Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (5 page)

They’d need sturdy boots, she said, and warm clothes for Jack and fur bags to sleep in, like the loggers had. They’d have to buy them in another town—too risky to buy them here, where people would notice and tell her father.

“We’ll want to buy weapons, too,” she added. “Bows and arrows for hunting for food along the way, and swords and knives—just in case.”

Jack could only marvel. She really did know all about adventures, and she was going to spend all her money on theirs. Van would never buy him boots. He felt as if they were all but on the mountain already.

“Don’t tell me you know how to use a bow and arrows,” he said.

“We can learn. I can ride a horse, though.”

He shook his head, dazzled. “I can get us rabbits and woodchucks with my slingshot,” he said. “We won’t go hungry. I can cook them, too. But I never thought of any of the rest. I had you figured all wrong. Now I’m glad you’re going with me—you really do know what you’re doing. I can hardly wait to get started! How about tomorrow morning, first thing?”

Ellayne wanted to make it the day after: she needed time to get some things together. “We’ll both need to carry packs,” she said, “with everything in them that we’ll need. I’m sure there are some clothes of my brothers’ that’ll fit you, and I’ll need some of their things, too. Maybe you ought to pack some cooking gear. And don’t forget your slingshot.”

Jack didn’t think that day would ever come. He was sure something would go wrong. Van would hurt himself on the job, and Jack would have to stay home and tend to him; Ellayne’s father would find out; or Ashrof would decide to tell on him because he was sure Jack would come to a bad end if no one stopped him.

He would have liked to say good-bye to Ashrof and ask the old reciter for his blessing. He knew the priest at the chamber house didn’t like Ashrof, thought he was too old and foolish. Jack would have been happier with Ashrof’s blessing, but knew he’d have to do without it. He could make it up with him when he came back.

He stuffed a canvas sack with two small pans, two knives and two forks, his slingshot, some bread, some onions, and what little spare clothing he had. It didn’t seem like much. He found an old wineskin that would serve for holding water.

It didn’t take him very long to get his things ready, leaving him with the rest of the day stretched out before him and nothing to do. He wished he could read Scriptures. But the Old Books were written in an ancient and difficult language. You’d have to study hard for years, Ashrof said, before you could read them. “And the Temple would prefer you didn’t read them,” he would add. That was another thing that he’d explain when Jack got older.

He fretted and fidgeted through the day. Van came home a little late for supper, complaining about the councilor who had to be driven all the way out to Oziah’s Wood and back the same day, just to see some cowherds who owed him money.

The hardest thing of all was getting to sleep that night; but eventually Jack managed it.

To his surprise, he didn’t dream about the mountain.

Early morning found him in a little patch of woods not far from the stockade, hugging himself against the cold and grumbling against Ellayne for being late. She probably wasn’t coming at all, he thought. This was a joke, a big joke on him. Or else her father had caught her out at the last minute, and Jack would be blamed for the whole thing and sold down the river to unload barges in Obann for the rest of his life. He’d get her for that.

Someone’s feet crunched dead leaves and sticks.

“Oh—there you are,” Ellayne said.

He hardly would have recognized her. She had boys’ clothes on, stout boots on her feet, and had tucked her hair up under a floppy cloth cap that otherwise would have been too big for her.

“What kept you?” he snapped. “I’m freezing!”

“It isn’t easy to sneak out of my house. The maid’s very nosy. Here, I brought you some things.”

She laid down her bag and from it took out a knitted wool cap and a woolen jacket decorated with a yellow check pattern. It hung loosely on Jack’s shoulders, but it was the warmest garment he’d ever had on his body.

“See if these boots fit,” she said. “They were my brother Josek’s, but he grew out of them. The cap is Dib’s, and he’ll be mad when he finds out it’s gone. Try not to lose it.”

He had to stuff bits of torn-up cloth napkin into the toes; then the boots fit him well enough.

“I guess we’re ready,” he said, stomping a little to get his feet used to their new homes. “Which way is Lintum Forest?”

“It’s somewhere south of here. I don’t know how far. But it’s a big place. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

That was good enough for Jack, because he knew no better.

Jack knew a path that wound through the little woods. Ellayne followed him.

“One thing I don’t get,” he said. “I’m glad you’re coming with me, don’t get me wrong—but why did you want to? You didn’t dream about the mountain. You never thought of it until you heard me talking to Ashrof. What made you want to do this?”

She grunted as she yanked her pack free from some sticker bushes. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. “As soon as you said you were going to go up the mountain, I had to go, too.

“I don’t know how to say it—but I want to do something! Not just grow up and marry whoever my mother and father want me to marry, and wear nice clothes, and never see anything and never know anything, except what everybody else in the world has already seen and already knows.”

“Your ma and pa have been all the way to Obann lots of times,” Jack said. “You’d get to see Obann.”

“Anybody can do that!”

“I’m only asking because I don’t want you changing your mind and wanting to go back.”

“I won’t!”

It didn’t take long to pass through the woods. Jack noticed the green leaves were sprouting on the berry bushes just as they ought to sprout, in spite of the funny weather. Robins sang in the trees, blue jays scolded, cardinals chirped. Squirrels raced along the branches and up and down the trunks, pausing to chatter and scold.

The children emerged from the woods.

“So that’s the land!” Ellayne said. “I’ve never seen it before. There’s so much of it!”

Before them, almost as vast as the sky itself, stretched a rolling moor, wave after wave of grey-green grass and scrub and clumps of brush, with knots of trees here and there. Neither Jack nor Ellayne had ever seen the sea; few people in Obann ever had. But if you have, you will know better what the land looked like: a motionless ocean. Not a road, not a trail, not a single herd of goats or sheep or cattle with its drover, not a solitary human being on foot or on horseback—Jack had seen it before, but never really looked at it. It just went on and on until it vanished into a distant haze.

But to their left towered the mountains, lorded over by Bell Mountain itself with its crown of clouds.

“There is an awful lot of it, isn’t there?” Jack said. No wonder nobody comes out here, he thought. It seemed impossible that anyone could actually cross such a space. You’d just keep walking and walking without ever getting there—wherever “there” was.

“We should keep the woods between ourselves and Ninneburky,” Ellayne said, “in case anybody has started looking for us.”

“Are you ready?”

“Of course I’m ready. Let’s go.”

They stepped off together, entering a sea of tough grey moor grass that clawed at their shins and made slishing sounds with every step. The sun by now was just peeking over the mountains. Somewhere a crow cawed.

“It does seem kind of silly not to be walking straight toward the mountains,” Jack said.

“I told you—someone would catch us if we did that,” Ellayne answered.

“I wonder how far it is to Lintum Forest. We can’t see it from here, so it must be pretty far away.”

“If we keep walking, we’ll get there.”

It was easier to keep walking than to keep talking. North of the river was a greener, kinder land. Any cow that tried to eat this grass, Jack thought, would be sorry. Indeed, he soon learned he’d better step over the biggest tuffets if he didn’t want to be tripped up. Ellayne stubbed her toe and went down in a heap.

“Ooh! Help me up.”

Jack pulled her up.

“Look,” he said, pointing. She turned. “We haven’t done too badly. We’ve left the little woods pretty far behind, and it’s still between us and the town. No one will see us.”

But Ellayne preferred to look ahead. “Look how empty it is, Jack,” she said. “It’s an awful lot of country to have nothing in it.”

It was, all right, Jack thought. As far behind as they’d left the little woods, it didn’t look to him like they’d made any forward progress at all.

“I wish we could fly, like birds,” Ellayne said. “I’ll bet the wild geese fly over this country when they fly south for the winter. I wonder how long it takes them to cross it. And I wonder where they go.
Abombalbap
says there are dragons in the south. Real ones, that breathe fire.”

“We only want to go as far as Lintum Forest,” Jack said. “Then we’ll turn east and head for the mountains. We ought to be pretty good at long walks by then.”

When the sun was high, they stopped to rest and have a bite to eat. By then they’d come far enough that they couldn’t see the little woods anymore. There were too many ridges in the way. Jack and Ellayne had walked up and down those ridges.

“My legs are tired,” she said.

“It’s getting hot,” Jack said. He took off the wool cap and put it carefully in his coat pocket and undid his buttons. There was a little breeze, and it felt good.

“I’m wondering where we ought to spend the night,” Ellayne said. “Even if we had sleeping bags, I wouldn’t want to sleep out here all night. It’s liable to get cold. Maybe too cold.”

“We’ll build a fire.”

“I haven’t seen any rabbits yet for you to shoot at.”

“There’s bound to be something.”

He certainly hoped there’d be something to shoot at between here and Lintum, or they’d be apt to go hungry. He took his slingshot out of his bag, picked up a few pebbles, and spent some minutes practicing. A small, rotten, broken-off tree stump made a handy target.

“Have you really killed rabbits with that?” Ellayne asked.

“Sure—and had ’em for supper. I got a woodchuck once, too.”

“Well, that’s something. I’ve never had rabbit, or woodchuck. Do they taste good?”

“By the time we get some, they’ll taste great,” Jack said. “Come on, we’d better get moving again. Maybe we can find a good place to stay the night.”

Ellayne said, “Oh! My legs!” as she got up.

No rabbits made themselves available, but well before sundown they found a place to stay—a heap of ruins.

It was a few low, broken stone walls, some piles of jagged rubble, and a couple of broken columns that were like square stone trees. It was no kind of stone that Jack and Ellayne had ever seen before. It was as if each wall had once been a single slab of perfectly squared-off stone. Much of it was overgrown by creepers. It all sat atop a low mound that stood alone in an expanse of flat ground. The mound had steep sides, and they had a job getting to the top.

“I wonder what this was!” Jack said, turning slowly to take it all in. “Our whole town could fit on this hilltop.”

“Those walls will keep us out of the wind,” Ellayne said.

“I wonder if it was a town or just one great big building. It’s bigger than those ruins down by the river.” Jack shook his head, puzzled. “Van doesn’t like ruins,” he said. “He says he hears funny noises when he drives past them. But here we are, and I don’t see anything.”

“What does he think makes the noises?”

“He doesn’t know. We’d better decide where we want to build our fire, and then pick up enough firewood before it gets dark.”

This time of year they knew the cold wind came down from the mountains. They found a sturdy bit of wall between them and the east, cleared a spot for the fire, and gathered sticks and brush. Armloads of creepers torn away from their moorings would have to do for bedding.