The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy - Страница 62

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“Well, what are you waiting for?” he demanded of the humans huddled on the bank. The cold didn’t seem to affect either him or the king.

The water rushed past stalactites of ice. Blue light came from an opening not far away, where the stream ended in a waterfall. They edged along a slippery path until they came out onto a shelf of black rock.

“It’s daytime,” murmured Jack. “It was the middle of the night in Elfland.”

“That’s how it is when you leave Elfland,” said the Nemesis, scowling. “Time is an illusion there. For all we know, they celebrated Midsummer’s Eve after breakfast, or even last week. Don’t think about it too long,” he advised, noting Jack’s bewildered expression. “It’ll only give you a headache.”

Below was a valley flanked by tall mountains. Its trees were not emerald green. Its fields were not filled with giant flowers, nor was the lake they bordered the brilliant blue of the waters of Elfland, but it was closer to the human heart.

Jack loved every lopsided tree, crooked stream, and marshy meadow of it.

“That’s the Forest of Lorn,” said the Bugaboo, hunkering down. The Forest of Lorn!thought Jack. That was where the Bard had wanted to take them all along.

“It’s a bit steep,” said the Bugaboo. “Hobgoblins have a head for heights, so we’ll carry you down one at a time.”

The Nemesis grumbled, but he agreed that mud men would go, as he put it, “lickety-splat” down the hillside without help. Father Severus and Pega were taken first, then Ethne and Thorgil. Last of all, Jack. He closed his eyes as the Nemesis leaped from rock to rock, crowing with malicious glee. Once, the hobgoblin bounced up and down on a jagged spire, insisting that Jack admire the beauty of the chasm down below. Then he swung dizzily from crag to crag, saying, “Whoopsie!” when he pretended to slip.

“Not bad,” conceded the Nemesis when they at last reached the bottom. “Most mud men would have tossed their oatmeal by now.” But Jack knew the only reason he hadn’t thrown up was because he had no oatmeal to toss.

He was suddenly, ravenously, hungry. The smell of the forest and the cool breath of the waterfall made him feel more alive than he’d been in—well, however long he’d been in the Land of the Silver Apples. And with this sensation came an overpowering desire to eat. Almost without realizing it, he picked a few pine needles and began to chew.

“Stop that! You’re not a beetle,” exclaimed the Bugaboo.

“It’s the effect of Elfland,” the Nemesis said. “It’s anyone’s guess what you were fed there, in the guise of glamour. Earthworms, mud, spiders—could have been anything.” He grinned at Pega’s horrified expression.

“I never ate their enchanted food,” said Father Severus, leaning wearily against a rock.

“You look like it too,” jeered the Nemesis. But the hobgoblins quickly set about making camp and gathering wood.

It had been late afternoon when they’d climbed out of the ice cave. Now it was nearly sunset.

“We’ll be back in a jiffy,” they promised. Jack started a fire, and by the time the hobgoblins returned with trout, apples, giant mushrooms, leeks, and combs of honey, everyone was seated around it, sucking on grass stems to stave off hunger.

The food was delicious. The Bugaboo baked the fish in clay and roasted mushrooms and slices of leeks on sticks. Pega fed Father Severus, who was exhausted but who nonetheless looked extremely happy. “I had forgotten how beautiful God’s world was,” he murmured.

Ethne refused a honeycomb. “I have turned my back on empty pleasures,” she declared. “I eat only to sustain life now.”

“Fine with me,” said the Nemesis, adding her comb to his heap of food.

“Where did you find the honey?” said Jack, who remembered what a painful chore it was extracting it from Mother’s beehives.

“Saw a nest in a hollow tree and helped myself.” The hobgoblin stuffed a giant mushroom into his mouth, and juice squirted onto his chin.

“Didn’t the bees object?” asked Pega.

“Sure did. Stung me all over. Mmf!” A bulge traveled down the Nemesis’ throat as he swallowed the mushroom whole. He slapped his leg with a meaty sound. “Hobgoblins are as tough as tree roots. Even an adder would chip his fangs on us.”

The day was coming to an end, and Jack noticed for the first time that a crescent moon was hanging in the western sky. “Look!” he cried. Everyone turned.

“It was near full in Elfland,” Thorgil said.

“And is near full still, if I know anything about glamour,” the Bugaboo said. “The elves will hold it that way as long as possible, but eventually, shadow will eat away the Silver Apple. Time has leaked into Elfland.”

“You mean they’ll age?” said Jack.

“Not as you do. The elves still have their powers, but they will gradually fade. The same moon will rise night after night and yet, so slowly you can hardly detect it, a leaf will curl up here, a blade of grass dry up there.”

Jack gazed at the silver thread of moon in the deepening blue sky, trying to puzzle it out. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Father Severus, you were gone from Middle Earth a year. I know, because I was there when you were sold to the Picts. How could time pass for you and not the elves?”

“I often thought about it in my long captivity,” said Father Severus. “The dungeon was beyond glamour, and so I aged. But Elfland itself is like an island in the sea. It is always summer there, yet its shores are surrounded by the same storms that sweep us poor mortals from birth to death. Past, present, and future exist at the same time for them. They can, if they choose, step into our world at any moment they please.”

“You mean—you mean they could turn up somewhere yesterday?” said Jack, now totally bewildered.

“Yes!” interrupted Ethne. Jack was struck by something familiar about her, something he hadn’t noticed in Elfland. Whatever it was, he liked it. “Once, Partholis moved Elfland into the past when she noticed a few wrinkles. It was horrible! We had to repeat everything we’d done before—every moment, every word. I fear, if she is terrified enough, she may force everyone to live the same day over and over again.”

“That is a Hell I had not even imagined,” murmured Father Severus.

Now that they were full of good food and warmed by the fire, everyone began to yawn. The Bugaboo and the Nemesis, who seemed to know the valley well, went off into the dark and returned with armloads of grass. They made nests for everyone, with extra grass to pile on top.

Jack, Thorgil, Pega, Ethne, and Father Severus crept gratefully into these surprisingly comfortable beds. The hobgoblins, however, were not ready to sleep. They declared that such a victory over the elves deserved to be celebrated. They climbed onto nearby rocks and swelled up like giant bullfrogs.

“Oh, no! Not skirling,” moaned Pega, trying to bury herself in the grass.

A most horrible wailing filled the forest as the Bugaboo and the Nemesis alternately swelled and deflated. They opened and closed their nostrils to change pitch. “Listen to this one, Pega dearest,” the Bugaboo said. “It’s a lament for a prince whose love has gone far away.”

“Not far enough,” muttered Pega.

“Look on the bright side,” said Jack as the hideous skirling broke out again. “Nothing’s going to attack us in the night with that going on.”

Jack woke up under a heavy layer of dew. The fire had burned down to embers, and dawn reddened a few wispy clouds. Everyone else was asleep. He got up and fed the coals from a heap of branches the hobgoblins must have gathered the night before.

Jack sat close to the fire to dry his clothes. If he hadn’t known the others were there, he might have thought he was alone. Everyone was burrowed into heaps of grass. It looked like a collection of haystacks.

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