Casting a final glance at the boiling red clouds drawing nearer every second, he ran back inside the house, wrenched open the cellar doors and began to roll up the rugs and push them down the steps. He took down the rug that hung over Zluty’s bed, and bundled up the bedding from both of their beds, pushing it all down into the cellar. Next, he carried down his weaving, the spindle and the bowl of breadcrumbs. Lighting a lantern he kept at the bottom of the steps, he was pleased to see that most of the birds were now sitting on the nests that he had tucked here and there.
He pushed the rugs and bedding to one side of the cellar, and went back up into the cottage to bring down his collection of feathers.
Puffing slightly as he made yet another trip down the steps, Bily prayed that all of his work would be for nothing, and that the roof tiles would hold. But even as he came up again from the cellar, he heard a long ominous ripping sound.
At the same moment he realised that he had forgotten to bring in any water. He did not want to face the tempest outside again, but there was nothing for it. He got two big urns and opened the door. The wind snatched it from his hands and threw it open with a loud bang before pushing at Bily as if it meant to knock him down.
Bily braced himself and shouldered his way outside, hauling out the urns after him and then dragging the door closed behind him. The garden heaved and churned in the heavy red light that suffused the late afternoon, making it seem to have come alive.
Bily dragged the urns around to the well and drew up buckets of water until he had filled them. Then he rolled them one at a time to the outside entrance to the cellar. Flinching from branches that lashed and flailed at him, he lowered first one urn and then the other into the cellar cave using a hook on a rope that ran up through another hook attached to outside of the cottage.
Propping the cellar door open so that the birds would not feel trapped, Bily ran back around the house to the door, noticing as he did so that two lines of the woven roof tiles had been torn off and the ones at the end of another line had begun to flap. There was nothing he could do, of course, but his heart ached as he went inside and saw the dark red sky was showing through the tiles in three separate places.
One of the shutters he had closed earlier rattled free of its hook, and the clatter it made as it banged open made his heart leap against his chest. He gathered his wits and ran to catch hold of it and push it closed. Even as he lifted the hook back into place, there was a great rushing roar outside that shook the cottage, and then came a cacophonous clattering and thudding on the roof and walls as if a hundred Zluty’s were outside hurling stones at the cottage.
Having no idea what was happening, Bily froze and waited for the terrible noise to stop. But it went on and on. He forced himself to go to the other side of the cottage where the tiles had been torn away so that he could look out. To his astonishment, he saw that great red stones were falling out of the sky. Even as he watched, several crashed through the hole to land on the rug below.
For a time he stood gaping at them in disbelief, then the large beams of wood overhead creaked ominously. Bily thought with horror of the red stones piling up on top of the roof, growing heavier and heavier, and backed away from the torn opening. He had been worried that things would get wet or be ruined, but now he saw there was a far greater danger.
Calling to Redwing, who was perched on the back of his chair by the fire, he ran to the cellar doors. Before he could descend the steps, he heard a violent crash from below. A moment later the birds that had taken refuge in the cellar exploded up into the cottage in a wild flurry of feathers and beaks, screeching, ‘Monster! Monster!’
‘Come back!’ cried Bily in alarm, as the birds looped and swooped in the air, knowing they would be killed if the roof of the cottage gave way under the stones. He was sure that their monster was only the door to the outside cellar entrance blowing shut in the wind. If only he had closed the outside trapdoor to the cellar after he had lowered the water urns!
‘There is no monster,’ Bily shouted, trying desperately to make himself heard over the screeching of the birds and the thunderous noise of the falling stones. ‘It is only the storm. We must go back down into the cellar where it is safe.’
None of the birds would listen and Bily saw that he would have to go down into the cellar to show them there was nothing to fear. When he was not devoured, the birds would realise they had made a mistake and return to their nests. On impulse, he took up the broom standing against the wall near the cellar opening before beginning to climb down the steps. The light given out by the lantern he had left on the bottom step was weak and fitful and Bily realised there must be very little oil left in its reservoir. He nearly groaned aloud but reminded himself that at least the jug of oil was in the cellar.
As he descended, the weight of earth between him and the cottage muffled the sound of the falling stones until Bily could only hear the soft swift thudding of his own heart. He realised that he was frightened and told himself sternly that there was no monster waiting to eat him in the cellar. Just the same, he was glad he had taken the broom.
By the time he got to the bottom step, Bily’s mouth was dry with fear. He knew that there was no such thing as a monster. But the thought came to him that if someone had told him the day before that stones would rain from the sky, he would have said that there was no such thing as a stone storm.
Bily peered around the cellar. He could just make out the humped shapes of bales of sweetgrass, sacks of grain and ground flour and the bedding he had thrown down earlier. Turning slowly, he ran his eyes along the rows of empty honey and tree sap jugs. Everything was exactly as it ought to be, except that when he looked down to the lower end of the sloping cellar, he saw that the trapdoor to the other entrance was completely smashed, splintered bits of it hanging down around the opening. Some stones had fallen through the gap, knocking over the ladder that usually rested against the wall under the trapdoor, but fortunately the water urns had not been broken.
Bily set down the broom and ran to roll the urns out of danger, thinking that the bush growing by the entrance must be partly shielding the opening for only a few stones had fallen into the cellar. None were big enough to have stove the door in and he wondered if the tree had been uprooted by the wind and had fallen on it.
One of the baby birds began to cheep piteously behind him, reminding Bily of the danger faced by the birds up in the cottage. He ran back up the steps and, to his relief, he found that most of the birds were now perched around the cellar doors peering down fearfully at him. Above them, Bily saw that there were now several places where the weight of the stones had torn holes in the roof. Worse, right above the cellar door, the roof tiles were sagging heavily.
‘Come into the cellar before the stones come through the roof!’ he begged the birds. ‘There is no monster and your eggs and nestlings grow cold.’
He looked at Redwing, who immediately launched herself through the opening. To his relief, the rest of the birds followed her. As soon as they had all come into the cellar, Bily reached up to close the doors over his head.
It was not a moment too soon, for he heard a loud ripping noise and a great clamour of stones falling. He went back down the steps again, careful not to stand on any of the birds. Clearly, they were not going to go any further into the cellar without him, even though Redwing had flown down to where the lantern stood. Its flame was almost out when he reached the bottom of the steps and Bily carried it over to the shelf by the bales of sweetgrass, where he kept the lantern oil. But even as he set it down he froze, for there, in the corner of the cellar, was a pair of huge glowing yellow eyes.
7
Entering the vast and mysterious Northern Forest, Zluty was struck as always by how unexpectedly it rose up from the flat bare plain. More than ever it seemed to emanate mystery and strange purpose, and despite the looming storm Zluty felt its pull as he stepped into the still, damp coolness under the leaves of trees twenty times larger than the small striplings that gre
w by the cottage.
Zluty stood for a time listening to the leaves rustling and hissing overhead. Deeper in, the forest was silent for no wind could penetrate the dense canopy of evergreen leaves and thick interweaving branches. He loved the velvety silence there, but he liked the whispering at the outer edge of the forest, too, because he always imagined that the trees were talking to one another in some language that only trees understood; maybe speaking of his coming and wondering what he wanted.
He shook himself and began searching for the dappled bark of the trees whose sap he would tap. It was much harder spotting them in the late afternoon light than in strong morning light, so it took him a good while to find the first tree. He was pleased to see how thick its waist was, for it meant he could hammer in two tap tubes rather than one. Under each tube, he set a pot to catch the drops, making sure they stood flat so that they would not topple over as they filled.
It seemed a good omen that the first tree he had found was big enough to take two taps, for most took only one. But it took him ages to find the next tree. It turned out to be one he had used before. He knew it because there was an old tap scar in its bark. He made a new hole well above the old one, and hammered in a tube, setting another pot on the ground under it.
Just as he found a third tree, it suddenly grew dark and the redness of the light on the plain made him realise the storm cloud was now close enough to have blotted out the sun. Weariness and haste made him clumsy, and to his dismay he broke two tap tubes trying to hammer them in. The third went in properly but now he had no spare taps. He would have to be especially careful not to damage the last two.
Zluty rubbed his tired eyes and ordered himself to get on with it, for once the sun set he would be unable to see the trees well enough to know which ones to tap. He made his way back towards the outer edge of the forest where the light was stronger and, to his relief, he soon spotted another tree with dappled bark. It was easily big enough to sustain the last two taps and, elated, he very carefully hammered one in and set the second-last pot under it. But even as he shifted position to hammer in the final tap, something made him look out to the plain.
He gasped aloud to see the great wave of redness that seemed about to crash down on the forest. The storm cloud seemed to be dragging what looked like a churning shadow beneath it and he wondered if it could possibly be rain.
All at once it grew very dark and there was a great murmurous rush of wind, followed by a sound such as Zluty had never heard in his life; a thunderous tumbling roar like the noise made by the ice rain that had once fallen on the cottage roof in the early days of a hard chilly Winter, but a hundred times louder.
Zluty was puzzled but not afraid, until he saw that it was not rain or frozen ice falling, but stones the size of his fist. Each one slammed down so hard on the ground that it raised up a little cloud of red dust that was sucked up into the great ruddy darkness boiling overhead.
Suddenly a stone the size of his head smashed through the canopy and hit the ground not two steps away from him. Zluty staggered back, remembering how thin the outer edge of the forest canopy was. He was horrified to imagine what the stone would have done had it hit him. More horrified still to think that if he had not been in such a hurry to get back home to Bily, he might have been out on the plain now!
Bily! His heart clenched in terror at the thought of his brother enduring this impossible storm of stones, then another large stone battered its way through the canopy, shattering the pot he was still holding.
He threw down the bits of broken pottery and fled deeper into the forest until the roar of the falling stones was muted enough that he could feel sure the canopy would protect him. He told himself he was safe, but he could not stop shaking. He had got so accustomed to thinking of himself as fearless that it was an unpleasant surprise to find that something could frighten him so badly.
Zluty blundered into a fallen branch half grown over with the same thick soft moss that covered the ground under the trees, and stopped to rub his knee. He realised that if he ran on so blindly, he would surely run headlong into a tree and knock himself out. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He had no idea of how a wind could take up stones and drop them as if they were rain. It was impossible and yet it was happening.
Bily’s gentle face came into his mind again, and Zluty shook his head. It was bad enough to know that his brother’s lovingly tended garden must have been destroyed by the falling stones without the horror of imagining that Bily might have been outside when the stone storm came.
Zluty told himself fiercely that Bily was timid. He would not go outside when he saw the dark red clouds drawing closer. He might even have hidden under his bed!
Then Zluty thought of the warning song of the bee Queen about the earth bird. She must have meant the storm. Her dreams would have shown her the stones falling and certainly the hive would have been battered and broken if he had not covered it over with a thick layer of earth.
The muffled thunder of the stonefall went on and on, and Zluty had to accept that he could not possibly get back to the cave where his bed and his pack were while the strange storm raged overhead. The thought of spending the night in the forest without food or fire depressed him almost as much as the pot he had left sitting under the tap by the last tree, which he ought to have had the sense to grab before he fled. It would almost certainly be smashed by now.
Gradually, the darkness deepened until true night came, but the muffled rumbling of the stones went on and on and there was nothing for it but for him to lie down and try to sleep. Zluty told himself that he would still be able to leave as he had planned if he collected the mushrooms and the honey early the next day. But what if the stones went right on falling through the night and into the next day? What if the stones fell for days?
It was not long before he sat up again. Aside from feeling too unsettled to sleep, he was also cold and hungry and beginning to be thirsty again. If only he could collect mushrooms to pass the time, but he would certainly lose his way and become lost in the black depths of the forest if he tried.
Then it came to him. The collecting bag he had brought with him was part of his backpack and he was almost certain he had pushed the pouch of shining stones into one of the front pockets on the pack.
Eagerly he searched the bag and gave a cry of triumph as his fingers touched the familiar soft weave of the stone pouch.
He drew it out with trembling fingers and opened it. A soft dim light flowed up from the shining stones it contained, painting the forest grey and silver and black. The light was not strong enough to show colour.
Zluty dug some twine from his bag and wove a net to the head of his staff, then he put the largest shining stone into it. Standing, he held the staff out before him. Its light did not travel far, but he could see a few paces in any direction. Slipping his collection bag over his head again, Zluty turned towards the plain, and walked until he could just see the stones falling. Then he turned to the East and walked parallel to the edge of the forest until he came to the enormous boulder where he always began his journey in to the earthbank.
There were clumps of many different kinds of mushrooms growing throughout the forest, but those that grew at the earthbank were a special hardy variety that would last the trip home and retain their flavour and goodness after they had been dried.
Zluty had made his way from the boulder to the earthbank so many times that he had many markers to guide him. It was even easier now that he could see them, rather than having to grope his way from one to the other with only the distinctive scent of the earthbank mushrooms to guide him to them.
As he walked he was fascinated to see that many of the tall dark shapes he had taken for tree trunks were actually metal poles with the same mysterious markings as some of the smaller metal objects strewn about the plain. But he stopped in utter amazement to see that what he had taken for a natural bank of earth surrounding a sunken circle of ground was actually a great metal object overgrown
with moss and lichen. The sunken part at the centre was a round hole in the object that opened to the earth beneath. Zluty had never seen a metal object so large, and yet it was clear that only part of it was showing above the surface of the ground.
Zluty climbed down into the centre of it and found that the mushrooms grew as thickly as he remembered under an overhanging fringe of moss and creepers dangling from the edges of the metal object.
Thrusting his staff into the thick moss under his feet, he knelt to open his bag and get out several woven squares of cloth. Laying them out, he began to pick mushrooms, sprinkling each with earth he had brought from the cottage garden before putting it on the cloth. Once he had enough mushrooms, he tied each square into a neat bundle and set it up on the edge of the object.
It did not take him long to harvest as many mushrooms as he would be able to carry back to the cottage, and at last he stood to stretch his back, feeling stiff, and thirstier than ever. He had meant to go back to the edge of the forest when he had finished gathering the mushrooms, in the hope that the stones might have stopped falling. But now, as his eyes sought the faint greenish glow of daylight that had always before guided him back to the plain, a chill ran down his spine. He could see nothing but darkness.
Wondering if the stone in the staff was dazzling his eyes too much for him to see the dim glow of daylight, Zluty covered it with his hands. But still he could see only darkness and he remembered that it was not morning, as it usually was when he gathered mushrooms, but night, and a dark and stormy night at that.
Zluty uncovered the stone at the head of the staff and climbed up onto the object. Turning around slowly, he realised that without sunlight shining through the edges of the forest he had no idea at all of which direction he had come from. The thick moss was too springy to have left any tracks and the forest looked the same on all sides. He could try to retrace his steps from the memory of what he had seen on the way to the earthbank, but he had made that journey only once, and he had been much distracted by what he was seeing. It would be too easy to become muddled, and if he got lost and wandered deeper into the forest he would never find his way out again.