with me. I guess we should be going.” And with those words, Elli took one step down the stairs, and then suddenly stopped. She reached far back to touch the door, and, just as she suspected, it was no longer there.
And so they continued their descent, the four children in the dark, toward what they could not fathom. Each of them began the journey harboring private thoughts and emotions, feeling mutually only fear and the greatest wonder imaginable, and perhaps also a shared disbelief that this was all really happening to them, except in a dream.
They followed the hard stone steps downward in a still ever-widening spiral. After an hour or so, the balls of their feet becoming sore, they decided to stop and rest. They had rested for perhaps five minutes when all of them began to shiver. A damp and chilly wind was descending upon them from above. “We’d best be going,” said Beatríz.
“Yes, I think so, too,” replied Elli.
In the grip of heavy weariness more than just physical, they continued their descent, each one panting in rhythm to his or her own rapidly beating heart. Jamie, who was following Alex and sensed Alex’s fatigue, gasped, “Elli, I need to stop for awhile. I never thought going down a set of stairs could be so tiring.” Elli was about to agree when she noticed that the key was glowing, ever so slightly, through her shirt. “Wait. Something is changing.”
“What?” asked Jamie.
“The key . . . it’s glowing, but the light’s not coming from the key. Look. When I point it down the stairs, it glows, just a little; but it definitely glows. But when I turn it in any other direction it stops glowing. Come on—just a little further.” With each successive step, Elli could see the key glowing more brightly, although she could see no light ahead. Then, all of a sudden, Elli noticed a faint glow in the distance, almost like the pale light of the moon when it settles softly on thin wisps of clouds that hover over a marsh. “Guys, there’s light up ahead; it can’t be far. C’mon!” Elli said, feeling for the first time since meeting Peterwinkle the excitement she felt when she was first going down the stairs in search of the book of poetry.
With the light ahead of them getting brighter as they continued their descent, they were finally able to see ever-so-faintly the stairs on which they were stepping, giving them greater confidence and more energy. As they got closer to the light, Elli could see it was in fact passing through a fog that was gradually surrounding them. As the fog deepened, the light became more luminescent. Then the stairs abruptly ended, and as they stepped onto a soft surface, the fog began to lift and the light began to dim.
There, in front of them, in the middle of a forest clearing, was a fire whose flames were nearly spent, leaving behind a large mound of glowing embers. The fire was enclosed in a sort of hemispherical hut cut vertically in half and made of thin bamboo stalks. The opening was facing the staircase.
Sitting on one of several woven rugs that lay all around the fire was an elderly looking woman in layers of worn, but elegant robes. She had long and beautiful gray hair that trailed behind her to the ground and framed her face in front—a face that was undoubtedly old, but that retained distinct soft features and large open eyes reflecting the glowing embers like tiny spherical mirrors. Her small, thin-lipped mouth was smiling and relaxed.
The woman seemed not to notice Elli and her friends, or at least she provided no such indication. She sat on her knees facing the fire, the glow from which danced delicately on her face and hands. Elli was about to politely announce their presence when the woman, as if she had expected them, politely invited them to sit around the fire and warm themselves. As the children ever so quietly walked toward the fire, Elli glanced back toward the stairs and noticed that, like Peterwinkle’s door earlier, they had disappeared.
The children sat close together around the fire across from the woman. Awkward silence ensued, and then Alex, without prompting, said, “Ma’am, we ah . . .”
“Shhh, Alex!” whispered Elli, firmly. Alex left his statement hanging, half-finished. “Don’t say anything,” Elli said to the others so only they could hear her. The three friends stared at Elli, waiting for her to do or say something. She did do something—saying nothing, making her companions anxious. Finally, the woman broke the silence.
“Please tell me who you are, from where you have come, and where you are intending to go,” she said, as if beginning a polite interrogation.
“We can’t do that, Ma’am, if you please,” Elli replied, just as directly, but with a note of respect for someone older, as her mother had taught her.
“I don’t know whether it will please me or not, but just the same I want to know who you are, from where you have come, and where you are going,” the woman said, in the same tone. Elli, as if fencing with the woman, repeated her own reply, and with the same tone.
“Suppose I told you I could help you—help you go where you want to go and do whatever you are intent on doing, perhaps even ensuring both your safety and the accomplishment of your mission? And,” she added following a long pause, “what if I told you that you will surely perish if you do not answer my questions?” said the woman, her tone now unfriendly.
“What does . . . does ‘paiwish’ mean?” Alex asked Elli, keeping his voice low.
“It means to die, Alex,” Elli, said, now staring straight into the eyes of the woman who, across the fire, was staring straight at Elli. The woman slowly lifted her left hand and, immediately, out from the shadows at the edge of the clearing appeared an animal, which was growling menacingly. It was an awful looking creature, not unlike a cross between a large snake and a badger. It had a long tail that was bare of fur and coiled tightly against its body. The creature was itself perhaps eight feet in length and covered in coarse hair, and had four pairs of legs—two pairs at the front and two at the rear, with each paw having numerous thin, curled and barbed claws. The head was nearly that of the badger, except that along with its badger-like ears and deep-set beady eyes, it had a very long and pointed nose and a pair of upper tusks that folded neatly over its lower lip. Blood from a recent kill dripped from its mouth and moistened its feet. The loud growl was more than merely threatening, but the creature did not appear to be about to attack—at least, not without a further order from the woman.
Elli never expected so great a challenge, or so great a decision, at the very beginning of the long journey. She had wondered to herself all along how she would respond when faced with such a crisis. Now, she was going to find out—and find out how the others would respond, too.
Beatríz, of course, could not see the beast, but she could hear and smell it, and her imagination was more than capable of filling in the missing pieces fairly accurately. Yes, she was terrified, but she knew she couldn’t survive the journey very long without finding sustained periods of relief from the fear and the crippling effects that almost invariably accompany it. She needed to assume the worst right now, and meet it head on, defeating her fear with courage, believing either she was going to die sooner rather than certainly later—or face the real possibility of death all over again, perhaps on numerous occasions, and go through the same terror.
Beatríz could, of course, decide to plead with Elli to be compliant with the woman, out of fear and against the express instructions from Peterwinkle, and so give into fear and thereby perhaps defeat the mission at the outset—and still be killed by the beast. If she could not control the consequences of her actions, she could at least control the actions themselves, and control was what she at this moment needed most. If she could defeat her fears now, then perhaps she could defeat them from that moment forth.
A new and wonderful sense of certitude and peace came over Beatríz. “Don’t tell her, Elli.”
Jamie, in the process
