The Dark Hills Divide

by Patrick Carman

  “Enough! I’m up! Just give me a second and I’ll be ready to start walking again.”

  He stopped splashing and watched me as I wrung my hair out with my hands. Then he emerged from the stream and returned to his perch on the rock. I was back on my feet, gaining more confidence that I might have the strength to hobble my weary bones a few more steps into the mountains.

  “I think I’m ready for another hour or two,” I said. “You’re going to have to slow down, though — I’ve got some remarkable blisters.”

  Yipes smiled and sat with his elbows on his knees, hands folded. He told me in a soft, slow voice, “Young lady, as I told you before, we’ve arrived. You’re an impressive climber. For a child, and such a small one at that, you did very well.

  “Now,” he continued, “it is my duty and my privilege to point you in the direction of your destiny. My work is done for now. I’ve brought you this far, but the next bit of effort is all yours, I’m afraid. What I need you to do is walk up this stream. Get right in the water and walk until you reach a pool. You’ll know it when you see it, trust me on that one. This is a special place. You get only one chance to go there in all your life. I cannot tell you what to do when you get there. That you must figure out on your own.”

  I looked up the stream with its bright green bed. It disappeared from view around a corner into the trees a hundred feet away. “But how will I know when I’ve arrived in the right spo —” I turned back to look at Yipes and found the rock bare.

  I removed my sandals and held them in my hand, dangling them from the straps with my fingers. My feet ached more than ever on the hot sandy dirt at the edge of the stream, so I immediately staggered into the water. The stream was only a few feet wide, and it came to my knees in the middle. It felt cold on my bare legs. My feet felt the heavenly touch of the soft, furry bottom. It was like walking on a perfect feathery pillow, only better because the mossy green came up between my toes and surrounded my feet with a delicate, squishy wrapper. I let out a thankful ahhhh and an unexpected smile sprouted on my face. In the heat of the day I dunked my head and body the rest of the way in and exploded out of the stream refreshed and walking, enjoying the velvet whisper of every step on my swollen feet.

  The stream narrowed further as I rounded the corner, but it remained a foot deep. The water moved slowly and quietly. As I walked farther and rounded yet another corner, I saw a pool surrounded by rock walls on all sides except for the direction I was coming from. This was the place.

  I reached the edge of the pool, which was about ten feet across on all sides. I looked down and found that the water had turned to a murky brown around my legs. Behind me, where I had been walking, an inky darkness inhabited the stream like a plague of locusts in a summer sky. The pool itself glowed in a strange hue I had never seen before. I moved to its center in three quick strides, and for a brief moment I could see the bottom, the water now at my chest. I saw the shimmering outline of a stone bursting with lavish green color. A moment later, my disturbance in the pool brought up a muddy brown thickness around my legs, settling around my chest and leaving me almost chin-deep in dirty water.

  I dove down, grabbed a handful of rocks, and brought them up into the air. They were all brown and bland, entirely void of bright color. Had I been dreaming? I dove down again and again, all over the pool until I was exhausted and angry, standing in a dark pool of icky guck.

  I slapped my arms against the water with a loud pop and let out a grunt of frustration. “I don’t understand! What am I supposed to do in here?” I yelled, hoping to see Yipes climb down the rock wall with an answer. But I was utterly alone. As I stood motionless in the water, the blackness turned a shade lighter. Maybe if I could stay completely still the dirt would settle down enough so that I could see the glowing emerald rock clearly again. Then, if I reached down ever so slowly, maybe I could pick out the right rock and it would be glowing green in my hand. While it may not be the end of the test, it seemed like a good place to start, and so I stood, still as a statue, in a pool of murky water, patiently waiting.

  It took a lot longer than I thought it might for the water to change. It stayed just the same for an excruciatingly long time. Was it a lighter shade of brown? Could I see the outline of shapes at the bottom of the pool? I couldn’t be sure, and I continued to wait and wait. It felt an awful lot like when I stood on the sill in my room for hours on end looking out the window for a sign of life in The Dark Hills. I wondered how Father and Ganesh were doing. I missed them terribly.

  A thousand other random thoughts filled my head as I tried my best to stay perfectly motionless. The water was definitely getting lighter now. Unfortunately, the day was getting darker almost as fast. The water had been exhilarating at first, but I was starting to shiver as the heat of the day began to wane. Surely my feet were prunes by now, and worse, my arches were precariously close to cramping, which would cause me to move and stir up the water all over again. Night was coming, and with it a cruel coldness that would force me out of the pool.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. I imagined I was sitting next to Father, he with his pipe billowing sweet smoke around the room. The fire was a raging monster, stacked high with crackling wood, sending an orange shimmer across the faces in the room — Ganesh, Grayson, Silas Hardy, Nicolas, and my father, all ranting in their usual way — that rancid tobacco is about as welcome as a skunk at a dinner party … you think the sun comes up just to hear you crow — all the nonsense that made the evening flow like thick honey into the wee hours.

  I opened my eyes and looked up. It was night in the sky, stars sparkling in clusters across my line of sight. And yet it was not as dark as the dark of an unlit night ought to be, the way the streets of Bridewell were after the lamps were extinguished and all was black but for the dim lamplight at the towers. The three rock walls shimmered unnaturally, like the pages of a book under flitting candlelight. I gazed along the wall and down into the water below me. The pool was aglow with radiant green light, pulsing from a single thumb-sized rock a few inches from my big toe. My feet and legs reflected the fuzzy lime flame, which worked its diminishing magic to the edges of the pool in a soft, smoldering finish.

  My shivering was rabid now, goaded on by the dreaded thought of reaching down into the water, submerging my head, neck, and shoulders in the icy glow. The more I shivered, the weaker the glow became, and I could see that if I waited much longer, the dirt would rise again and put out the light from the stone entirely. I slowly descended to my neck, yelping in slow bursts as the sting of cold took my breath away. Then I gulped a big breath of air, held it against my will, and plunged all the way under.

  I could see the stone clearly now, surrounded by other stones that remained brown and black and lifeless. It was just the one, the one by my big toe that shone like a tiny green sun in a liquid sky. I reached down slowly and grasped its warm surface in my hand, then rose, blasting out of the water, my body frozen in the night air.

  “Well done, little lady.” It was the unmistakable high-pitched voice of Yipes. “Come on out of there now. I don’t want you catching a cold.”

  I was smiling through my chattering teeth, delighted at the sight of my little friend hanging by the stone wall a few feet above me like a monkey on a tree trunk. He climbed around the wall and down to the stream’s edge a few feet away, motioning me repeatedly with his arm.

  “I’m f-f-f-rozen, Y-Y-Yipes!” I hobbled as best I could out of the pool and onto the mossy edge of the stream. I was greeted with a warm blanket, which I eagerly wrapped around my shoulders as I sat on the soft, dry bank. Out of the confines of the pool, we were drenched in a welcome bath of moonlight.

  “Where are your shoes?” Yipes asked as he placed a leather string around my neck with a pouch at the end.

  I cursed, surprising Yipes and myself with the outburst. “I must have dropped them in the p-p-pool. I had them in my hand when I went in, but I’ve l-l-lost them now,” I said.

  “No worri
es, no worries. Put the gem in the pouch around your neck. I’ll be right back.” Before I could protest, he was gone, headfirst into the water and out of sight. Then with a whoosh he was out of the water at the center of the pool, holding my sandals over his head. “These yours?” he asked with a grin on his face, water dripping down his mustache.

  He swam back and held my sandals out to me, but I was busy turning the stone in my hands. It maintained a radiant glow. It was smooth, about half the size of a chicken egg, and heavier than it ought to have been for its size. The color was astonishing, a tasty lime cream that made me want to smell it, expecting a tart zing in my nostrils.

  “Still holding that thing?” asked Yipes. “You really should put it in the pouch for safekeeping. That’s one stone you don’t want to lose.” And so I did, pulling the drawstring tightly shut after dropping it into its new home: a dry, coarse chamber very different from its previous watery environment. I found myself strangely concerned for its well-being.

  “The thing is to keep moving now. I know your feet are hurting you, but the worst is over. Just a little bit farther and you can take a break,” said Yipes, wet from head to toe but standing at attention without a sign of discomfort.

  I was up without complaint and ready to go. Yipes was starting to grow on me and I was happy to follow his orders if he wouldn’t leave me behind. We walked away from the stream into the silence of the night, the moon lighting our way, Renny Lodge somewhere off in the distant hollow of evening.

  CHAPTER 12

  DARIUS

  After Yipes and I had walked for half an hour, I heard the sound of fast-moving water. We approached a stream, which was about twenty feet wide. Along its sides and through its middle, it held fat, formless boulders like freckles on the descending arm of a giant mountain creature. On the other side of the stream, the moon shone down on an odd little house, leaning precariously on stilts, half over the water and half on land. It was small and jutted three miniature stories into the night sky. Puffs of smoke rose from its chimney.

  Yipes hopped a path of boulders across the stream, and I followed dutifully to the other side, half enjoying the challenge and half scared I might feel the cold sting of a misplaced footing. He was across and awaiting my arrival before I reached the third of twelve boulders.

  “You’re a decent hopper,” he said as I jumped down from my last rock. “And you followed my path exactly. That’s good, very good. A talent such as that will come in handy.”

  He turned and walked up the path toward the odd three-story house. I followed him, curious what the inside would look like. The nearby stream persisted with its pleasant, crisp sound. We came to the front porch and Yipes stopped. Perched on the ledge of the porch rail was the hawk. Yipes gave it a soft scratch on the neck.

  “This is my house, Alexa. I’ll accommodate you as best as I can until morning. Then Darius will be here to take you to the meeting,” he said as he opened the door, which stood about three feet tall and a foot and a half wide.

  I had to enter on my knees with my shoulders turned sideways, but I stood only four and a half feet tall myself, so it wasn’t as small as I thought it might be. I imagined Grayson trying to get in, sucking his gut tight, mercilessly wedged like a cork with his plump belly against the doorjambs; or Pervis Kotcher crouched inside the front room and turning his behind into the fireplace, banging his head against the low rafters as he whooped and howled. Once inside, I took the room to be on the order of twelve feet side to side, four feet from floor to ceiling.

  It was cozy and warm, even though I had to remain seated to avoid hitting my head. There was a table at the center of the room, which was filled with bread, nuts, fruit, and fresh water. I hadn’t thought of food all day, but seeing the spread in front of me made my stomach quake with hunger. “Yipes, can I —”

  “No need to ask. You are my honored guest; the food is for you, of course.” He licked his lips and brushed his mustache with his hand.

  “I refuse to eat unless you join me in the feast,” I said.

  “Well, I suppose if you insist,” he said, pulling a wonderful little nutcracker out of his pocket and advancing on the table. A broad smile covered his face, hiding his mouth almost entirely with the delicate fuzz from his mustache.

  I reclined on my elbow, and he sat at the table on a rickety wooden chair. We ate our fill while the warm glow of the fire danced on the walls. A spiral staircase wound up to the second floor, but it was clear I would have difficulty making the climb. By the looks of it, there was a reasonable chance of altogether lodging myself in the passageway, so I decided not to ask if I could see the rest of his fine little home. Instead, I probed him with questions.

  “You’re sworn to secrecy, not a word out of you about this man Darius or the mysterious meeting I’m to attend?” I asked, already well into a large, juicy apple.

  “Soon enough you’ll know everything, soon enough indeed.”

  “Can you tell me why you live in the mountains and where you came from?” I asked.

  He puzzled awhile, fiddling with his nutcracker, then cleaned out a walnut shell. Nibbling its contents, he offered, “I can’t tell you much — not allowed, I’m afraid. I did live in Bridewell for a time, a long while ago. When my parents realized I was never going to grow to a normal size, they left me on the streets.” He paused, then added, “You can disappear easily when nobody notices you to begin with.” Then crack, he was busy on another walnut.

  “I’m small, and I can’t disappear easily at all,” I said.

  “Well now, that’s because you’re special. You’re small, but very special indeed.”

  I think we talked a while longer, but the heat of the room and my full stomach made me so tired, I really can’t remember how I got on the floor or when I began sleeping. I only remember waking up, the room in the early glow of morning, crisp and cool. I was crumpled up on the floor like a baby, with a blanket over my body. A quilted pillow nestled my head. I was half asleep, half awake.

  She’s bigger than I thought she would be.

  Oh, she’s just fine. Even I can see that.

  All right, all right. No need to get excited. She’ll do just fine, I agree. You’ve done a wonderful job getting her this far.

  She did it all by herself. No help needed from the likes of me. She’s the one you want. She’s the one.

  The voices became clearer as I sat up. For a timeless moment I thought I was in my room at Renny Lodge and everything I had experienced the previous day had merely been a dream. Then I turned and saw a full-grown wolf standing next to Yipes, razor-sharp white teeth an inch long in its panting mouth.

  I jolted back against the wall and felt a familiar cold fear digging into my bones. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was awake, and found with unfortunate clarity that I was indeed alert and fully conscious. I began to feel a strange awareness all around me. It felt as though I somehow understood what the trees were saying as the wind blew through the branches outside and what the water rolling over the rocks in the stream meant to express.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” said the wolf. “I am Darius.” His lips did not move to speak like a human, but I comprehended him entirely. The way he moved from side to side, his paws shuffling on the floor. The tilt of his head, the subtle noises from his throat, and a hundred other things combined to form a language I understood with perfect accuracy. What was happening to me?

  “I’m sorry, did I just hear you introduce yourself?” I gasped.

  “Yes, you did. And I understand you are Alexa Daley of Bridewell Common. I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Likewise,” I said in a flat, quiet tone.

  Yipes said nothing and remained stiff at attention against the far wall. The wolf advanced in liquid strides and stopped a few feet in front of me.

  “I know you’re confused and in need of answers. I also know that you have only today and tomorrow before you must return to Bridewell. I know about your father, Grayson, Gane
sh, and Pervis Kotcher. I know about your mother, about Nicolas, about Warvold, and a great many other things you don’t know about.

  “You have been chosen for a special purpose, Alexa. The birth of Warvold set in motion events that his death must now bring to a close. He chose you to accomplish this task, and so you must.

  “Yipes has been kind enough to bring you this far. Now it is my duty to escort you to a meeting with the forest ruler and his council. I can take you as far as the tunnel, where you will continue your journey with Malcolm. He will take you the rest of the way.”

  Forest ruler, council, more tunnels — my head swam with facts I could not begin to comprehend. Naturally, my first instinct was to back out of any false sense of duty I might have stumbled into.

  “But I’m just a child — a small child,” I protested. “I can get my father, he’ll believe me; you can talk to him about whatever you need.”

  “Alexa.” It was Yipes whispering from across the room. I could barely hear him utter my name. He continued in a soft voice, “Your size is your strength. Without it, you could not have been chosen. Look at me — I’m half your size. And yet without me, you would still be bumping your head against a tunnel door, locked away inside Bridewell. The size of your body is just right, Alexa. The only question is whether you’re big enough inside.”

  Then Darius added, “By nightfall, I promise, everything will be clear, and I’ll have you on your way home by morning.”

  I looked at Yipes and longed to sit with him and chat the day away. He was standing at perfect attention, letting a tear run down his cheek without wiping it away.