Brumbles said, “Princess Sylvia. I am pleased to see you well.” He turned and embraced his brother. They slapped each other on the back. “Dermot, you look well, eh?” He turned to the others with a grin. “This is my brother.”
#
“So you came after me,” Dermot said, as he and Sylvia showed off their camp. “Just like a good brother. A bit overprotective, but good. Father would have been pleased to see how you turned out.”
Brumbles harrumphed. “I didn’t come to check up on you.”
“No, of course not.”
Sylvia and Dermot had been on the riverbank for awhile. They’d built a lean-to house, and cleared the brush around their camp. Their fire pit was well used. Dermot offered them honey-sweetened water and dried fish, then stoked his fire while they all caught up on the news. Only Skunk seemed to have any appetite. The rest of them were too anxious to find out about Shar La.
“First things first,” Dermot said. “If you didn’t come to check up on me, then why are you here? The weasels must be causing more trouble. And with a Skunk, too? How curious.” He turned to the children. “I’m sure you two have a story to tell in all of this.”
“Anywhere you’d like me to start?” Brumbles asked. “Or do you have some more questions to throw into the mix?”
“I’ve got a thousand questions. So do you, no doubt. But since I’m the curious one of the family, why don’t you humor me and share me your news first.” He pulled out a pipe and lit it with an ember from the fire. “Do go on. I’m quite anxious.”
“Oh, all right.” Brumbles sounded exasperated. “Yes, the kingdom is in trouble. Serious trouble.”
“What happened? Garmley attacking the south already?” He smacked a fist into his other paw. I know that vicious little–”
“Oh, do let him finish,” Princess Sylvia said to Dermot. “Don’t let him distract you with a million questions, Brumbles.”
“Easier said than done,” Brumbles offered. He looked back at Dermot, who waved him on.
The younger bear grew quiet as Brumbles laid out the full scope of the disaster. A couple of times he let out a low whistle or groaned. Princess Sylvia looked stricken when she heard that her father was overthrown and in chains in Garmley’s dungeon.
“Curse those miserable weasels,” Dermot said when Brumbles had finished. “I’m afraid my news is not much better, brother. It is true that we have found the legendary city of Shar La. It is magnificent, as you can see even from here. We built a boat and spent almost two weeks exploring her ruins. Yes, they are ruins. Nobody has lived in Shar La for generations.”
“And King Prestor?” Aaron asked, forging on to the most pressing issue. “Does he exist?”
“Yes,” Dermot said. “Or at least, he used to exist. Those days are long gone. We searched through the ruins and there is nothing there. Maybe the humans have moved north or east, just as the bears have gone west.” He shrugged. “Who can say?”
“But you are certain?” Brumbles asked in a weary voice. “There is nothing in Shar La?”
“Come. You’ve traveled this far, you may as well see it all.”
Dermot and Sylvia led them to the river, where they’d left their dugout. It wasn’t big enough to take them all, so they made the trip in stages. The water was not so swift as that of the Alonus, but it took them several hours to ferry everyone to the island. When Aaron finally arrived, he joined his sister in staring in awe up at the city. The buildings, the towers, even the gates were all alive. Yes, alive. They were trees, grown into the shape of a city.
Years of neglect had left towers dead and rotting, while other buildings had grown wild and formless. But the biggest stretch still retained the shape of buildings and towers that it was impossible to deny that an entire city had once occupied this island, every part grown from living trees.
“Does this mean anything to you, Brumbles?” Dermot asked.
“The King’s Hall. The Oaken Throne.”
Aaron was confused. “What do you mean?”
“My father,” said Sylvia, “sits–or rather, sat–upon the Oaken Throne. It is a living thing, growing from the midst of the Great Hall.”
“Part of the king’s manor?”
“That’s right. They say that throne was once part of a castle that has since died. My great-grandfather cut away the dead castle and built the manor around the throne, which still lives. It is said that once all bears lived in growing buildings, like these.”
Brumbles said, “At one time, they say, bears knew how to plant the seeds, coax them to grow, and how to prune the trees just so, to make them grow into walls and houses and even castles and towers.”
Sylvia said, “Maybe King Prestor taught it to us. But it’s a skill long-since lost.”
It was almost dark, so the bears collected dead branches for a fire. Nothing from the growing parts of the city.
“I don’t like this place,” Skunk confided to Aaron while the bears were away. Their smelly friend was standing closer than usual. “It’s creepy, don’t you think?”
It was certainly an odd feel, Aaron admitted. A heavy stillness hung in the air; he heard no birds or squirrels. The leaves of the tree-towers would shake in the wind, but it was a muffled sound, like the sound of snow falling.
“Seems completely deserted,” he said at last. “What harm could befall us here? In fact, we could probably sleep in those buildings if it started to rain.”
Bethany was glancing around her. “Yeah, we probably could. But all the same I’m glad we’re sleeping in the open.”
After dinner, they sat in silence within the circle of light cast by the fire. The bears kept it stoked whenever it threatened to die to embers. The silence grew uncomfortable.
Unexpectedly, Brumbles started to sing:
City of Light, where lived the maiden fair
She of the honey brown hair
Wandered far in fields of gold
Through lands of Prestor bold
Sylvia joined her voice to Brumbles’. Their voices twined together in a rope with strands of melody and harmony. Dermot took out his flute and the song became truly haunting. They sang of King Prestor, of the friendship once shared between humans and bears. But mostly they sang of loss. The maiden in the story wandered through distant lands, looking for her people, who had been scattered to the wind. She searched until she forgot even what she’d been searching for, until she forgot her very name.
At last the bears stopped their music. The companions, now grown in number to six, wrapped in their blankets and watched as the fire sputtered and crackled, flaring one last time before beginning its long, darkening march toward ashes.
They would spend the night in the ruined city of the trees. It was filled with ghosts.
Chapter Twelve: The Ruined City of Trees
The night was full of whispers from the ruins. “Ghosts,” Bethany said in a low voice when the others had gone to sleep. “Can’t you hear them?”
“It’s just the wind through the branches,” Aaron said, trying to reassure her.
“It’s more than that. Listen.”
At first he heard nothing but shaking leaves. But as he listened, the sounds changed. Rustles became sighs. Sighs became murmurs. Murmurs became whispered voices. Always, he felt as if he listened harder he would understand what they were saying.
“See what I mean?” Bethany said. “There are ghosts.” She scooted closer to him. He opened his blanket to let her in and she came, gratefully, shivering and afraid.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, more boldly than he felt. “They mean us no harm. They are memories.”
“I saw a show on the History Channel about Scottish ghosts once,” she said.
He didn’t like the way this was going. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”
“You know what they said about the ghosts? They are still here because something went wrong. Something bad happened, or they had unfinished business. But have you noticed how ghosts are always found i
n cemeteries, castles, moors? Always somewhere with a personality of its own.”
“This is a place like that,” Aaron said. “But what happened here to leave so many ghosts? What went wrong?”
Neither of them wanted to answer that question. This was a beautiful, magical place. A great city at the heart of a great kingdom. But its people were gone, scattered.
Their dreams were fitful. Aaron saw a bear on a throne–was it Greatclaw?–with a court filled with both bear and human, and all other animals seeking the king’s wisdom. And then he saw the same great hall, but with the ceiling collapsed. Weeds grew on the floor and the walls sagged with rot.
They ate a quick breakfast the next morning, then Dermot and Sylvia led the others into the ruined city. At one time, Aaron imagined, the streets had been orderly, the houses neat and trim. No longer. Buildings grew upon each other in a tumble. Entire wings sprang out in the form of massive branches, with windows and chimneys set at random. Towers twisted off at weird angles, then sprang forth into entirely new buildings floating overhead. Some of these had collapsed under their own weight, others supported themselves against even crazier buildings growing from the opposite side of the street.
The air smelled...green. That was the only word Aaron could think of. It was like the smell of cut grass, together with a deeper, almost sweet smell. It hung in the air like perfume or one of those air fresheners that’s supposed to smell like Hawaii and was so rich that it made him light-headed.
Dermot and Sylvia had picked their way expertly through alleyways, into houses, some rotting, some newly grown, and then back outside again. Several times, a path or door would appear just as it looked like they’d reached a dead end. They made steady progress toward the heart of the city.
There was life after all. Strange purple bugs hovered in the air, snaring gnats and flies with tiny nets woven from their abdomens. These in turn were stalked by lizards that matched almost perfectly the color of bark. They waited in the sun until one of the insects floated nearby, then darted out a sticky tongue to catch their meal. Once Aaron heard a small animal racing through the underbrush as they disturbed its rest.
They reached a doorway. It had been hacked open by the two bears, and sap still oozed around the edges. “We decided that this was the building,” Dermot explained. “But the doors were overgrown. There was no way to enter. So we made one.”
They pushed open the door, which groaned like a bending branch. They entered. The door snapped back shut when they released it. For a moment, it was too dark to see, then Aaron’s eyes began to adjust. They stood in a vast hall, with ceilings that stretched to the sky. Wooden pillars, each ten feet across, reached up to support the roof, some of which had collapsed. These holes in the roof gave just enough light to see by. The wooden pillars were carved with figures of bears and men and battles, all so alive it was as if they’d been carved the day before. In the center of the hall stood a massive statue, forty feet high, made of stone.
Aaron caught his breath.
“Behold, King Prestor!” Dermot said with a shouted flourish that echoed throughout the empty spaces of the hall.
They approached the statue, then Brumbles said, “That’s not King Prestor.”
No, it couldn’t be. It was a bear, not a man. But who else could be so magnificent, even in stone? The bear wore a crown on his head. His face was wise and severe and kind, depending upon the angle at which you observed it. His right hand leaned again a war hammer with its head resting on the floor. The left held a blood-red stone as big as a bear’s head; it was the only part not made of granite.
“It is Prestor,” Dermot said. “You know it is, Brumbles. It must be.”
“But King Prestor is a human king,” said Bethany.
“Bear, human,” Skunk said. “Myth, legend, history. What does it matter? This is the king of this city.”
“No,” Brumbles said. His voice was bitter and he ignored the children and the skunk, looking only at his brother. “No, it cannot be. King Prestor built the city of Shar La. He gave bears the gift of speech.”
“Humans lived in Shar La, Brumbles,” Dermot said. “Bears and humans alike. No doubt they were friends, as the stories have it. But this city was founded by bears. Its greatest hero was a bear. This statue, brother, is King Prestor.”
“It isn’t.”
Dermot approached him and the two bears glowered at each other. “Open your eyes, you fool.”
The younger bear was a good three inches taller, but Brumbles was bigger, heavier in build. Each was growling, low and dangerous. Brumbles bared his lips and snarled. Dermot snarled back.
“Stop it, both of you,” Princess Sylvia said. She forced herself between the two brothers. “Brumbles, look at his left hand. Look! Look at your belt. Look at Dermot’s talisman.” She held up her right paw. “My ring.”
Aaron looked up with the others. He looked more carefully at the red stone that the bear king held in his left paw. It matched the stone at Brumbles’s belt, on Dermot’s pendant, on Sylvia’s ring. The stone in the statue’s hand was marred with chips, as if someone had removed chunks of it over the years.
“It’s the Sky Stone,” Dermot said.
“The Sky Stone?” Aaron asked.
Brumbles explained, hesitant at first. “Legend has it that King Prestor wielded a magical stone that had fallen from the heavens in a ball of flame. He had seen it fall in his dreams and wandered through the mountains until he found it. It gave him the ability to talk to the animals, to keep his enemies at bay. He would break off pieces of sky stone and have them crafted into rings and pendants and other talismans that would guard his greatest heroes and generals. Some of these exist to this day, including the three that we wear.”
“If it is the Sky Stone, then it must be King Prestor,” Dermot insisted again.
“Maybe Prestor gave some bear...” Brumbles started, before his voice trailed off and he hung his great, shaggy head. “Oh, how far have we fallen. Prestor, forgive us.” He looked away. “There is nothing here for us. No help. Nothing at all. We are beaten.”
“No,” Aaron said. He didn’t believe that. It would mean that he and Bethany had come for nothing. No, he refused to believe that.
Princess Sylvia said, “It’s a beautiful land. Our people could leave the Kingdom of the Bears, make a new home here in the wilderness.”
“That’s not the answer,” Aaron said. He looked at the doubt and fear on the bears’ faces. Had King Prestor ever looked so beaten as these three? Surely not.
“Then what is the answer, little cub?” Dermot said. He spoke with the voice of an elder humoring a child. “What should we do?”
“That’s right,” Brumbles said. “What do we do, Aaron? We’ve searched for help. There is none to be found. Garmley is too strong for us. Why not flee into the wilderness? Why not return to Shar La?”
Aaron nodded. “Maybe some day bears will live in Shar La again. But if you flee, Garmley will only come searching. And you’ve been fleeing for too long. Scattering, diminishing.”
“And what would you have us do?” Sylvia asked. Despair marred her voice. “Diminish is all we can do.”
“Make a stand,” Aaron said.
“Yes,” said his sister. “Make a stand.”
Aaron said, “And not in Shar La. Make a stand in the Kingdom of the Bears. In River’s Edge. Where it matters.”
“We have been beaten so many times, why should this time be any different?” Brumbles asked. “What makes you think that we have the strength?”
Aaron pointed at the statue. “That is why. That is why I know you have the strength.”
#
They left the island the next morning. The bears had not yet embraced Aaron’s plan, but at least they were talking. There was a glimmer of hope in their words. Brumbles thought someone might wage a successful insurgency from within the kingdom. Not them, surely, but someone might do it.
Sylvia thought her father should be rescued. “People wi
ll rally to the king.” They could then wage a guerrilla campaign from the mountains.
Dermot thought it best to seek out the Greencloaks. March directly on the weasel lord, draw him out of River’s Edge. They would meet in a great battle outside the city gates. The bears argued strategy until the other three grew weary of it. It was drizzling that morning and Skunk and the children sat on the opposite side of the fire, poking it with sticks.
“You know what I think,” Skunk told the children. “We should go south.”
Aaron didn’t see the wisdom in that. “How could that possibly help us? That’s Garmley’s stronghold.”
Skunk said, “Yes, and no.”
Meanwhile, Dermot was waving his paws on the other side of the fire. “No, no, Brumbles. Your plan is too cautious. We’ll die of old age waiting to attack. What we need–”
Aaron and Bethany turned back to Skunk. “Explain.”
“The people of the south hate Garmley and his band. Take my cousin, Skunk. Lives in weasel lands. Does some work when he must. But he hates them. He’d hide us, feed us, and help us organize the others who hate Garmley.” Skunk sighed. “Ah, my cousin is quite the cook. Now, these bears make some good food. But it’s all the same. Honey this and honey that. Apples, cinnamon. Everything sweet. Sure, they make a good apple crisp, but have you ever had eel liver crisp?”
Aaron thought that sounded absolutely hideous. “Yuck.”
Skunk fixed him with a disappointed frown. “Don’t dismiss what you’ve never tasted. It’s delicious. First you catch a live eel, then you–”
“Ew, that’s enough,” Bethany insisted.
“Well, then, take caterpillar casserole...” Skunk said.
“I’d rather not,” Aaron said with a shudder.
“...sprinkled with crunchy grasshopper legs, or, if you can get them, those black and yellow beetles you see in the spring. Even better. Crunchy outside, green and slimy inside.” She smacked her lips. “Very tasty, I assure you.”
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