Curse of the Thirteenth Fey by Jane Yolen

Author:Jane Yolen
Language: jpn
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2012-10-24T21:00:00+00:00

• 10 •

THE MAGICK GATE

With so many of the huge, hairy males and females surrounding us, the stench was almost unbearable, and so I held my breath. Grey and the prince must have done likewise, because when they spoke, their voices were strained and some of their words were hard to decipher.

“Dake her,” Prince Orybon said to the monsters but pointing at me, “do the Gate.” Then he turned to Grey. “Add you—go along wid dem.”

Grey nodded, and said to me, “Doh rudding off dis dime.”

I said nothing, which he took as agreement.

Then one of the McGargles came toward me and slung me onto his hairy shoulder, and we were off in that rollicking run I remembered from before. It gave me stomach cramps to think of it, of what I’d done to that first McGargle. But I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I kept my apology and guilt inside, though each thought turned into another stomach cramp.

As we loped along, I turned my head and saw Grey with a fiery torch at the middle of the pack of monsters. I wondered how long he’d remain there. Running while not breathing through your nose can’t be all that easy.

Even though I was bouncing up and down on the McGargle’s shoulder, I watched carefully where they ran. As long as Grey and his torch were close by, I could count the tunnels and how many turns we made. I was up to about five right-hand turns and a single left, but suddenly things got darker. I saw that Grey had fallen behind, because the torch kept getting dimmer and dimmer, and pretty soon there was no light anymore, just slate-gray tunnels, which corkscrewed and turned until I totally lost count of which way was which.

“Oh, Father, oh, Mother,” I whispered, a sort of prayer, but didn’t get any more than that out because the McGargles had begun singing as they ran, a kind of marching cadence. Or perhaps they’d been singing all along and I’d just been too busy counting turns to listen.

I recognized that kind of cadence because one of the Uncles had been a general, and before he left, he used to make the boys march around the forest in front of Grandfather Oak, counting off in a singing chant. We girls all took turns glamouring ourselves as one of the boys whenever Alliford or Carnell or the twins wanted to skive off from the marching, which was often. The general never knew the difference. Uncles only saw what they wanted to see. And what we wanted them to see. They may have understood about us being the Shouting Fey, but glamour befuddled them. As it was meant to.

Naturally, the monsters’ cadence was in the McGargle tongue, and so I didn’t know exactly what it meant. But I understood the tone and the pattern. And the count certainly kept them running together.

• • • • • • • •

After a long, twisting run, the cave trolls finally began to slow down and then gave a series of shouts.

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