Northwood

by Brian Falkner

  “I now declare the festival open,” he said grandly.

  The music started again immediately, and people poured back into the center of the courtyard to dance.

  ***

  Cecilia, Avery, and Evan waited until the party was in full swing before sneaking into the castle one by one and making their way down to the big stone door.

  They pushed the door open slightly. Rocky stuck his nose out and sniffed a few times, then winked at Cecilia.

  “No lions,” she whispered to the others. She pushed the door open a little wider and slipped through before she lost her nerve.

  The sound of the big stone door closing behind her sent a shudder through her heart.

  No lions, Rocky had told her. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any prowling the pathways nearby. The well looked a long way off.

  She took a step, then another, and before she knew it she was almost halfway to the well — halfway from the safety of the castle.

  She glanced back, realizing that there was no safety there. The big door was shut. If a lion came into the clearing now, it would be on her before the twins could open the door and pull her inside. Her only chance was to get to the well.

  Without making a noise, she quickened her pace, trotting as fast as she dared through the grass of the clearing, which was lit only by the moon.

  She had a lantern with her, but had not lit it. It would be too easy for the light to be seen from the castle, and she didn’t want to risk it.

  The faint moonlight was just enough for her to make her way to the well without tripping over anything or getting lost in the darkness.

  She took her coil of rope and tied it securely around her waist before looping it twice around a stone pillar.

  Holding it firmly, Cecilia clambered over the edge of the well, half expecting to hear rushing footsteps and the gnashing teeth of a lion at any moment.

  She let out the rope slowly and walked backward down the vertical face of the well. She only felt safe when she was low enough to be out of a lion’s reach.

  Once she got to the ledge, she pulled the rest of the rope down into the well after her, leaving no trace of her expedition visible from above.

  A few minutes later, she had completed part one of the mission.

  She opened the doors to let the twins and Rocky into the royal quarters.

  The carefree beat of Latin music bounced its way to them along the corridors and stairways of the castle like a small boy bouncing a ball against a fence. But the melody and the singing were swallowed up by the rock or drowned out by the constant whir of the gasoline generator at the other end of the hall.

  “One of us needs to stand guard,” Evan said, “in case King Harry or any of his zoo leave the party early or decide to check on something.”

  “Rocky will do that,” Cecilia said. “He’ll bark if he hears or smells anyone approaching. Won’t you, Rocky?” She added, “Good boy,” which earned her a disdainful look from the Samoyed.

  “If anybody comes, we all go to the dining room and hide in the tunnel,” Evan said.

  Avery nodded. “Let’s see if we can find this map.”

  “I’ll take the nursery,” Cecilia said.

  “I’ll take the sitting room,” said Evan.

  “Okay. I’ll take the drawing room,” Avery said.

  ***

  It must have been a nursery once, because that was what it said over the door, but the room Cecilia was searching through had clearly most recently been used as the bedroom of a little girl.

  A princess! This was Princess Annachanel’s bedroom, then her children’s, and then her children’s children’s.

  The last little girl who had lived in this room would have been the daughter or granddaughter of Queen Annachanel, Cecilia thought, before all the people in the castle mysteriously disappeared.

  They must have left in a hurry. The dining room was filled with furniture and paintings, and here in the princess’s bedroom there was still a four-poster bed and a freestanding closet, although it had sagged with age and was now leaning against one wall.

  The bed was even made with ragged old blankets that might have once been pink, although moths and rot had long since eaten away at them. A chest of drawers still stood proudly against one wall, a mirror above it in a wooden frame. The mirror was cracked in two directions and covered with dust.

  Cecilia wiped the glass with her hand, carefully avoiding the cracks, and looked at herself standing in the bedroom of a real princess.

  Her heart began to beat faster. A princess had stood exactly where she was standing now, as maids brushed her hair and fussed over her gown, preparing her for a banquet or a royal ball. What must it have been like?

  She opened the closet, wondering if any of the princess’s gowns could possibly have survived the centuries, but it was empty.

  She bent down and looked under the wardrobe, which was raised on four legs of turned wood. There was just dust and cobwebs.

  This room had not been disturbed for centuries, she realized. If there was a map hidden somewhere in the castle, it was not going to be in here. Just to be sure, she peered under the bed.

  The frame of the bed had sagged in the center so that the mattress (or what was left of it, at least) was almost resting on the floor. Which is why she didn’t see it at first.

  She was just about to get back to her feet when she caught a glimpse of something wedged under the collapsed mattress.

  Cecilia reached right under the bed, hoping there would be no spiders or cockroaches waiting for her, and she felt something solid. She tugged and it gradually came free from its prison.

  Covered in dust and all kinds of grime, it was still easily recognizable. A golden bejeweled tiara.

  Cecilia could see it happening.

  In their rush to leave the castle the tiara was dropped, or maybe placed on the bed and knocked off. Maybe a careless foot kicked it under the bed and there was no time to search for it.

  Whatever had driven these people from the castle must have been sudden and terrifying.

  She stood up and blew some of the dust off the tiara. It sparkled in the low light of the lamp.

  There was a quiet tap on the door.

  Cecilia jumped and turned to see Avery standing there with a strange look on her face.

  “You’d better come to the drawing room,” Avery said. “You need to see this.”

  “Look what I found,” Cecilia said.

  “Nice.” Avery sounded as though her find was much more interesting.

  “It’s a tiara,” Cecilia said.

  “Bring it with you.” Avery was in a hurry.

  Cecilia shook her head. “No, it belongs here.”

  She slid it carefully back under the bed and blew some dust around the floor to hide the scuff marks where she had dragged it out.

  It wasn’t her tiara — it belonged to a princess. And even if that princess had lived hundreds of years ago, Cecilia didn’t feel that the tiara was hers to take.

  That wouldn’t have been honest.

  26

  THE DRAWING ROOM

  “THIS IS VIVACIOUS!” Evan said.

  The drawing room was very long. It seemed more like a corridor than a room and it was not at all what Cecilia was expecting. Each wall of the room was covered with drawings — pictures drawn in simple black ink on square plaques of white marble. Like everything else, they were dusty, but the pictures were perfectly clear.

  The drawings were hung in long rows that stretched right down the length of the room.

  Cecilia studied the closest ones.

  “See, they tell a story,” Avery said. “Start with the first picture on the top row and follow them along. Each one is a scene out of a story.”

  “It’s like a comic book,” Cecilia said. “Or a graphic novel!”
r />   “What are those?” Evan asked, but Cecilia was too caught up in the panels to answer.

  “Here are Baron Mendoza’s troops attacking little Prince Danyon’s town,” she said. “And here are Danyon and Natassia running for their lives.”

  “Yes, and here they find the castle,” Avery said, “and begin to build a new life. And look at all the people who start to arrive at Storm.”

  That panel showed the new King and Queen standing on the ramparts of the castle watching lines of people streaming in from all directions. Cecilia took her gaze from the panel and looked down the length of the room. “There must be hundreds of pictures here,” she said.

  “I know,” Avery said. “But I wanted to see the part where Danyon burns the catapults, so I skipped all these and just went along till I found it. You’re not going to believe it when you see it.”

  Avery strode past panels showing feasts and celebrations, births and deaths, harvests and droughts.

  “Here,” Avery said at last.

  It was just as Cecilia had seen it in her mind’s eye when reading the story. The strong castle standing resolute against the attackers. The huge catapults hurling jagged rocks toward the cliff face. The dark figure of King Danyon appearing beside the war machines with a burning brand. The tar pits, long trenches concealed in the grass, bursting into flames beneath the catapults. Fire lighting up the cliff face as the weapons were destroyed.

  “They don’t show the well, though,” Cecilia said. “Or the secret passageway.”

  “Of course not,” Evan said. “That was still a secret, even after the battle was won.”

  Avery said, “See this one? That’s the Baron himself wailing in agony as his catapults were destroyed. Here he is again — and again here.”

  Cecilia looked where Avery was pointing. “Oh my word,” she said. There was no doubt. These were drawings of Baron Mendoza. The commander of the army. The archenemy of King Danyon, Queen Natassia, and Castle Storm itself. One panel showed just the Baron’s face, agonizing over his defeat. Other panels showed him standing alongside his soldiers.

  To Cecilia’s shock, she recognized him. Even from a simple line drawing, the man was quite distinctive. He was only around half the height of most of his soldiers. And he was fat, round like a beach ball, with long hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “You don’t think . . .” Evan’s voice trailed off.

  “Surely not,” Cecilia said.

  “It must be,” Avery said.

  “It’s King Harry!” Evan said, and then he said something that his mother would have been very disappointed to hear coming out of his mouth.

  “It can’t be,” Avery said. “This happened hundreds of years ago.”

  “It’s not King Harry,” Cecilia agreed. “It’s Baron Mendoza. He must be Harry’s great-, or great-great-, or great-great-great-grandfather.”

  “How?” Avery asked. “How did Harry get here?”

  Cecilia thought about it for a while. “Maybe Harry knew the story of his great-great-great-grandfather, and came looking for the castle. Somehow he found it, then he set himself up as King. As other people found the place, they became his subjects.”

  They were all silent for a moment.

  It had taken hundreds of years, but Baron Mendoza, or at least his descendant, had finally conquered Castle Storm.

  “When everyone finds out that King Harry is a descendant of Baron Mendoza, there’s going to be a riot,” Avery said. “And this time we’ve got proof.”

  “This isn’t proof,” Evan said.

  “He’s right,” Cecilia said. “Just because King Harry looks like the Baron doesn’t mean anything for certain.”

  “And what about the guards?” Avery asked. “King Harry’s little zoo. Why do they do everything he says? Does he pay them with something?”

  “Gold, silver?” Cecilia wondered. “Is there a secret treasure room somewhere? The people all seem to have left in a hurry. Maybe they had to leave their treasure behind.”

  “A treasure room.” Avery’s eyes lit up. “Full of jewelry and gold! We’ve got to find it.”

  “I didn’t say there was one,” Cecilia said. “I was just wondering.”

  “What happened to all the people?” Evan asked. “All the descendants of King Danyon and Queen Natassia, and all the other people who came to live in Storm Gorge? Where did they all disappear to in such a hurry?”

  “Let’s keep reading,” Cecilia said. “We might find out.”

  She was right.

  “Here!” Evan said.

  He had gone straight to the end of the room, on the right-hand side. The wall on the left was completely covered in drawings, but the right side petered out about halfway down.

  “There was an earthquake,” Evan said, pointing to a panel. “Part of the cliff collapsed at the far end of the gorge. It dammed up the river where it flows out underground. With the outlet blocked, the river began to rise and rise. It began to fill the gorge, flooding it with water.”

  Cecilia stared at the next series of drawings in horror. The story was quite clear. All the stone cottages were submerged, and then the water began to rise higher and higher inside the castle itself.

  “This is the last panel,” Cecilia murmured. “They must have evacuated the gorge and the castle. Moved away. Found somewhere else to live.”

  It was a shocking end to the story of Storm, Cecilia felt. The mighty castle half flooded: deserted, abandoned, left to rot in the depths of the forest.

  “But what happened next?” Avery asked. “How did it get unblocked again?”

  “We don’t know,” Cecilia said. “We can’t know. Nobody was here to tell the story.”

  “Maybe another earthquake jolted the boulders free and unblocked the river,” Evan suggested.

  Cecilia thought of the large granite boulders surrounding the hole at the end of the rock pool.

  “I think that’s right,” she said.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Avery said. “Maybe the map is hidden somewhere in these drawings.”

  ***

  They spent the next ten minutes reading panel after panel from the huge storyboard that lined the walls of the drawing room.

  There were hundreds of stories on those walls: births and deaths, tragedies and triumphs. But there were no clues to any secret path that might lead them out of the forest.

  “Time to go,” Evan said. “Before they notice we’re missing.”

  “Just a minute,” Avery said. She had wandered back to the other side of the hall.

  “Here’s a drawing of Princess Annachanel walking alone in the forest,” Avery said.

  “No black lions back in those days,” Cecilia said.

  “I know,” Avery said. “Here she is with some birds and squirrels, and . . . what’s that? Like a fox or something? Lots of little animals, anyway.”

  “The forest was probably teeming with animals back in those days,” Evan said. “There are probably a lot fewer now, thanks to the lions.”

  “Yeah,” Avery said. “Look at the little lines coming out of the princess’s mouth.”

  Evan didn’t seem very interested. He was already opening the drawing room door and checking for sounds in the corridor.

  “And the lines coming out of the animals’ mouths,” Avery said.

  Cecilia looked more closely at the panel. Her tongue seemed suddenly dry and she could hear the beating of her heart in her ears. The room seemed to fade into a gray fog around her. There was nothing in the world except her and the drawing.

  Avery’s voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away as she said, “It’s almost like Princess Annachanel is talking to the animals.”

  27

  NAUGHTY CHAIR

  THERE WAS A low growl from the corridor. Cecilia didn’t need to see Rocky to understand what he was s
aying this time.

  Danger!

  “Come on!” Avery said. “The dining room.”

  Cecilia tried to move, but her feet were fixed to the floor in front of the picture. She was aware of Evan and Avery running across the corridor and into the dining room, but she could not move her eyes from the little princess talking to the animals of the forest.

  “Cecilia,” she heard Avery whisper harshly across the hall, and there was a low whine from Rocky.

  That, perhaps, was what she needed.

  She broke her gaze from the picture and ran to the door of the drawing room.

  She took one step out into the hallway and froze. The door to the royal quarters was already starting to open.

  Across the hallway she could see Avery’s horrified eyes and the urgent waving motion: Come on!

  But it was too late.

  She stepped back inside the drawing room and shut the door quietly as footsteps and voices sounded in the corridor.

  She looked desperately around, searching for somewhere to hide. The room was long and straight, with no furniture to crouch behind or alcoves to duck into.

  Cecilia flattened herself against the wall by the door. That way if they glanced into the room, they would not see her.

  And why would they come into the room anyway? Surely, there was no reason.

  The voices in the corridor stopped abruptly.

  Her lantern! She was still holding her lantern. Could they see the light underneath the drawing room door?

  That question was answered with a crash as the door was flung open. Cecilia grabbed at the knob of the lantern, but it was already far too late.

  The glow was like a lighthouse signaling her position as Wolf stormed into the room, his own lantern held high, his other fist clenched. He relaxed slightly when he saw that his foe was just a ten-year-old girl.

  Private Weasel came into the room behind him and peered over his shoulder at her.

  “Now who do we have here?” Wolf growled.

  ***