The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy - Страница 65

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Suddenly, surprisingly, she laughed. “You use words as Olaf used to use his fists, thrall-worshipper. I can use word weapons too.”

“Then I welcome you as an enemy,” Father Severus said.

They stayed on the beach for several weeks, to allow Father Severus time to recover. Every morning Thorgil climbed to a high rock and sat looking out to sea. She occasionally helped with chores, but every task reminded her of her useless hand. She would throw down whatever she was working on and return to her perch. Jack didn’t have the heart to scold her.

Father Severus lay under a tree. He seemed quietly happy, but Jack worried about his cough and the feverish patches on his cheeks. “Sometimes I think I did not sleep the whole time I was in Elfland,” Father Severus murmured. “Perhaps that’s why I’m so tired now.”

Jack understood what he meant. Glamour seeped everywhere there, so that you didn’t know whether you were awake or dreaming. Even Jack’s memories of Lucy were confused. Had he actually seen her? Did she really turn against him, or was it only a bad dream? He found it difficult to remember her face.

“Some call Elfland the Hollow Land,” Father Severus said when Jack confided these thoughts to him. “It is formed by our desires, but ultimately, it is only a reflection of something else. Do you remember their music?”

That was the one thing Jack did recall. The music seemed to hang in the air like the last thread of sunlight before total darkness came on.

“I listened to their voices night after night, trying to despise them,” said Father Severus. “I couldn’t.” He sighed.

On the beach Pega made an ingenious cairn of rocks that was hollow inside to hold a fire. On top she placed a flat piece of slate for roasting. Jack gathered whelks, sea kale, leeks, and garlic. But the hobgoblins were the champions where fishing was concerned.

They had a unique method. The Bugaboo perched on a rock out beyond the surf line and dangled his foot in the water. The Nemesis waited behind him with a club. Hobgoblin toes were long and wiggly—the Bugaboo could move all five in different directions at the same time. He demonstrated this to Pega, who told him to go away.

From below, the toes must have looked like a clutch of fat earthworms. They were certainly attractive to fish, although it was soon clear that it was important to attract the right sizeof fish. Once, a giant cod swallowed the Bugaboo’s leg and the Nemesis had to knock it senseless before the rest of the Bugaboo followed the leg inside.

“You won’t find better than that,” proclaimed the king, throwing the fish down before Pega’s horrified eyes. It was large enough to feed everyone.

“You’re bleeding! That isblood, isn’t it?” She gasped. Yellow-green drops oozed from a row of holes on the Bugaboo’s leg.

“You’re worried about me,” cried the delighted hobgoblin, turning cartwheels around her and spraying her with sand.

“Worrying doesn’t mean I care,” retorted Pega, wiping sand off her face.

“Oh, it does! It does! I’m so happy, I’m going to gleep!”

“Don’t!” begged the girl, but the hobgoblin was too overjoyed to stop.

Gleeping, Jack thought, moving out of earshot, had to be the nastiest sound in the world. Hobgoblins did it when they were ecstatic, which was far too often in Jack’s opinion. It was infectious, too. Once one individual began, others took it up, just as a yawn could spread through a crowd. The Nemesis, never a cheerful creature, gleeped softly as he gutted the fish.

Ethne was hopeless at all chores. Pega tried to teach her to weave baskets, but the baskets fell apart. She let the fire go out and allowed seagulls to steal fish. When Pega sent her to pick fennel, she returned with henbane. “That’s poison!” shrieked the girl, throwing the plants into the fire. “Don’t you know any better?”

“We ate henbane salad all the time in Elfland,” Ethne said huffily. “It never did us the slightest bit of harm.” In the end she sat beside Father Severus and memorized Latin prayers. Jack was certain she didn’t understand Latin, but it kept her out of trouble and entertained Father Severus.

Finally, one afternoon after a meal of roast goose (hobgoblin toes were irresistible to geese, too) the Bugaboo called a meeting. “It is time for us all to go home,” he said.

“What home?” Thorgil said. “My shipmates have gone, thinking I am dead. Often when the day breaks, lonely and wretched, I bewail my fate. There is no comrade to whom I can unburden my heart.

Jack, always fond of poetry, admired her fine words, but Father Severus cried, “Good heavens, shield maiden! You make a meal out of misery.”

“I do not!”

“A true warrior shows gratitude for the bounty God sends him. You could be drowning in the midst of the sea. You could be trapped in a burning building. A thousand devils might be contending for your soul—not that they won’t someday—but in fact you’re sitting on a pleasant beach surrounded by friends. Fie on this self-pity.”

“ I’velost my home, and I don’t have one scrap of self-pity,” Ethne announced.

“We really must have that discussion about pride, Ethne,” said Father Severus.

“To return to the immediate problem,” said the Bugaboo, “when fall comes, this beach will be uninhabitable.”

“Can we build a boat?” said Thorgil with a glimmer of hope.

“No!” said the Nemesis. “Hobgoblins never, ever go on boats.”

“Is that because of kelpies?” inquired the shield maiden.

“They swim for hours if they smell something tasty,” the Nemesis said with a haunted look in his eyes. “They follow you day and night, never sleeping, never giving up. They are tireless.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” scolded the Bugaboo. “You’ve said the K-word.” He took his friend for a short walk, and when they returned, the Nemesis was a healthy green again.

“As I was about to say before I was interrupted, it’s time to go home. Fortunately, there’s more than one cave on this coast,” said the Bugaboo.

Of course. It was so simple, Jack didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. When he, Brutus, and Pega started on their quest, they had camped in a huge underground chamber full of bats. Eight tunnels branched out from that chamber, like the eight legs of a spider. Crumbs. I don’t like that image,thought Jack.

The earthquake had collapsed one of them, but perhaps the others were still intact. The Bugaboo assured everyone that there were dozens of branches to the Hollow Road and that hobgoblins knew every part of it. “We know a shortcut to St. Filian’s Well,” he said.

“Won’t it be full of water now that the Lady of the Lake has returned?” said Pega.

“The earthquake opened up the well to the Hollow Road itself. It would take the sea to fill it.”

Sunset was coming on swiftly, and the swallows dipped and circled over the little camp on the beach. Pega and Jack had built a bonfire, and they all enjoyed its lively warmth against the cool of the evening. “I keep putting out fish for them, but they won’t feed,” said Pega, gazing up at the swallows.

“They don’t eat fish,” Jack said. “I wonder why they’re so interested in us.”

“Mumsie told them to keep an eye on us. What?” The Bugaboo looked up at Jack’s surprise. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You didn’t tell them,” said the Nemesis. “You meant to, but the thought blew straight through that drafty cavern you call a brain.”

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