Patrick Carman - Land of Elyon 04 by Into The Mist

Author:Into The Mist
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-27T15:24:49+00:00

CHAPTER 17

The Wakefield House

As we drew farther away along the cliffs, I felt Thorn watching us from somewhere atop the mountain, and I felt that other set of eyes watching us — the ones that were larger and scarier — from somewhere in the hidden realm of the wild. Whatever it was had stopped moving with us, and it seemed as if it was watching us from a hidden place in our past, not wanting us to escape into a new day. For a long time I had wondered when it would choose to pounce on us. Now, with the feeling of its presence weakening on each step out of the mountains, I began to think the feeling of being watched had been only a dramatic figment of my imagination. As much as I’d loved the thrill of our flight through Fenwick Forest and over Mount Norwood, I was glad to be free of this unseen fear that had haunted our movements.

Out in the open along the cliffs it seemed far less wild, as though we were at a threshold between the tamed and the untamed world. We’d come only a short distance away from the base of the mountain and were without Thorn to protect us. Thomas

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and I walked that way and stopped many times so that he could paint pictures of what he saw. He painted the forest and mountains from memory and the clouds over the Lonely Sea and the Dark Hills off in the distance. From that point on, he was most fond of using a brush made from Thorn’s fur rather than any from the children at the House on the Hill.

“You’d better slow down,” I said, watching him busy at his work. “If you keep it up you might run out of pages.”

He scowled at me, but he knew it was true and couldn’t help flipping his fingers through the remaining pages of the journal… as if he didn’t already know the exact number that remained. He put his things away and looked off in the direction we were heading.

“Do you see that?” he said, pocketing his journal and box of supplies.

“What?” I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Don’t you see it there? That tall thing. It’s the same color as the things behind it, but it sticks up high in the air.”

I still couldn’t see what he meant, and thought he might be either making it up to play a trick on me or seeing some sort of mirage in the rising heat of the morning. But as we walked on I, too, began

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to see the extraordinarily high, thin structure in the distance, as well as the small houses scattered at its base.

The Western Kingdom was before us, and we couldn’t help but believe that the tall spire that rose into the sky was the Wakefield House. We had come at last to the place we’d been searching for.

We quickened our pace and talked nervously about what we would do when we arrived at the edge of town.

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