Northwood

by Brian Falkner

  It took him a few minutes to answer, and when he did, it was clear from his red, smeary eyes that he had been crying. Cecilia had never seen a grown man cry before, and felt a little embarrassed.

  Tony managed a half-smile and lifted a hand to say hello.

  Cecilia and the twins had snuck their meals out of the dining room by wrapping them in a cloth and concealing them in Cecilia’s jacket, which she carried casually in one hand.

  She unwrapped the food and held it up.

  Big Tony Baloney looked as though he was going to start crying again, but he shook his head.

  “Yes,” Cecilia said, and the others nodded in agreement. “This is for you.”

  Tony looked at the food for a long moment, then looked at them, and finally took the meal, and put it down on a table inside his cottage. Then he returned to the doorway.

  He tapped his chest with three fingers and said quietly, “Boomphah.”

  Cecilia instinctively reached out and took his hand. She tapped her own chest with her free hand and repeated, “Boomphah.”

  Tony smiled hugely, but then his expression changed. As he had been doing in the throne room, he mimed the action of putting back the braces on the big stone door.

  I did put them back! he was saying.

  Cecilia looked at the others. They shook their heads.

  “We have to,” Cecilia said. “It wouldn’t be honest not to.” She took a deep breath, unsure of the reaction she was going to get. She pointed to herself, then to Evan and Avery, and mimed the action of taking down the braces.

  We know you didn’t. It was us.

  There was a drawing in of breath from the giant, and the twins drew back a little from the doorway. Then Tony relaxed and even smiled.

  He put one huge hand over his mouth and winked at them.

  I won’t tell anyone!

  24

  NOTHING HAPPENED

  HARVEST WEEK WAS a week of hard work, finishing with the big Harvest Festival party on Saturday night.

  Everybody was busy picking, cutting, packing, hauling, and storing the various crops that kept the community fed throughout the year.

  On Wednesday, Summer Busch, who lived in the first cottage over the bridge with her husband, Wilfred, had a baby, which made a total of three children who had been born in Storm in modern times. (The other two, of course, were Avery and Evan.)

  On Thursday everybody was summoned to the throne room before dinner for another Royal Court of Inquiry.

  Much to Cecilia’s horror, Summer was sitting in the naughty chair that night, clutching her newborn baby in her arms.

  King Harry was outraged. It wasn’t the baby that made him so angry. It was the fact that the baby had been born during harvest week.

  The King sat on his throne at the end of the room and fumed (Cecilia could almost see the steam coming out of his ears) as the big sergeant scolded Summer for being so lazy.

  “Any excuse to get out of helping with the harvest,” Sergeant Lee thundered.

  “But the baby came early!” Wilfred Busch cried out from the back of the room, trying to stand up for his wife. “It wasn’t our fault.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t my fault,” Sergeant Lee yelled, going a little red in the face. “Whose fault was it?”

  Wilfred seemed to shrink down inside himself, deflating like a balloon with a leak.

  “Well?” Lee demanded.

  “It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” Summer said. “She just came early. Look. She’s beautiful.”

  Lee didn’t seem to hear her. “Or was it perhaps King Harold’s fault?”

  “No, sir, of course not,” Summer said, clutching the baby closer as if he was going to take her away.

  Big Tony Baloney was standing next to Cecilia. He shuddered every time Sergeant Lee shouted. Cecilia reached up and took his hand. He looked down at her and his eyes were sad.

  “It’s not fair,” Cecilia whispered.

  Although he could not hear her, Tony must have understood what she meant, because he shook his head.

  Sergeant Lee looked over at the King. Cecilia saw the King discreetly raise two fingers off the arm of the throne.

  “You are sentenced to two nights without dinner,” Sergeant Lee said.

  There was a gasp from the crowd.

  Two nights. That was a very severe punishment.

  Summer lowered her eyes and held her baby close.

  “You can’t do that,” Cecilia said loudly before she knew what she was doing.

  All eyes turned to her. Sergeant Lee stiffened, drawing himself up to his full height and turning in her direction. The King was furious, Cecilia saw, but it was too late to turn back.

  “You can’t,” she said. “She has a new baby. The baby needs food, and she gets that from her mother. If you starve Mrs. Busch, you are starving the baby too.”

  Sergeant Lee started to march in Cecilia’s direction, but stopped as a bulky shape moved slightly in front of her.

  Big Tony Baloney let go of her hand and took a step forward. To get to her, Sergeant Lee would have to go around him.

  The other guards were on their feet now, drawing wooden batons from their belts and looking at the King for instructions.

  “She’s right!” yelled Wilfred. “It’s a cruel and unusual punishment.”

  Cecilia thought that Harold the Merciful was a cruel and unusual king.

  By now the crowd was starting to stir with a deep undercurrent of discontent.

  The King, clearly uncomfortable, stayed silent for a moment, while the guards, with their batons drawn, waited for instructions.

  The mood of the crowd darkened and the tension swelled, like a big, festering pimple that was just waiting to burst.

  “I will be merciful,” King Harry said at last, attempting to sound calm and compassionate, but his anger was spitting out with every word. “I hereby pardon Mrs. Summer Busch for her crime, and transfer the punishment to Ms. Cecilia Undergarment.”

  ***

  Cecilia did not go hungry.

  That night, as she wandered back to her quarters, there was a quick rustle of clothing and a bump against her arm, and when she looked down there was a package in her hand that hadn’t been there before.

  She turned to look, but saw only a flash of gray tunic as the person disappeared around a corner.

  The package turned out to be a loaf of cheese bread, wrapped in catichoke leaves. And that was just the start.

  Almost every person she passed — even people she hadn’t met yet — shook her hand, and when they let go she would be holding a scrap of food.

  And when she went back to her room there were fruits and breads, carefully wrapped and hidden under her mattress.

  Like it or not, Cecilia had become a small hero in the gorge. She certainly hadn’t intended to be, or planned it that way, but it was sort of a nice feeling anyway.

  But in another way it was a little disturbing.

  She had the sense that many people in the valley were not quite happy with the way things were run by the King and his henchmen. For years they had put up with it, uncomplaining, accepting their situation.

  Somehow Cecilia’s arrival and her taking a stand against the King had changed all that. She caught the edges of muttered conversations where the King’s name was often mentioned, and the expressions on peoples’ faces were grim.

  The King seemed to be aware of this, and that night his guards strode through the castle, eavesdropping on conversations or breaking up groups of people who had gathered to chat.

  On Friday morning she passed the King at the main entrance to the castle, but he did not speak to her. He shot her a narrowed glance, and his nostrils flared, before he stomped back up the stairs to the royal quarters.

  He didn’t like her much, she decided, but that was okay. Th
e feeling was mutual.

  ***

  That afternoon, Cecilia and the twins went swimming.

  Cecilia had finished helping Jazz grind the flour by around three o’clock and was playing fetch with Rocky, using a short stick she’d snapped off a fallen oak branch.

  They had only been playing for about twenty minutes when Avery and Evan appeared along the riverbank.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you still be harvesting?”

  Evan grinned. “Finished.”

  “We picked the entire crop of crawling beans,” Avery said. “Tomorrow they’ll put us on a different crew, but for the rest of the day we’re free.”

  “We’re going for a swim,” Evan said. “You want to come? It’ll be salubrious.”

  Avery rolled her eyes, and Cecilia laughed.

  “But I don’t have a swimsuit,” Cecilia said.

  “What’s a swimsuit?” Evan asked.

  Cecilia looked at him carefully to be sure he wasn’t making fun of her.

  “It’s like a special costume you wear when you go swimming,” she said. “Otherwise you’d be completely naked.”

  Avery and Evan looked one another in the eyes and laughed.

  “You wear clothes when you go swimming?” Avery asked.

  “Don’t they get wet?” Evan asked.

  “Well, they’re special swimming clothes,” Cecilia said. “They’re supposed to get wet.”

  Avery and Evan laughed again.

  “That’s funny,” Avery said.

  “No it’s not,” Cecilia said.

  “We don’t wear special swimming clothes,” Evan said. “Around here, nobody minds.”

  “It’s what everybody does,” Avery said.

  “I think I’ll leave my undies on,” Cecilia said, crossing her arms and lifting her chin determinedly into the air.

  “What are undies?” Evan asked.

  It was a long way to the waterhole, which was right at the far end of the gorge.

  On the way they passed Tony and his harvest gang. They were working at one of the widest parts of the gorge, where the steep rocky walls sloped inward on both sides, creating a terrifying overhang.

  The top of the gorge was still narrow here, but at the base, it had been worn away by the river to create a wide plain. Small beech forests grew on both banks of the river.

  As they passed, Tony banged his chest a couple of times. “Boomphah! Boomphah!”

  Cecilia and the twins waved from the other side of the river.

  Tony had an animal on a leash. At first Cecilia thought it was a dog, but then she realized it was a pig.

  “I didn’t know Tony had a pet pig,” she said.

  Then, as Cecilia watched the harvest gang wander in and out of beech trees, she noticed that all the harvesters had pigs of their own, all on leashes. All of the pigs were wearing muzzles.

  “They’re truffling,” Evan said. “That’s one of our biggest crops.”

  Cecilia thought of all the large sacks that Tony and his gang had been hauling back from the river earlier that week.

  “What’s a truffle?” she asked.

  Avery said, “They’re these big white things kind of like mushrooms.”

  “They grow underground, and the pigs help find them,” Evan said. “But they’re nothing like mushrooms.”

  “Yes they are,” said Avery.

  “Not at all,” said Evan.

  “They’re both funguses,” Avery said.

  “Fungi,” Evan said.

  Cecilia wanted to ask more about the truffles, but she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  Then they reached the waterhole and she completely forgot about it.

  Here at the far end of the gorge, the river tumbled whitely over rapids, splashing over rocks, spitting long streams of foam into the air, and bubbling down into a wide rock pool that narrowed again at one end, where huge jagged boulders seemed to have fallen from the cliff above.

  The water surged through a gap in the boulders before vanishing into a crevice in the cliff face.

  “Is it safe?” Cecilia asked.

  “Who cares?” Avery grinned.

  Evan nodded. “It’s very safe as long as you stay away from the rapids and the outlet.” He pointed to the hole in the cliff where the water surged and frothed before disappearing underground.

  The bank on this side of the river sloped gradually into the swimming hole.

  Evan and Avery threw off their clothes and raced each other down the slope, disappearing abruptly into the water.

  Their heads popped back up, laughing.

  “Come on,” they both yelled.

  “Turn around!” Cecilia shouted back.

  They did (eventually) and Cecilia got undressed behind a bush, before she ran down the ramp and jumped into the water behind them.

  They played and splashed around for half an hour, refreshed by the cool, clear water.

  Once or twice Cecilia found herself heading in the direction of the outlet and felt cold, watery hands grasp at her, pulling her toward the jagged rocks.

  She was careful to stay far away from it.

  ***

  It was on the way back that she told them about her new plan.

  “Tomorrow night, when everybody is at the Harvest Festival dance, we should sneak back into the royal chambers,” she said.

  “During the dance!” Evan was horrified.

  “The dance is the perfect time,” Cecilia explained earnestly. “Everyone else will be busy, so we can have a good look around without having to worry about being discovered.”

  “But we wait all year long for the Festival!” Evan said. “It’s the highlight of the year. The one day we all look forward to.”

  “It’s just a stupid dance,” Avery said.

  “Listen,” Cecilia said. “If there really is a way out of Northwood, don’t you want to know about it?”

  “Of course,” Avery said, with a nervous flicker of her eyes.

  Evan hesitated before nodding, and Cecilia realized that neither of the twins had ever seen the outside world. They had been born in the castle, and the thought of the world outside must be very scary for them.

  Once they got out, she would do all she could to help them to adjust. She would teach them about her world, as they had been teaching her about theirs.

  “If there is a path through the forest that nobody knows about,” Cecilia said, “then there must be a map. Otherwise, how would King Harry know about it? You can bet he wasn’t smart enough to find it by himself.”

  “He’s not smart enough to find his own nose by himself,” Evan said.

  “So we break into the royal chambers during the dance and find the map,” Cecilia said. “Then we can lead everybody out into the world, and expose King Harry for the liar, cheat, and thief that he really is.”

  The twins agreed, although still with a little bit of hesitation.

  “We don’t all need to go down the well,” Cecilia said. “Only one of us does. Then that person can open the door to the royal chambers and let the others in.”

  “I’ll go,” Avery said immediately.

  “No, it has to be me,” Cecilia said. “I’m not strong enough to help put the braces back on the door. And we can’t get poor Tony in trouble again.”

  They all agreed on that.

  25

  THE PARTY

  EVERYONE WORE THEIR best clothes to the Harvest Festival dance.

  For most, that was the same gray smocks they wore during the day, but they decorated them brightly with flowers, sashes, and colored ribbons so that the courtyard looked like a kaleidoscope of whirling, twirling shapes.

  Avery’s mother had helped Cecilia by tying some scraps of material into bows and pinning them onto her shoulders.


  When Cecilia asked where the colored material came from, Mrs. Celestine told her they were the few remaining scraps of the dress she had been wearing when she had gotten lost in the forest. Most people had some remnants of their “world” clothes, and some even had the entire outfit, bringing it out only at festival time.

  The round, raised area that Cecilia had seen earlier was indeed a band rotunda, although Castle Storm didn’t actually have much of a band.

  The royal orchestra had only one real instrument in it: a banjo that old Gimpy had been carrying when he had wandered into Northwood.

  But they had created other instruments out of things around them. A set of drums made by stretching some kind of thin leather over a frame made from branches. A wooden board with ridges that was used for washing clothes became a rhythm instrument played by Mrs. Clarkevy. And Mr. Knight, the oldest person in Storm, had a box with a long pole on the top. He plucked at a string stretched between the top of the pole and the box, producing a low bass note.

  The music was brimming with energy, as if by playing and singing and dancing, the people of Storm could lift themselves out of their dreary world to a colorful place, even if only for an hour or so.

  The courtyard was lit with flaming torches, casting flickering light across the revelers’ faces. The little golden statue of the bird in the waterfall had been polished and shone like a beacon.

  At exactly nine o’clock, the music suddenly stopped, and everybody retreated to the low wall around the courtyard, finding seats where they could.

  Old Gimpy put down his banjo and picked up his “trumpet,” the wooden horn that he had used in the throne room.

  A long, clear note sounded, then a short salute, and the King, in fine velvet robes, appeared. He sat on a carriage, carried on poles on the shoulders of four of the strongest men in the gorge, one of whom was big Tony Baloney.

  Four men of the royal guard, in their bright-blue finery, walked behind the carriage. The men set the carriage at the head of the courtyard and the King clapped his hands twice.