Burrowing Into the Barrow
Milo walked. And walked. One day turned into two. He reached the pass that Stigma had pointed out and waited there. She didn’t appear. Or didn’t show up, since she couldn’t appear and Milo was too hungry to wait for long.
“She said she would find us,” Milo told Bori. He recalled something he had read somewhere. An adventure is nothing more than a long walk on an empty stomach. “Let’s keep moving. I’m afraid if I wait, I’ll starve. Let her find me while I look for a place to get something to eat.”
Bori did okay, since the countryside was well provisioned with field mice. With nothing left in his rucksack and no place to get a meal, Milo began to wonder how long he could go before taking up Bori’s offer to share the meals the cat procured out in the grass and rocks. He still wasn’t that hungry, and besides, he considered this a breach in his contract with Bori; he was supposed to furnish the meals, not the other way around.
For two more days Milo ate nothing more than the wild foods Stigma had shown him—far, far longer than he had ever gone between meals in his whole life. Then, from a high place on the morning of the fourth day, he saw a thread of white smoke on the horizon. Smoke meant fire and fire suggested a chimney where food could be cooking. Admittedly, it was still a long way off, but it offered a real destination to aim for.
That day turned out to be the longest day of all as he walked and walked, exhaustion dragging at every step. Finally, by afternoon, he could see the chimney that the smoke came from, and the building it belonged to. His stride picked up a little in anticipation. Would he find hospitality, or would the people there prove to be unfriendly? No matter, he decided. One way or another, he had to get something to eat.
As he and Bori walked up to the well-heeled complex of stone buildings, dozens of curious young people surrounded them, surprised to see anyone walk out of the wilderness beyond the school, for that was what it was. They clamored around, asking each other questions—they didn’t ask him anything directly—and exchanging theories about his arrival among themselves until a couple of teachers arrived and immediately took charge. He was only too glad to explain his plight and ask for help.
They took him at his word (and famished looks) and steered him straight to a place that emitted such delicious aromas that his empty stomach nearly jumped out of his throat in anticipation. The presiding staff member there, the head cook, quickly took over, since feeding hungry young people was her vocation.
She fed him a wonderful, thick broth, with crusty bread still hot from the oven. She had to intervene when she saw how he wolfed down the food, cautioning him to slow down before too much food on an empty stomach made him sick. After he had spooned out the last drop of soup and munched the last crumb of bread he was still hungry. Actually, he felt even hungrier, because what he had eaten had alerted his appetite that it was back in business. He thanked the cook while the young people gawked at him from several tables away, chattering on about this unusual wayfarer. Bori, of course, had gone among them after finishing his saucer of milk, and was making friends, making a hit, as usual, with the young ladies.
A new person now appeared, one who wore the air of authority so pompously that Milo had no problem believing, on being introduced, that he was the school principal.
“I am Headmaster Treverthorne,” the inquisitor announced. “What brings you to our Academy, young man? What possessed you to go off into the wilderness?”
“I’m Milo, and this is Boriboreau,” Milo replied to the headmaster’s demand for his identity. “We travel together, and I haven’t eaten in some days. Thank you”—and he turned to include the cook, who was still standing nearby, bare arms folded over her ample bosom—”for the meal. I don’t think I could have made it much further.” With the soup soaking into his body, he felt the exhaustion drain away the last of his resolve.
“I...got separated from my friends. That is, I knew where I was but I didn’t know where I was going.” Milo was quickly losing any interest in conversation. He was feeling an increasing disorientation, rubber-legged and even sick. The headmaster must have noticed, because he ended the interview. “Let’s get you into bed. You’ll feel more like talking once you have a long rest and another meal.”
Milo woke up with Bori on his chest, staring into his face. “It’s about time,” Bori told him. “You’ve been asleep since yesterday, and now it’s today.”
“That long, huh?” he replied groggily, rubbing the gravel from his eyes. He hadn’t decided if he was ready yet to wake up, but he did feel better. He recalled that the headmaster had sent him and Bori with a staff member to a cottage out behind the building where the kitchen was, and that he had collapsed onto the bed without bothering to undress, or even to turn down the covers. He now had the covers pulled up to his chin, and from the feel of his body underneath, he didn’t have on any clothes, either. “So, what’s this place like? Where are my clothes?”
“They took your clothes to be washed, because they stank. They said they’d see you got a bath when you woke up.”
Milo felt for the string with the little bag at his throat. It was gone. “Where’s...where’s my—” he asked, instantly in panic. Bori jumped down and started batting something around on the floor from under the bed. “Bori! This is no time for play! My...my...”
“Is right here,” Bori finished the sentence, nonchalantly, and swatted the little bag into clear view. “Don’t get fumblefluxed. I thought you wouldn’t want anyone messing with this, so when they took it off you, I just knocked it down and batted it under the bed for safe keeping.”
Milo sighed and leaned back in relief. “Thanks, Bori. You really are a paragon of cats.” He picked up the bag and slung it back around his neck. “Any sign of Stigma?”
“Now, there’s a dumb question. There wouldn’t be any sign of Stigma if she were sitting right next to you.”
Even if what Bori had said was true, Milo rather resented it. “You know what I mean. Do you think she came here? I feel pretty disappointed that she might have just left us like that and not come back like she said she would.”
Actually, he felt more than disappointed. He felt angry, and betrayed. He’d trusted her as a friend, and she’d left him lost and hungry.
“There’s a basin over there for you to wash in,” Bori told him. “I’ll take you to see the headmaster when you’re ready.”
“Ready? Like this?” Milo gestured to his nakedness.
“Oh, you humans!” the cat exclaimed in exasperation.
A knock at the door interrupted their discussion about human customs. Without waiting for an answer, the visitor opened and came in. Milo dived deeper beneath the covers on the bed.
Tinburkin stood there. “Well! Awake at last!” he exclaimed.
“Wha...how—” Milo stammered, forgetting for the instant in his surprise that he was not prepared for a social visit.
“Hup! Hup!” Tinburkin urged. “Get up! It’s impolite to keep the headmaster waiting!” He turned to Bori. “Didn’t you tell him that he was to see Master Treverthorne immediately upon awakening?”
“Yeah, he told me that,” Milo said. “But I’m naked. I can’t go traipsing around like this, in my birthday suit now, can I?”
“Birthday suit!” Tinburkin laughed. “That’s good! That’s funny!”
“It’s what my grandmother called being naked when I was little,” Milo mumbled. “Where are my clothes? Somebody took them!”
“And left you these,” Tinburkin said, pointing to a pile of folded, clean ones lying on a chair that Milo had not yet noticed. Bori was sitting on them. “Your’s are on the line to dry after being laundered. But more important, do you still have the...” Tinburkin left the question open to make his meaning, and Milo touched the bag at his throat in answer. Since it was all that he was wearing, the significance of the gesture wasn’t hard to figure out.
Milo huffed over to the chair and Bori jumped down as Milo reached to snatch up the stack of cloth
es. “Oh,” the cat said. “That’s what this is. I thought it was a cushion. Certainly more useful than the silly things you humans think you have to wear all the time.”
“Why are you here?” Milo accused Tinburkin as he began putting on the pants. “If you’re keeping tabs on me, you could have come when I was lost and starving.”
“I’m here on business. My business is to check up on the progress of the Hunt contestants.”
“Checking up on the...? Why? How?”
“I’m...what you would think of as a referee. I keep up with the Hunt players and validate their progress.”
“How’s my progress, then?” Milo demanded.
“How do you think it is?” Tinburkin riposted. “My job doesn’t include judging how you may be doing.”
“I’m doing just fine,” Milo grouched. “I’m lost, someone I trusted let me down, or even worse, she might be in trouble herself. I couldn’t find her if I tried, I’m sick of being hungry, walking endlessly to I don’t know where. And I’m tired of not knowing just how bad it can still get. How’s that for a report?”
“So...you’re doing fine, you’d say?”
Milo decided not even to answer that.
Tinburkin continued. “I can tell you this. You don’t need to worry about Stigma. She’s quite capable of taking care of herself. Also, based on what you know right now, you don’t have enough information to judge her. Keep focused on what you need to do.”
Milo leaked all the sarcasm he could into his voice. “Great. I feel much better, with your valuable advice. What about Analisa? I heard about the encounter with the Stone Knights and that it went badly for some of the contestants. Was she one of them?”
Tinburkin gazed away toward the ceiling as if the answer to Milo’s question had been posted there. It wasn’t. Milo looked.
“Oh, I really can’t tell a contestant anything about the progress of others,” Tinburkin replied.
“I don’t care about that!” Milo snapped. “I just want to know if my friend’s okay.”
Tinburkin ignored him. “So. What are you planning to do next?”
Milo gave him a scathing look. “Talk to the headmaster, I guess. And have some breakfast, or whatever I can get. I’m hungry. That’s all I have any plans for right now.”
“That’s a good start. Then, perhaps it would be a good idea to find out where you are?”
“Yeah. Sure. I guess so. I expect the headmaster—I think you called him Master Treverdoor?—will fill me in on that, since I’m sure you won’t.”
“Trevorthorne. Master Trevorthorne. Yes, he can tell you about Rykirk Academy. That’s where you are. A place with a distinguished history. Interesting that you should show up right here, seeing as how you were lost and all.”
“It was accidental, I assure you. As far as I could see, and I mean that very literally, it was the only place I could see. Yeah, it was an accident, just like every other thing that’s happened to me.”
“I suppose so. But I shouldn’t keep you any longer. Run along. Don’t keep the headmaster waiting. He’s not at all used to that, you see.”
Milo and Bori did just that. Milo commented to Bori on how Tinburkin showed up the way he did and that he thought it was curious how he popped up over and over. He also asked Bori what he thought about it.
“Tinburkin’s a Ranger. He travels a good deal. He told you that he’s a referee for the Hunt, so I guess keeping up with you and the others must be what he does.”
“All I am is lost. But he found me anyway.” The thought hit him that if Stigma had found him and Tinburkin, too, what about that other one, that Smith guy? Milo’s small feeling of safety by eluding his enemy vanished.
“Whatever,” the cat said. He changed the subject. “I’ve heard that Tinburkin was a contestant in the Hunt once. That was before my time, so I don’t remember it myself. So was Barenton; remember him? The chairman of the Hunt committee? I believe the Mayor of the Kingdom of Odalese was, too.”
“Why? Why are all those people so interested in playing this hunt game?”
“I don’t know, but then I’m a cat. That sort of thing is none of my business.”
They arrived at the office of the headmaster, which Bori knew from his reconnaissance while Milo was sleeping.
“Ah! Master Milo!” the headmaster greeted. “Please, come in and have a seat. I hope you’re feeling much refreshed since I saw you the last time.”
Milo shook the headmaster’s proffered hand, expecting it to feel oily. It wasn’t. It was very soft and a little damp. “Yes, thank you. I...ahh...” he stammered, not able to decide just what he should say.
“The Ranger told me about your long trek across the wilderness. All the way from Korrigan Forest? My, my. You must be a ranger yourself to complete such a journey. Did you actually enter the forest?”
“Yes, I did. I...I wanted to learn something about the lore of the place.”
“That would certainly give you first-hand experience, though I would say most of us would choose a less risky way of getting it. A very reckless choice indeed.”
“I had some coaching about how to go about it. I think that it was worth the trouble. That is, if I can take what I learned to where it leads. Perhaps you can help me with that part. Can you tell me how to get to the Great Barrow? Or who Hersonsuge is?”
Headmaster Trevorthorne sat as if poleaxed. His mouth actually gaped.
“I...ahh...I...” he stuttered at first, then turned stern, as if admonishing a wayward pupil for some infraction. “How did you come by these...these questions?”
Milo answered calmly. “Musail suggested that I go to the Great Barrow to speak with this Heronsuge. Musail is the Shade I met in Korrigan Forest.”
The headmaster rubbed his forehead as if it suddenly ached. “These are...uncommon questions. And things that should not be so...casually spoken. Musail, you say? How did you know him? How did you make his acquaintance?”
Milo was pleased that his question had rattled the headmaster’s control, taking him off his high horse. He also guessed that the headmaster’s answer would not likely be a simple one, either. “As I said, I met Musail in Korrigan Forest. I had been counseled to find him because I needed information which he could give. Because of the nature of my quest, I really can’t or shouldn’t say more, but the information is important. I was hoping you could help me. Tinburkin—the Ranger—urged me to speak with you.”
“Yes. Of course. But you must understand, Master Milo, that you ask about things that are not to be discussed lightly, or by the uninitiated.”
“I’m a contestant in the Magical Scavenger Hunt and figuring out puzzles is a key feature of that. What I’m asking for, if you have the information, is essential. I’m not asking about it lightly at all.”
“My, my, but you are a determined young man. The Ranger advised me as such, and now I understand what he was telling me. Still, these things cannot be approached in a casual way, nor are the answers simple, like filling in the blanks on an exam. Generations...well, I must stress to you that the things you seek answers for are weighty matters that have absorbed the earnest studies of many committed scholars, and have inspired incredible advances in scholarship.”
“I won’t try to tell you that I understand, because I know that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Milo confessed. “If I had the choice, I’d just walk away from the whole thing and forget it, but apparently it doesn’t work that way. However it works, I’m caught up in it and if you can’t help me, I have no choice but to look for someone who can. The sooner I can get to the Great Barrow, the better. So, can you give me the information, or can’t you?”
Milo’s direct method was clearly unsettling to the academic. The headmaster bristled and he wrapped his scholar’s robe tightly around himself. “I’m afraid that the Great Barrow and what it conceals are too complex and powerful to pass on so lightly. If you are willing to invest the time and hard work to accomplish the disciplines required to approa
ch such a profound endeavor, perhaps I might help you, but without such a serious commitment, I’m afraid there is little I can do. I offer you what I can by extending the hospitality of the Academy for as long as necessary for you to recover from your rash ordeal, but I cannot offer you the information you seek as if it were passage on a tramp trader’s ship.”
That done, Milo and Bori took their leave. “Either he knows about the Great Barrow, or he doesn’t know but is trying to let on that he does,” Milo told Bori when they left the office.
“He knows, but only as an idea,” Bori observed. “The sort of knowing that’s wrapped around maintaining what he knows to differentiate himself from the uneducated. I think we should snoop around here to see if we can’t find something that he doesn’t want us to find.”
They agreed to split up. Instead of returning to the cottage where Milo had slept off his exhaustion, he decided to look for the school’s library. Bori said he would explore the place for its less obvious nooks and crannies. “Besides,” he added, “places like that are likely to hide a mouse or two.”
Since Bori seemed to be putting his appetite ahead of the business at hand, Milo decided that he should detour his errand to the kitchen.
His nose led him there. The head cook greeted him right away, and swept him into the aroma-filled refuge. In moments he was seated in front of a plate piled with eggs, bacon, and a basket of fresh, crunchy bread with butter and marmalade. A chilled pitcher of milk topped off the bounty, and Milo forgot the urgency of his mission. While he ate, the cook talked.
“This is such a highly touted school,” she told him, “you’d think they could pay us better than they do. The students all come from the best—and richest—families.”
“Is it—the Academy—any different from other schools?” Milo asked. “I mean, I really don’t know much about schools here or anything. Back at home—where I come from—I go to school, but it’s...well, in a very different place and we study lots of things unlike what I’ve seen since I joined the Hunt.”
Milo and the Dragon Cross Page 20
