The Beginning (24 page)

The five companions read the riddle several times, juggling the words over and over again in their minds. Jahrra could hear Gieaun and Pahrdh whispering the words incoherently under their breath, and all around her the murmur of low voices ensued.

“The River!” Gieaun hissed frantically after a few minutes of reflection. “It has to be!”

She looked up at her friends, the horse-head mask hiding the expression on her face.

“I think you’re right,” Pahrdh added, pulling down his own bear’s mask. “Quick, back down the main road, the same way we came into town!”

“Belly parts the sand,” he was muttering as they walked quickly together back towards the river, “the river bottom running along the earth. In winter the rains fill the river, and in the summer the river runs very low, leaving a groove. It has to be it!”

The five of them moved quickly down the cobblestone road until they reached the traffic bridge fifteen minutes later, all breathing heavily and clutching their sides.

“Alright,” said Scede, panting from the combination of brisk walking and jogging, “I don’t think the next clue would be on the traffic bridge, but maybe on the foot bridge?”

“I think you’re right, Scede,” Rhudedth added, tugging on his arm. “Look.”

She was pointing down near the edge of the river, about a couple hundred yards away. They could see the flickering light of a torch in the distance. It stood still for a few moments before it began moving east up the riverbank.

“Quickly!” hissed Jahrra as she jumped past her friends, almost getting snagged on Rhudedth’s golden butterfly wings. She didn’t even wait for them as she started running down the small dirt road that intersected the main street.

The fields were sunken below the town’s main avenues and the small dirt road they now traveled down ran parallel to the river’s natural levee to their left. Jahrra knew that as long as they stayed on this road they’d eventually intersect the path leading up to the foot bridge.

About half of the fields had already been harvested and the twilight shadows cast by the baled hay and bundled corn added an unnerving effect to the spooky feel of this Sobledthe Eve. Jahrra tried hard to block out the images of evil spirits and goblins her imagination couldn’t help but conjure up, and her stomach lurched when she recalled what Denaeh had once told them about the spirits of the dark. Jahrra shook these dreadful thoughts from her mind and soon felt the cool fall air pulsing through her lungs as she jogged. Before too long, the group reached the trail that climbed the levee up to the footbridge. Jahrra grinned, her thoughts of evil spirits gone for the moment.

“Alright,” she gasped as her friends caught up, “the footbridge must be this way.”

They all climbed the steep levee to find that a narrow wooden bridge did indeed span the river ahead. It allowed only two to pass together and had a railing to keep pedestrians from falling off. In the center of the bridge, there appeared to be some sort of plaque or sign attached to the railing. Jahrra quickly slid over to it, threw back her mask, and began to read in the flickering torchlight that Pahrdh provided:

StrAight As the hAckles on A dog we stAnd, fluid yet rigid,

AlwAys clothed, And never bAre.

We Are AlwAys moving, except when frigid,

Yet we go nowhere.

“What’s with all the out-of-place capital letters?” Rhudedth asked in frustration as she rubbed her glittered face.

“I’m sure it has a purpose,” claimed Scede as he removed his mask to get some fresh air.

“Alright, let’s focus,” Jahrra snapped, trying to remain patient. “What’s straight but at the same time capable of bending or moving?”

“Nothing,” snorted Gieaun, crossing her arms in an annoyed fashion.

“It has to be
something
, Gieaun. They wouldn’t give us a clue that doesn’t have an answer!” Jahrra retorted, her voice rising unintentionally.

“Well, you’re the one who insisted on taking part in this stupid scavenger hunt! You wanted a challenge! Why don’t we leave you here and you can figure it out on your own?”

Before Jahrra could give her rebuke, Pahrdh cut in, “Hey, calm down, we can do this! It can’t be that hard. Let’s start with the main parts of the clue.” He read it aloud once more and then glanced up, looking truly perplexed. “So it seems to be a little bit of a contradiction, but riddles are supposed to be that way, right?”

“Why don’t we just start listing off things that are straight, and then go from there?” Rhudedth squeaked, trying to keep her wings from getting bent by her pressing friends. “At least that’s a start. But we’d better get off this bridge. We could be giving this clue’s location away to other people.”

Jahrra quickly took out the small piece of charcoal she’d brought along and jotted the riddle down on the back of the paper with the first clue. The group then moved back down onto the main road and huddled around the parchment, reading the riddle again and again. After naming off a variety of objects that were straight (fence posts, roads, arrows), they moved onto another part of the clue.

“What can move but at the same time goes nowhere?” Jahrra asked, trying hard to keep the frustration out of her tone.

“Corn stalks are straight, but they can move in the wind, and scarecrows can move in the wind as well,” Gieaun said, looking out into the dark fields for inspiration.

“Maybe the next clue is attached to one of the scarecrows in the fields?” Rhudedth offered weakly.

“Yeah! And scarecrows are always clothed, that has to be it!” Gieaun added excitedly.

“Wait a minute,” Jahrra said, holding up a black raven’s wing. “
Always moving, except when frigid.
When is it frigid?” she asked, addressing the entire group.

“When it’s cold, windy or at night,” the red boar that was Scede rattled off absentmindedly. “Also during the winter time.”

“Huh,” Jahrra said in a pensive manner. “So, whatever the answer to the riddle is, it doesn’t move when it’s cold. So that would mean,” she continued slowly, “if
scarecrow
were the correct answer, then the scarecrows couldn’t move when it was cold out. But wouldn’t they move when it’s windy?” Jahrra paused, screwing her eyebrows together, and then said abruptly, “I don’t think it’s
scarecrows
.”

Gieaun crossed her arms in a huff again, but Pahrdh understood what Jahrra was trying to say.

“So, we have something that’s straight and bending, never naked, moving and holding still, and only moving when it’s warm out?”

Pahrdh’s confusion was translated through his tone of voice. Rhudedth released a pathetic sigh. Scede kicked at the ground and Gieaun stood absolutely still, staring down the dark road as if the answer would manifest out of the darkness. The friends had been standing motionless for over half an hour, and the moon was beginning to show its face over the horizon. A few groups of people had come and gone, and the five of them were growing more and more agitated as each minute passed.

“What could it be?!” Jahrra hissed in dire aggravation. She was very close to shredding the paper to bits.

She looked up at the rising moon in the east for comfort and let her eyes wander to the shadowy crop of woods to the northeast. The trees were very dark now, and their blackened, ragged edges stood out like wicked, serrated teeth. Jahrra then looked down the main road in the opposite direction, spotting the old maple tree that grew a few hundred yards away, its few remaining red leaves looking like dark drops of blood against the washed out ultramarine of late twilight.

Suddenly, Jahrra shot her head back towards the forest. She nearly jumped when the magic-tinged bead in her wood charm armlet flared minutely, tingling her skin for only a moment. That’s all it took to make the answer click.

“Pines!” she shouted louder than she had intended to.

Her four friends flinched and then turned to glare at her.

“What?” snapped Scede.

“Evergreens!” Jahrra rejoiced, the weak torchlight dancing in her smiling eyes. “They are always clothed: they don’t lose their leaves in the fall! They don’t grow during the winter months, and they are always moving, growing, but always standing still. And the wind makes them fluid!”

The group looked down at the paper one last time, and Pahrdh said, “Hey, I think that’s it. C’mon, those woods up ahead are the only group of pines within a two mile radius of the city. The next clue has to be there somewhere!”

They hurried along the path, the looming grove growing taller as the group drew closer. Jahrra placed a hand over her bracelet as she jogged, understanding now why the elves insisted it would aid her. The tingling sensation was gone, but she could still feel the Apple bead’s warmth. She smiled and picked up her pace as her small band of friends dashed down the road.

Every now and again a bat or an owl would fly by, clicking after insects or making a solemn cry, sending a chill through everyone as they moved closer to their destination. The two torches that the boys carried fluttered in the crisp night air as they ran, and after a half mile or so, they finally reached the edge of the trees. A small path, the white sand barely visible beneath the dark shadows of the forest, broke from the road and twined around the trunks of the conifers.

“I bet we have to go in there,” breathed Rhudedth ruefully.

“It can’t be that far in,” Scede offered, taking a deep, weary breath.

The children entered the woods, single file, Pahrdh in the lead with one torch and Scede taking up the rear with the other. After several yards into the copse, the path ended in a tiny clearing where there stood yet another post and plaque.

“This is it! Quick, write down the clue Jahrra, I don’t want to stand in here much longer,” Gieaun said, shivering a little in the shadows of the trees.

The flickering torchlight jerked and danced from side to side, casting living shadows that made the trees seem alive. Jahrra quickly jotted down the clue and the group headed back out to the main road, once again gathering around the parchment. This time Jahrra read it aloud:

The Various colors of fall adorn my lot,

across the Vast fields I roam.

Vermin prey upon me, though I hear them not,

both from aboVe and below the loam.

“This one’s as hard as the last one, but we need to figure it out fast,” Jahrra finished, pursing her lips under her mask.

The darkness was making it difficult to read and the sounds of the night’s denizens made it hard to concentrate.

“Let me see it for a moment, Jahrra.”

Jahrra handed the parchment over to Gieaun, grateful to let someone else have a shot at it. Gieaun pushed back her mask and rubbed her eyes.

“It sounds like something that changes color in the fall, the maple trees perhaps?” she sounded tired, like she didn’t want to have to think anymore.

“I think it’s talking about something that lives in a field. Maybe some sort of crop that is grown there. But why mention that it can’t hear? Everyone knows plants can’t hear,” Rhudedth said in a flustered tone.

“It’s the native corn!” Scede said suddenly. “The cornfields, the ones east of town, the kernels turn to orange and red in the fall, just before harvest! The farmers usually harvest them last, waiting for them to change color! And they have ears, but they cannot hear, like the riddle says!”

“Good job, Scede!” said Pahrdh, relieved to be moving once again.

The group ran the remaining five hundred yards to where the field of the native corn stood. The road was now following the edge of the small forest; the river had long since headed northeast. Jahrra didn’t like being so near to the wood at night, but she desperately wanted to win this contest, if not for the prize money for the glory. Not to mention, it would give her another one-up on Eydeth and Ellysian.

After spending several minutes searching around the immediate area of the cornfield, the children grew restless once more.

“The previous clues weren’t difficult to find, where’s this one?” Scede complained. “They don’t expect us to traipse through the corn fields all night, do they?”

“Read the clue again, maybe we missed something,” Jahrra said, a little more irritably than she meant.

Gieaun cast her friend a frustrated glance before reading the clue aloud once more. While the group stood there wracking their brains for some idea of where the riddle might be, a rustling noise in the field adjacent to the woods caught their attention. Scede and Pahrdh wheeled around, torches held high, trying to see into the cornfields to judge what had made the noise.

“Probably a possum or a fox,” whispered Rhudedth nervously.

“We’re on the main path, so the clue
must
be around here somewhere,” Jahrra said, her focus returning to the paper that Gieaun clutched in her hands.

“The first riddle led us to the river, the second to the forest, but the path runs
around
the cornfields. We already checked the entire perimeter, so the clue has to be somewhere within the fields. Maybe we should see if any of the stalks are pushed aside; maybe someone ahead of us found the clue already.”

Just as Gieaun was tucking the paper away, a crashing noise, louder than the one they’d heard before, sounded from the dark tree line. The five companions froze and stood staring at the spot where the commotion had come from. Scede and Pahrdh held their torches up once again.