The Last Stand of Daronwy

by Clint Talbert

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know. I have to stop them. It’s not right.” He stood and scraped the food into the trash. He wasn’t hungry.

  “Well, if it’s their land… ”

  “It’s not! It’s ours.”

  She nodded, rinsing a green bowl and setting it into the open maw of the dishwasher. “Have you done your homework yet?”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. Why didn’t they ever get it? “No, ma’am.” He set his empty plate next to the sink. They didn’t understand what was important. School and homework were eight thousand ton lead chains on his legs. He would never be free of them. Twin Hills held the key to those shackles. Twin Hills could set him free. And someone was tearing it down. Why didn’t anyone get it?

  The gaggle of girls walked through the halls, changing shape like a giggling amoeba. Something was said that made Mira’s chin tuck into her chest. Her eyes squinted, her arms crossed, and she dropped out of the amoeba, stationing herself against the wall. The girls didn’t seem to notice and kept giggling on down the hall. Josh had not gotten to school yet, so this was Jeremy’s one chance. Jeremy put down the book he was pretending to read and crossed the hall to her.

  “Mira.”

  She glanced up, as though startled out of her thoughts. Her lips broke into a smile. “Hey, Jeremy, what’s up?”

  In the light of that smile, the words in his mind ran into each other like a pile of bumper cars. “I… I… um.” He swallowed. “I haven’t seen you at home much.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of dancing and gymnastics. I’m going to try out for cheerleading next year.”

  “Awesome!” He glanced up and down the hall; still no sign of Josh. “I was wondering, have you seen the tractors in Twin Hills?”

  She cocked her head. “There are tractors in Twin Hills?”

  “Yeah, they’re kind of hidden right now by the trees behind Roland’s house, but they’ve been there since yesterday. I think someone is trying to cut down Twin Hills.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But we have to stop them.”

  “Who?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Me, Daniel, Sy, Loren, Roland, Marcus, even Lee.”

  “No, who’s cutting down Twin Hills?”

  “I don’t know. I just know we need more help. There’s a lot to do.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Well, they’re trying to drain the pond in the middle of Twin Hills. They’re digging these trenches to drain it, and we have to keep filling them in. Loren and Sy and I are also setting traps, and Loren did something to one of the tractors, but I think they fixed it.” He stopped, gulping air. “We just need you to help us fill in the ditches. There is so little time when we get home and we have to be in by dark and we don’t know if we ever find them all.” He entwined his fingers together to try to stop babbling. “We just need everybody’s help.”

  “I can try, but I don’t really get home until after dark these days, with dance and gymnastics. Maybe on Saturday, if you show me what’s going on?”

  “Okay—”

  A paw clamped on Jeremy’s shoulder and the hallway spun. His jaw erupted in pain and he staggered backwards, windmilling his arms. Someone screamed. Jeremy lost balance and crashed to the floor, when his eyes focused, he could see Josh storming toward him, fists clenched.

  “I told you!” Josh said, “I told you to stay away from her!”

  Jeremy’s foot was tangled in someone’s backpack strap. He scrambled to his feet as Josh grabbed his shoulders and slammed him into the wall. Jeremy saw Josh’s fist and tried to throw his hands up, but Josh’s knuckles crushed into his temple. Jeremy’s head snapped back against the wall behind him, and the hallway blurred into strands of color. Shouts faded into a muffled roar like ocean waves. Pain split through his left side. His legs went mushy. Hands covering his head, he fell, curling on the floor.

  Someone hauled him to his feet and marched him toward the principal’s office. Halfway there, the hands on his shoulders steered him into the nurse’s. The teacher and the nurse talked.

  The nurse waved her hand in front of his face. “Jeremy, Jeremy pay attention, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He blinked up at her. The paper-covered doctor’s office bed crackled beneath him when he moved. How did he get onto this bed?

  “What were you doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I was just talking to my friend Mira.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She wiped away the blood from the cut under his eye. “I think you’ll have a black eye. Are your teeth all right? Say ‘ahh.’”

  “Ahh… I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I promise.” Tears welled up at the corners of his eyes.

  “I know you weren’t, sweetie. This is going to sting a bit.”

  She wiped hydrogen peroxide on the cut under his eye, and Jeremy cried out.

  “Did he hit you anywhere else?”

  “I think my shoulder, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad.”

  “Take off your shirt so I can see.” She looked over his arm, and his back where he’d landed on the backpacks. “Yeah, you’ll have a couple of bruises, but you’ll be all right. Do you feel nauseated—like you’re going to throw up?”

  Jeremy shook his head.

  “Put your shirt back on. You can rest there until Principal Boudreaux sends for you, but don’t go to sleep.”

  Jeremy lay back on the paper-covered bed, hating the way it crackled beneath him, and shivered with sudden fear. “I don’t have to get a shot, do I?”

  The nurse stifled a laugh. “No, I think Josh has all his shots.”

  Relieved, he stared out the top of the window into the infinite blue of the sky. Clear days were rare in October. He wondered what was happening in Twin Hills right now. Were the tractors running? Were they sitting idle? What would the principal say to him? More importantly, what would Mom and Dad say?

  He wished he could fall up into that sky and come down in some better place, some place without school, some place without Josh. He didn’t realize he had accidentally drifted to sleep until they woke him to take him to the office.

  “Josh said that you hit him first,” said Principal Boudreaux.

  “What? No, sir! I was talking to Mira and then he came up out of nowhere and hit me. And I fell down and then he came after me. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Now the tears that had been in the corners of his eyes did fall, and he wanted to curl up and disappear to some other world. Maybe if he just closed his eyes tight, this entire life would disappear like some bad dream and he could wake up somewhere else.

  Principal Boudreaux ran a hand through his brown hair. “I don’t believe Josh. I think that you’re telling the truth. I can let you go back to class, or I can call your parents and have them come get you. Josh will be gone for a couple of days, but when he comes back, you need to stay clear of him, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Next time, keep your hands up.”

  Keep his hands up? What? “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jeremy sat on the wide steps of the school while he waited for his mom. Eventually, the long sedan pulled into the circular driveway. As it crept closer, his stomach sank. He looked at the cement, at the trapped pebbles beneath its surface. Maybe they had once been part of a giant mountain, and then somebody took them and they ended up in this concrete, doomed to be part of a school’s sidewalk forever. Jeremy doubted these pebbles ever had a fighting chance.

  “Jeremy!” His mom j
umped out of the car and ran to him. She swept him into an embarrassing hug. “Are you hurt? Are you all right? Why were you fighting?”

  “I didn’t start it. All I was doing was talking to Mira.”

  “Honey, why didn’t you hit him back?”

  “I couldn’t.” He stared at the concrete and kicked at the pebbles, wishing he could dislodge one and set it free. “I dunno.”

  “Do you want me to talk to the principal about it? Maybe we should put you in a different class.”

  “No, ma’am. Can we just go home?”

  “Yes, honey. We can. Come on.”

  She opened the front door and he climbed into the plush brown seat. She got in on the other side. “Are you hungry? It’s almost lunch time.”

  He nodded.

  “How about Mexican food at Casa Olé? I have to go back to work, so you’re going to stay at Mommit’s until Dad gets off.”

  “Casa Olé sounds good.”

  It was the same set of questions when his dad arrived at Grandma’s. They rode home in complete silence and Jeremy couldn’t tell if his dad was angry or not. When they turned on Vermont Street, acrid smoke wafted in through the air conditioner.

  “What’s burning?”

  Dad shrugged. “I dunno.”

  They drove down the street and the bike trails slid into view—far too many of them. They had almost been entirely cleared. Half the trails remained, but half were just exposed dirt crisscrossed by tractor-sized tire tracks. All the underbrush had been pushed together into a pyre, and it billowed a gray smoke.

  “Dad, I need to go to Twin Hills!”

  “No, Jeremy. You need to stay in your room and think about why you shouldn’t be getting in fights at school.”

  Jeremy trudged to his room, slamming the door. Sitting on his bed, he stared across the street and watched as the October light faded and the smoke pooled into the darkening sky. His mind wandered and he was startled by the knock on his door.

  “Jeremy! Come eat!” Rosalyn shrieked through the door.

  He marched out of his room to take a seat at the table.

  “So he hit you first?”

  Jeremy looked at his dad. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you hit him back?”

  “I couldn’t. He was too fast. And I was falling over backpacks, and then he grabbed on to me.”

  His dad shook his head.

  Jeremy stared at the homemade hamburger and fries on his plate. He really wasn’t hungry. Twin Hills was burning. Burning.

  “… library… ”

  “What?”

  His mom turned as though she were about to scold him for interrupting, but didn’t. “I was saying that someone told me that they might be building a library in the woods across the street. Wouldn’t that be nice? We wouldn’t have to go all the way to Port Arthur for the library anymore.”

  Jeremy blinked and ate a bite of hamburger. A library; that might be okay. Having a library across the street from his house would be really good. Well, not really good, but not terrible. Did this mean that he was wrong for fighting against them? Shouldn’t he be helping them if they were building a library? Vexed, he pushed the plate away. It was too late to call Daniel, so he went back to his bedroom and stared out the window. The amber street lamps stretched their light toward the gaping hole of shadow that yawned where there had once been trees, but could not illuminate the destruction or the burn piles. They still smoldered, though. He could smell them.

  If they built a library on Twin Hills, they wouldn’t need to cut down everything; the Port Arthur Library would easily fit within Helter Skelter. That would leave the rest of the forest and the Tree intact. He wished the street lamps would pierce the shadow over Twin Hills so he could see how much they had already cut. He remembered the decision of the Elders to give the Dan’kir fortress to Kronshar in Eaglewing and Lightningbolt’s world. He remembered the way Daniel had played Naranthor when he had proposed it. It had sounded safe; it had sounded logical. But not long afterward, Eaglewing and Lightningbolt were rescuing hostages from Dan’kir. This library could be the same sort of thing; he had to find out.

  The next day, his mom took the day off and he stayed home from school. Just before lunch, two men arrived and started their tractors. They worked to push the remaining debris into a burn pile. The men would know if they were building a library. He could simply ask them and settle the question. But how? What if they realized he had been the one filling in their ditches? They could tell his parents, or worse, call the police. Jeremy watched them from his driveway, trying to decide what to do. There were three men now, moving about in the warm autumn sun. Two on the tractors and one with a shovel. He would never have another chance to talk to them—he would be back in school tomorrow. He had to find out why they were destroying Twin Hills.

  Forcing his shaking knees to straighten, he took a breath. Halfway across the street, the tempest in his stomach drowned his courage. If he asked them, then it would be obvious that he was the one filling in their ditches. He would be in trouble for certain. But, how else was he going to find out? Taking another breath and balling his hands into fists, Jeremy pushed himself across the empty lot and into the decimated bike trails. The man with the shovel had disappeared, so Jeremy walked toward the man on the closest tractor—the green one. Jeremy stood in front of an uprooted bush and stared at the man, waiting to be noticed.

  The tractor driver glanced up, then glanced again, startled. Leaving the matted pile of limbs and brush that he had been pushing, the man reversed his tractor, spinning it toward Jeremy. Jeremy forced his shoulders straight and curled his toes in his shoes, trying desperately not to run. His breath came in short gasps.

  The tractor rumbled slowly toward him.

  Cold sweat beaded across his forehead. His hands shook. His knees quivered.

  The man steered the thing next to Jeremy and geared the engine down into a less noisy idle.

  “Hey,” he said, leaning down. “Whatcha doin’ out here?” The man’s gaze registered the black eye. Jeremy felt it throbbing like a giant “guilty” sign on his face. “Are you okay, son?”

  Jeremy wanted to speak, wanted to say something, but all the words caught in his throat. Taking a wheezing breath of diesel fumes, he shouted, “Are you building a library?”

  The man sat back, blinking. Then he stared at Jeremy, cocked his head and laughed. “No, no; I don’t think so. I mean, they don’t tell us that stuff. But no, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Before the man could say another word, Jeremy bolted across the remaining yellow grasses toward his house. As he crossed the street, he steered toward Sy’s house instead so that they wouldn’t know where he lived. He ran onto Sy’s porch and crouched behind the shrubs. The man had watched him go. As Jeremy spied from behind the shrubs along Sy’s porch, the man took off his baseball cap, scratched at his unruly brown hair, and put it back on. The tractor swerved back to its previous task, piling the murdered brush of Twin Hills into burn-piles. The man’s words rang in Jeremy’s ears. “They don’t tell us that stuff.” The man was just another pebble, trapped in just another sidewalk. Jeremy thought about his dad who hated waking up at four in the morning for his shift at the refinery. Everyone on this block did that, except Mira’s dad; he was a professor at Lamar.

  But all of them were trapped in these jobs, doing things that other people made them do. Except him. Jeremy could save Twin Hills, because he was still free. He was, after all, chosen. Jeremy repeated that thought until his nervous nausea passed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They were creeping along the canal embankment as it transformed into the stinking, crumbling shanty towns that surrounded Khazim. “Let’s play that we got up to Khazim,” Daniel said, “but Niritan is still off in the rift valley somewhere.”


  Jeremy nodded. “It’s bigger than Hrad’din. There’s a giant city of huts and ogres and selurks that live outside it in these mud-brick houses. The castle walls are up on a hill, they’re tall and black, and beyond that is a large square pyramid with no point. Instead, it has a building on top of it, and that is where Kronshar lives, in the center of the keep.”

  “Naranthor knows a way inside.”

  “Right. Let’s play that it’s night and we fly over the city, almost up to the inner wall. We stay right on the edge of the clouds so that they won’t see us.”

  “Okay.” Daniel extended his arms.

  “We have to dive. Dive next to the wall,” said Naranthor.

  “But we’ll be seen,” said Lightningbolt.

  “Wait for the guards to cross each other. Watch the orbs. Once they cross, dive for the middle of the wall and make for the ravine in front of it. Go, now!”

  They pulled their wings back, plummeting like dark shooting stars. The guards and the wall flashed past as they swept into the rocky gorge just outside the wall. Naranthor led them along the putrid stream in the bottom of the gorge for hours; the stink of sewage burned their eyes and choked their lungs. It was nearly dawn when they alit on a tumble of blocks from a collapsed escape tunnel. They crept inside silently, leaving the rancid stream behind them.

  “And I thought the rift valley was the worst thing I’d ever smelled.” Kavarine suppressed a cough with her hand pressed against her chest.

  They gathered in the tunnel. “Well, I can see why it isn’t guarded. Who could stand next to that thing?”

  “Quiet.”

  We should walk up a little ways and then rest, Naranthor said using his telepathy.

  I can’t rest with Kronshar this close, said Eaglewing.

  It will take almost two days to get through this tunnel undetected. Most of the beings in the castle live in daylight. Dawn is already breaking above.

  Can we at least get a little bit away from the sewage? The smell is killing me. Kavarine pressed her hands together in a prayer-like gesture.