by Adam Gidwitz
Again, the bucket began to descend. But slowly.
And then, they heard a voice. “How will they get the treasure back up?”
Jill looked all around her. Jack gripped the edge of the bucket.
“Who said that?” the frog whispered.
“They’ll just hoist it up, piece by piece,” said another voice. It sounded like Begehren. But they could hear it as if he were right next to them.
“But if the treasure’s anything like what the legends say, that could take a lifetime!” Jack and Jill stared at the glowing walls, passing slowly by. The voices seemed to be ringing through the stone.
“If it takes a lifetime, it takes a lifetime. What’s another eighty years,” said Begehren, “after the thousand we have waited?”
Jack and Jill looked at each other, their eyes wide.
“But they won’t get it, right?” asked the voice. “They’ll be killed.”
“One way or another,” Begehren replied. “Almost certainly by the Eidechse von Feuer, die Meschenfleischfressende. And if not, once they hand over the Glass, we won’t need them anymore. So I’ll kill them myself.”
Jack went pale.
“I like him less and less,” whispered Jill.
The frog began to weep.
* * *
The bucket descended farther and farther into the impenetrable gloom, and beads of sweat began to stand out on Jack’s and Jill’s foreheads, faces, necks, arms. Farther, farther, farther. With every few yards the children descended, the heat climbed another degree. The air was so thick they could barely breathe. It was as if they were being lowered into a forge, as if the children were metal, and they would melt and re-form themselves in the heat of the sinkhole. At least, those were the strange thoughts that passed through Jack’s head as he gasped for breath. Jill was so hot she could not think of anything at all. And the frog was still weeping.
At last, the bucket landed with a bump on a craggy outcropping of stone. The children crawled out. There was no relief from the heat. The spears, which had been jarred from their hands when the bucket stopped suddenly in midair, lay on the black rock. One was shattered to pieces.
“Great,” said Jack.
“Oh, because it would have helped,” said the frog.
Jill said, “Where do we go now?”
There was a small, dark tunnel that led away from the outcropping where they had landed. Jack pointed to it. Jill scanned the rest of the walls for any other passageways or doors. There were none. “Okay,” she said.
“Yeah,” said the frog. “Fantastic.”
So Jack scooped up the remaining spear, took Jill’s hand, and they walked into the dark, narrow, oppressively hot tunnel. Here, too, the rock glowed with that eerie phosphorescence. All it allowed the children to see, though, was that the tunnel was dark and rocky and descended gradually toward the center of the earth.
The children walked in silence, thinking about what Begehren had told them of the beast. He kills reflexively, as if he were born to. Were he even to breathe in your direction, you would be burned to a cinder. He is as cruel and perfect a killing machine as has ever lived. And they thought of all that they had heard of the Glass. It is a treasure horde so great a king could trade his kingdom for it and be counted a wise man . . . The greatest power, it is said, resides in that Glass . . . If you can’t find it, you die.
Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper into the darkness. The children stopped and tried to catch their breath. Even walking in this heat was a trial. Deeper and deeper. Hotter and hotter.
“I may be turning into a casserole,” the frog muttered.
Deeper.
Hotter.
Deeper.
Sweat poured off the children’s faces. They could barely breathe for the heat.
The frog was now praying.
The dark tunnel continued down, down, down. The heat wrapped them in a bear hug and squeezed their lungs. But the heat was not the only thing that intensified. It began with Jill sniffing and wrinkling her nose. Then Jack said, “What is that?” Soon, the children—and the frog—were covering their noses and mouths, trying not to breathe because of the horrible, putrefying stench. It was as if flesh were rotting, had been rotting, for a thousand years. Jack bent over, put his hand on the pockmarked black wall, and tried not to be sick. He gagged and held his throat. At last, he straightened up, and the children staggered on.
They became dizzier and dizzier with the heat and the smell. How will we fight this thing? Jack thought. I can barely walk. I can barely see straight. He would have said as much to Jill, but he didn’t want to open his mouth, for fear of the pungent funk. And besides, he didn’t need to, because Jill was wondering the same thing.
The tunnel became narrower, and narrower, and narrower, until Jack and Jill were crouching, and then crawling. Their shirts, their hair, their socks were soaked with sweat.
The rock beneath them became hotter, until the sweat that ran off of their faces sizzled as it landed on the black stone. The palms of their hands were burning.
The tunnel turned precipitously. The frog, peering out of Jack’s pocket, said, “Holy . . .”
Jack looked up. “Have mercy . . .” he muttered.
Jill came up behind them. She opened her mouth. No sound came out at all.
CHAPTER TEN
Eidechse Von Feuer,
Der Menschenfleischfressende
Once upon a time, there was a huge cavern under the earth.
Jack and Jill and the frog stared.
But the cavern was not what they were staring at.
At the back of the cavern, a torrent of lava poured out of a rock wall, red and black and lurid and glowing.
But that was not what they were staring at, either.
The torrent tumbled into a magma river that wound its way around the back of the cavern, hugging the pockmarked black wall closely and then, in the distance, feeding into an endless underground lava sea.
But the three travelers were also not staring at that.
They were staring at a small mountain that sat beside the winding lava river. The mountain was made not of rock, nor of magma, but of pink, fleshy skin. The mountain had a ridge like a backbone, and little valleys formed by small arms and legs, and a slope of a wide, flat tail. There was no head. But its body rose and fell with breath. They could see thin black bones through the pink skin, and in the distended bag of a belly, black organs wound around one another, pulsing.
“I don’t want to do this . . .” Jill whispered.
Jack shook his head and muttered, “Maybe we can go back and beg Begehren to let us up.”
“Or we can just live down here . . .”
The two children backed into the tunnel they’d come from as swiftly as they could.
But the frog said, “Wait.”
“What?” hissed Jill.
“What?” said Jack, a little louder than he’d intended to.
Jill looked at Jack, eyes wide, finger before her lips. Jack slapped his hand over his mouth.
Silence.
Jack said a wordless prayer of thanks.
And then there was a roar. A roar that has never been described accurately, in all the times this tale has been told. A roar that shook the walls and the roof, that caused waves in the lava sea, that made Jack and Jill fear their eardrums would burst, that made their very bones vibrate and ache within their bodies, that was felt in a tremble not only up in the Goblin Kingdom, but indeed, even on the surface of the earth above that. Jack and Jill fell back into the tunnel, covering their ears and burying their heads between their knees and wishing, wishing, wishing the sound would stop.
And then there was heat. It scorched the children’s faces and arms, turning their skin red and blistery in an instant. Flame followed the heat, and it rolled up against their little tunnel like a beast that was too big to chase them any farther. The flame was red and yellow and blue and pale green, and Jack and Jill would have thought it was one of the most magnific
ent things they had ever seen in their lives—if their heads hadn’t been clamped firmly between their knees.
Finally, the flame subsided. The children peeked out from their protective positions. The frog had fallen from Jack’s pocket and was curled in a ball on the ground.
The children leaped to their feet. “GO!” Jack cried.
But the frog cried, “Wait!”
Jill hesitated, but Jack was already sprinting away, his spear discarded, his arms flailing wildly as he ran. “Wait!” said the frog again. “He only wants to know who we are!”
Halfway down the hall, Jack slowed to a jog.
“Excuse me?” said Jill.
“He was asking who we are,” said the frog.
Jill was staring at the frog in an attempt to determine if he had lost his mind. Jack had very much the same look on his face.
“He speaks Amphibian,” said the frog, and shrugged his little froggy shoulders.
“You’re joking . . .” said Jack.
“You’re certain?” said Jill.
“Sure,” said the frog. “It’s my language.”
The floor began to shake, the air heated to boiling, and Jack and Jill clamped their hands over their ears as another roar rocked the tunnel, the cavern, and the earth miles and miles above.
When it had subsided, Jill asked the frog, “Well? Was that Amphibian, too?”
“Yeah,” said the frog. “He wants to know where we went.”
Jack started laughing hysterically, and Jill was pretty sure that both of her companions had suddenly lost their minds.
“Let’s go talk to him,” said the frog. Jack continued to laugh insanely.
Jill looked back and forth between the two and, since Jack wasn’t giving her any better options, she followed the frog back to the very edge of the cavern.
The mountain had moved. It had turned and raised a humongous, grotesque, fleshy, pink head. This head was roughly the size of the rest of its body, excluding its long, thick tail. It had tiny black eyes that sat where you might have expected ears to be, just above the upward curves at the end of its wide mouth.
“Oh boy,” said the frog.
“What?” Jill whispered.
“It’s a salamander.”
Jill stared. “It is?”
The frog nodded.
“Is that bad?” Jill asked.
The frog shrugged. “Well, they’re not terribly clever.”
The mountainous salamander stared at them out of the tiny black eyes on either side of his head.
“I’m going to introduce us,” the frog said. Jill nodded as if this made sense. Jack walked up to them, giggling and mumbling about all the king’s horses and all the king’s men putting his head back together again. Then he tried to make his elbow touch his nose.
The frog croaked again. The beast opened his mouth, revealing a big pink tongue. Then out poured a roar that seemed to never end. Jill curled up in a ball and covered her ears. She thought they might be bleeding.
“He says his name is Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschen-fleischfressende,” said the frog.
“Yeah,” said Jill, “we figured.” Then she said, “Can you ask him not to talk so loud? I think I’m going deaf.”
“Sure,” said the frog. So he croaked at Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende. The giant salamander roared a roar that hurt Jill’s ears and blew her hair back but did not force her to curl up into a ball and want to die.
“Better,” she mumbled.
“He said his name is Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende again.”
“Yeah,” said Jill. “We got it.” Jack giggled and tried to fit his fist into his mouth.
“Also,” added the frog, “he said he prefers to be called Eddie.”
Jill was about to say something and then realized that there was absolutely nothing to say to that.
The frog croaked some more. “Eddie” roared back. “I just introduced you two,” said the frog. “He wants to know what’s wrong with Jack.” Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende’s head was held alertly up, and he seemed to be studying Jack curiously with his tiny black eyes. Jill turned around to see Jack trying to fit his left leg over his head.
Jill took him by the shoulders and shook him. Then she slapped him across the face. He shook himself. He said, “What happened? Where am I?”
Jill pointed to Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende. “He’s a salamander. His name’s Eddie.”
Jack started to giggle again, so Jill slapped him across the face again. Again Jack shook himself. “Sorry. What?” He looked up. “Oh.” And then, again, he said, “Oh.”
The children stared up at the beast of the translucent skin and the putrid odor. After a moment, Jill said, “Well, I guess we should ask him about the Glass?”
The frog said, “Right. Good idea.” So he croaked up at Eddie. The salamander roared.
“He apologizes,” said the frog. “Apparently he ate it.”
“He ate the treasure?” Jill exclaimed.
“Oh, boy,” said Jack.
The salamander reared back with his huge, pink, fleshy head and roared some more. “He’s very sorry,” said the frog. “He didn’t mean to.”
“At least he’s polite . . .” Jack marveled.
“He said someone dropped it into his pit a long time ago by accident, and he ate it.”
“Can you—” Jill began, but the frog cut her off.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll ask him to explain.”
So the frog croaked at the salamander. The salamander wrapped his enormous, fleshy tail around his legs. As he moved it, the cavern shook and shifted, and in the distance hundreds of stone stalactites fell from the rock ceiling into the lava sea. The salamander roared.
“He says he didn’t used to live so far under the ground,” said the frog. “He used to live near the surface.”
The salamander roared again. “The goblins used to like him, he says. He sounds kind of sad about it.”
The salamander roared yet again. “He powered their forges with his breath.” The frog waited for more from the salamander.
When there’d been silence for a moment too long, the frog croaked at him.
Eddie roared in reply.
The frog said to the children, “Right. Sorry. He’s starting the story over again. You’ve got to get used to this with salamanders. It’s very hard for them to remember anything they’ve said more than a few sentences ago.”
After a bit of roaring, the frog said, “Okay, he’s back to where we left off. So he lived in a big sinkhole, and would breathe fire to heat the goblins’ homes and power their forges. But then, one day, at some ceremony that he tried to explain but I didn’t understand, they dropped the Glass into his mouth. By accident. And they were very mad.” Jack and Jill looked up at the salamander. He was watching them with his tiny black eyes, as if he wished they would understand.
The frog croaked at Eddie, and Eddie roared some more. “He forgot where he was again. Hold on.” The frog croaked, the salamander roared, and the frog turned to Jack and Jill. “And we’re back. So once he’d swallowed their treasure, they drove him deep down into the earth by dropping boulders on his head and pouring cold water on him, which he did not like at all. So now he lives down here by himself, and he never gets to ask anyone any questions.”
“He never gets to what?” said Jill.
“Ask anyone any questions,” replied the frog. “You know. Salamanders love to ask stupid questions.”
“Oh,” said Jack and Jill at once. “Right.”
They stood there in silence, staring up at the massive, grotesque head of the beast, who stared back down at them as if he was waiting for something.
The frog said, “Hold on,” and he began croaking at the salamander. The salamander nodded his huge head and the whole cavern shook. “It’s still in his stomach!” said the frog. “It’s lodged right next to his intestines. He can feel it!”
Jill t
hought she was going to be sick. Jack said, “You mean, he could cough it up for us?”
The frog croaked at Eddie. Eddie roared back.
“He’s tried to disgorge it for however many hundreds of years he’s had it in there. He can’t. But he’d be happy to let you go in and get it.” Jill turned green and shook her head violently.
Eddie’s tiny eyes narrowed. Jack looked up at him and thought that that was probably what passed for a sly look for a salamander. Eddie roared. The frog turned to the children. “But before he lets you crawl down his throat, we have to answer his questions.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Jack.
“It’s going to be awful,” said the frog.
“Can we go back to the part about ‘crawling down his throat’?” Jill interjected.
“One trauma at a time, please,” said the frog. He croaked at Eddie, and was answered by a roar. The frog smiled. He turned to Jack and Jill. “What’s better, red or blue?” he said.
“What?” said Jack.
“Is that a joke?” said Jill.
The frog smiled smugly at them. “It’s the first question. Welcome to my world.”
“I don’t know!” said Jill. “What’s the right answer?”
“No idea,” said the frog. “That’s the beauty of it.”
“Blue,” said Jack.
“Red,” said Jill.
Eddie roared loudly. Jack and Jill clamped their hands over their ears. “Don’t confuse him,” said the frog. He turned and croaked at Eddie.
“What’d you say?” Jill demanded.
“Purple,” replied the frog. “Compromise.”
“He accepted that?” asked Jack. But Eddie’s eyes were glazed over and his mouth was drawn back like he was lost in a contemplative smile.
“That’s going to be a lot of information for him to process,” said the frog. “Give him a minute now.” Sure enough, a few minutes passed, and the salamander stopped grinning and roared again. “He wants to know which is bigger, the sky or the earth.”