by Robin Jarvis
Suddenly Meg sat upright and gave a gurgling laugh. “Meg wants to see shimmil dunge!” she called out.
She clapped her large webbed hands, and at once the four guards at the entrance to the chamber jumped to attention.
“Change!” she commanded. “Change!”
Kernella’s rabbit face frowned. How could the sluglungs change any more than they already had? And then she saw.
With a gargling whoop, the guards dropped their rusted swords and spears and ran at one another. To Kernella’s disgust, instead of bouncing back and falling over, their slimy bodies collided with a squelching smack, and they fused into one large wobbling mass that went rolling across the ground.
It was a repulsive sight. Helmets and armor clattered clear as heads and limbs flowed in and out of the central gooey mound, disappearing on one side and sprouting again on the other with a loud plop. Over the quivering surface eight eyes swam independently, swirling in every direction. Some of them sank under the translucent skin then emerged again like bubbles, clustering together to peer around the chamber in startled unison.
As the horrible ever-changing blob quaked and shivered its progress about the throne, the four mouths burbled a ghastly song, praising their Queen and Goddess, and reveling in the nauseating glob they had become.
Peg-tooth Meg sang with them, lifting one of the large snails in her hands and crooning into its horns.
“Such shapes they can make,” she said, laughing. “All beasts and trees and birds they can be. Oh, my sticky loves, be a stag in the woods that we have forgotten!”
At once the seething, confused mass formed a loose, shimmering pillar that piled high then doubled over, hitting the ground again in two separate columns. A long neck grew from one corner, then a tapered head and a pair of antlers.
The glistening approximation of a stag shape trembled uncertainly then collapsed back into a formless lump that resumed rolling about the chamber.
Meg cheered, then whispered gibberish to the snail.
Kernella felt sick and looked away. Suddenly her heart leaped with fear.
The sluglung that had been Finnen was fascinated by the undulating clump of guards and was shuffling toward it.
“No!” she cried out. “Finnen, you mustn’t! Stop!”
Panicking, Kernella sprang from the throne and scrambled down the boulder to jump to Finnen’s side.
Finnen was about to lunge at the horrendous ball of sludge when the girl grabbed his hand. Fiercely she pulled him back.
“Don’t join that!” she bawled. Then she realized that although she was holding the soft, clammy hand, Finnen’s arm had stretched to a hideous length, and he was still lumbering toward the flowing mass.
Shrieking, she bounded forward, seized him by the jerkin and dragged the enthralled sluglung as far away from that nightmarish mixed jelly as possible.
Pushing him against the boulder, she stared into his great tawny eyes, but the dark pupils were still fixed on the shapeless heap that jolted and slithered around the chamber.
“Shimmil dunge,” he uttered.
The rabbit shape dissolved around Kernella, and she was a plump werling girl again. “Oh, Finnen,” she breathed desperately. “What are we to do?”
Above her the sound of Meg’s cold laughter went ringing around the crystal walls.
“He is yours to order,” Meg told her. “Meg has enough attendants. He shall be your very own.”
“I don’t want him as a servant,” Kernella replied. “I want Finnen back the way he was.”
Peg-tooth Meg put the snail down carefully, then climbed from the throne.
“Not possible,” she said. “Not possible. None of us go back; we stay here. That is how it is. Down here for always.”
Crouching at Kernella’s side, she waved her hands and gave a guttural instruction. The squelching blob separated into four parts that grew legs and arms, and the eyes floated upward into the heads as the guards returned to their usual forms. One of them now possessed three eyes, and for a few moments they roved around the chamber until the sluglung who only had one marched over and plucked it out. With a squish it was popped back into its rightful place and they all cackled.
Peg-tooth Meg smiled at them as they retrieved their weapons and clambered into their armor once more. Then she turned to Kernella and cast a disparaging glance over her.
“You must not wear that shape,” she scolded. “Your above life is no more. Change—or drink the dark waters.”
The girl took a clump of bristly fur from her wergle pouch, gave it a weary sniff, and a moment later a stout hedgehog was in her place.
Peg-tooth Meg slapped the floor with approval and cried, “Follow Meg. She will take you to hidden places. You will see her great treasure. Behold the prizes Meg keeps secret, here in this sweet, dark haven.”
“What about Finnen?” the hedgehog asked, not wanting to leave him behind in case the sluglungs decided to merge again.
“He is yours,” Meg told her. “He will follow.”
Hunched over, she pattered from the chamber. Kernella let go of Finnen’s hand, and the stretched arm oozed back into his sleeve.
“Say you remember,” she begged him. “You must. Finnen Lufkin, remember me, remember Kernella.”
The great round eyes stared back at her; no light of recognition twinkled there.
“Kernella,” she repeated. “Kernella Tumpin.”
“Kerboo,” he eventually gargled.
The hedgehog bowed its head. It was no use. The dashing and heroic Finnen Lufkin whom she had always idolized and adored was hardly there at all.
“This way,” she instructed in a sorrowful voice.
Finnen’s saucerlike eyes focused on her. “Kerboo,” he muttered again, and, with trudging steps, he lumbered after.
PEG-TOOTH MEG LED THEM THROUGH the tunnels and passageways. Every sluglung they met bowed low as she passed, then stared curiously at Kernella’s hedgehog shape and burbled to one another.
Kernella kept turning around to make sure Finnen was behind her. His wobbling form followed obediently, but he twisted his large flat face left and right and up and down, taking in each new cave, and it was painfully obvious to Kernella that he loved it down there.
It was not long before she began to think that, if she did ever manage to escape, it would be kinder to Finnen to leave him here. This was where he belonged now, not in the upper world.
Beneath endless rows of glimmering snail lamps Meg took them, until at last she halted at the bottom of a rocky slope guarded by twenty sluglungs who parted as she approached in order to let her pass.
“Up there,” Meg croaked, pointing to the ledge above where ten more sentries stood before a craggy archway. “Up there is Meg’s treasure house. Come, let Meg show you her riches.”
They ascended quickly. In spite of her fears and dejection, Kernella found herself wondering what sort of treasures this mad woman kept in there. Would there be jewels and golden rings? Perhaps she would give some to her, or at least permit her to wear a necklace, or maybe pin a gem-encrusted brooch on her cape.
A moment later she was standing upon the ledge, startled at her own greed. What use was gold down here anyway? There was no one to admire her.
The sluglung guards stood to attention, raising their rusted swords in front of their glistening faces.
“Megboo,” they droned. “Us keep watch, us protect.”
Peg-tooth Meg grinned, then turned to Kernella and stroked her prickly spines.
“Such a fortune lies through there,” she cooed, pointing through the archway. “Big wealth Meg has, and it grows with every passing year. Soon the chamber will be full, and a second treasure house will have to be found. Very rich Meg is. No coffers of any High King, up in the hard lands above, can compare. You will see, you will see. Tell your friend to bring in a lamp, dark as a murderous thought it is in there.”
Giggling to herself, she shuffled under the arch.
Kernella turned to
Finnen. He was already taking a lantern from one of the guards. Together they pressed into the chamber. In spite of everything, the hedgehog was breathless with excitement at what they might see.
The gloom within pushed away from the flickering lamplight. The large crouched shape of Meg was a little way ahead, her dark green hair swinging through the air as she whirled about on her haunches.
“Look!” she cried proudly. “Behold Meg’s bounty. Riches beyond the grasp of claw and sisters. No grave nor tomb was ever so laden, no miser’s hoard more jealously beloved. Does the glory and spectacle of it not awe you and set your heart aflame with wonder?”
The hedgehog peered around the chamber, and its bright little eyes opened wide with astonishment. The Finnen sluglung at her side grinned and gurgled with pleasure.
“Yes,” Meg crooned. “A treasure unequaled anywhere.”
Kernella’s pointy hedgehog nose crinkled with disappointment and disbelief. She had expected to see mountains of glittering gold and gemstones that sparkled like colored stars and bright tiny fires, but the sight that the lamplight revealed to her could not have been more different.
Piled in great heaps, from floor to ceiling, were hundreds and hundreds of empty snail shells. They were all sizes, from those no bigger than her fingernail, to immense swirling domes, banded with reds and browns and flecked with vivid greens. Meg patted them and fawned over them, whispering and cooing into their hollow interiors.
“Such wealth!” she exulted. “Such glories! Is it not blissful?”
Kernella scratched her bristly forehead. “It isn’t what I was expecting,” she said truthfully.
Meg was too preoccupied to hear her. Taking up a medium-sized shell, peppered with sickly yellow spots, she held it to her ear and closed her eyes dreamily. “Every one has a voice,” she murmured. “And every voice is different. Hearken to this—it is Meg’s favorite. Listen to what it says. It calls you and pleads with you.”
She held it out for the hedgehog, but Kernella had noticed something upon one of the mountainous heaps that was not a snail shell. She hurried across the chamber.
“What’s that?” she cried.
High up, out of her reach, was the strangest object she had ever seen.
Meg put her favorite treasure on the ground and pattered across to where Kernella stood.
“Ah,” she chuckled. “That is Meg’s harp.”
“A harp?” Kernella repeated, without understanding what it meant. “What’s a harp?”
Before answering, Meg clambered on to the heap of shells, sending many of them rolling across the floor as she reached up and took the instrument in her large hands.
“It is a maker of music,” she said, returning to Kernella’s side. “A bringer of song in the dripping darkness.”
“But,” the hedgehog said with a shudder, “it’s made of bones.”
Sure enough, the triangular frame of the harp was constructed of yellowing ribs and thigh bones, the tuning pins were knuckles, and the strings were long strands of auburn hair.
Meg flicked her fingers over them, and at once the air shook with a cascade of beautiful notes.
“Pretty,” Meg sighed, when the sounds faded.
“It’s gruesome,” Kernella said. “Where did you get it?”
Meg touched the strings softly. “Long time ago,” she whispered with a melancholy light gleaming in her great eyes. “Long, long in the dim past, when Meg was all alone down here, before others came and drank the dark waters to become her sluglung subjects.
“One dark and lonely morning he came floating down from the mere above. A princeling he had been—up in the cruel world beneath the stars and sky. Yes, a princeling, accused unjustly. Meg remembers that much. From his home he fled and leaped into the mere, but a spear struck him in the back, and so down he sank, down to the dark muds where fish and foulness stripped the bones clean. Eventually, the waters brought him here, down into the caves and underground streams, to me, to Meg. She hauled him from the drink and sang over his skeleton. Many days and nights she cried for him, until a thought crept into her heart like a flower opening in the deeps of winter. Meg knew what she should do, and so she fashioned from his bones a harp to chime in the shadows and wring tears from the stones.”
Kernella grimaced. If she needed any further proof of Peg-tooth Meg’s madness, then this was surely it.
Meg plucked at the harp and immediately the familiar dirge of the sluglungs filled the treasure chamber.
“Three young chicks left chirping in the nest,” she sang. “One went swimming and only two were left …”
“Is that the only tune you know?” Kernella asked. “It’s horrible.”
Meg withdrew her fingers from the strings, and a strange light glimmered in her eyes.
“You would prefer a merrier sound?” she asked. “A capering jig, perhaps?”
“Anything different would be a start,” the hedgehog replied with a shrug of her small shoulders that caused her prickles to rattle.
Meg held the harp toward her. “Then you play,” she instructed. “Pull a happy melody from the air. Fill the cavern with joy.”
“But I can’t play that,” Kernella protested. “I can’t even tweet properly when I wergle into a sparrow.”
“Try,” Meg insisted.
The hedgehog reached out her paws and plucked several harp strings in what she hoped would create a jaunty tune.
To her astonishment, the same sluglung dirge resounded from the grisly instrument, and no matter which string she tried the same notes repeated themselves over and over again.
“It’s enchanted!” she cried, taking a fearful step back.
Peg-tooth Meg stroked the strings into silence.
“Yes,” she sighed, “only one song will this ever play, just the one painful music to echo in the dark forever.”
“But why?” Kernella asked. “I don’t understand.”
Meg looked down at her and tilted her large head on one side as she prepared to answer. Then, with a twitch, she sat upright and said, “Meg is late! The hour of the bright circle is upon us!”
“What’s the bright circle?” Kernella asked.
But Meg was already hurrying from the treasure chamber, with the harp tucked under her arm and her old joints clicking and clacking.
“Come, little shobbler!” she called. “We must not delay!”
Kernella shook her head, exasperated. “This way, Finnen,” she said. “If we don’t follow her, we’ll only end up lost.”
The sluglung who had been Finnen Lufkin took one last admiring look at the wealth of snail shells and went shuffling after them.
INTO THE TUNNELS THEY WENT once more. Meg was in haste, and the short legs of Kernella’s hedgehog shape could not keep up. There was no time to wergle into anything swifter, so when she finally caught up with her, she was very out of breath.
Meg had reached the rickety jetty that jutted out across the underground stream and was already clambering into one of the three boats moored there.
“Quick, quick!” she urged.
Kernella eyed the little wooden craft warily. It lurched from side to side and did not seem at all safe.
“Where … where are we going?” she panted.
“To the bright circle,” Meg repeated. “Meg has never missed it.”
Reluctantly, Kernella eased herself into the boat. Meg had placed the harp at her side and was already reaching for the one oar.
Finnen stood on the jetty with a foolish grin across his face. Then he made a gargling noise and leaped high into the air.
Up over the boat he sprang and with a terrific splash! landed in the cold waters of the stream.
“Finnen!” Kernella cried. “What are you doing? Why didn’t you jump into the boat?”
Finnen’s gleaming eyes bobbed to the surface, and he blinked them dreamily.
“Give me your hand!” Kernella shouted. “I’ll help you up.”
Meg let loose a cackling laugh. “All tho
se who drink the dark waters revel in the wet,” she explained. “It is as air to them and keeps their rippling flesh chill and glistening. Your Finnen does not want to sit dry in a boat when he can frog his way behind us. Now, we must go.”
Dipping the oar into the water, she paddled the craft away from the jetty and into the center of the stream.
Finnen blew bubbles from his wide mouth, then gave a kick with his legs and darted in their wake.
It was not a long journey. Through narrow, unlit tunnels where the darkness was deeper than anything Kernella had ever imagined, the little boat bobbed. Then the absolute blackness began to lift, and a dim, gray gleam glittered in the surrounding water.
Presently they emerged into a low-roofed grotto where Meg tied the boat to a stout pole that jutted from the water.
“We are here,” she announced, leading Kernella along a narrow ledge and under a mossy archway that spanned the stream.
The hedgehog ambled inside and immediately uttered a cry of astonishment.
They were in a perfectly round space built of huge gray blocks of stone. Kernella lifted her pointed face as far as her prickly form was able and saw that it was the bottom of an immense shaft that reared up to a staggering height. At the very summit of that dizzy distance, a disc of brilliant light dazzled her and she quickly averted her eyes. She had already grown too used to the gloom to brave the blinding glare of daylight straightaway.
With a burble, Finnen came swimming into the shaft. The stream rushed around him, swirling and swishing against the smooth round walls before continuing out through another archway set in the opposite side.
He lifted his head from the water and gargled with glee as he floated on his back into the ray of light. He held up his webbed hands to see it shine through his jellylike skin and see the soft bones as dark smudges inside.
“Bendy bend,” he chuckled.
Then something on the far ledge caught his attention, and he swam across to inspect it.
An old wooden bucket was lying on its side. Tied around the rusted metal handle was a thick rope that reared upward toward the daylight.