The higher he climbed, the more he felt exposed. It felt as if there were millions of tiny eyes watching him clambering clumsily up the mountainside.
Even the mountain seemed to be against Aidan. Again and again, Aidan reached the edge of what he thought was a ridge he could get over and start climbing down, only to realize he still had to climb higher.
After what seemed like hours of back-and-forth climbing, Aidan made an all-out sprint toward a distant notch on the left peak. But it turned out to be just a plateau. And even worse, it looked like there was no way to continue up from there. The mountain rose up before him in a sheer face of stone—as if to say: “GO AWAY! IT’S NOT SAFE HERE!”
Aidan slumped down, his back to the mountain. The headache of hunger and fatigue continued its dull thudding while Aidan considered his options. He could either climb back down a bit to search for another way up, or he could edge along a narrow ridge looking for a spot more level to climb. Aidan opened the scroll once again—this time to the page after the map—but it was still blank. He rolled up the scroll, tied it, and let it roll off his hand to lie at his feet.
The moment he sat down, the sweat he had generated climbing turned icy, and Aidan shivered.
What’ll I do? he thought, looking up as the sun sank behind the clouds in the distance. Here he was, high above the trees on the edge of a dreary mountain in a world no one knew existed.
He wondered what his parents would do when they came home and found him gone. What could Grampin say to them?
“Dad, have you seen Aidan?” Mr. Thomas would ask.
“Well, yes, actually,” Grampin would reply. “Y’see, he believed in The Story, entered The Door Within, and ended up in The Realm.”
Aidan laughed through chattering teeth. They wouldn’t believe him if he told the truth. Perhaps, Aidan thought, I could bring home some proof—to show them once and for all that it is all real!
Aidan’s eyes grew wide as it occurred to him that the scrolls had helped him get into this realm, but they never mentioned getting back out.
It wasn’t at all like some of the stories Aidan had read. Stories where kids had run away without a care to strange new worlds. Stories where the characters never worried about food or where to go to the bathroom! Aidan trembled and hugged himself, for he was cold, afraid, achy, and hungry.
As the deep purple of night began to creep across the sky, Aidan succumbed to sleep. The temperature on the mountainside dropped even more during the night, so Aidan curled up, tucking the scroll under his arm like his old down pillow, and huddled close to the face of the mountain. Aidan’s eyes raced beneath his eyelids while he dreamed. Visions of his basement back in Colorado Springs paraded through his mind. He was there again, staring at the alcove beneath the basement stairs, listening to the strange scraping sound he had heard before the clay pots appeared.
But something in the dream wasn’t right. The scraping sound was too loud—out of place in the hazy quiet of his dream. Aidan’s mind jolted to consciousness.
Opening only one eye, Aidan scanned the dark ledge lit only by the cloud-veiled light of the moon. There was movement in the corner of the ledge near his feet. A fuzzy basketball-sized black lump was scratching at the ground. Aidan sat there motionless, unsure of what to do, until the creature rose up on its hind legs and opened two pale yellow eyes.
“Aaah!” Aidan yelped, leaping to his feet and pressing his back against the wall behind him.
He looked again for the eyes, but they were gone. To be sure, Aidan waited a few minutes and then ventured toward the corner of the ledge. The creature was gone.
At that moment, the moon escaped the clouds briefly and rained pale light upon the ledge. Aidan looked more closely and saw . . .
“Fruit!” Aidan screamed aloud. Not caring where it had come from, he grabbed one of the four plump purple fruit and bit into it. Sweet juice trickled down his parched throat and all over his face and hands as well. It had a texture similar to watermelon, but the taste was different from any fruit he had ever eaten. Aidan’s skin tingled warmly as he ate the delicious fruit. Its juice seemed to flow directly into his achy muscles, completely renewing their strength.
When Aidan lifted the last piece of fruit, he discovered an arrow that had been gouged into the ground. It glowed palely, as if it had been painted with moon dust. It pointed to the narrow ridge to the right of the plateau.
Go that way? Aidan wondered. Why that way?
“Well,” Aidan said aloud, “I might as well go now while I have the energy.”
Pressing his back to the sheer mountain, he moved cautiously on a ledge just wide enough for his feet. Gravel and stones toppled over the ledge and disappeared into the inky black distance. Aidan could hear them clacking and ricocheting off the clefts and crags far below.
Following that arrow was another bad idea, Aidan thought. But almost as soon as he’d thought it, the ledge path widened a little and there was yet another glowing arrow—this time scratched into a rock that jutted up from the ground. His confidence restored, Aidan continued along the ledge. As he crept along the ledge, more arrows appeared, until the path began to rise steeply up the mountain. He turned for a moment to see how far he had climbed and became dizzy with the sight of the dark world beneath him.
Don’t look down, Aidan! he berated himself.
Aidan followed the arrows around a gradual corner. Then the path stopped, and Aidan was faced with another dead end. But it wasn’t a dead end, not quite. For there in front of him, in the side of the mountain, was a three-foot circular hole about waist-high. Several arrows all around the opening seemed to indicate that he should enter.
“No way!” Aidan said, his complaint bouncing off the echoing cliffs. “I am not going in there!”
Spooky basements and nightmares were bad enough, but venturing into a pitch-black hole in the side of a mountain with who knew what living inside? That was just plain crazy.
What if one of those little glowing-eyed beasties is in there? Maybe this whole arrow thing was a trap meant to lure me in!
Aidan thought there might even be a whole nest of those things in there, just waiting to tear him to pieces like piranhas on some poor critter that fell into the river. Aidan sat down with a thud and sulked.
I guess I’ll have to go all the way back, Aidan thought dejectedly. It was a LONG way back, with no guarantee that he would find another way over the mountain. Of course, there was no guarantee that this cave, or whatever it was, would lead to the other side of the mountain either. What to do? Neither choice appealed to Aidan, but going back seemed safer than a dark, mysterious hole!
Aidan knew what Robby would do.
That was the problem. Of course, Robby would go. Robby was brave. Robby was an explorer. And if Robby went in first, Aidan would follow. Aidan just didn’t have it in him to be the leader. Or did he? Aidan thought for a moment, and a burning sensation began to smolder in his belly. He remembered exploring Grampin’s basement. He had overcome that fear, and he was rewarded with the scrolls. Aidan looked again at the opening in the rockface. He felt he had to at least go into the cave a little. Okay, I’ll go in. If it seems to go nowhere, I’ll simply turn back.
Aidan jumped to his feet and walked over to the hole in the mountain. He peered in, straining to see anything that indicated its depth or whether it went straight in or curved.
Total darkness.
He couldn’t even tell if it was indeed a cave or a tunnel. But gathering all his courage, he took a deep breath and put one foot up on the edge. Aidan grabbed the top of the entrance and swung his other foot to the edge. Balancing precariously, he stared for a moment into the darkness, questioning all the time if this was a mistake he would live to regret.
Aidan took a couple of tiny squat-steps into the tunnel when an alarming thought occurred to him: He had left his precious scroll way back on the ledge where he had slept!
I’ve got to get it!
He tried to turn around, but
the cave floor sloped downward and was slippery like a newly waxed floor. In trying to clamber out, he lost his footing and began to slide.
Aidan yelled and clawed at the edge of the opening, trying to gain a hold, but he failed. With a final shriek, Aidan rolled onto his back and slid helplessly down the tunnel into the heart of the mountain.
Carrying Aidan’s scroll like carpet installers delivering a huge rug, three of the dark, pale-eyed creatures came trotting along the path outside the opening to the tunnel.
The middle one hopped up on the first one’s shoulders, and the last one scrambled up atop the other two. With a wobbly effort, they hoisted Aidan’s scroll up to the edge of the tunnel’s opening. The scroll lay balanced on the edge until the top critter lunged upward to knock it forward. The scroll launched over the edge, but so did the highest creature!
Together, they sailed down the tunnel, following Aidan into the unknown.
10
THE GATE OF DESPAIR
Aidan’s screams echoed as he flew down the smooth tunnel through the mountain. Nothing he tried could stop nor slow his descent, for the tunnel wound through the depths of the mountain at a steep angle. With every unexpected turn in the passage, with every jarring bump, Aidan expected to die. Smashed into a rock wall, skewered on a stalagmite, or wedged forever in some black crevice of the mountain.
How long can this go on? he wondered. And some distant part of Aidan thought, This would be kind of fun, if I wasn’t about to die.
Aidan blinked as the thin air whooshed past him. His view was the same, eyes closed or eyes open. Black. And still he slid.
Aidan strained his neck trying valiantly to see where he might be headed. At first, there was nothing. Then, far in the distance, he saw a few points of pale yellow light. Then there were more than a few. Then there were many. Aidan swallowed hard.
Before he knew it, he was right in the midst of them—like swarms of stars on all sides. Aidan whooshed through them, fearfully trying to figure out what they were. Some kind of luminous stones, maybe? Sparks? Subterranean lightning bugs? Or maybe . . .
Eyes! They are eyes! Aidan could see only blurs and flashes, but he felt sure they were eyes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them winked and blinked as Aidan slapped and scraped to keep them away.
Fed by this new terror, Aidan thought that perhaps the little glowing eyes belonged to the parasites of a gigantic beast that disguised itself as a mountain! The tunnel was actually its enormous esophagus, and Aidan would soon enter the great beast’s stomach and be dissolved in its digestive juices.
Aidan yelled, shut his eyes, and launched out of the backside of the mountain. His momentum carried him safely over some jagged rocks. With a plop, he landed in a pool of something dark and wet.
Thinking he was in the creature’s stomach, Aidan felt the sting of the acid beginning to eat away at his flesh. He splashed furiously and then stopped when it dawned on him that he wasn’t in acid. He opened his eyes and stood up in the chest-deep water.
“Right, Aidan. It was a mountain monster!” Robby would have said. Aidan shook his head and laughed quietly at himself. The scrapes and cuts still stung, but at least he wasn’t being digested.
Aidan heard a noise high behind him and stopped laughing. He spun around and looked up at the backside of the mountain. The tunnel exit was forty feet up and the noise, a high-pitched squeal now, emanated from it. The sound grew louder.
Something long shot out of the tunnel, followed by something round and dark. In a split second Aidan recognized the first item: his scroll! He backed up like a center fielder awaiting a fly ball. Then he identified the second item: It was one of the creatures he had seen on the ledge the night before!
He didn’t want that thing to land on him. But he didn’t want the scroll to land in the water either. Something happened at that moment. Aidan didn’t think; he just acted.
He took two slow steps backward and reached up with his left hand while simultaneously feeling for the edge of the pool with his right. He caught the scroll and vaulted up onto dry ground just as the dark ball hit the water.
Aidan was stunned for a moment. Never in his life had he pulled off a move like that. That was . . . that was almost athletic! Aidan thought, feeling a little proud.
A few moments later, a small wet face poked up out of the water. It had large, pale yellow eyes that blinked continuously and a shiny black nose much like that of a bear cub. It looked at Aidan, emitted a gurgling growl, and began to emerge from the pool.
Ordinarily, Aidan would have been off and running, but the creature crawling out of the water was more peculiar than it was threatening. It had dark wiry hairs running back from its widow’s-peaked scalp and similar fir covering its four sodden limbs. Long, fingerlike silver talons protruded in groups of three from each paw.
On the animal’s back were rows and rows of sharp gray quills like a porcupine’s or a hedgehog’s, but the quills were webbed together by leathery folds of dark skin. The folds extended and retracted so that the rows of quills combed each other. It seemed to be cleaning—or drying—itself. After several such combings, the thing shook like a wet dog, spraying droplets of water everywhere— even onto Aidan’s shoes.
Then, to Aidan’s complete surprise, the creature curled up like a pill bug and began to roll. Aidan watched it cruise about twenty feet before it disappeared into a large round hole in the ground.
Another tunnel, Aidan thought. Some distant part of him wondered if he could take one of those rolly-creatures home with him. They were cute, but Aidan figured such a creature would dig up the yard and give his father fits. Aidan smiled.
Shivering from the wetness and the cold, he turned and looked back up at the mountain behind him. It was dark and towering and gave the sense that it might shift and topple at any moment, crushing anything beneath it. It was dizzying, and Aidan turned away. He had made it over . . . through, actually, and that was enough.
Aidan unrolled the scroll to look again at the map. His original goal had been to get over the mountain to find out what the flag symbol stood for. He had hoped it might be a castle—maybe even the Castle of Alleble—but there weren’t any man-made structures anywhere in sight.
The sky was red and purple like fiery paints threatening to spill upward over the dark sky canvas, but the distant mountains still hid the sun’s full brilliance. To the left, the mountain range stretched out like a severe fence of stone. Straight ahead were miles of wasteland, uneven ground, pocked and rent with pitfalls and shadowy holes. And to the right, the dark mountain curled and jutted, creating a series of coves.
No flag, no castle . . . no plan.
Aidan secured his scroll with the leather lace and placed it safely away from the edge of the pond. He looked down at the dark water.
It might be okay to drink. Or it might not. Aidan was too thirsty to care. He cupped his hands, drank several mouthfuls, and watched the sun climb above the distant peaks.
It was dawn. And in the new light, Aidan saw a wispy tendril of smoke rising from one of the coves to his right. Smoke meant fire, and fire meant civilization! A warm, crackling fire to dry off by sounded good to Aidan, so he set off in the direction of the smoke. Moving as swiftly as his sore, achy body would allow, he leaped over several holes like the one the creature rolled into before. Eventually, he had to slow down, for the terrain began to rise as he neared a high ridge.
The smoke came from directly behind the stony ridge, so once again, Aidan climbed. Compared to the long journey up the mountain the day before, it was an easy ascent.
Just then, a trumpet rang out from the other side of the ridge. It was not the proud blast of royalty, however. It sounded more like the dying scream of a large bird. Aidan remained very still, and he gripped the stone so hard his knuckles whitened. He had a terrible feeling that he was headed in the wrong direction, but he was just a few feet from where he might see what was on the other side of the ridge.
Moving an inch at a time, Aidan
climbed closer until he could peek over the edge. Looking into the cavernous valley, what he saw stole away his breath and most of his hope. A long convoy of soldiers was entering the cove from the wastelands beyond. He could see knights in black armor riding horses and pulling people on foot chained at the neck, wrists, and ankles. All moved toward a pair of tall arched doors that were cut into the mountain. Foul black smoke escaped the thin fissure between the doors and rose like a shadow of a serpent into the sky.
A soldier in the lead of the convoy blew his trumpet once more. A second trumpet answered from some unseen opening in the rock near the doors. The caravan halted. Great belches of smoke escaped as the heavy doors swung outward.
The convoy resumed its march, and the first wave of knights began to pass within the mountain. But there was some trouble with the prisoners. They screamed and violently pulled against their captors. They clutched their own chains and dug in their heels to avoid entering the place in the mountain from which the black smoke rose. The soldiers in front spurred their horses, and the soldiers behind pressed into the prisoners, forcing them forward. They were dragged—some still struggling, some limp—into the smoky darkness.
When the last of the soldiers passed into the mountain, the great stone doors slowly closed. Aidan stared, transfixed, unable to look away and yet not wanting to see.
“You there, on the rock!” A soldier in black stood on a ledge just below Aidan. “Who are you? The Prince does not take kindly to trespassers!”
Aidan struggled to his feet. He looked left and right, adrenaline surging.
“Stay right there!” the knight yelled. He began to climb up after Aidan.
Aidan turned and leaped back down the way he had come.
“Don’t move, you!” Aidan heard the soldier shouting as he ran. He also heard the distinctive metallic ring of a sword being drawn. Aidan panicked.
He bounded down the ridge, groaning with each awkward landing. He knew the knight in black must be right behind him, and he knew there really was nowhere to go.