by Anna Dale
Athene found the whole thing quite amusing. ‘You must have felt a bit silly,’ she said, ‘when you realised what you’d been running from. Jonnie’s pigs wouldn’t have done you any harm.’
‘I know!’ said Humdudgeon. He blew his nose. ‘I felt like such a nincompoop. No self-respecting Gloam would ever run from hogs! Because of my poorly leg, it took me ages to make it back to my tribe,’ he said. ‘When I got there, I was muddy and bleeding, my leg could hardly bear my weight and my clothes were in rags. As soon as the others spotted me they all gathered round and asked me what had happened. I knew I’d be a laughing stock if I told them the truth, so I lied. I made up a cock and bull story about a runaway girl and three Low Gloam thugs who had given me a beating. I didn’t think that anyone would find out the truth. Huffkin thought I was terribly brave and insisted on calling me a hero. It was quite nice to begin with, but after a while I started to feel like a bit of a cad.’
‘The guilt got to you,’ Athene said. She knew exactly what that felt like.
‘If only I’d spoken up sooner,’ said Humdudgeon. ‘We wouldn’t be down here now. My stupid made-up story made everyone think that your hare-brained plan would succeed. I’m afraid, my dear, the reality is that we’re stuck down here for all time. No poor soul has ever escaped from the Low Gloam’s kingdom and no one ever will.’
‘I know things look quite bleak,’ said Athene, ‘but I’m still glad that we came.’
‘Glad?’ Humdudgeon said, fixing her with a horrified stare. ‘How can you be glad about it?’
‘If we hadn’t dared to come I wouldn’t have found my brother, would I?’ she said, breaking into a smile. ‘Zach’s down here, Humdudgeon! I’ve seen him with my own eyes!’
‘Poor little boy,’ Humdudgeon said gloomily. ‘He’ll never see the light of day again – and why? – because I’m a worthless, cowardly louse. Huffkin detests me and when it dawns on you that I’ve ruined your life and your brother’s as well, you’ll probably hate me too.’
‘No, I won’t,’ Athene said with certainty. Humdudgeon seemed convinced that he was the vilest creature who had ever lived and yet his wrongdoing paled into insignificance when she compared it with her own dark deed. She might have admitted that she had sent her brother into the Low Gloam’s tree right there and then, but she couldn’t work up the nerve.
‘Come on out of there, Humdudgeon,’ she said, seizing a hand and ankle and tugging him out of his badgersized burrow. He tried to fight her off, but she was very determined.
‘We need you!’ she told him.
‘What for?’ moaned Humdudgeon, lying prostrate on the floor and rolling about as if he were in agony. ‘I’m not fit for anything. I deserve to die!’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Athene, ‘and listen to what I’ve got to say. I’m brainy, all right? I got great marks in my exams this year and I was captain of Year Seven’s quiz team – but that doesn’t mean I’m smart enough to think up an escape plan on my own. You’re quite bright and Huffkin isn’t a dimwit either. The only way that we’re going to get back above ground is if all three of us put our heads together.’
Humdudgeon lay still. Then he sat up and clambered to his feet until he was standing beside her.
‘Well?’ said Athene.
‘You’re awfully bossy,’ he said.
Six-and-a-half hours later, Athene woke up and threw off her blanket. She got dressed quickly and quietly, not wishing to awaken Huffkin and Humdudgeon who had a whole night’s work ahead of them and needed to snatch every second of sleep that they could. As Athene left their quarters and hurried down the tunnel, she met no one. In the holes to either side of her, she caught brief glimpses of Gloam asleep under grey striped blankets and all manner of animals curled up in a confusion of scales, spines or fur, their ribcages rising and falling by turns.
Athene slipped out of the entrance to the Squattings seconds after the third Honk had sounded and, a little further up the tunnel, she passed the Low Gloam sentries who were wearily plodding home to their beds, having been on duty all day. They watched Athene scurry past them without interest, not bothering to call out to her or enquire where she was going. The Curfew had ended, which meant that any creature could go where they pleased as far as the sentries were concerned. If a Gloam wished to leave for work a half-hour earlier than usual it was no business of theirs.
When Athene got to the Stints, she searched several chambers until she found a handcart big enough to transport Zach. Emptying the cart of its contents (a sack of soil and a shovel), she grasped its wooden handles and steered it along the tunnel, drawing to a halt when she reached the chamber where Tippitilda worked. The Low Gloam woman was ready and waiting. She ushered Zach from the cupboard and, while Athene kept watch, lifted him into the handcart and told him to lie down.
‘No wriggling about,’ Tippitilda told him as she covered Zach with a blanket. ‘It’s really important that you stay still.’
‘But I want to look at everything!’ protested Zach, peeping out from underneath the blanket. His eyes shone with recently administered Goggle Drops.
‘No peeking either,’ said Tippitilda sternly, tucking the blanket round him. ‘What happens if you’re seen? Do you want to get your sister into trouble?’
‘No,’ breathed Zach and hid his face from view.
Tippitilda set off first and Athene waited patiently until the Low Gloam woman was far enough ahead. They had already decided that they would have to leave a certain distance between them so that they would not look as if they were accompanying each other. It was much more difficult to manoeuvre the handcart with a six-year-old boy inside. Before they had even left the Stints, Athene had almost tipped it over twice. To his credit, Zach did not make the slightest sound on either occasion.
Trying to appear as nonchalant as possible, Athene followed Tippititilda through the maze of tunnels. She could feel blisters forming on her hands as she turned the handcart this way and that. Her eyes were trained on Tippitilda’s heels, which meant that she did not take much notice of the route that they were following. To her relief, they did not meet many people on their journey. One Low Gloam expressed an interest in Athene’s load to which she replied, ‘They’re blankets, sir,’ and moved swiftly on, but that encounter proved to be her closest shave. When she turned into the Digs and parked the handcart outside a round door that Tippitilda had just gone through, Athene allowed herself a smile and a huge sigh of relief.
She tugged at the bell pull and rubbed her aching arms while she waited for her fellow conspirator to answer the door.
‘Yes?’ said Tippitilda, emerging from her doorway. She glanced at the handcart, feigning curiosity. ‘Do you have something for me, dear?’
‘Your bedding has been washed and mended,’ said Athene with a wink. Despite the tunnel being empty, they kept up their pretence. There was every chance that somebody might suddenly appear.
Carrying him like a rolled-up carpet, they took Zach over the threshold and into Tippitilda’s living room. Only when the front door had been closed behind them did they allow him to take off the blanket.
‘Cor!’ Zach said, kneeling by a table and handling some figures carved in wood. ‘You’ve got a chess set, Tippitilda!’
Athene looked around the room. ‘This is very posh,’ she said, trying hard not to sound envious. Apart from the low table, there was also a sofa with three plush cushions and an armchair and footstool to match. Athene yearned to sit down for a minute, but she knew that she must not. She was expected at the Sanctum in a few minutes and unless she left immediately she would be late.
‘Bye! Be good,’ she said to Zach, who had found a chessboard and was opening it up. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ She loathed the idea of leaving him, but was consoled by the knowledge that he would be well provided for in Tippitilda’s home. He would not have to sleep on the hard ground or have to make do with the measly portions of food dished out to the Squattings folk. He would also have more absorbing things to do t
han play noughts and crosses or I-Spy.
‘I don’t have time to take the handcart back before I go to work,’ said Athene as she and Tippitilda made their way to the door. ‘I’ll have to ditch it somewhere and return it later. Thanks for all you’ve done,’ she said, pausing to shake Tippitilda’s hand. ‘Our plan was a good one.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ Tippitilda said.
And now I have to think up another one, thought Athene anxiously as she hastened to the Sanctum. It had been risky, but relatively simple to transport her brother to the Digs. Escaping from the realm of the Low Gloam was a far greater challenge and she could only hope that between them, she and her two Humble Gloam friends would be able to think of a way of achieving it. At the present moment, though she hated to admit it, she had no ideas at all.
Chapter Thirteen
Searching for the Spell
It took them three days to think of something that seemed like a workable plan. In the meantime, they all went about their jobs like good, obedient citizens.
Humdudgeon started each working day by heading straight to the Water Hole. There, he lowered buckets through the hole in the floor on a strong length of rope. When each bucket sank into the river that ran several metres beneath the chamber he would stand firm and wait until the bucket felt heavy enough; then haul it up through the hole and load it on to the cart. Finally, when all four buckets were full he would harness up Rusty and MacTavish and deliver the water to everyone who needed it. Time and again, he hauled and lifted and walked with the cart and tipped and poured and returned to the chamber to start the whole process afresh. It was a wearisome job, but it meant that he got to know every twist and turn of the tunnels and he spoke to most of the underground folk and worked out which among them were honourable and which were not to be trusted.
Huffkin’s task required a lot of bending and stretching. She was given her own section of mosaic to work on, and handed a bag of stony fragments. Huffkin did not get to talk to as many people and animals as Humdudgeon did, but she learned plenty of useful information from the others in her work party. One squirrel, in particular, whose name was Skitter, was an incessant chatterer.
Athene’s knowledge expanded as well. The further she delved into the Low Gloam’s history, the more interested she became. She found a long chapter which went into great detail about the Battle of Barnyard Bedlam. It explained that once the Lofty Gloam (as they had previously been known) had moved from the oak tree’s branches to the hayloft in a nearby barn, they had lived without incident until one moonlit autumn night. The Lofty Gloam had been going about their business in the usual way, when a pair of Glare had attacked them. It had been an unprovoked assault. The Glare had let forth with bloodthirsty cries and pelted the Gloam with missiles, which found their targets easily and caused the most dreadful injuries. As a result of their battering, the Lofty Gloam who had survived the onslaught vowed that they would relocate underground and never make themselves vulnerable to such violence again. Once they had found the hollow tree which they all agreed would make a perfect base, the burliest Gloam set about digging a shaft and a network of tunnels below it, while the others collected together all the supplies and materials that they would need for their new subterranean life. Even before the tunnels were finished they moved in, and that was when they decided to change their name from the Lofty Gloam to the Low.
‘A pair of Glare?’ said Athene to herself, after she had read the full account. When Tippitilda had described the battle she had made her tribe’s opponents sound as numerous as a regiment. However, Athene was more convinced by the version in the book, mainly because it occurred to her that a barnyard would simply not be big enough for a major skirmish to take place there. She wondered where the battle might have been fought. It made sense for it to have happened on a local farm not unlike the one belonging to the Stirrups, which was old and had a barn and an adjacent yard. In fact, why couldn’t the scene of the battle have been Freshwater Farm? Its barn was large enough to house a tribe of Gloam in its loft and there was also a sizeable tree stump in a nearby field that could conceivably be the remains of a massive, old oak – just like the tree in which the Lofty Gloam had lived before it had been felled.
Athene felt the need to prove her theory. She scrutinised the mosaic which depicted the battle on her way home from work. The mosaic did indeed feature two Glare. They were strangely dressed, for warriors, in long flowing robes and the weapons that they wielded were unusual shapes. There were two mosaics in which the barn could be identified and the closer Athene looked at the pictures of the barn the more she was convinced that it was the very same building that stood on the Stirrups’ land.
Tippitilda tired of Athene bringing up the subject of the Battle of Barnyard Bedlam whenever she stopped by at the Low Gloam’s house. Zach grew weary of her obsession too. All he wanted to know was whether the plan which would take him home had been hatched yet.
‘Are we getting out of here soon?’ he whispered on a regular basis, whenever Tippitilda’s back was turned.
It pained Athene to see him disappointed when she shook her head and told him that they were still working on it.
Kept apart during working hours, Athene and her two Gloam friends were obliged to hold their powwows after supper when most folk were settling down to sleep. After they had eaten their fill of whatever had been on the menu that day, they sat in a little circle and, in hushed voices, tried to come up with ideas that could be moulded into an escape plan. Initially, these meetings had been rather tense as Huffkin was still furious with Humdudgeon for fabricating a story to explain how he had hurt his leg. It took a lot of persuading on Athene’s part to even get Huffkin to sit next to him (which, when you are sitting in a circle with two others, is not really something that you can avoid).
Huffkin ignored Humdudgeon to start off with, and then she decided to criticise every single suggestion he made. She sniped and snorted and said nasty, waspish things until the hurt and anger that had built up inside her had been well and truly vented. At their third session, Huffkin had almost reverted back to her good-natured self and Humdudgeon had begun to lose his mournful, hangdog look, which was just as well because, by this time, Athene had had quite enough of the pair of them.
The improvement in relations between the two Gloam made for a much nicer atmosphere and this, together with the fresh opinions and notions of somebody else, meant that an intelligent plan was finally hit upon.
Coney the rabbit was the ideal sort of character to be brought on board. Like all the animals Below, he had wandered into the hollow tree unsuspectingly and been grief-stricken to find himself trapped underground. He was not alone in wanting to be free again, but what set him apart from the rest of his peers was his upbeat personality and boundless energy. Coney was also very likeable and his kindness to Huffkin when she had been in need of comfort had impressed them all. Letting Coney in on their secret soon proved to be an excellent move.
Between them, Huffkin, Humdudgeon and Athene had already worked out that they would need to break the Low Gloam’s Confining Spell in order to escape, and from what Athene had told the others about her encounter with Lodestar, they guessed that the Chief’s secret room was where she performed her magic. According to Humdudgeon and Huffkin, an explosion and a powerful smell were two of the things that could occur when a spell went slightly awry, and to carry out most magic (of the kind that the Low Gloam practised) you would need all sorts of ingredients and – most crucially of all – a Book of Spells.
What they needed to do was to get inside her secret room, find her Book of Spells and steal a glance at the Confining Spell which held them all prisoner. Only when Huffkin and Humdudgeon were clued up on how the spell had been performed would they be able to figure out how to reverse it.
Finding their way inside a room through a door that was hardly ever there was obviously not going to be a simple feat. Athene and her two Gloam friends had fretted about this setback, and had failed to come
up with a solution. However, as soon as they had explained the problem to Coney, he saw straight away what would have to be done.
‘If we can’t count on the door being there, then we must make another,’ he said, and he scrabbled in the dirt with his front paws, and after only a few seconds, had made quite a deep indentation in the floor.
‘You’re suggesting that we dig through the wall?’ said Humdudgeon. ‘That’s a simply splendid idea! Why didn’t we think of that ourselves?’
‘You’re a marvel, Coney, you really are,’ Athene said, and she slipped her hand into her rucksack and drew out an apple. It was the last remaining piece of food from the small supply that she had brought with her. ‘This is for you,’ she said, placing it in front of the dumbstruck rabbit. ‘Go ahead and take a nibble. You deserve it!’
They plotted for hours. It was Huffkin who finally broke up the meeting and insisted that they should all get some sleep (she had to be quite firm about it because the others were so feverish with excitement that they would have talked right through till six p.m., given half the chance).
That evening, Athene woke up earlier than usual. She put fresh Goggle Drops in her eyes and waited for Coney and his friend to turn up. It had been decided that burrowing through a wall was a tall order for just one rabbit and the likelihood of succeeding would be far greater if two sets of paws were to undertake the job.
‘This is Kit,’ said Coney, appearing at the mouth of the hole with another rabbit at his side.
Kit’s whiskers were quivering and she could not seem to keep her ears still. She looked extremely anxious, as well she might, for it was a dangerous mission that they were about to embark on.
With a grim expression and a rapidly beating heart, Athene said her farewells to Huffkin and Humdudgeon. Then the two rabbits hopped into her rucksack, which was empty apart from her Goggle Drops and a neatly folded cardigan for Kit and Coney to sit on. She did not pull the cord tight or buckle the straps, but shifted the rucksack carefully on to her back and, taking care not to jolt its precious contents, she began the journey to Lodestar’s house. When she rounded the last corner of the tunnel and spied Lodestar’s guards in their familiar position either side of the entrance to the Sanctum, Athene muttered a warning to the two rabbits.
