"Can you tell me where we're going or who Darius is? We've been climbing for an awfully long time and I have no idea where you're taking me," I said.

He was back at attention now, stiff and serious. "Sorry, strictest orders. I must take you to the appointed destination as quickly as possible. Important meeting tomorrow, very important mee --" He stopped short, turned!

85.

his cantaloupe-sized head to the left, and listened intently. In a flash he was through the bushes and scaling a nearby tree like a spooked squirrel. Seconds later, he was so high in the branches of the tree I lost sight of him. I looked back down the mountain and saw the thin, endless snakes of the walls far below. I imagined I could flick them with my finger and knock them all down.

When I turned back to the trail, Yipes was standing at attention, not winded in the slightest, with the same calm manner as before. "So sorry. I thought I heard something in the bushes. Can't be too careful now, can we? Important cargo. Yes, very important cargo." He led me to a stream where we drank. I began gulping and Yipes told me to drink only a little or I might become ill and weak. He gave me dried meat from his pouch and told me to sit and rest. Another sip of the icy water and a few minutes more rest, then we were off again.

"Not far now. Not far at all," said Yipes as we meandered farther up the mountain, our pace much faster than it had been. The trees grew thick, but the heat remained stifling as we approached midafternoon. The minutes turned into another hour of treading time behind my stalwart companion. My feet ached with open blisters and my legs burned with every step, but I was determined to keep going without complaint.

The stream we had rested at earlier now ran alongside of us as we walked its bank. Only a few feet wide with a bright green underbelly, it offered the refreshing sound of

86.

water flowing over rocks. I saw flashes here and there in its depths -- fish moving and reflecting as they sensed our presence along the edge. I was so tired I thought I might pa.s.s out, and again I lost track of Yipes in my delirious wondering.

"Excuse me. You can stop now," said Yipes. He was sitting on a large rock a few feet behind me, lacing his leather sandal, which had come undone. He looked annoyingly refreshed, as if the ma.s.sive trek we had just made was nothing more than a sightseeing stroll.

"I'm afraid this is as far as I can take you. The rest you have to do on your own," said Yipes, now lapping up water from the stream, which had shrunk to only a couple of feet across.

I hobbled over to the stream, now quiet in its slow movement, and I drank in large gulps until I thought I would burst. Then I sat at the water's edge and felt it all coming back up again. Hunching over, soupy water poured out of my mouth. I fought off a sickly shiver, rinsed my mouth in the stream, and turned to face Yipes. Exhausted, I lurched forward and fell on my face.

Why am I out here in the dark? Something warm is beside me. Warvold, his mouth gaping, rotted teeth dripping yellow goo down his chin. He's grabbing me by the shoulder, shaking me hard. Run, Alexa, run! Get away!

"Wake up, Alexa, wake up now. You must get on with it." Yipes was gently nudging my shoulder with his clam- sized hand. It was late afternoon, maybe four o'clock. I

87.

must have slept for at least an hour. I stretched, let out a painful sigh, pulled my knees to my chest, and sat breathing heavy sobs, tears rolling down my kneecaps, running a wet track to the top of my feet. My body ached all over, and my mind continued to struggle with the surroundings. I had an unfortunate dull throb in my head. It felt like a man, one even smaller than Yipes, was standing behind my eyeb.a.l.l.s with a club, swinging with all his might to bang his way out.

Bang, bang, bang! "Sorry, Mr. Yipes, sir, she won't budge!" "Put your back into it, man! Give it all you've got!" Bang, bang, bang!

"Alexa, stop that now! Pounding your head against your knees won't make you feel any better. On that, you can trust me," Yipes insisted. "Come on then, on your feet!" He was in the stream now, splashing me with icy cold water. I jerked awake, jumping to a stand, and felt the shearing pain in my legs and feet. The open blisters were screaming back at me to sit down. Sit down or I'll send the club through your forehead! I fell to my knees; Yipes continued the chilling barrage of splashes until I finally screamed.

"Enough! I'm up! Just give me a second and I'll be ready to start walking again."

He stopped splashing and watched me as I wrung my hair out with my hands. Then he emerged from the stream and returned to his perch on the rock. I was back on my feet, gaining more confidence that I might have

88.

the strength to hobble my weary bones a few more steps into the mountains.

"I think I'm ready for another hour or two," I said.

"You're going to have to slow down, though I've got some remarkable blisters."

Yipes smiled and sat with his elbows on his knees, hands folded. He told me in a soft, slow voice, "Young lady, as I told you before, we've arrived. You're an impressive climber. For a child, and such a small one at that, you did very well.

"Now," he continued, "it is my duty and my privilege to point you in the direction of your destiny. My work is done for now. I've brought you this far, but the next bit of effort is all yours, I'm afraid. What I need you to do is walk up this stream. Get right in the water and walk until you reach a pool. You'll know it when you see it, trust me on that one. This is a special place. You get only one chance to go there in all your life. I cannot tell you what to do when you get there. That you must figure out on your own."

I looked up the stream with its bright green bed. It disappeared from view around a corner into the trees a hundred feet away. "But how will I know when I've arrived in the right spot --" I turned back to look at Yipes and found the rock bare.

I removed my sandals and held them in my hand, dangling them from the straps with my fingers. My feet ached more than ever on the hot sandy dirt at the edge of

89.

the stream, so I immediately staggered into the water. The stream was only a few feet wide, and it came to my knees in the middle. It felt cold on my bare legs. My feet felt the heavenly touch of the soft, furry bottom. It was like walking on a perfect feathery pillow, only better because the mossy green came up between my toes and surrounded my feet with a delicate, squishy wrapper. I let out a thankful ahhhh and an unexpected smile sprouted on my face. In the heat of the day I dunked my head and body the rest of the way in and exploded out of the stream refreshed and walking, enjoying the velvet whisper of every step on my swollen feet.

The stream narrowed further as I rounded the corner, but it remained a foot deep. The water moved slowly and quietly. As I walked farther and rounded yet another corner, I saw a pool surrounded by rock walls on all sides except for the direction I was coming from. This was the place.

I reached the edge of the pool, which was about ten feet across on all sides. I looked down and found that the water had turned to a murky brown around my legs. Behind me, where I had been walking, an inky darkness inhabited the stream like a plague of locusts in a summer sky. The pool itself glowed in a strange hue I had never seen before. I moved to its center in three quick strides, and for a brief moment I could see the bottom, the water now at my chest. I saw the shimmering outline of a stone bursting with lavish green color. A moment later, my

90.

disturbance in the pool brought up a muddy brown thickness around my legs, settling around my chest and leaving me almost chin-deep in dirty water.

I dove down, grabbed a handful of rocks, and brought them up into the air. They were all brown and bland, entirely void of bright color. Had I been dreaming? I dove down again and again, all over the pool until I was exhausted and angry, standing in a dark pool of icky guck.

I slapped my arms against the water with a loud pop and let out a grunt of frustration. "I don't understand! What am I supposed to do in here?" I yelled, hoping to see Yipes climb down the rock wall with an answer. But I was utterly alone. As I stood motionless in the water, the blackness turned a shade lighter. Maybe if I could stay completely still the dirt would settle down enough so that I could see the glowing emerald rock clearly again. Then, if I reached down ever so slowly, maybe I could pick out the right rock and it would be glowing green in my hand. While it may not be the end of the test, it seemed like a good place to start, and so I stood, still as a statue, in a pool of murky water, patiently waiting.

It took a lot longer than I thought it might for the water to change. It stayed just the same for an excruciatingly long time. Was it a lighter shade of brown? Could I see the outline of shapes at the bottom of the pool? I couldn't be sure, and I continued to wait and wait. It felt an awful lot like when I stood on the sill in my room for hours on

91.

end looking out the window for a sign of life in The Dark Hills. I wondered how Father and Ganesh were doing. I missed them terribly.

A thousand other random thoughts filled my head as I tried my best to stay perfectly motionless. The water was definitely getting lighter now. Unfortunately, the day was getting darker almost as fast. The water had been exhilarating at first, but I was starting to shiver as the heat of the day began to wane. Surely my feet were prunes by now, and worse, my arches were precariously close to cramping, which would cause me to move and stir up the water all over again. Night was coming, and with it a cruel coldness that would force me out of the pool.

I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. I imagined I was sitting next to Father, he with his pipe billowing sweet smoke around the room. The fire was a raging monster, stacked high with crackling wood, sending an orange shimmer across the faces in the room Ganesh, Grayson, Silas Hardy, Nicolas, and my father, all ranting in their usual way that rancid tobacco is about as welcome as a skunk at a dinner party. . . you think the sun comes up just to hear you crow all the nonsense that made the evening flow like thick honey into the wee hours.

I opened my eyes and looked up. It was night in the sky, stars sparkling in cl.u.s.ters across my line of sight. And yet it was not as dark as the dark of an unlit night ought to be, the way the streets of Bridewell were after

92.

the lamps were extinguished and all was black but for the dim lamplight at the towers. The three rock walls shimmered unnaturally, like the pages of a book under flitting candlelight. I gazed along the wall and down into the water below me. The pool was aglow with radiant green light, pulsing from a single thumb-sized rock a few inches from my big toe. My feet and legs reflected the fuzzy lime flame, which worked its diminishing magic to the edges of the pool in a soft, smoldering finish.

My shivering was rabid now, goaded on by the dreaded thought of reaching down into the water, submerging my head, neck, and shoulders in the icy glow. The more I shivered, the weaker the glow became, and I could see that if I waited much longer, the dirt would rise again and put out the light from the stone entirely. I slowly descended to my neck, yelping in slow bursts as the sting of cold took my breath away. Then I gulped a big breath of air, held it against my will, and plunged all the way under.

I could see the stone clearly now, surrounded by other stones that remained brown and black and lifeless. It was just the one, the one by my big toe that shone like a tiny green sun in a liquid sky. I reached down slowly and grasped its warm surface in my hand, then rose, blasting out of the water, my body frozen in the night air.

"Well done, little lady." It was the unmistakable high-pitched voice of Yipes. "Come on out of there now. I don't want you catching a cold."

93.

I was smiling through my chattering teeth, delighted at the sight of my little friend hanging by the stone wall a few feet above me like a monkey on a tree trunk. He climbed around the wall and down to the stream's edge a few feet away, motioning me repeatedly with his arm.

"I'm f-f-f-rozen, Y-Y-Yipes!" I hobbled as best I could out of the pool and onto the mossy edge of the stream. I was greeted with a warm blanket, which I eagerly wrapped around my shoulders as I sat on the soft, dry bank. Out of the confines of the pool, we were drenched in a welcome bath of moonlight.

"Where are your shoes?" Yipes asked as he placed a leather string around my neck with a pouch at the end.

I cursed, surprising Yipes and myself with the outburst. "I must have dropped them in the p-p-pool. I had them in my hand when I went in, but I've 1-1-lost them now," I said.

"No worries, no worries. Put the gem in the pouch around your neck. I'll be right back." Before I could protest, he was gone, headfirst into the water and out of sight. Then with a whoosh he was out of the water at the center of the pool, holding my sandals over his head. "These yours?" he asked with a grin on his face, water dripping down his mustache.

He swam back and held my sandals out to me, but I was busy turning the stone in my hands. It maintained a radiant glow. It was smooth, about half the size of a chicken egg, and heavier than it ought to have been for its

94.

size. The color was astonishing, a tasty lime cream that made me want to smell it, expecting a tart zing in my nostrils.

"Still holding that thing?" asked Yipes. "You really should put it in the pouch for safekeeping. That's one stone you don't want to lose." And so I did, pulling the drawstring tightly shut after dropping it into its new home: a dry, coa.r.s.e chamber very different from its previous watery environment. I found myself strangely concerned for its well-being.

"The thing is to keep moving now. I know your feet are hurting you, but the worst is over. Just a little bit farther and you can take a break," said Yipes, wet from head to toe but standing at attention without a sign of discomfort.

I was up without complaint and ready to go. Yipes was starting to grow on me and I was happy to follow his orders if he wouldn't leave me behind. We walked away from the stream into the silence of the night, the moon lighting our way, Renny Lodge somewhere off in the distant hollow of evening.

95.

CHAPTER 12.

Darius After Yipes and I had walked for half an hour, I heard the sound of fast-moving water. We approached a stream, which was about twenty feet wide. Along its sides and through its middle, it held fat, formless boulders like freckles on the descending arm of a giant mountain creature. On the other side of the stream, the moon shone down on an odd little house, leaning precariously on stilts, half over the water and half on land. It was small and jutted three miniature stories into the night sky. Puffs of smoke rose from its chimney.

Yipes hopped a path of boulders across the stream, and I followed dutifully to the other side, half enjoying the challenge and half scared I might feel the cold sting of a misplaced footing. He was across and awaiting my arrival before I reached the third of twelve boulders.

"You're a decent hopper," he said as I jumped down from my last rock. "And you followed my path exactly. That's good, very good. A talent such as that will come in handy."