by Robin Jarvis
Meg chuckled. It was a dry, rattling, wheezing noise. “You not go,” she said. “No one goes. All who find their way to Peg-tooth Meg are her beloved guests. They stay and do not leave her. The upper lands are not safe. It is best for you to be down here. Caves and secret dark are what you need.”
“Well, thanks and all that, but we’re not stopping.”
“You cannot go,” she repeated in a voice so calm and assured that it was almost frightening.
Finnen held out his hand. “We’ll see,” he said in a loud, angry voice. “Thimbleglaive!”
At once the sluglung holding the enchanted knife let out a gibbering cry as the blade tugged and twisted in his grasp. Others rushed to help him keep hold of the weapon and tripped over one another in a slithering scrum.
Meg looked on, but not a flicker of surprise twitched on to her face.
Thimbleglaive fought against the restraining hands. Then suddenly, amid shrieks and woeful shouts, it tore into the air, flashing in the glittering lights.
Kernella folded her arms. “Ha!” she snorted. “You’d best show us the fastest way out or—”
As she spoke, Meg’s yellow eyes were watching the blade come sweeping back down toward Finnen’s waiting palm. Then, with a croak, she said, “Knife.”
To the werlings’ horror, Thimbleglaive immediately spun around and flew obediently to Meg’s hand instead of Finnen’s.
“Thimbleglaive!” the boy commanded. “Thimbleglaive! To me!”
Meg held the blade close to her wrinkled face. A low grunt escaped her large lips as the steel glinted into the depths of her eyes and the creases of her forehead deepened.
“Little knife,” she whispered huskily. “Meg deems she knows you. Little knife, where have you been? What sights have you seen? Do you know Meg? What long-lost dream did you spring from?”
An expression of pain and regret clouded her face as she struggled to recall some distant memory, and everything else, the werlings, the sluglungs—even her beloved snails—were momentarily forgotten.
Her yellow eyes closed, and the tips of her bony fingers moved slowly over the blade as though trying to tease out the knowledge she sought.
Kernella and Finnen were surprised to see a single tear trickle down the crevices of her cheek, and the sluglungs began to murmur uneasily to one another.
Then it was over. Meg’s eyes snapped open once more, and she shook her head. Whatever had been troubling her was thrust to the back of her mind, and, without a word, she tossed the knife carelessly away. It clattered onto the shelf by her side.
“Thimbleglaive?” Finnen called, trying one last time. “To me.”
But the charmed knife remained as still and inert as any pebble on the floor, and no amount of calling or pleading could summon it again.
“Finnen!” Kernella cried. “What happened? What went wrong with the magic?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t understand. Her power must be stronger than the Smith’s.”
The sluglungs began their frothing, bubbling laughter. The werlings felt painfully vulnerable once more, and a hideous dread crept quietly over Finnen Lufkin.
“Are you a witch?” he asked. “My old nan says there are troll witches in far-off lands. Is that what you are?”
Meg returned her attention to her snails.
“Peg-tooth Meg is no witch,” she replied once each of their shells had been kissed. “She is Meg, and Meg is she.”
“But what are you and why are you down here?”
“Where else would Meg be? This is her handsome home: the palace of the dripping dark and her belonging. No hunting eyes can seek her here, no enemy can bring her harm or hurt. Here she has dwelt for longer than any can tell, for no touch of frost or spring creeps in to count our years. And no tongue may leave here to ever give wag of it.”
It was Kernella who voiced the question that was uppermost in both the werlings’ thoughts.
“What are you going to do with us?”
Meg regarded the girl for a moment, then said, “Meg’s sluglungs tell her they saw you shobble and mooty.”
“We don’t know what that means,” Finnen answered.
“You changed your shape. Can such little folk as you own this royal skill? Peg-tooth Meg wonders. If her sluglungs were not deceived by tricks and clevernesses, Peg-tooth Meg should like to witness this kingly marvel. In this place nothing is permitted to remain as it was in the cruel upper lands. All must change. Change is beautiful and worshipful, change is the key to secrets and safety. Meg knows without it there can be no saving for any of us, and this delicious dark world will fall down ’round our ears.”
Kernella almost choked with shock. The last thing she expected was to have to demonstrate her wergling.
“Now!” Meg demanded with an unnerving intensity. “Be other than you are, other than you were when you entered here. Let Meg see this change.”
Kernella cleared her throat and cast a nervous glance at Finnen.
“I’ll do it,” she volunteered.
Summoning as much solemn dignity as she could, she opened her damp wergle pouch and took out a token of mouse fur. Closing her eyes, she concentrated for an instant then put the fur to her nose and gave it a sniff.
The girl vanished, and in her place stood an odd-looking ginger-furred mouse with a fat tail and freckled ears.
“Shobble and mooty,” the sluglungs cooed in wonder.
“I like being a squirrel or a rabbit better,” the mouse said with a shrug that caused the cloak to fall from its narrow shoulders.
Meg gave a gurgling cry of admiration and delight.
“How many beast shapes can you wear?” she asked.
“Only nine. I never got the chance to learn the more difficult wergles. My sparrows are just downright embarrassing according to Stookie Maffin.”
“Very pretty, very clever,” Meg trilled throatily. “Meg likes—Meg will spare you and keep you close to her always.”
“Lucky me,” the mouse said with wilting whiskers.
Meg turned back to Finnen. “Now you,” she said.
The boy shifted awkwardly, and his face flushed crimson with shame.
“Shobble,” the sluglungs urged. “Mooty!”
“I … I can’t,” Finnen muttered. “I’m not able to. I can’t wergle anymore.”
The sluglungs glared at him crossly, and one of them gave him an impatient shove.
“Shobble and mooty,” it burbled.
“Leave him alone!” Kernella’s mouse squealed. “He used to be the best wergler of them all, much better than me or anyone else, even the Great Grand Wergle Master himself! No one could beat him.”
Peg-tooth Meg’s smile faded. “Stray folk can’t remain down here wearing the same shapes they wore above. He must change or go to the pot.”
“No!” the mouse yelled.
“Change!” Meg commanded.
“Stop this!” Kernella cried, her pink tail lashing behind her. “It’s horrible, you’re horrible, you’re all horrible!”
Finnen looked fearfully around him. “I can’t do it,” he said in a defeated voice. “I can never change into anything else again—ever.”
Meg studied him for several minutes, and the humor left her old, ugly face. The sluglungs shook their jellylike heads, and Kernella’s mouse was trembling.
“Take him to the pot,” Meg instructed. “To the pot with him. Call the others. Everyone must be present—all must see.”
With a whoop, the sluglungs charged at Finnen, and their clammy hands seized hold of him once more. Over their heads they hoisted him and went lumbering across the cavern to a dark opening in the glittering wall.
“Please!” Kernella’s mouse begged Peg-tooth Meg. “Don’t do this! You can’t eat him! He killed the lantern monster for you. You owe him so much!”
Cradling the snails in her arms, Meg crept from the shelf with a riot of clicks and creaks from her joints. With a crooked, stooped bac
k and bowed legs she began to follow the sluglungs.
“He will not be eaten,” she said with a throaty laugh. “Meg is thankful. He is to be rewarded.”
“Rewarded?” Kernella asked, scampering after her.
“It is the best gift Peg-tooth Meg can bestow,” she said. “He will become a guard of high ranking and tend to Meg’s most prized delights in her treasure cave.”
Kernella stared at her suspiciously. Was she telling the truth? Could she trust her?
“But you said …”
“Oh, to the pot he goes,” Meg told her. “But not to be boiled into broth as you imagine, dear little mouse.”
“What then?”
“He goes to drink of the dark waters!”
FINNEN WAS CARRIED THROUGH A short passageway, around a corner, and up seven steps. At the top they set him down, and the boy looked around nervously.
A waft of air, cooler and less musty than before, fanned his face, and he knew that they had come to a great space. Yet all was in darkness. A slow, steady dripping sounded some distance to the right, but he could only guess at the size of this great cavern by the returning echoes of his captors’ slobbering voices.
Finnen moved forward, and immediately a sluglung hand snatched him back.
“No go,” the creature warned. “Yoosum fall and breakle.”
It was then that two sluglungs bearing snail lamps came plodding in, and Finnen took a deep, marveling breath.
They were standing upon a high cliff edge. Only three short strides away the floor disappeared into blackness, and he wondered how far the drop was. No light reached the bottom, and he knew that the sluglung who dragged him back had just saved his life.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Shobble cave,” came the proud-sounding reply. “Hall of sluglung meet. Big gumyak.”
A sudden deafening crash drowned any further speech. An enormous tarnished bronze shield, emblazoned with images of brambles and flowers, was suspended from the unseen ceiling by rusty chains, and one of the sluglungs was beating it with a long-handled hammer.
Finnen covered his ears. It was a horrendous din that made the very air shiver and jolted his bones. The noise went clanging through the earth, into every tunnel, and the innumerable snails pulled in their horns and hid in their shells. Even far off in the Hollow Hill, the goblin knights asleep on their ivy-covered beds heard the dim rumor of the terrible gonging, and they gripped their swords and ground their teeth.
Peg-tooth Meg laughed amid the harsh ringing, then signaled for the hammering to cease. The noise continued to vibrate in the darkness and bounce around the walls for many long minutes, but then it faded to the faintest of trembling notes. A new sound was heard.
There were voices, many chanting voices, coming from the blackness below the cliff.
“Others,” one of the sluglungs said. “The they come.”
“Such dear friends and muddy loves,” Meg croaked. “How they adore these gatherings.”
The darkness beyond the precipice where they stood gradually began to lift as many entrances and holes glimmered into view before them. Finnen and Kernella saw that they were in a huge cavern far larger than anything they had already seen, and every wall was riddled with openings. Each of these glowed with light as snail lamps bobbed within them and into the vast space poured hundreds of sluglungs. As a river of floating flames they flowed in, all chanting and singing woeful songs.
“So many!” Kernella gasped, and any hope of escape instantly perished in her heart.
Toward the foot of the cliff the frightful horde came stomping, and they swiftly filled the cavern. A sea of lamps and gleaming eyes spread back to the farthest craggy wall. Some of the creatures went marching up the rocks to get a better view and wave their lanterns with hoots of horrible laughter.
Smiling broadly at them, Meg held up one of her bony hands, and at once a hush descended.
Kernella clasped her paws together and realized with astonishment that to these creatures Peg-tooth Meg was more than a queen—she was a living goddess.
“Dear ones,” Meg called, and her voice went echoing throughout the cavern. “You know why you have been summoned here. Two new guests have escaped the lies and cruelties of the land above and come to join us.”
A great cheer went up, and a terrifying suspicion began to dawn on Finnen.
“Megboo! Megboo!” the host of sluglungs called. “Shobble and mooty!”
“Yes, my treacly fancies, my delectable wetwumps. The time has indeed come for shobble and mooty.”
Everyone roared, and their froglike faces turned expectantly to one side of the cliff. Kernella and Finnen followed their gaze, and the boy swallowed fearfully.
An immense stalagmite that was taller than the lofty ledge where they stood loomed upon their right. A narrow treacherous-looking bridge made of tangled roots and rusted metal spanned the gulf between, and set atop that pinnacle of limestone, upon a circular platform, was a large cauldron.
Into this a regular drip of water leaked from the high ceiling. The cauldron was brimming with liquid, and the passing of many ages had encased the vessel in stone and fused it forever to the platform.
In the silence that surrounded him Finnen could hear only the rhythmic splashes of the water and the thumping of his own heart.
Peg-tooth Meg bowed her head. “To the pot,” she said.
Two sluglung guards came forward and took hold of the boy’s arms.
“No!” he yelled. “You mustn’t do this! You can’t!”
“What’s happening?” Kernella’s mouse squealed.
Finnen was dragged to the bridge. “Don’t you see?” he cried to her. “Don’t you understand yet? Don’t you recognize the rusty armor on these slimy frights? It’s from the Hollow Hill! Now do you see?”
The plump mouse shook its head and scampered after them.
Over the perilous walkway they went, and when they reached the cauldron, one of the sluglungs reached inside and drew out a stone goblet. Dark, viscous water, black as ink and reeking of stagnation, dripped from it, and Finnen shuddered.
“Drink!” Meg shouted from the cliff top. “Drink and forget the woes and horrors of the upper places. Now no one will find you, no one will hunt you, and you will be safe here in the dim velvet deeps. Away from sun, moon, star, and sister.”
The sluglung put the goblet to Finnen’s lips, but the boy refused and kept them tightly shut. He turned away.
“Drink!” Meg called.
Her command was taken up by the hundreds of creatures in the cavern, and they stamped their large splayed feet impatiently as they too shouted, “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
The goblet was put to Finnen’s lips once more, but again he refused, so a hand seized his hair and yanked his head back fiercely. The boy cried out in pain, and the dark water went flooding into his mouth.
“No!” he shrieked as he spluttered. But it was too late. He had swallowed enough to feel its freezing progress down his throat, and he turned to Kernella with terror in his eyes.
The sluglung released him and held up the goblet in triumph.
“Him drunkum!” it hollered, running back along the bridge with his fellow guard, leaving the werlings by the cauldron.
The assembled horde below gibbered in glee and clapped their gooey hands together. Upon the cliff, Peg-tooth Meg sang with happiness and performed a decrepit dance in celebration.
Finnen felt strange. A sharp, cold sensation was curdling in his stomach, and beads of icy perspiration pricked out across his forehead. His vision began to blur and colors swam together, bleeding into one another in sickening swirls. He started to tremble uncontrollably and closed his eyes to shut the madness out.
“Finnen!” Kernella’s voice called to him as though from a great distance. “Finnen, what’s the matter?”
With a great effort of will, he forced his eyes open and saw Kernella’s mouse standing before him, the last solid shape in his dissolving world. Reachi
ng out, she held his hands in her paws and was frightened to discover how cold and clammy they had become.
“I’m sorry,” he told her as his legs buckled beneath him. “I’m sorry I failed you. I’m so … so …”
His voice became a gurgling croak, and his eyes filled with tears. Kernella shook her head in horror.
“No!” she screamed as finally she understood, and she turned a stricken face upon the hundreds of gibbering creatures down in the cavern and knew that every single one of them had once drunk of the dark waters.
“Finnen!” she wept desolately. “Finnen!”
The boy’s eyes bulged before her and turned a tawny yellow. His skin blistered and his mouth stretched while his neck sank into his shrinking shoulders. The long sweep of his fringe withered on his crawling scalp, and his brows retreated to a flat glistening slope of toadlike flesh.
Kernella gripped his hands tightly, but the bones turned to jelly and his fingers squelched in her grasp.
“Shobble and mooty!” the host of creatures cheered.
“A blissful change,” cried Peg-tooth Meg in exultation.
Kernella hung her head, and her despairing sobs were lost in the uproar.
Finnen Lufkin had become a sluglung.
CHAPTER 8 *
THE JOURNEY TO THE POOL
NANNA ZINGARA’S CARAVAN BUMPED AND swayed along the green track that wound deeper into Hagwood.
Crowds of werlings had given her a rousing send-off, and she had waved at them, calling out warm farewells and promising to return as soon as possible, armed with the secret knowledge of the Smith’s hiding place.
At her side, Liffidia and Tollychook sat in thoughtful silence. It had been a wrench to leave their homes and families. Liffidia’s mother had been so proud of her daughter, and both had struggled not to cry. Tollychook and his family, however, had done nothing but weep and sob. Laden with enough provisions to last any other werling a fortnight, the boy stared morosely at the donkey plodding in front of them and ate five hazelnut biscuits before they had even crossed the boundary out of werling country.
The violet shadows of evening were already settling beneath the surrounding trees and spilling out over the green way.
