by Kailin Gow
Ms. Lake nodded, and Wirt could see that she seemed pleased by the suggestion. Wirt half wished that he had made it, because he needed all the credit he could get from teachers right now.
“Well, it was quite an impressive exhibit, with several pieces worth taking. There’s the string of infinite length, for example. That’s mostly just useful for answering rhetorical questions, though. Then there’s some rope of binding, which is supposedly impossible for someone tied up in to escape without the right releasing word. There was an Indian vanishing rope, which lets you climb into a small pocket dimension at the top. There was a balancing rope, which lets people walk along it as though it were a wide street, and then of course, there’s Jack’s rope…”
“What’s that, Ms. Lake?” Wirt asked.
“You’ve heard the children’s tale of Jack and the Beanstalk? Well, here, it wasn’t so much a children’s story as a warning. One of the most famous magical thieves who has ever lived, Jack, used to use magical means of climbing to access difficult locations. Beanstalks are the method everybody heard about, but towards the end of his career, he started using a rope instead. It combines some of what the infinite string does with the ability to levitate itself to where it’s needed. Tricky stuff, which is why it was supposed to be locked up here.” Ms. Lake seemed to think for a moment. “In fact, that might explain how they got out without setting off any of the alarms. Hmm… excuse me, all of you.”
She hurried off, leaving the four of them to consider what, if anything, they had learned from that visit. It seemed to Wirt that there were simply too many different types of rope available.
“What kind of person would want all those different kinds of rope?” he asked aloud. “I mean, who would want them all?”
“Someone who just wanted magical artifacts?” Spencer suggested. “Or maybe some kind of specialist collector?”
“A specialist collector?” Roland made it sound like the stupidest idea he’d ever heard.
“You know, the way that there are specialist art collectors who are willing to get people to steal exactly what they want for their private collections.”
“Only this one has a thing for magical ropes?” Wirt asked. It didn’t seem very likely. “Somehow, I just can’t see someone wanting bits of old rope, even magical ones, just for their own sake.”
“Wirt’s right,” Alana said, and Wirt felt a small surge of pride at that. Pride and a lot of other feelings that he didn’t want to examine too closely. “If someone were going to steal artifacts from the school’s collection, wouldn’t they take something more impressive than this?”
“Maybe this was all they could get,” Spencer suggested. “After all, the security is pretty tight. Maybe the bit on display was the one bit that a thief could target.”
“But then why not wait until something better was on display?” Alana countered. “Give it a week or two, and it might be magic swords, or flying carpets, or wands designed to increase a wizard’s power. Why rope?”
“Maybe they had to act fast,” Wirt suggested, but then shook his head. “No, that doesn’t work either, does it? The display has been there since the start of term, so they would have taken something long before now.”
“Exactly,” Alana said. “So whoever took these ropes needs them for something specific. Or they need one of them, and they took the rest either because they weren’t sure which was which, or because they didn’t want to make it easy to work out which one they were planning to use.”
“Maybe,” Roland said. “Though I don’t know why we’re bothering with this ‘whoever’ took it, stuff. The headmaster has obviously just planted the rope somewhere.”
That was the most obvious explanation, but increasingly, Wirt wasn’t sure. Still, at least with Alana’s idea that the “thief” might have needed the rope for something specific, they had a starting point for their search.
The only problem was that there were plenty of things someone could have used one of the ropes for, as the four of them found out over the next hour or two. They checked the library, in case someone had used the vanishing rope as a way into one of the inter-dimensional spaces where the important books were held. They checked a few of the outlying branches of the tree, in case someone was using the balancing rope as a way out onto them.
They even checked in with Sir Percival, asking what kinds of creatures might need a rope of binding to subdue them. That didn’t reveal anything of use, since apparently, almost nothing big enough to require a magically strong rope to hold it, would be dexterous enough to untie knots, making the rope of binding unnecessary. It was mostly, as the knight explained, for dark mages who wanted to tie up human victims. Everybody very carefully kept from mentioning Ender Paine at that point.
Finally, while Sir Percival was giving Alana and Spencer a lecture on the finer points of tying up three-headed dragons, Wirt was able to do what he had been hoping to do almost since hearing about the loss of the ropes. With Alana and Spencer still busy, he took Roland to one side, and asked what Wirt felt was the obvious question.
“Roland, I remember you were pretty interested in these ropes when you first heard about them. You didn’t have anything to do with them going missing, did you?”
As soon as the words were out, Wirt regretted them, but by then, it was too late. Roland glowered at him, looking for a moment as though he might actually react with violence to the suggestion.
“You’re calling me a thief?”
Chapter 16
Roland jabbed a finger at Wirt’s chest. “Who do you think you are, accusing me?”
“I’m not accusing anybody,” Wirt said. “I just want to know what’s going on. And you have to admit, it’s a bit strange, you being so eager to see the ropes just before they disappear.”
“Eager?” Roland’s eyes narrowed. “The way I remember it, your Ms. Lake practically ordered you to take me to see them. By your idea of logic, she should be behind all this.”
“Look, I’m just-”
“I know what you’re doing,” Roland snapped. “It’s the same thing that jealous kids have been doing since I was little. You assume that, because my family has money, it doesn’t matter if you blame everything that’s wrong with your life on me, whether it’s your inability to pass a test or a bunch of missing ropes.”
That was enough to make Wirt react. “Well, maybe if you didn’t wander around like you owned the place-”
“At least I could afford it. At least I could afford the fees here, rather than being some kind of charity case.”
It would have been so easy to lash out then. Roland had found the right buttons to push Wirt with as simply as if he were reading a book on him. Yet somehow, Wirt knew that would be just what he would want. It would be exactly the thing to drive a wedge between him and Alana, leaving Roland as the only one of the group close to her.
“Don’t have anything to say now that you aren’t accusing people, do you?” Roland preened as he said it. “Maybe you’d like me to call the others over and you can tell them what you think I did too?”
Briefly, Wirt considered coming back with what he did know about Roland. With what he’d heard that night he’d woken and listened in on the other boy talking to something in that box of his. Yet he guessed that too would only make things worse right now. There was a better way.
“No,” Wirt said. “Sorry. It was just that, with the way these tests have been set up, I assumed it would be one of us. Like the way Priscilla was in on her disappearance.”
“And it had to be me?” Roland seemed partly mollified by Wirt’s explanation, but he obviously wasn’t going to forgive him just yet.
Wirt thought quickly. “I thought that, since they laid out a trail of clues for us with Priscilla, Ms. Lake asking me to show you the magical ropes might have been a deliberate hint. You know, a test to see if I would remember something like that so far on?”
Roland nodded. “I guess so. Though you still had no right to accuse me.”
“I know,” Wirt lied, “and I’m sorry.”
The others came up then, preventing the two of them from discussing things further. Alana shook her head in disgust.
“Nothing,” she said. “All this effort, and we’ve still found nothing. At this rate, someone else is going to find them before us.”
Roland put an arm around her. Wirt saw Spencer wince. “No they won’t. We’d have heard if they had found them by now, and it’s getting late. We’ll start bright and early in the morning, and find them well before anyone else. I might even have one or two ideas where we can find them.”
“So let’s go,” Alana said.
“In the morning. We all need the rest.”
They went back to their rooms. Wirt and Roland didn’t speak much more that night. Instead, Roland practiced his guitar for a while and Wirt read up for a test, before they both drifted off to sleep.
Or pretended to, anyway. Wirt lay still for almost an hour before he watched Roland get up in the dark and take out that box of his. When he opened it, the weird light poured forth once more.
“Is everything going to plan?” the cracked and raspy voice within demanded.
“Things almost went wrong today,” Roland said. “I thought the boy Wirt knew, but it turns out he was just made suspicious by it being a test.”
“Will we need to act?”
“No,” Roland said. “We have the first item. Getting more will not be a problem. I’ll have to arrange for the return of most of the ropes, but I have already used them for what I needed. Everything is working.”
“Good. Remember, mid-year.”
As with the first time Roland had used the box, Wirt lay awake thinking about it long after the other boy put it away. It was obvious now that the other boy was plotting something. It was equally obvious that he’d had something to do with the loss of the ropes. Even so, there still seemed to be little way of proving any of it. All Wirt could do for now was wait and hope to find out more.
Morning came, and Roland went with Wirt to meet the others down in the cafeteria. Spencer and Alana were picking at their food, and not just because the nymphs had served up something unidentifiable through the serving hatch. Alana looked up excitedly as Roland came in.
“Are you going to tell us this big idea of yours yet?” she demanded.
Roland looked around at all the other students eating there and put a finger to his lips. “Not here. We wouldn’t want any of them getting the same idea, would we? Are you ready to follow me?”
It seemed that the others were, so Wirt had to do without breakfast. From the look of Spencer and Alana’s he wasn’t too bothered by that, though. He did, however, want to know what Roland’s idea was. Thankfully, Roland explained a little of it once they were clear of the crowded school cafeteria.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “what if we’re trying to be too clever? We’ve been spending our time trying to look for all these alternative uses for the ropes, but we haven’t considered the one rope that has its use pretty much built in.”
“Which one is that?” Alana asked.
“Jack’s rope. Come on.”
Without saying anything more, Roland started to lead the way up through the school. Thanks to his time exploring over the summer, Wirt knew the interior of the school pretty well, so he knew they were climbing, but pretty soon, they were heading through spaces even Wirt hadn’t known about before.
And then, finally, they arrived in a small room with a huge plant pot in the middle of the floor, a hole in the ceiling, and a suspiciously thick looking green shoot stretching from one to the other.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Spencer said.
Wirt found his thoughts running on similar lines. “An actual beanstalk? Really?”
Alana looked around. “Priscilla isn’t here somewhere, is she? This looks like her kind of thing.”
Roland nodded. “I know it’s a bit of a strange thing to find, even by the standards of the school, but think about it. Where else would someone take Jack’s rope?”
Wirt wasn’t too sure about that. He suspected that, if someone already had the beanstalk, they wouldn’t need the rope. The others, however, seemed more enthusiastic about the whole thing. Alana climbed up the green shoot enthusiastically, while Spencer was quick to follow her. Roland gestured to the trunk.
“You next, Wirt.”
Wirt hesitated, wondering for a moment if this might all be some kind of trick, but then clambered up after the others. The shoot was easy to climb, with plenty of peeling sections to serve as hand and foot holds. The climb went on for longer than Wirt expected, going up through the ceiling, and into a cloudy bank of what seemed to be fog. It was another five minutes before Wirt was able to put his feet on level ground.
The ground in question was a checkerboard floor on which huge pieces of furniture sat, obviously designed for people more than twice Wirt’s size at least. The whole place was a kitchen on a scale that Wirt could barely comprehend. He looked around at Roland as the boy emerged from a hole in the floor.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“It’s a giant’s home,” Roland said, as though that were the most natural thing in the world. “Now, we need to take a look around without attracting attention.”
“And if we do attract attention?” Alana asked.
“Then we would probably get eaten.”
Wirt had been worried that it might be something like that. On the other hand, they needed to find those ropes, and Roland obviously knew where they were. So following him was probably the quickest way to find them. Wirt fell into line, and together, the four of them tiptoed their way across the room, looking out for any sign that they were about to be discovered.
“It should just be over here,” Roland said, nodding towards the door. He was being careless, Wirt thought, letting on that he knew the layout of the place like that. The other two seemed not to notice, however. They moved through into a hall that was essentially a large pantry, with sides of beef hanging on hooks, whole sharks packed together like sardines, and other foodstuffs stacked together in quantities that brought the words “giant appetite” unbidden to Wirt’s mind.
And there at the end sat eggs. They were the size of ostrich eggs, and impossible to miss, given that they glowed brightly golden in the light of the pantry. Roland started towards them.
“Roland,” Alana said, “those aren’t the ropes.”
“Who cares about some stupid bits of string?” Roland demanded, perhaps a little too loudly. “We’ve got plenty of time for both. Now, are you going to help me carry some of these out of here?”
Wirt shook his head. “We’re here for the ropes, Roland.”
“Then you’re all idiots. Why don’t you-”
“I HEAR YOU!” The words rang out in a voice no human could have produced, coming from the other end of the kitchen. Wirt turned and looked up. And up. The man there-the giant- was easily fifteen feet tall, and broadly built, so that it was hard to comprehend the sheer scale of him. He had a bristly beard that stuck out at angles from his features, and wore trousers and a sweater of dark wool. “I smell you. I see you.” A smile spread over that bristle-covered face. “And soon, I’ll taste you too.”
“Um…” Alana began. “We’re not here to cause trouble, sir. We’re just looking for some magical rope that we thought someone might have brought here?”
“Rope? You’re here for my eggs!”
“We’re really not,” Alana protested. “We’re just here for Jack’s rope-”
“Jack! So you are just like that murderous, thieving thing! I can see you, eying my eggs. And one of you…” the giant sniffed the air. “One of you is an Englishman.”
That seemed to be the last straw for the creature, and Wirt wondered if things might have gone better had he not been there. As it was though, the giant barreled forward, smashing into the closest of them. Which just happened to be Alana. She flew backwards, hit the wall of the pantry and crumple
d to the floor, unmoving.
Chapter 17
Wirt stepped to the side as the giant kept coming forward, avoiding that first rush. Roland, meanwhile, had his hands up and was chanting words Wirt didn’t recognize from any of their classes. Dark strands, like semi-translucent ropes, shot forward from his arms, wrapping around the giant’s ankles. It stumbled for a moment, but didn’t fall, ripping through the strands instead in a sudden burst of strength.
“Idiot,” Spencer yelled over to Roland. “Don’t you know giants are hard to use magic on?”
He didn’t get an answer, because at that moment he had to jump back to avoid another sweep of the creature’s arm. Wirt tried to think of something that might slow the giant down, but if it wasn’t likely to be affected by his magic, he didn’t know what was left.
Roland seemed determined to keep going with those magical strands of his. Apparently, he didn’t believe what Spencer had to say. At least, the strands shot forward again, and again the giant brushed them away.
Wirt had better things to worry about than Roland, however. Alana was still slumped against the wall, and she didn’t seem to be awake. Seizing his chance in between lunges from the giant, Wirt darted forward, keeping his head down as he struggled over to Alana. She was breathing. Wirt’s heart leapt as he saw that much. It fell again just as quickly. There was a thin trickle of blood on the wall where Alana had struck it, and despite his attempts to wake her, her eyes wouldn’t open.
Did he dare shake her awake? Did he dare move her at all? Wirt didn’t know enough about what you did with injured people to risk it. Which was a problem, because the giant chose that moment to turn to him, the fury on its face still raw.
“You! Englishman! Now you die!”
Wirt reacted on instinct, knowing that he couldn’t target the giant itself with magic, yet knowing that magic was exactly what he needed if he and Alana were going to survive. He gestured to the ceiling, calling on the earth and stone within it. An ominous creaking sound followed.
