Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (21 page)

“I think,” Lily said, puffing, “I think…this one's smaller.”

“Or a child,” said Jasper. “Of the same species.”

The three swerved around bushes. The awful kraken levered itself over branches, chuckling in the firs.

“I have…a horrible thought…,” said Lily.

Katie asked, “What's that?” as the beast roared.

“The tentacles…,” said Lily. “Katie…
Jasper…Maybe these are mountain squids. I…thought they…lived in the water…but…”

“But maybe they don't,” said Katie. “Maybe they live in trees and chasms.”

“And…,” Lily panted, “that means…that we might be going up the wrong mountain…Maybe Tlmp…is the one with the lake…”

“We can't think about that just now,” said Jasper.

“It's no good running!” said Katie, looking backward. “It's faster than we are!”

The squid came hurtling down at them. Lily ducked—Jasper yelped—

The monster threw itself through the treetops—chose Katie—snaked out a feeler.

Katie shrieked—then shouted in defiant surprise, “What is it”—swatting at the tentacle—“with me and tentacles these days?”
*

The squid lifted her from the ground. She half turned—as much as she could—feeling the muscle ripple around her, and saw the huge, chip-toothed mouth, the pulsing coils—

She screamed.

And out of the air, a curious beast flew.

It was a dinosaur—green—with a gentle face—four stumpy legs—two graceful, feathered wings—and a sparkly, soft mane of purple and pink. It descended from the sky to face the squid.

Katie looked up at it in wonder.

It roared fearsomely at the mountain squid. The squid, aghast, dropped Katie to the ground. It started whipping tentacles at the sky, flailing the tops of the trees. The dinosaur roared, reared.

Battle was joined. The giant drool-mouths of the squid chomped away at the air as feelers
slapped the beating wings of the sky-saur. Gilt feathers wafted through the air.

Katie stood by her friends, mouth open, watching the battle.

“It's…it's my dinosaur,” she said. “That I made out of my Star-Wonder Glitter-Pony. They…they really exist.”

“Incredible!” said Jasper.

“We'd better run,” said Lily. “While we can.”

“Hey!” said Katie. “Where is that stupid teacher?
He should not have made me redo that dinosaur project! I want an appeal to a higher court!
”

They had started walking away from the fight. Katie's dinosaur had lifted up the mountain squid, pulling its suckers out of the treetops, and was carrying it off somewhere for dinner.

“Um, we have another problem,” said Lily. “If that's a mountain squid, then we don't know that we're even on the right mountain.”

Katie asked, “Do you think that dinosaur
could become my own special dinosaur? And always protect me from tentacles?”

Jasper took his brass telescope out of his bag and trained it on the other peaks. “I am searching…,” he said, “searching for other monsters like that one. Ah. Yes. There's one crawling on the rocks near the giant pillar. And one in the grass near the lake. This is a dismal sight, chaps. The mountains appear to be fairly lousy with squid.”

“So we don't know we're going the right way,” said Lily. “I led us into a wild goose chase.”

“No,” said Jasper, snapping the spyglass shut. “
I
led us into a wild goose chase.”

But it was Lily who felt awful. She had been proud of her solution—she felt like she had really contributed something—and she'd been proved wrong.

I know exactly how she feels. Because you and I were proved wrong too. We did the same puzzle and came up with the same solution. It
could be that if we'd figured out that grid correctly, right now you'd be reading a book about someone on a different mountain, striding up to the mysterious, aeon-blasted pillar, say, and reaching out a hand to touch its pitted surface, when suddenly we hear, through the howling wind on the high heath, a sound like something moving right underground, under our feet, and realize that this mountain is actually the fabled location of—

But no. All of us—you, me, and Lily—have ended up here on the mountain with the pine forest, and our choice wasn't illogical. We did a good job. We just didn't know an important fact about mountain squids.

But still, Lily felt terrible. She scraped at the bangs that kept blowing in her eyes, and squinted bleakly around at the peaks and the jungles.

“What are we going to do?” said Katie.

“Let's keep going up,” said Jasper. “When we have a better vantage point, maybe we'll be able to see the tops of the other mountains.”

They walked through steep valleys of rock. They scrambled over bracken. There were, eventually, blueberry bushes.

Each time they thought they were almost at the peak of the mountain, they discovered that they were just on the lip of another hillock—and still the mountain towered higher.

Round about evening, they broke out of the tree line for good.

Below them, stretching as far as they could see, were the jungles of Delaware: the gorges and hills. Very far away they saw the grasslands, the rice paddies through which they had driven with Bntno. Out there lights were sparkling in distant villages and farmsteads.

The cold evening wind blew over them.

“We don't even know that this is the right mountain anymore,” said Lily.

“We need to sleep,” said Katie. “I'm tired.”

“It's not safe,” said Jasper.

“So what are we going to do?” Katie demanded. “We can't just walk until we fall over!”

“We need to keep walking,” said Jasper.

“Says who?” Katie demanded. “This isn't a walk-ocracy.”

“I'd really like to stop,” said Lily. “I mean, I could go on, but…”

Katie repeated, “What are we going to do?”

And just at that moment, nearby, there was a soft green glow.

They turned and looked across the barren mountainside. Boulders and crevasses caught the light of the dying sun. The sky was red. One blasted, crooked little tree was red.

And beside it was the ghostly figure of a boy. He did not seem to see them but stood upon the mountainside as if keeping watch. He was green and translucent, and his robes rippled in the wind.

It looked as if he had been standing there playing sentinel since the ancient times. He looked out over the crimson horizon.

“Drgnan!” exclaimed Jasper. “Drgnan Pghlik!”

He ran toward his old friend.

“Drgnan!” Jasper said. “It is wonderful to see you! Even translucently!”

But the ghostly Drgnan Pghlik did not seem aware of Jasper. It simply turned and started pacing away up the mountain.

“It's his astral form!” said Jasper, delighted. “He sent his astral form to guide us the last few miles.”

They scurried after the specter.

“Lily,” whispered Katie. “Do you realize what this means? You were right all along! Tlmp
is
the mountain with the pine forest—and we're on it!”

Lily nodded. “Yeah,” she said, feeling a little better.
*

“She's right, Lily,” said Jasper, scrambling over a boulder. “If it hadn't been for you, we'd be hours away. He never would have found us.”

“Can we throw stuff through him?” asked Katie. “I mean, safely?”

No one answered her; and soon, they were all too exhausted with the climb to speak. The ghostly figure led them along paths through the night. In some places, there were secret stairs that had been carved into the rock. He drifted forward on narrow rims of stone.

It grew colder. Very cold. Incredibly cold. Their breath came out in puffs.

Drgnan Pghlik walked without turning, seemingly without ever noticing their presence.

He led them through hollows of granite. They walked past cairns—piles of stones heaped on the top of cliffs. They passed old carvings: fanged faces, dancing gods.

A mist closed thickly around them. They were in the clouds. All they could see was Drgnan's glow. They shined their flashlights up and down the narrow path. Though they could not see the impossible drop to one side of them, they could hear it. They could feel it in the booming wind.

Lily thought she had never been so tired. She tried to concentrate on every step—not on how far they had left to go or how far they had come. One foot in front of another.

Her back hurt. Her head was sore. She was getting a throat-ache. Her hands were numb.

Jasper skipped along as if nothing was difficult for him, as if the air weren't condensing on them all as frost.

Through the night they climbed. It was a dark night, a night of haze and cold.

At around four o'clock, the mists began to clear.

They were climbing a long ridge of stone on all fours. Lily did not want the light to rise too quickly. She knew that she would see sheer drop-offs on either side of them. She didn't want to know. She didn't want to see how far she would fall if she slipped.

Snow blew across her face. She wiped it away, blowing her frozen bangs out of her eyes.

“Drgnan!” she heard Jasper call. “Drgnan? Where are you going?”

With the dawn, the specter was flickering out.

Drgnan Pghlik's astral form turned once, his forlorn face finally beseeching them for help. Then he disappeared.

“Drgnan! You can't leave us like this!” said Jasper. “Which way? Which way?”

Katie and Lily looked on in horror. But Jasper's friend was gone.

With the dawn, a great wind arose. A huge fan of snow swept across them and dissipated.

“Look!” said Katie.
“Look!”

It stood above them, about a half mile away, lit bright against a blue sky and dazzling plumes of snow.

The monastery was built upon the craggy walls of a volcanic crater, crowning three little peaks, its bastions and bridges cast between them. It was a maze of sloping walls and stone towers, gardens of gemlike green and ornaments of brass dazzling in the morning sun—white stone and gilded spoons on which monks hurled themselves from temple to temple.

It rose up out of a pine wood, through which paths wound, lined with gray prayer flags flapping in the breeze. From the high battlements, the morning horns sounded.

Katie, Jasper, and Lily had reached Vbngoom, the Platter of Heaven.

The three made their way toward the monastery. They were glad that their approach was hidden by the forest. They knew things would be very dangerous for them once they got close to the walls.

“Bobby Spandrel,” said Jasper, “is clever and ruthless. We must take every precaution.” He took out his ray gun and proceeded with it at the ready.

“Jasper,” said Lily. “One thing with taking precautions? Just to remember?”

“Yes, Lily?”

“Your ray gun is out of batteries.”

Jasper frowned. He pointed the gun straight up and fired it. Not even a flicker came out of the nozzle.

“You're right,” he said. “Curses.” He fired uselessly a few more times at the sky. “Ah well. Forward, chums.”

“Forward,” muttered Katie.

They walked down the path. On each side of them, there were gray prayer flags, thin and gauzy as ash, blowing in the mountain breeze.

They crept through thickets of spruce. Ahead of them, they could hear the sound of engines and groaning. They didn't like it at all.

They rested for a minute against three pillars they found in a clearing, and they planned in whispers.

“We don't have any weapons,” said Jasper. “Not a single electro-atomic ray blaster among us. This worries me.”

“How are we going to get into the monastery?” asked Katie. “We can't just walk up to the front gates.”

“It's too bad we can't dress like monks,” said Lily. “If we had…you know, monk suits.”

“In movies,” said Katie, “when people need to get into a secret facility, they always run into three guards and then they grab them and pull them off-screen into closets for a second and then they come out wearing their uniforms. And the uniforms are always exactly the right size. Maybe they pull them into fitting rooms.”

Lily and Jasper really had nothing to say to this, so Katie continued, “Which would be great, except my feet are a really weird shape. I have a short foot, like a size five, but wide. It would be really hard to find a guard shoe that would—”

“Um, hey,” whispered Lily.

She pointed straight up.

The others looked up at the top of the three pillars they were resting against.

Sitting on top of the pillars were three old monks, naked except for white loincloths. Their eyes were closed. Their beards had grown down and intermingled with their knees, their toes, and vines.