In a Dark Land

by Christina Soontornvat

  To stones dry and drinking.

  The Gift for a Spring King

  Hides to your right.

  The stream winds and wanders,

  North it flows onwards.

  ’Neath a bride’s veil of water,

  Crawl through the night.

  A tree for the fairy

  Children so merry.

  A stone for the wary

  Men of the loam.

  To find the great treasure,

  Its worth you must measure.

  Knock thrice with a feather

  Izzy felt a tingle down her spine. She looked up at her friends, and they all had smiles spreading across their faces. This had to be it. The verse didn’t make complete sense, but it was full of directions. After spending so much time wading through the book, this was the first time they’d found anything that seemed like instructions.

  “Smythe’s Hall,” said Selden. “That sounds like where you’re supposed to start. But where is it?”

  “Smythe is the old word for a smith,” said Hiron. “A smith is someone who makes things out of metal.”

  “Like a key?” offered Hen.

  “Maybe.”

  Dree leaned toward the painting on tiptoe. “Lug, will you come take a look at this? Don’t we know where that is?”

  She pointed to a formation of large boulders in the painting’s background. The stones leaned against each other, forming a dark corridor underneath.

  Lug squinted at the picture. “Yes, of course! That’s Brightsmith Hall.” He turned to Izzy and added wistfully, “When we lived in the Edgewood, we’d go berry picking near there. Got caught in a thunderstorm once and had to hide under the rocks. They make a fairly good shelter.”

  “A brightsmith is another word for a silversmith,” said Hiron, cleaning his glasses against the fabric of his sling.

  “That’s it!” cried Hen, bouncing up and down as if the floor was a trampoline. “That’s got to be where you’re supposed to start looking!”

  Hale twisted her braid between her fingers. “But what about what we just agreed?” She looked at Selden. “About hiding? And keeping the little ones safe?”

  “What about the people on Earth?” said Izzy. “If we can find the King’s Key, we can keep everyone safe from Rine.”

  Selden’s mouth twisted from one side to the other. “Dree, what do you think?”

  “I think looking for the Key wouldn’t be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” Dree answered. “Though it’s a strong contender. But Peter put you in charge. You have to decide.”

  “Peter,” murmured Selden. Izzy could tell he was struggling with the decision. “All right, I think I’ve got a plan.” He turned to Hale. “We’ll split up. You and Hiron can go with Tom and the little ones up in the Muscadine and start heading east. The rest of us will go with Izzy—”

  “And me,” said Hen.

  Selden smiled. “And you. If we can’t find the King’s Key in one day, we’ll give up and join Hale and the others. We’ll hide so deep in the Edgewood that no one will ever find us.” He glanced at Izzy. “And we’ll send Izzy and Hen back to Earth.”

  “Hold on,” said Hiron. “You don’t have the last clue, remember? You’re going to tramp through the woods, but when you get to the end, you won’t know what to do.”

  Footsteps shuffled softly down the staircase behind them. They turned to see Marian, who had come down while they had been debating their plan. She twisted her cap in her hands like she was wringing it out to dry.

  “Don’t gawk at me,” she said gruffly. “I’ll be ready. By the time we get to the end of this, I’ll have that poem out of Izzy’s heart.”

  23

  On the Trail of the Key

  Izzy swayed side to side, perched on Lug’s shoulders as he moved quietly through the undergrowth. The Edgewood was in the full leaf of summer, and the thick air hummed with tiny insects. The buzzy drone and the heat were starting to slow them all down.

  Izzy pulled the verse of clues from her pocket. “Lug, are you sure this is right?”

  Lug pointed down at the star-shaped purple flowers dotted among the ferns. “The instructions told us to follow the mallow. Well, we’re following it.”

  Selden, in his stag form, trotted up beside them with Ollie and Hen riding on his back. “Haven’t we learned not to question Lug’s plant knowledge by now?”

  “OK, you’re right,” said Izzy. “It’s just that we’ve been heading east for hours. If we’re going to crawl through the night, that means we’ll have to get through these other clues by nightfall.”

  They had left Netherbee Hall early, when it was still dark, so they could pass through Brightsmith Hall at sunrise. They didn’t know how crucial it was to get the timing right, but they didn’t want to take any chances. They’d only have one shot at following the clues in the right order. If the Unglers picked up their trail, they wouldn’t be able to backtrack.

  They’d helped Hale bundle up the youngest Changelings the night before and tuck them into the Muscadine’s basket. It was Hale’s idea for Tom to take them at night, so they would sleep while he flew them east.

  Hiron had stood in the corner of the basket, looking frustrated. “Wish I wasn’t so useless,” he said, tugging at his sling. “What if you need another flyer with you, Izzy?”

  “We’ve got Dree,” said Izzy. “Besides, you’ll be healed up soon, and Tom will need you in case—”

  She’d been about to say, In case we fail and something terrible happens to us. But she smiled instead and patted his good arm.

  Tom leaned over the edge of the ship to hug Izzy and Hen. “You girls both be real careful and send Dree for me if you get into trouble. I’ll come back for you quick as I can.”

  Marian put her arms around the sisters. “These girls’ll be just fine. You take care of that cargo.” She nodded at the sleeping children in the basket.

  “You’re brave souls,” said Olligan, shaking his head at Tom and Hale. “You couldn’t pay me to get in that basket with all those babies at once.”

  The truth was that they had wanted Ollie to go with Tom, but he refused. He said it was because his friend the chipmunk was afraid of heights, but Izzy knew he wanted to stay with Selden.

  Olligan smiled proudly, riding on Selden’s back as the appointed lookout. His chipmunk rode with its nose sticking out of his pocket, nibbling bits of biscuit Ollie had saved from breakfast. Ollie also had a speckled salamander draped across the back of his neck and two chickadees, one perched on each shoulder.

  “Haven’t seen any fallow fields so far,” he said, scanning the woods.

  Hen lowered her flute from her lips. “What’s a fellow field again?”

  “Fallow,” corrected Marian. “It means resting.”

  Marian brought up the rear of their party on foot. She carried a sturdy walking stick in one hand, the page with the heart spell written on it in the other. For most of the hike, she’d lagged behind. Not because she couldn’t keep up but because she was still reading the spell, working on memorizing it.

  Marian leaned on her staff and took off her cap, wiping her brow with it. “Fallow fields. That must be talking about abandoned farmland.” She looked overhead at the dense canopy. “Though I can’t imagine a farmer choosing to plant their crops here. Think of all that work, clearing the trees just to get enough sunlight.”

  Lug jolted to a halt, nearly pitching Izzy off his shoulders. “Oh goodness! I just realized something. Izzy, how old is The Book of the Bretabairn?”

  “Dree said five hundred years.”

  “Well, any fields would be completely overgrown by the woods after five hundred years.” Izzy held on to the top of Lug’s head as he leaned back to look up at the trees. “We wouldn’t be able to tell when we were crossing farmland, fallow or not.”

 
“Oh,” said Izzy, disappointed. “Then what should we do?”

  “The next verse says the fields lie below red poplars tall,” said Marian. “Farmers sometimes plant trees in a ring around their fields. Makes a natural fence.”

  “Poplars that were tall five hundred years ago have likely fallen down by now,” said Lug. “But they would have dropped seeds onto that fallow field. With nothing else in the way, the poplars wouldn’t have any competition. So we need to look for a thick grove of red poplars.”

  “You see?” said Selden, nodding at Lug. “The master of plants.”

  They walked on for another mile before they found what Lug was looking for—a large square area where the only trees were straight, bare-trunked poplars blooming with crimson flowers. Just to be sure, Lug dug his finger deep into the ground and tasted the soil. “Yup, this has to be it.” He smacked his thick lips. “If I had to guess, I’d say this was once a field of beets.”

  “All right, Ollie,” said Selden, turning over his shoulder. “Send Dree the signal.”

  Ollie turned and twittered something to the chickadee sitting on his left shoulder. The bird nodded and bobbed, then took off up through the canopy.

  After a few minutes, the chickadee flew back down with a scissor-tailed bird following behind. Dree landed beside Lug and Changed back to herself. “Please tell me you found a giant X with a shiny golden key buried under it.”

  “Not yet. But we think this is the fallow field—or it used to be,” said Izzy, pointing to the trees around them. “That means we’ve got to find ground that lies sinking next.”

  “That’s got to be a sinkhole,” said Selden.

  “All right, give me a minute, and I’ll see what I can find,” said Dree. She Changed into a bird again and flew back up through the trees.

  The rest of them took a break to eat what they had packed from breakfast. Hen sat against the trunk of one of the poplars, so absorbed in her flute that she even declined a biscuit loaded with jam. She could play short tunes now. They didn’t sound as lovely as the songs Peter had played, but at least they had a melody. Suddenly, Hen jumped to her feet.

  “Hen, you OK?” asked Izzy.

  Hen walked through the trees, staring forward like she was in a trance.

  Izzy followed her, worried. “What are you doing?”

  Hen played another melody and stared again. She spun around excitedly. “I can see them!”

  Izzy looked around nervously. “See what?”

  “The paths!” said Hen with a giant smile. “Or the fairy roads or whatever you call them. Izzy, when I play the flute, I can see where the entrances are. They’re everywhere!” Hen walked up to two poplars that stood a few feet apart. “The flute makes the entrances glow.” She laughed, moving her fingers in the shape of a square. “It looks like they’re covered in twinkling Christmas lights. Come see!”

  Izzy joined her sister. Hen pointed to a spot on the ground between the poplar trunks. Izzy couldn’t see the twinkly lights Hen was talking about, but when she leaned in at the right angle, she could see a dark hole in the ground that hadn’t been visible before.

  “Whoa,” whispered Izzy. “Hen, it’s like you’ve turned into Peter.”

  Twigs snapped overhead as Dree crashed through the branches and swooped into the glade. Her eyes were wide, and she waved everyone closer as she caught her breath. Her words tumbled out quick and anxious. “I found the sinkhole. It’s not a hole—more like a bowl in the ground. A mile to the east. But I also spotted the Unglers. It must be the ones you saw before, Selden. They’re about five miles west of here, moving slowly but definitely coming this way. They must have picked up our trail.”

  Hen rolled the flute between her fingers. “Sorry, was I making too much noise?”

  “It’s all right, child,” said Marian. “You found a way to Earth just in time.”

  Izzy looked down at the flute in her sister’s hand. Now Hen could guide them back to Earth, but if they left, Marian couldn’t go with them. They would never get the poem out of Izzy’s heart. “We’re so close,” she said.

  “I’m with Izzy,” said Selden. “Let’s see how far we can get before we give up. Dree, you think you can try to get the Unglers off our trail? Lead them the wrong way and buy us some time?”

  “All right,” said Dree, Changing into a silver-flecked fawn. “But you guys better hurry. There’s no way I can give off as much of a scent trail as the rest of you.” She leaped into the trees and bounded away.

  They followed Dree’s directions to the sinkhole, a place in the forest where the ground sloped down into a wide depression the size of a city block.

  “Listen,” said Lug, pausing to let Izzy down off his shoulders. “I hear water.”

  They followed the sound down into the base of the sinkhole, where a tumble of boulders lay at the bottom. A woodland stream drained down from the higher ground, disappearing into cracks between the rocks and flowing into some underground reservoir beneath their feet.

  “What do you think?” said Izzy. “Would you say those stones are drinking that water?”

  “Slurping it right up,” said Selden.

  Izzy’s pulse beat faster. She held up the paper full of clues. “The next part of the verse says the gift for a spring king hides to your right.”

  “Sometimes, Revelrun is called the Spring King,” said Selden. “The gift must be the King’s Key.”

  The ground rose steeply as they followed the water upstream. Everyone had to climb down off backs and go on foot. Soon, the stream forked, and they followed the branch to the right. True to the verse, it turned north, winding out of sight through the trees.

  “Follow me,” said Selden, splashing into the creek. “Walk in the water so we don’t leave a trail.”

  They trudged single file through the stream, trying to go as quietly as possible. Izzy looked up. The late afternoon sun shone bright through the leaves. If they were going to crawl through the night, their timing was off pretty badly.

  They heard the quick clacking of hooves and turned to see Dree galloping up toward them. “It’s no good,” she panted. “I tried, but I can’t shake them. They sent one Ungler after me. I lost him, but three more split off, following your trail.”

  “How far away are they?” asked Marian.

  Behind them, they heard a distant shriek. The sound was joined by another high-pitched squeal and another. The shrieks grew to a chorus.

  “Come on!” shouted Selden, leaving the stream and Changing to a wolf. “We’ve got to move! Dree, you do what you can, then get up in the air if you can’t shake them.”

  They ran along the bank of the creek, no longer trying to be quiet. Izzy pulled Hen up the slope by one hand. The gentle trickle of water grew to a swooshing rush.

  “Look!” cried Olligan, pointing to a short waterfall that spilled over the edge of a shelf of moss-covered granite.

  Selden charged into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. He ducked under the falls, then popped back out. “There’s space behind here. We could hide. Come on!”

  They all waded down into the thigh-deep pool. Izzy took a deep breath and ducked through the falls. There was so much water, it pushed her down, and Lug had to grab her hand and help her up. Behind the waterfall, the rock formed a deep pocket lined with ferns and strings of algae that hung from the ceiling. They huddled to the back, cramming as far into the darkness as they could.

  Izzy put one arm around her shivering sister. Thankfully, the rushing water masked the sounds of their breathing, but it also made it impossible to hear what was happening on the other side. Selden sat beside her, perfectly still except for his twitching wolf ears.

  Izzy leaned close to him. “What about Dree?” she said quietly.

  “Don’t worry about her,” said Selden. “Dree can take care of herself.”

  Izzy felt Hen’s body
tense up. She gasped and pointed. The wavering silhouette of a hunched figure loomed on the other side of the waterfall. Izzy squeezed Hen closer. The Ungler waded down into the water, standing a mere yard away. Its head swayed side to side as it smelled the air. Another Ungler joined it. The shadows crossed each other as they walked back and forth across the pool.

  Izzy didn’t dare breathe in case one puff of air would tip the Unglers off to their scent. Her heart was pounding as she waited, expecting the bony beasts to punch through the waterfall any minute and grab them with their long fingers.

  Slowly, she scooted farther back, drawing Hen along with her. They were trapped, with their backs against the wall. But when Izzy put her hand behind her, she realized there was no wall to back against.

  She turned and peered into the darkness. The pale light filtering through the waterfall was too dim for her to see much. She reached back as far as she could and still touched empty air.

  She snapped her fingers softly to get everyone’s attention, and they leaned in closer to hear her. “This is the next clue in the verse!” she whispered. She pointed at the waterfall where the two Unglers still lingered just outside. “That’s the bride’s veil of water. And there’s a space behind us big enough to crawl through.”

  “But it’s not nighttime yet,” said Hen.

  “I think when the clue says crawl through the night, it could mean crawl through the dark. And it’s pitch-black in there.”

  Lug made a face. “I don’t think I can fit in there, can I?”

  “You’re going to have to try,” whispered Marian, pushing him forward. “Let’s give it a go. It’s better than sitting here waiting to be found. Izzy, you lead the way.”

  Izzy got on her hands and knees and started forward, with Hen right behind. Ollie came next, then Lug, Selden, and Marian. Lug had to Change into his badger form, and still he grunted as his body scraped against the walls on either side.

  The sounds of the waterfall faded behind them as they crawled on. At first, Izzy’s adrenaline pushed her forward. She was so eager to get away from the Unglers that she hurried down the tunnel without thinking about anything else. But soon, she grew worried. What if the tunnel got smaller and smaller? What if it opened up into a bottomless pit or a deep pool? The cave was completely black. Izzy opened her eyes as wide as they could go, but she caught no light whatsoever.