The Game of Sunken Places Read online

  “Maybe his sleek escape-gazelle jumped up and caught him.”

  “Right. But seriously.”

  “It’s a good thing you realized what he was after.”

  Compliments always made Brian shy. He said, “Oh, yeah…I mean, no. It was, you know, just sort of obvious, when you stop and think about why he was so intent on getting up to the roof. It had to be the answer to the riddle.”

  “So he’s our opponent in the Game.”

  “Yeah,” said Brian. He thought for a moment, then said, “I wonder what will happen, now that he’s gone.”

  “If he’s gone.”

  Brian nodded. “At least we’re ahead now, though. We bought ourselves some time.”

  They walked a little farther. Gregory said, “Now I get to see the troll.”

  Brian said, “I guess.”

  The troll was sitting on the bridge, scraping at the soles of his feet with a pumice stone. He looked up as they came down the slope toward the river. He nodded as they approached. “Fine. Good job,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Gregory stared.

  Brian walked forward and handed the weathervane to the troll, who scrambled to his feet. “You’re in the lead,” said the creature. He handed the weathervane back to Brian.

  Brian asked, “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  The troll shrugged. “I don’t need a weathervane,” he said. “You could give it to your friend, for one thing, if he wants to cross the bridge.”

  Gregory came forward. Brian handed him the weathervane.

  “There we are,” said the troll. “All nice and legal. You want to come in for some mulled cider and funnel cake?”

  “No,” said Gregory, incredulous. “You swung an ax at my friend.”

  “It’s my job,” said the troll.

  “We’ll—we’ll take the cider,” said Brian. “If we can ask a few questions.”

  “You don’t like funnel cake?”

  Gregory rolled his eyes.

  They walked across the bridge and trundled down the rocky bank of the river. There, beneath the bridge, built into the struts at one end, was a door that led underground. The troll opened it and gestured. He said, “Wipe your feet.”

  They ducked and stepped inside.

  Within the stone house was a battered iron pipestove and several high-backed leather chairs sitting around a rough wooden table. Next to the pipestove was a large stone fireplace with a pipe rack and a kettle on the mantel-piece. Around the room were scattered faded Persian rugs, books in a peculiar language, and the bones of small, unfortunate creatures. Over the door was the huge battle-ax, grimed with old blood.

  “If you’ll excuse the mess,” said the troll as he shut the door behind them. “Just sit anywhere.”

  The two sat across from each other at the table, warily eyeing their host.

  The troll explained, “I’m Kalgrash. The troll.”

  “I’m Brian,” said Brian.

  “I’m Gregory,” said Gregory. “I don’t believe any of this.”

  The troll shrugged. “I was lying about the funnel cake,” he admitted. “I just wanted company.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t wave an ax at visitors,” said Gregory.

  “Nothing personal, kiddo. I received orders.”

  Brian leaned forward. “From who?”

  “The Speculant. He said it was Time.”

  “Heck,” said Gregory. “I don’t know what I’d do if the Speculant didn’t drop by every once in a while to tell me it was Time.”

  “You’re kind of a sarcastic little fingerling, aren’t you?” said the troll.

  “Don’t you think threatening people with an ax is a strange thing to do?”

  Kalgrash slipped a kettle onto the stove and answered, “Not really. Not for a troll. It’s what my parents did, and my grandparents, too. You want any squirrel in the cider? Just one? Gray?”

  “No, thanks,” said Brian.

  Gregory shook his head. “There goes my appetite.”

  Brian asked, “Would you mind if we checked our game board?”

  “Not at all,” said the troll.

  Brian pulled it out of his pack and flipped it open on the table.

  Things had changed. Now the forest across the river was filled in. The path headed through a maze-like group of mounds and hillocks labeled THE TANGLED KNOLLS. There were several routes out of the maze. Brian followed each one of them. “Hey,” he said, “look at this. A way underground. If we can just get through the Tangled Knolls and find this place—it has pillars and a dome—it’s called Fundridge’s Folly. It looks like a little Roman temple or something. There are steps from it that go underground to something called the Dark Marina.”

  “You like going underground?” asked Kalgrash. “You know what I think would be great? A system for harvesting potatoes from the underside. They’d grow out of the ceiling. You’d pull them down.” He twiddled his hand above his head, as if unscrewing a lightbulb.

  “We’re trying to get into the mountain,” said Brian. “We think there’s a hidden kingdom there.”

  “Yeah, there is,” said the troll. “Mum’s the word. I’m not supposed to tell you anything. That would be against the Rules.”

  The troll poured the cider into several chipped china teacups, the kind given out as premiums by gas stations in the 1950s. He passed the drinks to the boys.

  Kalgrash yanked back one of the chairs and sat down, sipping on his own cider. “So how long are you going to be in the area?”

  “About another week,” answered Brian.

  “Oh, my! Not much time!”

  “Well, we’re lucky we have even that much. Most schools don’t even have a fall break right now.”

  Gregory explained peevishly, “The only reason we’re having a break at all is the cafeteria ran out of beans and dessert cubes.” He turned to Brian and insisted, “We’re having this conversation with a troll. A troll! And it’s like it’s with my great-aunt Betsy! ‘Would you like some sugar with that?’ ‘Nice to see you, dearie.’”

  The troll looked with concern at Gregory. He pleaded, “Look, I’m sorry about swinging my ax at your friend. Maybe that was a bad way to introduce myself. But it’s my job, see?” He thought about it, and then he snickered. “And kind of fun, I have to admit. I practiced for about three days in front of the mirror, you know? Originally I was going to slaver when I spoke, but I, um, kept getting my feet all sticky. I’m sorry you didn’t get the full effect of it,” the troll apologized, staring into his teacup. “Hey, I could slaver a bit for you now!” he said brightly.

  Brian replied quickly, “No—no thanks. Don’t bother just for us.”

  The three of them sipped more of their spicy cider. They were a little self-conscious, now.

  “What’s the Speculant?” Brian asked suddenly.

  “A creature,” said the troll, shrugging. “He comes down from the mountain. He oversees the Game. He keeps track of who’s where and tells us what to do.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” asked Gregory.

  “The rest of us.”

  “Do you know Gelt the Winnower?” asked Brian.

  “Uck—yeah. Whoo, yeah. Wowzers. Uh-huh. Yeah, I know him. Stay away. He’s a mess.”

  “Compared to an ax-wielding—” Gregory began. “Compared to you—”

  “Hey!” the troll interrupted him. “Hey,” he said to Brian, “what’s his problem? Kiddo, if you don’t have anything nice to say, you know? Shut your scuttle, okay? Just shut it.”

  There was a really awkward silence.

  “We should probably be going,” said Brian. “We should see what’s on the other side of the bridge.”

  “I think you’ll enjoy it,” said Kalgrash. “Leave the dishes for me. Don’t bother with them. Please. Don’t bother with them.”

  They rose. The troll said, “You can leave the weathervane by my door. On your way back, pick it up. Put it back on the roof when you get a chance. So others have a
chance at crossing the bridge.”

  “All right,” said Brian hesitantly.

  Kalgrash opened the door, and the damp, cold fall air drifted in. “I’ll see you later, then. Come back sometime when it’s sunny out and we’ll play croquet.”

  The two stepped out. “Yes, thank you,” said Brian.

  “Thanks,” said Gregory.

  The troll waved one more time and shut the door.

  “Well,” said Gregory. “Wasn’t that sweet.”

  “You—you shouldn’t be so rude,” said Brian sheepishly.

  Gregory looked at him strangely. “He’s a troll,” he said flatly. “Troll. You know, troll?”

  Brian turned and walked up the slope.

  “What?” said Gregory. They paced on in silence. Finally he said, “I know, I know, he might be useful in the future.”

  Brian said, “There are reasons to be polite to people other than whether they’ll be useful in the future.”

  “People?!?” said Gregory. “You mean trolls.Trrrrrrrolls.”

  Brian shook his head and kept on walking.

  Up the bank there was a line of scraggly birches, and beyond them, a field of tall grasses, muddy yellow in the murky day’s half-light. A path, plastered with grimy leaves, led through the field.

  They didn’t talk as they crossed the field and reentered the forest on the other side.

  For a long time they wandered through the wood. Occasionally, a wind would shake a treetop and rain would patter down from the leaves before slowing and finally subsiding. Half an hour or an hour passed without them even noticing it. The sun, muffled by cloud, was only visible occasionally as a dim aura. The air was somehow heavy, and both the boys started to get headaches. They shivered as they walked. After one meets a troll in the morning, there seems very little to discuss later in the day.

  Gregory muttered, “Feels like someone’s cramming angry elephants into my skull.”

  Brian said, “Oh, really? You know how that feels, then?”

  Gregory nodded. “Yeah. Happened once. On the subway, I think. Some crazy guy and his elephants. I was choking on ivory for months.”

  Gradually, they realized that the wood that they walked through was sloping upward. The path rose and wandered among a series of small knolls, from under which, occasionally, moss-strangled boulders peeked. The path split, and split again, leading off into branches that joined and wrapped around the knolls and parted again with annoying frequency. Gregory and Brian initially drew a careful map of their twistings and turnings, but eventually the paper became so darkened with pencil smudges and crabbed handwriting and looping arrows and question marks that Brian just sighed and shoved the paper back in his pocket. From then on, they wandered through the labyrinth of hillocks with only a vague sense of direction.

  Their only landmark was the nearby mountain, rising right above them. Every once in a while, it would appear between the doused leaves in some unexpected direction.

  Finally, the two took a fortunate right turn and found themselves in what they believed to be the heart of the maze of mounds. Various paths led out from between lumpy hillocks into a wide crossroads, in the center of which rose a tall, almost conical mound, heavily coated with spindly, blackish-green hemlocks. At the base of it there was an old snowmobile on its side. It looked like it had stalled there. The paint had peeled, as if it once had been on fire.

  Beside it, abandoned, was a 1950s kitchen table. The legs were brown with rust.

  Brian tried to climb the steep slope. He pushed his way through the stiff, prickly branches a bit, but they were thick and interwoven, an impenetrable barrier. He heard some small animal scurry through the hemlocks. Brian backed off and let the tangled branches bounce back into place. “No, we’ll never get up. It’s all too thickly grown.”

  “Hill’s a strange shape,” Gregory pointed out. “It isn’t natural.”

  “It could be a huge glacial boulder or something, a huge shard of rock.”

  “No,” said Gregory, frowning. “I think it’s too regular. Did the Native Americans build mounds like that?”

  Brian shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.

  Gregory looked around the clearing. “What does the game board say?”

  Brian dropped his pack to the ground and rummaged through it. He pulled out the board. “We’ve been walking through the Tangled Knolls,” he said. He squinted. “This is the Ceremonial Mound.” He tapped the board.

  “Which way should we go from here?” Gregory asked. “Which way do you think it is to that route underground?”

  Brian considered, then suggested uncertainly, “Well, I’m getting hungry, and it’s going to take a couple of hours to find our way home. I was thinking maybe we should head…you know…”

  Gregory nodded. He said, “I don’t know, I was excited when we got across the bridge. After the troll, I thought we would find something really spectacular. Maybe we should go on.”

  Brian said, “Okay. Whatever you want.”

  “Okay?”

  Brian nodded.

  “We have a time limit,” Gregory argued.

  Brian nodded again.

  “You always give in,” said Gregory, walking ahead. “You should argue more.”

  He chose a path that led, as far as they could tell, toward the dark mountain. They left behind the clearing of the black mound of hemlocks. For half an hour more they trudged up and down little insignificant vales and hills with steep sides and banks of thick roots or slimy rocks.

  The day grew worse, and it appeared that the battering rains of the night before would return. A wind began to pick up in the treetops, and the upper branches began to sway beneath ominously pitchy clouds.

  The two boys were on the verge of attempting to find their way back when suddenly they came out of the maze and stood in an expansive wood. Thick, tall beeches rose like uncluttered columns from some lost civilization. Covering the forest floor were dark green lilies of the valley, dead, a sea of low-lying, glossy leaves.

  Far above the boys’ heads, the wind stirred the trees, sending down a spray of cold water.

  “The path keeps going,” Gregory pointed out. The route snaked on through the pristine wood.

  Brian said, “Should we turn back? It’s going to rain any second. It’ll probably take us a couple of hours to get back, even running.”

  Gregory had frozen, however. He stood perfectly still, every muscle tensed, peering out of the corner of his eye at the path ahead of them.

  Brian glanced nervously up the path, drew his cloak closer about him, and urged, “Gregory…”

  Then he realized. The trees had ceased their swaying. A strange light had somehow drifted into the wood. The birds were silent.

  A distant trumpet blustered out a brief, simple call.

  Quite nearby, another trumpet answered.

  Brian stumbled on the slime of leaves. Gregory went to grab his arm.

  Then, suddenly, a host was upon them, a phantom host of translucent riders on stately horses, following a pack of lean, ghostly hounds. The riders were male and female, dressed strangely—some in the peaked hats and robes of the Middle Ages, others in jodhpurs and sporting jackets or frock coats and dark caps.

  Brian fell to his knees.

  The riders dashed unaware before the two boys, with eighteenth-century coattails flapping near wide, bejeweled capes, all the figures grinning with the thrill of the chase as they rushed after the leaping hounds in supernatural glee.

  Gregory only saw the faces of the first three riders—a stunning, proud woman; a reserved, dark-haired young man in the pointed hat of an archbishop; and a smirking blond man. Other faces were indistinct, for a spirit-fog drifted between them, shrouding the pale faces and the blind eyes.

  Gregory and Brian turned and ran. Their footfalls pounded on the wet ground. A shivering, tingling fear sparked through their fingers as the two threw themselves headlong over knolls. Brian stole a glance back over his shoulder and saw the host veering away, p
ouring through the trees off to the right. Lightning slammed across the clouds, and abruptly rain was flung all around them. Through the mad gushing of the storm, the two heard a muffled call from a distant hunting horn, and then the water drowned out any sounds but the thumping of their feet and hearts and the hiss of their frenzied breath.

  They’re not following!” huffed Brian as he slid down another mound. “They didn’t even see us.”

  “Let’s keep things that way,” said Gregory, grabbing a root and yanking himself up a rise.

  They ran for several minutes as the rain dashed around them.

  Then they came to a building.

  Fundridge’s Folly.

  It was like a little Roman temple. There were no walls—just a domed roof of cracked and discolored stone supported by thick columns. The boys ran and took shelter under the roof.

  They stopped and caught their breath. The rain was heavy and gray in the woods. It was soaking through their tweed. Brian leaned against a column. He was breathing heavily. The stone was wet and chilly.

  Brian looked around hastily. “This is supposed to be the entrance to the underground world. Where’s the staircase?”

  Gregory was looking up at the ceiling. “What is this?” he asked. The ceiling was painted a dark blue, with stars picked out in gold. The paint had flaked; the sky was cracking like alligator skin.

  The floor was covered with leaves and pine needles, but a mosaic design made of little tiles could be seen underneath them.

  The two looked down at their feet. They began to scuff. They kicked the leaves off the design. Gradually, it became clear.

  A bat-winged, but not unattractive, god held a red horseshoe magnet, from which trailed chains of paper clips that led to other figures: a little boy in a toga who held a jar of fireflies and a globe; a god with white, shaggy brows whose forehead was lifted up on pillars like those around them, revealing the clock from Clock Corner; a fair young goddess who, draped in bright robes, carried a scepter, a harmonica, and a lump of kelp.

  “Gods and goddesses?” asked Gregory.