by Robin Jarvis
Torrents of battering rain sluiced down. It was as if the Lonely Mere had emptied and risen to the heavens, then spilled into the clearing. Everywhere was doused and drenched, and the ground had become an ever-widening pool that sizzled and spat around the surging fountains.
Gamaliel wiped his eyes and peered between the jets of spray. The sluglungs had picked themselves up and were now dancing ecstatically with their hands above their heads, reveling in the delicious wet.
The boy frowned and stared beyond them. Where was Kernella?
Then he saw her. Slithering through the fresh mud and splashing through the deepening flood, his sister had almost reached the well and Bufus Doolan was wading after her.
But it was the sight Gamaliel saw behind his sister that made his heart leap and brought a cry of joy to his lips.
The spriggans were shrieking and running in all directions.
The High Lady’s soldiers were frantically scurrying away from the unnatural torrents of hated water. Those with shields held them over their heads while the others bolted for cover. Even Captain Ruffnap was squealing, for a waterspout had erupted out of the ground where he was standing and went spurting up his hauberk.
Screeching in panic and terror, he dropped his weapons and tore from the clearing.
Chaos was everywhere as the spriggans ran to and fro, desperate to escape the deluge.
Upon her stallion, the Lady Rhiannon called for order, but a madness had seized them and they did not hear her.
“Stand and fight!” she commanded. “Obey me, you craven curs! Obey me! This is naught to fear.”
But the shrill screams of the hillmen said otherwise. The mere touch of water pained them, and, in minutes, they had all deserted her and sought refuge in the forest.
Even her magnificent horse took several fearful steps back and tossed its head when the muddy tide reached them, while the barn owl hid its face beneath one wing to shelter from the downpour.
Soaked and stung by the water’s violence, her dark raven hair straight and dripping, Rhiannon glared at the figures around the well, her long lashes blinking away the rain.
“You think a mere spring shower could deter me?” she shouted. “This water shall run red by the time I have done with you.”
Taking up the long knife she had stolen from Captain Grittle the previous night, she spurred the stallion onward.
The great steed splashed across the clearing, but it did not like the springs that spurted around them and twice it halted and refused to move farther.
The High Lady impelled it on with brutal kicks and curses and, reluctantly, it continued.
“She’s going to kill us herself!” Gamaliel exclaimed.
“Not this day,” Meg declared, and she turned to her sluglungs.
“Quick, my lovelies,” she urged them. “Her steed is already dismayed and fearful; go plague it further.”
Gargling and shrieking, the sluglungs bounded away, waving their bendy arms and croaking like bullfrogs.
“Rugurkka!” they sang. “Ruggurrum rugjug ragaabaah!”
The stallion shied at the sight of them, but the High Lady forced him on.
Sploshing through the quagmire that the clearing had become, the sluglungs hurtled to meet them. Then, bellowing and belching, they flung themselves at the great ebony beast.
The horse reared and recoiled as the cold, slimy creatures clung to its legs, wrapping themselves about its knees.
When they began crawling up its shoulders, it whinnied in fright and wheeled about, only for more sluglungs to leap on to its hind legs. They glued themselves to the hocks, and two of them jumped up and started swinging from its tail.
The Lady Rhiannon tried to calm the animal. Then she swiped her knife down at the detestable creatures that tormented it. But the blade inflicted no harm, merely cutting through gelatinous limbs that quickly fused back into place.
The horse staggered sideways. One of the sluglungs was making a squelching progress up its neck, and it shook its mighty head to dislodge it, but the creature would not let go and was soon pulling at one of its ears.
“Steady!” the High Lady commanded. “Easy. Master your fear.”
The neighs and shrill whinnies increased. Rhiannon cast a murderous glance at the watch well where Meg and the others were laughing at her, jeering at her difficulties.
“Laugh well and hearty,” she threatened them. “There is no escaping my wrath, for I will bring the goblin knights and there is naught they fear—except me.”
And then something red came bounding from the trees. Fly, the fox cub, splashed through the flood and sprang at the stallion, sinking its teeth deep into the muscular flank.
The horse screamed and reared one last time. Overthrown with terror and pain, it bolted—with its rider clutching helplessly at the reins.
Running mad and out of control, it raced through the shallows, galloping from the clearing. The sluglungs that clung to it leaped clear and bounced into the puddles, where they gleefully flung mud at one another.
It was all Rhiannon could do to remain in the saddle. No threat or cruel wrench on the reins would halt her terrified steed.
Horse and rider plunged into the forest, leaving the barn owl to fly after them, hooting anxiously after its mistress.
Deep into Hagwood the stallion sped, and eventually the High Lady’s furious yells dwindled out of earshot.
For the moment she had been thwarted, but not defeated.
CHAPTER 23 *
MEG'S GREATEST TREASURE
FINNEN SMACKED HIS KNEE AND laughed. Gamaliel shook his head in disbelief, and Tollychook forgot to close his gaping mouth until a greenfly flew into it.
“Good riddance!” Bufus shouted. “Hope She breaks Her neck!”
“Even that would do Her no harm,” the Tower Lubber said. “You could feed Her to the fire or drown Her deep and yet She would thrive.”
Kernella pulled a peevish face. “I still don’t think She’s much to look at,” she sniffed.
“She will return,” the Tower Lubber said gravely, “as soon as She is able, and that time She will do as She vowed and bring a force more terrible than spriggans with Her.”
The spouting waters were beginning to falter and die, and the sluglungs started marching back through the dirty pools.
“Those froggy dollops won’t be much use then,” Bufus said, “against all the Unseelie Court—pah. We might as well top ourselves now and save them the march from the Hollow Hill.”
“If only we hadn’t failed,” Finnen muttered. “If we’d only managed to find that golden casket.”
“Yes,” Bufus railed. “I knew you’d botch it. You’re useless, Lufkin!”
“Don’t start, Doolan,” Finnen warned him.
“Make me, you lousy wergle cheat.”
Normally Liffidia would have stopped the quarrel, but she didn’t even hear it.
Fly was running toward the well, exhausted but desperate to reach her. Liffidia leaped down and ran to meet him.
“Fly!” she shouted. “Oh, Fly!”
From the moment the hawks had plucked her from the Pool of the Dead, Fly had pursued his mistress through the forest.
Now, his energies almost entirely spent, but barking with excitement, he pranced and danced around her, and, forgetting all the perils she had faced, the girl was the happiest she had ever been. She hugged him desperately, sobbing into the warm fur of his neck.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she wept. “I didn’t dare hope you’d escaped.”
The fox cub licked her cheek, and she laughed through her tears.
They were together, and that was all that counted.
A gentle smile spread across Peg-tooth’s Meg’s ugly face as she watched them.
“Rhiannon may succeed,” she said. “She can slay us, She may even burn every tree in Hagwood, yet She will never triumph. No matter what She does or however long She reigns, She can never know that pure, encompassing joy that makes the
sharpest pain worthwhile. She can never know love.”
A sudden gleam twinkled in her large yellow eyes, and she peered down into the dark water.
Something was swimming upward.
It was the sluglung she had sent below. With a plop it came to the surface and exchanged guttural words with Meg before handing her something round and heavy that it had fetched from the subterranean caverns.
Meg held it in her large hands and caressed it with her fingertips.
“Is it not even more beautiful in the sunlight?” she asked Kernella. “See how the bands glow with color—was there ever a thing more perfect or more precious?”
The werlings looked at the object she held and shrugged in puzzlement. Kernella groaned and stared down at her toes.
“She’s still a loony,” she murmured under her breath.
“It’s a snail shell!” Bufus scoffed. “A dirty brown shell with yukky yellow spots. Are you barmy or something?”
The Tower Lubber raised his hand. “Hush,” he told him.
Bufus shook his head indignantly. “An army of knights could come charging over here at any moment!” he cried. “And you expect us to ooh and aah over a manky old snail house! Am I the only one here who isn’t barmy?”
“Step forward, angry little shobbler,” Meg said, “and quell your temper a moment. Put your ear to this shell and tell us what you hear.”
“Get lost,” he replied.
She smiled patiently and offered it again.
“Please,” she said.
Bufus regarded the shell with the utmost suspicion, then, grudgingly, he placed his ear against it.
The other werlings wondered what Meg was doing. Suddenly Bufus sprang back as though the shell had burned him.
“What is it?” Tollychook asked.
“That … that thing!” Bufus stammered. “It’s alive! I heard it speak!”
“No!” Gamaliel gasped.
“Is there a snail still in there?” Tollychook asked.
“Snails don’t talk!” Bufus snapped at him.
“Then what is in there?” Finnen asked.
Meg grinned at them. “It is Meg’s greatest treasure,” she said simply. “Look!”
Raising her hands, she brought the shell sharply down against the stones. It crunched and smashed, and she brushed the broken fragments and splinters away.
The werlings held their breaths and marveled.
It was as if she held the sun in her hands, and for a while they could only squint at it. A brilliant, glorious light was reflected up into all their faces.
Golden flames seemed to leap from Meg’s palm, and when she lifted the object high, long shadows radiated around the well.
“Behold!” she proclaimed. “The answer to all our fears—revealed at long last.”
Kernella shielded her eyes and let out an adoring sigh.
And so the golden casket that the Puccas had fashioned for the High Lady, many years ago, in which she had magically hidden her beating heart, was finally brought from the darkness.
It was crafted from the purest faerie gold and round in shape. Exquisite designs of ferns and flowers and intertwining symbols had been chased over its surface, and a large ruby, like a drop of royal elfin blood, was set upon the top amid an intricate swirl of golden leaves.
For a while it blazed in Meg’s hand, then she returned it to the wall and the werlings stared at it.
“It’s beautiful,” Kernella said.
Finnen peered at it closely. Such was the cunning skill of the Puccas that no division or crack betrayed where the two halves met, and no hinge could be seen.
“Beautiful?” the Tower Lubber repeated in a stern voice. “It is but a glittering box woven about with darkest sorceries learned from the troll witches. The only beauty of that trinket is the peace and freedom once it is opened and I plunge my knife into its contents.”
“There’s no heart inside there,” Kernella huffed. “If there ever were, it would’ve gone moldy and maggoty ages ago. The very idea is daft.”
A cry from Finnen silenced her. “It’s not possible!” he said. “There … there is a voice!”
The werlings listened. Then they too heard.
“Told you,” Bufus muttered.
Kernella covered her ears. Gamaliel could scarcely believe it, and Tollychook’s mouth fell open once more.
From within the golden casket a plaintive, anguished voice was crying out to them. It was faint and stifled by the precious metal that imprisoned it, but it sounded just like the Lady Rhiannon. Instead of her harsh, strident arrogance, however, this voice was weak and wavering, tortured with the guilt and remorse of hundreds of years.
“Destroy me!” it pleaded. “Release me of this burden. I beg you to end this torment. For mercy’s sake, kill me! Kill me!”
The werlings looked at one another in dismay, and when Liffidia rejoined them with Fly, she took hold of the Tower Lubber’s hand and gripped it tightly.
“How can you bear it?” she cried. “Such pain and suffering. Do something!”
The Tower Lubber nodded.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “The hour awaited is here. But now that I have heard that agony, I will get no joy from this deed.”
Peg-tooth Meg closed her eyes. “From the minute my exile began,” she murmured, “those wretched cries were with me in the dark. All that was good in my sister, in the girl Morthanna, before she became Rhiannon, is there. Bring an end to that distress now, my love. One blow and the tyrant of the Hollow Hill shall fall down dead, and we shall be released from the bondage of these guises.”
The Tower Lubber turned his blind eyes to Gamaliel and Finnen. “My friend Gofannon the Smith was a wily fellow,” he said. “He would not have journeyed far and wide to have been beaten at the end of his road. Am I not correct? Did he not give unto one of you, before the thorn ogres slew him, the key to this box?”
“Yes,” Gamaliel answered, much to his sister’s astonishment. “He gave it to me.”
“Then what are you waiting for, Gammy?” Bufus heckled. “Open the box, stick a knife in, and hey, presto, we’re all safe—no more war, we can go home, and Chookface can eat seven more breakfasts!”
Gamaliel swallowed nervously.
He looked at everyone present: Liffidia with her sad soulful eyes, Bufus impatient and crinkling his upturned nose, Tollychook looking scared and bewildered, Kernella frowning at him, and Finnen, who was smiling encouragingly.
“Do it,” the Lufkin boy told him. “Bring an end to this once and for all. You’ll be saving everyone.”
Gamaliel removed the wergle pouch from around his neck. He thought of everything he had gone through to get to this moment and of the horrors along the way. He thought of Yoori Mattock lying beneath a cairn of stones near the haunted burial mounds and brave Grimditch the barn bogle, who had saved him at the Crone’s Maw.
Remembering the vow he had made then, he untied the wergle pouch and reached inside for the key.
Everyone, including the sluglungs, watched and waited in anxious anticipation.
Slowly, Gamaliel drew out the hard shape that nestled in among his tokens of fur and feathers and held it up.
“What’s that?” Bufus exploded.
“That’s not the key,” Finnen said. “Look again.”
“Stop messing around!” Kernella scolded.
Gamaliel became flustered, and he stared at the thing in his fingers. It was not a golden key, but a small, well-gnawed bone—a rat bone.
“Grimditch!” he cried, and the awful realization of what must have happened hit home.
“He … He switched them! I didn’t suspect … I thought—oh no. He must have it!”
“Who is this Grimditch?” Peg-tooth Meg demanded.
“More importantly,” the Tower Lubber exclaimed, “where is he?”
Gamaliel Tumpin crumpled the wergle pouch in his hands and felt his face burn with shame. He had ruined everything.
“Well?” Kernella shou
ted. “Where is he?”
Gamaliel hung his head and felt faint.
“He was taken to the Hollow Hill,” he murmured. “The High Lady has him.”
This is the second book of the Hagwood Trilogy.
The story will continue.
A BIOGRAPHY OF ROBIN JARVIS
Robin Jarvis (b. 1963) was born three weeks late on a sofa in Liverpool, England. As a child he always had a pencil in his hand, and was always drawing and making up stories for the characters who appeared in his sketchpads.
When Robin was very small, one of his favorite television programs was an animated puppet series called The Herbs. This is what Robin would look like if he somehow managed to enter the world of that show:
Robin’s school years were spent mostly in art rooms, although he greatly enjoyed the creative writing assignments in English classes, where his sole aim was frightening the teacher. After a degree course in graphic design (during which Robin decided he really preferred making monsters out of latex to anything related to graphic design), he worked in television making models and puppets.
One evening, while doodling, he started to draw lots of mouse characters and had so much fun inventing names and stories for them that he decided to put them in a book. Thus began his writing career. The Deptford Mice (1989) quickly established him as a bestselling children’s author.
Robin has been shortlisted for numerous awards, and won the Lancashire Libraries Children’s Book of the Year Award. One of his trilogies, Tales from the Wyrd Museum, was on a list of books recommended by then–British Prime Minister Tony Blair for dads to read with their sons.
Robin still likes to make models, usually monstrous characters from his own stories. These models are good for his book events at schools or bookshops; when the audience is tired of looking at him, he can whisk a creature out of his bag to distract them. One such monster was extremely effective at scaring away the forty-three cats owned by Robin’s next-door neighbor.
Robin gets his inspiration for stories from all sorts of sources. Once, on a hike through the forest, he heard a racket up in the trees and saw two squirrels chasing each other. The thought suddenly occurred to him that perhaps only one of them was a real squirrel and the other only looked like one. And so the werling creatures were born, and by the end of that hike Robin had Thorn Ogres of Hagwood drafted in his head.