The Boy Who Knew Everything (27 page)

“I'm going in,” Conrad said.

 

CHAPTER

39

The stairs were narrow and slanted down at a steep incline. The ceiling was rounded and low, the air thick and close. Conrad had created a small torch to illuminate their journey down, down and into the belly of Mother Mountain. The descent seemed endless so that when Conrad's foot finally hit the bottom it felt awkward as his body readjusted to level ground. Even with the light from the torch the darkness was bottomless.

The hallway that they found themselves in was wide and the ceiling was high, making them feel small and helpless. Thirty feet later the hallway ended and they stopped at the threshold to something much bigger. Foreboding kept Piper rooted to the spot. She grabbed Conrad's arm and her fingers dug into him. “Let's go back now. No farther.”

“You go back. I have to keep going. My father might be down here.”

Piper sighed deeply. As he watched Piper's chest heave with a terrible fear, it seemed to Conrad that she might collapse on the spot. He remained still and in a few seconds she settled and started to float next to him. Getting her feet off the ground was having a calming effect that allowed her to continue on.

Now the darkness around them had no borders or end; no walls or ceiling could be seen and their footsteps echoed loudly. Because there was nothing to look at Conrad's attention was drawn to the sound of their feet falling on the stone. The more intently he listened the stranger their steps became, as though Piper was limping. Stopping suddenly, Conrad looked back—Piper was still hovering behind him! He hadn't been listening to her footsteps at all.

In complete stillness Piper and Conrad listened to the sound of two feet walking. They sounded something like this:

Thump.
Drag.
Thump.
Drag.

“What is that?” Piper breathed in Conrad's ear.

Conrad's breath caught in his throat; his skin tingled with fear and dread.

Piper's hand shot out in front of her at the same time she grabbed Conrad's arm. She was pointing straight ahead at a creature that was walking in a hobbled manner, dragging one leg behind it.

Neither of them moved. The creature didn't see them, which was impossible since they were holding torches that burned brightly in this place of darkness.

Tufts of gray hair were dangling from the creature's head and in patches there was no hair at all, but a sort of grayish dirty skin. Its body had rags drawn about it and it moved slowly. Piper's and Conrad's eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness now, allowing them to discern a massive pile of stones on either side of what seemed to be a football-field-size cavern. The stones were piled to the ceiling and about as large as a breadbox each.

At length the creature reached one of the stone piles and with great effort tossed the stone in its arms onto the pile. Next it climbed up, choosing a specific stone, and with the same great effort, took the stone into its arms, curling around it and then limping to the pile of rocks on the opposite side.

Now that the creature was walking straight for Conrad and Piper they could see that she was not a creature at all but a very, very old woman. All but two of her teeth had rotted away, and those last two miserable specimens were sticking out at odd angles from her mouth and praying for release. She was so bent and twisted that her back had formed itself into a hunch almost the size of the rock she carried. She had no shoes on her feet and there were open sores covering every part of them such that each step was its own specific agony. The dirty daggerlike fingernails on her hands made them look more like claws than anything human. As she moved, the muscles in her face tightened and shook from the effort of it all, and perhaps without even knowing that she was doing it, she moaned.

The fear coursing through Piper's body began to give way to another feeling entirely: pity. She found herself rooting for the woman; there was such determination on her face and her body was so feeble, surely too weak to make it to the massive pile of rocks against the far wall. At any moment Piper worried that the weight of the rock would pull the old woman to the ground and pin her there and possibly even kill her.

Piper held her breath with each step she took, waiting until her foot was safely returned before relaxing again.

“Do you think she knows we're here?” Piper whispered.

Conrad shook his head.

“Hello,” he called out.

The old woman continued without interruption on her piteous journey.

With quick steps Conrad positioned himself by the rock pile and waited for the old woman to reach him. As she approached she did not acknowledge the light, nor did she see that Conrad was now standing by the rock pile waiting for her to arrive. Piper flew down next to him, propping the torch on the stone pile.

“Hello,” Piper said this time.

The old woman hobbled onward.

“She may have lost her vision and her hearing,” Conrad pointed out. He was waiting for her to stop at the base of the pile. Sure enough she did, just as she had done before, and it was then that Conrad reached out and took the rock out of her arms. He was so surprised by its weight he almost fell over.

When the old woman found herself without a rock and no explanation for its absence she stopped suddenly and with great effort opened her eyes. The moment the light hit her corneas she threw the filthy sticks that were her arms over her unsuspecting eyes as a shield.

“Owwwww,” she moaned. “Owwww.”

Piper reached out to her but Conrad stopped her. “Let her eyes adjust. Who knows how long it's been since she last saw light.”

Curling into herself, the old woman moaned, rocking back and forth. Taking the torches, Piper flew with them to the hallway and left them out of sight, reducing the amount of light by half.

Blinking furiously and holding her hand above her head to keep the glare away, the old woman began to blink and squint and coax her tired old eyes back into seeing. As she was always in the darkness, she went days, or was it weeks or even months, without bothering to open them: when there was nothing to see you stopped looking.

She opened her mouth to speak, but began to cough violently. She motioned to her mouth. Conrad looked about and spotted a wooden bucket with a metal cup on a stick hitched against its side.

Piper saw it too and flew to it, dipped the cup in, and filled it with water. She was back at the woman's side moments later and helped her place it to her lips.

The woman slurped it greedily, letting it slop down her face and drench the rags against her chest. When she had sucked the contents of two full cups she waved it away and opened her mouth.

“Danger.” Her mouth trembled and worked hard to form the words that seemed foreign to her. “Get out!” She pointed a sinewy arm back the way they had come.

“Can we help you?” Piper offered.

She looked back and forth between the two of them, then got up and, as they watched with amazement, she picked up another rock and started walking back to the other rock pile. They found themselves following behind her.

“We can show you the way out,” Piper offered.

“I cannot talk … to you. No one is allowed down here.” She looked over her shoulder suddenly. “No one has ever come. He might hear.”

Conrad stepped forward quickly. “Who is he?”

She hobbled faster, trying to escape them. “Danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

“Stupid boy,” she spat. “You know nothing.”

“Then educate me!” Conrad's demand was met with silence. “How long have you been down here?”

She snorted. “I have no need of time. I was a young woman when last I saw daylight.”

A look passed between Piper and Conrad. “You've been down here all this time moving these rocks back and forth?” Piper was aghast.

“Stupid child. These are not rocks: they are memories.”

“You mean your memories were turned into rocks?”

“Some.”

Conrad was getting tired of this game. If she was determined to be stubborn it could take considerable time to pry anything out of her, and Max could return at any moment. Conrad decided he was going to have to bluff the old woman to get her talking. It was a gamble but one he calculated would pay off.

“Max sent us down here. Do you know Max?”

She said nothing.

“I'm going back to meet him now.” Conrad started to walk away. “I'll tell him that I met you and I'll tell him that you told me a lot of interesting things.”

She stopped walking toward the rock pile. “I told you
nothing
.”

“You told us
everything.
” Conrad continued to walk and the woman started to hobble after him desperately.

“Noooo,” she wailed. “Noooo.”

Piper was distressed to see her so upset. “Conrad!”

Conrad spun around and charged up to the old hag's face, pointing his finger at her threateningly. “If you tell us nothing, I will go to Max and say that you have told us everything. If, though—” He paused a beat to make sure he had her attention. “If you tell us everything then we will say nothing and you will be safe. You choose.”

She dropped the rock. “No one is safe around Max. You are a fool.”

“We know that Max is the Guardian. We know that he is immortal,” Conrad said quickly. “Piper and I are Outsiders and we know about the rest of the world too.”

She rested her weary bones upon the rock. “Max is not immortal,” she moaned. “He lets people believe that, but … it is not truth.”

“If he's not immortal how has he lived so long?”

“He—” She searched for the word and at the same time put her hand to her mouth as though she were putting imaginary food in it. “He's a—a Gobbler.”

Piper repeated the word like she could taste it. “A Gobbler?”

“That is so, yes. He eats energy. But not all energy is equal. Grief, suffering, creates a lot of energy and it keeps him young. The more he eats the longer he remains young.”

“My god,” Conrad breathed. “He's like a vampire.”

“That is his gift.” She nodded. “Without that energy he would wither and die.”

“And you're the only one who knows this and so he keeps you down here,” Conrad considered.

“He feeds on my suffering too, but it is not why I am down here. He keeps me here because I would destroy him if I could.” She said this calmly and without malice, and it made her declaration all the more chilling.

Piper wondered what possible series of events could have led up to such a terrible end. “What happened to you?”

The sincerity of Piper's question melted the old woman's hardness and she sighed deeply. “So long ago. I think of it little.” Her attention turned inward and she got lost in her thoughts.

Conrad could see that she was ready to talk and so he approached her gently. “How was it that you learned Max is a Gobbler?”

“Because I broke the law. And because I am his wife.”

 

CHAPTER

40

“I was eighteen the first time I met Max. I was shy and excited. He seemed to know all about me, but then he knew all about everything. He told me that he'd been to the moon. Imagine, going to the moon!”

“Nothing much to look at up there, but way fun bouncing up and down and the earth looks a sight,”
is what he said.

Now that the old woman had started talking she became oblivious to Piper and Conrad and went into a world all her own.

“My mother always said that I was very beautiful. She said I shone like the stars and that is why she named me Starr. When I was still very young it was discovered that I had the ability to read other people's memories. My mother told me that memory keepers are rare. She said it was my job to take the memories that people offered me and to hold them safe. I did as I was told. I ate the memories of the elders. I swallowed the memories of the storyteller. Any memory I was offered I held on to. I was filled with memories.

“Max started to visit me but I didn't notice for some time that he only came when no one else was around. He said he was busy but the truth is that he likes to stay out of sight and in the shadows. The truth is that he—well, the truth is complicated.”

The old woman grew silent, and Conrad and Piper waited patiently for her to continue.

“He was so mysterious, so thrilling, so full of things that I fell deeply in love with him. He never loved me. I know that now, but I believed that he did at the time. Just like I believed that he was immortal. He never really told me that he loved me and he never told me that he was immortal, in so many words. The thing about Max is that he directs your attention and then allows you to believe what you want to believe.”

“At dawn one day we married ourselves. No one else was there. I was thrilled by the secrecy. There are no secrets in Xanthia and to have one was exciting. When I became pregnant Max told me to go to the elders and explain to them that my child was a special child. I did as he told me.

“The elders were not surprised. It was then that I learned this wasn't the first time this had happened. Over the history of Xanthia there had been other children born in this way. It didn't happen very often and when it did no one talked about it. After that Max went away and didn't come back, not even when our child was born. I had a little boy and I named him Peter. He was … extraordinary, with a heart so pure and good. He was always happy, always looking for ways to help people and bring them joy. He filled me with a deep contentment and I no longer cared or thought about Max.

“As Peter grew he became worried about his gift. It seemed to me that he had a strong gift; the way he made people happy, the way he would calm them if they were upset. Almost like he could place thoughts into their heads. I saw the gift growing, but one day it went away, and after that he was often confused and sometimes angry.