Summerland by Chabon Michael

Author:Chabon, Michael [Chabon, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Disney
Published: 2011-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The Housebreakers of Dandelion Hill

THE INTERIOR OF A FAIRY KNOLL, as Thor Wignutt explained to Ethan, is invariably laid out on the plan of a spiral. In the case of a great ferisher court such as Caer Sidhe, Lyonesse, or the Fields of Even, there may be several hills, and spirals linked to other spirals linked in turn to more spirals, in a grand and intricate labyrinth of tunnels. But the court of Filaree, Queen of the Dandelion Hill, was just an ordinary sort of ferisher knoll, rustic and plain. It plays no role in any tale or record, aside from this one, and until the appearance there of the traitor princess Spider-Rose, no personage or hero of any particular interest had ever turned up within its confines. Once Ethan and Thor were on the other side of the cell door, therefore, it was immediately apparent that there was only one way to go—up. The cell into which they had been tossed was the lowest room in the hill—the spiral died, so to speak, at its door. Going up it led, in long, gentle but ever-narrowing loops, to the council chamber at the very summit, in the usual and predictable ferisher way. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the whole situation in which they now found themselves, as they set up the curving tunnel in search of Ethan's lost stick, was that Thor Wignutt was explaining the whole thing. He was whispering, so it was harder to tell, but it seemed to Ethan that his friend's voice really had lost, perhaps for good, the slightly irritating flatness it took on when he was being TW03 and explaining about thermal vents, or how you could plot a human being on a sheet of graph paper, if you really wanted to. He was just talking, in that gravelly voice of his. It made Ethan feel oddly sad. It had been annoying, true, to be referred to as "Captain" all the time, and to be kept constantly informed of the coordinates of this, and the ion-emissions of that. But then again there was something kind of nice about the way Thor was always trying so hard to behave like a real human being. That was a lot more than you could expect from some people. The actual significance of what Taffy had told them back in the cell—that Thor was, in fact, not a real human being at all—well, that was just too much for Ethan to think about right now.

As they climbed, they passed dozens and dozens of low ferisher doors, most of them elaborately carved with tangling shapes that might have been vines or flames or the characters that spelled out a grammer. Many of the doors had been left ajar, even wide open. The rooms inside—kitchens and sculleries, bedchambers and salons, card rooms and galleries, had all been abandoned to the urgency of council. They were lit by rows of tiny windows that let in the afternoon sunshine, though Ethan was sure he had seen no windows on the outside of the knoll.

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