as if cut vertically in half and attached to a cliff.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it, Elli!” Aneht set a plate of several pies in each of their hands and then sat down herself to eat. “Yes! Yes! But here’s the thing, girls! The rings of domes actually go all the way into the cliff, so that the rings of domes are all complete, and not cut in half! But half of all the domes (both above and below us) are inside the cliff, you see! Yes, yes! Otherwise, they all look the same, especially from the inside! And when you go down into the bottom set of rings you actually feel as if you are: really going up! Hee-hee! Yes, yes!”
Beatríz, who was fingering the pies with hesitant taps, asked, “Aneht, why would there be any domes at all inside the cliff, and not just round rooms maybe, since they are not, um, outside?”
“Yes, yes! Very good question, Beatríz! Very good!” Aneht noticed that neither girl had begun to eat. “Please! Eat! Try one! You’ll like them—yes, yes, you will!” Elli saw Aneht take a demonstrative bite and so followed suit with a slight nibble large enough to not be impolite.
“Ooh, Aneht! This one is so delicious! It’s like, like, like tasting the smell of a soft spring rain!”
“Yes, yes! Precisely—because it’s made out of the earth—and the scent of a spring rain! And the other here,” she said, as she stretched out a limb like the arm of a crane to point to one of the other two pies on their plates, “is made from the aromas of fresh cut alfalfa and clover petals, light from the sun, and dry summer dirt!” Beatríz took a quick bite out of one and then another.
“Mmm . . . Aneht! These are better than chocolate chip cookie dough!” Beatríz giggled.
Aneht passed around earthenware cups of fresh cold spring water flavored by the scent of a late summer meadow, and the girls drank heartily.
“Oh, Aneht! This is so, so . . . delectable!” exclaimed Beatríz.
“And so refreshing!” announced Elli.
“And in this third pie I taste the smell of chicory flowers!” squealed Beatríz.
“And the aroma of black eyed Susans!” exulted Elli, laughing.
“And you should also be tasting the scent of black raspberries!” exclaimed Aneht.
Aneht sat looking back and forth at the girls, smiling with contentment, her head tilting to one side and then to the other. “So, yes, yes,” she said, “nothing like a good conversation during supper! And I need to be hearing about how you ended up in the Queen’s tomb, how you first entered Bairnmoor, and what has happened to you since then. And, oh, yes, yes, I already know this much about you: I know by relayed message from Hannah of the mission she gave you, and that one of you, or so it seems, would be the girl of the poem inscribed on the outside of Taralina’s tomb door who is supposed to release the Queen with a diamond key. So you needn’t be secretive.”
“And, excuse me, Aneht,” said Elli before Beatríz and she began their story, “but we also want to know about you.”
“Well, that’s easy! I am who I am: the keeper of Mud Mansion, and have been so for as long as I can remember, which is as far back as I choose to remember; at some point, though, it would hardly matter, yes, yes?”
The answer didn’t even begin to answer all the questions that Elli and Beatríz had about Aneht, but they quickly realized that they had gotten the full of what the ground grub was going to share with them—which she said was all there was; so the girls began their narrative.
Since Aneht seemed to know a lot more about them than they did about her (with Aneht interrupting politely at points to say, “Yes, yes, I know all about that!”), the story was much shorter than any prior telling of it, save the one told initially to Thorn because there wasn’t a lot of any story to tell at that point!
When they had finished, waiting for Aneht to share her thoughts, the grub suddenly blurted out, “Oh, yes, yes! I almost forgot!”
~seven~
Childheart pushed in the partially opened gate and waited until his eyes became adjusted to the dark. The room was small, serving principally as a landing for winding stairs that spiraled both up and down. The stone ceiling was a good thirty feet high, and just below it on three sides several tiny windows allowed in just enough light for Childheart to see where he was.
The stairs was far too narrow for either Childheart or Starnee to negotiate, so the unicorn headed for a low archway behind the staircase, the only other way to enter or exit the room besides the gate and the stairs. Childheart lowered his head slightly and walked into the next room, also lit by several tiny windows just beneath its high ceiling. The room was actually a long and narrow hallway that opened onto a dozen other rooms before bending out of sight in the darkness, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet ahead. The door to each room was wide open. Immediately to his left and right there was a pair of smaller hallways, each with a heavy wooden door opened wide, and both entirely dark beyond the doorway and too narrow for Childheart to enter.
As Childheart, alert for enemy presence, walked past the twelve rooms, six to one side of the hall and six to the other side, he saw that each doorway opened wide into a large chamber filled with light from a floor-to-ceiling multi-paned window occupying the bulk of the wall opposite the doorway, with empty bookcases framing the window and lining the remainder of the walls. Inside each room there was a king size poster bed, a vast wardrobe, a small desk and chair in front of the vast window, both an upholstered chair and a sofa, and several nightstands and end tables. All of the furniture would have been ready for guests, but for the thick dust that coated everything, including the bed linens and rugs on the floors—suggestive of what one might find in a crypt rather than a bedroom.
Childheart stepped, lightly tapping his hooves, past the last of the doorways and stopped; the rest of the hallway bent sharply into darkness just ahead and off to the left. He was beginning to turn to go back to where he’d left his two friends when he smelled smoke, as if from a fireplace, and changed his mind—especially since, commingled with the smoke, he scented something baking; all were in need of nourishment, but especially Thorn. And in addition, he suddenly realized, where there is food there is nearly always something to drink.
Childheart stepped without caution around the corner into the blackness that concealed what was almost certainly going to be an imminent encounter of an uncertain sort. Foremost in his mind was the smell of something desperately needed by Thorn. Besides, whoever—or whatever—it was had certainly by now been aware of his presence for some time—and likely also of the existence of his companions. Indeed, the only other sound besides that of his hooves on the stone floor was that of Starnee yanking boards off windows—so faintly in the distance that it seemed as if the two friends now occupied different worlds.
Childheart continued walking the hallway that continued to bend, to the left and down, and then slowly and continuously up again, and to the right. He had no sense of how far he had gone—or of how long he had been traveling. But it seemed to him to take an inordinate amount of time to cover ground contained solely within the confines of even the largest of castles. He stopped to listen; he no longer heard Starnee, or any sound other than his breathing, and saw nothing as of yet. Childheart wondered how long it had been since he left the front hall—and his friends—behind him. Fifteen minutes? Thirty? An hour perhaps?
He resumed walking; and the odor of smoke and the scent of something baking increased, first gradually, and then markedly so. At about the same time he noticed a faint light drifting into his field of vision ffrom just around a corner up ahead and to the right,
