War in Hagwood Read online

  The children looked at one another awkwardly.

  “You can’t take him,” Kernella hissed at her brother when she saw his stern expression soften. “He’ll betray us the first chance he gets. Remember what he did before!”

  “But look at him,” Gamaliel said. “Could you really abandon him?”

  Kernella stated that she could, very easily, and so did Bufus.

  “Please!” Master Gibble implored through his sobs. “Just for a little way. I’m not made for abject solitude; I have been so very, very lonely—I cannot endure it another moment longer.”

  “You’ve only been out here a few days!” Bufus reminded him scornfully.

  “And they have been the worst of my life!” he answered. “You cannot know how interminably long each hour becomes when you are utterly alone, how the desolate moments crawl by. Let me walk with you; I can raid other squirrel hoards and fetch more food for the journey. I will do anything you ask, only do not forsake me.”

  Bufus folded his arms. “We can do that ourselves, Flatbonce,” he said. “And we can still wergle, so we’d be better at it than you.”

  “Leave him,” Kernella agreed.

  Gamaliel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That isn’t what Finnen would do,” he said at last. “He’d bring him along, even though he knows Master Gibble hates him.”

  “That’s ’cos Lufkin is stooopid!” Bufus said, rapping his knuckles against his temple.

  Kernella wavered. Her brother was right. Her beloved Finnen wouldn’t leave the old tutor out here on his own.

  Master Gibble pawed at Gamaliel’s arm. “Take me to Finnen Lufkin,” he cried. “Let me beg his forgiveness. I’m changed—I’m not the vain, selfish creature I was. I swear it, by the mighty beech of the Gibbles in the Silent Grove I swear it.”

  “Oh, come on then!” Gamaliel said, shaking him off. “But no lagging behind, and if you run off, we’ll not come looking. Just do exactly what we tell you.”

  “I am undeserving of your kindness and favor,” the tutor sniveled, rising to his feet once more.

  Bufus groaned. He thought the Tumpins were too soft and he found Gibble’s lightning changes of mood irritating.

  “Too right you’re undeserving,” he told him. “You may have conned this daft pair, but I’m keeping my eye on you, Dribble. I don’t trust you and never will.”

  Master Gibble clapped his hands together in delight. “Even your scathing mistrust is a music to my empty ears!” he laughed, performing a spindly sort of dance. “Now let us be off, together—intrepid werlings of Hagwood! Where are we bound?”

  Bufus and Kernella looked questioningly at Gamaliel.

  “‘High upon the haunted crag,’” he said, repeating the line from Gwyddion’s poem.

  Master Gibble’s elation collapsed. He jerked his head nervously. “How very inviting,” he mumbled in a voice of lead.

  “Where’s that then?” Bufus asked.

  “I’m sure it’s the Witch’s Leap,” Gamaliel answered. “When I was standing on that … the Devil’s Table, I saw it in the distance.”

  “And that’s where Finnen will be?” his sister asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know, but I think that’s where the final great battle will be fought. According to the prophecy, that’s where the end is going to take place.”

  “End?” Master Gibble inquired with caution. “What end would that be?”

  “The end of the High Lady’s reign, or the end of everything else,” came the stark reply.

  The wergle master smiled weakly. “How you’re spoiling me,” he simpered without enthusiasm.

  They pressed on through the mounting darkness. Bufus tried to keep them cheerful by regaling them with tales of the worst pranks he and his late brother had played on people. Only Kernella giggled. Many of those practical jokes had centered on Master Gibble. He pretended to be insulted, but it was good to think of happier times and even his long face was lifted by occasional smiles. Gamaliel, however, had grown very quiet, and his forehead slowly creased with worry about what lay ahead.

  Bufus reached the end of a story in which he and his brother, Mufus, had lain in wait for the elderly Diffi Maffin and emptied a sack of slugs onto her white hair, and then gave a heavy sigh.

  “I miss him,” he breathed. “Every moment of the day. We were going to do so many things together: put hedgehog poo in Mrs. Umbelnapper’s pasties and see if Chookface noticed the difference, nail up the door of old Granny Lufkin’s place with her still inside …” His voice trailed off sadly.

  “The Silent Grove will keep Mufus safe till your time comes to join him,” Master Gibble said in as gentle a voice as he could manage.

  Bufus thought of the previous night by the Pool of the Dead, where he had spoken with the ghost of his twin, but he kept it to himself and hastily wiped his eyes.

  It was Kernella who broke the ensuing silence.

  “I miss home,” she said. “I wonder what everyone is doing right now? Mum and Dad must be worried sick, what with me and Gamaliel going off without a word.”

  “I don’t reckon we’ll ever see our folks again,” Bufus said flatly. “According to Nest, one of us definitely won’t, and there’s no chance we’ll even make it to the Silent Grove after the other two snuff it.”

  Kernella pulled an unhappy face. She knew he was probably right. She would have given anything to be back in the Tumpin Oak with her parents, but they were far away and she felt the pain of that keenly. She turned to their old tutor and asked, “You know lots about the history of us werlings, don’t you?”

  “Indeed I do,” Master Gibble answered. “There are few who are as learned as I.”

  “Don’t set him off,” Bufus grumbled.

  “I just wanted to hear something about home, something to make it feel closer,” Kernella explained. “There must be lots of stories we’ve never heard.”

  “Are you requesting a lesson?” Master Gibble asked in astonishment.

  “Not a lesson, you noseless twit!” Bufus said crossly. “Did you land on your head when you fell out of that tree?”

  “Just a story,” Kernella repeated. “Make yourself useful and tell us something comforting about our kind, something to take my mind off this horrible tangled part of the forest. Every shadow might have a monster lurking in it.”

  “There probably is,” Bufus muttered.

  Master Gibble considered for a moment. “A tidbit of history, perhaps?” he ventured. “How the first werlings came to settle in our humble corner?”

  “That would be okay,” she said.

  Bufus groaned. “I can’t believe you just asked Yawnface to drone on at us,” he said to Kernella. “You want him to bore us to death?”

  The tutor pursed his lips and steepled his fingers beneath them.

  “It was a time of darkness and danger,” he began.

  “That’s not very cheery,” Kernella rebuked him. “This is a time of darkness and danger—right now!”

  “It was when the wars with the troll witches were at their height,” he continued. “None could withstand them. They sought to destroy every faerie realm, stealing their secret magics to add to their own. They were savage and without mercy; their powers were mighty and they grew stronger with each conquest. One by one the lesser kingdoms fell. Hills and fortresses, woodland hamlets, and cave towns were blasted by their fearsome arts. Countless were slain, but the survivors fled to the Hollow Hill to seek refuge with the High King. There were many different tribes and races—some had once been enemies, but all quarrels were forgotten when they united against the one true foe, Black Howla and her haggish host.”

  He paused and saw with satisfaction that he had her complete attention and she was eager for him to continue.

  “The fathers of our fathers’ fathers’ fathers, and quite a few more fathers beyond that, ca
me from a green land near to one small kingdom. The marauding troll witches drove them from that place, so what remained of our people joined the straggling troop of the dispossessed in the Hill.”

  Kernella gasped. “We once lived in the Hollow Hill? We were lordly folk?”

  Master Gibble tutted at her. “Not everyone who dwells in there is of noble blood,” he said. “Remember, there are servants and cooks and grooms and drudges and many strange creatures without title or lineage. We too were on the lowest step of that society, and in those far-off days, we had not yet discovered the art of wergling. We were just a small race of no importance.”

  “So we was goblet washers and muck shovelers,” Bufus butted in. “No better than slaves, then.”

  “But we were slaves in the middle of a war,” the tutor said. “The Hill became an island besieged by Black Howla’s terrifying hag army. It was a fearful time to live through.”

  “So what happened?” Kernella demanded. “How did we get from there to our little wood?”

  Terser Gibble gave a jerk of the head. “It was actually an ancestor of Finnen Lufkin, Channin Luffud, who saved us. He volunteered to act as a spy out in the forest and discovered many of Black Howla’s secrets. His daring and courage was so great and he performed such heroic deeds that, when the War was finally over, the High King told him to name his reward. Channin asked for a grant of land at the western edge of the forest and for his people to be released from servitude and for them to be left quite alone and forgotten. Hide and be safe, that was always our motto.”

  “And Finnen is descended from him?” the girl cried. “I might have guessed.”

  Bufus grimaced. “I’m going to throw up,” he muttered.

  “And so the High King generously instructed all record of our people to be erased and we were not to be spoken of again, so that we might pass out of memory. Then, in his far-sighted wisdom, he gave Channin Luffud one last gift, which he said would aid us in our desire to remain out of sight and out of mind.”

  “What was it?” Kernella asked.

  “A velvet pouch containing a score of enchanted beechnuts. Channin did not know how they would help keep our race secret, but he planted them in the new land beyond the Hagburn and thus the Silent Grove came into being.”

  “What a steaming dollop of bullfinch doings,” Bufus said.

  Master Gibble looked affronted. “I have read the parchments and scrolls kept in the council chamber!” he declared. “They are older than the towering elm in which your family dwells!”

  “Don’t prove nothing,” the boy argued. “Just a load of old lies and … well, faerie stories.”

  “What about the wergling?” Gamaliel asked abruptly. “When did we learn to do that?”

  Master Gibble smiled, greatly pleased. He had managed to engage each of them. He was still capable of commanding an audience’s attention, in spite of his heinous crime and disheveled appearance. For the first time in days, he began to feel good about himself.

  “The very first spring, the beech saplings put forth their flowers,” he answered. “That was when the first true wergle occurred, without warning. Hamjin Fepple had been hunting mice all morning and, as he rested beneath the beech’s catkins, he drifted off to sleep and dreamed he was running with them. When he awoke, he had sprouted whiskers and a tail. Of course, it was a very crude and rudimentary transformation by our standards, but it was the beginning. Over the years, we learned how to master that skill and hide from the world most successfully, until—”

  “Until those thorn ogres killed my brother,” Bufus interrupted grimly.

  “But the wergling,” Gamaliel pressed. “How did we learn? How did we know what we could and couldn’t change into?”

  “Mostly trial and error and common sense,” Master Gibble replied in his old, familiar lecturing tone. “Those early werglers found they could only change into animals that were roughly the same size as themselves. And they learned, to their cost, that some shapes cannot be undone, such as insects, for the few werling masters who dared to do so forgot their true selves and could not change back. Only the greatest wergler of them all, Agnilla Hellekin, succeeded. Several times she wergled into diverse crawling shapes. Then, at last she was trapped, caught in a nightmarish mongrel form of wasp and spider, from which there was no escape, and her mind was broken. Since that day, Frighty Aggie has been a grave warning to anyone who might be thinking of doing such a thing.”

  “Frighty Aggie, sting not me,” Kernella whispered with a shudder as she recalled the old nursery song.

  “What about wergling other things?” Gamaliel asked. “Not insects or animals, but … oh, I don’t know … flowers or stones, things like that.”

  Bufus snorted with laughter. “Only Gammy would ask such a daft question!” he cried.

  Kernella shook her head at the absurdity of her brother.

  “We must never disrespect our great gift,” Gibble concluded with a tut. “We must adhere to the rules—or pay the price. We must never flout them, like Finnen Lufkin did when he cheated.”

  There was a silence. Kernella scrunched up her face. She wished Finnen had not done that horrible thing. Bufus fell back to brooding about his brother and Terser Gibble was doing his best to look impressive and knowledgeable but, with the strip of cloth bound about his face, he looked simply ludicrous. As for Gamaliel, he was thinking about wergling into something far more dangerous than anything anyone else had ever attempted and the dread of it made him shiver.

  “Wait!” the tutor hissed suddenly. “What was that?”

  Everyone listened.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Kernella said, after a few moments had elapsed. “What did you think you—”

  She gasped and jumped into the air. The ground was trembling.

  Bufus and Gamaliel spun around and saw that the trees were quivering. A deep rumble of grinding stone was echoing through the earth.

  “Beeches spare me!” Master Gibble shrieked as he staggered from side to side.

  “What’s happening?” Kernella cried.

  Overhead the leaves shone brightly with a silvery green light that came flooding over the forest.

  “It’s the end of everything!” Master Gibble howled.

  “Bring it on!” Bufus yelled above the din.

  “It can’t be the end,” Gamaliel told himself hopelessly. “I know what I have to do now. It can’t end before then—I just need a bit more time!”

  * Chapter 12 *

  Gabbity and Grimditch

  WHEN THE GOBLIN NURSEMAID LEFT Lord Fanderyn that afternoon with a skip in her step and a wonky tune on her warty lips, she had visited the abandoned royal nursery. There, she spent a good while searching through large wooden trunks and reminiscing over the things she found. The old toys of King Ragallach’s three children filled her mind with swarming memories. Holding them close, she could almost hear the happy voices of the past surround her.

  Eventually, she tore herself away and, laden with a bundle of clothing and a pail of green milk from the dairy, returned to the High Lady’s private chamber where she discovered Grimditch leaning into the cradle.

  “Get away from there, you nasty bogle!” she cried, laying her burdens down. “Caught you trying to steal my dumpy dainty’s life glow—ha! Keep your scavenging paws off him!”

  “Me weren’t pilfering nowt!” Grimditch protested. “Me was keepin’ his grooly dreams at bay.”

  “A graspy starveling like you?” she cried in disbelief. “I’ll give you grooly dreams what need keeping at bay!”

  Flapping her hands in front of her, she slapped Grimditch’s clean-shaven face and, with an onslaught of blows, drove him back to the table.

  Grimditch yelped and leaped away. The goblin’s big hands delivered painful smacks on his bare skin and he jumped clean over the table to escape them, running along the wooden ches
ts and then bouncing onto the High Lady’s bed.

  Gabbity screeched in outrage. “How dare you be on there!” she yelled. “Come here so I can thump your ears!”

  The barn bogle responded by hurling a pillow at her, followed by another and another. Then he scrambled up the bed curtains and swung from the rail like a monkey—which infuriated her even more.

  “Come down this very moment!” she fumed. “M’Lady will hear of this. She’ll deal with you!”

  It was then the hammering began. The terrible smiting clamor as the key was destroyed reverberated through the Hollow Hill and the barn bogle loosed his grip and dropped back onto the bed.

  Gabbity stared fearfully around her. The quarrel was at once forgotten and the dread of that forbidding sound united them.

  “What be that racket then, missus?” Grimditch asked. “An’ why do it bite through old Grimditch’s bones so?”

  “I don’t know what that be,” the goblin nursemaid answered in a wavering voice. “But my prickling thumbs tell me it’s spelling the end of summat—summat big and grand and glorious. Just hark at it clanging and clashing.”

  Frozen by the awful sound, they wondered what was happening and then a new noise began that caused both of them to spring forward. In the cradle, the human infant was crying.

  The pair of them rushed over and Gabbity lifted the child in her arms.

  “Hush now,” she soothed. “’Tis only a tuneless old bell that some fool is bashing. Don’t you let it scare you none, my pudgy duck.”

  The child wept and struggled in her embrace. Grimditch leaned over and stroked the infant’s golden head then started to sing to him once more. The sobs subsided and the little lordling returned to his deep sleep.

  Gabbity looked at the barn bogle in surprise. As she regarded him, the fierce hammering ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The silence seemed to throb in their ears.