The Ever Breath (20 page)

Otwell raised his voice as high as an ogre’s voice could go. “We’ve a pimso, yah, but wee high.” He stuck out his hand to indicate Coldwidder’s height. “And he’s been eldbit by the windary and white knoffs. Could you bit-bit the fire-brays to brindle through the knoffs and loft him upwith?”

The banshees cried and wailed and gnashed their teeth. One whirred forward and shook her head, and her hair waved as if underwater. She responded rapidly and sharply to Otwell’s request.

Otwell held up one finger and bowed, and then turned to the others to translate. “We have to give her all of our food in payment.”

“That’s preposterous! We’ll starve out here!” Binderbee protested.

“We don’t have time,” Camille said. “We have to give it to her.”

“Or else,” Truman said, “the firebrays will loft the wee pimso upwith but they’ll take their time and he’ll be dead!”

Camille stared at him sharply. “Did you just speak half-Banshee?”

Truman shrugged.

“We’ll give them everything,” Camille said, pulling the rucksacks off Chickie’s back. “Come on!”

Artwhip and Truman pitched in, untying the sacks and throwing them toward the banshees.

“We are frissling our nosebags,” Otwell said. “Haste-please, will you criigle and toot the firebrays?”

Banshees swooped down and grabbed the sacks as they appeared and dashed off, spiraling into the air and then to the distant trees, except for one. She opened her arms and cried out, “Criiiiiigle! Criiiiigle!”

Truman could hear the fire-breathers tunneling toward them through the snow. They popped their heads up like prairie dogs and gazed adoringly at the banshee. She screeched her command and the fire-breathers set off, wildly bursting and snorting through the snow. They moved quickly, forcefully. And it wasn’t long before one rose up and let out its smoky grunts and the others came barreling over to help. In no time they’d unearthed Coldwidder, lantern pole and all, and nudged him out of the deep snow with their spiky heads and tusked snouts.

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” Coldwidder was screaming, swinging the snuffed-out lantern on its long pole.

“He’s a little blue around the gills,” Artwhip said, “but he’s still Coldwidder. Alive and well.”

The banshee whirred up, her hair spinning like a fan, but then she descended again. She cried out something that sounded like a warning.

Otwell squinted at her, confused. “A brottle that’s swipping from every prindle?”

“What does that mean?” Camille asked.

“She’s warning us that we’re being swipped from every prindle!” Otwell said, looking into the dark shadows of the surrounding woods.

“Stop speaking Banshee!” Coldwidder cried.

“We’re being watched at every turn,” Otwell said.

“Ask her who’s watching us,” Artwhip said. He had taken the lantern off the pole and was using the fire-starter kit to relight the wick.

“Whoowhit?” Otwell asked.

“Dezzles yev fleet blinkers,” she screeched as she flitted up and off. The snow-rooting fire-breathers followed, tunneling through the snow, trailing their puffs of billowy smoke.

“What did she say?” Camille asked.

Otwell kept scanning the woods.
“Dezzles
means millions and
fleet blinkers
are quick eyes.”

“Do you think Dobbler has sent an army?” Artwhip asked.

“An unseen army?” Coldwidder said, his eyes darting from side to side.

“It doesn’t matter,” Artwhip said, climbing onto Chickie’s back. “We have to push on. We’ve lost time and we’re off course. We need to pick up the pace.”

They all agreed.

“I think I know a shortcut that’ll put us closer to the Dark Heart.” Artwhip, still holding the pole lantern, climbed onto Chickie’s back. “If you don’t mind, Coldwidder.”

“Fine,” Coldwidder said. “It was the stars that were off. They can be tricky.”

They quickly fell into line and started marching single file into the forest.

“How about you send back some tarty-tarts from the rucksack,” Coldwidder said to Artwhip.

“Um, about that …,” Binderbee said.

“What?” Coldwidder said.

“We gave all our food away—in exchange for your life,” Artwhip explained.

“You did what?” Coldwidder said, looking shocked and then a little touched. “For me?”

“Of course we did,” Artwhip said.

“Did you think we’d let you freeze to death or get eaten by snow-rooting fire-breathers?” Truman said.

“Well, don’t get all mushy about it. You gave away all of our food, befuzzler!” he blustered. “What are we going to do now?”

“We could always change our minds and eat
you,”
Otwell said.

“Very funny!” Coldwidder said.

They all laughed, just a little, but they kept their eyes peeled for the dezzles of fleet blinkers that might be lurking all around them.

The path had disappeared. They were moving quickly through the forest, breathing hard. Plumes of steam rose from their mouths as if they were a train chugging up a mountain, Chickie leading the way. They leaned into the wind that would sometimes rip through the trees.

“Shouldn’t we check the globes?” Truman asked.

“I’ll look,” Camille said, opening her backpack.

Artwhip passed the lantern back to Otwell, who walked behind the kids with the light poised over their heads.

Camille kept walking as she peered into the rounded glass. It showed a dark cave, filled with rows of glowing lights. “Flashlights?” she whispered. “No, not flashlights…” As the scene came more sharply into view, she saw that they were jars, not unlike Swelda’s browsenberry wine jars. But these jars held lots of little blinking lights that moved around. The jars were filled with crawling bugs—lightning bugs. All kinds of strange creatures were carrying buckets and shovels and pickaxes. “It’s a group of creatures all working underground like miners.”

“What kinds of creatures?” Coldwidder asked.

“They’re all different,” Camille said, “except …” She squinted into the globe and saw dark chains clamped on their feet and paws and claws—all of them attached to the same row of chains. “They’re all prisoners.”

“That’s where they were headed,” Truman said. “Praddle and I saw a flock of caged creatures being carried up the mountain. And remember, Artwhip? In the alley outside of the ruckus tent?”

“That’s right,” Artwhip said. “A vulture, right there in the alley.”

“Are they mining for something, or excavating?” Coldwidder asked.

“Dobbler had blueprints on his desk,” Binderbee said. “He said he’d made a new alliance, one that would help with surveillance. It was with someone who might know where Cragmeal was and might know a thing or two about the Ever Breath.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. They were all thinking the same thing.

Camille finally said it aloud. “They’re digging a new passageway.”

“One that they can control—whoever they are,” Artwhip said.

“And Dobbler is in on it,” Binderbee said. “He wants to pin the robbery of the Ever Breath on Cragmeal, and put him away for good.”

“And he’ll team up with this new alliance of his, and then what?” Otwell asked.

“Everyone will be good, and evil will be done away with,” Binderbee said.

“And what does that mean, exactly?” Camille asked.

“It means,” Coldwidder said, “that Dobbler and this other person will be in total control of everything and everyone, and those who disagree, even in the slightest way, will be deemed unpatriotic betrayers and will be …”

“Done away with?” Truman asked. “Which means …?”

“Killed,” Otwell said.

Truman’s stomach tightened to a knot. He looked at Camille, who’d gone pale.

“What about
your
globe, Truman?” Coldwidder asked urgently. “Maybe it will tell us something more.”

Truman turned the globe over in his hands, and the snow in it swirled and kept swirling. He waited for it to settle, but it didn’t. He stopped walking to keep the globe perfectly still, but the snow inside only seemed to whirl more violently. “It won’t stop,” he said. “It’s like watching a snowstorm in a snow globe.” And then he called to Otwell, “Lower the lantern! I need more light.”

Otwell did as Truman had asked. “What is it?”

“It isn’t snow,” Truman said. “It’s a swarm.”

“Of what?” Camille asked.

But then suddenly, in the woods all around them, there was a flutter of white, what looked to be snow, except that it wasn’t coming down from the sky. It was coming up from the ground.

“Locust fairies! Millions of them!” Coldwidder shouted.

“That’s not all!” Artwhip shouted. “Dragonflies!”

One flew past Truman’s ear. He saw that it wasn’t the kind of dragonfly he knew. It was a tiny dragon—with a spiked tail,
teeth, claws, and wings. On its back was a rider—a teeny, tiny man in a shiny red uniform and high black boots.

“Run!” Otwell bellowed.

“Run?” Camille said. “Away from fairies and dragonflies?”

“Trust us! Run!” Artwhip shouted.

Everyone started running then, but Truman had a hard time not being dazzled by the beauty of so many locust fairies—their spinning wings, the dart of their bodies through the night air, white wings rising up from the white ground, white lifting from white—and the darting swarm of dragon-flies zipping among them. They poured through the trees. Truman felt like he was in a dream. He could feel fairy wings beating around his head, even lightly brushing his cheeks.

And then there were spiders, just like the ones he’d seen leaving town along the gutter that morning. They drifted down from the tree limbs on thin strands of silk and then they spun around Truman’s body, twirling and twirling around him, as if he were a maypole.

Truman could hear his sister’s voice off in the distance. “Where’s Truman?” she shouted. “Truman!” And then he heard her shouting, “No! Get away!”

He heard a lot of voices then, all shouting at the same time—from Otwell’s deep bass to Binderbee’s squeak. But he couldn’t see anything. His eyes were covered with webbing. His wrists were bound behind his back. And then the sea of tiny wings drifted off and a heavy set of wings descended. He felt a grip of claws pierce his jacket and then he was being pulled up from the earth, up and up and up.

And so Truman was up in the sky, cocooned in spiderwebs, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

The sound of the heavy, slow beating of the wings just above him and the taut feel of claws gripping the webbing at his back told him he was being transported by a vulture—a big one. Although he couldn’t see, he could hear other wings beating around him. Was it a flock of vultures? Had locust fairies, spiders, and vultures captured all of them? Had they plucked Camille and Coldwidder from the ground? Had they snatched Artwhip right off of Chickie’s back, as well as Otwell with Binderbee in his pocket?

Truman’s mind started shifting from one thought to the next in rapid-fire images. He saw Swelda’s parlor, the photograph of Ickbee and Swelda and their younger sister. He saw Ickbee’s face, close up, the rolling pin frozen over her head, and then, in his mind’s eye, his tiny view from the hollow log of the robe of locust fairies. He saw the museum again, with all of its strange and dusty items, and his father,
as a little boy, being left there alone. There was Erswat in her hooded cloak, and the old music maker waving his four-fingered wave. The blood-betakers, the snow-rooting fire-breathers, the banshees, the swirling wings of locust fairies …

“C’mon, Truman,” he muttered to himself. “Think!” He knew he needed help. He needed Camille. His mind flashed on the image of her in the window of Ickbee’s hut, and the strange feeling of her voice in his ear even though she was miles away. Would it work if he tried it again? “Camille,” he whispered, “are you there? Can you hear me?”

Everything was silent. He sighed.

But then he heard his name—a loud voice in his left ear,
Truman!
—and Camille’s quick, choppy breaths.
I don’t like this! Put me down!
she cried. And then she let out a scream.

Truman could hear the rush of water beneath him. They were following the path of a river, curving with each bend.

“Camille!” Truman called. “We’ve got to think!”

I’m not a survivor, Truman!
Camille shouted.
I’m just me. I’m just a kid. I’m not tough at all. I just pretend to be. I miss home. I miss Mom even though she gets teary sometimes and goes all Jell-O, and I miss Dad—not the kid he is in this world, but our real grown-up dad who sings us that stupid song every night. I miss that stupid song!

“It’s okay, Camille. I’m just as scared as you are. But listen to me! Breathe! Just try to take deep breaths!”

There was silence—nothing but the sounds of the water below and the whipping air.

“Are you there?”

I’m breathing!

“Just pretend you’re in a dream. A good dream where you get to fly. Haven’t you ever flown in your dreams?”

No!

“Well, pretend anyway. It’s a good dream.”

It’s a good dream. A good dream … very good dream …