by Lee Duigon
But to their left towered the mountains, lorded over by Bell Mountain itself with its crown of clouds.
“There is an awful lot of it, isn’t there?” Jack said. No wonder nobody comes out here, he thought. It seemed impossible that anyone could actually cross such a space. You’d just keep walking and walking without ever getting there—wherever “there” was.
“We should keep the woods between ourselves and Ninneburky,” Ellayne said, “in case anybody has started looking for us.”
“Are you ready?”
“Of course I’m ready. Let’s go.”
They stepped off together, entering a sea of tough grey moor grass that clawed at their shins and made slishing sounds with every step. The sun by now was just peeking over the mountains. Somewhere a crow cawed.
“It does seem kind of silly not to be walking straight toward the mountains,” Jack said.
“I told you—someone would catch us if we did that,” Ellayne answered.
“I wonder how far it is to Lintum Forest. We can’t see it from here, so it must be pretty far away.”
“If we keep walking, we’ll get there.”
It was easier to keep walking than to keep talking. North of the river was a greener, kinder land. Any cow that tried to eat this grass, Jack thought, would be sorry. Indeed, he soon learned he’d better step over the biggest tuffets if he didn’t want to be tripped up. Ellayne stubbed her toe and went down in a heap.
“Ooh! Help me up.”
Jack pulled her up.
“Look,” he said, pointing. She turned. “We haven’t done too badly. We’ve left the little woods pretty far behind, and it’s still between us and the town. No one will see us.”
But Ellayne preferred to look ahead. “Look how empty it is, Jack,” she said. “It’s an awful lot of country to have nothing in it.”
It was, all right, Jack thought. As far behind as they’d left the little woods, it didn’t look to him like they’d made any forward progress at all.
“I wish we could fly, like birds,” Ellayne said. “I’ll bet the wild geese fly over this country when they fly south for the winter. I wonder how long it takes them to cross it. And I wonder where they go. Abombalbap says there are dragons in the south. Real ones, that breathe fire.”
“We only want to go as far as Lintum Forest,” Jack said. “Then we’ll turn east and head for the mountains. We ought to be pretty good at long walks by then.”
When the sun was high, they stopped to rest and have a bite to eat. By then they’d come far enough that they couldn’t see the little woods anymore. There were too many ridges in the way. Jack and Ellayne had walked up and down those ridges.
“My legs are tired,” she said.
“It’s getting hot,” Jack said. He took off the wool cap and put it carefully in his coat pocket and undid his buttons. There was a little breeze, and it felt good.
“I’m wondering where we ought to spend the night,” Ellayne said. “Even if we had sleeping bags, I wouldn’t want to sleep out here all night. It’s liable to get cold. Maybe too cold.”
“We’ll build a fire.”
“I haven’t seen any rabbits yet for you to shoot at.”
“There’s bound to be something.”
He certainly hoped there’d be something to shoot at between here and Lintum, or they’d be apt to go hungry. He took his slingshot out of his bag, picked up a few pebbles, and spent some minutes practicing. A small, rotten, broken-off tree stump made a handy target.
“Have you really killed rabbits with that?” Ellayne asked.
“Sure—and had ’em for supper. I got a woodchuck once, too.”
“Well, that’s something. I’ve never had rabbit, or woodchuck. Do they taste good?”
“By the time we get some, they’ll taste great,” Jack said. “Come on, we’d better get moving again. Maybe we can find a good place to stay the night.”
Ellayne said, “Oh! My legs!” as she got up.
No rabbits made themselves available, but well before sundown they found a place to stay—a heap of ruins.
It was a few low, broken stone walls, some piles of jagged rubble, and a couple of broken columns that were like square stone trees. It was no kind of stone that Jack and Ellayne had ever seen before. It was as if each wall had once been a single slab of perfectly squared-off stone. Much of it was overgrown by creepers. It all sat atop a low mound that stood alone in an expanse of flat ground. The mound had steep sides, and they had a job getting to the top.
“I wonder what this was!” Jack said, turning slowly to take it all in. “Our whole town could fit on this hilltop.”
“Those walls will keep us out of the wind,” Ellayne said.
“I wonder if it was a town or just one great big building. It’s bigger than those ruins down by the river.” Jack shook his head, puzzled. “Van doesn’t like ruins,” he said. “He says he hears funny noises when he drives past them. But here we are, and I don’t see anything.”
“What does he think makes the noises?”
“He doesn’t know. We’d better decide where we want to build our fire, and then pick up enough firewood before it gets dark.”
This time of year they knew the cold wind came down from the mountains. They found a sturdy bit of wall between them and the east, cleared a spot for the fire, and gathered sticks and brush. Armloads of creepers torn away from their moorings would have to do for bedding.
Ellayne stuck close to Jack as they explored the hilltop. “I’ve never been in any ruins before,” she said. “My father says there are whole ruined cities. There’s a really big one right across the river from Obann.”
“They’re all that’s left of the cities of the Empire,” Jack said. “Ashrof taught me about it. It’s in the Old Books, in the Prophets. A thousand years before there even was an Empire, the prophets told how God was going to destroy it. The Empire would be full of great cities, and they would all be destroyed because the people were so wicked. Only the ruins would be left, so that people would always be able to see them and never forget what God did.”
“Ugh! Ashrof never taught me that,” Ellayne said. “I don’t know how I feel about sleeping someplace where the people were so wicked. What if there are ghosts?”
“We can’t sleep out in the open. We’d freeze.”
Ellayne nodded. “At that, we’d better make a big fire,” she said. “At least there’s plenty to burn up here. And I suppose it’ll look different when the weather gets warmer and the creepers come into blossom. It won’t look so dead.”
CHAPTER 9
A Night in the Ruins
Even with the stone wall between them and the mountains, it was deadly cold on the hilltop once the sun went down.
Ellayne tried to start the fire by rubbing stones together to make sparks, which were supposed to ignite a little pile of dried moss she’d scraped together. “It’s in Abombalbap,” she said, through clenched teeth. “It’s how the shepherd taught him to make fire, when he was a boy. But there’s something wrong with these stones.”
From his pack Jack took a little cloth bag—which he’d filled with matches. He soon had the fire going properly.
“You might’ve told me you had matches,” Ellayne said.
“I didn’t want to use them if you could start a fire with stones. As it is, Van’s going to be hard put to cook his supper tonight. These are all his kitchen matches.”
They built up the fire and fed it. By nightfall they had it blazing powerfully. Jack had learned from other boys how to build a campfire. Boys playing outside the stockade sometimes liked to roast potatoes.
“We really ought to learn how to make fire without matches,” Ellayne said. “We won’t always have matches.”
“Wish we had something to cook,” Jack said.
They each had an onion and some bread, shared an apple, and washed it down with water. Tomorrow they’d have to refill their water bag somehow. There had to be a creek or a spring somewhere in th
is country, Jack thought.
They sat close together by the fire with their backs to the wall. The firelight glowed off another ruined wall a few yards away, and long shadows danced on it like ghosts. Somewhere else on the hilltop an owl hooted. Some tiny creature shrieked.
“What was that?”
“I suppose an owl caught a mouse,” Jack said.
“I wonder if old ruins have ghosts in them,” Ellayne said. “A lot of people say they do. What does the Scripture say?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read the Scriptures.”
“I thought Ashrof taught them to you.”
“He taught me a little. Not much,” Jack said. “He was going to teach me how to read the Old Books for myself, when I was older. It takes a long time to learn how to read them.”
“Why didn’t he just teach you from the New Books?” Ellayne said. “The books the prester and the reciters read from at meetings—that’s Scripture, too, isn’t it?”
Jack shook his head. “Ashrof says the New Books aren’t really Scripture. They’re just books about Scripture. The Old Books are very old, from before the Empire. The New Books weren’t written until hundreds of years after the Empire fell.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“You’d have to ask Ashrof. He says God Himself told the prophets what to write in the Old Books. That’s what makes them holy. The New Books aren’t holy. Anyhow, that’s what Ashrof says.”
They went on like that for a while, mostly because neither of them liked the way the night sounded when they stopped talking. The wind went “oooh” when it blew through the ruins, and sometimes sounded like a woman weeping. It made the hilltop seem the most lonesome, forsaken place in the world. Sometimes things crunched or skittered through the underbrush in the dark. Only animals, Jack said. At least he hoped so.
“What’s making that chittery-chattery-boop noise?” Ellayne said. “What kind of animal is that?”
“How should I know? I can’t see it.”
“It’s getting on my nerves. It’s as if they’re all around us, watching us, and we can’t see them—and they know it.”
“Of course they’re watching us,” Jack said. “Animals are curious. There must be foxes up here and mice and other animals that come out at night. You heard the owl.”
“They sound like they’re awfully close.”
“Don’t worry so much. They won’t want to come too near the fire.”
Something whistled and chattered at them, and now Jack saw a pair of red lights, close to the ground, just beyond the circle of firelight. That’d be the animal’s eyes, he thought. He didn’t want to call Ellayne’s attention to it; but in another moment she saw it, too.
“There! What’s that?” she whispered.
“Quit whispering! You don’t have to whisper. It’s only an animal,” Jack said. “You’re making me jumpy, so stop it.”
“I just want to know what it is.”
Jack did something then to prove to himself that he wasn’t getting scared. He broke off a little piece of bread and tossed it about halfway toward the red eyes. He wished he had his slingshot in his hands, but he’d put it away; and if he dug in his bag for it, he was sure the animal would run away. So instead of reaching for the slingshot, he made a clucking noise with the tip of his tongue and his front teeth. It was a noise that sometimes soothed Van’s ox when it was in a bad mood.
But it was no ox that came into the light to get the bread.
Jack and Ellayne both held their breath. This was no animal whose like they’d ever seen before. Not a fox, nor a rat, nor anything they had a word for.
It came tiptoeing out on little furry feet, walking on its hind legs like a tiny human being. Indeed, it might have been a human being, if it weren’t so small and covered with glossy brown fur from head to foot—except for its face, which was bare and pale and almost human.
From outside the light, the creature’s eyes had shone red; but up closer they were brown, almost black, bright and shiny and large.
It tiptoed up to the bread, hesitated for a moment, and then reached down and picked it up—with hands.
Little furry hands, real hands like Jack’s own: Jack didn’t know what to think. All he could do was stare as the creature handled the bread with nimble fingers, studying it, sniffing it, and finally stuffing it into its mouth. Jack saw a flash of tiny white teeth.
With its cheeks bulging, the creature turned suddenly and scampered back into the darkness.
Jack and Ellayne exhaled together, loudly. Jack jumped up and only then realized he couldn’t follow the creature in the dark. But he didn’t sit back down. His heart raced like a moth flapping frantically when you held it by one wing.
“Tell me what that was!” Ellayne cried. “Do you know what that was? Do you?”
“Oh, shut up and let me think!”
“You don’t know! But I do! I know!”
That startled him so much that he dropped down into a squat and glared at her.
“You know?” he said.
“You bet I do! Don’t you know anything, Jack? That was a Skrayling, that’s what it was—one of the Little People. We’ve seen one of the Little People. Oh, it’s in all the stories! And now we have to watch ourselves because they’re magic. They can put a spell on you. They can—”
He held up his hand, and Ellayne swallowed whatever she was going to say, and she stared at him. He didn’t pay any attention to her. Something else, something important, was trying to batter its way through the confusion in his mind. Something Ashrof told him once, something from the Scripture. Something about the ruins.
“Just a minute!” he said. And then he had it.
“Ellayne, listen. Ashrof taught me some things about the Empire. How the ruins are all that’s left of it. And he said the prophets wrote all about it before any of it ever happened. And he recited a verse about the ruins. It went like this, or something like it: And none shall dwell there forever, but only the Omah shall possess those cities, and shall dance therein.
“I asked him who the Omah was, and he said it was an old word that nobody uses anymore. No one’s sure what it means, but he said most of the scholars who study those things say Omah means ‘the hairy ones.’ Well, what we just saw was hairy enough.”
“Hairy ones?” Ellayne repeated.
“It’s in the Old Books,” Jack said. “The Empire was going to build a hundred great cities, and God was going to destroy them and give them to the Omah.”
“But are they good or bad?” Ellayne said.
“I don’t know! Ashrof didn’t say.”
“Well, he should’ve! What are those things going to do to us if we fall asleep up here?”
“I don’t know that either,” Jack said. “But I’m thinking we’d better not fall asleep. I don’t think I could sleep now anyhow. Could you?”
She shook her head.
“It didn’t look like a bad kind of creature,” he added.
“That was only one,” Ellayne said. “What if there are hundreds of them up here—and they come out and swarm all over us?”
Jack built up the fire. Fortunately they’d collected more than enough wood; they wouldn’t run out.
“I just wish we could’ve gotten a better look at it,” he said.
“Any kind of look is bad luck,” Ellayne said, shivering in her coat. “I think those Omah and the Little People are the same thing. They don’t like to be seen. They can put an enchantment on you. They can turn you into stone, or else turn you into their slave, and you can’t get away—never. They take you underground and keep you there forever, and you never get any older. There was one man that they let out, and as soon as the sun came up, he crumbled into dust.”
Jack could have done without that story. “Well, I don’t see why the one we saw should want to do anything bad to us. I gave it some bread, didn’t I?”
As their excitement ebbed at last, and as the fire toasted them, they found themselves so weary that t
hey couldn’t have stayed awake no matter how badly they thought they had to. The full day of tramping over the wild plain took its toll.
The next thing Jack knew, the sun was up, birds were singing in the underbrush, and Ellayne slept against him with her head pillowed on his shoulder.
We’re still alive, he thought. He wondered if the night’s adventure had been a dream. It certainly seemed like one, by light of day. And he was hungry and thirsty—
That was when he noticed the rabbit laid out at his feet.
And squatting by the ashes of the campfire, the little hairy man.
CHAPTER 10
The Hairy Ones Dance
When it saw Jack’s eyes were open, it made a soft whistling noise at him. Jack found he wasn’t in the least afraid of it, not now. The only way a fresh-killed rabbit came to rest in front of him was if someone had put it there as a gift. And there was no someone besides this little manlike creature.
Jack clicked his tongue. The animal’s round head bobbed up and down, and it chattered back at him.
The noise woke Ellayne, and when she saw what was making it, she shrank up against Jack with a loud gasp.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s friendly. Look—it brought us a rabbit. That’s because I gave it bread last night. This meat’s going to taste mighty good.”
Ellayne stared at the Omah (if that’s what it was). The Omah looked up at her and made a purring noise, almost like a cat.
“How long has he been here?”
“He was here when I woke up,” Jack said.
“Give him another piece of bread. Maybe he’ll go away.”
Jack reached into his bag. The visitor watched intently, but didn’t startle or run away. Jack broke off a piece of bread and held it out at arm’s length.
“Here, fellow—nice bread. Come and get it.”
Bold as you please, the creature stood up on its hind legs, walked up to Jack, and took the bread from him. By light of day you could see its hands really were hands and not just paws. Aside from being furry, they were perfect miniature hands.