I continued on to Stacks, walking, not flying. I didn’t care if I was one or even ten slivers late. I didn’t care about anything any more. My parents had disappeared, vanished into fire and smoke. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they had journeyed somehow to another place, though I had no idea where that could be. The questions flooded my brain: Who was I? And who were they? And what really was this place I called home? I suddenly felt that nothing I’d ever been told was true.
At my table I took up the first strap that I would work on this light. It was many feet in length, very rough, and its edges would slice through bark, leather and certainly skin. My job was to smooth out the roughness. Then I would work in holes towards the ends of the metal. That would allow tethers to be used to hold both ends together for stability after the straps were wrapped around a stack of planed timbers. It was difficult, tedious work, and I found that even with my thick gloves on, my hands – one of which was already injured from striking Non – became cut and scarred as the straps’ edges on more than one occasion tore through the gloves’ leather and sliced into my skin.
During my meal break, I went outside and fetched a bowl of water for Harry Two and then gave him a bit more food I had managed to scavenge. I sat on the ground next to him and stared up at Stacks. It was a colossal building and I had only seen a small part of it in my two sessions here. Yet I wagered I had probably also seen more of it than any other Wug who had ever laboured here. I counted off the turrets and towers and floors, and it suddenly struck me that it was far taller than simply two storeys. This was puzzling because when I had headed up the stairs that night, they ended at the second floor. There were no other stairs. But that wasn’t exactly right. There were no other stairs that I could see.
As I passed back through the double doors, Domitar barred my way.
‘What were you doing, Vega?’
‘Just feeding Harry Two.’
‘You were nearly late this light,’ he noted harshly.
‘I had a good reason,’ I said.
‘I can hardly wonder what would be a good enough reason to be late to your job, particularly in times such as this.’
I hesitated. Ordinarily, I would not convey personal information to Domitar. ‘My parents seemed to have taken a turn for the worse at the Care,’ I replied.
He bowed his head, something that surprised me. But his next words stunned me. ‘I pray at Steeples for their recovery. They were good Wugs. And may the Fates be kind to them.’ We locked gazes for an instant before he turned and left.
The rest of my slivers at Stacks that light went by in a sort of blur. I must have worked hard, because when the end-of-work bell rang, all the straps I had been given to finish lay coiled on the trolley with their edges sanded, their surfaces smooth as a baby whist’s skin, and the requisite holes cut precisely as instructed in the parchment. I went to the locker room, changed into my other clothes and headed out.
Dis Fidus closed the doors behind me and I heard the lock turn. And that’s when I made up my mind. I was going back into Stacks. I remembered the vision of the fierce battle and the torrent of blood that had washed me away. I recalled the screaming Wug on the doorknob. I, of course, remembered the jabbits.
But what I most vividly recalled, as I plunged into the red abyss, were the images of my parents. I needed to find out what had happened to them. Wormwood was not what it seemed to be. It held secrets – secrets I was now determined to discover.
A sliver later, Dis Fidus came out from a side door and walked down a path away from me. A bit later, I saw Domitar emerge from the same door. I crouched down low in the tall grass. Harry Two copied me. Once Domitar was out of sight, I said to Harry Two, ‘OK, I’ll be back. You stay here.’
I got up and started to walk away. Harry Two followed me. I put out a hand. ‘You stay here, I’ll be back.’ I started to walk again. Once more he followed. ‘Harry Two,’ I said. ‘You stay.’
He simply smiled and wagged his tail and followed. Finally, I gave it up as a bad job. It looked like we would do this together.
I accessed Stacks through the same door as before. Harry Two followed me in. I wasted no time and made right for the stairs. I found the door the jabbits had knocked down. It was fully repaired. I opened it and went inside.
I could now see that what had toppled down on me and revealed the little door the first time was a suit of armour. It was all righted and shiny now. I managed to move it aside, again exposing the little door. Harry Two started growling when he saw the screaming Wug on the doorknob, but I told him to be quiet and he obeyed instantly. I closed the door behind us. At the same time, I braced myself for a wall of blood hurtling at me. I had already planned to use Destin to get to my parents’ images in that abyss. And I did not intend on drowning Harry Two and myself in the process.
But there was no blood.
As I stood there, the cavernous walls disappeared and an enormous pit was revealed directly in front of me.
Stacks had clearly been something else many sessions ago. There was something in this place, some force that was absolutely foreign to me.
I squared my shoulders and stepped forward until I came to the edge of the pit. I stared down, unable to process what I was seeing. So stunning was it that I felt myself teeter on the edge. That’s when I felt Harry Two bite down on my cloak and pull me away from the abyss before I might topple in.
I composed myself and once more drew close to the pit and stared down again. What I was looking at filled me with both anger and hopelessness. For what was down there were all the things that Wugs who had long laboured at Stacks had made. The ones on the very top I recognized as objects I had very recently finished: a silver candlestick and a pair of bronze cups.
How could all these things have ended up here? I had always assumed they were being made for the Wugs who had ordered them. I could never afford any of these things, but other Wugs I believed could. They were custom-made. They— Here, my ridiculous thoughts broke off as the truth hit me. They were made so they could be thrown into this pit. They had never left Stacks. All my work was in that hole.
Without thinking, I slammed my already-injured hand against the hard ground, then yelped in agony. I grabbed it with my other hand and squeezed, trying to stop the pain. But it only grew worse.
I bent down and, using my injured hand, I picked up a white stone lying on the floor next to the pit. I wanted to see if I could form a grip. I could, barely.
I glanced at Harry Two, who stared up at me with a helpless look, as though he could feel every painful thought of mine. He licked my bad hand and I absently patted his head.
‘Let’s go, Harry Two,’ I said in a determined voice.
We marched around the pit and through a tunnel on the other side. It eventually opened into a vast cave.
I looked all around. Nothing but blank, rock-studded walls stared back.
My frustration boiling up inside, I screamed, ‘I need answers. And I need them now!’
Immediately, a movement came from my left. I wheeled in that direction and called out, ‘Who’s there?’ I blinked as a small orb of light glimmered from the part of the cave furthest from me. The orb grew and then transformed to a shadow. And then this shadow evolved into a small being holding a lantern. As it came forward and stopped in front of me, I looked down at it and it looked up at me.
‘Who are you?’ I asked in a quavering voice.
‘Eon,’ came the response.