The Land of the Silver Apples

Chapter Twenty THE ENCHANTED FOREST

“I wish I could light my candle,” murmured Pega, lying on the sand.

“What candle?” said Jack, lying beside her. Exhaustion and thirst had finally overtaken them. Jack thought he could struggle on, but Pega was clearly at the end of her strength.

“The one your mother gave me.”

“You still have it?” said Jack, surprised.

“Of course. It was given to me on the best day of my life. The day you freed me.”

Jack knew she always carried it in a string bag tied to her waist. He thought it had been lost with all their other possessions.

“Your mother said, ‘When you feel the need, it will brighten your nights.’ And I said, ‘When I die, I’ll be buried with it.’ So I shall.”

Jack felt the prickle of tears. He was too dried out to produce them. “I’m surprised it survived the fire.”

“Me too. It’s slightly flattened.” Jack heard Pega moving, and presently, he felt something brush his face. He smelled the honey-sweet wax. “Isn’t that wonderful?” the girl said. “It’s like being outside.”

Jack remembered how Mother talked to the bees, telling them what was happening in the village. Bees wanted to know everything, she said, and for the first time the boy wondered if she was also listening to them. Mother sang when the weather was thundery, to keep the hives from swarming. “Sitte ge, sigewif. Sigað to eorpan,” she sang. Settle, you warrior women. Sink to the earth.

It was her small magic. It wasn’t as impressive as the Bard’s large magic, for he could call up storms and drive people mad, but it might be just as important. Jack hadn’t thought of that before. Pega’s candle, gathered patiently in field and meadow, had its own quiet power. It, too, had drawn fire from the earth.

He blinked his eyes. A pale, blue light hung in the distance. The hair stood up on his arms. He felt for his staff.

“Is it a ghost?” Pega whispered.

The blue light neither advanced nor retreated. It simply waited. Is Brutus dead? Has his spirit come back to haunt us? thought Jack. But, no, if it were Brutus’ ghost, it would be moaning. The boy smiled in spite of himself. The light didn’t move, but it became brighter. All at once Jack understood what he was seeing.

“It’s the moon! I’m such a fool!”

“What?” Pega said drowsily.

“We’re there! That’s the entrance. Come on, Pega. You can make these last few steps.” He pulled her up and half dragged her along the sand. When they got to the light, Jack saw it was falling from a hole at the top of a heap of rocks. That was why he hadn’t seen it before. The moon had to be in exactly the right place to shine down.

“You go. Tell me if it’s nice.” Pega collapsed on the sand.

“I know it’s nice. Come on!”

“Too tired.” She sighed.

Jack knew he couldn’t carry her. “I can’t leave you here for a knucker to find.”

“A knucker?”

“That thing we saw in the cave.”

“That,” said Pega with slightly more energy, “was a giant bedbug.”

“It was a tick,” said Jack, who hated ticks.

“It was a bedbug. A bedbug! I’ve seen thousands of them, only not so… huge.” Pega’s voice was edged with panic.

Jack thought for a moment. “There could be hundreds of them down here.”

Pega grabbed Jack’s arm. “You’re making that up.”

“It makes sense that there’d be more than one of them. Everything comes in pairs, and some creatures have a lot of babies.”

Pega pulled herself up. “You’ll have to help me,” she said tensely. “I don’t know if I can make it, but I’d rather fall and break my neck than…” She didn’t finish, but Jack understood what she meant.

The rock pile wasn’t stable. More than once a boulder shifted and sent a cascade of dirt and pebbles over them. More than once Jack and Pega had to cling to the side while they waited to see whether the whole pile would come down.

But at last they struggled out onto a steep hillside. They lay panting and stunned under a sky strewn with stars. A full moon hung overhead and painted the rocks with a lovely blue light. From below, where giant trees stretched their branches over unseen dark glades and meadows, came the music of a rushing stream.

The air was surprisingly cold, though its freshness made up for it. Jack had been in the fug of bat guano so long, he’d forgotten how good clean air could be. He breathed in long drafts of it, but as delightful as it was, it of course couldn’t take the place of water. “It isn’t much farther,” he whispered to Pega.

Jack saw that they were halfway down a vast rock slide. An entire cliff had collapsed, sending stones and dirt all the way to the edge of a deep forest. The boy and girl slid down on loose gravel, occasionally coming to rest at giant boulders that stuck out like plums in a pudding. But it was far easier going down than up. The moonlight shone all around with a dreamlike radiance, so bright the hillside seemed to glow.

At the bottom they came to a narrow strip of meadowland before the trees.

“Ohhh,” said Pega, sinking her scorched feet into grass. Buttercups, oxeye daisies, and primroses spread out in drifts, though their colors were hidden in the silvery light. Beyond, complete darkness loomed, and in that darkness the water sang.

“Do you think there’re wolves?” whispered Pega, pressing against Jack.

�It doesn�t make any difference. We have to go,� the boy said. They edged through the cool grass, Jack in front with his staff at the ready. He heard nothing except the stream, yet he felt a watchfulness in the air. I wish I had a knife, he thought, but his knife had vanished with the rest of their supplies in the fire.

“It’s so dark,” Pega murmured.

Jack thought about shouting for Brutus—he must have come this way—but the watchfulness made him hesitate.

Only a dim echo of moonlight penetrated beyond the edge of the forest. Roots snaked around humps of moss, and branches twisted awkwardly. They seemed, to Jack’s mind, to have frozen into place and were waiting for him to look away before moving again. He listened for the usual night sounds—frogs, crickets, or even an owl muttering as it glided after prey. There was nothing except the stream. “Well, here goes,” Jack said.

He advanced carefully with Pega clinging to his arm. “We’ll never find each other again if we get separated,” she whispered. Jack thought it unlikely they’d get separated. She was holding him so tightly, he was sure there’d be a bruise in the morning. Once the light faded, they had to feel their way along with only the sound of water to guide them. Jack tripped over a root, and they both blundered into stinging nettles.

“Ah!” Jack cried, pitching forward. Pega’s firm grip saved him. The ground was slippery with mud.

“There’s got to be water,” she moaned. Jack inched ahead on his knees. He saw a glimmer of light and recklessly tore away vines.

“Oh, sweet saints,” Pega said reverently. The trees parted to show a rushing stream, marked here and there by slicks of moonlight. It flowed noisily over rocks and on into a broad channel, a dark presence slicing the forest in two.

Jack and Pega slid down the bank as fast as they could go and landed in the water up to their waists. The current was deeply cold. Jack didn’t care. He drank until his head ached and his stomach cramped, but the water took away the pain in his feet.

Finally, they crawled back up the muddy bank and snuggled together like a pair of foxes in a tree hollowed by age. They were wet, cold, and very, very hungry, but the sound of water sent them to sleep as surely as if they were in the Bard’s house with a fire snapping on the hearth. They slept through the night and the dawn as well. It was mid-morning before they stirred and saw the sun sending narrow beams of light into the forest outside.

“Where are we?” said Pega, shading her eyes.

“Here. Wherever here is,” Jack answered, yawning. The air shivered with tiny midges dancing in the light that penetrated the forest. The stream tumbled nearby, and a carpet of wild strawberries covered the ground around the hollow tree. “Food!” Jack cried.

They picked the tiny fruit as fast as they could. “Mmf! This is good! More! More!!” Juice ran down Pega’s chin and dripped onto her dress.

“You know,” said Jack, sitting back after the first ecstasy of filling his stomach, “it’s awfully early for strawberries.”

“Who cares?” Pega wiped her mouth with her arm.

“It isn’t even May Day. There should only be flowers.”

“Then we’re lucky,” declared Pega. “Brother Aiden would call this a miracle.” She began gathering strawberries again.

Jack was uneasy. Several things bothered him. The fire he’d called up in the tunnel had come too readily—not that he wasn’t grateful. He didn’t want to find out what knuckers ate for dinner when they couldn’t find bats. But in the village fire-making was difficult. You had to clear your mind and call to the life force. You couldn’t just snap your fingers.

The moonlight, too, had been odd. He’d been too tired to care last night, but now it came back to him. Everything seemed to glow. And now the strawberries. Not one of them was green or worm-eaten or overripe. “This place is like Jotunheim,” he said.

“From what you’ve told me, it’s a lot nicer than Jotunheim.”

“Parts were horrible. Others…” Jack’s voice trailed off. There was no way he could explain the wonder of Yggdrassil to someone who hadn’t seen it. “Anyhow, magic is what I’m talking about. It’s close to the surface here, and dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Like when I called fire. I couldn’t stop it.”

Pega looked around. The trees were covered in thick moss, like sheep after a cold winter, and clusters of bluebells grew at their feet. The ground was a carpet of strawberries. Toward the stream was a swath of yellow irises. “All right. I agree. It does look a little too perfect. Are we going to have trolls stomping around demanding our blood?”

“Not here. It’s too warm. But what,” Jack hardly dared say it, “if this is Elfland?”

Pega’s eyes opened wide. “Crumbs! It’s pretty enough.”

And wet enough, thought Jack. If ever there was a place the Lady of the Lake would love, this was it. “Brutus must be around somewhere. I wonder why he isn’t calling for us,” he said.

“We haven’t been calling him, either.”

“No,” said Jack, once more aware of a watchfulness in the trees. Sometimes it seemed far away, concerned with other things, and sometimes it was right there next to them. “I haven’t seen a sign of him, though he must be around. Unless he’s dead. That would be a problem.”

“It’d certainly be a problem for him,” Pega said.

“I’m not being heartless. Of course I’d feel sorry if anything happened to Brutus, but we were counting on him. I suspect he’s done something stupid, like challenge a dragon and got himself eaten.”

“Inconsiderate of him.”

“Do we keep exploring?” Jack said, ignoring her sarcasm. “We could wander for weeks. Or do we go back down the hole and choose another tunnel? The fire must be out by now.”

“Go back down?” Pega turned very pale, and her birthmark stood out like ink. “I wouldn’t want to meet another of those—you know.”

“Me neither.”

“Well then.”

They went back to the meadow. By day the hillside appeared an even greater ruin. A huge section of cliff had fallen, leaving a giant scar on the mountains above. The slide went halfway up and ended in rocks too rugged to climb. “This looks new,” said Jack, shading his eyes. “I wonder if it happened during the earthquake.”

They followed the edge of the meadow, fording little streams that poured out of the mountainside, keeping the grass to their left and the rocks to their right. Deer watched them gravely from the shadows of the trees, and red squirrels followed them with bright, black eyes. Voles, dormice, and shrews rummaged through the flowers, unworried by the appearance of strange humans. Even hedgehogs were foraging.

“That’s another thing that just shouts magic,” Jack pointed out. “Hedgehogs in daylight.”

“I could catch those,” Pega suggested. “You roast them coated in mud and the quills come right off.”

“You aren’t allowed to hunt in magic places,” Jack said decisively.

“We’ll need something. Those strawberries wore off hours ago.” Eventually, Pega found a field of pignuts. She pulled them up and collected the round nuts on their roots. “I used to eat these when my owners didn’t feed me,” she explained. Jack decided they weren’t too bad—like hazelnuts dipped in mud. Besides, he had nothing else.

The sun sank behind the mountains. Blue shadows flowed over the forest, and the temperature dropped. They hurriedly tried to gather firewood, but strangely, the forest produced nothing but a few twigs and damp leaves. The ancient trees clung on to every gnarled branch. “Doesn’t anything die here?” Pega cried.

“Not if it’s Elfland,” Jack guessed. The light was fading, and his teeth chattered with cold. They would have to find shelter or freeze to death. They searched until they found a ring of trees so close together, the trunks formed a natural room.

“Can’t you use your staff to call up fire?” Pega said, stamping her feet and rubbing her arms to keep warm.

“Even magic fire needs fuel. Somehow I don’t think it’s safe to burn these trees.”

They were exhausted from walking, but sleep would not come. A chill came up from the ground, and neither Jack nor Pega cared to snuggle close to the roots. Jack was aware, though he couldn’t say how, of a brooding dislike in the trees. They seemed to be making up their minds about what they might do with the intruders in their midst.

“That does it,” Pega said, sitting up. “I’ve had it with those trees whispering.”

“What whispering?” said Jack, jarred from what little comfort he had.

“Those sneaky sounds. Surely you heard them? I don’t know what they’re saying, but I don’t like it. What did Brutus tell us to do when we were dispirited? Sing something cheerful.”

“You mean his ballad about a knight hunting an ogre in a haunted wood? Remember how it ended?”

“Not that one,” Pega said. “The one your father sang on the way to Bebba’s Town.” She immediately began Brother Caedmon’s hymn, given to him by an angel in a dream.

Jack had to admit it was an excellent choice. For one thing, its soaring power put those whispering trees in their place. Jack couldn’t hear them, but he didn’t doubt that Pega could. For another, her voice was so marvelously fine. He’d been jealous of her at the Bard’s house, but he knew even then he was being unfair. She wasn’t a strong singer, yet her music filled the night. In the darkness you could believe you were listening to an elf lady.

Afterward they curled up together as they had in the hollow tree. No looming menace disturbed their sleep, and when they awoke, they found themselves covered with a blanket of the finest wool.