by Willow Rose
“Then join us,” Sara said. “For we are on our way to the castle to free all the animals from the spell of the ring. Will you come with us and fight for your freedom?”
The hyena bowed in front of her.
“I shall help you in any way I can.”
Left, right … and then left again. They walked the labyrinth with help from Arnaldo the eagle in the sky. Every now and then Sara was sure she saw the hyena look up at him with envy and a great longing in her eyes. She couldn’t think of a fate worse for a bird than to be bound to the ground, never being able to feel the wind beneath the wings again.
As they turned another corner, Sara was certain she saw a figure at the end of the next turn. It looked like the shape of someone running around the corner just as they entered the path.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Manolo said. “I didn’t see anything.” He turned and looked at the others. “Did you?”
They all shook their heads.
Since no one seemed to know or even have seen it, Sara let it go as something she had simply imagined. But as soon as she turned the next corner, there it was again. This time Sara started running towards it. But as she turned the next corner she barely saw it turn right at the end. With great speed she pursued it again just to see it disappear around the next corner. Every time she turned a corner Sara was certain that this time she would be able to catch up with it. She was determined that she would. But she never did. It always seemed to be just enough ahead of her to make her think she could catch it but still exactly far enough for her not to.
So it kept going for a while until Manolo finally grabbed Sara’s shoulder. She stopped and looked at her friends behind her. She realized that she had been so eager to catch this escaping shape that they had lost their way.
Marland the Mole shook his head.
“It is a trick. It is not real. You can never catch it. It is only a spell, meant to trick you to lose your way,” he said looking at her with his small eyes close to each other.
Sara sighed.
“I am sorry. I just thought it might have been one of the Sombras. I was so curious. I wanted to see what it looked like. I thought maybe if we could catch it we would have an advantage. ”
“Let’s go back a little to the clearing we passed earlier. From there Arnaldo can show us the way,” Manolo said and turned.
They walked for a while but never found the clearing again. It was as if it had vanished. Now they kept running into dead ends. Sara tried to see Arnaldo in the sky, but the walls had gotten so high it was impossible to see anything. It was as if the walls grew into the sky. They could only see a fracture of the black sky and in that there was no Arnaldo. Nipples tried to fly up and find him, but the walls were too high for him. With his cat face and tail he was a heavy bat and was unable to fly very far or very high. So he stayed just above their heads resting now and then on someone’s shoulder.
“How are we ever going to get out of here?” Sara asked. She sat down with her back against the wall. She closed her eyes. Suddenly it was like she heard her mother’s gentle voice in her head.
“It isn’t magic. It is logic,” she whispered.
She repeated it a few times before it was gone. Sara sat for awhile trying to hear her mother’s voice again, but nothing came. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Manolo before she rose and got up from the ground.
“I know which way to go,” she said and pressed on. “I really do,” she said again. “I know which way to go.” Then she started running as fast as she could.
The others were still grounded and didn’t move since they had no idea what was going on. The deer held their heads high while their eyes gazed from one to another, Grover the hedgehog stood with spiky fur, next to Henrietta the hyena. Apollo and Angel were sticking their heads out from Manolo’s pocket. Meanwhile, Nipples the bat stared at Sara with its yellow cat-eyes from Grover’s shoulder, while Marland and William were dumbfounded.
“Well, come on!” she yelled after them.
Manolo caught up with her. The rest followed a little reluctantly. (You couldn’t really blame them for it after Sara’s last run-away.)
“How do you suddenly know which way to go?” Manolo asked.
“It isn’t magic. It is logic.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It is getting darker, right?”
“Yes.”
“Because the walls are getting taller.”
“Yes, that is right, but…”
She pushed him to the right.
“Turn here,” she said and they did. “The closer you are to the exit the harder Sensisaron wants it to be, right? The more scary, the more impossible it will seem.”
“Probably, but…”
“So, we just follow the paths where the walls are getting higher and the darkness is increasing.”
Sara stopped at a fork and looked at the three paths in front of her. “We take the one on the left here,” she said and went on.
From thereon they met no more dead ends and no more obstacles, so little by little Manolo and the rest of the creatures were convinced by her theory which was quite simple if you think of it, but that is often the way with magic stuff and riddles like this.
All they had to do was to keep taking the path that seemed to be the most dark and difficult. The walls grew sky-high and the darkness almost swallowed them. They had to stick close together to not lose anyone behind. But soon as they turned that last corner they saw the long awaited entrance of the black castle right in front of them. Thirteen steps led to the tall black wooden door.
Behind it was everything that Sara desired.
18
ENTERING THE BLACK CASTLE
They walked the stairs with caution, examining every step for traps, animals, plants or whatever might try and stop them. The three deer had their bows and arrows strapped, ready to shoot at whatever might come against them. If the doors opened they would shoot first and ask afterwards. Angel and Apollo, the two mice, had crept into Manolo’s pockets when they were still in the labyrinth. This way they were sure not to lose any of them. Now they were peeking out.
“How do we open it?” Apollo asked with a low voice.
Sara looked at the small mouse and then back at the door. A small crack over it had caught her attention.
“We don’t,” she whispered and looked back at the mouse. “You do.”
She opened her hand and put it next to Manolo’s pocket so Apollo could climb on to it. Then she lifted it towards the crack in the wall.
“Try and climb through,” she whispered. “Maybe it is a way in.”
Then she asked Nipples to grab Apollo and lift him all the way to the crack so the mouse could climb in.
When Apollo reached the crack he wiggled his nose and tried to come through, but halfway he couldn’t move anymore.
“Oh, no,” Apollo moaned. “I am stuck.”
Angel sighed from the opening in Manolo’s pocket.
“I told him he was getting on the heavier side, but he wouldn’t listen. Now see what happened.”
Nipples grabbed Apollo’s behind and with a lot of hard work he managed to pull him out.
“I am very sorry,” Apollo said hanging from Nipples claws. He was put on the ground.
“I don’t think it is possible for anyone to get through that crack,” he said while Manolo picked him up from the ground. “It is way too narrow.”
“Let me try,” Angel whispered.
Apollo looked at her with discontent.
“If you want to get stuck like me, then by all means, do try,” he whispered back and stuck his little nose high in the sky.
“It is at least worth another try,” Sara said with a low voice and took Angel in her hand. Then she let Nipples grab on to her. He put her at the opening of the crack. She too wiggled her nose and her body as well and with very little effort she managed to climb right through.
“Humph.
Show off,” Apollo said.
In a matter of minutes Angel managed to open the big door from the inside and they could get through. It all seemed a little too easy, Sara thought as they walked inside where a dark stone passageway met them. As they stepped into it, the big door behind them closed with a loud sound that echoed in the passageway.
“Oh, no,” the mice shrieked from Manolo’s pocket. “What if that woke up Sensisaron?”
Everybody stood as quiet as they could in the passageway. Sara thought she heard a sound behind her and looked back, but saw nothing. When she turned around, it was there again. It was like the sound of something creeping along the walls. She looked again and this time she saw something moving.
“Wait,” she whispered.
Everybody looked at her.
“There is something there.”
She pointed at the wall.
Something was moving across it. It looked like a plant of some sort.
“What is this?” Marland asked.
“Don’t know,” Sara answered. Then she remembered her mother telling her about a similar plant. Nepenthes attenboroughii was its name and it looked exactly like this one coming toward them. This one was just ten times as big as the one Sara had seen in her mother’s book.
“I have a feeling that it might be a giant carnivorous plant,” she said as its long creepers grew under their feet and grabbed their ankles.
“What is that?”
Manolo fought to pull the plant off, but the more he strained against it the more it tightened its grip.
“It is a meat-eating plant,” she said, trying to stop the plant from curling around Manolo’s neck. She lifted the knife that Manolo had given her and started cutting. Green ooze came out of the creeper that she had just cut and then it fell to the ground. But as it did another creeper grew out from where she had cut it. She ran towards Marland and cut him free as well. More creepers grew out and tried to grab them. But they seemed to be leaving Sara alone which she found strange.
While the deer started to shoot their arrows at it and managed to hurt it, the hedgehog, Grover used his pointy fur to keep it away. Sara kept stabbing and cutting the plant as eventually she freed all of their friends one by one from the plant’s grip. Hardest to free was William who had a creeper around his throat and kept tightening it the more he struggled.
“Help me,” he whispered while the plant tried to strangle him.
Devin the deer started shooting its arrows at the creeper holding William and managed to hurt it but it didn’t let go. When Sara saw that she jumped towards him slicing the creeper into a million pieces until William fell heavily to the ground.
“That is twice I owe you my life,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” she said.
Meanwhile, the plant kept growing and in the end all they could do was to run as fast as they could down the passageway.
Luckily they were much faster than the big plant and soon they lost it. When they realized it was no longer behind them, they slowed down.
All they could hear apart from their footsteps was an occasionally drip of water trickling down the walls. The passageway sloped downwards which was strange since they were sure they were supposed to go up, to get to the tower where they assumed Sensisaron was sleeping. But there were no stairs leading upwards and no other path or passageway they could take. Sara wondered when the Sombras would show themselves.
“They must be aware of our presence by now,” she mumbled to herself.
“Can you hear something?” Manolo whispered.
Sara listened. A crowing sound of birds seemed to be coming from up ahead.
“Sounds like a lot of birds to me,” she said.
“There is a light ahead. And I can see something moving,” Manolo said.
The passageway led them straight into a chamber. It was dark and Manolo blew fire into a torch he took from the wall. As he did, he lit up the chamber. It was—just as Sara expected—filled with birds. They were fluttering and tumbling around under the ceiling. They were red birds, just like the ones that had attacked Sara and Manolo when they first arrived in the valley. Arnaldo moved ahead.
“I will take care of them,” he said. Then he soared into the air and circled around under the ceiling with his great wings. But the red birds didn’t even move.
On the other side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.
“We need to get to that door,” Sara said.
“Will the birds attack us like they did last time?” Manolo asked.
“We have no choice. We will have to put our trust in Arnaldo.”
“What if they attack him?” Marland said.
“They did that in the marshland but they didn’t seem to hurt him,” Sara said.
“Maybe not, but there weren’t as many as there are here. There are at least ten times as many now.”
“We have to try.” Sara looked at her friends. ”Cover up and run,” she said.
She took a deep breath and covered her face with her arm. Any moment she expected to feel their claws in her hair and sharp beaks tearing her. But nothing happened. She reached the door without them even touching her. They all did. And all the birds did was stare at them.
“This is a little too easy,” Sara said to Manolo.
“So what? We are getting closer to our goal now,” he said and pulled the handle of the door.
The next chamber was just as dark as the first. They couldn’t see anything at all. Even Marland had a hard time seeing. Manolo lifted his torch but even as he did they still couldn’t see anything. It was all dark. He didn’t seem to be able to light up the whole chamber. All they could see were each other’s faces. Even the floor remained black as he tried to light it up.
“What is this strange kind of darkness?” Grover the hedgehog said.
“I don’t know,” Sara said.
“Me either. It might be a spell or something,” Manolo said.
“Whatever it is, we are all creatures that are used to living in the darkness, so we are not afraid,” Nipples the bat with the face of a cat said.
“Let’s just keep going,” the wolf said.
So they stepped out in the darkness. The eagle and the bat tried to fly ahead to see what was waiting but came back without an answer.
“The black just keeps going,” Arnaldo said. “We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to find you again, so we had to turn around.”
“Are we even sure this is the right way?” Marland asked. “Maybe we missed a door somewhere?”
He turned around and tried to find the door to go back, but he couldn’t see it any longer. It was as if it had vanished.
“We have to stay close together,” Manolo said. “Keep close to the torch.”
“All we can do now is walk,” Sara said.
So they did. They walked close together in complete darkness not knowing when they would reach the other end of the room—if it was indeed a room and if there was indeed an ending to it.
Grover, the human-sized hedgehog, was the first one to show fear on his face. After they had walked for about an hour or so he caved to the feeling of despair.
“What are we going to do? This will never end!” he said.
“We keep walking,” Sara said. “The worst thing we can do it to panic. If we panic we will get lost.”
“But we are already lost,” he cried. “We will never get out of here, don’t you get that?”
Sara tried to calm him down.
“We just have to keep moving forward. Grover, look into my eyes,” she said.
His eyes flickered for a while before they finally met Sara’s.
“This is only a trick. It is some sort of illusion, trying to make us panic and stop our quest. I need to save my brother and you need to be freed from the spell. Focus on that. Focus on the goal of our mission. Don’t let her tricks get to you! Do you hear me?”
It took a while but the hedgehog finally nodded.
“Now let’s go!�
� she yelled.
They must have walked for another hour or so before something finally showed up. It was no more than a small dot of light, but to them inside of the darkness it was shinning brighter than the sun.
“Look, light!” Marland yelled as he spotted it long before the rest.
Encouraged by this sudden hope shinning in the middle of the big blackness they all started running towards it. As they did they saw the light came out of a small keyhole. On top of the keyhole was a handle. Manolo grabbed it, but it was locked.
“It is locked,” he sighed.
“How do we open it?” Grover asked with a slight panic in his voice again.
“Could we try to put Angel through again?” Henrietta the Hyena asked.
“It is too small,” Sara said. “There must be some other way. We have to find the key.”
Manolo kneeled on the cold dark floor beneath him and touched it with his palms.
“Maybe it is on the floor somewhere?” He asked.
Sara had an idea.
“Where do you put a key?” she said and kneeled, too. She started patting the floor under the door. A second later she touched something soft with brushes. It was the doormat. She lifted it and felt underneath it and found something that felt exactly like a key. She put it in the lock and turned it. Then she pulled the door open.
Bright light hurt their eyes. It took them a while to get used to it as they stepped into the next chamber. There finally they found stairs. A long and winding staircase that seemed to lead all the way into the sky. They started climbing it in silence. Round and round and round they went. Being so big the wolf had a hard time climbing the stairwell that seemed to get narrower and narrower the further they got.
“I can’t go any longer, it is too small for me,” the wolf said after a while. “You have to continue without me.”
