A Gypsy Song (The Eye of the Crystal Ball - The Wolfboy Chronicles) (22 page)

“Oh, no,” Apollo moaned. “I am stuck.”

Angel sighed from the opening in Manolo’s pocket.

“I told him he was getting on the heavier side, but he wouldn’t listen. Now see what happened.”

Nipples grabbed Apollo’s behind and with a lot of hard work he managed to pull him out.

“I am very sorry,” Apollo said hanging from Nipples claws. He was put on the ground.

“I don’t think it is possible for anyone to get through that crack,” he said while Manolo picked him up from the ground. “It is way too narrow.”

“Let me try,” Angel whispered.

Apollo looked at her with discontent.

“If you want to get stuck like me, then by all means, do try,” he whispered back and stuck his little nose high in the sky.

“It is at least worth another try,” Sara said with a low voice and took Angel in her hand. Then she let Nipples grab on to her. He put her at the opening of the crack. She too wiggled her nose and her body as well and with very little effort she managed to climb right through.

“Humph. Show off,” Apollo said.

In a matter of minutes Angel managed to open the big door from the inside and they could get through. It all seemed a little too easy, Sara thought as they walked inside where a dark stone passageway met them. As they stepped into it, the big door behind them closed with a loud sound that echoed in the passageway.

“Oh, no,” the mice shrieked from Manolo’s pocket. “What if that woke up Sensisaron?”

Everybody stood as quiet as they could in the passageway. Sara thought she heard a sound behind her and looked back, but saw nothing. When she turned around, it was there again. It was like the sound of something creeping along the walls. She looked again and this time she saw something moving.

“Wait,” she whispered.

Everybody looked at her.

“There is something there.”

She pointed at the wall.

Something was moving across it. It looked like a plant of some sort.

“What is this?” Marland asked.

“Don’t know,” Sara answered. Then she remembered her mother telling her about a similar plant. Nepenthes attenboroughii was its name and it looked exactly like this one coming toward them. This one was just ten times as big as the one Sara had seen in her mother’s book.

“I have a feeling that it might be a giant carnivorous plant,” she said as its long creepers grew under their feet and grabbed their ankles.

“What is that?”

Manolo fought to pull the plant off, but the more he strained against it the more it tightened its grip.

“It is a meat-eating plant,” she said, trying to stop the plant from curling around Manolo’s neck. She lifted the knife that Manolo had given her and started cutting. Green ooze came out of the creeper that she had just cut and then it fell to the ground. But as it did another creeper grew out from where she had cut it. She ran towards Marland and cut him free as well. More creepers grew out and tried to grab them. But they seemed to be leaving Sara alone which she found strange.

While the deer started to shoot their arrows at it and managed to hurt it, the hedgehog, Grover used his pointy fur to keep it away. Sara kept stabbing and cutting the plant as eventually she freed all of their friends one by one from the plant’s grip. Hardest to free was William who had a creeper around his throat and kept tightening it the more he struggled.

“Help me,” he whispered while the plant tried to strangle him.

Devin the deer started shooting its arrows at the creeper holding William and managed to hurt it but it didn’t let go. When Sara saw that she jumped towards him slicing the creeper into a million pieces until William fell heavily to the ground.

“That is twice I owe you my life,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” she said.

Meanwhile, the plant kept growing and in the end all they could do was to run as fast as they could down the passageway.

Luckily they were much faster than the big plant and soon they lost it. When they realized it was no longer behind them, they slowed down.

All they could hear apart from their footsteps was an occasionally drip of water trickling down the walls. The passageway sloped downwards which was strange since they were sure they were supposed to go up, to get to the tower where they assumed Sensisaron was sleeping. But there were no stairs leading upwards and no other path or passageway they could take. Sara wondered when the Sombras would show themselves.

“They must be aware of our presence by now,” she mumbled to herself.

“Can you hear something?” Manolo whispered.

Sara listened. A crowing sound of birds seemed to be coming from up ahead.

“Sounds like a lot of birds to me,” she said.

“There is a light ahead. And I can see something moving,” Manolo said.

The passageway led them straight into a chamber. It was dark and Manolo blew fire into a torch he took from the wall. As he did, he lit up the chamber. It was—just as Sara expected—filled with birds. They were fluttering and tumbling around under the ceiling. They were red birds, just like the ones that had attacked Sara and Manolo when they first arrived in the valley. Arnaldo moved ahead.

“I will take care of them,” he said. Then he soared into the air and circled around under the ceiling with his great wings. But the red birds didn’t even move.

On the other side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.

“We need to get to that door,” Sara said.

“Will the birds attack us like they did last time?” Manolo asked.

“We have no choice. We will have to put our trust in Arnaldo.”

“What if they attack him?” Marland said.

“They did that in the marshland but they didn’t seem to hurt him,” Sara said.

“Maybe not, but there weren’t as many as there are here. There are at least ten times as many now.”

“We have to try.” Sara looked at her friends. ”Cover up and run,” she said.

She took a deep breath and covered her face with her arm. Any moment she expected to feel their claws in her hair and sharp beaks tearing her. But nothing happened. She reached the door without them even touching her. They all did. And all the birds did was stare at them.

“This is a little too easy,” Sara said to Manolo.

“So what? We are getting closer to our goal now,” he said and pulled the handle of the door.

The next chamber was just as dark as the first. They couldn’t see anything at all. Even Marland had a hard time seeing. Manolo lifted his torch but even as he did they still couldn’t see anything. It was all dark. He didn’t seem to be able to light up the whole chamber. All they could see were each other’s faces. Even the floor remained black as he tried to light it up.

“What is this strange kind of darkness?” Grover the hedgehog said.

“I don’t know,” Sara said.

“Me either. It might be a spell or something,” Manolo said.

“Whatever it is, we are all creatures that are used to living in the darkness, so we are not afraid,” Nipples the bat with the face of a cat said.

“Let’s just keep going,” the wolf said.

 So they stepped out in the darkness. The eagle and the bat tried to fly ahead to see what was waiting but came back without an answer.

“The black just keeps going,” Arnaldo said. “We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to find you again, so we had to turn around.”

“Are we even sure this is the right way?” Marland asked. “Maybe we missed a door somewhere?”

He turned around and tried to find the door to go back, but he couldn’t see it any longer. It was as if it had vanished.

“We have to stay close together,” Manolo said. “Keep close to the torch.”

“All we can do now is walk,” Sara said.

So they did. They walked close together in complete darkness not knowing when they would reach the other end of the room—if it was indeed a room and if there was indeed an ending to it. 

Grover, the human-sized hedgehog, was the first one to show fear on his face. After they had walked for about an hour or so he caved to the feeling of despair.

“What are we going to do? This will never end!” he said.

“We keep walking,” Sara said. “The worst thing we can do it to panic. If we panic we will get lost.”

“But we are already lost,” he cried. “We will never get out of here, don’t you get that?”

Sara tried to calm him down.

“We just have to keep moving forward. Grover, look into my eyes,” she said.

His eyes flickered for a while before they finally met Sara’s.

“This is only a trick. It is some sort of illusion, trying to make us panic and stop our quest. I need to save my brother and you need to be freed from the spell. Focus on that. Focus on the goal of our mission. Don’t let her tricks get to you! Do you hear me?”

It took a while but the hedgehog finally nodded.

“Now let’s go!” she yelled.

They must have walked for another hour or so before something finally showed up. It was no more than a small dot of light, but to them inside of the darkness it was shinning brighter than the sun.

“Look, light!” Marland yelled as he spotted it long before the rest.

Encouraged by this sudden hope shinning in the middle of the big blackness they all started running towards it. As they did they saw the light came out of a small keyhole. On top of the keyhole was a handle. Manolo grabbed it, but it was locked.

“It is locked,” he sighed.

“How do we open it?” Grover asked with a slight panic in his voice again.

“Could we try to put Angel through again?” Henrietta the Hyena asked.

“It is too small,” Sara said. “There must be some other way. We have to find the key.”

Manolo kneeled on the cold dark floor beneath him and touched it with his palms.

“Maybe it is on the floor somewhere?” He asked.

Sara had an idea.

“Where do you put a key?” she said and kneeled, too. She started patting the floor under the door. A second later she touched something soft with brushes. It was the doormat. She lifted it and felt underneath it and found something that felt exactly like a key. She put it in the lock and turned it. Then she pulled the door open.

Bright light hurt their eyes. It took them a while to get used to it as they stepped into the next chamber. There finally they found stairs. A long and winding staircase that seemed to lead all the way into the sky. They started climbing it in silence. Round and round and round they went. Being so big the wolf had a hard time climbing the stairwell that seemed to get narrower and narrower the further they got.

“I can’t go any longer, it is too small for me,” the wolf said after a while. “You have to continue without me.”

“No!” Sara said. ”I don’t want to leave you here.”

Manolo grabbed her hand.

“We have to move on. William is too big.”

“It is true,” William said. “You have to focus on the task, remember?”

“Okay,” Sara said. Then she hugged William.

”I will wait here till you have broken off the spell,” he said. “Then I will be able to find my way out.”

“We will come and look for you if you are not there when we get out,” Sara said. “I am not leaving you.”

“Now go!” the wolf said. ”I will be fine.”

Heavy in her heart, Sara left her good friend and companion behind. And soon others had to be left as well. First it was the three deer that had a hard time climbing the narrow stairs, then Grover the hedgehog who was about the same size as Moeselman had to give up. Also Henrietta the Hyena became too big and soon Arnaldo the eagle couldn’t fit his broad shoulders through the stairwell any longer. As they neared the top, it was only Marland, Nipples, the two mice, Angel and Apollo, and Sara and Manolo left.

In the end, the stairs became so narrow that Sara and Manolo even had to walk sideways to pass. Finally they reached the last step and now they were met by another passageway.

It seemed to be leading them towards a big door at the end. As they neared it they saw that in front of the door was a black cat. It was sleeping.

Satali, Sara thought, the cat that the king of the Will-o’-the-wisps had said was not an ordinary cat. But he had not told her what it was if it wasn’t ordinary.

Sara walked closer to the sleeping cat. She heard it purr in its sleep. As she came close to it, it opened its eyes and stared at her with eyes as green as sapphires. And then the strangest thing happened. It just purred and moved away so she could walk right past it. As she put the hand on the door handle, she heard the cat hiss behind her. She turned around and saw it grow slowly behind her separating her from her friends. She stared at the big black fur that kept growing until she couldn’t see her friends any longer.

“Manolo,” she called.

“Sara!” he said. ”Just keep going. We will fight the cat while you go on and look for Sensisaron and the ring. It seems like it will let you go through but not us. We will catch up to you.”

Still the cat grew larger and larger and its body became longer and longer.

“What kind of a cat is this?” she asked afraid for what might happen to her friends.

“It is not a cat,” Manolo said. “It is a giant sea serpent. Now go on!”

With a heavy heart Sara turned her back to Manolo and the creatures not knowing if she would ever see them again after the encounter with the sea serpent. But they had made a pact. They had to go on even if it meant leaving the other behind. So she turned the handle.

“It is now or never,” she whispered as the door opened.

19

THE WITCH AND THE RING

What Sara saw
when she looked inside was not exactly what she had expected. As she entered what seemed to be an old lady’s bedroom, the door behind her immediately shut with a bang. Sara jumped by the sound, and looked at the old lady sleeping in the big king-sized bed. She didn’t seem to wake up. She didn’t even blink. Slowly Sara went closer. The old lady was so pale that Sara for a minute suspected that she was already dead. But as she came close to her she could tell the woman was breathing. But she wasn’t waking up, even from the noise from the passageway where Manolo and the creatures from the valley were fighting the sea serpent.