Stargazer

by Patrick Carman

  “Rule, you say?” came a voice from a middle-aged man who wore a wide-rimmed hat tied with a string. “Is that really possible?”

  “I know it seems as if Abaddon …” Did they even know who Abaddon was? I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to confuse them, but looking at many of their faces told me they were quite aware of who was embodied by the sea monster below.

  “You’ve brought the evil of the whole world upon us,” said a young woman.

  “But Abaddon can’t be in two places at once,” said another. “Does this mean Castalia is free?”

  Finally, some good news to report!

  “Yes! I was there. Victor Grindall and his ogres are defeated. Abaddon was thrown from The Land of Elyon, never to return. The unforeseen part of this victory is that Abaddon took the form of a sea monster, the very one that’s trying to tear down the fourth pillar.”

  There was a rumbling of talk—some good, some not so good—and many speculated about Castalia, The Land of Elyon, and their old lives.

  “The sea monster is far below and can do you no harm all the way up here. But it’s more powerful than you suppose. I think it may knock down the fourth pillar as early as tomorrow, and that pillar could fall in any direction.”

  Murmuring of concern worked its way through the crowd, and some shouted their disbelief at such an unlikely outcome.

  “Sir Alistair Wakefield himself thinks the pillar won’t last another day.”

  I blurted this out a little sooner and a little faster than I had originally planned, and it resulted in many questions being asked all at one time.

  He’s alive? Where did you see him? What did he say?

  “Everyone calm down!” Jonezy yelled. “She can’t answer all your questions at once.”

  The crowd quieted and I told them all about my encounter with Sir Alistair, that he was in fact alive, and that Matilda, Yipes, and Marco were on the fourth pillar helping him.

  “We thought he was dead!” a chorus of voices echoed.

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot,” I offered. “He seems very … private. I guess he just wanted to be alone so that he could work. He’s trying to help you—we all are.”

  A young, strong-looking man came forward. He was one of the fisherman who hauled giant nets from the sea. His arms and hands were heavy with muscle.

  “Even if the fourth pillar could be knocked down—and that seems wholly impossible to me—it’s by far the thinnest of them all. Abaddon couldn’t possibly knock down any of the pillars we live on.”

  “What if the fourth pillar falls into the third?” I asked. “Then what?”

  There was a gasp from the crowd at the thought of damage done to the skimming pillar. The fisherman laughed through his nose at first, but then he appeared to be calculating what might happen in the event that the fourth actually did impact the third.

  “That’s exactly where the fourth is going to fall if it comes down,” I continued. “That’s the side Abaddon is ripping stone out of. What if the impact of the fourth pillar falling were to break the third pillar of stone? It might just tip into the second, and then the first. I know this creature, and if my guess is right, that’s precisely what it aims to do. It tore the Warwick Beacon to pieces in a matter of minutes. I believe it has the power to tear down pillars of stone.”

  “That’s impossible!” cried the fisherman. But even as he said it, his face showed some doubt, and everyone around him seemed convinced it could happen.

  “Even if this doesn’t come to pass, it won’t matter. If Abaddon wants to rule this place and he can get to the top of one of these pillars, then I’m afraid the Five Stone Pillars are doomed. He’ll find those among us he can manipulate and control. He’ll set us against one another and bring ruin until he takes everything and turns the whole place as evil as he is. That’s his goal.”

  “We can’t let him do it!” a chorus of angry voices sounded the same idea back and forth between the group.

  “Then fight as hard as you can to save this place. Use the method Phylo has come up with and deter that monster for as long as you can. But be realistic. Barring a miracle, he can’t be stopped, and even if the fourth pillar falls dead into the sea, he’ll just begin again on the next pillar until he gets what he wants. It could take him years to chew through the third pillar, but that doesn’t mean he won’t keep going until he knocks it down. Or the fourth pillar may crash into the third, only to stay leaning there, an easier path for the monster to come ashore.”

  More chattering filled the air at the thought. Oddly—and it had only just occurred to me—the third pillar was in many ways a tailor-made home for a beast such as the monster that lurked below. It was a pillar covered in an intricate, weblike system of vines. The top was concave, thus hidden from view should anyone pass by. Abaddon was a many-armed creature in the water, so it would make sense for him to be a many-armed spider on land. Maybe he had known about the third pillar all along and wanted it for his home.

  “How many children live on the Five Stone Pillars?” I asked. “Those under twelve or thirteen years old.”

  Jonezy answered. “There are, I think, about thirty. The youngest is two, and a handful are five or six. We have a good number of eight-to ten-year-olds and a few on up to twelve.”

  “We should move the youngest of them if we can,” I said.

  “How do you mean to move them?” asked one of the mothers. I could tell she was a mother because she held one of the few very young children. Everyone who had arrived on the stone pillars by way of the Warwick Beaconhad come to it as an orphan, rescued from a past Castalia ruled by evil. Only a very few children had actually been born here.

  I was about to say something I wasn’t sure would go over very well, but I had to say it at some point, and the time had come, whether I wanted to do it or not.

  “I think I have a way,” I began. “To bring you all back home.”

  More gasps—some angry, some excited—and a chorus of protests and questions followed.

  You mean we can go back to The Land of Elyon? How will we get there? You’re not taking the children! We’re not going anywhere!

  “Give the girl a chance!” said Jonezy. “Let her explain before you make up your minds.”

  And so I continued as best and as honestly as I could.

  “Sir Alistair has been working on something for a very long time, and he thinks it can get us home. We’re going to test it tonight, and I’ll know more in the morning. That’s all I can say right now. But it could hold the children if you wanted to have them taken to safety. They could return to a renewed Castalia.”

  “We’re not putting these children on a boat with that thing down there!” someone cried.

  “It’s not a boat. It’s … something else.”

  “What kind of something? Tell us what you mean to do with the children!”

  I couldn’t tell them that we were flying home, like a bird. They’d never believe me, and it sounded too dangerous. I’d have to show them when and if the time came.

  “Trust me—please—I simply can’t tell you. I don’t even know if it will work. But I’ll know tomorrow. I promise to tell you then.”

  An older woman of about the same age as Jonezy stepped forward out of the crowd.

  “Why did Roland bring you with him into the Lonely Sea?” she asked. And then a more direct question, “Who are you?”

  The words rang in my ears. There would never be a better time to tell them who I was.

  “Roland had a brother—there were just the two of them—you all must know that.”

  “Of course we know it,” said the fisherman with the giant arms who had so vigorously opposed me only a moment ago. “Some among us knew them both at the House on the Hill. We’ve heard the legends. If it wasn’t for them, we’d have rotted on that hill of garbage and a lot of us would have fallen by the hand of Victor Grindall. We keep all those stories alive here. We don’t forget.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,”
I said. “And I’m so very sorry that the time of the Warvolds has passed. Thomas and Roland are gone, but I remain.”

  The crowd fell deathly silent, as if they had just been told that Roland was alive and about to walk out of the trees and stand before them as their leader once more.

  “What are you saying?” asked the fisherman, but he seemed to have figured it out on his own and his voice trembled.

  “She’s saying,” said Jonezy, “that she is Thomas Warvold’s daughter.”

  “Is this true?” asked one of the three girls who had befriended me. She was very excited.

  I nodded. “I am called Alexa Daley because I was hidden away for a time, but my father was Thomas Warvold.”

  There was something eminently powerful about these words. As I said them I felt different, as if they held weight I hadn’t previously understood. It wasn’t that the crowd bowed down and lined up to kiss my hand, but there was a genuine change in the tone of everything. There were tiny, almost hidden smiles. The Warvold name and all it had meant had power I didn’t realize—the power of myth and legend. All at once I knew they would listen and that I’d given them something to hold on to. I had given them hope. I had gotten them thinking about how it might, in the end and under the right circumstances, be okay to leave their home.

  I insisted that I be left on my own to find my way back to the fourth pillar. I needed time to think things through, and the people of the Five Stone Pillars would benefit from my absence as they thought through decisions of their own. I made the long walk back to the fourth pillar and left Jonezy, Phylo, Ranger, and the rest to their business. When I was alone, I spoke the name of Elyon over and over again, hoping against hope that good would yet prevail.

  I had been told that my days of hearing Elyon’s voice were behind me until I reached the very end at the gates of the Tenth City. But it still surprised me that I felt alone at the outset of a great battle. Would Elyon come to my aid, or was I truly on my own this time?

  CHAPTER 18

  STARGAZER

  I made quick work of the bridge from the second to the third pillar. Finding no one at the third pillar on my arrival was eerie and troublesome. I looked down at the empty, crisscrossing vines and could think only of an enormous, metal-headed spider turning everything black. I could imagine the beauty of the third pillar with its cottages against a sea of green turning dead and lifeless. The third pillar was too quiet—no hollering as skimmers flew past, no buzz of activity from the village below—and I had a premonition of its demise that frightened me.

  I placed my slider over the nearest vine and jumped clean and free into the air. It was different with no one around, scarier for some reason, and I couldn’t shake the idea that Abaddon was lurking in the vines, already transformed into a spider of massive proportion.

  For once, I was happy for my flight to end at the other side. I advanced quickly on the hill and found the rope leading to the fourth pillar. There was no one waiting for me at the other side, and looking down into the water I saw that Abaddon was my only company.

  What are you up to, Alexa Daley?

  I was feeling bold and angry, and it showed in my response.

  “You’ll never rule this place. But if you leave now, we’ll let you alone in the Lonely Sea.”

  There was a tremendous howling laughter from below.

  I’ve grown weary of the water. It’s cold. Very soon you and I will change places!

  And then Abaddon climbed twenty feet or more up the side of the pillar, his arms extending out longer than I’d seen them extend before. Flames licked in every direction. There was the sound of metal on stone as Abaddon smashed his many arms into the pillar and tore boulder-sized chunks free. He held on to a rock as big as the cart I used to ride between Lathbury and Bridewell, and his body began to shake. Everything about Abaddon turned red and fiery. The stone itself began to glow red with the force of Abaddon’s anger until all at once it exploded into a thousand pieces and the sound of despicable laughter filled the air.

  You should be careful who you trust. You might be surprised how many people I can turn against you!

  “You’re a liar!” I screamed, angrier and more confused than ever. I hastily took my slider in hand, flipped it over the rope leading to the fourth pillar, and dove into the air. It was a long way across, almost a minute to the other side, and looking down I watched as Abaddon attacked the pillar more ferociously than I’d ever seen him do so. His arms moved stunningly fast, hurling rocks up into the air toward me and tearing stone away like an ax against the base of a dying tree. As I reached the halfway point, the fourth pillar began to sway and rumble as if it might topple over. It had the effect of making the rope swing violently from side to side. Abaddon laughed and laughed, filling my head with the terrible sound of death coming to find me and hurl me into the Lonely Sea.

  Abaddon stopped suddenly and the pillar settled down, but the rope remained turbulent as I approached the stone wall of the fourth pillar. I was coming in extremely fast and my legs were swinging from side to side. I couldn’t get them out in front of me fast enough, and I’d waited too long to begin slowing down by twisting my slider.

  And now I wait. This pillar is about to fall, but it will fall at my choosing, when I make it so.

  Those were the last words of Abaddon I heard as he slipped back into the Lonely Sea, sizzling on the water as he disappeared from view. I gripped my slider as tightly as I could and hit the pillar shoulder first, bouncing back into the air. I felt as though I’d been dropped flat on my back onto a cobblestone road from a great height. The wind was knocked out of me and I couldn’t breathe. Stars and blackness filled my vision as I told myself one thing over and over again: Hold on! Hold on! Hold on, Alexa!

  But I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t even breathe. The slider began to slip slowly from my fingers even as my feet tangled in the rope bridge before me. When I finally let go, I fell backward, out toward the Lonely Sea. The shock of this feeling—of knowing I was about to fly free one last time—pushed me back to breathing. I managed to get my hands facing the pillar and protected my head, for my feet were tangled in the rope ladder and they held. I was injured and upside down, but I was alive and holding steady on the side of the fourth stone pillar.

  It took some careful thinking to get myself turned back around and to work my way up the ladder. My whole body shook with fear at each painful step, but I couldn’t help thinking that climbing now felt very much like the first time I’d climbed up the ladder to the library in Bridewell from out of the hidden tunnels. Back then I had only just returned from meeting Yipes for the first time, from hearing the voice of Darius the wolf, from an adventure that seemed, at times, more play than real. How was it that I’d found my way across the Lonely Sea to a place so unreal, in a battle so far beyond my abilities?

  “Are you all right?” came a familiar voice from above.

  “Yipes!” I cried, looking up and seeing the silhouette of my best friend’s hat against the blue sky.

  “Take it slow,” he said as I raced up the ladder. “Who knows what this pillar might do next?”

  He took my hand at the top and pulled me up. Having him hold my hand made me realize that I’d lost my slider coming across.

  “I don’t have a slider,” I said. “I dropped mine.”

  “Maybe you won’t need it to get back across,” said Yipes. He had a sly look on his face, like he knew something he couldn’t wait for me to see. “Come on. The sun will be setting soon. And with night comes the first flight.”

  I groaned as we started up the side of the fourth pillar.

  “Can I take off my sandals?” I asked.

  Yipes nodded and I carefully took them off, holding them both in one hand.

  “Does this feel familiar to you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  I squished my toes into green moss and we climbed.

  “Don’t you remember when we first met? You led me to the secret pool to fi
nd one of the last Jocastas. I took my sandals off then, and I walked in the water on green moss. My body hurt then as it does now, in a new way that I didn’t think I could hurt.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Yipes. “Everything about this place is so different and yet so much like the places we’ve been before.”

  My strength was returning as we went on. It occurred to me then that it was in times of struggle that I found the best parts of myself—courage, loyalty, an unexpected peace—and I always discovered what I needed to break through and go on.

  “The Five Stone Pillars have the fingerprints of Elyon all over them,” I said. “He made this place—I’m sure of it. He’s not going to let Abaddon have it in the end.”

  Yipes nodded his agreement as we reached the edge of the hole leading to Sir Alistair’s chamber. Nimbus was sitting on the other side and appeared to be waiting for us.

  “It’s cloudy on the horizon this evening,” she purred. “I like the clouds.”

  “How long before dark?” asked Yipes. Cats had a way of knowing such things rather precisely.

  “Less than an hour,” meowed Nimbus. “Cutting it close, aren’t we?”

  I didn’t feel at all like arguing with a cat, so I sat down and slid into the hole, leaving Nimbus to wonder what I was thinking.

  In my absence, the flying machine had been successfully prepared for its first flight out of Sir Alistair’s chamber. It was plump full of air, bobbing gently overhead, and it seemed to me as if the balloon wanted to be let off its leash to roam free on the air above.

  “You’re back!” said Matilda. She came near and we couldn’t help hugging each other.

  “Yipes has been so much help,” she told me. “He’s been climbing up and down the ropes of the balloon making sure she’s ready.”

  “What about me?” said Marco, yelling from one of the platforms above.

  Matilda rolled her eyes and whispered to me, “He’s actually been doing quite a lot.”