by Dave Butler
“Well, then ’e sounds like the right dwarf for us.”
Ollie crowded close to Charlie to look at the compass. “Which way’s it point now, mate?”
Charlie looked. The compass pointed them north and east, up over a ridge that was steep, but not a sheer cliff. “Over the mountain.”
Ollie appeared disappointed. “What if we was to drop in and say hello to Aunt Big Money first? Thank her for the goats.”
“We’d better do that later,” Charlie said. “Once we get into Mountain House, I think we’ll be able to talk to her all we like.”
“Maybe she can get us into Mountain House.”
“She tried, mate, remember? Those were ’er goats we rode up the ’ill, an’ they took us right to that bloke on the mountaintop. If the rabbit could get us in to see the Old Man, I reckon it would ’ave already ’appened.”
Ollie looked down at his feet, but he nodded. “Right, then. Let’s go climb over this mountain.”
They climbed. Charlie had to slow his pace to match his friends’. Gnat was tireless, but once their path began to lead them up the slope on the other side of the valley, the chimney sweeps panted and gasped for breath.
At a rest stop near the top of the ridge, Bob swept the breadth of their panoramic view with her arm. Below lay the valley, and below that the forest, and the trail leading down to the dark woods and bright pastures around Cader Idris. Off to the right, billows of steam suggested where Machynlleth was, and beyond it Charlie could see the dark blue arm of the sea.
“All that, mate?” Bob said. “You can’t see that in London.”
Ollie didn’t even look. “You mean you don’t have to see it in London. Instead you can see theaters, and buses, and coaches, and costermongers, and cobblestones, and gaslight, and everything else that makes up civilization.”
“But this is England. You love England, don’t you? You’ve been a queen-an’-country lad since I met you.”
“I love England, all right,” Ollie agreed. “But this is Wales. And even if it were England…it ain’t London. You and I have talked philosophy before, Bob. Everything outside London is rubbish.”
The hike over the mountain took the better part of the day. As they crossed near a particularly craggy peak, Gnat drew Charlie’s attention to a ring of boulders. The rocks were the size of hansom cabs, and they stood shoulder to shoulder in a perfect ring.
“Standing stones,” Charlie said. “Ancient crossroads.”
“Oh, aye?”
Charlie nodded. “A good place to contact any elder folk who may be living on this mountain, but I don’t think Caradog Pritchard is one of the elder folk.”
Gnat laughed. “Charlie, you know many things. Sometimes you know less than you think.”
“What is it, then?”
“Go on, take a look.”
Charlie climbed onto Bob’s shoulders; from there he dragged himself to the top of the nearest stone. Then he lay on his belly, extended a hand down, and pulled her up to join him.
Ollie flopped into the grass and stared at the sky.
The space enclosed by the ring was full of ashes and cinders. It was depressed in the center, but not in a perfect bowl shape—the depression was oblong and winding.
“What is it?” Charlie called to Gnat. “Old volcano?”
The pixie laughed again. “Dragon’s nest.”
“The ’eck!” Bob jumped down as if the stone she was standing on had burst into flame. Charlie looked a little longer.
“No eggs,” he reported.
“Aye, and no dragon, either. Or we’d have seen it long since.”
“Could this be what happened to the pixies of Giantseat? Did they fight a war against dragons?”
“You don’t really fight wars against dragons,” Gnat said. “You can leave them alone. You can hunt them down. Or you can run screaming in fear with your hair on fire. But to answer your true question, aye, perhaps. Perhaps the folk of the barony tangled with a clutch of dragons and got the worse end of it. Or perhaps not. One way or the other, this mountain has history.”
“And mysteries,” said Ollie.
“An’ secrets,” added Bob. “ ’Op on down now, Charlie. It’d be a real shame if some dragon took this very moment to decide ’e wanted to reoccupy this very comfortable-looking old nest.”
Charlie jumped down.
“Dragons.” Ollie snorted. “Something else you don’t have to worry about in London, mate.”
The descent down the far side of the mountain was much faster than the climb up. Charlie found his biggest challenge was keeping his footing. The compass occasionally led them to cliff tops or tangles of fallen trees, but nothing so big they couldn’t get around it with a few minutes’ extra work.
To their north, ahead of them as they dropped into the valley on the other side of Cader Idris, stood more mountains. They were mantled in dark green by thick forest and had shoulders of gray slate, but the peak looming above them was white with snow, though it was the end of June.
Snowdon. Yr Wyddfa. The burial mound.
Finally the road came into view. As they descended through dark-leafed deciduous forest, Charlie scanned the track, hoping he’d see red-and-gold wagons, but he didn’t. Of course, maybe they were under some enchantment of Thassia’s, and he was just failing to notice them. Or maybe, since the needle pointed straight, the wagons were beyond the road. Maybe they were on another road, past this one and over the next hill. The compass didn’t tell Charlie anything about how far away Syzigon’s wagon was.
But Charlie still felt a little nervous.
“ ’Ere now, what’s that?”
Charlie snapped out of his thoughts. To his left, from the west, a vehicle approached. For a moment, Charlie expected to see Syzigon’s red wagons, or maybe the wagons of a different dwarf family.
Instead he saw William T. Bowen’s steam-truck.
He dropped behind a fallen log and his friends dropped with him. They were high enough on the hill that he didn’t think anyone would spot them, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
He himself could see Bowen quite clearly. The incorporator who had kidnapped the boy dwarf Aldrix stood at the wheel of his steam-truck and beamed at the road as his giant India rubber tyres pounded over its slates. That sight alone would have made Charlie uncomfortable, but there was more.
The deck of the steam-truck was packed with men.
They weren’t in any sort of uniform, but they were big men, and armed; Charlie saw rifles and pistols and scatterguns. Most of them also had knives hanging from their belts, and a few had actual swords.
“Beautiful,” Bob whispered.
Charlie stared at his friend.
“I mean the machine,” the aeronaut protested. “Not the babblings on back.”
Charlie looked to Ollie to explain.
“Babbling brook, crook,” he said.
“Where do you think they’re bound?” Gnat asked.
“I’m more worried about where they’re coming from,” Charlie said.
He watched the steam-truck rattle along the highway, concerned that the rough men standing on its deck would jump off and come looking for him and his friends. But the steam-truck didn’t slow down, and when it had gone, Charlie glanced down at his compass.
“I think we’re close,” he said.
He was afraid they were close. What if Syzigon had encountered William T. Bowen again, and this time it had gone worse for the dwarfs?
They descended the rest of the hill and crossed into the center of the road without seeing any sign of the wagons.
“Keep your eyes open,” Charlie said. “Remember, dwarf wagons can be very difficult to spot.”
They crossed the road through a stand of pines. Beyond that, they descended another slope and crossed a brook…and Charlie accidentally kicked a pile of red wood.
Ollie cursed. “Where did that come from?”
They stood in a small meadow Charlie hadn’t noticed. A wagon rest
ed across a pair of fallen logs at the edge of the meadow. It had no wheels. And in the center of the meadow, at Charlie’s feet, was a pile of red-and-gold-painted wood. Charlie saw spokes and shingles in it and knew immediately that the wood was the remains of one or more of the dwarf wagons.
He caught a sob of shock before it could escape his chest.
“Syzigon? Thassia? Yellario?” He wasn’t really sure he should use their names so conspicuously, but he was terrified.
“My friend!” Syzigon stepped from behind a screen of thin young pines. His face was streaked with smoke and sweat, his jerkin was torn, and the braids of his beard were thrown back over his shoulders. In his hand he held a hammer, and behind him came the other dwarfs and Lloyd Shankin. “You’ve come back to us in our hour of need.”
“It seems I am to find myself perpetually in your debt.”
Syzigon sawed lengths off a board Yellario had cut and planed.
Under Bob’s direction, Ollie, Gnat, and Lloyd Shankin had put the wheels back on the least damaged wagon and had nearly finished assembling the second vehicle. Because all three wagons had suffered serious damage—scorched and shattered boards, snapped yoke poles—the third was taking longer to repair. Charlie, Yellario, and Atzick worked on this one under Syzigon’s leadership. They picked suitable trees, felled them, cut and shaped the trunks into boards, and then painted them.
The dwarf elders played with their grandchildren and watched five of the donkeys. The three sheyala stalked Bad Luck John through the woods; he had kicked his hobble in two and pulled up his picket, but the tassel-eared cats kept him from getting very far.
“We’re just helping,” Charlie said. “Except for Bob, we’re not particularly good help.”
“That yoke pole was a tree you uprooted with your bare hands.” Syzigon pointed at the pole in question. “And the dewin has a song that blends a seam in wood down to nothing.”
“He does?” Charlie changed the subject and lowered his voice. “What happened?”
“The Old Man’s gate is blocked. Guarded by his enemies. They fired on us and chased us away. A certain dwarf was able to hide us, but not before they wrecked our wagons. Praise earth and sky, none of us were hurt.”
“Just a little scorched.” Charlie watched Lloyd Shankin sing as he held a board in place for Ollie to drive nails into it. The dewin had a hole the size of a large ham burned through his coat.
“Just a little.” Syzigon gestured at the Welshman. “A certain singer showed up as we were running and tried to help.”
“Did he help?” Blending a seam in wood sounded useful, but Charlie had a hard time imagining Lloyd summoning lightning or doing anything else that might be helpful in a fight.
Syzigon shrugged. “He tried.”
“Well, our shortcut didn’t turn out much better.” Charlie looked into the stand of pine trees where Patali and Aldrix were counting a tree’s branches and guessing how tall it was. In the early-evening shade, Thassia stooped over the boards already painted red and added gold characters onto all sides, chanting with each stroke of her fine brush and sprinkling Dust from a pouch onto each character as she completed it.
Syzigon grunted. “You survived, though.”
“We all did. Will the Old Man escape?” Charlie asked.
“The Old Man is cunning,” Syzigon said. “And he’s armed. He knows these enemies well.”
“I still don’t know them.” Charlie frowned. “What do they want? Why do they do the things they do?”
“They kidnapped your father,” Syzigon reminded him. “And they killed him. Does it matter exactly why they did it?”
Charlie wasn’t sure. He changed the subject. “Will you tell me what you do for the Old Man?”
“We’re finders.” Syzigon shrugged. “When we bring the Old Man the items he asked us for on our previous visit, he gives us a new list.”
“What sorts of things does he ask for?”
“Our wagons are small. We bring him spices, seeds, oils. Also unusual feathers and other rare animal parts. Precious metals. Gems. Very small, specific machine parts. And before you ask, I don’t know what he does with any of it.”
“There must be other dwarfs who help him,” Charlie said, guessing from Syzigon’s own words. “And some of them have bigger wagons.”
“The Old Man has a foundry. I’ve known dwarfs who bring him ore, or large tooled items—pipe, tubing, cogs, and so on. None of them wear our colors.”
What was going on inside the mountain?
Syzigon cleared his throat. “You are welcome to come with us. We’ll be going east in the morning. We don’t have room for your friends, but we can share some food with them and help them find their path. And you are welcome with us for as far as the road goes.”
“You won’t deliver what you were bringing?”
Syzigon opened his hands helplessly. “I don’t see how we can.”
Charlie rocked back on his heels. The man his father had called Caradog Pritchard was surrounded by his enemies, and they were openly firing weapons. Whatever Charlie’s warning might have been worth a few days earlier, now it was surely worth nothing.
Was his journey over?
* * *
Later, Charlie found himself alone for a minute with Lloyd Shankin. “How did you get back to the dwarfs?” he asked.
Lloyd smiled. “I sang my way here.”
“And…you spent the night on the mountain? How was that?”
Lloyd’s smile only got wider, and his eyes twinkled like the stars over Cader Idris.
* * *
Over plates of stew and thick black coffee, Charlie and his friends talked. They spoke openly with the adult dwarfs, Aldrix and Yezi having already gone to bed in the first of the repaired wagons, bundled in leather and silk.
“We ain’t finished yet,” Bob said. “That man needs ’elp.”
“When did we become the Help Everybody Association?” Ollie objected. “There’s widows and orphans and prisoners all over this world, and here you go wanting to help some random chap on a hillside.”
“Helping people is a good thing.” Lloyd Shankin pointed at Charlie with a spoon. “Isn’t it, Charlie?”
Bob crossed her arms. “ ’E ain’t random. ’E’s Charlie’s dad’s friend, for starters.”
“I feel the same way,” Charlie said. “It is good to help people when you can, and this is not a random old man. Also, the Iron Cog killed my bap. Anything I can do to stop them, I want to do it.”
“Charlie’s my mate,” Ollie said. “I owe him. But this ain’t a lark like going down old Pondicherry’s chimney, Bob. This is dangerous.”
“We’ve done dangerous before, Ollie, you know we ’ave. An’ this Old Man, I think ’e’s someone special.”
“Is he as special to you as Aunt Big Money is to me?” Ollie’s face was red. “Because I really wanted to talk to her again, and that wasn’t going to be dangerous at all, and instead we climbed over the mountain and here we are, talking about risking our lives for some mad hermit.”
“ ’E ain’t a mad ’ermit,” Bob said. “ ’E’s important.”
“Caradog Pritchard! Important?” Ollie snorted. “I’d never heard of him until I met Charlie.”
“ ’E ain’t using ’is real name.” Bob looked solemn. “That’s because everybody thinks ’e’s dead.”
Ollie stopped his rant. “You say he ain’t using his real name, and you obviously think you know what his real name is. You’d better tell us.”
“It was the ’ex bolts, see?” Bob looked to Charlie.
Charlie shook his head. He had no idea what Bob was talking about.
“Those bolts in the steel wall in Giantseat. I got to thinking I’d seen bolts like ’em before. You know, an ’ead with six sides, an’ inside the ’ead an infestation with six sides again.”
Charlie considered that one for a moment. “Indentation?”
“You’ve got it. I ’ad to think about it a bit, an’ then it c
ame to me. The Sky Trestle.”
That was the train that ran over rooftops and viaducts in London. “I remember the Sky Trestle,” Charlie said.
“The Sky Trestle ’as such bolts. An’ the reason it ’as them is the bolts were invented by the man who built the Sky Trestle. ’E used them on all ’is big projects, an’ as far as I know, nobody else ever did.”
Charlie gasped. “Isambard Kingdom Brunel?” The dwarfs recoiled in shock. “He’s dead! He died almost thirty years ago! Are you saying Isambard—”
“Enough!” Syzigon snapped.
“Excuse me.” Charlie slowed down. “And you think this person…you think he’s alive.”
“That’s the Old Man,” Bob said. “An’…you know. Who I said. An’ Caradog Pritchard. All one fellow.”
“That’s mad,” Ollie said.
“Is it?” Bob stood up, the straps of her bomber bouncing around as she spoke. “Think about it. Brunel dies, what, about thirty years ago. Only ’e doesn’t die. ’E gets kidnapped by the Iron Cog an’ ’e ’as to work for ’em. Or maybe ’e doesn’t realize as they’re evil at first, an’ ’e’s in ’iding because it’s sensitive work. Like for the queen. Later ’e changes ’is mind an’ runs away from ’em, with ’is friend Mr. Pondicherry, and like Mr. Pondicherry, ’e stays in ’iding because now the Iron Cog wants ’im dead. The timing is right.”
“Yeah, but…Isambard Kingdom Brunel?” Ollie kept his voice down almost to a whisper, but the dwarfs still frowned. “He’s one of the greatest engineers who ever lived, isn’t he? The man’s famous. He’s on monuments. His face is all over Waterloo Station. He’s the Duke of Wellington of machine-makers.”
Bob flapped her arms. “That’s the most perfect thing! ’Oo did you think we was going to find when we got up that mountain an’ knocked on the door? Punch an’ Judy? Spring-’Eeled Jack? The Prince of Wales? No, it was going to be an engineer an’ an inventor, it always was. An’ it ’ad to be a really good one, someone as good as Raj Pondicherry, someone ’oo could build amazing things.”
“Like the Articulated Gyroscopes.” Ollie’s face was thoughtful.
