When the ground erupted, I jumped backward in alarm. My foot slipped on a pile of wet leaves, causing me to land on my rump—which put me at about eye level with the pair of monsters in front of me.
They stood only about three feet tall, but those three feet were terrifying. Perfectly identical, they had green skin, goggling eyes the size of lemons, and pointy noses. Their fingers and toes were splayed flat at the ends, making each like a miniature shovel. These were tipped by fierce-looking black nails, almost claws. Both creatures had on tight-fitting brown garments, something like those things high school wrestlers wear. Their bare arms and legs were lean and tightly muscled. Their heads were topped with short brown fur.
Staring at me intently, curiously, they took another step forward. I scrambled back, only stopping when I bumped into a big tree. I pushed myself as tight as I could against the tree, bracing for their attack.
Moving in unison, they stepped still closer. As they reached for me, Keegel Farzym said sharply, “That’s enough, Sploot Fah. Leave the boy alone.”
The creatures spun around. “Why?” Their voices were high, but also raspy. “I only want to examine him.”
“I said to leave him alone,” repeated Keegel Farzym sternly. “That should be sufficient. What do you want anyway?”
“To get to the root of things!” cried the creature to my left.
“Which is my job and my joy!” exclaimed the one to my right.
Keegel Farzym sighed. “I’m sorry he frightened you, Jacob. He’s harmless—”
“Am not!” they cried indignantly.
“All right, have it your way,” said Keegel Farzym. “You’re fierce and terrible. But admit that you cannot harm the boy as long as he is with me.”
“Of course not,” said the one on the right.
“I had no wish to harm him,” said the one on the left.
“I was merely curious,” they said together. “Something about him fascinates me.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“Not they!” cried the creatures, whirling on me. “Sploot Fah is a he! A he!”
I looked at them, confused. “But there are two of you....”
“No, no!” they cried, hugging themselves in delight. “There is only one Sploot Fah! But inside, Sploot Fah is so big, so wonderful, so amazing, it takes two bodies to hold him!” Flinging their (or his) arms wide, they (or he) cried, “Sploot Fah is a much of a muchness!”
“You’re twintastic,” Lily told the creature (or creatures), coming to stand beside me. “But that still doesn’t tell us what kind of monster you are.”
“He’s a monster of ego,” said Keegel Farzym wearily.
“This is not so!” cried the one on the right.
“’Tis a monstrous lie!” added the one on the left.
“Sploot Fah is a digger …”
“A tunneler …”
“A seeker …”
“A finder …”
“A lover of darkness …”
“And deep places …”
“Of secrets …”
“And hidden things!”
“Sploot Fah is an annoyance, a prankster, a lover of mischief, and a master of naughtiness,” interrupted Keegel Farzym sharply.
“Yes, yes, that is all true!” cried Sploot Fah happily, crossing his hands on top of both his heads and doing a little dance of joy. “But Sploot Fah is also a helper, a holder, a kindness, and a friend when a friend is needed.”
“You have not been around long enough for me to be sure of that,” said Keegel Farzym. “All I know is that you love mischief … and this is not the time for mischief.”
“Why not?” cried one of them. “You have a baby with you!”
“And babies love mischief,” continued the other.
Suddenly they paused in their string of babble. They looked more closely at the baby, then at each other, then at the baby again.
“Oh my!” they cried in unison. “Is that Dum Pling?”
The one on the right: “Sploot Fah thinks there is a story here.”
The one on the left: “This definitely needs getting to the root of.”
“Tell Sploot Fah, High Poet …”
“What are you doing here with that baby?”
“That is more than you need to know,” snapped Keegel Farzym.
“Fine!” cried both parts of Sploot Fah. “Do not speak civilly to me. I have other things to do anyway.”
Sniffing in disgust, the creature(s) dove back underground.
“Do we have to worry about him telling Mazrak where we are?” asked Lily.
It was a smart question. I wished I had thought of it myself, but I was still pretty shaky from the way Sploot Fah had focused on me.
“I think it unlikely,” said Keegel Farzym. “Sploot Fah is an annoyance, but he seems to be of good heart. Now come along—we need to keep moving.”
The path forked and divided many times. We had left the swamp, though the transition had been so gradual I had hardly noticed it. Much as I tried, I could not keep track of the choices Keegel Farzym made about which branches to follow. Worse, several times the High Poet took us completely off the path. It was harder to walk when he did this, because the forest blocked most of the moonlight. Also, the trees were massive, and the leaf-strewn ground was ridged by their great roots—which were all too easy to trip over.
“Boy,” muttered Lily at one point. “I hope nothing happens to Keegel Farzym. Without him, we’d be in big trouble.”
Then she started singing “Cannibal Bunnies Go to the Fair.”
It seemed like a bad song choice to me.
At last we reached a large clearing. At its far side a sheer cliff stretched hundreds of feet straight up. The clearing itself was a perfect half circle, formed by the trees at either end growing right up to the base of the cliff.
Tucked against that cliff, smack in the middle of the open space at its base, was a cozy-looking stone hut with a thatched roof.
Keegel Farzym led us to the hut. Handing me the baby, he said, “Stand here, all of you. And don’t move. I need you to stay close to the door for what I’m about to do.”
Holding Little Dumpling tight to my chest, I nodded.
Keegel Farzym walked about twenty feet to our right. Starting at the base of the cliff, he paced out a half circle that perfectly matched the larger half circle formed by the trees beyond him. When he reached the end, he turned and retraced his steps, muttering to himself and making strange gestures. On the third pass he took something from a pouch at his side and sprinkled it in front of him as he went.
When he had made five passes in all, he returned to where we waited and said, “Stay here while I go inside to dismantle the traps. Be cautious. Speak to no one. Above all, do not cross the line I just made!”
He opened the door, ducked his head, and stepped into the hut.
The door swung shut behind him.
After a moment Lily reached for the baby.
“Just promise not to sing to him,” I said, passing LD to her.
Lily made a face, then started bouncing the baby and telling him how wonderfully strange he was.
“Good!” said LD. Then he patted her cheek and blew a spit bubble.
Gnarly, standing a foot or two away, muttered uneasily.
I gazed out at the dark forest. How much, exactly, did my grandfather know about this place? I thought. How did he find out about it? And how much had my father figured out before Mazrak lured him to that cave?
Ignoring my instructions, Lily started to sing about the three bears eating Goldilocks for breakfast. LD got so excited, he began shaking his rattle. When the song was finished, he reached for me.
I was glad to have him in my arms again. Something about holding him—about trying to protect him—felt solid and right to me. That was the one thing in the world—two worlds, actually—that I knew right now: I had to take care of the baby.
That’s one of the ideas that crops up in my grandfather’s stories over and over again. You have an obligation to protect and care for beings that are smaller and weaker than you are. It’s part of that “tikkun” thing, I think. My mother believed in the idea, intensely. It’s part of why we kept Little Dumpling.
Time dragged on. Was it possible Keegel Farzym had brought us here for some purpose other than saving us from Mazrak? The High Poet was a monster too, after all. Who knew how he thought, what he might be planning? What if he was going to leave us out here just for the fun of it? Heck, he hadn’t come to help when Octavia had captured me, spouting some nonsense about it being against the rules. And what had he been doing when he was pacing out that half circle in front of the hut? Was that line to keep other creatures out … or to keep Lily and Gnarly and me in?
As my mind conjured up horrible fantasies, I noticed a horrible reality: eyes had appeared in the darkness around us—glowing eyes that hung at all levels, as if the creatures they belonged to stood anywhere from a foot to twelve feet high.
Then I saw a flickering light that was definitely not an eye approaching. I pressed back against the hut. Lily joined me. Little Dumpling began to whimper. Gnarly moved to my other side. Clutching his pickax, the old man whispered, “Hang on, kids. We won’t go down without a fight!”
Soon I saw that the flickering light came from a torch. The torchbearer drew near enough that he could be seen, then stopped just outside Keegel Farzym’s line.
A flood of astonished relief washed over me.
“Dad!” I cried, my voice thick with joy. “Dad, I’m here!”
“Jacob! Thank goodness! I’ve been searching for you for hours! Come on—bring the baby and we’ll go home.”
“I can’t believe you found us! How did you get here?”
“Later, Jacob. We don’t have time right now. Hurry!”
I started toward him. LD howled in fright.
“Jacob!” cried Lily. “I don’t know if we should do this.”
Ignoring her, I continued forward. I had taken only three steps when the door behind us opened and Keegel Farzym roared, “Jacob, what are you doing?”
“Getting out of here!”
“Jacob, do not cross the barrier! That is not your father!”
I hesitated, frightened and confused. It had to be my father standing there with the torch, waiting to take us home.
It had to be.
But if it was Dad, why didn’t he come to get me, instead of just standing there?
Keegel Farzym bellowed a word I could not understand. Instantly the line he had so carefully walked began to glow.
“Hurry, Jacob,” called my father. His voice was urgent now, almost angry.
I took another step forward.
“Jacob!” yelled Keegel Farzym. “If you pass that barrier, I cannot protect you!”
Again I hesitated. LD was squalling now, squirming in my arms and reaching back toward the High Poet.
“Hurry, Jacob!” ordered my father. “I can’t come to get you. Keegel Farzym has set a barrier against me.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I’ll explain later. Hurry!”
Something was wrong. I don’t know how I knew, but I was as certain of it as I was of the weight of Little Dumpling in my arms. I took a step back, feeling something inside me that had already been broken break a little more.
“Hurry!” snarled my father.
I took another step backward.
“COME HERE, YOU LITTLE IDIOT!”
As the words exploded out of my father’s enraged face, his face itself changed. His eyes reddened. His skin turned orange. Clothes splitting, the man exploded into Mazrak.
I screamed but once again found that I could not move.
Mazrak lunged toward me. As he did, Keegel Farzym’s protective barrier blazed into a wall of purple light. Mazrak struck it. A crackle of energy threw him backward and he thudded to the ground, howling in rage. But other than angering the monster, the fall had no effect; he was back on his feet in an instant. Raising his arms, he began to chant, his voice low, ferocious, and terrifying.
The purple light of the barrier grew dim, as if losing strength.
Mazrak walked toward it, still chanting.
How long I would have stood there, unable to move, I don’t know. What saved me was Lily grabbing me from behind and pulling me back.
“Jacob!” she screamed. “Jacob, come with me!”
We stumbled and almost fell. Fortunately, Gnarly was right behind her. He put his arms out to support us. Then he helped Lily drag me to the hut.
At the door, Lily plucked Little Dumpling from my arms, then followed closely as Gnarly pulled me inside.
The door slammed shut behind us.
I collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
So I was not the first to spot the place’s unexpected occupant.