The Farthest-Away Mountain Read online

Breathing hard, Dakin looked around. Everything was exactly as she’d last seen it. There was the pool in the middle, with the lily pads and—oh joy!—there was dear Old Croak sitting on one of them, with his fingers in his ear holes and his eyes screwed shut.

  Dakin was taking no chances this time. Creeping up to him very quietly, she reached her hand out and gently but firmly caught him in it. He jumped and quivered, but she held him, and after a moment he cautiously peeped at her. Then he took his fingers out of his ears at once.

  “Oh, it’s you!” he said, in a tremendous relief. “I thought—I heard—oh dear, oh dear! What a terrible fright I got!” And he lay down on his back in herhand, his hands clasped to his chest, palpitating all over.

  “Now, Croaky dear,” said Dakin firmly, “there’s no need to carry on like that. Nothing can get in here, surely you’ve found that out. Now do sit up, because I want to talk to you. Here, have a nice fly. You’ll feel much better.”

  The cabin was abuzz with them. She caught one easily as it blundered against the windowpane, and popped it into Croak’s open mouth. He gulped it down and immediately sat up.

  “What a kind little miss you are, to be sure!” he said. “I’m so glad to see you again! Of course I knew you wouldn’t get far, but I didn’t think you’d ever actually come back. I cried a lot about you, after you went, you know. Quite sure you’d be killed... Well, never mind. So you decided to be sensible after all, then, and not go on?”

  “Of course I went on,” said Dakin indignantly. “And I did get far. I got to within sight of the summit, as a matter of fact—”

  Old Croak’s eyes popped. “You got where?”

  “Nearly up to that big rock like an ogre’s castle.”

  “What do you mean, like an ogre’s castle?” cried Croak, jumping about in excitement. “It is an ogre’s castle! It’s Drackamag’s castle, you foolish, rash little girl! Oh my goodness gracious me! And what about the spikes? And the witch? And her snow? And WHAT about the gargoyle brothers? Oh, I can hardly believe it! Right to the top, she got! Oh. tell me, tell me everything, I can’t wait to hear!”

  He had fallen off her hand and was jumping about madly all over the cabin, tumbling into the pond every now and then and jumping out again. “Do sit still, Croaky!” said Dakin. “How can I talk to you when you’re bouncing about like that? I promise I’ll go away without telling you a thing if you don’t stop it!”

  So in the end the frog had to sit still on the palm of her hand while she told him all her adventures, right from the very beginning—even the part about wanting a prince as her husband.

  He was certainly a most wonderful audience, except that he kept interrupting with exclamations.

  “Good heavens!”

  “Fancy you guessing that?”

  “And what did he say?”

  “And how did you get out of that?”

  “Oh my goodness gracious me!”

  The end part, about the Winged One carrying her off, had him absolutely on the edge of her hand with suspense, with his eyes wide and both his tiny hands in his mouth.

  “Oh, I do think you’re brave! Oh, I do think you’re brave!” he said at last. “You wonderful girl! Oh, you did deserve to get there, you did, you did!” He was nearly in tears. “It’s too bad, that rotten Graw coming out and spoiling the end of the story!”

  “But it’s not the end,” said Dakin.

  “What?”

  “It’s not the end, how could it be?” said Dakin. “I haven’t solved any of the mystery yet. I don’t know why the mountain called me. I haven’t helped the gargoyles. And there’s that awful ogre, still up there, frightening everybody, not to mention the witch and Graw, as you call the brute. Ooh, don’t I owe that Graw something, for bringing me down here again! Just wait till I catch him! Because now I’ve got to climb all the way up again, and even though I do know some of the secrets now, it’s still an awfully long way.”

  Old Croak sat there staring at her for a long time.

  “You’re going back up there?” he asked at last.

  “Of course,” said Dakin.

  Croak flopped off her hand and jumped slowly across the cabin and back, muttering to himself: “Never would have believed it. Never saw anything like it. Such determination. Such courage. Amazing. Amazing.” Dakin, knowing he must mean her, tried not to listen. After a while she said:

  “Though now I think about it, there is one good thing about coming back here again, and that is that now I can bathe in the pool. This is the Lithv Pool, isn’t it?”

  “The what? Oh yes—yes, of course. Go ahead, my dear. Help yourself. Very welcome, I’m sure.”

  Dakin didn’t fancy getting herself all wet, but it couldn’t be avoided, so she sat on the edge of the pool with her legs dangling in (the water was surprisingly warm), took the book out of her pocket, and then slipped in. Her feet didn’t touch the bottom. She swam around once—it took about half a minute—and then prepared to pull herself out again.

  Croak was watching her critically.

  “Not good enough,” he said. “Got to do it properly.” And without warning he jumped onto the top of her head.

  She got a bit of a fright when he landed on her, and ducked right under. When she popped up again, spluttering, Croak, still sitting on her head as calmly as could be, remarked: “That’s more like it! Now you’re fully protected”—and jumped ashore.

  “Now go outside,” he said. “Run about the meadow and get dry. Can’t have you catching cold, can we? That would never do.”

  He was looking at her with a very strange expression on his froggy face. She was about to get the rope ladder down to climb out when he suddenly said: “Just a minute.”

  She turned.

  “One or two small things before you go.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, first of all, I’m not really a frog.”

  “If you’re not a frog, what are you?”

  “I don’t know. No, don’t laugh. It’s true. I’ve forgotten what I once was. A man of some kind, probably, since I still have the gift of speech.”

  “But who changed you? Drackamag?”

  “No, no, no, of course not! Drackamag’s an ogre, not a wizard. He can’t do things like that. He’s just a huge giant: a brute, a lout, and a bully. And the witch herself is harmless: she puts all her witchcraft into her colors, and the only thing she’s afraid of is white.”

  “So who could it have been? Not the gargoyles—I won’t believe that!”

  “No, not them of course. They’re as much victims as I am.”

  “Are there any other witches up there?”

  “I believe not. I’ve never heard of any.”

  “So there’s someone—or something—else, some—some wicked force behind all this.”

  “That has always been my idea.”

  They were silent for a moment, looking at each other.

  “I must go and get dry,” said Dakin. “I’m shivering.” She started to go, then turned back once more and kissed the frog. It was as if she knew she wouldn’t be coming back.

  12

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Up the Mountain

  Out in the meadow she raced back and forth for a while. The sun and wind dried her so quickly that she realized the water was magic. What had Zog told her about it? That it had the power to repel evil... In that case, she had nothing to worry about, other than natural accidents, such as falling down a mountain, for instance...

  Suddenly a white something caught her eye on the edge of the wood. She ran up to the trees. High on a branch she saw her stocking cap.

  “I must get that back,” she thought. “I really must.”

  The tree itself, which had stolen the cap from her head, as she supposed, was impossible to climb. But the one next to it was not so bad. After a long, tiring struggle, Dakin managed to get nearly to the top of it and, by reaching over, was just able to get her hand on the white woolen cap. It was another matter to pull it free, for the tr
ee it was caught in seemed to be holding onto it. Twice Dakin nearly fell, but at last she wrenched it ofr and, with one arm around the trunk of her tree, fitted it securely onto her head.She had been so much occupied she hadn’t noticed that her struggle in the treetops had been seen by sharp eyes far away. But now a heavy dark shadow fell on her, a shadow that filled her with a far-from-ordinary chill. Her face snapped up. Yes! It was Graw, swooping close above her, his dreadful claws opening to snatch her again!

  “Aha!” thought Dakin, even as the shadow fell on her. “Now I’ve bathed in the Lithy Pool, you won’t be able to harm me!” But she was in for a shock. Either the Lithy Pool water didn’t work, or something else was wrong, because no sooner had she thought this than the great creature clamped his claws on her shoulders and flew off with her again.

  Dakin started to scream as she felt the claws, but then she stopped, because, although they seemed to be digging into her, she suddenly realized they weren’t hurting. She felt herself firmly held and, when she looked, she could see the terrible claw nails, as sharp as daggers, pressing through her clothes; but they certainly weren’t going through her skin.

  “Maybe that’s what the Lithy Pool does,” she thought, as well as she could think for the wind whipping her hair around her face and snatching breath out of her mouth. “It may be like a magic suit of armor that stops you actually getting hurt if someone tries to hit you or shoot an arrow at you or something. But I see it doesn’t stop monsters from picking you up. Well,” she added to herself, “perhaps it’s not such a bad thing, if only it doesn’t drop me! Because it’s taking me straight up the mountain again to the lair of its master, Drackamag, which is where I wanted to go in any case, and it’s saving me all that long climb.”

  It was all very well to be so calm about it, and look on the bright side and so forth, but when the great, dark, rocky bulk of Drackamag’s castle ( which was the summit of the mountain) loomed ahead of her and the terrible Graw began circling it in great sweeps, Dakin began to feel very frightened indeed, It really was a most awful-looking place. The turrets of the castle were no more than pinnacles of rock, which had been hollowed out from inside and rough windows cut through; these looked like so many caves (they weren’t proper square windows) so that if you didLn’t know, you wouldn’t think it was an ogre’s castle at all. But flying close around them like this, Dakin could peep in as they passed one of these openings; and inside she could see cave-like rooms with huge bits of rough furniture, tables, and chairs, the legs of which were whole tree trunks and the tops like the decks of ships, a candle so thick Dakin couldn’t have got her arms around it and. in the kitchen, a fireplace as big as Dakin’s whole house, half-filled with “twigs” that were the tops of trees, and a black cook pot in which you could have cooked a couple of bullocks without even chopping them up first.

  All these rooms were dark and gloomy, and Dakin thought with horror that she might soon find herself inside, in the power of Drackamag. She could have wished herself safely at home, and she certainly would have had she not met the gargoyle brothers and Old Croak, who needed help so badly. How she could possibly help them she had no idea, but all of them had said that she could, and after all—the mountain had called her.

  She had no more time to think about it now.

  though, because Graw had reached the front of the castle for the third time around and was now flying with her into the vast mouth of the cave door.

  It was dark in there, so dark that Dakin kept blinking to make sure her eyes were really open. Graw flapped slowly on, until they must have been right in the heart of the mountaintop. Then, quite suddenly, just when she least expected it—he dropped her.

  13

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Blue Bead

  The fall was horrible but short. She landed on a hard stone floor. For a moment she lay still, stunned, but only by fright: the magic of the Lithy Pool had protected her from every other hurt but that.

  “I really must try to be a bit braver,” thought Dakin shakily as she sat up, “especially now. I must trust the Lithy Pool water.”

  She stood up. It was still perfectly dark. She could sense that she was in a huge, very high cave; she knew this by the way every little sound she made echoed. Also, she could still hear Graw, his wings making their uncanny whistling sound and his beak clacking, high, high above her.

  And now she heard another sound. Actually, she felt it first, in the stone under her feet: the trembling of the mountain as Drackamag walked. She fumbled in her pocket and found the troll’s little blue bead, or sweet, or whatever it was, and popped it into her mouth. It had a strong, rather disgusting but healthy sort of taste, like disinfectant. Now she could see that the cave was growing lighter. A flick ering light spread across the great rocky rough-cutwalls. Thud, thud, thud—and with each footfall the light of the giant candle drew nearer and lit up more of the cave, as the ogre came along a vast passage toward her.

  “I don’t suppose,” thought Dakin, trying not to quake, “that the magic water could protect me if Drackamag actually stood on me, so I’d better run and stand against a wall, not here in the middle of the floor!” She quickly did this, but Graw, hovering above in the eerie blackness, saw her run and, thinking she was trying to escape, swooped down on her with a harsh cry. She ducked into a crevice of the rock, and the tip of his black wing just brushed her face as it wheeled by with a swish of air like a sword stroke.

  “Ugh!” Dakin exclaimed. Its wing had a horrid smell, like something dead. Dakin put up her hand to wipe away the cold, cold touch from her face—and got the shock of her life.

  Her hand was transparent.

  Even as she stared at it, it faded altogether and disappeared.

  For a second Dakin thought—well, it would be hard to describe her thoughts. Had she gone blind? But no, the walls of the great cave were still clear before her, clearer and clearer, in fact, as the ogre’s candle approached. How then could she not be able to see her hand right before her face?

  She looked down at herself. But there was no herself. She was there—she could breathe, she could feel the cold floor under her bare feet, she could touch her face and hair and feel them warm and real—yet she was not there, for she could not see any part of her body or clothes.

  Suddenly she understood. The troll’s blue sweet, which he had told her would protect her from Drackamag, had made her invisible.

  But she had no time to think any more about it, because now Drackamag himself had come into the cave. He was so huge that she couldn’t see him properly. One of his great booted feet thundered down right outside her crevice: she could have reached out and touched the side of it, but she was only as tall as the heel of the boot. She could look up and see part of the rest of it, but not much more than that. The ogre himself nearly filled the whole of the cave, and when he spoke, no thunder that ever rocked Dakin’s house on a stormy night had ever sounded half so loud and boomy. She had to put her fingers hard in her ears to prevent herself being deafened by the vibrations, and still she could hear his words quite clearly.

  “Did you get her, Graw? Where is she?”

  The Winged One squawked shrilly and tried, per haps, to fly down to where Dakin was hiding, but Drackamag’s enormous bulk blocked the way.

  “Well, don’t just flap about around my face, you stupid brute!” roared the ogre. “Show me, can’t you? Oh, if the Master is clever enough to bring a thing like you back to life, couldn’t he manage to make you talk, too? He gave me a voice, and a brain, and a bit of sense in my—OWWCH!”

  Dakin felt the whole mountain jar. It was like an earthquake. She fell over. She guessed Drackamag must have bumped his head on the roof of the cave.

  “And come to that, why didn’t the Master make these caves bigger before he put me into them?” he roared. “That’s the third time in two days I’ve banged my head! The whole lot’ll come crashing down one of these times, crashing right down, you’ll see! Then where will the Master be? Lost in
the rubble, and serve him right! Serve him right. Come here, you, stop digging your stupid talons into my shoulder, can’t you see I’m stuck? Wait a minute, I’ll sit down.”

  There was a lot of heaving and grunting and puffing, several bits of rock—boulders, really—came tumbling down, and again the whole mountain seemed to shudder and shake. The light, which had been partly blocked off, now became brighter, and when Dakin looked out of her crevice she saw, instead of the side of the ogre’s boot, a vast area of coarse green cloth which must have been a bit of Drackamag’s trousers. He was sitting down on the floor, and now Graw was swooping about, making horrible shadows in the flickering light of the giant candle, still trying to get down to where Dakin was.

  But it seemed the ogre hadn’t got a very good memory, or maybe his knock on the head had made him forget about Dakin. For instead of looking for her, he caught Graw in his hand and said:

  “Now keep still, you brainless bird or lizard or whatever you are, you’re getting on my nerves, bashing around me like that. I want to think. Oww, my head! How I hate this job... If you don’t stop trying to peck me, I’ll give you such a thick ear! Wonder when the Master’ll be back... ? Always off looking for that stupid ring... as if it mattered! If Prince Rally can’t be married without it, as if I cared about that, and it’s lost, what does it matter if the troll has it or the Master has it or if it’s at the bottom of the Lithy Pool? I bet’that’s where it is, if you ask me. And even he can’t get it out of there.”

  The ogre gave a chuckle. “Ho, ho! Wouldn’t I like to see him try! Even I had to build a house around it because I couldn’t stand the sight of it, and I’m not half as bad as he is! I bet he’d burst into a million pieces if he so much as dipped his little finger into it, and if he jumped in to look for the ring—wow! He’d just go up in a puff of steam! Poof, Graw, poof! A couple of bubbles—that’d be the Master. You wouldn’t like that, would you, Graw? If the Master went poof, you’d probably go poof, too, or turn into a fossil—ho, ho, ho! While I stood up here on top of the mountain, laughing my head off!