THUNDER PEAK, page 11
Casey nodded but remained quiet.
Jonas tilted his head at Casey and said, “I think I’m being pretty fair.”
Casey nodded again.
Normally, Jonas would have prompted her to respond, but knowing how disappointed she was, he let it slide. “What does StarFall say?” he asked instead.
Casey translated, then turned back to her father. “He’s anxious to begin, but believes you’re being fair and has offered to help in any way he can with the chores.”
Jonas smiled. “Good.” The showdown had gone much better than he had expected. “Good,” Jonas repeated. Then he slapped his knees with both hands and stood. “I say we have an early lunch and get right out to the gate and have a look around. Maybe we’ll see Taliko, or more likely, he’ll find us on the way.”
“Really? Today?” Casey finally smiled. “We’re going to do this together?”
“Of course,” Jonas replied. “We’re in this together. I know I can’t be much help opening the gate, but I can help you set up a campsite in case you need to take a break, or if it rains.”
Casey nodded enthusiastically. “I didn’t think of that. Thanks Dad.”
After lunch Casey, Jonas, and StarFall struck out for the gate. The trek was uneventful, and they did not pause until they reached Point Lookout and the frolicking brook tumbling under it.
“Explain to StarFall that before they abandoned it, the aril used this tower as a fort. And that Taliko lives under there somewhere. And that he has the lizardlings with him.”
“Got it,” Casey said, turning away and then back again. “Hold on. What are lizardlings? Are they his children or something?”
Jonas waited before speaking, then replied, “No. I’m not sure what they are and neither is Taliko. He’s trying to figure that out. Communicate with them.”
“Communicate,” Casey echoed.
“Whoa!” she drew up short. “Lizardlings? As in the lizard monsters that attacked us? Those lings?”
Jonas turned toward Casey. “I don’t like it either but…it seems very important to Taliko. And we know we can kill them if we have to, if we need to—not that it’s easy. But…”
“I can’t believe they slipped my mind.” Casey shook her head. “Everything is just so tumbleweeds in the wind.”
“I know,” Jonas said, and the distant fear that he too was overlooking something very important tickled the back of his mind again. “During the war my captain told me that chaos can be a matter of perspective. The man on the front lines is in a storm of bullets and bayonets and often doesn’t know if he’s winning or losing. His general is farther back; he sees everything and decides which flank to attack and with what company to give them the best chance of winning. Training and discipline ensures that everyone does what needs to be done when it’s time to do it.”
“What does this have to do with—” Casey started and stopped when her father’s look told her he was just coming to that.
“So”—Jonas held Casey’s eyes in his own—“it’s when things are at their worst that it’s most important to stay calm, keep routines in order, and establish what perspective you can. If you can do that, you can make decisions that win the battle.”
“Training and routine,” Casey said after a moment.
“Exactly.”
“So this captain”—Casey sniffed—“he’s the real reason I have to keep doing my chores.”
Jonas laughed. “Yeah. It’s all his fault.”
StarFall snorted.
“He all right?” Jonas asked.
Casey spoke with StarFall a moment and then blew out another sigh.
“What is it?” Jonas prompted her again.
“He’s frustrated with all our chatter. He wants me to teach him some of our language so he can understand us better and work quicker.”
“Why is it he understands your words but not mine?” Jonas asked. “We speak the same language.”
Casey queried StarFall, then replied, “He says it’s the same reason I was able to see them running through the woods on Friday.”
“Your frein?” Jonas guessed.
“My frein.” Casey nodded. “I want him to understand me, so my frein puts magic into my words to make sure he does.”
“Right,” Jonas answered. “I think we went over that last night in the barn. Still, that would be a good idea. And he can learn English? Just to understand me? I suppose he can.” Jonas answered his own question while he watched StarFall examine the crumbling outpost. “Or he wouldn’t have asked.”
“Yeah,” Casey mumbled. “Sounds like another chore to me.”
“Maybe Taliko can help; they understand each other some too, right?”
Casey brightened. “That’s a cherry idea!”
Taliko did not appear while they rested at Point Lookout, but they lingered longer than anticipated because StarFall became very curious about Jonas’s harmonica when he witnessed him attempt to call Taliko with it. As a result father and daughter sang several songs for him, after which StarFall told them he had never seen or heard the like, not even among the aril, who are often wondrous singers and musicians.
In time they were moving again, Jonas showing Casey where the stepping-stones were so that her feet remained dry. Then both watched in awe as StarFall vaulted over the fifteen-foot span like he had wings.
“Amazing,” Casey breathed.
It was early afternoon when they came to a thick regiment of towering fir trees.
StarFall surged ahead and disappeared straight into the cloying, living wall.
“Whoa!” Jonas gasped, stepping into the tightly interwoven branches where the steed had disappeared and being repelled by them. “How’d he do that?”
“Is this new?” Casey sounded alarmed. “Is the gate behind this somewhere? How do we get in? Can we get in?”
“Calm down.” Jonas waved his hands in a downward motion. “We have our own way. Your mother showed it to me. The tree maze is a way to keep strangers out, so people don’t find the gate by accident.”
“Ohh,” Casey said with obvious relief. “I thought we might have to go back for axes or something.”
“Funny you should say that,” Jonas remarked, testing and bending a handful of branches. “Your mother loved all the animals and birds, flowers and trees, just like you always have. Sort of what brought us together.” Jonas removed his hat and wiped his brow. “Story for another day. See the hint of copper in some of these pine branches?”
Casey came over for a closer look. “That’s beautiful,” she said, nodding. “The copper sparkles like little stars when they catch the sun.”
“It is,” Jonas went on. “These trees are like the pearlwood. From her side. And I almost think if we chopped into this grove that they would somehow know and come through the gate to stop us.”
Casey’s eyes grew wide. “That’s a horrible thought, Dad.”
“It could be a last resort for StarFall,” he said glumly.
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Let’s,” Jonas said, rushing back from other dismal thoughts. “And let’s see if we can find the way in.”
They circled the wide ring several times, and Casey was just beginning to doubt her father knew what he was doing when his hand abruptly vanished through the trees.
“Found it!” Jonas exclaimed and then disappeared into the green wall so swiftly that Casey sucked her next breath through her teeth. When the minutes piled up and he still didn’t return, she began to panic.
“Dad! Where are you?” she called, prodding tight branches that were more akin to the seams of a rock wall. “Dad! Come ba—aaah!” Casey screeched when his hand popped through and grabbed her.
Then her father’s face appeared, and he was laughing so hard she was surprised she hadn’t heard him before seeing him.
“That was not funny!” Casey glared at her father.
Jonas laughed harder. Then his face disappeared back beyond the green wall and the sound of his laughter was abruptly cut off. His open hand waited for her, and clasping it tightly, Casey stepped through.
“Nearly impossible to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for,” he said. “Practice going through a few times while I start looking for the entrance to the next ring. We’ll mark it somehow when we leave.”
Casey watched him go for a moment, unsure about why she needed to practice coming and going. Then decided if finding the second entrance took as long as the first, moving in and out of the ring would help pass the time.
As it was, she got out easy enough but had lots of trouble getting back in. Sometimes she could get a hand through, a foot or even her face, but then the rest of her got stuck.
“Oh, crickets and rotten apples!” she finally shouted at the fir trees. “Let me in!” Thinking speed might be the key, Casey took a few quick steps and slammed into the green wall. All that got her was an aching shoulder and visit to the bed of pine needles under her feet.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “Take it slow.” Casey moved forward, taking one direct step into the wall and stopping. Then she took a second step and emerged on the other side.
“I did it!” Casey exclaimed. “I did it!”
“There you are! Didn’t you hear me calling you?” her father asked, coming around the bend.
Casey looked at him. “Actually, I didn’t. I couldn’t hear you laughing before either, not until you poked your head out. I think these trees somehow stop sound too.”
“Huh,” Jonas looked at the wall again with new eyes. “That’s an amazing tactical advantage,” he noted, plucking a bullet from his gun belt and placing it in the dirt to mark the exit. “At least it would be, if there were a way to hit a target on the other side.”
As she watched him, Casey’s eyes glowed with youth’s exuberant certainty that every mystery had an answer, even sound-buffering pine trees, and that she was on her way to discovering all of them.
In all the pair had to navigate five narrow rings of escalating difficulty to reach the center. Mastering the walk of stepping into the ring and then through was an important key, for sometimes you had to sidestep while in the foliage before stepping forward again; on one occasion they even had to climb.
Her father marked each “slipway” with another bullet. “We should replace these with stones at some point,” he remarked while they deciphered the third ring. “Make them less obvious until we know the way by heart. Or maybe just pace them off.”
At last they emerged into the hidden half-acre oval that made up the Gategrove.
Inside the afternoon sunlight steaked down through the tall trees at an angle, filling the grove with a flickering, dreamlike atmosphere; slowly, and with measured steps, Casey strode forward from the shadow of the grove wall. The moment she crossed into the dappled light, her skin tingled, though from anticipation or something else, she could not be sure.
“Oh my.” Casey stood, gaping at the towering portal and its glistening marble dais.
Jonas looked long on the gateway as well. His thoughts were his own.
The portal arch was fashioned out of granite blocks. Affixed to the center of each facet of every stone was a bright jewel of varying shape, size, and color. Surrounding each jewel was a set of deep, carefully chiseled runes.
The standing stones themselves had been carefully hewn into a perfect rectangular block that was two-feet high, two-feet wide and four-feet deep. The stones were stacked seven high on either side, forming two pillars ten feet apart.
The arch linking them was etched with dark carvings, an unreadable chain of mysterious symbols with no apparent beginning or end. The keystone, looming over twenty feet in the air, was encrusted with an oval desert jasper the size of Jonas’s fist, which faced the marble floor.
Casey stepped up on the marble dais, then walked around and under the arch several times, marveling at the runes and gems. “Thank goodness this is hidden,” she said. “Anyone finds this and they’ll destroy it and sell these stones before the jackrabbit jumps.”
Jonas was about to agree with her when Casey noticed StarFall drinking from a small pond at the other end of the hidden clearing and moved briskly toward it.
The water was filled with multicolored fish, scooting and diving with the aid of fanlike fins. A stone fountain stood in the center, carved in the likeness of three graceful swans with turquoise eyes and crisp, clear water pouring gently from their mouths. Their raised wings met in the middle, where they cradled a large flowered basin. Birds sprang between the sculpture and the surrounding trees, chittering and singing happy songs. Facing the pond at each directional point was a smoothed tree stump where two could sit comfortably and gaze upon the pleasantly burbling scene.
“I feel like I remember this place,” Casey said distantly. “Not the gate, but this pond. I feel like I’ve been here before.”
“You have been here,” Jonas said, coming up behind her. “I used to bring you here when you were little. You’d play at the edge of the water, feeding the fish and birds with bread and grain we brought from home.”
Just then, a gray bird shot with red markings that made it look like it was trimmed in flame when it flew landed on Casey’s head.
“What in the—” Casey began, but then the bird hopped down to her shoulder and they were eye to eye. “Can you believe this bird?” she laughed. “If you drop on me, there’s gonna be trouble,” Casey warned her new feathered friend sternly.
The bird cocked its head, chittered back at her a moment, and then flew off.
Jonas laughed. “Just like old times. Maybe he remembers you.”
Casey looked at her father. “You think that’s possible? Do birds live that long?”
“In here, who’s to say what kind of bird that even is?” Jonas answered.
StarFall snuffed and snorted by the gate, gaining their attention.
Casey’s eyes widened a few times while the steed communed with her, and Jonas braced himself for what she might say next.
“He says he can’t be sure exactly what happened,” Casey began. “But the day he got stuck here, some kind of black cloud filled the gate. He crashed into it on his way through. There was an explosion of sorts, and he was knocked out. He doesn’t know what it was. Could have been errant magic or something happening on the other side.”
“Loose mountain magic,” Jonas mused out loud. “Like the lizardlings, I’d wager. Things just keep slipping though.”
“Slipping through?” Casey asked. “Like the storms?”
“Like the storms.” Jonas nodded. “Sometimes the mountain lets other stuff, nasty stuff, through too. But it’s not supposed to happen out here. Mae said it would only happen in the mountain.”
More precisely, Jonas added quietly, in that dashed cave.
A long moment passed before Casey exclaimed, “What? No. That would be terrible. Don’t even think that!”
“What?” Jonas asked, eyes narrow.
“He says gates are usually built by places with loose magic because they draw on it to operate. But in some places, the magic is dangerously erratic. Those gates can shut suddenly, and travelers caught in them are never seen again.”
Casey took a deep breath, forcing herself to get the words out. “This isn’t supposed to be one of the dangerous places, so it just occurred to him that if the aril opened the gate while he was unconscious and he didn’t come back…”
“They think he was killed when the gate closed,” Jonas finished for her, shaking his head.
“Which means they’re not coming.” Casey pursed her lips.
“So it’s up to us,” Jonas said.
“Me, you mean.” Casey sighed.
Seeing his daughter’s face, Jonas put more steel into his voice. “We don’t know what they’re thinking on the other side of that gate. Either way, nothing’s changed over here. Nothing’s any harder than it already was, is it?”
Casey thought on that for a moment, then her chin rose and her eyes brightened. “No, it isn’t.”
“Right then.” Jonas locked eyes with her and nodded. “Go on and remind him that we, have no intention of giving up.”
Casey smiled fiercely and turned away to commune with StarFall.
Jonas looked away before either of them could see his face darken. “For so long nothing,” he muttered to himself. “Why all this now? And where in blazes are you, Taliko?”
Jonas turned suddenly, raising his voice and pointing at his daughter. “Tonight, when we get back. Knives and pistols.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Both of us,” he grumbled.
He had never told Casey about the cave and did not intend to. It had taken her so long to get over the wolf nightmares, and the Cave of Bones seemed to him something that might start them up again if she knew about it. Sorry Mae, but if there’s another dead thing it that cave, I’m going to get enough dynamite to bring the whole blasted mountain down on it.
Casey resumed examining the gate.
“Does he have any idea where to begin or how to open it?” Jonas asked.
Eyes peering into the depths of the sparkling gems, fingers probing the runes, Casey relayed the question to StarFall. “No. Its function is an aril secret. Using gates like this is common where he lives. They get around easily that way. Just like you said. Go through a portal. Get what they need, and come back the same way. So he’s seen them do it lots of times. But they all do it in different ways. Some touch it. Some whisper to it. Some just stand there and it opens for them. They say no one else can learn how do it. Just the aril. But there is no way to know for sure because they’ve never agreed to teach anyone. Like he said last night, that’s why he thinks the law against marrying humans or—what?”
“What?” Jonas raised his eyebrows.
