Land Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  What had the sign said? The gem of wisdom is obtained through the procurement of knowledge and the willingness to use it. So far they had procured the knowledge that stepping on the same symbols or the same colors didn’t work. What other knowledge could they “procure”? What about stepping on the same symbol and the same color? A quick examination of the rafts soon dismissed that idea. She could see only three sets of connected rafts with the same color and symbol, and they weren’t anywhere near each other.

  “They wouldn’t send us out here if there wasn’t some way to solve the problem,” she said. “What are we missing?”

  Marcus yawned and rubbed his eyes. “What we’re missing is the fact that we were sent here by a lunatic. How do we even know he gave us the right door? We could spend days trying to get the stone in the middle of this lousy little pond, only to discover that it’s just a paperweight he left out here while he was collecting snails. Wake me up when you decide to go back.”

  Go back? Hadn’t he noticed there didn’t seem to be a way to go back? The door had disappeared as soon as they entered the swamp. She wasn’t sure there was any way out of this test besides completing it. As far as she could tell, they were still underground so jumping was out, and Marcus was getting sicker. He looked even more flushed, as if his fever was rising. He couldn’t afford to fall into the lake again.

  “Think,” she urged herself. What were they missing? What was the clue they’d overlooked? She stared slowly around the lagoon. The rafts, the gem, the walkways, the rope, the stones—

  The stones! Of course, why hadn’t she thought of that first? The stones bordering the water had the same symbols painted on the rafts. That must mean something. One at a time, she examined the rocks—searching for any clue. At first they seemed to be as random as the rafts. Six symbols—two triangles, two squiggles that formed an X, something that looked like an open hand, a half-moon with two dots, three squiggles side-by-side, and a tree-like shape.

  But then, she realized there was a pattern after all. The symbols repeated themselves—triangles, X, hand, half-moon, squiggles, tree—over and over all around the lake. The solution was about the symbols after all. The colors were just to throw you off. She hurried back to tell Marcus, but he was asleep—breathing in wet, heavy snorts. He needed to rest. She looked out at the rafts. If she could make it out to the gem and wake him up with it . . .

  But what if she fell in the lake while he slept? She was a strong swimmer, but hundreds of those creatures could pull her down before she made it back to shore. Trying it alone was a bad idea. Sending Marcus out on the rafts in his condition was wrong, too. He couldn’t take much more exertion.

  What finally made the decision for her was the thought of how Marcus would react if she woke him to try again. Great. Another one of your crazy ideas. Why do I always have to be the one to do everything?

  Silently, she slipped the rope around her waist and knotted it. She set the coil by Marcus. If she got into trouble, her screams would awaken him, and—she hoped—he’d manage to pull her out before . . .

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Repeating the symbols in her head—triangles, X, hand, half-moon, squiggles, tree—she moved to a raft with a pair of triangles on it.

  “Here we go,” she said, and walked carefully but quickly to the raft with the X. She didn’t hesitate, but as she stepped onto the raft, she turned toward shore—prepared to swim with all her strength if she hit water.

  Only she didn’t. The raft stayed afloat. It worked. So far, she was right! “Yes!” she whispered, pumping her fist as she’d seen Marcus do so many times. She might be cautious, but she wasn’t a coward, no matter what he thought.

  Now she had to make a decision. There were six walkways leading from this raft—five if you didn’t include the one she’d just crossed. Two had the hand symbol. She tried to track where she’d go after that symbol and the one after, but it was too complicated, like a maze. Well, the only way to handle it was to try one and see what happened. Then she realized that maybe the colors weren’t a trick. There could be a pattern to them as well as to the shapes. But if that was the case, then it was pure luck this raft hadn’t disappeared beneath her.

  It might be the time to wake Marcus. But if she could give him even a few more minutes of rest . . . She looked back at the first raft with red triangles. The one she was on had a blue X. The hands on the two rafts ahead of her were green and yellow. A fifty-fifty chance. Chance, that’s what it was. But maybe Marcus was partly right. Sometimes—after you’d done your best to prepare—it all came down to chance.

  “Riph, Raph, wand, staff,” she repeated a rhyme from a game she’d made up as a child. “Horse, cow, somehow, close my eyes, and you . . . are . . . it.”

  “Yellow it is.” She stepped onto the raft and . . . it didn’t disappear.

  She had both patterns now—red, blue, yellow, green, and triangles, X, hand, half-moon, squiggles, tree. Focusing on colors and symbols, she began trying to unravel the maze that would take her to the stone.

  Two hours later, Marcus sat up with a groan and rubbed his eyes. “Come up with any brilliant ideas yet?”

  He looked left and right, apparently searching for Kyja on the shore. Then he met her eyes and sat up with a gasp. “What are you doing out there?” he shouted, getting to his knees.

  “Trying to figure out this stupid puzzle!” Kyja shouted back. “I know the pattern of colors and shapes, but I still can’t get there.” She was on the second-to-last circle. Four times she’d made it this far, but every time she’d been stopped by a dead end. “It doesn’t work. There’s no way to get to the last circle.” She stomped her foot on the raft, making it shake and bob in the water.

  Marcus spotted the rope next to him, and his eyes went wide. There was only a single coil left on the grass. Kyja had wrapped the rest of it around rafts and walkways—stretching out into the lagoon as she tried first one path and then another.

  “What were you thinking?” he yelled. “Do have any idea what would have happened if you’d fallen in?” Taking the rope in hand, he began to shake loose the tangles and knots.

  “I was taking a chance,” Kyja yelled, giving the raft another kick. This whole thing was idiotic. She was hot and tired.

  “A crazy chance,” Marcus said. He looped the rope around and around his arm with sharp, angry snaps. “You could have been killed! Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “You needed to rest.” What right did he have to complain? She’d done it for him. And besides, he’d taken much worse risks than this. “Besides, I knew you’d just complain if I asked you to go out again.”

  Marcus stared at her, his mouth open. “I . . . when. . ?” He pulled the rope taut so it made a straight line between them. “All right, maybe I would have complained. But that doesn’t mean I want you taking stupid chances.”

  “Stupid?” Kyja roared. “Stupid? You’re the one that fell in twice. I’ve crossed every one of these stinking rafts without getting wet once. Don’t call me stupid!” With that, she spun to walk to the next raft, but in her anger she missed the walkway.

  “Hang on!” Marcus screamed, tugging at the rope as Kyja struggled for balance.

  Tilting far out over the water, Kyja clung to the line with both hands. On his knees, Marcus started to slide. “Oh!” Kyja cried. She was too far into the lake. Marcus would never be able to get her to shore if she fell.

  With a ferocious yank, Marcus pulled her, one-handed, to her feet—and something moved. Shifting her balance, still trying to keep from falling on the raft as it bobbed and swayed beneath her, Kyja looked out at the other rafts, then in toward the gem. The walkways. The walkways didn’t align with the other rafts anymore.

  “Do that again,” she called to Marcus.

  “Do what?” he asked, his face pale except for the angry red circles high on his cheeks.

  “Pull the rope,” Kyja said. “Slowly.” Holding the rope tightly with both hands, she set her feet against the boa
rds of the raft. As Marcus tugged, she felt herself dragged toward the edge of the raft, but she reset her feet and leaned further back. “Keep pulling!”

  Almost imperceptibly, the raft began to move. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been watching the walkway. She glanced over her shoulder. The entire circle of rafts was slowly turning like the horses on a merry-go-round.

  “Move to the left,” Kyja called.

  Seeing what she was doing, Marcus pulled himself to his feet, limped several yards to the left, and pulled again.

  “A little more.” The walkway was closer, closer, “Stop!” she yelled.

  That was it! She ran across the walkway, past the blue half-moon, across the last walkway, and, kneeling down on the center raft, closed her hand around the gem.

  Chapter 29

  The Fairy

  We’re closed,” said Mr. Z, balancing on his stack of books.

  Marcus blinked. The lagoon was gone, and they were back in the dimly lit study. “Closed?” he asked.

  “Mr. Z, it’s Marcus and Kyja. We brought back the gem of wisdom,” Kyja said, stepping around a pile of books and holding out the green stone.

  “The gem?” Mr. Z looked up from a dog-eared volume and squinted at her.

  “Take off your glasses,” she whispered.

  “What? Oh, yes, yes.” He took off the gold spectacles, pushed them into the sleeve of his coat, and looked from Marcus to Kyja with a frown. “You two again, eh? Figured you’d have drowned by now.”

  “Hoped is more like it,” Marcus said. “Next time you send us to a swamp full of lake-lizards, give us some warning.”

  “I have to admit, I felt sure at least one of you wouldn’t make it back alive. Those willywogs are a brutal lot. Lost a wager on that one.”

  “A wager?” Kyja asked. “You bet one of us would get killed? With whom?”

  “Myself,” the man said, scratching his enormous right ear. “My right hand bet Marcus would drown his first time out. My left hand bet he’d make it. It’s hard for me to keep track. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.”

  “That sounds strangely familiar,” Marcus said.

  “Could be.” The man nodded. “Have we met before?”

  “We got the gem of wisdom,” Kyja said holding out the stone. “We passed the test. Can we go to the Augur Well now?”

  Mr. Z took the gem, pulled his silver glasses from his pants pocket, and examined it closely. He breathed on the gem and rubbed it with the sleeve of his coat.

  “Well?” Marcus said, leaning forward on the desk. Both of his legs were killing him, and his stomach felt like he was going to be sick soon.

  “That’s it, all right.” Mr. Z set the stone on one of his book piles with a thunk. “Been looking for that everywhere. Pages flying all around without a good paperweight. Where did you find it?”

  “Paperweight?” Marcus growled. “All that trouble for a stupid—”

  Kyja cut him off with a kick to the ankle. “What about the key to the Augur Well?”

  “Come back later,” Mr. Z said, opening his book. “Maybe next week. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.”

  Marcus opened his mouth, ready to give this pipsqueak a piece of his mind, but Kyja held out her hand. “We don’t have until next week. Marcus is really sick. We need to get to the Augur Well right away.”

  “My dear girl,” the man said without looking up from his book. “As you can see, I am a very busy man.”

  “Busy?” Marcus shouted, slamming a hand on top of the desk. “The last time we were here, you were snail jousting. What happened to that?”

  Mr. Z flinched at Marcus’s outburst. His stack of books swayed far beyond what should have been possible without falling over completely. His eyebrows rose nearly to his hat. “Called on account of rain, if you must know.”

  “Mr. Z,” Kyja said, “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of things to do, but we don’t have much time. If you could just tell us what we need to do to get the key . . .”

  Mr. Z produced a silk handkerchief from under his hat and blew his nose rather loudly into it. “Time is the one commodity no one can control.” He pointed a runty finger at Marcus. “You can demand someone else’s time with bluff and braggadocio. She can plead that she doesn’t have enough of it. Yet the only time we can control is our own, and we waste most of that.”

  He put away the handkerchief, pulled a silver pocket watch out of his vest, and flipped open the cover. “Speaking of time, shouldn’t you two be on your way?”

  “On our way where?” Kyja asked.

  Marcus groaned. He didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  “On your way out the door.” Mr. Z flapped his hands. “Go! Go!”

  “Go where?” Marcus said. “If this is another test, at least tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

  With astonishing dexterity, Mr. Z leaped from his pile of books onto the top of the desk. “Hurry, now! You must help her. She’s in terrible danger. It may already be too late.”

  “Help who?” Kyja said. But the man jumped to the floor and pushed them in front of him like a collie herding sheep.

  “Which door do we take?” Marcus asked, trying to keep from stumbling over the stacks of books falling in every direction.

  “Any door, every door. Go. Go!” With strength Marcus never would have expected, the man shoved him and Kyja through the door. Losing his balance, Marcus dropped his staff and put out his hands to brace his fall. But instead of landing in the hallway, he found himself sprawling onto a rough, stone floor.

  “Help!” screamed a high-pitched voice.

  Marcus scrambled to his knees. He was in a dark, stone cavern. For a moment he couldn’t see anything. The voice screamed again. It sounded like a young girl in danger. “No, don’t. Leave me alone!”

  “Gurggooolah!” grunted a deep voice.

  Spinning around, Marcus saw a crackling fire where the study had been a moment before. Standing beside the fire—silhouetted by the sunlight shining through the cave entrance—was a squat-trunked creature with a broad chest and shoulders nearly as wide as the creature was tall. It had three hairy, muscular arms. In one it held a wooden club tipped with sharp chips of rock. The second hand held a flaming log. With the third, it seemed to be trying to swat something out of the air.

  At first, Marcus couldn’t see what it was slapping at. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed a figure no bigger than a Barbie doll fluttering through the air. She looked in his direction, her eyes wide with terror. “Please, help me.”

  Marcus edged closer to the fire. Something was wrong with the creature’s wings. She was trying to dodge the swinging paw of the three-armed beast to get past it and out the cave entrance, but she couldn’t seem to maintain any kind of altitude.

  As he watched, the creature caught her with the edge of its plate-sized palm and knocked her toward the dancing flames. She managed to keep from falling into the fire, but not before her wings crackled from the heat, trailing smoke as she dodged a blow from the rock-tipped club.

  “The tribrac has a fairy,” Kyja cried, grabbing Marcus’s arm. “We have to do something!”

  Marcus looked for some kind of weapon, but there was nothing in the cave. What would he have done with it even if there were? Beside him, Kyja scooped a handful of rocks and began firing them at the hairy creature that looked intent on crushing the fairy. One hit the monster’s face on the bridge of its nose.

  “Riggle gortog!” the creature growled, baring its brownish tusks. But it refused to be drawn from its prey, slapping the fairy again, knocking her to the stone wall.

  “Use your magic!” Kyja shouted. “It’s going to kill her.”

  The last time Marcus had tried to use magic, he’d been near the harbingers, and it didn’t work. But now that they were gone, surely it would be all right. He reached for air to knock the monster back, but there was nothing. It was as if he’d never had magic in his life.

  The creatu
re reached down and with its thick fingers snatched the struggling fairy from the ground.

  “Help her!” Kyja shook Marcus. “Use your magic now.”

  Marcus looked from Kyja to the fairy, whose struggles were slowing as the thick fist closed around it. “I can’t,” Marcus said helplessly. “My magic is gone.”

  Kyja stared at him open-mouthed.

  He raised his hands. “I’m sorry. I . . .”

  “Ayyeeeeeee!” the fairy screamed. She was dying, he knew it, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “No-o-o-o-o!” Kyja cried. She raced toward the beast, arms held out as if she would wrestle it to the ground by herself. Suddenly, Marcus felt a terrible heat rise inside him as if he’d swallowed hot coals. The fire burning beside the creature rose up from the logs with a life of its own and attacked the beast, setting its hair on fire from its thick head to its broad feet.

  “Graklog! Gerr-r-r-lack,” the monster shrieked as the fire raged around it. Dropping the fairy onto a stack of sticks and logs, it raced out the cave entrance, flames trailing after it.

  Kyja dove to the ground and lifted the fairy from the wood pile gently in her palms. She cradled it against her chest, prodded it gently with one finger, and put her ear to its chest. The fairy remained motionless.

  Kyja looked at Marcus and shook her head. “She’s dead.”

  Chapter 30

  Winds of Change

  What just happened?” Marcus scooted across the floor to Kyja’s side.

  “We . . . let her die.” Kyja’s rage had banked itself to overwhelming grief at the sight of the motionless figure lying in her arms. No more than eight or nine inches tall, the fairy weighed less than a sparrow. Her two pairs of translucent wings—as light and fragile as tissue paper—were singed from the fire and crumpled against her tiny body by the monster’s fist. Gently straightening the wings with the tip of her finger, Kyja felt her anger rise again at this senseless death.

  “It’s our fault,” she said, tears flooding her eyes and leaking down her cheeks. She glared at Marcus. “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have magic anymore?”