“Are you quite certain, Thorn? I mean, about the Queen being dead?” Elli asked, meekly.
“Oh,” he replied sadly, “I’m afraid that I am all too certain. I saw her killed, Elli, by the sword of Sutante Bliss. And I saw them bury her deep below the castle. No, I am quite certain, Elli, that the Queen is dead.” He paused and looked kindly upon Elli. “Does it matter to your mission, Elli?”
Elli glanced at the silver amulet on her wrist and asked it in her mind, with great reluctance, not being at all certain she wanted to know the answer, whether what Thorn had said about the Queen’s death was true. As she feared, and with a visible shudder, Elli saw the amulet begin to glow. “But, if true, then what does that now mean for our mission?” she asked herself. And she then wondered whether Hannah and Peterwinkle knew.
“But,” Thorn added, following another couple of puffs, awaiting patiently a response from Elli, but not expecting to get one, “why does it matter to you, Elli?”
“I cannot tell you anything about the mission, as you’ve already acknowledged, Thorn. Nor can I tell you whether it matters or not that the Queen is dead,” Elli said, forlornly, while looking away with tears in her eyes.
“But, Elli,” said Jamie, “doesn’t it matter that . . .”
“Jamie!” Elli said sharply.
“Dear young lady, Elli,” Thorn said, with a soft and sympathetic voice, placing a hand gently on her shoulder, “I feel bad that none of you knew about the Queen’s death, and that it troubles you. But whatever this means to you I have pledged to Hannah to do everything I can to see you safely through the forest, and that I will do regardless.” Thorn then added, “I would ask you which way out of the forest you wanted to go, but since there is only one way, it will have to be that way.”
Thorn puffed a couple of times on his pipe, which was no longer lit. “We will talk about all of this tomorrow. Now we shall go to bed. I am sorry to say I have no beds that will suit you. However, I will lay some vine rugs on the floor next to the fire and give you some soft coverlets made from skins. I will tend the fire, as needed, throughout the night. You must get some sleep, for your day tomorrow will be a long one.”
“Excuse me, Thorn,” Elli said, changing the subject deliberately, “but what are these creatures pursuing us? We have only heard them; we have never seen them.”
“And a good thing, too,” Thorn replied. While he made ready their meager sleeping arrangements, he continued. “They are called Rumblards and Thrashers, and are fashioned from the wicked art of joining together animals and former persons, or, Unpersons. The Rumblards are fashioned from Unpersons and elephants—hence, the rumbling of their movements. The others, the Thrashers, are made from Unpersons and Sawfish. Both are tools of Sutante Bliss and are tended by others called Wolfmen—who are half wolf and half Unperson—and by Unperson warriors from the north. All of these have been pursuing you, no doubt.”
“But,” Elli asked, with a voice of incomprehension, “how does Sutante Bliss create these creatures—these Rumblards and Thrashers and Wolfmen?”
“He doesn’t. In fact, Sutante Bliss can create nothing; he can only destroy. But, he provides the illusion of creation with evil, and the creatures I have named are the products of destruction only.” The children looked puzzled, but Thorn did not elucidate—and they were too weary to pursue any more questions, including Jamie, who wondered about the lights.
When Thorn had prepared the children’s beds, he pulled himself up and onto one of the protruding sets of tangled branches located along the wall, covered himself with an animal skin, said “Goodnight,” and went immediately to sleep, evidenced by a slight, rather bottled snoring sound drifting from his bed.
Except for the presence of the skin, there was nothing else to distinguish the place where Thorn was sleeping from any of the other protruding sets of branches, or even from Thorn himself, so well did Thorn “become one” with his bed, as he must have “been one” with the forest itself.
Perhaps surprisingly, the children slept soundly through the night, falling asleep nearly as soon as they had lain themselves down.
~four~
When morning broke, it made very little difference either inside or outside Thorn’s home. The sun had been rising for several hours, but since it was not yet nearly overhead, the large clearing around the immense tree in which the five had been sleeping had the appearance of dusk. Though it was becoming slowly and steadily lighter, it was nevertheless impossible for anyone to see more than three or four feet into the surrounding forest.
Inside the tree, it was the darkest it had yet been because Thorn had let the fire die down to dusty flickering embers. Thorn awoke well before the children had even begun to stir into consciousness, lit various lamps hanging on the wall, and pulled out a preparation table from one of the tall cabinets. He then put coffee on to simmer over the fireplace coals and cut up some bread and fruit.
It was actually the smell of the coffee simmering that awakened the children, one by one. And while none of them actually liked coffee, the smell comforted them with the familiarity of home.
The children rose and took nourishment with Thorn by the low fire, even to the point of drinking the sweetened coffee and actually enjoying its taste and warmth. No one had yet said anything, as if the meal was meant to be eaten that way—in meditative silence.
When all had finished, Thorn addressed them. “In a few minutes we shall set out. As I said last night, regardless of where you expect your journey to take you, you will, in any event, have to leave the forest first, and there is only one—that is to say, one safe—way. And that is underneath the forest, following the main root from this tree to where it emerges from the ground many miles from here. There is a narrow tunnel which the Dactyls excavated a long time ago that follows alongside the main root. However, I will need to lead you, since there are numerous other tunnels made for various purposes by a variety of creatures, including some into which the main tunnel divides or that break off from it. There are also tunnels that ground waters have created that would confound you, sending you easily and truly—and literally—to a dead end, with no hope of ever being found.
“We will each of us carry in our rucksacks water, fruit, and dried sweet bread, as well as a skin for warmth when we need to rest or sleep.”
“How long will it take us, Thorn?” asked Jamie.
“If we make good time and not encounter any, shall we say, ‘interferences,’ we can make it in three to four days. We will carry no torches for light, since the air is scant as it is simply for breathing. You will feel as if you are climbing up high into some mountains instead of descending deep into the earth as the air becomes increasingly thin and you tire more easily.
“We will, however,” Thorn said, with a note of the fortuitous, “have the light of my eyes to guide us. Indeed, just as you will be able to see my eyes when they are open, so I will be able to see what lies some several feet ahead of me, my eyes casting a dim light upon our path whenever I open them. However, just as you will be able to see my eyes when they are open, so, too, will other creatures that may be hidden in the dark beyond the reach of my glow.
“I will have Beatríz follow immediately behind me. Her keen sense of hearing that I noticed when you first arrived may assist us most valuably during our journey. I will have a rope tied about my waist, and each of you will take hold of it, one after the other. And, by all means,” Thorn said, as if this was the most critical instruction of them all, “do not under any circumstances let go of the rope. You may never find it again—or the rest of us you.”
Having finished his instructions, Thorn doused the coals with water, blew out the wall lamps and led them in the dark across the floor with his glowing eyes to the other of the two cabinets. He then moved the cabinet aside and, with his thin fingers pressed into several small holes in the wall, pulled out and slid to the side on a hidden track a small door, not unlike the