The Dark Hills Divide

by Patrick Carman

  It was only around ten o’clock, so people were still milling around Renny Lodge. The smoking room had its usual collection of late-night attendants, and I could hear the cooks cleaning the kitchen and preparing things for the next morning. Murphy slinked alongside of me down the stairs, looking every which way, his slight feet making a quiet mist of noise like small pebbles dropped onto sand. An occasional creak on a step from my comparatively ample weight was the only noticeable sound the two of us made until we reached the double doors.

  I whispered, “There’s the cat door. Remember, no noise. Turn the latch on the door slowly or it will make a loud pop when it comes open.”

  Murphy said nothing as he sized up the cat door. With his diminutive front foot, he pushed the wood flap slightly, then let it swing back. No rubbing on the edges, no squeaky hinges, it swung free and silent. He placed his head against the flap and made his way through the space, letting the flap down slowly from the other side with his long tail. I hardly noticed a sound as he leaped to the knob, balanced on his hind legs, and slowly turned the latch. It made an audible click as it came unlocked, like the sound of a peanut shell cracking open between a thumb and knuckle.

  I had told Murphy not to jump down off the knob because I thought the sound of his thud on the floor might wake the cats. He would be waiting patiently, balanced on the other side of the door. I turned the knob slowly, and I could hear the tiny mechanisms inside quietly move around. I could not see Murphy, but I imagined he looked a lot like a circus clown rolling around on a big round ball, quick feet doing small hops as the knob turned and turned under him.

  Finally the door swung free and I reached my hand around and grabbed Murphy by his surprisingly bony midsection. He was thinner than I had thought under all that fur, certainly no match for either Sam or Pepper, let alone both of them at one time. I set him down on the floor and carefully closed the door behind me.

  The library was on the third level, and it had wood flooring. Creaking as I walked was likely to be a problem, so it was up to Murphy to do the hunting. He was light enough not to make a sound while he padded about the aisles to find what we had come for. It would be my job to patiently sit and wait while Murphy found Pepper — hopefully sleeping — and cut off the medallion around his neck. This would be no small feat. The medallion dangled from a thick leather collar attached by a solid gold ring. His only chance would be to cut the leather collar and slide the ring off, then run for the cat door with the ring and the medallion between his teeth, two screeching and clawing cats chasing him all the way. It would have to be a quick operation — cut, grab, run. It was the only way.

  I signaled Murphy and he nodded and started away from me in the direction of Grayson’s office. It was darker in the library than I had expected, and I lost Murphy in the shadows almost immediately. Seconds turned into minutes as I waited. Finally, Murphy returned with news.

  I lifted him to my ear. “I found them both curled together in the chair,” he whispered. “No sign of any hawks outside the window. With the light it’s hard to tell which is which. I know Pepper is darker, but other than that, they’re a close match.”

  “I don’t know of any other markings,” I whispered back. “If you’re not sure, just take the one you can cut off the easiest and get out fast.”

  I set Murphy down and reached into my pocket to find the tool I’d fashioned for him. It was a small block of wood. With some effort, I had snapped off the smallest blade on my pocketknife, carved out a slit in the block, and jammed the butt of the small blade into the wood. I took the makeshift leather cutter and placed the wood block into Murphy’s mouth. He bit down hard, and I ran my shirt against the sharp edge of the blade as he pushed his head up. It ripped cleanly through.

  “If you don’t have a clear shot at the medallion, keep the blade in your mouth. It will be your only defense against them,” I whispered. Then Murphy turned and was gone, swallowed by the black night of the library. I was immediately sorry I had sent him.

  Minutes passed. I heard voices in the distance, the echo of laughter, a clang of a pot or a pan being placed in a sink. Water running. And then I heard an unearthly screech from one of the cats, a sound I could not translate into words. I was terrified for Murphy and I thought my capacity to understand animals had already begun to fade. Without thought I grabbed for the leather pouch around my neck with the stone inside and clutched it tightly.

  And then the voices returned. “Stop him! He has the medallion! Kill him!”

  It was time for me to move. I opened the door and returned to the hallway. I closed the door firmly behind me, and lifted the flap to the cat door in my direction. All the while I heard a mix of screeching and words and claws on wood. I got down on all fours and placed my head on the floor so I could look through the small opening. There was still no sign of Murphy in the dark.

  The sounds were much closer now: “Mrrrroooeeew!! Don’t let it get away!”

  A moment later I had to move out of the way as a blast of sliding fur came shooting through the door. It was Murphy, gold ring between his teeth, the medallion dangling below. As soon as he was through, I dropped the swinging door and sat down right in front of it. Murphy tried to stop but continued to slide on the waxed floor. He hit the wall opposite the library with a thud; the gold ring released from his teeth and flew into the air, landing with a loud clang between the two of us. The lead cat in the chase came crashing into the door behind me. The second landed on top of him and screamed from inside the library. It was Sam, yelling, “Get away from the door! Who are you? Return the medallion!” and other nasty remarks that billowed through the air.

  Murphy came to as loud footsteps started from the staircase below.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered. “Murphy! Get up, Murphy!” Holding the flap down with one hand I took my knife out of my pocket with the other and opened the largest blade with my teeth. The cats were clawing and pushing against the flap, screeching all the while. I pushed the flap as hard as I could and sent them flipping backward into the air. With one hard thrust, I slammed my knife into the jamb of the little opening. The flap swung down and stopped hard against the blade, locking the cats in for the night.

  The approaching footsteps were almost right on top of us. I darted across the floor, grabbed the medallion, and whisked Murphy into my arms, then I tossed Murphy down the hall toward my room, where he hit with a thud. I turned and faced the approaching footsteps coming around the corner.

  It was Althia, one of the cooks, and she was holding a saucepan in one hand looking as though she might hit me over the head with it.

  “Alexa!” she shouted. “What on earth are you doing out here at this hour making such a racket? You scared me half to death.”

  “I’m sorry, Althia, really I am.” I needed to get her back to the kitchen so I could attend to Murphy, but the cats were still wailing and clawing at the door trying to get out.

  “The cats were making this awful noise so I came down to see what all the fuss was about,” I said. “I think Grayson has them locked in for the night and they want to get out. I’ll tell him in the morning to check the cat door. It seems to be blocked — probably a stack of old books or something.”

  I stood between Althia and the cat door in the dim light of the hallway and she seemed to believe me.

  “I’m just glad it was only you,” she said with some relief. “I’m going back to my soufflé before it falls to pieces. You best get back to your room.”

  She wandered down the stairs muttering about the cats and waving her saucepan to and fro.

  I stood dazed in the hallway for a moment, shaking my head and replaying the scene in my mind, hoping Althia wouldn’t return with more questions. I quickly advanced down the creaking hall to find Murphy and get back to my room. To my horror, he remained unconscious, breathing uneasily, blood oozing slowly from a wicked scratch across the front of his head. I carefully picked him up and went to my room, cursing myself for sending him into the library with
those awful cats.

  CHAPTER 19

  MY MOTHER’S LETTER

  I went to the bathroom and got a wet washrag. Murphy was lying on my bed, shivering and twitching as if dreams of fighting off maniacal cats were racing through his head. I dabbed his wound and cleaned the fur matted with blood around his eyes and nose. What really bothered me was the considerable bump I found on his forehead. It was either from his crash into the wall after the chase or, heaven forbid, from the impact of being thrown onto the landing.

  While Murphy remained quiet I dug into my pocket and removed the medallion and the gold ring. Like the one from Sam’s neck, this one had a beautiful pattern etched on its surface. I hoped the Jocasta hidden beneath would grant me some new insight I desperately needed. I lifted the throw rug beneath my bed. Under it was a loose floorboard, which I popped out. In the small space below the floorboard I kept my tools, Warvold’s silver key, his favorite book, my mother’s broken spyglass, and the printer’s glass with its damaged lens.

  I removed the printer’s glass and covered the hole again with the board and the carpet. When I came back up to the bed, Murphy was sitting up straight, licking one of his paws.

  “You’re all right!” I placed my hand on his head and petted him gently.

  “Couldn’t be better. Most excitement I’ve had since a coyote chased me up a tree a month ago. Quite a good headache, but otherwise, all in one piece,” he said.

  I was ecstatic to see him up and about. “What happened? Tell me everything,” I said.

  “Well, let me think — it was dark, hard to get a read on things at first. I decided my best chance was to wrap my hind legs around Pepper’s neck and sit on his head all in one quick motion, then cut the collar, grab the gold ring, and hightail it for the door.” He was up on his hind legs acting dramatic.

  “As soon as I jumped on his head he jerked and jangled all over the place. I was flying around the room so fast it was dumb luck I was able to hold on at all. I cut the collar, which sent the ring and the medallion soaring across the floor and down the hall. Unfortunately, I also gave the cat a sharp poke in the neck, and he jerked his head back so hard it threw me in the air like a rag doll. There was a lot of confusion when I landed, but I was closest to the medallion. I ran across the floor, grabbed the gold ring between my teeth, and bolted for the door with both cats behind me.”

  “Amazing!” I said. Murphy beamed, the proud aura of mythical battle status hanging all about him. The story needed no embellishment; it was first-class legend all on its own, and I had a feeling Murphy would be telling the story to children and grandchildren for years to come.

  “You got the right one, too — the one from Pepper. He was fighting mad when I locked him in the library,” I said.

  I took the printer’s glass and set it against the medallion. What I saw rippled like a kaleidoscope in every direction. The broken glass would make it difficult to read the Jocasta. I pulled back, reviewed the glass, and found the largest unbroken piece. Then I got down on the floor on my knees and pushed the broken lens out of the metal frame. It fell in bits and pieces onto the floor. I took the largest shard of what was left, about a quarter of the whole lens, and sat back up on the bed.

  “Do you think it will work?” asked Murphy.

  “I think it will, but it may take a while to see everything,” I replied.

  As it turned out, it was a simple Jocasta — a diagram of three boxes. Two had a line joining them; the third was unattached. The end of the line formed an arrow, which pointed to the third box. It looked like this:

  I wrote the diagram down on a piece of paper and cleaned up the glass on the floor. Murphy and I puzzled over the diagram for a few minutes without any idea what it might mean.

  Finally, Murphy said, “I’m sorry, Alexa, but I must go report to Yipes. He’ll be worried I haven’t checked in, and Ander will want an update.” He jumped down, ran across the floor, and popped up onto the windowsill. “What do you say I coat our progress with a little honey?”

  “Fine by me,” I replied. “Though I’m at a dead end as far as I can tell, and I have no idea what to try next. This Jocasta was my big hope, and it was a failure. Sorry I sent you into all that trouble for no reason.”

  “Not to worry, I enjoyed it immensely. I’m a wartime hero; they’ll probably decorate me with medals and give me a parade when this is all over with. What more could a squirrel ask for?”

  He darted out the window and I was alone with my thoughts in the deepest part of the night. It was past one in the morning, and I was utterly exhausted. I reclined on the bed and felt a poke in my back pocket. It was my mother’s letter, and now was as good a time as any to get the reading of it over with. With some good fortune I thought it might lull me to sleep.

  Alexa,

  Thank you for your letter. I miss you and your father very much, and even a few lines make me feel closer to you. The daisies are coming up all over town and the garden is full of tomatoes. I told your father not to plant so many, but he wouldn’t listen. Now I’m off to the neighbors every three days giving them away and having them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No matter how many tomatoes I eat or give away there are always more the next day. Tell your father I said, “I told you so.”

  I was sorry to hear that you had taken my spyglass to Bridewell. It’s hard to discipline you from far away, but you can be sure I’ll have you clearing out all the tomato plants from the garden when you get home. I understand the temptation was great, but you really must learn to make better choices. The spyglass was a gift from Renny Warvold. It’s the only thing I have to remember her by, so it’s special to me. Just bring it home with you and be careful with it. I’ll get the lens fixed and you can work off the expense around the house.

  How’s the weather in Bridewell? I’m sure it’s as hot as ever. The River Roland runs even higher than usual this year and keeps Lathbury cool by late afternoon.

  Write again! See you and Father soon.

  Love,

  Mother

  The beautiful, ornate three-piece spyglass. As soon as I learned it was a gift from Renny, I began to understand things in a new light. Maybe the three boxes on Pepper’s medallion were the three sections of the spyglass. The images on the first two could equal whatever was on the third. I scrambled off my bed and ran to the window, looking all around for Murphy, hoping I could catch him. But he was already long gone.

  I returned to my hiding spot and removed the rug and the wood panel. My hands shaking, I picked up the broken spyglass and returned to my bed. I extended the sections and revealed all the wonderful paisley patterns that adorned the tubes. Every section was like a vibrant forest of color, and finding the Jocastas hidden within seemed an impossible task, especially given that I had only a shard of magnifying glass to work with. I began scanning the large, outer tube with the splinter of glass, and quickly realized that it would take hours just to scan the one part. I was already so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.

  I went to the bathroom and listened for my father’s steady snoring. It swept into the night, a quaint little snore, not too loud, almost soothing. I took water from the basin and wet my face and neck, hoping the water would revive me. Then I returned to bed and began scanning again.

  It was hopeless. At the rate I was going it would take days to find the hidden Jocastas, and I was already bobbing my head as I tried to stay awake; before long I would collapse from exhaustion and wake up with Sam in my face and Sebastian towering over me with a sledgehammer. I pulled back and rubbed my eyes. There had to be another way. It was past two in the morning and I couldn’t stay alert for much longer.

  I held the spyglass at arm’s length and turned it slowly in my hand, looking for a pattern that might join the three tubes together. I placed one hand under the largest tube and one on top of the smallest tube and continued spinning the whole thing around. The three patterns did seem to have a point at which they matched, but they were not lined up between the three s
ections. I took the top and bottom tubes in hand and, to my surprise, with a fair amount of effort I was able to slowly twist them in opposite directions. When the patterns lined up, the tubes snapped into place and stopped. It had never occurred to me to turn the tubes in this way before.

  Now I could see a line of commonly shaped paisley swirls, one on top of the other, each slightly larger than the last, in a row down the three tubes. The color also ran light to dark from the first pattern to the last. At the center of each paisley pattern was a symbol, which looked like a flash of yellow light. I picked up my shard of glass and moved in tight to view the center of the pattern on the first tube. I had found the first of three Jocastas.

  It was an image of a man, eyes missing, groping his arm up and out against an invisible object. I immediately recalled the fable Warvold had shared with me on the night of his death about the blind men and the elephant, and I understood the invisible object to be the elephant in Warvold’s story.

  My heart was racing and I was all at once wide-awake as I moved to the next tube. The Jocasta on this tube depicted a man on his knees, arms raised in worship to an unseen god.

  I moved to the last tube, and found an even simpler Jocasta than the one on Pepper’s medallion. It was nothing more than a capital letter S.

  Elephant + Worship = Sebastian.

  I was more confused than ever.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE MEETING ROOM

  Extreme fatigue is an overpowering force. Under the right circumstances it blankets its captive under heavy layers of deep sleep, layers that must be peeled away to reach beneath. As voices and light from the wakeful world pound to get in, they fight against a thick film to wrench the weary back to life.