Into The Mist (Land of Elyon) (16 page)

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sometimes so low we could hardly believe it. And always we felt as though we were moving in circles, going nowhere at all. At length we looped back around to the room from which we'd begun, and we sat down beside one another exasperated, hungry, and tired.

"It would be good to have some of that yellow soup or some water," said Thomas. His voice was beginning to sound a little dry, and I cursed myself for not begging some water from Miss Flannery before entering the Wakefield House.

"The stairs that lead out are right there," I said, pointing to the way we'd come in. "We could sneak out, find some water and food, then try again."

"I don't think that's the way it works," said Thomas. "I have a feeling this is our one chance."

I had the same feeling, though I didn't say so.

"Should we try one of the other ways? The day is getting on, and this will be a lot harder without any light."

Thomas scratched his leg and looked thoughtfully at his knee, probably thinking the same thing I suddenly was. He rolled up his pant legs and revealed the marks across his skin in the soft light of the room.

"I wonder if these would be of any help," he said, though it sounded to me like he didn't really

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think they had anything to do with getting to the top of the Wakefield House.

I rolled up my own pant legs and sat staring at the markings.

"I've lived with them so long I think I have every line memorized," I reflected, running my finger along the pattern as I'd done a thousand times before. I had pulled my legs up toward my chest and so had Thomas, and just then I let my knee hang limp. It drifted toward Thomas's knee and rested there while I kept running my finger along the lines.

We sat like that for a long, quiet moment, and then Thomas moved his outside knee so that it was next to his other, the three knees -- two of his and one of mine - sat together in a line. We'd never really thought to sit that way before and line things up, partly because there didn't seem to be any purpose in it, and partly because the markings on our knees were so different and we hadn't seen any real connection between the two. His markings were all of lines and squares, mine all of twists and circles.

"Come around the front," said Thomas. "There's something...." He looked at our knees like he was looking at a message hidden under moving water, like there was meaning he couldn't quite see, though clearly something was there.

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I shuffled on the floor until I sat facing him, and we knocked our knees together. I could only see my own knees clearly, the tips of where we touched like the peak of a small hill that drifted down the other side into Thomas's lap.

"Give me your hands," he said, holding his out in the air. We clutched each other by the wrists and pulled, lifting each other off the ground until we were even and could both look down on the four images coming together in the middle.

"Something's there," he said again. "Let's move to the window and try again."

It was rather dark where we sat, but when we moved under the light of the window and pulled each other up again, we both got a clear look at our four knees bunched together.

"Do you see it?" asked Thomas, excitement rising in his voice.

"I see it!" I exclaimed, and we both let go, tumbling backward and laughing out loud. We chattered nervously as we locked arms once more and held our position under the window. There, with our knees together, we saw the very room we were in. There were the eight doors and the two windows and, more important, there was a line that led a certain way, twisting and turning from my knees to his. My knees alone wouldn't show us how to

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navigate the Wakefield House, but our four knees together would.

"There are only a few hours of light remaining," said Thomas, glancing toward the window. "We'd better hurry if we don't want to spend the night in a haunted old house!"

"It begins with your knees," I said, looking intently at the fullness of the pattern. "With the squares and rectangles. But it ends with my knees, with the circles and swirls."

Thomas suddenly let go of my hands and I fell backward. He leaned forward, kneeling, then sat back on his feet. "This will be much easier," he said smiling, as if he'd figured out something rather obvious I should have noticed sooner.

I followed his lead and we touched knees again, this time with both of us kneeling on the floor. We were able to use our hands to point and decipher.

"The windows are here and here," said Thomas, putting one finger on each of his knees. "And this must be the stairway leading into the room." He pointed to a place where my knees met.

"That would mean," I said thoughtfully, pointing to one of the eight doors in the room, "we should go this way."

"That's right," Thomas said. "And that way is on my knee. All we need to do is follow it back and

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[ILLUSTRATION: The symbols on a leg.]

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forth between my two knees until it crosses over to your side, here." Thomas pointed to a strange little symbol on my right knee. It was something I'd never understood, an image I'd looked at a thousand times.

The image gave me a chill, for it was clearly the beginning of a second way we must take, a way of swirls and circles that looked unbearably confusing. As if to provoke us into action, the Wakefield House began to groan from above.

"We'd best be on our way," I said, and we both hopped to our feet together.

We went through the door with Thomas leading, checking his knees whenever we came to a window where he could see clearly. We became lost only once during the next hour and then doubled back, finding our way again. The path never did lead back to the room where we'd begun, and it was very clear that we were rising steadily into the air. Each time we came to a new window we were another floor higher, until we were so high up it scared me to look out. The higher we rose the less noisy were the sounds the Wakefield House made, but the more noticeable were its sways. I truly felt that if I leaned out one of the high windows at the wrong time my weight would be enough to topple the Wakefield House on its side. Thomas had no such concern, and was quickly at every window we

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encountered, leaning out and looking up to see how far we'd come.

"We're almost there!" he shouted as we came upon a new room. The rooms were growing steadily smaller as we rose, and the one we were in wasn't much bigger than Madame Vickers's kitchen.

"Come look!" said Thomas, waving me close. I listened for the creaking sound of the Wakefield House. Then, hearing nothing, I walked to the win-dowsill, leaned out, and looked down. I could hardly believe how far we'd come. I could see Miss Flannery's house and even her horse. Both looked unimaginably small from such great heights. I turned my eyes to the sky and saw that we were only one floor from the very top.

"It sways a lot up here," I said, moving away from the window. "Do you think it will fall apart?"

Thomas knew I didn't like ledges and high places, so he also knew how to calm me down.

"It's been here a long time," he reassured me. "I think it can hold two skinny brothers just fine."

He looked at his knees, but only for a moment, and then he gazed at the two doors before us.

"That one," he announced with confidence. "The end is through that door."

We went out of the room, up a set of steep stairs, and then through a zigzagging passageway where it quickly became too dark to see.

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"Do you know the way?" I asked Thomas, wanting to grab his hand in the darkness but finding myself too proud to do it.

"Just follow my voice," he said. "Skip the first opening you come to."

I did as I was instructed, feeling the open air of a passage we did not take. The way I was to go cut a sharp turn, and I bumped into my brother from behind.

"Watch where you're going!" he said.

"Very funny. Why aren't we moving?"

"Because we've come to the end."

I reached over my brother's shoulder and felt a wall of stone before us.

"We've gone the wrong way!" I said, suddenly losing my nerve and feeling claustrophobic in the black corner we'd wound our way into. "You must have made a mistake somewhere."

"There's no mistake," said Thomas. He was moving again, but I couldn't understand where he was going. I felt the cold of the walls with my hands and realized he was gone.

"Thomas! Where are you?" I yelled. A sliver of light appeared over my head, followed by the sound of something very old being opened and a flood of light pouring into the space where I stood.

"I'm here," said Thomas, looking down at me from above. With the light pouring in, I saw that

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there were notches in the wall for hands and feet and that Thomas had climbed up and pushed open a door. He climbed the rest of the way up, jumped inside the room above, and held his arm down to me.

"Come on!" he yelled down. "We've made it, Roland - we've made it to the top of the Wakefield House!"

I scampered up the stone ladder as fast as I could and bounded through the door into the soft light of a new room. As soon as I entered, Thomas let go of the door. It was heavy and only opened partway to begin with. It was restricted by a thick chain that would only allow it to open far enough for a person to get through. As soon as Thomas let it go, my heart sank, for when it closed it made a loud click.

"Thomas?" I said.

"What?" he answered. It was a voice mesmerized by what he had done.

"Was there a latch under there?" I asked.

"There was," he answered flatly.

We couldn't even see the door we'd come through, so perfect was its match into the floorboards of the room. There was no handle, no rope with which to pull the door back open.

The way from which we'd come was no longer open to us.

We were trapped at the top of the Wakefield House.

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***

CHAPTER 19

The Circle of Light

The very top of the Wakefield House greeted us with a sway and a groan. The sound it made was almost as quiet as it had been when we were outside on the ground. There was only one window in the room at the very top, and the room was shaped unlike any of the rooms before it. All along the way as we'd come up it had felt as if we were near the outer edge of the Wakefield House, like there was a solid inner core that ran straight up through the middle, a core we were being kept away from on our ascent to the top. Some of the rooms we'd entered were on one side of the Wakefield House, while others were on the other side, and all the rooms were in some way curved like the middle part of a letter C. But this room was different, for it went all the way around in a circle, a thin passageway wrapped around a stone column.

Thomas and I walked around the passage, touching the column and moving toward the waning light of the window. The Wakefield House swayed so much at the very top it made me feel like I was standing on water with gigantic but peaceful

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rolling waves beneath me. When we came to the window we both looked out, standing next to each other, wondering why we'd been brought to such a strange place.

Far off in the distance -- straight in front of our eyes -- was the towering presence of Mount Laythen. We'd seen it off in the distance many times from the hill where we picked through garbage, and we were about as far away from it now as we had been then, only we were seeing it from an entirely different point of view. From the hill it had been cold and unknowable, but from here it seemed to invite us closer.

"Look." Thomas had pulled back from the window and was pointing to an oblong hole in the stone wall. It went deep into the thick stone to a shadowy place we couldn't see.

"Something's in there," Thomas continued, gesturing to the top of the rectangular opening where an image appeared. It was the very circle and square image we'd seen on the iron doors leading away from Mister Clawson, the same image we both had on our knees.

Thomas reached his hand inside, and when he pulled it out he had his fingers wrapped around something shiny with the gold and rubies look of a treasure.

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"It's a spyglass," I said. "A very expensive-looking one."

Thomas extended the spyglass back and forth like a toy, laughing a little at how perfectly engineered it was.

"All this time, just sitting there, and it slides on golden rings as if it were only just made," Thomas commented. "Shall we have a look outside?"

It seemed like the obvious thing to do, and so with the sun hanging low in the sky, Thomas put the spyglass to his eye and stared out at Mount Laythen. He took his time, and I nearly crawled out of my skin with curiosity. Finally he took the spyglass from his eye and handed it to me.

"Somehow, I don't think you'll be surprised," he said, letting the spyglass go and stepping aside. And I wasn't surprised. There on the side of the mountain, in all its natural beauty, was the place where the image had first presented itself -- the image on our knees, on the iron doors, on the way out of the Great Ravine. The image was there, a natural part of the mountain itself, exactly halfway up the side of Mount Laythen. A square and a circle, intertwined as one.

I looked at Thomas, who was smiling and jittery, clearly ready for what this meant.

"It's a long way off," I said. I was tired, thirsty,