02 - The Land of the Silver Apples Read online

  “Do you know what those sneaks did last night?” raged Thorgil. “They stole my knife! Ohhh, there was something in that food. My ears ring like a dozen warriors clashing their swords.”

  Jack felt strange too. The cave swayed gently when he tried to focus on it. “They took my staff.”

  “That proves their evil intentions. I told you it was ill fortune to be trapped in this cave. They’re fattening us up.”

  “They didn’t take my candle,” said Pega, holding up the string bag she carried with her.

  “Why would they want that?” said Thorgil. “You aren’t going to cut anyone’s head off with it.”

  “I don’t think the hobgoblins plan to hurt us,” Pega insisted. “After all, they let Brutus go.”

  “That’s their story. For all we know, they’ve picked his bones clean.” The shield maiden glared belligerently at the hordes of hobgoblins gathered to celebrate breakfast. They hooted and drummed on the tables as they waited for the food to arrive. Presently, the Bugaboo and the Nemesis appeared.

  “What a splendid morning, my little dewdrop,” the Bugaboo exclaimed as he sat down next to Pega.

  “If you say so.” She edged closer to Thorgil.

  “I do say so. In fact, I’ll say it again. What a splendid, absolutely perfect morning!”

  “When he goes on like that, you know it’s going to rain rats and frogs before sundown,” said the Nemesis.

  Mumsie and the Nemesis’ wife came out with trays and were greeted with cheers. “We’re in for a treat,” the Bugaboo announced. “Mumsie has made us her special frog spawn omelet.”

  “Hurrah!” shrieked the assembled hobgoblins, stamping their feet. Thorgil clapped her hands over her ears.

  “Frog spawn omelet?” Pega murmured.

  “Made from the very freshest eggs,” the king said, placing a quivering green slab on her trencher.

  “They’ll really make you hop,” the Nemesis said, carving another slab for Jack. “Do you get it, ha-ha? Frogs? They’ll make you hop?”

  “I get it,” said Jack. He had trouble focusing his eyes.

  “Well, you aren’t laughing. You mud men have no sense of humor.”

  “I don’t feel like laughing,” said Jack, beginning to lose his patience. The incessant noise was getting on his nerves, and he felt sick. “I told you we had an important quest to fulfill. The Lady of the Lake has run off with the water in Bebba’s Town. Our task—one of our tasks—is to bring her back.”

  “That’s the same whiny story Brutus told. Ask me if I care,” the Nemesis jeered.

  “You don’t understand! My father’s being held hostage. He’ll be killed if I don’t return the water. Oh, why won’t you listen!” The conversation around the table stopped. Everyone turned to look at Jack, and Pega snatched away her hand, which the Bugaboo was attempting to hold. Jack rose and bowed to him. “We’re grateful for your hospitality, sir, but we can’t stay.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ve only just arrived,” said the hobgoblin king. “We have dozens of things planned to entertain you: fungus fairs, motley sheep shearing, hopping contests, and glee club performances. We can’t possibly think of letting you go.”

  “And we can’t possibly think of staying. There’s one more thing: Where’s my staff and Thorgil’s knife? We had them last night, and you took them!” Jack had dropped all pretense of being polite.

  The hobgoblins puffed themselves up and hissed like angry cats. “You’re accusing us of stealing? Us? Your benefactors?” screamed the Nemesis, bouncing up and down on his bench.

  “Not exactly,” said Jack, dismayed by the anger he’d provoked. “Perhaps you were just borrowing them.”

  “I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again: Time does not pass here,” growled the Bugaboo. “This realm is the Land of the Silver Apples. We fortunate beings who live within its borders do not age unless we venture into Middle Earth. When you leave—if you leave—you can enter the stream of life at the exact point you left it. You can carry on with your quest then. Now apologize to Mumsie. You’ve made her quite ill with your insults.”

  Jack was confounded. He understood now that they were prisoners. He could see himself and the girls spending months here, even years. Would they grow old? Could they grow old?

  “I’m waiting,” said the Bugaboo, tapping his foot.

  Jack swallowed the angry words he longed to hurl at him. They were trapped in this cave without weapons or allies, and their only hope of escape lay in keeping the hobgoblins friendly. Somehow, given time—and they had plenty of that, Jack thought bitterly—they could discover the exit Brutus used.

  “Of course I apologize, Mumsie,” said Jack, clenching his fists in frustration. “I never meant to hurt your feelings. Your frog spawn omelet is delicious.”

  “Now, that’s really going too far,” muttered Thorgil, but Mumsie grinned, and the good humor around the tables was restored.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  THE MAELSTROM

  Jack, Thorgil, and Pega trudged along in varying moods of gloom. They had spent weeks exploring the cave, always dogged by a pack of hobgoblin youths. They were allowed some freedom, but they were never left entirely alone. Thorgil’s frequent bursts of temper caused the youths to hang back out of range of her fists.

  Swarms of will-o’-the-wisps filled the upper reaches so that it was almost as bright as day inside the mountain. But not quite. Something was missing from the light. Jack felt it, though he didn’t know what it was. No leafy plants grew here, no grass or even moss. Instead, the humans and hobgoblins passed through vast fields of mushrooms. Some were as tall as trees with darkness pooled at their base. Even the shadows were wrong. They kept shifting as the will-o’-the-wisps darted around.

  The mushrooms were of every imaginable shape and color. They filled the air with a damp, musty smell that Jack found oppressive. He had learned, through Pega’s instructions, not to eat certain fungi. The red spotted ones gave you nightmares, the round purple ones he’d mistaken for plums dulled your wits. The Bugaboo warned her about toxic mushrooms when he remembered and was most apologetic when he forgot. “Humans and hobgoblins don’t eat exactly the same things,” he had explained. “We, for example, dare not touch parsnips. One mouthful makes us itch for a week.”

  Suddenly, something punched Jack in the stomach. He folded up on the ground, gasping for breath. “What was that?” cried Thorgil, reaching for her knife and not finding it. “By Thor, I feel naked without weapons!” She tore up mushrooms and hurled them at the invisible enemy.

  “It’s the motley sheep,” called one of the young hobgoblins. “Look for shadows that shouldn’t be there.”

  Pega knelt by Jack. “You’ll be all right in a moment,” she said softly. “I know how miserable it is to have the breath knocked out of you.”

  “Where are these wretched beasts?” demanded Thorgil.

  “I… hate… sheep,” wheezed Jack, cradling his bruised stomach. It took him several minutes, but he was finally able to detect collections of smudges hanging in midair. “Why would anyone keep an animal he can’t see?” he asked.

  “It’s for the motley wool,” explained the hobgoblin. “It conceals us when we go abroad in the world. You should see the cloaks we make—or, rather, you shouldn’t see them.” The youth laughed heartily at his own joke. He bounced away from a collection of smudges that was sneaking up on him.

  When Jack had recovered, they went on. They were in the deepest part of the cave now, far from any hobgoblin dwelling. Side passages branched off in all directions. It might take years to explore all of them, Jack thought morosely, and who knew what creatures might be lurking in the shadows?

  They walked past columns of limestone that glittered eerily in the light of the will-o’-the-wisps. Glowworms dangled on glistening threads. Giant cave spiders scurried into the shadows. “Those remind me of knuckers,” said Pega, shuddering.

  “We cleaned out most of the knuckers,” offered one of the yo
ung hobgoblins. “The rule is, if a will-o’-the-wisp won’t go inside a tunnel, you’d better stay out too.”

  At last they arrived at a black lake filling the farthest end of the cave. Here were no mushrooms or any other form of life, and the will-o’-the-wisps refused to venture over its dark waters. The lake stretched on into ever-increasing gloom until it fell into profound shadow. Jack instinctively disliked it.

  “I wouldn’t sail on those waters,” remarked Thorgil.

  “The Bugaboo thought you’d like this,” a hobgoblin youth told Pega, pointing at a shelf of crystal jutting out over the lake. It was as clear as glass and no thicker than a crust of ice.

  “It’s… impressive,” said Pega. Jack knew she was feeling the same unease he was.

  “Walk on it,” suggested one of the youths.

  “No, thank you,” said Pega.

  “It’s safe as long as you don’t jump up and down.” The creature trotted out onto the shelf and back again. With each step, the crystal chimed a different note. The water shivered in response. A pattern of wavelets rose and formed lines that radiated from the center like the spokes of a wheel.

  “That is pretty!” said Pega.

  “You can get all kinds of patterns if you walk in different ways,” the hobgoblin said. But still Pega hesitated.

  Thorgil, scorning caution, strode out boldly and stamped her foot. “No!” shrieked the hobgoblins, scurrying for the rocks. A single, musical note boomed through the cave. It grew louder and louder, the water heaved, and the center began to sink. The whole lake began to turn.

  “Come back!” shouted Jack. Thorgil stood on the crystal with the waves foaming around her boots.

  “It’s a maelstrom!” she cried, laughing.

  “Get out of there!” Jack ran out on the crystal and dragged her back. Now the whirlpool—or maelstrom, as Thorgil called it—was in full spate. It roared like an angry beast, going round and round as the black hole in its center deepened. Jack couldn’t see into it. He didn’t want to see into it. He was too busy climbing rocks and helping Pega to higher ground. The hobgoblins gibbered with fear from their perches.

  Then, gradually, the water slowed. The roaring faded, and the gaping hole vanished. Only a faint sheen of ripples showed where the whirlpool had been.

  “By the nine sea hags, that was a fine adventure!” exulted Thorgil. “This cave is getting me down. Nothing ever happens here. Each day is like the one before, and the same stale jokes are told over and over.”

  Jack had to agree. It was all too easy to slide into an endless routine that dulled you as much as the mushrooms he was learning to avoid.

  The hobgoblin youths crowded around Thorgil, wringing their hands. “Never stamp on the crystal. Oh, no, no, no,” one of them moaned. “We only tap it, to see the pretty waves. No stamping. Never.”

  Now that the lake was calm again, the hobgoblin youths went off to play. They tapped and stroked the crystal shelf to produce beautiful cascades of music. It was a fine performance until they spoiled it by singing. They puffed up like the hobgoblin who had called them to breakfast and produced the most horrible wailing sounds.

  Jack, Thorgil, and Pega retreated behind a barrier of limestone, to shut out the worst of the noise. Pega shuddered. “The Bugaboo calls their music ‘skirling’. I think it’s worse than the howling of hungry wolves when you’re alone in the forest.”

  “Worse than howling wolves?” echoed Jack. There was something familiar about those words. For days now, certain memories had been hovering just out of reach. “My stars! That’s what Father heard when my sister was stolen!”

  And now Jack remembered Father’s description of the little men—dappled and spotted as the grass on a forest floor. They moved around in a dizzying way, first visible, then melting into the leaves, then visible again. They had been wearing motley wool cloaks, Jack suddenly realized! “Hobgoblins stole my sister!” he cried.

  “I thought the Bard called the kidnappers ‘pookas’,” said Pega.

  “He also called them hobgoblins. How could I have forgotten?”

  “My head’s been in the clouds too. It’s those wretched mushrooms. Do you think they still have her?” said Pega.

  Thoughts whirled in Jack’s mind. His sister could be hidden anywhere in this enormous underground world. And if he could find her, how could he get her out? For that matter, how could he rescue himself, Pega, and Thorgil? “I don’t know where to begin,” he said.

  “Why not simply ask the hobgoblins where your sister is?” said Pega.

  “Ask?” cried Jack and Thorgil.

  “They mean us no harm.”

  “No harm? They only disarm us and keep us prisoner!” said Thorgil.

  “I’ve learned a great deal from listening to the Bugaboo and Mumsie,” explained Pega. “I think they genuinely want us to be happy. They may pretend to dislike humans and call us ‘mud men’, but secretly, they admire us. Haven’t you noticed how much this place resembles one of our villages? Hobgoblins copy everything we do. They have the same clothes and houses, the same pastimes and occupations. They can’t grow flowers in their gardens, so they plant red, yellow, and green mushrooms instead.”

  Jack listened with amazement. He’d spent so much time searching for ways to escape, he hadn’t paid attention to the hobgoblins. The cave was a copy of a village. Why have houses with thatched roofs in a place where no rain fell? Why wear hats—as the hobgoblin men did when they gathered mushrooms—when there was no sun?

  “Why do they want us?” he asked.

  “Because we’re the most interesting thing that’s happened to them in ages,” Pega said. “You must have seen how dull life is here. Nothing ever changes. Mumsie says that’s the bad side of living in the Land of the Silver Apples. There’s a sameness that eats away at life even as it preserves it. Each day repeats itself endlessly until the inhabitants go into a trance from which they can’t be roused. The hobgoblins visit Middle Earth regularly to wake up.”

  The horrid skirling had ended, and Jack could hear the hobgoblin youths anxiously calling their names. “We’ll ask about my sister tonight,” he decided. “Pega can soften up the Bugaboo first with her singing.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  HAZEL

  That night Pega gave them “The Jolly Miller” and “The False Knight”, followed by “The Man in the Moon”, a song Jack hadn’t heard. The Man in the Moon came down to gather wood for his hearth, leaning on a forked stick as he searched. It was an odd tale and somehow disturbing. Jack wondered where she’d learned it.

  “I have sometimes spoken to the Man in the Moon,” remarked Mumsie when the song was finished. “He has much lore for those who can bear his company.”

  “He really exists?” said Jack, who had supposed it was only a legend.

  “He’s one of the old gods. He’s doomed to ride the night sky alone, and being with him is like being lost on an endless sea with no star to guide you. He visits the green world only during the dark of the moon, and his conversation is both cheerless and disturbing.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk to him,” said the Bugaboo. “You cry for hours afterward.”

  “Knowledge is always gained at a price,” said Mumsie, her eyes blinking serenely. “I gather news of the wide world from the swallows that visit the forest outside. It’s the only way the Man in the Moon can learn of it. In the dark night only owls are abroad, and they’re both stupid and surly.”

  Jack’s eyes widened. He remembered the Bard talking earnestly to a swallow in the window of Din Guardi. “Are you—a bard?” he asked cautiously.

  Mumsie laughed. “Nothing so grand. I’ve learned a few things from the Wise, but I’m far too lazy to commit my life to such study.”

  Jack didn’t believe her. There was nothing at all lazy about the Bugaboo’s mother. It seemed she knew much that she didn’t care to reveal.

  “I think we need something cheerful to make up for tales about the Man in the Moon,” said the kin
g. “Give us ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’, Pega my dear.”

  She smiled and obeyed. As her perfect voice soared up to a mob of entranced will-o’-the-wisps, hobgoblins began to appear from nearby houses. They came in twos and threes until a dense ring of them surrounded the courtyard. When Pega finished, they all sighed like a wind blowing through a forest.

  “You darling!” cried the Bugaboo. “I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me. Ask for anything and it shall be yours.”

  “Now you’re in for it,” said the Nemesis. “She won’t be satisfied until she’s got your heart and liver.”

  “First I have to tell you a story,” began Pega. “Long ago Jack’s mother gave birth to a little girl. Unfortunately, she was so ill, the baby had to be cared for by another woman. Later, when Jack’s mother had recovered, his father went off to fetch the infant, and on the way home he stopped to gather hazelnuts.”

  At the mention of hazelnuts all the hobgoblins sat up straight and looked attentive.

  “He put the infant’s basket into a tree to keep it safe, but then a terrible thing happened. A crowd of little men swarmed up the tree and stole her. Jack’s father tried to catch them, but they were too swift.”

  “There you go again,” grumbled the Nemesis, “accusing us of stealing.”

  “I didn’t mention you,” retorted Pega. “But you’re right. They were hobgoblins. Jack’s father went frantic with grief, and he knew his wife would be heartbroken.”

  Mumsie dabbed at her eyes with her apron. Several women cooed in sympathy.

  “Amazingly, when Jack’s father went back to the basket, there was another baby inside. It was a beautiful child—a thoroughly selfish one, it turned out.”