by Jane Yolen
Just then the first of the tribe appeared, carrying armfuls of stuff that smelled worse than they did. They dumped it in front of Prince Orybon.
Orybon jumped up and stepped back from the piles. “What is that?”
“Bat poo,” said Dusty with a ferocious grin. He dipped his hand into the crumbling stuff and held it toward Prince Orybon’s face. “Want some?”
Orybon turned on his heel and made a hasty retreat into the darkness.
“Did you have to do that?” I asked.
“How could I not?” Dusty’s grin was a league wide.
Laughing uproariously, Grey tumbled backward off his stalagmite seat and landed bottom first on the stone floor.
• • • • • • • •
We spent the next few hours experimenting, using the handle of Grey’s knife and several rocks to pound the guano into a grayish powder. Afterward, we set little bits of it alight with a torch made from the shorn McGargle hair held aloft on the sword and bound with my ribbon.
The smell of the burning hair was almost as bad as the guano. But the powder burned with a lovely lilac flame and then exploded with a loud pop. Each time we tried, we got another small explosion. These were tiny, short, and sharp, but nothing exactly powerful. Still, we understood we were onto something real. It worked and was repeatable.
Dusty danced about like a loon when the first bit of powder popped. And when the second and third did, Grey joined him. They were like two boys seeing their first skyrockets.
Next we tried making a paste of some of the powder with water from the river, stirring it with the largest fish bones we could find. Grey forbade us the use of his knife for that. The watery guano turned to glop that looked a great deal like something a cow might have dropped onto the stone floor. It wouldn’t ignite at all.
“So now we know it has to be the powder form,” said Grey. Dusty and I agreed.
“How much guano are we going to need?” Dusty asked.
“A great deal more if we are to make a large explosion,” Grey told him. “But the McGargles are in charge of that. So we need not worry.”
“And how are we going to make the kind of explosion we need?” I asked. “We daren’t get too close to light it ourselves else we’ll be blown up.”
Grey got a strange look on his face. “Orybon will probably suggest using a McGargle.”
“Oh, no!” I said, suddenly remembering the death of poor old Gargle. “We can’t do that.”
“Of course not,” said Grey. “We need some sort of fuse.”
“What’s a fuse?” Dusty and I asked together.
“It is what initiates the actual explosion, a kind of cord that leads away from the powder to a place where we can be safe. We light the far end, and the fire travels along the cord until at last it reaches the great residue of powder. Then BOOM!” His voice sent thrills of echoes running through the cavern.
“Oh, that,” Dusty said, disgusted. “We call it a string.” He cocked his head at Grey. “For our rockets. Of course, those are short . . .”
“Short fuses for small explosions,” Grey said, “and long fuses . . .”
“I get it,” Dusty said.
“I like the word fuse,” I said, trying to close down any argument before it started. But I was not convinced a fuse could work. “What could we possibly make the cord out of?”
“A piece of excess clothing,” Grey explained, eyeing the Cloak around my waist.
“Not that!” I said, shielding it as best I could with my hands. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“It’s what?” He leaned toward me. There was a kind of gleam in his eye that made me doubt him all over again. After all, he’d been in the cave for uncounted dreary years. Being around Orybon all that time must have rubbed off on him.
Dusty said, “It’s her traveling cloth. She sleeps with it and always has it somewhere near to hand.” Dusty’s voice was rough with the lie, but only I noticed.
The Magick Gods’ blessings on you, brother. I looked at the floor of the cave so Grey couldn’t read my face.
“Then,” Grey said, “we shall use my shirt. I still have a doublet to keep me warm.”
“And the hearth fire,” I whispered.
“And the glamour,” Dusty added. Though we all knew that a glamour couldn’t actually warm you, just make you look warm.
Grey sent the McGargles out to get more, and more, and then even more of the guano till we had huge piles of the stuff everywhere. He and Dusty took turns smashing it into dust while I had the job of pulling Grey’s shirt apart, plaiting the threads into a long, thin, pliable rope that would become our fuse.
• 15 •
CURSES
It took us three days. Or at least it took us three times between sleep periods before we were ready, all marked by the whoosh of the bats out of the cave. Whether that was time as calculated Under the Hill or over, I couldn’t be sure, though it had to be long after the christening. But I couldn’t bring myself to dwell on that. And as Dusty and I were still alive and not turned into stardust, I was at least slightly comforted.
The McGargles had several rough-made willow baskets, probably from their days before they’d been closed up in the caves. We loaded the powder into those for transportation to the walls on either side of the Gate. But not too near, lest sparks from the Gate ignite the powder before we were ready.
“Careful, careful . . .” Grey cautioned us, and then in the McGargle tongue cautioned them as well.
The McGargles were only as cautious as large trolls can be, but they avoided going up close to the Gate because they were terrified of it. Only once did one of the baby trolls get too close. It probably wanted to play with the guano dust. But its mother—or father—raced over and hauled it back. The little one complained in a high-pitched squeal all the way. The grown-up’s hair started to burn from the Gate’s orange sparks—the smell was predictably awful—but the others quickly patted it out with their large hands.
Luckily, none of the sparks came close to the growing piles of guano dust, or it might have all been blown up beforetimes, and us with it.
Soon there were two knee-high piles against the stone walls on either side of the Gate, though none closer than about seven feet. Knee-high to an adult McGargle, that is, which put it chest-high on Grey.
Under Grey’s direction, the McGargles used the baskets like a farmer’s rake to shove the piles closer to the Gate, maybe three feet on either side closer. Then they tidied up the bits of guano dust that had escaped, using their hands, until their hairy arms fairly glittered with the stuff.
“Had enough sparkles, Mr. Magpie?” I asked Dusty as he loaded the last of the guano into the baskets.
“I think,” Dusty said, “I’ve had enough sparkles to last me a lifetime.” He wiped his arm over his sweaty brow, leaving a line of dust there, like a girl’s hair ribbon. I brushed it off carefully.
Grey turned to me. “Are you ready with the fuse?”
I held up the skinny, snakelike thing to show him. It was longer than two McGargles.
“Good.” He took the cord from me and cut it in two with his knife. “One for each pile.”
Then he went over to the nearest hearth, which was unlit, and soaked both strands in the oyl. “It should make the cords burn even better,” he said, over his shoulder, before coiling each into large greasy ropes. By now his hands were smudged with the black oyl. I could smell him from where I stood and wrinkled my nose, but he never noticed.
Dusty took one of the coils from Grey and set its mouth against the guano powder to the left of the Gate, while Grey set his to the pile on the right.
The McGargles cheered, though once again Grey cautioned them. I think he was afraid that, in their excitement, they might start jumping around and scatter the dust.
After the cheer, Grey and Dusty each unrolled the rest of the two fuses backward toward the corridor where we planned to wait, close enough to be able to hear what was happening, far enough away to be relatively safe. They were both filthy with oyl by the time they were done, and stinking as badly as the trolls.
The McGargles crowded in with us, though the corridor was too small for that many, so Grey shooed them farther back, but—even so—the smell of their hairy bodies, combining with the oyl pong on Grey and Dusty, made my headache throb madly. The corridor seemed to glitter and whirl as if I’d been twirling around. Though to be fair, I didn’t know if the headache and the strange visions before my eyes were from the smells, from fear, from the nearness of the Gate, or from the residue of magick.
“Now what?” Dusty asked.
“Now,” Grey said, “I go to the Gate cave, set both cords alight, and then run back here, where we will wait for the explosions.”
“I’m going with you,” I said to Grey. The tone of my voice let him know I wouldn’t be talked out of it.
“And I!” said Dusty.
Grey shrugged, but a small smile played around his lips, and he couldn’t disguise it.
As instructed, the McGargles went galloping and whooping back through the long, twisting corridor, but Dusty and I followed Grey into the Gate cave and stood near the ends of the fuses while Grey prepared to set them on fire. He fiddled with the tinderbox, mumbling something—whether a Curse or a prayer, I couldn’t tell. The tinderbox seemed reluctant to light the cords.
“Wait!” I said. “Where’s Prince Orybon?”
“Who cares?” Dusty growled.
Grey handed me the tinderbox. “Guard it with your life,” he said. The tinderbox was smeared with the oyl, too. I sighed. There was no getting away from that smell now.
Checking the main cavern first, Grey came back shortly to grumble that he’d no idea where Orybon was, but at least he wasn’t near the Gate and therefore wasn’t in any immediate danger.
“Too bad,” Dusty said.
A hand cuffed his ear.
“Ow!”
“If this doesn’t work, it will be too bad for you,” Orybon said, having emerged almost—as it were—from the corridor wall.
“You could have said something,” Grey told him.
“It was more amusing this way, watching you all work so hard. At least it made the time pass.”
I glared at him. “It could have passed even faster if you’d been helping.”
“I doubt that.”
“I doubt that, too,” grumbled Dusty.
“Well,” Orybon said, lips pursed as if he’d eaten something sour, “at least we agree on something, little fey.” He turned and faced the Gate. For a moment, he stood still as a statue, then said in a loud voice, “I Curse your Gate, Father, and you who made it. I Curse the hands that touched it and turned it against me. I Curse the mind that thought it up. And when I get home—and that will be soon, no thanks to you—I shall wrest the throne from your thrice-Cursed, aging body and Curse you again into your grave.”
I was shocked.
Dusty was appalled.
“Was that wise?” I asked, not looking at the prince but at Grey, who’d returned in time to hear the prince’s entire speech.
Grey shrugged, took the tinderbox back from me. Our fingers touched. I went red with embarrassment, for it felt as if the Gate had shot sparks between the two of us. We glanced at each other, and he had the grace to look away first. “That’s what he calls repentance,” he whispered.
“Sounded like a Curse to me,” I said.
“Several,” Dusty added.
Grey bent over the two fuses and struck the tinderbox, and this time it flared. He touched it to one fuse and, right after, the other. The cords began to burn quickly and efficiently, heading like small fiery carts along their preset tracks.
“That will do it.” Prince Orybon stepped over one cord and walked back past the three of us to wait, as always, in the dark.
We all moved back down the corridor, to join the prince in the dark, protected by a thick wall of stone.
I could hear the little zzzzing noises of the fire moving along the fuses, but it seemed like too much time had passed and still there was no explosion. I counted to ten, then twenty, then fifty, and still there was no large BANG!
At last I couldn’t stand it any longer. Inching past the three of them—Dusty, who whispered my name in warning, and Grey, who reached out an oyly hand to stop me, and Orybon, wherever he was hiding—I walked deliberately to where the tunnel opened into the cavern.
I could see the fuses still burning toward the piles of guano powder, but slowly, as if they’d lost the will to go any farther or faster. I could feel their resistance, their reluctance to set the thing alight. As I’d been making them, the cords had felt strong and competent. When Grey had set them on fire, they’d seemed set and purposeful. But now, traveling along the stone floor toward the piles of gray powder and the walls the powder leaned on, the cords looked vastly too small and too insignificant to start any explosion, the powder too frail to bring down stone, and the Gate too powerful and filled with magick to be moved.
Stepping into the cavern, I took a deep breath and found my center. Then, just as the fuses finally reached the powder, and the powder began to burn with that delicate lilac color I’d seen before, I made the Wish.
“Let the walls on either side
Crumble, tumble, open wide.
Let the Gate fall far from me,
And let all go free. Go free!”
The last two words came out in an unexpected Shout, though it seemed to have little of the power of the Shout with Dusty, none of the burning in my throat and tongue. Rather it leaped from my mouth like a shaft of cold fire, coursing along the ashy cords till it caught up with their own fire at the very end.
I leaned forward to watch, thinking, Certainly not one of the greatest charms, but workable. Especially with the Shout at the end. I hadn’t any time to come up with a better rhyme or a longer one.
Without warning, there came a terrible, multiplying echo of the Shout, as if my brain had exploded, the sound of it terrifying. I heard the explosion long before I saw it. And long before I realized it wasn’t the guano and fuse that had made the noise.
Rather it was the whooshing sound of bats suddenly flying around me, as if they somehow knew what was about to happen. I tried to turn away. I put my hands up to keep the bats out of my hair. I wanted to move to anywhere but where I was, but in that same moment, none of my limbs nor my one good wing seemed to be working. Instead, I was lifted up by the air as if I were no more than a puff of milkweed, but at the same time the air seemed hard as stone.
Then I was tossed end over end until I was sure I would empty my stomach or bang my head, and I couldn’t decide which one should come first or hurt less.
As I was trying to figure it all out, a sudden downdraft hurtled me toward the stone floor.
There were terrified screams.
Wild laughter.
Cries.
And some of them came from me.
• • • • • • • •
Seconds, minutes, maybe even an hour later, I realized I was mostly unhurt and safely enfolded in someone’s familiar strong arms. I opened my eyes.
“Father?” I asked, thinking I’d just awakened from another ague dream.
“Don’t be silly, Gorse,” said someone close by. “It’s the hairless troll. He caught you. You were falling faster than one of Father’s skyrockets and he plucked you from the air.”
It took me a moment to remember where I was, what a hairless troll was, even who I was. Then I looked into the monster’s yellow eyes that were narrowing as they focused on me. Without thinking, I whispered, “Gargle?”
He
burbled back at me. “Gargle McGargle.”
I was astonished. It seems I hadn’t killed him after all, just shorn him in the most efficient and permanent way by burning his hair off with my spell.
Something inside me, some wet and weepy thing, some stone wall of guilt, crumbled away. And then, remembering the other crumbling stone, I stuttered hoarsely, “The . . . the . . . Gate?”
Dusty pointed dramatically to a spot behind me. “Look!”
I squirmed out of Gargle’s arms and turned to look. It wasn’t easy to see through the scrim of rock dust that still filled the cavern. But once my eyes adjusted to the gray light, I saw that on both sides of the Gate, about five feet on either side, where the guano dust had been shoved, the rocks were jagged, broken, tumbling down.
But the Gate itself still stood upright.
“It stands,” Prince Orybon said in that dry voice, filled now with an ultimate bitterness. “You have failed me, Pudding Alice, Mistress Goosey, daughter of the Shouting Fey. I wonder that you have not burst into a thousand stars. You swore a binding Oath to me, after all. And failed.”
“But not to Shout down the Gate,” Grey reminded him. “Only to deliver your message of repentance to your father.”
“It still stands,” I whispered, not knowing if I meant the Gate or the Oath or maybe both. And also not knowing if somewhere, somehow, Orybon’s father—my Great-grandfather Fergus’s father—was still alive to receive a message from me about his son. At that moment, I was too exhausted from the events, my head ached too much from the Shout and its residual magick, and my throat was too raw from the rock dust and my screams to care.
Dusty laughed. “There’s room enough on either side to sidle through, prince. That is, if you aren’t too high and mighty to sidle. Or too afraid of a few minor sparks.”
At that, Orybon shoved the spindle at me and gave Dusty such a cuff, he fell to the stone floor. As if intent on proving Dusty wrong about his fear, Orybon stepped forward. He hadn’t got very far when he was stopped by Grey’s hand on his shoulder.
“Do not go there until I have tried it myself, my prince.”