Thorn Ogres of Hagwood Read online

  “Did you see what happened to your brother? Who or what committed this fiendish crime?”

  Bufus shook his head wretchedly.

  “Why did you not tell anyone where you and Mufus were headed?” Irvinn asked.

  The boy lifted his tearstained face and in an angry voice replied, “We did! We told ’em right enough. Lufkin knew we wanted to go to the heath; we’d said so. He should have come fetched us, but he didn’t. He was supposed to. We didn’t know no better!”

  The eyes of the councillors fell upon Finnen Lufkin, and Bufus’s father spluttered, “It’s his fault! His fault my son’s dead!”

  Mr. Doolan sprang to his feet and started lurching across the chamber with his fists clenched, but his wife pleaded with him and grabbed at his arm. Leaping from her seat, Liffidia yelled in her friend’s defense and Tollychook gabbled in dismay. The ceremonial hammer rapped a brisk tattoo upon the table as Diffi Maffin called for order to be restored. Throughout this uproar Finnen remained silent and still, avoiding all their glances.

  When a brittle calm had settled, Irvinn Goilok called, “Finnen Lufkin, step up.”

  The hero of the werling children rose, and with his arm still in a sling, he stood before them.

  Lacing his spindly fingers together, Terser Gibble eyed him coldly.

  “Is it true?” Benwin Ortle asked. “Did the Doolan twins tell you they wanted to go to the heath?”

  “They did,” came his plain answer.

  Mr. Doolan rumbled threateningly and Liffidia called out, “But they wanted to see the holly fence as well! We all thought that’s where they were headed, not just Finnen.”

  “One more outburst from you, young Nefyn,” Mr. Goilok snapped, “and you will be told to leave.”

  Yoori Mattock took up the questioning.

  “Do you also admit that you purposely wasted precious time with an unknown vagrant?”

  Finnen stared Mr. Mattock straight in the eye. “We weren’t wasting time!” he said impatiently. “Last night the Wandering Smith told us of the High Lady in the Hollow Hill...”

  “What ails the lad?” Mistress Maffin exclaimed. “We are not here to discuss such things. What have they to do with us?”

  “Everything!” Finnen replied, his temper simmering. “There’s something big going on out there. It was the servants of the Lady Rhiannon who killed Mufus. The Smith is the only one who can save us. If he fails, then there’ll be more murders and nowhere will be safe. We ought to be out there helping him.”

  The council members covered their ears.

  “Silence!” Yoori shouted. “We will hear no more. It is now plain to see where the impressionable minds in your charge learn their prattling falsehoods. How dare you utter such wicked lies about the royal folk of the Hill! What mania is in you, lad? I had heard that you were one to be trusted and had much respect. I cannot guess how you acquired such a reputation, for you are nothing but an idler and a lying coward. Is it any wonder the Doolan children desired their own company, away from you?”

  Mr. Mattock turned to Terser Gibble, who was still considering Finnen down his long nose, the nostrils of which were slowly dilating and shrinking in time to the pulse of his thoughts.

  “Master Gibble,” Yoori entreated, “I look to you for guidance in this matter. It is evident that the blame of this tragedy lies with the Lufkin lad, but it is a muddy affair, made none the clearer for the willful deceits told by himself and his companions. What course shall we take?”

  Finnen could not believe them. “Why aren’t you listening?” he cried. “If something isn’t done, if the High Lady isn’t got rid of—then nothing will ever be the same again. Wergling won’t keep us safe from the poison-tipped arrows of her soldiers. Her power is spreading!”

  “What has happened to our young folk?” Irvinn Goilok asked in sorry bemusement.

  The nostrils in Terser Gibble’s nose winked shut as he took a sharp breath and left his seat.

  “As for the Nefyn girl,” the tutor remarked, speaking aloud for the first time during the whole of the meeting, “she suffers from lack of discipline and needs to feel the rod against her back. A sound thrashing never hurt anybody. That will curb her pert impudence and ensure her loyalty does not get misplaced again. Tollychook Umbelnapper, however, is too clod-stupid to know any better and has merely fallen in with the wrong company.”

  Striding around the table, Master Gibble licked his mottled teeth and considered Finnen with the utmost distaste.

  “For you see,” he said, wearing a face of vinegar, “there has flourished in our midst a most hideous criminal, an assassin of all that we cherish and hold dear. I speak, of course, of the nauseating worm that is Finnen Lufkin!”

  Master Gibble revolved on his heel, then pointed an accusing finger at the boy, and his beady eyes flashed with enmity.

  “There really isn’t time for this,” Finnen said, ripping the sling away and throwing both hands in the air. “Some of us should go back into the forest and see if the Smith is still there. If he’s managed to destroy Her then we can go on wergling into mice and frogs till we fall over, but if he hasn’t then we have to know so we can prepare ourselves!”

  “Never have I known such perfidy!” Terser Gibble ranted, shouting the boy into silence. “A viper in our bosom, that’s what he is! A most heinous and obdurate poltroon, a mucid abscess that must be cut from our bodies, and I, Terser Gibble, shall denounce and expose this impenitent, obscene outrage to you all! Behold the vile dissembler; see what foulness he has been perpetrating!”

  The tutor’s hands snatched a small leather bag from Finnen’s belt and, with a toss of his head, emptied the contents onto the floor.

  Out fell the chippings Finnen had taken from the Silent Grove, and uttering a dismal groan, the boy closed his eyes. His horrible secret was out.

  Gamaliel Tumpin awoke at noon. His dreams had been dark and troubled, but the sleep had refreshed him, and he now felt ready for the day.

  Stretching in his untidy bed of moss and straw, he whimpered at the pain in his shoulder and peeped under the fresh bandage his mother had placed there.

  “I’ll have a whopping scar,” he observed, pulling a face. “Still, the Smith knew what he was doing. Just a dull ache now.”

  Gazing round his messy bedchamber, he smiled at the sight of his crowded collections, but the pleasure fell instantly from his face when he remembered that Mufus Doolan was dead.

  The Doolans always had teased him, and Gamaliel often had wished that they would go away, but never had he wished for anything like this to happen to either of them. A mild, irrational guilt washed over him, and he reenacted the previous night in his mind. At the time it had all flashed by so quickly, and after the encounter with Frighty Aggie he hadn’t even given them a second thought.

  But there were other things to think about. Everything the Smith had told them was still bright and terrible in his memory, and he looked around for his clothes so that he could go and discuss it with the others.

  In just a few minutes he was hopping up the passage, pulling his shoes on, when he heard a sound that made him falter and stumble.

  It was coming from Kernella’s room. She was crying.

  Puzzled, for he did not realize that his sister had been especially fond of Mufus Doolan, he ventured to her doorway and peeped inside.

  Kernella Tumpin’s chamber was neat and spartan. The moss of her bed was mingled with sweetly scented leaves and the dried petals of last autumn’s flowers, and the crackly mixture was plumped and pushed into the corner every morning. Two large baskets contained her neatly folded clothes, and consigned to the orderly shelves were the neglected rag dolls and trinkets of her childish past.

  With her face in her hands, she sat on a stool, weeping and sniveling. She did not hear her brother enter until he announced his presence by coughing.

  Normally Kernella would have scolded him for invading her room, and Gamaliel prepared himself for a verbal bashing, but the girl merely
lifted her head and sobbed all the more.

  Gamaliel had never seen her so upset. His first anxious thought was that something awful had happened to their parents during the night.

  “It’s Finnen!” Kernella wailed, dispelling his instinctive fears. “Oh...it’s too...oh!”

  “What about him?” her brother demanded. “Is he all right?”

  Kernella shook her head and blew her nose. “Nooo,” she whined. “He lied to me. He lied to everyone!”

  Gamaliel knelt before her. “Why? What’s gone on?”

  “He was cheatin’ the whole time!” she cried. “It’s so awful an’ nasty, what he done. It makes me sick! I hate him—I hate him!”

  “Kernella!” Gamaliel exclaimed. “You’re not making sense. What did he do?”

  The girl sobbed a little more, then took heaving breaths. “He weren’t no better at wergling than the rest of us,” she eventually declared, mopping her eyes. “Weren’t cleverer or gifted at all. He was going to the Silent Grove and stealing slivers of wood from the trees to increase his wergle powers. Oh, Gamaliel, he were chewin’ and eatin’ them. It’s so disgusting—how could he?”

  Gamaliel drew back, aghast.

  “That’s revolting,” he murmured. “It can’t be true. Finnen wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  Wringing her hands, Kernella began crying all over again.

  “But he did!” she blubbed. “Master Gibble saw him. There was a meetin’ of the council this mornin’, and he emptied Finnen’s bag on the floor. It were full of shavings and splinters. He’s been deceivin’ everyone and has made a complete fool out of me.”

  Gamaliel drew himself up; he did not know what to do or how to feel. Finnen’s crime appalled him, but the longer he thought about it the more he understood the reason. If anyone knew about the pressures of wergling instruction, Gamaliel did. Had he known about the powers that the wood of the Silent Grove possessed, would he have resisted the temptation? He was not certain.

  “You don’t hate Finnen really,” he told his sister. “He couldn’t help himself, and once he started he wasn’t able to stop. No one would let him alone. He never pushed himself forward or said he was the best. We did that; we were always doing it. He never had a chance.”

  Kernella sniffed. “Don’t matter if I hate him or not,” she mumbled. “Too late now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The council,” she said, her words tumbling out. “When they heard what he’d done, they were so horrified that they sentenced him to exile. Finnen’s been banished—sent over the Hagburn. He were only allowed to say goodbye to his nan, then he had to go. Mother and Father are with her now, poor old thing. Oh, it was hideous, Gamaliel. Word had got out about what he’d done and how he was to blame for Mufus’s death as well. There was a crowd. Some folk threw stones. I’ll never forget the look on his face. It was so hurt, so unhappy, and that’s the last I ever saw of him. I’ll never see Finnen Lufkin again!”

  In a turmoil, Gamaliel could hardly believe what she was saying. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me? I should have been there. I could have done something.”

  “It was over so quick,” his sister explained wretchedly. “If I’d have come up here, I’d have missed his going as well.”

  Gamaliel’s eyes were stinging with the threat of his own tears. “That’s not fair,” he muttered. “Just not fair. The council didn’t have to do that. It’s mean and cruel!”

  The injustice of the elders’ decision stunned him, but swiftly his simmering resentment boiled into anger, and Gamaliel Tumpin thumped the wall in frustration.

  “I won’t have it!” he shouted. “Finnen saved all our lives last night. I don’t care what else he’s done, I’m not letting him go off like that without so much as a word of thanks.”

  Kernella stared at him in surprise. That didn’t sound like her useless little brother talking. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going after him,” he said, charging determinedly from her room. “He’s got to know that I’m still his friend.”

  Kernella leaped from the stool and sent it rolling over the floor as she scurried after him.

  “But you can’t!” she yelled, running up the passageway to the main living chamber.

  Gamaliel was already climbing down the oak when she reached the entrance and popped her head outside.

  “It’s forbidden,” she called down to him. “No one’s permitted to even talk to Finnen now. Do you hear me? It’s the law!”

  Leaping onto the ground far below, her brother glanced up at her and shouted, “Nuts and pips to the law!”

  “Gamaliel!” she cried. “Gamaliel! It’s too dangerous!”

  But he was not listening. Gamaliel Tumpin hurried through the woodland—heading straight for the Hagburn.

  Close to the oak in which the Tumpins lived, a magnificent wych elm provided dwellings for five other werling families, including the Doolans.

  Sitting high in the branches, Bufus was gazing absently into space and thinking of his late brother. When Gamaliel came storming down the nearby oak, the Doolan boy heard Kernella’s warning and he ground his teeth together. As well as the members of the council, he had managed to convince himself that Finnen was responsible for Mufus’s death. The sight of that stupid Gammy marching off to go and speak to the despicable criminal was more than he could stand.

  “No you don’t, Gammy!” Bufus spat as he scrambled from his perch. “Gibble’s going to know about this. He’ll stop you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Betrayal

  FINNEN LUFKIN PICKED HIS way through the dense forest, trying his best not to think about what had happened that morning. Yet still his face burned with shame. Terser Gibble had utterly humiliated him, and a stone flung by one of the Doolans’ cousins had struck him painfully on the ear.

  “Well, it’s in the past now,” he told himself. “I won’t be going back there. I can’t.”

  In the dull daylight the crowded trees did not seem quite as sinister as they had the night before, but it remained an uneasy, unsettling place. The buckled, jostling forms were even uglier now that he could see them properly. They were either bare and black or smothered in a livid lichen that was a sickly greenish color.

  Above him many of the writhing, interlocked branches were still naked of bud and leaf, and their crazed limbs formed a low, cracked ceiling through which the cloud-covered sun barely penetrated. When spring eventually found its way to the forest, Finnen wondered if, after the leaves opened, a perpetual dark would descend.

  Like an endless series of caves, he thought. A tree-lined mine where nuggets of emerald shine in the roof on the sunniest days. Well, I’ve got the rest of my life to see if I’m right—if I last that long in here.

  Pensively sucking his bottom lip, he returned his full attention to the way ahead. He had been trying to find the route that the Wandering Smith had taken when he returned the werlings to their homes. Finnen was anxious to know what had happened after the Pucca had left the Silent Grove. It was a futile hope, for the Smith would most certainly have moved on, but the boy had nowhere else to go.

  Pressing further into that wild realm, as the land began to rise steadily, he found that he had strayed onto the lower slopes of a hill that rose above the encompassing trees. Nettles and bracken grew over its ridges, and it was crowned by a single chestnut tree. Finnen thought it would be an excellent vantage point from which to survey the land.

  Struggling through the thick weeds, he climbed to the summit and, standing on tiptoe, viewed the forest roof.

  The vastness of Hagwood stretched in all directions. Glancing back westward he saw how far he had already marched. The pleasant treescape of his former home marked the edge of that ancient woodland, and beyond that was an empty wilderness that rose to the barren hills on the horizon.

  It was too painful for Finnen to look on the familiar oaks of that land he had been forbidden ever to set
foot on again, and so he bent his gaze south.

  A sheer green wall reared up in the distance, denying any intrusion from the mobbing forest. It was the holly fence.

  Finnen grimaced. There was no way he would approach that foul place again, but the Smiths camp had lain upon the far side of Frighty Aggie’s gruesome abode, and so he would be forced to circle around it.

  The eastern edge of Hagwood was obscured beneath a blanket of pale mist, but he thought he could discern the faint shape of some remote tower revealed in the drifting vapor.

  Turning again, Finnen cast his eyes briefly to the north, where the huge green hump of the Hollow Hill dominated the skyline. Today his perception of that grassy upland was colored by the bloody histories the Smith had told him, and it appeared a menacing, brooding thing. Was the Lady Rhiannon lying dead within its halls? Surely there would be some outward sign.

  A gang of crows croaked in the slate gray sky, and the boy suddenly felt alone and observed.

  He had seen enough. Threading his way back down his own, humbler hill, he resumed his journey.

  Keeping the holly fence as far as possible on his right, Finnen began to skirt around it. But he had not gone very far when he became aware of a great disturbance ahead.

  Finnen hesitated. The forest was in uproar. There was a din of many trampling feet crashing through the dead, stalky undergrowth, and coarse voices were braying and yelling at one another.

  The werling was not close enough to understand what those brutish cries said, but he could hear the hatred behind them.

  Cautiously he continued on his way, scooting from tree to tree, gradually realizing that the creators of the noise were heading his way.

  All too soon Finnen caught the aggressive words, but it was still a little while before he grasped their meaning. Then, through the crooked hornbeams ahead, he saw two grotesque, briar-crested creatures lumber into sight, and knew that they could only be servants of the High Lady.

  Finnen had never seen anything like the thorn ogres before, but he guessed that those monsters were responsible for Mufus’s murder.