Always October

by Bruce Coville

  The one on the left: “This definitely needs getting to the root of.”

  “Tell Sploot Fah, High Poet …”

  “What are you doing here with that baby?”

  “That is more than you need to know,” snapped Keegel Farzym.

  “Fine!” cried both parts of Sploot Fah. “Do not speak civilly to me. I have other things to do anyway.”

  Sniffing in disgust, the creature(s) dove back underground.

  “Do we have to worry about him telling Mazrak where we are?” asked Lily.

  It was a smart question. I wished I had thought of it myself, but I was still pretty shaky from the way Sploot Fah had focused on me.

  “I think it unlikely,” said Keegel Farzym. “Sploot Fah is an annoyance, but he seems to be of good heart. Now come along—we need to keep moving.”

  The path forked and divided many times. We had left the swamp, though the transition had been so gradual I had hardly noticed it. Much as I tried, I could not keep track of the choices Keegel Farzym made about which branches to follow. Worse, several times the High Poet took us completely off the path. It was harder to walk when he did this, because the forest blocked most of the moonlight. Also, the trees were massive, and the leaf-strewn ground was ridged by their great roots—which were all too easy to trip over.

  “Boy,” muttered Lily at one point. “I hope nothing happens to Keegel Farzym. Without him, we’d be in big trouble.”

  Then she started singing “Cannibal Bunnies Go to the Fair.”

  It seemed like a bad song choice to me.

  At last we reached a large clearing. At its far side a sheer cliff stretched hundreds of feet straight up. The clearing itself was a perfect half circle, formed by the trees at either end growing right up to the base of the cliff.

  Tucked against that cliff, smack in the middle of the open space at its base, was a cozy-looking stone hut with a thatched roof.

  Keegel Farzym led us to the hut. Handing me the baby, he said, “Stand here, all of you. And don’t move. I need you to stay close to the door for what I’m about to do.”

  Holding Little Dumpling tight to my chest, I nodded.

  Keegel Farzym walked about twenty feet to our right. Starting at the base of the cliff, he paced out a half circle that perfectly matched the larger half circle formed by the trees beyond him. When he reached the end, he turned and retraced his steps, muttering to himself and making strange gestures. On the third pass he took something from a pouch at his side and sprinkled it in front of him as he went.

  When he had made five passes in all, he returned to where we waited and said, “Stay here while I go inside to dismantle the traps. Be cautious. Speak to no one. Above all, do not cross the line I just made!”

  He opened the door, ducked his head, and stepped into the hut.

  The door swung shut behind him.

  After a moment Lily reached for the baby.

  “Just promise not to sing to him,” I said, passing LD to her.

  Lily made a face, then started bouncing the baby and telling him how wonderfully strange he was.

  “Good!” said LD. Then he patted her cheek and blew a spit bubble.

  Gnarly, standing a foot or two away, muttered uneasily.

  I gazed out at the dark forest. How much, exactly, did my grandfather know about this place? I thought. How did he find out about it? And how much had my father figured out before Mazrak lured him to that cave?

  Ignoring my instructions, Lily started to sing about the three bears eating Goldilocks for breakfast. LD got so excited, he began shaking his rattle. When the song was finished, he reached for me.

  I was glad to have him in my arms again. Something about holding him—about trying to protect him—felt solid and right to me. That was the one thing in the world—two worlds, actually—that I knew right now: I had to take care of the baby.

  That’s one of the ideas that crops up in my grandfather’s stories over and over again. You have an obligation to protect and care for beings that are smaller and weaker than you are. It’s part of that “tikkun” thing, I think. My mother believed in the idea, intensely. It’s part of why we kept Little Dumpling.

  Time dragged on. Was it possible Keegel Farzym had brought us here for some purpose other than saving us from Mazrak? The High Poet was a monster too, after all. Who knew how he thought, what he might be planning? What if he was going to leave us out here just for the fun of it? Heck, he hadn’t come to help when Octavia had captured me, spouting some nonsense about it being against the rules. And what had he been doing when he was pacing out that half circle in front of the hut? Was that line to keep other creatures out … or to keep Lily and Gnarly and me in?

  As my mind conjured up horrible fantasies, I noticed a horrible reality: eyes had appeared in the darkness around us—glowing eyes that hung at all levels, as if the creatures they belonged to stood anywhere from a foot to twelve feet high.

  Then I saw a flickering light that was definitely not an eye approaching. I pressed back against the hut. Lily joined me. Little Dumpling began to whimper. Gnarly moved to my other side. Clutching his pickax, the old man whispered, “Hang on, kids. We won’t go down without a fight!”

  Soon I saw that the flickering light came from a torch. The torchbearer drew near enough that he could be seen, then stopped just outside Keegel Farzym’s line.

  A flood of astonished relief washed over me.

  “Dad!” I cried, my voice thick with joy. “Dad, I’m here!”

  “Jacob! Thank goodness! I’ve been searching for you for hours! Come on—bring the baby and we’ll go home.”

  “I can’t believe you found us! How did you get here?”

  “Later, Jacob. We don’t have time right now. Hurry!”

  I started toward him. LD howled in fright.

  “Jacob!” cried Lily. “I don’t know if we should do this.”

  Ignoring her, I continued forward. I had taken only three steps when the door behind us opened and Keegel Farzym roared, “Jacob, what are you doing?”

  “Getting out of here!”

  “Jacob, do not cross the barrier! That is not your father!”

  I hesitated, frightened and confused. It had to be my father standing there with the torch, waiting to take us home.

  It had to be.

  But if it was Dad, why didn’t he come to get me, instead of just standing there?

  Keegel Farzym bellowed a word I could not understand. Instantly the line he had so carefully walked began to glow.

  “Hurry, Jacob,” called my father. His voice was urgent now, almost angry.

  I took another step forward.

  “Jacob!” yelled Keegel Farzym. “If you pass that barrier, I cannot protect you!”

  Again I hesitated. LD was squalling now, squirming in my arms and reaching back toward the High Poet.

  “Hurry, Jacob!” ordered my father. “I can’t come to get you. Keegel Farzym has set a barrier against me.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain later. Hurry!”

  Something was wrong. I don’t know how I knew, but I was as certain of it as I was of the weight of Little Dumpling in my arms. I took a step back, feeling something inside me that had already been broken break a little more.

  “Hurry!” snarled my father.

  I took another step backward.

  “COME HERE, YOU LITTLE IDIOT!”

  As the words exploded out of my father’s enraged face, his face itself changed. His eyes reddened. His skin turned orange. Clothes splitting, the man exploded into Mazrak.

  I screamed but once again found that I could not move.

  Mazrak lunged toward me. As he did, Keegel Farzym’s protective barrier blazed into a wall of purple light. Mazrak struck it. A crackle of energy threw him backward and he thudded to the ground, howling in rage. But other than angering the monster, the fall had no effect; he was back on his feet in an instant. Raising his arms, he began to chant, his voice low
, ferocious, and terrifying.

  The purple light of the barrier grew dim, as if losing strength.

  Mazrak walked toward it, still chanting.

  How long I would have stood there, unable to move, I don’t know. What saved me was Lily grabbing me from behind and pulling me back.

  “Jacob!” she screamed. “Jacob, come with me!”

  We stumbled and almost fell. Fortunately, Gnarly was right behind her. He put his arms out to support us. Then he helped Lily drag me to the hut.

  At the door, Lily plucked Little Dumpling from my arms, then followed closely as Gnarly pulled me inside.

  The door slammed shut behind us.

  I collapsed to the floor, sobbing.

  So I was not the first to spot the place’s unexpected occupant.

  19

  (Lily)

  THE WORLD BELOW

  Pulling Jake away from Mazrak was the scariest thing I’d ever done (at least, until then). I still have nightmares where I see the rage on that horrible monster’s face as he realized we were about to escape him.

  But in the hut I saw something that lifted my heart.

  “Mrs. McSweeney!” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

  Jacob gasped and looked up.

  “Well, what do you think, darlin’?” she said. “I came to help!”

  My grandfather snorted. “I shoulda known you’d be mixed up in this, Eloise.”

  Mrs. McSweeney made a tutting noise. “When a monster invades a house where I’m tending the young ones, I don’t have much choice, now do I, Abraham?”

  “But how did you get here?” asked Jacob, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “I brought her, of course,” said a sharp female voice from somewhere near my feet.

  Looking down, I saw Luna Marie Eleganza the Sixth lounging next to Mrs. McSweeney’s shoulder bag, which she had set on the floor. The cat extended a pure-white paw and began to lick it.

  “Did that cat just talk?” asked my grandfather.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” said Luna, not bothering to look up. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “I never heard you talk before,” said Jacob.

  “I don’t, on our side of the Tapestry. Things are different here.”

  “What did you mean when you said you brought Mrs. McSweeney?” I asked.

  “Oh, cats can cross over to Always October anytime they want,” said Mrs. McSweeney. “That’s usually what’s going on when you know a cat is in the house but can’t find it—he or she has simply gone to Always October.”

  “Of course, we don’t generally bring our people with us,” put in Luna, sounding a trifle smug. “But herself here is a bit different.”

  Mrs. McSweeney, looking serious now, said, “I’ve known who Little Dumpling was since the night he showed up on your doorstep, Jacob. That’s why I urged your mother to go to that conference and made it clear I would stay with you. I wanted to be there on the night of the full moon in case anything happened.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” asked Jacob.

  “Do you think your mother would have taken me seriously if I did? I already have a reputation for being slightly strange. Besides, I’ve been sworn to silence about certain things.” She sighed. “As it worked out, the situation was far worse than I expected. When I heard that uproar in the baby’s room, and then couldn’t get in, I knew things were bad. Then everything went silent, which was even worse. The door swung open, but the room was empty. I raced to the window and saw Mazrak running across the lawn. I snatched up Luna—”

  “A bit roughly,” put in the cat.

  Mrs. McSweeney scowled down at her. “It was an emergency, dear.” Returning her attention to the rest of us, she continued, “I knew they were goin’ to Always October, and knew I had to get here too. But if Luna made the crossing from Jacob’s house, I had no idea where we would end up. So we hurried home, because crossing from there brings us here to the Council Chamber, and that way I could at least warn the Poets about what was happening.”

  “How did you know Always October existed to begin with?” I asked.

  “That’s another story altogether, and a fairly long one. Right now let’s concentrate on finding a way to get you home. We need to be back before Jacob’s mother or there’s goin’ to be hob to pay.”

  She looked at Jacob appraisingly. “Actually, there’s going to be hob to pay when your mother sees those marks on your face. What in the world happened to you?”

  “He had an encounter with Octavia,” said Keegel Farzym.

  Mrs. McSweeney raised her eyebrows.

  “Now don’t give me that look, Eloise,” said the High Poet. “I warned them about staying on the path.”

  She made a little snort, as if she thought that was pretty inadequate, then said, “Did you at least get some silk out of it?”

  “A lot, actually,” said Jake.

  “Well, that’s something,” she muttered.

  I was getting impatient with all this. “Can’t Luna take us home?” I asked.

  Mrs. McSweeney shook her head. “It would be lovely if she could, dear. Alas, it’s a one-cat, one-person arrangement. I’m her person, so she can bring me here. No one else—well, no other human—gets to travel on that ticket.”

  Luna looked up from licking her paw. “I am not a ticket!” she said sharply.

  “Just a figure of speech, darlin’,” said Mrs. McSweeney.

  “The McSweeney is right,” said Keegel Farzym. “It is urgent to get you back, for more reasons than you yet understand. Nor would it work for the cat to take you back right now even if she could. There is something you must do before you return.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “All will be revealed in a few minutes. Let us move on.”

  “Now just a ding-danged minute,” snapped Grampa. “You’re chivvyin’ us along awfully fast, Mr. Monster. I’d like to know how come you didn’t come out to git the boy yourself.”

  The High Poet sighed. “I entered the hut ahead of you for two reasons, Mr. Carker. The first was to disarm the traps meant to protect this entrance to the Council Chamber … traps that would surely have ensnared the three of you. The second was to work a new spell to prevent the enemy from following once I got you inside. This new protection won’t last long, but it should help. Unfortunately, once that spell was in place, I could not pass back through the door without destroying the very protection I had just created.”

  “I s’pose that makes sense,” said Grampa grudgingly.

  “I don’t care about that!” cried Jacob, still struggling to control his voice. “What I want to know is how Mazrak was able to look like my father!”

  Keegel Farzym frowned. “That is hard to say. I do not know all that our enemies are up to, or all that they are capable of. Perhaps Mazrak spied on your family long enough to mimic your father’s appearance.”

  “My father was gone long before LD came to live with us.”

  “I did not say the baby was the only possible reason for Mazrak to spy on you. Other things about your house remain of interest to us. Now come. The Council awaits.”

  As he said this, a door creaked open. A faint blue light appeared in the back wall, which I now realized was actually formed by the cliff. Dim as it was, the glow provided enough light for us to make our way forward.

  We stepped onto a stone stairway that spiraled downward. It was lit by that same blue glow, which made my friends look slightly monstrous themselves. The light, such as it was, turned out to come from a fungus growing in patches along the walls and on the ceiling. It was lumpy and wrinkled, and smelled like wet forest.

  LD reached and patted one of the lumps. It burst with a loud pop, causing him to cry out and bury his face against Jacob’s neck. Then he laughed, twisted in Jacob’s arms, and reached for another.

  “Best not to touch the lumnifung,” said Keegel Farzym gently. “It’s delicate.”

  “Want!” wailed Little Dumpling as
Jacob pulled his arm down. “Want!”

  I noticed that his vocabulary seemed to have increased since we entered Always October. Reaching out for him, I murmured, “Hush, sweetie, and I’ll sing to you.”

  Jacob passed me the baby, and I began my song about the children the witch in the gingerbread cottage had cooked before she’d met Hansel and Gretel. It’s one of my favorites—I have a separate verse for each child I’ve invented.

  As I sang, I wondered whether the baby might turn back into his human form now that we were out of the moonlight. He didn’t, for reasons we would soon learn.

  The stairs brought us to a stony, circular chamber, about fifteen feet high and fifteen feet across. I had no idea how far underground we were now.

  Ahead of us, across the stone floor and dimly visible in the blue glow, was another door, this one made of rough wood held together by thick iron straps. Nailed to its surface were various signs and symbols, some carved from wood, others made from metal. Keegel Farzym put his hand on the door, then spoke some words I could not understand.

  With an ominous creak, the door swung open.

  Following Keegel Farzym, we stepped into a huge chamber. It was lit by seven flickering torches, each burning in a different color. The flames ranged from a vivid red through yellow and green to a deep royal purple. Twisting roots—some fine as thread, some thicker than my arm—thrust through the ceiling and the moist earthen walls. Patches of toadstools dotted the floor.

  I loved the place instantly.

  Wonderful as the space was, the creatures who occupied it were even more fascinating. Five in all (or, at least, so it seemed just then), they sat in a half circle around a curved wooden table that was nearly level with my chin. Two more chairs stood empty. One, bigger than the rest and carved with strange designs, was at the center. On the table in front of that chair rested a crude hammer that looked as if it had been made by jamming a thick wooden handle directly into a chunk of stone. Beside the hammer was a flat rock.

  A large tapestry covered the wall behind the table, its woven image showing a moonlit swamp through which prowled the silhouettes of mist-shrouded creatures.

  Not one of the five monsters seated at the table looked like any one of the others. Even so, they did have three things in common: they were large, they were strange, and they were frightening.