Footsteps

THEY say dragons can feel footsteps. It matters not how silent those footsteps may be, for it is said that dragons can feel the shifting of the earth, even if it is but a gentle shifting. The children, and, of course, Arthur and Maude, know very well these stories, and so it is that they travel on the perimeter of Morad with a mounting fear in their hearts. Will they wake the dragons? Will they find themselves in a greater danger than they might ever have faced? Will they have the utmost privilege of bearing witness to the majesty of creatures such as these, a privilege that comes with a dangerous price?

The answers to these questions do not matter at all, dear reader, for Arthur and Maude and the children know they must journey on. They know that passing through the dragon lands of Morad is the only way. They know that the king’s guard, under orders from King Willis to find the magical boy of Fairendale, are coming for them, and to turn back would be to surrender their lives. They must move forward. They must at least try.

Arthur leads the way. He steps carefully, slowly, silently. No one speaks a single word. They are afraid of speaking, you see, for any noise could be the noise that gives them away.  If they could fly through this land, they would, for even the noise of their feet, the shaking of those steps, carries danger. They cannot very well keep the ground from shifting beneath them. Who could?

There are so many children, and they are trying so very hard to be quiet, but children, we well know, are not always skilled at keeping quiet, nor are they always skilled at knowing precisely what quiet means. One has only to recall the experience of slipping out of bed, for one more thing, and immediately being discovered by one’s parents to agree that this is an interesting mystery, indeed.

A dragon’s ear, alas, is even finer tuned than a parent’s.

Arthur leads the children onward toward a shelter. He has chosen a cave. There are many in this land, but this cave is larger than all the others, enough to hold the twenty-four children and the two grown ones. He does not speak his fear aloud, not only because he knows the gift of silence in a land such as this one, but also because he does not want to alarm the children. There could be dragons waiting in that cave. Oh, yes. But perhaps fortune will smile upon them today, as it seems to have smiled upon them in their every attempt to escape danger. This is the hope Arthur carries. Every step, this hope trades places with his fear, so his footsteps sound like this:

Left, right, left, right, left, right. Fear, hope, fear, hope, fear, hope.

Maude brings up the tail end. The children stretch between them. They do not run, hardly even walk, to be precise. They creep, one step after another. The girls do not touch their staffs to the ground, for that would be unnecessary noise. They cradle them in their arms instead. The children think only of what is behind them, hoping that they have gained enough space between them and the danger of the king’s men that they will not be discovered. It is not so very far to the cave before them, but they move so slowly.

Maude, for her part, thinks only of the dragons. Perhaps Arthur, Maude and the children will be permitted this invasion. Perhaps the dragons are reasonable creatures who will listen to their story and agree that they may pass into lands of safety. She looks around the wasteland that has not moved or changed at all in the minutes they have traveled. Not a single sign of life. And this brings another concern to the mind of a woman like Maude. What is it that they will eat? Where will they find water? How will they survive this crossing without sustenance?

And what will they do once they reach the cave? They will not be able to remain in a cave forever. What is it Arthur has planned? Has he planned at all?

She supposes her husband has likely not thought this through in its entirety, but she cannot blame him, reader. For they are all only concerned with the moment, with ensuring safety here and now. They will consider the future when they have reached safety.

And look. They have made it to the mouth of the cave. Maude has caught up to the group, and they are standing in a huddle of sorts. Arthur glances behind them, to make sure no one has followed them. In fact, he looks all around, briefly, with a trained eye that has not been used for some time. It has been many years since he has seen a dragon. He has forgotten how to look.

“I shall go in first,” Arthur whispers, and Maude nods silently. Brave Arthur. He is a good man, a kind man, and, perhaps most importantly, a courageous man. Not many would risk their lives for all these children. But Arthur has risked his life all along the way and now risks his life by walking into a cave.

Caves, you see, are the homes of dragons. He remembers this from his days as a boy, when he would move about in caves, always stepping silently and carefully to ensure there was no danger inside. Sometimes, as a young boy, he found that danger in sleeping form, and he found himself fleeing without a backward glance.

It takes him only a moment, and then Arthur is beckoning them all to enter. “Quickly,” he says. “Let us seek cover.”

It is dark inside the cave. If one could see inside it, one might note how very like the dungeons beneath the dungeons this cave appears. It is dark and cold and damp. These children, who have escaped from the king’s men, face the same sort of sleeping place as the children who did not escape. This, dear reader, is what one might call irony.

One of the girls, a quiet one called Minnie, musters enough magic, though she is tired and starving, to make the tip of her staff glow. The children look around them, but do not see much before Maude, dear Maude, closes a fist over the girl’s staff. “No,” she says. “We must not use light. We cannot risk being discovered.”

Will the children have to live in the dark forever? This is the fear that creeps into all of their hearts. They squint their eyes, but there is nothing to see, for the light lessens the deeper they move into the cave, the further they creep from the mouth. A cave as long as this quickly loses all its light.

“This cave is larger than it first appeared,” Arthur says. The children only know where he is by the sound of his voice. They run their hands against the sides of the cave, feeling their way forward. It grows narrower the deeper they move. “There will be plenty of space for all of us to sleep.”

The children brush up against one another, but they cannot see whose tunic touches whose dress or whose foot steps on theirs or which arm has hooked their elbow, for it is much too dark. They cannot even see the whites of their eyes anymore. It is as if the light has been drained from their world.

“Sit, children,” Arthur says. “You are tired. We must rest for a time.”

In truth, all the children want is a bit of water. If you will remember, they have only just finished running faster than they have, perhaps, ever run in their lives, and their mouths are dry and parched. Arthur seems to sense this, or perhaps he feels the same, for he says, “I will search for some water.” A clinking noise. A step. A whisper.

“It is far too dangerous,” Maude says, and it is so quiet in the cave that all the children hear her.

“It is dangerous to live without water as well,” Arthur whispers. “I must go.”

And then he is gone, and it is Maude bidding the children to lie down and rest.

And they try, dear reader. They certainly do. But, you see, this ground is not the same as their underground home. Their underground home had beds made of straw, at least. Here, the only bed they find is one of rock. The edges prod their backs. For a time, there is only the sound of children trying to find a comfortable position, but soon, they stop trying, for there is no comfortable position when one is lying on cold, hard, knobby rock.

“It is not like our other home,” Hazel whispers into the dark. The children murmur around her.

Her mother finds her hand and squeezes it, though Hazel can only sense that the hand in hers is her mother’s, for she cannot see it. “We will leave for Rosehaven soon,” Maude says. “We have only to stay here until we are sure the way is safe. The king’s men will move on.”

“What about food?” a boy calls from the darkness. “What shall we do for food?”

“Arthur will see to that,” Maude says. “Do not worry about your well being. He has brought us here because he knows this land.”

The children, more than anyone, know the stories of Arthur’s wanderings, for this is how they passed their time underground, with storytelling. Arthur is the greatest of all storytellers, though not one of them can recall hearing any involving dragons or these lands.

“Has he traveled across Morad?” Hazel says.

“Many, many years ago,” Maude says.

“Did he know the dragons?” a girl asks.

“He did not know them,” Maude says. “But they let him pass.”

This gives the children great hopes for their own safe passage, as one might imagine. If Arthur crossed these lands once, and the dragons did not stop him, perhaps they, who are in grave danger, will be permitted to cross. It is this very hope, in fact, that led Arthur to try these lands, for no man would ever think to look here.

“How will we cross the land?” a boy says.

Though Maude would like nothing more than for the children to sleep, for she has worries of her own, she knows that they are frightened, and a child frightened is a child who cannot sleep. So she says, “From cave to cave. We will run on silent feet and hide in the darkness.”

“I do not like the dark,” a girl calls out in a squeaky voice.

“No,” Maude says. “Not many do. But darkness is our safety now, children. At least until we cross these lands.”

Someone’s stomach rumbles. A few of the children laugh. Others weep. They are so very hungry, you see. So thirsty. So afraid.

Hazel is glad her mother’s hand rests on hers. She pulls her head against her mother’s shoulder now. “I do not want to leave Fariendale,” she says. “It is all I have ever known.”

Her mother strokes her hair. “I know, my dear,” Maude says. “But you were born in Rosehaven. You do not remember, but you loved the land once.”

“Is it as lovely as Fairendale?” Hazel says.

“No,” Maude says. “I have never seen a land as lovely as Fairendale, though I have not seen them all. And Fairendale...” She does not finish, but every child here could finish for her. Fairendale is not as lovely as it once was. They have heard the stories from their own parents, you see. Fairendale, as it existed once, practically shimmered with vibrant colors and clear skies. And while it is true that the Fairendale before the king’s roundup wore vibrant colors and beautiful blue skies, it did not shimmer as it had done once upon a time. The land had never known a cloud until King Sebastien took the throne. Some stories say it was his doing, that he did not enjoy the light so much as The Good King Brendon, and that is why clouds crept in. The children have never known this flawless world. They have only known a muted beauty that is, still, lovelier than all other lands.

Fairendale has grown even darker still, now, without the children, but they have not gone back to see it. They do not know what a land becomes without its children.

“But the people of Rosehaven are good people,” Maude says. “They will keep us safe. They will grant us asylum.”

Hazel does not speak again. She is only thinking of Theo. What if they never find Theo? What if he does not know where they have gone? What if he is in the king’s possession?

What if he dies?

She cannot bear to think of her brother’s death. She cannot bear to think of life without him, of magic without him. She does not dare say her thoughts aloud, for she does not want to cause her mother more distress. So she says, instead, “What if we do not ever return to Fairendale?”

“I believe we shall,” Maude says. “In time. In the days of another king, perhaps.”

“A king like Prince Virgil?” Hazel says.

“Perhaps another,” Maude says. Her voice has grown far away, as if she is no longer in the cave but with her husband, who, even now, is stealing back to their cave on legs that belong to a much younger man.

“You must rest, my dear,” Maude says. “I shall wait up for your father. I will guard the way.” She gently pushes her daughter away from her shoulder. Hazel stretches out on the ground, as all the children have done, their feet touching heads, on and on down the line, each of them facing another, but for the last one, a boy called Jasper, whose head points toward the mouth of the cave, though still deep enough inside to be hidden from those who might peer in from the outside.

Soon, the cave will grow much darker, for the sun will be gone, but the children will not notice, for they are very tired—tired enough, even, to sleep on a bed of stone. They do not think of the dark, nor of the stone, nor of what may come tomorrow. They merely sleep, their breaths warming the cave.

No one but Maude hears Arthur return. No one but Maude hears Arthur whisper. “It is growing colder out there. And we are headed north. But I brought us water.” No one but Arthur hears Maude whisper back.

“We will make it, will we not, Arthur? We will make it to Rosehaven. Please tell me we will.”

Only Arthur and Maude hear the silence that stretches between them, summoned by a question that cannot be answered.

***

IN the woods, hidden quite impressively, away from any place one might detect him even if one were skilled in looking, is a man.

He is a young man, clothed in brown and green and all the colors of the forest that turn him invisible to the naked eye. He has donned his cover most skillfully, huddling in the shadows, right out in the open, but one would never notice anything but a stump.

This man is an unknown man. He does not dare move from his cover. He must appear as a stump, if he is to watch the mouth of the cave unnoticed. He must not retreat back into the trees. He must certainly not step over the line. He knows the rules, after all. He knows that no man who desires to live would ever cross this boundary line.

And so he hides. And waits.

He waits for what he knows must come.

For he has seen the print. His kind can see prints from quite a distance away.

It is only a matter of time.

***

IN the heart of the woods, the king’s men have dared remain longer inside the cover of trees than any other man, for they have been given a charge, and they, in truth, feel desperate to find the missing children, for the ones among them who have lives in the village of Fairendale, which is merely a handful of them, want nothing more than to return to their wives and mothers. They are duty bound, and these men, you see, are honorable men, unwilling to break their vows to their king, though their king has stolen some of their children. It is not easy to understand, is it, dear reader? But honor is a strange thing, different for every man. Some believe that honor means fulfilling the duty they have promised another. Some believe that honor means caring for their families. These men, you see, are caught between the two. Fulfilling a duty is what they are doing. Caring for their families is also what they are doing. One might argue that the king’s men are not caring for their families, but in the world of Fairendale, one who works for the king is one who receives all his family needs. Alas, they cannot decide between finding their own children and caring for the family that is left to them. And so they do their duty. They hold to their honor.

They look rather silly cavorting about in their silver breastplates and clunky armor, trying to beat the sun. The men who are strictly soldiers and the men who are also family men have all heard the stories of the dangers that live in these woods, and so they turn stones and climb trees and crawl on their hands and knees, noses near the ground in full soldier dress, for protection, of course (they did not dare take it off, for what if they should meet a creature of the wood?). They search in a fashion that is decidedly hurried and desperate, for they must find their way out before the sun disappears. And the light is fast fading, for the trees loom thick and tall.

The children, it seems, have vanished into thin air. There is not a trace of them, thanks to magic.

Sir Greyson and his men are tired. They have been looking for so long, day after day after day, with nothing new to report to a king who grows angrier by the hour. King Willis, as we know by now, is not a patient man, and he cannot understand why the children have not yet been found, why the king’s men lost them in the first place, though if you remember, the king’s men lost the children because of the disappearance of the king’s own son and a call that divided the soldiers in half.

Every day the children remain missing is another day the children travel farther into the arms of safety, but, to the king’s men, it is another day the guard travels farther from those arms, for the king could very well decide to rid himself of all these men who have failed him. Captain Sir Greyson knows how uncertain his future is. He knows how uncertain his mother’s future is. This is why he continues searching for the missing children, for he does not, truth be told, want to find the children at all. If not for his mother, who suffers from the sugar sickness and is only alive because of the medicine Sir Greyson receives from the castle, he would abandon this search entirely.

Perhaps, if the king could tell Sir Greyson what it is he intends to do with the children, Sir Greyson might change his mind. Or perhaps not. Sir Greyson has always loved children, though he never had any of his own. He has never seen the dungeons beneath the dungeons. He can only imagine how dark and damp and unforgivable a place such as that one can be. He has asked the boy, Calvin, who takes food and water to the children, what it is the boy finds on his descents into these dungeons. Calvin has reported that the children grow more frightened by the day, for no child wants to live forever in a place where they cannot see the very finger that scratches their nose. Sir Greyson knows that the king will not allow captured children to live in comfort until the one with magic is found. And even then, it is not a guarantee that the others will be released.

And so it is that our good captain of the king’s guard does not perform his duties as well as he might, in another circumstance, perform them. He has seen the looks of the villagers. He has seen the way Fairendale has changed since the children disappeared. He has seen the look in his king’s eye, desperate to keep a throne at all costs.

There is mourning and there is darkness and there is greed all around.

Sir Greyson knows what side he wants to be on, what side he would be on, if not for the letter. This morning it arrived from the village healer. His mother would not last much longer, it said. Not without stronger medicine. Not without a return of the light. And the light will not return without the children. He does not know this for certain, but a man can sense these kinds of things.

Tell me, dear reader, what is it you would do? Leave the children to their escape, ensuring your mother’s death, or find them, hoping that you will be able to save them yet?

So it is that Sir Greyson continues his duty. So it is that he orders his men to continue looking under every stone and tree and crack of the earth. So it is that they search for a piece, just a tiny trace of the missing children to lend all the king’s men hope and relief.

Meanwhile, the day passes on and night hastens toward them.

Sir Greyson looks around at his men. There is his second in command, Sir Merrick, a good man with a daughter who disappeared. There is his rear guard, a man who lost three children in the roundup. There is the man whose wife has not risen from her bed since the day his baby girl was taken. He can see how defeated they are. He can sense how very near they have come to giving up. He has noticed their surreptitious glances toward the village, where everything they love waits for men who may or may not return at the end of day.

“Sir,” says Sir Merrick.

Sir Greyson turns to him. “Yes, Sir Merrick?” he says. Sir Merrick points toward the sky. Sir Greyson had not noticed, before now, how dark it had become.

“We must move from these woods soon,” Sir Merrick says.

Yes. They must. He nods at Sir Merrick, who lets out a long whistle. The men turn to face Sir Greyson and Sir Merrick, their armor clanking and ringing with a noise that echoes through the woods and makes the silence within the trees seem ever more dangerous.

Sir Greyson lets out a long breath. The king would not be pleased that they had found nothing this day, but he cannot risk keeping his men in the forest after sundown. He lifts his voice loud enough to be heard by the men at the outer edges. “Hear me, men!” he says. They stand silently, looking toward their captain. They trust Sir Greyson completely, these men, for he is a good man. A good man is a good leader. “We must return to the castle. The sun will not light the way much longer.” The men involuntarily shiver, a sound that spreads through the wood like a clanging of muted bells. The men know that dusk is the most magical time of all, when eyes could play tricks on minds and one could not know whether what one was seeing was real or imagined until it was too late. The woods had been known to keep grown men, not just children. They have heard about the horrors that crawl from their daytime hiding places. They know about the imps and trolls and creatures that cannot be named, for no name even exists to describe them.

The men begin to mount their horses, sending up a great roar of armor lifting up and out and catching at the top of the boughs as if no sound is permitted to leave the cover of trees. They ready their horses for running, which they will, now, have to do in order to beat the dusk.

And in the middle of all the noise comes a small voice, almost too small to be heard, snaking into Sir Greyson’s ear.

“Here,” it says.

“What was that?” Sir Greyson says to his men. They, too, stop to listen. “Did someone speak?”

The men look around, not one of them claiming the voice Sir Greyson heard.

“Here,” the voice says again. “Footprints.”

Sir Greyson turns toward the place from where the voice seems to come. But there is nothing. No one.

And then Sir Merrick says, “There.”

He points. Sir Greyson follows his arm. Off to the side, emerging from a cloud of sorts, though it is, perhaps, only fog gathering in the light of dusk, is a small, bent old woman.

A old sorceress, perhaps. Sir Greyson has never seen one quite so old. But her face, its lines and its nose and its gleaming, hungry eyes, remind him of pictures he has seen in story books.

“Leave us, old woman,” Sir Greyson says. “We must be on our way.”

“But they are here,” the old woman says. Her eyes, the bluest eyes he has ever seen, reach into his and pull, pull, pull, until he cannot look away. Sir Greyson can feel the eyes of his men trained on him, can feel the eyes of the woman drawing him closer. She is ugly and old and bent in two, undesirable in every way but for those blue eyes that remind him so much of his queen’s.

It is not Queen Clarion. She is much too old, much too bent. It is an illusion. Sir Greyson tries to turn away, but her spell, if that is what she has stretched around him, will not permit him such an easy escape.

“The children are here,” the old woman says.

“Where?” Sir Merrick calls out. He, it seems, has not been bewitched at all. His wits are still about him. “Where are they?”

Behind him, Sir Greyson can feel his men breathing hard. They are anxious to leave these woods. They are anxious to keep their lives, truth be told, and the forest does not promise their lives at all.

Sir Greyson cannot turn, cannot order them to leave, cannot move at all. He is held by a blinding blue.

Sir Merrick climbs from his horse, places his hand on his captain’s shoulder. “Where, woman?” Sir Merrick says.

She points to the ground, her eyes leaving Sir Greyson’s for a moment. He backs away. “Here,” she says.

Sir Merrick bends over the spot where the woman has pointed. Yes. There it is. A footprint. How is it that they missed this? How is it that they could not see this flattened grass, this raised dirt, this proof that someone has walked here? Sir Greyson looks, too, and suddenly he sees them all, so many footprints, so many marks, so many children, running all in the same direction.

The children. They have found the children.

The old woman cackles. Sir Greyson’s armor clatters as he startles, so lost was he in thought. Have they really found the children? Have they really found a way? How is it that they can leave now? He looks at his men, up at the sky, back toward the prints.

“The footprints of children and those who wish to protect them,” the old woman says, “can only be seen by the light of the moon.”

She points to the sky. Sir Greyson and all his men look up. Yes, the moon has uncovered its light. It reaches fingers down, into the woods, illuminating all the prints. The forest has grown suddenly and unexpectedly dark. A wolf howls. The trees come rustling alive, and by alive, it might surprise you that I mean they open their eyes. A fog grows behind all the king’s men, obscuring their way forward.

Sir Greyson does the only thing he can think to do. He flings his sword into the ground, the hilt pointed in the direction the footprints lead, and then swings a foot over his saddle and sits heavily down.

He and his men race from the forest to the music of an old woman cackling, a wolf howling, and unknown terrors beating in pursuit.