Dark Waters of Hagwood Read online

  Down into a snarl of bone and slithering weed, the blade went clattering, and before Finnen could retrieve it, the huge head of the candle sprite came rushing for him.

  “Look out!” Kernella yelled in warning.

  The boy rolled forward just as the monster’s jaws crashed into the bones, plowing clean through them and smashing into the wall beyond with a force so terrible that the entire cave shook and Kernella fell to her knees.

  Anxiously, she glanced around. Had Finnen survived? To her relief she saw him sprawled a little distance away, his frightened face pale and drained. Already the creature was rearing back, shaking the bones from its mouth; the many silver eyes of its misshapen head locked upon him.

  The repulsive slits in the horn of gristle were screaming hideously, gloating as the webbed claws came reaching and the hellish light blazed ever brighter.

  Finnen was cornered; there was nowhere to run, no chance of darting away. Staring up at the nightmare, he felt his heart quail in his chest.

  “Thimbleglaive!” he cried in desperation as the monster bore down. “Thimbleglaive!”

  From the broken bones and slimy weed the magical knife came flying, rocketing through the air until the hilt shot into the boy’s outstretched hand.

  The massive claw of the candle sprite slammed down, but Finnen gritted his teeth and, summoning his strength, gripped the blade fiercely in front of him. There was a hideous, jolting wrench and a horrendous scream as the boy hacked and sliced through bone and sinew. The creature reeled back and thundered into the craggy wall. Loosened stones rattled down, and the cave groaned as the monster pounded its agonized fury upon the rocks.

  Breathless with fear, Kernella stared openmouthed across to Finnen.

  He had been battered to the ground. His face was grazed and he looked in pain, but his hands were still clutching the enchanted knife. He was trembling, and, without wasting another moment, Kernella picked herself up and ran along the ledge to join him.

  “Finnen!” she shouted. “Don’t worry. I’m here!”

  With the monster’s screams trumpeting louder than ever, she pushed through the heaps of dry bones to hasten to Finnen’s side. Then she froze.

  A huge claw, chopped off at the wrist, was writhing and twitching close to where the boy lay. It was a loathsome sight, but it barred her way to him; a grim expression set her features as she sought for what to do.

  Reaching for one of the large curved ribs that littered the ledge, she snapped it free and poked the claw with it.

  To her horror, the hooked fingers grabbed at the bone, almost tearing it from her grasp, but she clung on and her temper fumed. More angry than frightened, she gave the barbed hand a great shove and pushed it over the edge. Both bone and claw went splashing into the water below.

  “Are you hurt bad?” the girl asked, dashing over to Finnen.

  “Just my shoulder,” he answered. “I don’t think it’s broken, only bruised.”

  “We have to get out!” Kernella said. “Quickly, while that …”

  Her words trailed away as the candle sprite’s tortured screams ended suddenly. And both werling children looked up in despair.

  A terrible silence, more hideous than the bellowing screams, filled the cave. The monster’s silver eyes were glittering at them. It raised its arm. Dark blood was flowing freely from the mutilated wrist, pouring into the surrounding water.

  In all the ages that it had dwelled in the watery grottoes beneath Hagwood, since the time it had been driven from the caverns under the cold hills, not one of its victims had ever inflicted such a bitter wound. Even the farmer, long ago, had been less of an adversary. Now these tiny morsels had brought about its worst harm, and its evil mind boiled for vengeance.

  Noiselessly it swam through the water toward the ledge where those puny animals were quivering in fear. There would be no blind rage this time, but a slow deliberate devouring and crushing of small skeletons in its great jaws.

  Kernella pulled Finnen to his feet, and he winced at the pain in his shoulder.

  “This is it,” he whispered.

  “Are we done for?” she asked.

  The boy put his arm around her and hugged her. “Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Then with a yell and holding the knife aloft, he ran along the ledge and, to Kernella’s dismay, catapulted himself from the rock. Out over the water he leaped, legs kicking and arms flailing.

  The monster was close. Its one remaining claw exploded from the water and snatched at him. But the boy jabbed and hacked and used the webbed fist as a springboard to propel himself even farther. Over the creature’s head he jumped, catching hold of the branching horn of gristle that projected from the skull, and, wrapping his arm about it, he slid down and planted his feet upon the scaly brows.

  “Now, you foul horror,” he shouted. “You’ll haunt the pool no longer!”

  With that he plunged the knife down. Deep into cold flesh and thick bone he buried the blade, until the hilt rammed against the skull and could go no farther.

  “Sink into the dark waters!” Finnen cried. “Once and for always!”

  The monster let out a horrendous, gargling screech. Its mighty arms churned the water, and it writhed in torment. Huge black bubbles surged up from the enormous throat, and it threw itself backward, dashing its head against the wall.

  Finnen leaped clear. Without looking back, he swam away as fast as he could. The violent death throes of the candle sprite foamed the water behind him, and immense waves crashed over his head, engulfing his struggling form. Twice he floundered and was dragged beneath the surface, but finally he fought his way to the ledge where he scrambled up and flung himself on to the rock.

  Kernella hurried to him. The cavern was quaking, and ominous groans issued from the low roof. Large stones began to fall, sending huge waterspouts blasting upward.

  As the waves smacked and drowned the ledge, the werling girl pulled Finnen to the farthest corner and waited while the monster died. Already the screams were failing, and the powerful thrashing of scaly limbs was growing steadily weaker.

  With a final explosion of black bubbles and a strangled gasp, the enormous creature turned over in the water and grew still.

  “Oh, Finnen,” Kernella breathed in wonder. “You did it. You finished him!”

  The boy said nothing. The immense bulk of the candle sprite was sinking, down into the cold darkness of the deep water—the light of its lantern still glimmering.

  Suddenly a tremendous shiver rocked the cave. There was a ferocious splitting of stone, and the world seemed to tip sideways.

  Finnen and Kernella gripped the ledge and each other as tightly as they could.

  “The roof’s collapsing!” the girl cried. “We’ll be buried alive!”

  With a cataclysmic roar, tons of rock and grit came thudding down. At once the air was filled with choking dirt, and the werlings covered their faces. All was panic and oblivion. Kernella wept and Finnen thought that his luck had finally deserted him.

  Huddled together, they waited for the end. Destruction rained around them and the water rose to their waists, but eventually the din subsided and an eerie calm descended.

  After several minutes, Finnen shifted and peered warily into the gloom.

  The faintest of glows was still gleaming up from the deeps, and by its pale light he discovered that most of the cave had disappeared, engulfed by an avalanche of rubble.

  Caked in dust and soil, he rose and shook his head.

  “The entrance is gone,” he said in a defeated voice. “We can’t get out.”

  Rubbing her eyes, Kernella looked about in disbelief.

  “Are we trapped in here forever?” she whimpered.

  “Well, until the air runs out.”

  The girl immediately held her breath, and her eyes began to bulge.

  “That won’t make much difference,” Finnen told her with a feeble laugh.

  Kernella spluttered and turned a puzzled face to him. “Bu
t where did this air come from in the first place?” she asked. “The entrance was under water and there’s no other way in or out.”

  The boy looked at her in astonishment then looked wildly around them. “You’re right!” he cried. “There has to be another entrance!”

  Frantically, they searched along the ledge, pulling the bones and skulls clear of the rocky wall.

  “Eeeuurrggh!” Kernella said with a grimace. “Some of these bones are soft and squishy. How did that happen?”

  Finnen was not listening. Tearing the last pile of weed away, he finally found what he was looking for—a fissure in the rock, wide enough for them to squeeze through.

  “A tunnel!” he exclaimed. “It could lead back to the surface, back home!”

  “It’s pitch-black in there,” the girl complained. “I’m not budging. Could be anything lying in wait at the end. What if there’s something even worse than what we’ve just seen? We wouldn’t know it till we was eaten, and then it’d be too late. I’m stopping here.”

  Finnen grinned. His spirits were reviving, and he knew exactly what to do. “Who said we were going to be in the dark?” he said with a chuckle.

  To Kernella’s surprise, he took a deep breath and plunged headlong into the water. With a kick of his feet he was lost from sight before the girl could call after him.

  Moments crept by and she chewed her lip in suspense. What was he doing?

  A loud splash signaled his return to the surface. He raised his hand and brandished Thimbleglaive.

  “Took a while to pull it out of the brute’s skull!” he shouted. “Didn’t think I could do it first time, but I managed it.”

  “Come back,” Kernella told him.

  “Not yet,” he answered before taking another great breath and diving down once more.

  Kernella hugged herself and ruefully thought of her family’s snug, warm home in the oak tree. She was soaked to the skin and freezing. Opening her wergle pouch, she pulled out the sodden tokens of fur it contained and wrung them dry. A moment later she had transformed herself into a very soggy and bedraggled-looking squirrel. The animal shape brought her comfort and she wrapped herself in her tail.

  “Oh, hurry up,” she muttered at the blank water. “What are you doing down there?”

  As if in answer, the pale wavering light that shone up from the depths began to swell and increase in strength. Soon the whole cave was rippling with a pink-and-bluish radiance that came brimming from the murky deep.

  In a shower of glittering droplets, Finnen’s head burst back into view, and this time both hands were held up high. The enchanted knife was still gripped in one of them, but the other was clutching the candle sprite’s repulsive lantern, now shorn from the dead monster’s skull.

  Kernella stuck out her tongue in disgust, but she secretly marveled at Finnen’s courage and ingenuity.

  He swam quickly back to her.

  “How’s this for a lamp to light our way?” he asked.

  “Ugh,” she snorted. “Just keep it away from me.”

  And so the two of them pressed into the narrow passage, and the watery lair of the candle sprite was left behind.

  THE TUNNEL WAS LONG AND sloped gently downward. Walking in single file, the werlings made steady progress. Deeper under Hagwood they journeyed. Far, far above, the night wheeled over the treetops, and the rim of the world was already growing pale with the approaching dawn.

  In the underground realm where Finnen and Kernella traveled, night reigned supreme. No slender ray of sun ever found its way down there. They were beyond the reach and thought of daylight. If they had not had the candle sprite’s lantern to guide them, they would have been groping blindly in the forgotten folds of the earth until, exhausted and starving, they would have stumbled in the dark and their little bodies would have lain entombed forever.

  Through the narrow ways where rock gave way to clay then back to rock once more, they pushed the darkness back, and Kernella’s fears were quietly forgotten. She was alone on an adventure with Finnen Lufkin, and a secret smile kept stealing over her squirrel face. It was almost romantic. Sometimes she even pretended to stumble and held out her paw for him to hold and keep her steady.

  At last the passage began to widen, and the light leaped and bounced into the greater space as if glad to be free of the cramped passage.

  Finnen held the lantern high, and the werlings looked around them. They had come to a crudely formed chamber dug into the rock. Three blocks of stone were arranged in a rough triangle on the floor, and Kernella promptly sat upon one.

  “I need to rest for a while,” she huffed, her tail swinging behind her. “Come sit next to me.”

  But the boy had stridden right past and was peering through an opening at the far side of the chamber.

  “This way is different from the tunnel we’ve just left,” he said. “That has been there since the world was made, but this has been gouged out with tools.”

  Kernella looked vexed. “Don’t you want to sit down?” she asked.

  By now Finnen was kneeling by the opening, examining something on the ground.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said quickly.

  Kernella folded her arms, and her squirrel ears flicked in agitation. “And why not?” she demanded. “I’ve been half drowned, nearly eaten, almost buried, and trudging for ages. Besides, my poor feet are aching.”

  “Look at these,” Finnen said.

  Standing aside, he lowered the lantern, and its ghostly light fell upon the objects he had found.

  There were clumsily made plates, an ugly earthenware jug, two lumpy cups, and a large snail shell containing the stump of a greasy candle.

  Kernella stared at the things in puzzlement.

  “What are those doing there?” she asked.

  “Don’t you see?” Finnen murmured. “Someone or something lives down here.”

  “In this damp hole? With that monster for a neighbor?”

  Finnen slapped his hand to his forehead. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “This is some sort of guardroom. A sentry post to keep a watch on what the candle sprite was up to.”

  “A guardroom?” the girl repeated. “Sentry post? Whose guards? Whose sentries?”

  “I think we had better leave,” he said urgently.

  Forgetting about her aching feet, Kernella jumped off the stone and scurried over to him.

  Through the opening they went. Their pace was faster now, and Kernella no longer thought of it as a romantic adventure. The sooner they escaped this gloom, the better.

  They had not gone very far when they froze, their hearts thudding in their chests.

  Echoing up the tunnel toward them, from the invisible distance ahead and around the winding corners, they could hear noises. Strange gurgling voices and squelching footsteps were drifting through the darkness, faint at first but growing louder and closer with every moment.

  Kernella clutched hold of Finnen’s arm.

  “What can we do?” she whimpered.

  The boy glanced back quickly. Then, to her astonishment, he ran along the tunnel a little way toward the approaching sounds and vanished around the corner.

  Left without the lantern, Kernella was plunged in darkness, and she let out a wretched squeak.

  A moment later Finnen returned at a run. “No good,” he said. “I was hoping there might be a niche or a hole we could hide in. There’s nothing the way we came, and there’s nothing down there either.”

  “Did you see them?” she asked. “Are they hideous? Have they got big teeth?”

  “Couldn’t see a thing. The path bends too much. They’ve got torches though—there was a glow at the end of the furthest tunnel I looked down.”

  “Let’s go back to the candle sprite’s cavern!” the girl pleaded. “We can stay there for a while till those whatever-they-ares go away!”

  “But they won’t go away,” Finnen told her. “I think what happened is the sentry heard the commotion of the fight and then the cave-in. He mu
st have gone to fetch reinforcements. They’ll go to the cavern and search. There’s nowhere we can hide.”

  Even as he said it, and even as another frightened squeak escaped Kernella’s lips, a flickering light came shining around the corner of the far tunnel.

  “We’re trapped!” Kernella wailed.

  Finnen’s right hand closed over the hilt of Thimbleglaive, and he smothered the light of the lantern. Holding their breaths, the werlings waited.

  The voices were clearer now. They were singing a slow dirge in gargling voices, but amid the slapping of bare feet upon the floor, the werlings could only make out a few lines of the unpleasant chorus.

  By knife you have killed, by water you have drowned,

  With hate you have harmed, but deep underground

  What you seek, what you fear, will ne’er be found.

  “Are they singing about us?” Kernella whispered.

  “I don’t know,” the boy answered.

  The light grew brighter, and the werlings clasped each other tightly until at last the front ranks of the creatures came marching around the corner.

  With snail-shell lamps swinging upon long poles and rusty spears held in their large hands, they stomped into view. Both Finnen and Kernella uttered gasps of shock and revulsion.

  The creatures were the ugliest things they had ever seen. Their bodies were bent, and great froglike eyes goggled and blinked out from flat, gray-whiskered brows. Each mouth was wide and gaping, and tattered remnants of filthy clothing hung from drooping shoulders.

  To the werlings’ disgust, they saw that the skin of these strange creatures was glistening and damp like that of rain-spattered toads, and when they moved in front of the swinging lights, the mud-colored flesh glowed with a horrible, oily translucence.

  “They look like slugs,” Kernella groaned. “Nasty big slugs with little arms and legs and boogly eyes!”

  “That’s what they are,” Finnen murmured, dimly remembering a tale his old nan had once told him. “Sluglungs. Denizens of the damp dripping dark …”