Queste

T he inside of the hut was just as Aunt Ells had once described to Nicko and Snorri. It was bare and basic but after the chill of the snow and the bleakness of the forest it felt warm and welcoming. On either side of the hut were three sleeping platforms one above the other, with two neatly folded blankets placed on each platform. Between these was an old table and an iron stove with a good supply of logs piled up on either side. At the back of the hut was a door. Jenna opened it and peered in. Inside was a tiny room containing a jug, a frozen bowl of water and a scary-looking pit half covered with planks with a bucket of earth beside it. It didn't smell so great. Jenna quickly closed the door.



Septimus and Beetle set to lighting the stove and soon the logs were ablaze. They left the door of the stove open and all three crowded round the fire, warming their hands while the snow dripped from their wolverine skins and puddles collected on the earthen floor. Once their hands were thawed, they undid the buckles of the backpacks to find them stuffed full of packages that were neatly wrapped in leaves and tied with thin strands of vine. Eagerly, they tipped them out onto the table.



Ullr growled in a hopeful fashion - he could smell fish. Even in panther form Ullr kept a cat's taste for fish.



"Sam must have been up all night making these," said Jenna, surveying the pile of treasure heaped on the table. She felt as excited as if it were her birthday.



Septimus could tell that Jenna wanted to open all the packages at once. "We should only unwrap a few at a time," he said. "I think the leaves preserve things and...well, we don't know how long we're going to be here, do we? It could be months."



"You are an old misery-bucket sometimes, Sep," said Jenna. "So which ones do we open?"



They decided to open two packages each, which resulted in four fish, a bag of dried leaves that Septimus thought was witches' brew and a flat, ash-covered loaf of bread that had obviously been cooked in the Heap campfire.



"We could open another one each," said Jenna, surveying the large pile of unopened packages that still remained.



"All right. Just one more," said Septimus grudgingly.



There was another fish and another loaf, but it was Beetle who drew the prize - a fat slab of toffee.



The boat delivering Ma Custard's stock had run aground on the riverbank where Sam was fishing, and the skipper had been extremely grateful for Sam's help in pushing him free on a falling tide.



Beetle unwrapped the thick wax paper surrounding the sticky slab, and they all breathed in the warm, sweet smell of toffee.



"You know," said Septimus, "I really like Sam."



An hour later they were lying on the sleeping platforms, warm from the heat of the stove, full of toffee, fish and witches' brew. The hut was filled with an orange, drowsy glow from the stove and outside the snow glistened in the light of the virtually full moon. But it still felt like the middle of the afternoon - much too early to go to sleep.



"What does your timepiece say now, Beetle?" Jenna asked.



"Four o'clock," said Beetle, holding it up so that it caught the light of the fire.



"That's four in the afternoon and it's been dark for what - two hours?" said Jenna.



"Yerr," Beetle replied, trying to scrape off the remains of a lump of toffee from his back teeth.



"So that means..."



"Everything's weird," said Septimus.



"No, Sep. It means we are either much farther north or much farther east - or both."



"Which is pretty weird," said Beetle, "seeing as all we did was walk into a heap of charcoal. Not what you expect from a heap of charcoal, even though my old art teacher used to say, 'Charcoal can take you into a whole new world, Beetle.'"



"I wonder which it is?" said Septimus. "North or east?"



"We can work that out tomorrow," said Jenna. "We can see how long the days are. I reckon it's east and we've just lost a few hours. I don't think it would be getting this dark so early farther north. It's getting toward the summer now and the days should be really long."



Both boys were silent for a moment. Then Septimus said, "How do you know all that stuff, Jen?"



Jenna took a while to reply. "Milo," she said. "He told me all about his travels. He had a timepiece, too, and before I was born he said he always kept it on what he called 'home time' so that he would know what, um...my mother...was doing. And he said that when he traveled east he found that according to the timepiece the sun was setting earlier and earlier - even though it didn't feel like that to him. And it was Snorri who told me that in the Lands of the Long Nights in the summer the days are so long that the sun hardly sets."



Septimus thought about this. "So if we are farther east," he said, "that's a good thing. That's where the House of Foryx is, isn't it?"



"I'll see what Nicko says." Jenna picked up Ephaniah's beautifully bound book of Nicko's notes, which she had put safely on her bunk. She leafed through the notes, some of which were tiny scraps that Ephaniah had fused onto bigger pieces of paper, others were bigger and carefully folded, their edges reinforced. All of them felt smooth, almost resinous to the touch. Nicko's writing had a tendency to wander around like a lost ant, but Ephaniah had made it appear crisper and clearer and for once Jenna was able to make sense of most of it. "House of Foryx...House of Foryx," Jenna muttered, leafing through the pages. "Here's something. There's a note stuck to it from Snorri to Nicko - 'Nicko, this is for you. For the parts you missed when Aunt Ells spoke in our language. Snorri x.' I think it's what Aunt Ells told them."



"Go on, then, Jen. Read it to us," said Septimus. Like a couple of children waiting to be read their bedtime story, Beetle and Septimus looked expectantly at Jenna.



She laughed. "Okay. But I'm not doing an Aunt Ells voice."



A chorus of disappointed protests filled the hut.



"Well, I'm not, so there. Here goes: 'I was nine years old. I was playing with my sister in my grandmother's house and we had a fight. I pushed her, she pushed me and I fell through the Glass. I know that now, but then I did not know what had happened. All I knew was that suddenly I was no longer in my grandmother's little house beside the sea, but in an octagonal room full of dark, heavy furniture. I was terrified.



"'When at last I dared to venture out of the room I found myself at the top of a long winding staircase.



I went down and came to the strangest place you could ever imagine. A great hall full of candle smoke, filled with many people with different ways of speech and strange dress. I felt as though I had walked into a never-ending fancy dress party. People wandered through the corridors talking aimlessly, or sat around the great log fires that burned constantly without ever seeming to consume the logs. No one took any particular notice of me as I roamed the house. I ate my fill in the great kitchens, I found a soft bed in a beautiful room where a fire always burned and the little tub of sweet biscuits was always full - but I was alone and I longed to go home.



"'There was a great door that opened into the house, but a visitor was a rare event. Some came to stay and Bide their Time but most came searching for lost loved ones, although I do not recall them finding any. I was surprised that so few already there wanted to leave the House of Foryx. I do recall one young woman wearing a beautiful white fur cloak. She wanted to go, but she took pity on me and gave up her place on the dragon chair in the checkerboard lobby by the door. She said that I was but a child and should leave as soon as I could, that no matter what Time I went into I was young enough to adapt. And she was right - I will be forever grateful to her. So I took her place on the chair sitting between the carved dragonheads, my feet resting upon the tail. I waited for many long weeks while she brought me food and kept me company. She told me stories of ice palaces and snow-swept plains, sleighs and roads of ice until even in the heat of the candles that burned day and night my knees knocked with the cold and I shivered inside my woolen cloak.



"'At last my chance came one morning when there was a loud knock on the door. To my surprise a little man jumped out of the pillar beside where I was sitting and ran to the door. Waiting outside were a man and a woman. The DoorKeeper would not let them come in and as the door began to close I took my chance and ran out, much to their surprise.



"'I was, I realize now, amazingly lucky. I do not know why my new mother and father went to the House of Foryx; they would never say. The next thing I remember was traveling across a great pit on a narrow bridge that swayed in the wind. My new papa led the horse while I rode, sitting in front of my new mama. Later Mama told me she had closed her eyes in terror as we crossed, but I was wide-eyed with excitement. There was a full moon rising through the mists below us and we were so high that I felt as if we were flying among the stars. They brought me here to the Castle and were kindness itself. I grew to love them as much as I had loved my mother and father, but always at the back of my mind was the question, What happened to me?



"'I did not realize that I was in another Time for many years, until a traveling storyteller told a tale about the House of Foryx and I knew she was telling no story but the truth. I found her and told her my own tale. She told me that the House of Foryx is a place where All Times Do Meet. You can only leave when someone arrives and then you must enter their own Time. So when I ran from the House of Foryx I ran into my new parents' Time.



"'I believe the only chance you have of returning to your own Time is to find the House of Foryx and pray that someone from your own Time comes to it. When I was a child I longed to return to my own Time, but when I finally understood what had happened I had already met my dear husband, my adoptive parents were old and frail and I did not wish to return. This is a good Time to live in - you could do much worse. But you are both young and I can see you are brave enough to try. May Odin and Skadi be your guides.' And then Nik has written...I think this is what he says...'House of Foryx - here we come.'"



"Sounds like Nik," said Septimus.



"I wonder if they are still there?" said Jenna.



"Only one way to find out," said Septimus.



No one found it easy to get to sleep that night.



The stove kept them warm and Septimus did a SafeShield Spell for the hut, but it was hard to ignore the noises outside - and there was a fine assortment to choose from. It was strange, Septimus thought, that a forest so silent by day should be so noisy at night. As the moon rose higher, the wind rose too; it funneled down the valley and did not take kindly to finding the refuge hut in the way. It moaned and howled; it rattled the shutters and shook the door; it ganged up with the trees so that their branches banged and scraped on the little hut's roof and its flimsy walls. There were other noises in the distance, sharp whooping cries and ululating howls that made Ullr's fur stand on end. Beetle put his fingers in his ears and wished that he was back in his cozy bed in The Ramblings.



Beetle and Septimus fell asleep first. Jenna sat up on her bunk wrapped in her wolverine skin, listening to the wind howl. She watched the snow pile up against the windows, the fire in the stove die down and the hut gradually become cold and dark. Suddenly she heard scritch...scratch...scritch...something was scratching at the door. Ullr, who was lying across the door, got to his feet and growled. Her heart racing, Jenna climbed down to Septimus, who was asleep on the bunk below, and shook him awake. "Sep...listen!"



Septimus sprang awake, thinking for one awful moment that he was back in the Young Army.



"Wheerrr - wassat?"



"Something's trying to get in," whispered Jenna.



"Oh. Oh, crumbs." Ullr growled again. A gust of wind shook the hut and outside Septimus heard scritch...scratch...scritch... like long fingernails being dragged down the thin wooden door.



Wide awake now, Septimus sprang out of his bunk. He put both hands on the door, and muttered his SafeShield Spell once again. The scritch...scratch...scritch continued. Why wasn't it working?



Flustered, Septimus tried an Anti-Darke incantation. At that, the scratching stopped.



Jenna and Septimus listened, hardly daring to breathe. Outside, the trees tapped their branches like long, impatient fingers drumming on the roof of the hut, but there was no more scratching at the door.



Beetle stirred and mumbled in his sleep something that sounded like "Wotcha, Foxy," then with much creaking of his bunk he turned over and was quiet again. Ullr lay down once more and positioned himself across the doorway.



"It's gone," whispered Septimus.



"Thanks, Sep," whispered Jenna. She burrowed down beneath the rough hut blankets and her wolverine skin and soon fell asleep.



But Septimus lay awake. It wasn't the howl of the wind that kept him from sleeping, or the tapping of the branches on the roof of the hut, or even wondering what Darke creature had been outside. What kept Septimus from sleeping was the lapis lazuli stone with a golden Q inscribed into it. Every time he tried to get comfortable, the wretched thing somehow managed to stick into him. Irritably, he delved deep into his tunic pocket and pulled out the Stone. It lay warm and heavy on his palm. It was odd, he thought, how the light from the lantern made the Stone look so green - it didn't do that to anything else. And then a horrible feeling of dread shot through him like a dagger. It wasn't a trick of the light - it was the Stone itself. The Questing Stone had turned green.



Like a Transfixed rabbit Septimus stared at the Stone,



Alther's hurried whispered words at the Gathering spinning around his head like a dreadful nursery rhyme:



Blue to get ready,



Green to go.



Yellow to guide you



Through the snow.



Orange to warn you



That over you'll go.



Then Red will be the final glow.



Now seek the Black; there's no going back.



Green to go - that's what it was. Green to go on the Queste. Septimus lay down and gazed, unfocused, at the rough planks only a few inches from his face, panicky thoughts whirling around his head.



The first thought was bad enough: he was on the Queste - he was on the Queste .



The second thought was even worse: If he was on the Queste, how were they going to find Nicko?



But the third was the worst of all: How was he going to tell Jenna?