During a fitful sleep that followed, Crush dreamed that he followed a young boy out to a creek bed where seven people lay on their backs, paralyzed and submerged beneath the water. As the seven people held their breath, the boy went from person to person, and with a single hollow reed, he blew a fresh breath of air into each person’s lips to keep them from drowning. The boy was constantly on the move from one person to the next, never resting for a moment. Crush began to search for another reed to help the people himself, but there were no reeds to be found. Frantic, he tried to lift one of the people above the surface of the shallow water, but he could not raise him alone. Some force was at work here, holding them in place, and the only chance that the seven people had for survival was the boy with the reed. Crush shuddered to think what would happen when the boy grew tired and needed to rest. How many would be lost?
When Crush finally awoke, the cell was quiet and dark, and the only sound he could hear was the gentle clinking of a pick striking stone in the distance. Rolling over, the pain of sleeping on the hard floor combined with the extended exertion in the mine slowly crept through his bones and muscles. A dull ache began to pound in his head from the fight two days before.
“I’m too old for this,” he mumbled to himself.
Suddenly, there was a knocking at the back wall of the cell, as if a small pick were pounding at the rock and whacking loose stone fragments from the wall. Puzzled, Crush placed his hand on the wall and felt the vibration of each strike. Someone or something was digging behind the cell, and they were about to break through. Before he could step out of the way, the back wall collapsed, bringing rubble down and covering the cell floor in broken stone. Crush leaped just in time to ride atop the wave of rock and mineral and collided with the front wall of the cell.
“Hey! Are you okay in there?” came a voice.
“Yeah,” Crush replied as he spit dust out of his mouth and brushed his clothes off. A lantern light appeared from behind the new chasm, and a young man holding a pick lowered the light. Instantly Crush recognized him as the young boy in his dream.
“Follow me. We’ve only a few minutes before we’re discovered,” the boy instructed and disappeared back into the hole in the wall.
“Who are you?” asked Crush as he bounded across the room and into the newly-formed tunnel.
“Wilbur. And this is Sean,” said the boy as he pointed down to a little green person wearing a big grin. Sean stood about hip high to Wilbur, and he cackled as he kicked his feet together. Then the green man snapped his fingers together with a spark, and the ground began to grumble and shake. Incredibly, the stones that covered the cell floor rose in turn to piece themselves back together one by one until no evidence of a breakthrough could be found.
“How did you do that?” Crush asked as he placed his hands along the surface of the wall and felt for cracks. None could be found. Extending his cat claws from his fingertips, he carefully scratched across the surface once again to feel for any deep grooves, but still none could be found. Hiding his claws back into his fingertips, Crush waited for an answer.
“There’s no time for that now. The others are waiting,” replied Wilbur.
“Others. Who else have you freed?” Crush probed.
“So many questions! Come on and you’ll have your answers!” exhorted Sean with a thick accent and a wink of an eye. Crush followed through a winding tunnel that appeared to be hand hewn with pieces of planks used for bracing.
“Aren’t you afraid that this tunnel will fall in?” asked Crush, but neither Sean nor Wilbur acknowledged the question. “These boards will rot within months, kid,” he remarked when there was no answer to his question. Finally after a hundred yards of meandering through the winding tunnel, they came to a small circular wooden door amid the stone. Sean reached out and rapped a peculiar set of knocks on the door, and when he finished, a sliding board in the door moved to the side, revealing a set of eyes. The lock of the door clicked, and Wilbur pushed the door open and entered first. Crush could not believe his eyes. There was a room with makeshift beds, and there were seven people all stretched out in varying dregrees of consciousness. Wilbur placed the pick on a hook in the wall and immediately began tending to the injured and incapacitated people where they lay. The room itself was spherical in shape with a high ceiling, and lanterns dangled from the ceiling, casting light over the entire area.
“So, this is it,” mumbled Crush, and he understood his dream and the urgency of his rescuers. “Sean, this isn’t a safe environment for these injured people,” he continued and brought a frown from the little guy.
“Oh, ho! And would you have us deliver them to St. Patrick’s Home for the Weary Welldiggers?” replied Sean in deep sarcasm.
“Ah . . . no. I guess not. It’s cozy and . . . stony, but what I mean is this. These people need medical attention.”
“That, my friend, is why we brought you here. Wilbur needs all the help he can get if he is to see these weary people home. Yesterday we spotted you working in the mines, piling up my gold, and we knew you were sent here to help. I cannot leave my pot o’ gold, but I still have some power in this place, and I’ll not stand by while those thieving insects steal my gold and work the innocents to death! So the question for you is, are you going to help?” said the little guy with his hands placed firmly on his hips.
Crush peered around at Wilbur and the ailing people that he cared for, and the answer came out without hesitation. “Yes. But we will need a plan.”
“Aye, that we do, and don’t worry about the hollow threat from the prince of executing others for your escape. The prince needs every slave working, and he can’t afford to lose a single soul before their time,” Sean explained. “Now, this is what we need to do for starters.”
**********
“One of you, take off your uniform and give it to me,” said Pound to the three highlanders in the wooden cell.
“You have clothes,” answered one of the prisoners.
“What do you want with a uniform? Do you think you’re going back into the mines, pretending to be one of us?” asked a second prisoner. “Good luck to you, pasty,” said another. The third remained quiet for a moment and then started taking off his uniform. The others did not stop him as he handed it to Pound through the wooden bars. The prisoner began to shiver, and the other two stared him down in disgust, as if he had committed treason. Perhaps he had.
“Thank you,” replied Pound, and he waved his hands and created a second cell from the surrounding trees. This cell was much larger than the first, and Pound had the vegetal guards move the prisoner into it. With a snap of his fingers, Pound had new garments woven from a cottony material in a nearby tree and gave the cooperative prisoner a new set of warm clothes. The vegetal guards then supplied him with extra rations and a cotton pillow for his head. With the prisoner sufficiently cared for, Pound then clothed himself in the tartans, waved goodbye to Calvin, and headed back up the hill to the clover road. He had no plan yet on how to rescue the people from the mines, but he knew that he had to do something. He had to free Crush and as many slaves as he could, and he had to get them back to earth. It was a long walk back to the mountain, and he hoped an idea would come to mind before he arrived. More importantly, he hoped that he would not step into any more trouble along the way. The tale that Calvin had told him about an unseen and powerful Queenmother worried him greatly.
**********
Satisfied that Wilbur had what he needed to care for the injured group, Crush followed Sean to the far edge of the spherical room where a large stone lay in the crease between the wall and the floor. Sean snapped his fingers, and the boulder rolled over on one side revealing a small, dark opening.
“There you go, my friend. This is the path you will have to take,” said Sean. Crush looked at the size of the opening and then scratched his fuzzy ears.
“You want me to go in there?” Crush answered with a question for
which he already knew the answer. “The opening is kind of small,” he said as he bent down to try to see down the hole that was made for a man of Sean’s size.
“I’ll admit it’s cozy, but you’ll manage,” replied Sean as he handed Crush a miner’s light for his head. “Be quick now.” As he crouched down on one knee and peered down the hole, Crush hesitated.
“This tunnel will take me outside of the mountain?” Crush said as he raised his eyebrows with an air of disbelief.
“Sure, sure. Just remember the directions I gave you, and we’ll all be the better for it soon,” Sean reassured Crush with a slap on the back. “Hurry up now, lad. If I didn’t know better, I would say that you’re afraid.” Crush returned the last comment with a sneer and pressed ahead into the hole before he could give the little green dwarf a piece of his mind.
**********
Sean had dug a tunnel of his own which led to the backside of the mountain, if one considered the mine entrance to be the front side. The tunnel then led out into the fresh air of the outdoors, but the tunnel that the dwarf had burrowed seemed to be no more than a worm hole to a person of Crush’s size. Five hours into his expedition, the tunnel was so narrow and dark that Crush believed that he would actually get stuck inside and die of starvation or dehydration. Pressing ahead, Crush hoped that he would soon feel the light, cool, and dry breeze of the outdoors, and his imagination kept him motivated to move forward rather than to remain wedged in a damp and humid hole where he would surely smother in stale air.
“Three quarters of a mile to go,” he thought to himself. In all, Sean had estimated the passage to be three miles in length, which explained why the route had not been attempted by the injured people under Wilbur’s care. “It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic,” he mumbled as he low crawled, elbow and knee on the right, followed up by elbow and knee on the left. The miner’s light that Sean had given him was still burning, but no other source of light existed on either end the shaft. Crush’s knees and elbow joints were sore to the touch from the hours of crawling, and the ten-minute breaks were becoming more frequent the further he went. Unable to go any further, he rolled over onto his back and lay staring at the dimly lit ceiling five inches from his nose until he drifted off into a restful and dreamless sleep.
When he awoke, Crush was in darkness. The lantern that he was wearing on his head had went out when he had slipped off into a catnap. Amazingly, the lantern lit back up again at the touch of a finger, as if it were powered by magic. Rubbing his knees and elbows, he felt the throbbing and tenderness in his joints from the abuse of crawling on the ground for more than two miles, and he wished he had some magic spell to make the pain go away so that he could finish crawling to the outside. As he waited there in the burrow, he considered staying put just a little longer to rest. Then he remembered that his water supply consisted of one small container that Sean had given to him, and it was now half-empty.
“Half-full,” he corrected himself. He had to stay positive about the whole situation, or he would find himself caught in despair at the strange circumstances. Reluctantly, Crush began the agonizing crawl to the finish, and this time every movement that he made ached. To relieve the pressure on his knees and elbows, he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on one hand and one foot for a while, and then switched sides for a short distance before collapsing in exhaustion for another fifteen minutes.
“Will I make it to the end?” he wondered. Doubt began to clog his mind, and then the realization that, pain or no pain, he only had himself to rely on to get through this tunnel. Crush was no quitter, and with a last effort, he pushed himself to crabwalk, side crawl, and even drag himself until at last he could feel a cool breeze of fresh air. Then the pain and anxiety lifted for a moment as he climbed out of the tiny opening into the cool night air. Inhaling what he deemed to be the freshest breeze of exhiliration that he could ever recall, Crush stretched his arms and legs in the open air of freedom.
Looking at his new surroundings, the doorway outside was just as Sean had described. There was a short rock wall facing the entrance, and the wall served to block the opening from plain view to the outside world. There was also a ledge which varied between narrow in some places and wide in others, and this ledge meandered hundreds of feet downward along the face of the mountain to the base of a forest in the valley below. The forested valley extended for what appeared to be several miles to a river. A full moon was shining that night, and Crush could see no end to the forest as it surrounded another peak that rose out of the ground at the horizon. Taking a seat beside the opening, he considered whether it would be better to begin climbing down the mountain now or to wait until sunrise. The thought of falling off a cliff from a dark, narrow ledge seemed a poor choice, so he laid down in the shadow of the rock and stared at the stars until the adrenaline in his system had subsided and his eyes became too heavy to hold open. In his slumber, Crush dreamed that he spent the night at a hotel with a dwarf bellhop who served gruel and that he slept on a hard mattress with sharp, pointy springs.
**********
With his eyelids still closed, the light of dawn pierced through to his pupils, and Crush’s cheeks warmed in the sun that next morning on the backside of the mountain. A butterfly landed on his nose, and Crush sprang to his feet in surprise at the touch of the insect. Rubbing his bruised knees and elbows to get the circulation going, Crush thought to himself as he looked down at the valley below that this would be a long day as well. He would not be bent over in a small confined space like he was in the tunnel, but he would be pinned on a narrow ledge instead, hoping not to slip and fall to his death.
“And for what?” he thought. “A dragon’s tooth!”
In the plan that they had gone over, Sean had sworn that they would need a dragon’s tooth in order to dispell the magic of the prince and the Queenmother. “I’ve never even seen a dragon before, much less pulled a tooth from one,” he grumbled to himself at the thought of the mission. Crush had no prior experience with dragons, and he had no knowledge of the magic that they held. He also knew nothing of the dangers that he would surely face in stealing a tooth from one of the mythical beasts.
Away in the distance, the mountain that Sean had called Scalus Mountain stood fuming a black cloud of ruin into the air, and a sudden reluctance began to surface within Crush at the sight of the volcano. Swallowing hard, Crush put one foot in front of the other to begin the long journey down the cliff wall into the forest below.
“A dragon’s tooth. I wonder what magic a dragon’s tooth has against the prince,” Crush thought again to himself. Sean never had elaborated on why he needed a dragon’s tooth, just that it was a necessary piece of the formula for freeing the slaves. In truth, Crush believed himself a pawn in a larger game between two great magical powers, but there was no question in his mind that Sean was a compassionate being. The prince and his family on the other hand had proved themselves to be harsh and cruel towards all outsiders. Crush would have to trust that siding with Sean against the prince was the best course of action for the people enslaved in the mines. Still, he wished that Pound were with him on this part of the journey.
The trek down the face of the mountain proved to be treacherous at best, and at midday, he squatted down in a breach between two boulders and rested for a few moments as he surveyed the impending forest landscape. Ecklebee Forest, as Sean had called it, was thick with massive hardwoods and mythical creatures of unknown origin, and as treacherous as the face of the cliff. One of the things that the dwarf had done before Crush entered the tunnel was to provide him with a cautionary tale of past attempts of travel to Scalus Mountain. Sean had given warning that the journey to Scalus Mountain was a challenge that several mighty men had faced, but none had ever returned. Maybe the challengers had changed their minds or maybe they had gotten lost in the enormous forest, Sean could only guess. The dwarf had some idea of what lay on the road ahead, yet he was reluctant t
o disclose much of it for fear that Crush would not take the challenge. When Crush had inquired as to why the little fellow had not gone himself, Sean freely admitted that his powers were strong beneath his own mountain, yet faded just outside of the rock. If he were to be of any significant use, it would have to be from inside the mines.
“I wonder what is waiting out there,” he thought as he closed his eyes and drifted off into a catnap.
**********
Birds flew out of the treetops in the forest below as the roar of a beast echoed between the cliff walls and startled Crush from his unexpected nap. The treetops shook and swayed one after another as if some massive creature paced beneath the dense canopy, and as his ears stood straight up at attention, Crush began to have very serious doubts about whether he should enter into such danger.
“But if the birds can survive, then surely I will find a way,” he stubbornly reassured himself. His next step was more suited for a bird as his right foot slipped on loose pebbles, followed by a slide of his left foot and a drop off the sheer face of the cliff. The descent lasted only half a second, but it seemed to him that the fall lasted an eternity as he grasped at the passing objects of the cliff face in hopes of catching a life line. A branch from the sprig of a scrubby pine tree growing deep within a crevice provided the first break and slight pause to the untimely fall, but the weight of his body proved to be too much for the ages old mountain pine. With a crack and a snap, the fall to his doom started up once more. Making a final desperate stretch forward, Crush caught a granite ledge, and his chest slammed into the cliff wall. With the wind knocked from his lungs like a popped balloon, stars burst before his eyes, but Crush did not let go of his hold on the cliff. Gazing skyward, memories of his childhood and of his adopted family and friends passed through his mind, and Crush instinctively dug his claws into the rock. His lungs then burst out in a gasp for precious air, and Crush thanked the heavens for one extra moment of life before all would be over.
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 6 Page 4