Always October (16 page)

P
ulling Jake away from Mazrak was the scariest thing I'd ever done (at least, until then). I still have nightmares where I see the rage on that horrible monster's face as he realized we were about to escape him.

But in the hut I saw something that lifted my heart.

“Mrs. McSweeney!” I cried. “What are
you
doing here?”

Jacob gasped and looked up.

“Well, what do you think, darlin'?” she said. “I came to help!”

My grandfather snorted. “I shoulda known you'd be mixed up in this, Eloise.”

Mrs. McSweeney made a tutting noise. “When a monster invades a house where I'm tending the young ones, I don't have much choice, now do I, Abraham?”

“But how did you
get
here?” asked Jacob, wiping tears from his eyes.

“
I
brought her, of course,” said a sharp female voice from somewhere near my feet.

Looking down, I saw Luna Marie Eleganza the Sixth lounging next to Mrs. McSweeney's shoulder bag, which she had set on the floor. The cat extended a pure-white paw and began to lick it.

“Did that cat just talk?” asked my grandfather.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Luna, not bothering to look up. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I never heard you talk before,” said Jacob.

“I don't, on our side of the Tapestry. Things are different here.”

“What did you mean when you said you brought Mrs. McSweeney?” I asked.

“Oh, cats can cross over to Always October anytime they want,” said Mrs. McSweeney. “That's usually what's going on when you know a cat is in the house but can't find it—he or she has simply gone to Always October.”

“Of course, we don't generally bring our people with us,” put in Luna, sounding a trifle smug. “But herself here is a bit different.”

Mrs. McSweeney, looking serious now, said, “I've known who Little Dumpling was since the night he showed up on your doorstep, Jacob. That's why I urged your mother to go to that conference and made it clear I would stay with you. I wanted to be there on the night of the full moon in case anything happened.”

“If you knew, why didn't you say anything?” asked Jacob.

“Do you think your mother would have taken me seriously if I did? I already have a reputation for being slightly strange. Besides, I've been sworn to silence about certain things.” She sighed. “As it worked out, the situation was far worse than I expected. When I heard that uproar in the baby's room, and then couldn't get in, I knew things were bad. Then everything went silent, which was even worse. The door swung open, but the room was empty. I raced to the window and saw Mazrak running across the lawn. I snatched up Luna—”

“A bit roughly,” put in the cat.

Mrs. McSweeney scowled down at her. “It
was
an emergency, dear.” Returning her attention to the rest of us, she continued, “I knew they were goin' to Always October, and knew I had to get here too. But if Luna made the crossing from Jacob's house, I had no idea where we would end up. So we hurried home, because crossing from there brings us here to the Council Chamber, and that way I could at least warn the Poets about what was happening.”

“How did you know Always October existed to begin with?” I asked.

“That's another story altogether, and a fairly long one. Right now let's concentrate on finding a way to get you home. We need to be back before Jacob's mother or there's goin' to be hob to pay.”

She looked at Jacob appraisingly. “Actually, there's going to be hob to pay when your mother sees those marks on your face. What in the world happened to you?”

“He had an encounter with Octavia,” said Keegel Farzym.

Mrs. McSweeney raised her eyebrows.

“Now don't give me that look, Eloise,” said the High Poet. “I warned them about staying on the path.”

She made a little snort, as if she thought that was pretty inadequate, then said, “Did you at least get some silk out of it?”

“A lot, actually,” said Jake.

“Well, that's something,” she muttered.

I was getting impatient with all this. “Can't Luna take us home?” I asked.

Mrs. McSweeney shook her head. “It would be lovely if she could, dear. Alas, it's a one-cat, one-person arrangement. I'm her person, so she can bring me here. No one else—well, no other human—gets to travel on that ticket.”

Luna looked up from licking her paw. “I am
not
a ticket!” she said sharply.

“Just a figure of speech, darlin',” said Mrs. McSweeney.

“The McSweeney is right,” said Keegel Farzym. “It is urgent to get you back, for more reasons than you yet understand. Nor would it work for the cat to take you back right now even if she could. There is something you must do
before
you return.”

“What?” I asked.

“All will be revealed in a few minutes. Let us move on.”

“Now just a ding-danged minute,” snapped Grampa. “You're chivvyin' us along awfully fast, Mr. Monster. I'd like to know how come you didn't come out to git the boy yourself.”

The High Poet sighed. “I entered the hut ahead of you for two reasons, Mr. Carker. The first was to disarm the traps meant to protect this entrance to the Council Chamber … traps that would surely have ensnared the three of you. The second was to work a
new
spell to prevent the enemy from following once I got you inside. This new protection won't last long, but it should help. Unfortunately, once that spell was in place, I could not pass back
through
the door without destroying the very protection I had just created.”

“I s'pose that makes sense,” said Grampa grudgingly.

“I don't care about that!” cried Jacob, still struggling to control his voice. “What I want to know is how Mazrak was able to look like my father!”

Keegel Farzym frowned. “That is hard to say. I do not know all that our enemies are up to, or all that they are capable of. Perhaps Mazrak spied on your family long enough to mimic your father's appearance.”

“My father was gone long before LD came to live with us.”

“I did not say the baby was the only possible reason for Mazrak to spy on you. Other things about your house remain of interest to us. Now come. The Council awaits.”

As he said this, a door creaked open. A faint blue light appeared in the back wall, which I now realized was actually formed by the cliff. Dim as it was, the glow provided enough light for us to make our way forward.

We stepped onto a stone stairway that spiraled downward. It was lit by that same blue glow, which made my friends look slightly monstrous themselves. The light, such as it was, turned out to come from a fungus growing in patches along the walls and on the ceiling. It was lumpy and wrinkled, and smelled like wet forest.

LD reached and patted one of the lumps. It burst with a loud pop, causing him to cry out and bury his face against Jacob's neck. Then he laughed, twisted in Jacob's arms, and reached for another.

“Best not to touch the lumnifung,” said Keegel Farzym gently. “It's delicate.”

“Want!” wailed Little Dumpling as Jacob pulled his arm down. “Want!”

I noticed that his vocabulary seemed to have increased since we entered Always October. Reaching out for him, I murmured, “Hush, sweetie, and I'll sing to you.”

Jacob passed me the baby, and I began my song about the children the witch in the gingerbread cottage had cooked before she'd met Hansel and Gretel. It's one of my favorites—I have a separate verse for each child I've invented.

As I sang, I wondered whether the baby might turn back into his human form now that we were out of the moonlight. He didn't, for reasons we would soon learn.

The stairs brought us to a stony, circular chamber, about fifteen feet high and fifteen feet across. I had no idea how far underground we were now.

Ahead of us, across the stone floor and dimly visible in the blue glow, was another door, this one made of rough wood held together by thick iron straps. Nailed to its surface were various signs and symbols, some carved from wood, others made from metal. Keegel Farzym put his hand on the door, then spoke some words I could not understand.

With an ominous creak, the door swung open.

Following Keegel Farzym, we stepped into a huge chamber. It was lit by seven flickering torches, each burning in a different color. The flames ranged from a vivid red through yellow and green to a deep royal purple. Twisting roots—some fine as thread, some thicker than my arm—thrust through the ceiling and the moist earthen walls. Patches of toadstools dotted the floor.

I loved the place instantly.

Wonderful as the space was, the creatures who occupied it were even more fascinating. Five in all (or, at least, so it seemed just then), they sat in a half circle around a curved wooden table that was nearly level with my chin. Two more chairs stood empty. One, bigger than the rest and carved with strange designs, was at the center. On the table in front of that chair rested a crude hammer that looked as if it had been made by jamming a thick wooden handle directly into a chunk of stone. Beside the hammer was a flat rock.

A large tapestry covered the wall behind the table, its woven image showing a moonlit swamp through which prowled the silhouettes of mist-shrouded creatures.

Not one of the five monsters seated at the table looked like any one of the others. Even so, they did have three things in common: they were large, they were strange, and they were frightening.

“Pretty! Hello!” cried Little Dumpling, reaching toward them.

The face of the monster farthest to our right was hidden within the shadow of a large hood. I wondered if the creature wore the hood because it was too horrible to look at. It was the first to speak, saying in a low, surprisingly pleasant voice, “Welcome back, Poet.”

My grandfather gasped. Looking up at him, I whispered, “What is it, Gramps? What's wrong?”

“Nothin',” he said, shaking his head. “Nothin', Lily.”

The look in his eyes told me that he didn't mean it.

What was he hiding?

W
hen we entered the Council Chamber, the feeling that I had stepped into one of my grandfather's books skyrocketed. As in his stories, everything was strange and scary yet somehow made you
want
to be there. What really upped that feeling was the fact that I had already seen three of these monsters on the cover of his last collection of short stories—the one published just before he disappeared.

Mrs. McSweeney put her hand on my shoulder. LD gurgled and patted her fingers, clearly glad she had joined us. Luna coiled around my feet. For some reason I felt well guarded.

“You do not come alone, High Poet,” remarked the slimy green creature sitting at the far left of the group. He was one of the ones I had recognized. Just as my grandfather had described, his voice had a gurgling quality. “In fact,” he continued, “you have returned with a small crowd.”