The Map (3 page)

* * *
The Pond

The next stop on the map was marked by a cross-looking mallard. All around it were the swirly lines of water, scattered with little bones for good measure. The crackle of the next party favor brought us with remarkable accuracy into a tiny, ancient rowboat. I toppled to the stern, and Jackaby wobbled to find his balance at the bow.

“
Good aim,
” I said.

Jackaby looked out and frowned. “But bad timing.”

I pulled myself up to peer over the boat’s edge, half expecting a toothy swarm of ducks to barrage the vessel. Instead, as I leaned out, the dry, rotted side of the boat gave way and dumped me roughly onto cracked, dusty earth. We were in a brown, desolate bowl, half a mile across, bordered by grasses and a few thin trees.

“So much for step three,” I coughed. “This pond
looks as though it’s
been dry for decades.”

Jackaby nodded. “This challenge may prove more difficult.”

“What do you suppose we
’
re meant to do here?”

Jackaby felt the air as if tracing invisible threads. He followed one of them to the end of a rusty chain dangling at the boat’s prow and gave it a tug. It was fastened to a bucket, which he emptied of sandy soil, stirring up a horrific cloud of dry dust. Holding one end of his scarf over his mouth, he confirmed that the bucket, like the key and the vegetable before it, was an object of significance to this place.

“Do you suppose we
’
re meant to refill the whole pond by the bucketful?” I asked. I vaguely recalled reading a story about a group of women given a similar task and a sieve.

“No, this place was brimming at the time this map was drafted.” Jackaby took a pinch of gritty soil between his fingers and watched it with interest as he let it dribble back to earth. He tasted his fingertip for good measure. “I do believe we were meant to collect the water itself, which, for obvious reasons, is an unlikely prospect at present.”

“Well, that
’
s that, then. On to number four?”

“Not so hasty. Each task serves a purpose, Rook.”

“
Jackaby,
” I said, “none of this seems to have any real purpose. Water that has evaporated doesn’t seem any more important than a key without a lock or a turnip we can
’
t eat.”

Jackaby conceded the point and withdrew our next party cracker without enthusiasm. How was I to know that the crux of our next challenge—a matter of life or death—would hang upon the timely use of a turnip, after all.

* * *
The Front Gate

The fourth, fifth, and sixth steps were all within eyeshot of each other, but Jackaby insisted it was important that we take each in turn. The pop of a cheery purple party cracker brought us just outside the broad gate of an old castle crawling with vines and moss. The front face was hewn of massive stones with a wide tower at each corner, and the slightly caved-in roof of a central structure was visible just beyond. A few remnants of rotted beams appeared to have been part of a once formidable portcullis, but now they lay crumbling in the dirt at the feet of the wide stone arch. A thick chain hung from just behind the keystone, looping off into the shadows of the fortress. Whatever mechanism it might once have activated was long since out of commission.

“We seem to be a few hundred years late for this treasure hunt, sir,” I said to Jackaby, pitching a lump of cracked masonry into the darkness beyond the gate. The chunk of brick clacked and echoed through the dead chamber.

“There is something alive in this place.”
Jackaby
’
s finger
s played along invisible threads in the air, and he squinted into the darkness, sniffing. “Alive and ancient. I can see the tint of an enchantment saturating the whole area. This is very old magic.”

I stepped into the archway with him, ducking past the heavy chain and willing my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the inner chamber. The whole thing looked more like a medieval stronghold than an American fort. The entrance split into two narrow paths leading left and right. It had been designed to bottleneck potential invaders, forcing them to serpentine past tall, thin arrow slits, where defenders could easily pick them off as they came. Now the portals were blocked by creeping vines, letting only narrow shafts of dusty light cut unevenly across the hallway.

Jackaby trod in to the right, sniffing the area like a greyhound. “Rodent?” he asked.

I glanced around my feet. “Should I be looking out for magic rats?”

“Hm. No . . . not rats.” Jackaby drew a finger along the dusty stone as we walked. “Something . . . bigger.”

“How much bigger?” I stopped walking.

The chain behind us
clank-clank-clanked
to life, and the darkness deepened several shades. The arrow-slit shafts of light blinked out one by one as a tremendous shape eclipsed them from the other side.

“
Miss Rook,
” whispered my employer, “run.”

We exploded forward, heading to the light at the end of the passageway. The sound of the creature faded behind us, though the echoing rattle of the heavy chain betrayed its steady movement. Jackaby reached daylight moments before I did but skidded to a halt at once. He whirled around and barreled back into me.

“What are you—?” I began, but in an instant the bright mouth of the hallway where he had stood went black as the ragged, wooly form of a great beast leapt before it. I could hear the snap of jagged teeth and see wild, bloodshot eyes peering after us. It cocked its head back and forth, trying to gain a better view into the tunnel, then ducked and lunged after us, grunting and wheezing as it did. Two scraggly black ears dragged along the ceiling as the beast closed the distance with uneven bounds.

We scrambled out of the archway and back over the crumbling portcullis where we had come in, but the creature was too fast. I felt its breath on my neck and threw myself forward just as the chain rang out in protest, and the beast was pulled abruptly backward with a strangled whine. I crawled several feet farther before finally turning to survey the animal. Jackaby caught his breath and let out a relieved laugh, marveling at the figure before us. Its black fur was long, but thin and patchy, and its frame was all bony muscle and no fat. It was ten feet tall at its skull, though a pair of scraggly ears reached another two or three feet into the air. I blinked. Chained by the neck to the crumbling castle wall was a massive bunny.

“
Spectacular,
” said Jackaby. “It must have been bound all this time by an enchantment. You
’
re a very long way from home, aren
’
t you?” My employer leaned in, fascinated. The gargantuan rabbit pulled at its chain, reaching to snap at Jackaby with a pair of yellow incisors. When its manic efforts proved fruitless, the creature shook its head and hopped back to the castle gate to collapse to the ground, resting its head on the curve of the great archway. For all its ferocity, it looked sickly and exhausted.

“Why on earth would anyone magically enlarge a rabbit to use as a guard dog?”
I sputtered.

“Not a rabbit, and not enlarged,” Jackaby corrected. “A Brobdingnagian Hare. He began this size—well, a bit smaller as a young leveret, obviously, but proportionate in his infancy to the lagomorph you see today.”

“I swear you just make up every other word sometimes.”

“This hare comes from an island of giants, Rook. His enchantment has nothing to do with his size and everything to do with his suspended senescence.”

“That last bit in English?”

“I
’
m beginning to think a dictionary would have been a far more advantageous birthday gift for you.”

“More advantageous than being eaten alive by a giant, carnivorous bunny? Yes, most things fall in that category, I think.”

“This hare cannot age,” Jackaby stated flatly. “That is the enchantment, which explains why it has survived long after the other denizens of this place perished. Then again, it may very well have been the
reason
the others perished. It is a good deal more aggressive than your standard specimen but still a fascinating beast.”

“
It looks . . . miserable,
” I said. The humongous hare had begun beating a slow rhythm on the stones with its forehead. “So what do we do?”

Jackaby shrugged. “Consult the map?”

The map depicted a broken clock with long whiskers, obviously the hare. Two human figures stood before it, and beyond it only one. I looked at the castle and then at Jackaby. The grim realization hit me.

“Two paths,” I said. “The rabbit can only go after one person at a time. I think he intended for the holder of the map to find a willing sap to go through one end while he slid through the other. Two enter, one survives.”

Jackaby nodded. “Yes, I suspect you
’
re right. It would certainly be in keeping with his outlook on trust, I suppose. Fortunately for us, we don
’
t need to make it through this particular trap the way the Bold Deceiver planned.” He slid a pink party cracker from the bandolier. “We have our own route to the tower.”

I frowned.

“It
’
s all right, Rook,” Jackaby said. “I want to play by the rules and do the adventure properly, but I won
’
t have you jump into a fatal trap—not on your birthday.”

“It isn
’
t that.” I looked at the hare. From a safe distance, when it wasn
’
t snapping its incisors at my neck, the thing was truly pitiful. Through its mangy fur, the creature
’
s skin was stretched tight across its ribs. Its tall ears drooped and its eyes were cloudy and bloodshot. There was a madness there. Not the madness of fury, but of absolute fatigue.

Jackaby followed my thoughts. “I can
’
t reverse it,” he said at last. “It
’
s old magic. There are a few mages at the Zandermacht who might have been able to undo the effects after a decade, maybe two, but the spell is a part of him now. I
’
m sorry. There
’
s nothing we can do.”

“Can you see . . . ,” I faltered. I have never been quite certain of the nature of Jackaby
’
s vision, and he has never been particularly straightforward or coherent in explaining it. “Can you see its mind? See how it’s feeling?”

Jackaby breathed in, slowly. “It has sentience,” he said at length. “It is aware of itself, and it is deeply discontented.”

“And the villagers at the garden?” I asked darkly. “Are they sentient, too?”

Jackaby answered gently. “No, Rook. They show no more awareness than an average artichoke. They were taken by the garden, but they didn
’
t suffer. The people they had once been were gone.”

“Then there is something we can do for him.”

Jackaby knit his brow for a moment, and then his expression bloomed in comprehension. He pulled open his satchel and handed me the turnip.

The hare
’
s whiskers twitched, and its head shot up as I stepped forward. I came to the edge of the creature
’
s range and pitched the vegetable at its feet. The hare sprang up and inhaled deeply. It took an experimental nip, and then hungrily devoured the entire thing.

The change was almost instantaneous. The creature glanced down at itself as one quick wave of color turned its fur a blend of purple and white. It perked up at the sensation and then bowed down again, ducking its head into its chest as its ears sprouted into leafy green stems. Before I realized it was done, I was staring not at an animal, but at a bulbous plant more massive than any we
’
d seen in the garden.

“That last meal was a very long time coming,” said Jackaby. “He’s gone. You
’
ve put him out of his misery.”

I nodded, still looking at the enormous vegetable, and swallowed against a lump rising in my throat. It was frustrating to feel so sad for something as ridiculous as a ten-foot tall turnip. “Giant rabbit—giant vegetable. It . . . it was just the obvious thing.”

Jackaby put his hand on my shoulder. He waited until I met his gaze to speak. His eyes were soft and full of respect. “
Rook,
” he said with quiet earnestness, “it was a hare, not a rabbit.”

* * *
The Curtain Wall

Budging the heavy turnip out of the way proved as daunting an obstacle as the hare had been, and in the end we employed the pink party cracker after all. The fifth step on the map brought us into the towers bordering the castle. We were inside what Jackaby called the “curtain wall,” the castle
’
s first line of defense. It was stark and utilitarian, but the architect had tucked occasional accents into the brickwork. Little cherubs with chipped wings hung about here and there, and accents of stone leaves carved along the interior walls echoed the living ivy of the exterior. In the chamber before us, three iron cannons had been bricked into place with heavy mason stones. The base of each cannon was completely encased, blocking access to the gunpowder chambers, rendering them essentially useless. They stood immobile, aimed out of three openings only slightly larger than the weapons
’
muzzles.

“Jackaby,” I said, “how much do you know about Patrick Fleming?”

“Not a great deal,” he admitted, running a finger along a groove in the masonry. “Just the basic story. Shibboletta’s
Songs, Sagas, and Survivals
includes a short chapter on the man. Why?”

“He was human, right? Just a highwayman?”

“That’s the general consensus.”

“Then how did he do all this? The enchanted garden, the cursed hare—an entire castle erected on the far side of the Atlantic? Quite a feat for a mortal man to pull off on his way to the gallows.”

Jackaby frowned. “That’s an excellent question, Miss Rook.”

We walked along the top of the wall to the next tower, which was identical to the first. I pulled out the map and examined the miniature version of the castle. Each tower surrounding the central keep was marked with the same simple symbol: a teardrop.

“What do you suppose we
’
re meant to do here?” I asked. “Cry?”

Jackaby frowned. “The bucket,” he said. “Back at the lake, we were meant to fill the bucket and bring it with us.” He pointed to a pair of chubby stone cherubs who held a basket aloft near the doorway. I stood tiptoe to peer into the basket, and sure enough, it opened into a hole in the wall, inviting water to be poured in, like rain-spout gargoyles in reverse.

We paced around the towers, searching for hidden mechanisms or any significance to the water-trough sculptures, but their function, if any, was inscrutable. At length we descended the stairway to the sixth step, but our failure to carry out another one of the Bold Deceiver’s tasks left Jackaby unsettled.

I reassured him that if we met with difficulty, we could always head back to the towers and try again. The next destination on the map would not even require the use of a party cracker. We were headed for the castle keep.