is somewhere out there right now, still soaring.”

  “And Rhita Gawr is out there too, still fuming.”

  She nodded, then her face turned serious. “Still, I’m going to miss that hawk.”

  I dropped the feather, watching it spin slowly downward into my other hand. “So will I.”

  Rhia kicked at the brittle grass under our feet. “And see what else we have lost! This soil is so parched, I wonder whether it will ever come back to life.”

  With a slight grin, I announced, “I already have a plan for that.”

  “You do?”

  “I think the Flowering Harp, with its power to coax the spring into being, might be able to help.”

  “Of course! I should have remembered.”

  “I plan to carry it to every hillside and meadow and stream that has withered. As well as to one particular garden, down on the plains, where two friends of mine live.”

  Rhia’s gray-blue eyes brightened.

  “I was even hoping . . .”

  “What?”

  “That you might want to come along. You could help revive the trees.”

  Her bell-like laughter rang out. “Whether I come or not, this much is clear. You may not have found your true home. But I think you have found a few friends.”