Stargazer

by Patrick Carman

  “Tighter still!” came Matilda’s voice behind me. “Feet out front!”

  I did as I was told, thrusting my legs forward and crossing the knots as hard as I could. My feet hit the pillar, then my shoulder crashed hard into stone. Matilda came in right behind me, slower and more in control. She steadied us both and helped me get my footing on the wooden rungs of the long hanging ladder.

  “Well done,” she whispered. “You’re fine now. You’ve done it.”

  We placed our sliders into our belts and began to climb. It was then that I heard Abaddon below, speaking in his slithery voice of things that would come to pass.

  The way of yesterday is not for you. She has brought you to a place you should not have come. But not to worry—she won’t be with you much longer!

  “You leave her alone!” I screamed.

  My whole body was shaking as I felt Matilda lose her footing on the wooden rung where we stood together. It was unlike her, but she quickly recovered and we stood firm on the rung once more. She shook her head as if to wake all her senses and stay alert.

  “Who are you talking to, Alexa?” she asked.

  How could I possibly explain all that had happened to me? How once I could hear the voice of Elyon and now I heard that of Abaddon—the voices of good and evil in the world?

  “Let’s get to the top and find Yipes,” I said. “I don’t want him to be without us any longer.”

  Matilda nodded weakly, then untied the rope leading back to the third pillar and tucked it firmly into her belt. She passed to the side of me and we moved on, Matilda in front, me following close behind. It was a lot farther than I realized. Things always look so small from a distance, but there were at least a hundred rungs on the fallen bridge. Some were broken or weakened so that each step had to be carefully taken.

  “Yipes did this so fast,” Matilda said as she tugged softly on a board to check its sturdiness. “How does he do things like that?”

  “He probably used the vines on the sides and didn’t bother with the rungs,” I said. “He’s not like us—I mean, he’s got certain talents that are hard to explain.”

  Matilda looked up the long distance we had left to go. “So I see.”

  It was another ten minutes before we reached the very top and felt the soft, furry face of the fourth pillar. The moss here was even brighter and spongier than that of the third pillar. I was immediately concerned about the terrain.

  “This is steeper than it looked,” I said. There was barely a place to stand on the rim of the fourth pillar—maybe a foot of relatively flat moss, two at the most—and then the squishy landscape rose fast and high.

  Matilda had crouched down and was pulling on the edge of a flat wooden corner sticking out of the moss. As she tugged, a soft, wet sound filled the air. The wood slid free of the moss and popped out. It was a sign.

  “The bridge to yesterday is mine alone. Turn back,” I read aloud.

  “We have to stop thinking that way,” said Matilda. She picked up the sign and flung it over the edge, where it bobbed and flipped out of sight toward the water below. She pulled the long, heavy rope from her belt and tied it tightly to one of the posts where the rope bridge had been anchored.

  “It’s about time!” came a voice from well above us. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to cross back over and come looking for you.”

  “Yipes!” Matilda and I both cried at the same moment. We were so very happy to see him. He scampered down the side of the fourth pillar faster than I thought was a good idea.

  “Slow down! You’re scaring me!” I said, afraid he’d keep right on running off the end as he gained speed.

  “Not to worry,” he shouted, digging his heels in as he approached, then coming to a stop a few feet above without any trouble. He was grinning broadly as he pulled both of us up the hill toward the top. “I’ve found something interesting. You’re not going to believe it when you see it. Come on, up this way!”

  Yipes wouldn’t tell us what it was, and he seemed especially uncertain about how I would react. He showed us how to dig our feet into the moss and make good traction, so we wouldn’t slide down. As we went, I was amazed by the simplicity of the fourth pillar. There was nothing but cool green against a blue sky. And it was perfectly shaped on every side I could see, like the furry soft head of a very tall giant.

  After a while, the slope of the hill we climbed became less fierce. It leveled off near the top and then became entirely flat when we reached the summit.

  “There’s a lot more flat space than appears from the other side,” said Matilda, catching her breath. She was exuberant with curiosity, which was exactly how I felt.

  I loved that we saw this moment the same way.

  “Everything seems so far away from here,” I said. “Like we’re standing alone above the whole world.”

  “But there’s always somewhere higher to climb,” said Yipes. He looked over his shoulder and we followed his gaze. It was true I was higher than I’d ever been within the realm of the Five Stone Pillars, but the fifth pillar stood so much grander still. The first, second, and third pillars were below me now and I could see them clearly, but the top of the fifth pillar with its jagged wall of sharp stone remained an imposing facade above me.

  “Somehow I don’t think we’ll be visiting there anytime soon,” I said.

  “Look there,” said Yipes, pointing to the side of the fourth stone pillar hidden from view if you stood on pillar one, two, or three.

  What I saw creeping into view was not at all welcome.

  “That thing can’t be trusted,” I said. “You of all people should know better.”

  I glanced at Yipes, then back at the small animal that was advancing carefully in our direction. It was entirely black with sharp yellow eyes that stared me down as if to ask me why I’d come here. It had the shape and liquid slow movement of something I’d seen long before in the Bridewell library.

  “Not all cats are alike,” said Yipes. For that’s just what it was—a black cat slinking quietly toward us.

  “What do you have against cats?” asked Matilda, taken aback at my reaction.

  “They’re bad,” I said. And I meant it. Sam and Pepper, the only two cats I had ever known, had been as dreadful as any two animals could be. They had betrayed everyone.

  “Don’t mind her,” said Yipes. “She has a complicated history with cats.”

  “It wants us to follow it,” said Matilda. She was already moving across the top of the stone pillar. I took hold of her hand and pulled her back.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Well, I’m going,” said Yipes. “I trust this particular feline, at least enough to follow it a little while. I think it wants to show us something on the other side.”

  “What if it’s trying to trick us?” I asked. “There could be slippery rocks over there. There could be a monster or a trap.”

  “I’m going,” repeated Yipes. He took one step forward, but I had cast a shadow of doubt over him and he stopped short.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked Matilda. “We can leave Alexa here to bake in the sun.”

  I scowled at Yipes, but I was beginning to see that we didn’t have a lot of choices. From what we’d seen, there was nothing else on the fourth pillar to help us.

  “All right, I’ll go,” I said. “But let’s take it slow. I still don’t trust that thing.”

  Yipes led out and we made our way across the flat top of the fourth pillar. The black cat advanced and stayed well ahead of us as we followed, until it disappeared down the sloping side.

  “I told you!” I said. “It wants to draw us down the side, to send us slipping and sliding off the edge. This is crazy!”

  “We don’t know for sure,” said Matilda. This was a reckless side of her I hadn’t seen before. “Let’s go just a little farther and look down. Maybe the cat is standing there waiting for us.”

  “Abaddon has used cats before,” I said. “They’re
the only animal I know besides hawks that have sided with him. Yipes—tell her.”

  But Yipes wouldn’t banish an entire species because of two misguided library cats.

  “There are a few bad people in the world as well, but that doesn’t mean we’re all doomed to the same fate. Give this a chance, Alexa. I have a feeling about it.”

  I could not stop thinking it was a bad idea, but I also had to admit that there was truth in what Yipes was saying. So the three of us walked the last twenty feet to the end of the flat plain of the fourth pillar. It sloped down sharply on the other side—faster than on the side we’d come from.

  “Where’d it go?” asked Yipes. The cat had disappeared. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said. “It’s found some way to hide so we’ll go down there looking for it.”

  I was feeling vindicated, but then something happened that was so unexpected I almost slid right down the mossy green hill leading to the sea.

  The cat meowed. It spoke something in its own language from a hidden place I could not see. I heard the voice of this creature. And I understood what it was saying.

  “Over here, this way!” meowed the cat.

  “Please tell me you heard that,” I asked Yipes and Matilda.

  Matilda was awestruck. “It’s some sort of trick of magic from that monster below.”

  Yipes was backing up, and I could tell by the wide circles of his eyes that he’d heard the cat as well. The command came once more.

  “This way! Hurry!” meowed the cat.

  “It’s been too long since I’ve heard a voice like that,” Yipes said breathlessly. He was astonished, but happy, like a great memory from childhood had swept over him. “I’d forgotten how it sounds—exactly like a cat, only I understand it.”

  The idea seemed to enchant Yipes, and yet the cat’s words had concerned him.

  “Maybe you were right,” he said. “Maybe this is an evil cat.”

  And then, as if to answer Yipes’s concern, the cat spoke again.

  “You and your friends are welcome here, Alexa Daley. This way!”

  Matilda made a little yelping sound of surprise and hopped backward.

  “That thing knows who you are!” she said. “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m starting to think we should find out.”

  “That’s right,” meowed the cat. “This way!”

  “It can talk and it’s invisible!” said Yipes. He sounded more certain than ever that we were dealing with something dangerous. “Don’t go down there!”

  But it was too late—I’d already made up my mind. I don’t know if it was my immense curiosity or if I’d begun to trust the sound of this cat’s voice, but something told me to make my way down the side of the fourth pillar. Matilda wasn’t about to let me go alone, and she quickly came up beside me.

  “Wait for me!” cried Yipes.

  We didn’t have very far to go until we all realized at once that the side of the fourth pillar we were on wasn’t exactly what it seemed. The color of green here wasn’t all one shade. It varied in places from light to slightly darker and back again, and as we crept down the side and neared a patch of darker green, we understood why this was true. There were wide, oddly shaped openings in the ground. Along the sides of the openings, the moss ran every bit as thick as it did on the top of the fourth pillar. From somewhere inside, there was light shining through.

  “How is that possible?” asked Yipes, voicing what we were all thinking. Somehow there was light inside the fourth pillar, softly illuminating the sides of the wide holes. The light played with shadow and made it seem as if there weren’t any openings at all, only different shades of green on a singular surface.

  “Follow me!” The meow returned, only this time the sound echoed softly. It was coming from deep inside the hole directly in front of us. All three of us crept near the edge of the hole and looked down. It was very steep and shaped like a tube. It turned after a few feet in a way that made it impossible to see where it went.

  “Come on then—in you go!” said the cat.

  “We’re not going in there,” said Yipes, fiddling nervously with his long mustache. We were still leaning over and looking into the hole. This had a lot to do with what happened next. It began with a terrible shrieking noise from directly behind us. Matilda screamed and jumped from the terrible sound behind her, and when she turned, she lost her balance and fell down the hole with a thwoooop! Yipes waited for exactly zero seconds before jumping in after her, and this left me balancing precariously between a giant hole in the ground and something hissing at me from behind.

  “You shouldn’t make Nimbus wait for you,” said the feline voice behind me. “It’s hard enough getting her out at all when there are no clouds in the sky.”

  I turned in the direction of the voice and found that the terrifying sound we’d heard had come from a smaller than average cat. She was black as spilled ink with dazzling yellow eyes—just like the cat we’d seen—but this one appeared to be longer and as skinny as a rail.

  “Don’t make me push you,” meowed the cat. She was one of those kinds of animals that has no idea how small they are.

  I turned and yelled down the hole for Yipes and Matilda, but there was no answer. It was a mistake to turn my back on a cat at the edge of a deep hole. Before I could turn around, the little monster had jumped on my leg and was digging her claws into my skin.

  “Owwwwwww!” I yelled. And then I, too, fell into the hole.

  Once I stopped tumbling and settled in for the ride, it was slick. I swished and slid as the tube twisted and turned on the way down. The long, skinny black cat jumped free of my leg and I lost sight of her. A little farther down, I zoomed past the first cat, who held firm against one of the high walls of the tube and watched me slide by. I looked over my head as I kept going and saw the skinny cat come alongside its companion. The two appeared to be laughing.

  I hate cats.

  There was a long, straight shot toward the bottom of the tube that slowly leveled off. By the time I came to the very end, I was barely moving.

  When I finally stopped, I found that I could not get up. This was not because of any injury I’d sustained on the way down. If anything, I’d just enjoyed one of the more thrilling rides of my life and shouldn’t have minded getting up. I couldn’t move because I was paralyzed with disbelief at what lay before my eyes.

  And now I shall venture to describe all that I saw as two black cats slinked past me without a word between them.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE PILLAR OF YESTERDAY

  “How can this be?” I stammered, trying to understand the vast improbability of what I saw. It felt like I’d stumbled upon an elaborate carnival or a strange circus halfway between setup and teardown.

  I stood up and took in a deep breath of sea air, for there was plenty to be had. I faced a vast opening in the side of the fourth pillar that spanned hundreds of feet across and up into the air. Light poured into an equally immense space within the fourth pillar, and standing high and tall in the very center of the room was the biggest balloon I’d ever seen. It was shaped like an ice-cream cone—round on top and narrow at the bottom—and it was attached by vines to a big box that seemed to anchor the balloon to the ground. There were rudders at the back of the box and what looked like vast wings along its side.

  The ceiling of the chamber or cave—I couldn’t figure out what to call the place I’d arrived in—was much higher still than the top of the balloon. All along the wall to my left were living creatures of the sea. And I could see them all, because they were encased in clear boxes that defied imagination. Gigantic, long panes of glass separated me from fish and sea creatures of every size and color, many of which I’d never seen before.

  And there was more—so much more—as I walked toward my friends, who stood gazing in a different direction.

  “What is this place?” I said as I came alo
ngside. We were all staring together now, and it appeared that my companions were not able to answer me, for they didn’t speak at all. There was a towering replica of the Wakefield House rising all the way to the ceiling, hundreds of feet above. I gasped at the sight of it, for it brought Roland and Thomas and their incredible journey into such clear focus. The model looked as if it might topple over at any moment—just like in their story—and I marveled at its warped genius. Who could have made such a thing as this? Who could have even thought to try to make it?

  Rows of stairs and landings and tables crisscrossed all around the model of the Wakefield House and up into the air. The landings wound through, across bridges that connected to yet more landings surrounding parts of the giant balloon. This vast series of landings ran all through the ceiling of the chamber in twisting, turning levels of high and low. It was impossibly complex and, just like the Wakefield House, it looked as if it might all come tumbling down at any moment.

  Alongside the Wakefield House was yet another model, this one of all five stone pillars standing in a circle, rising high into the chamber where I couldn’t see their tops. There were long, teetering ladders that had been leaned precariously against them all.

  “He will be surprised to see you.”

  The words came from a voice I had never heard before. It was so very slowly said, like an ancient voice, grumbling and papery, bothered by having to speak at all and having to work very hard to do it.

  “Who said that?” asked Matilda. We all looked in the direction of the voice—up and to the right on one of the many landings. Leaning over and looking down toward us was a mammoth lizard, its tongue darting slowly in and out. By the size of its deep green head, I would have guessed it was more than ten feet long.

  “That’s a very long tongue you’ve got there,” said Yipes. He giggled nervously and I slapped him in the arm.

  “I don’t think we should be talking to that thing,” I said. “We don’t know anything about it.”