CHAPTER FIFTY

Although she acted calm and polite, Trinket seemed particularly agitated, with her green hair frizzing like she had been rubbing it with her fingers. Her little pyramid nose, and her green kite shaped ears were twitching. The vertical ellipses that were her irises expanded and contracted wildly. She pretended to be calm, but she was worked up.

Jane noticed the quiver of arrows and the bow slung across Trinket’s back. The quiver was a beautiful red leather, and the flight feathers were berry red.

When Jane didn’t answer Trinket’s request that she go into the Inn, Trinket suddenly stood and looked back at the dwarves, as though she was expecting the little beggars to attack her. Perhaps they were planning to. The one dwarf on his feet was in the process of gesturing to three other dwarves to stand with him. Trinket glared, her vertical irises folding in and out. Behind the dwarves stood the tall thrip who, earlier, had gone to find the horse groom.

Trinket looked down at Jane.

‘So, I will get you to make your way up to the Inn. The Innkeeper is expecting you.’

Jane rubbed the back of her hand over her nose, then stared straight up at the ceiling of the huge cavern, at the milky stone, and the block shaped shadows. Her eyes shone gold.

Trinket continued.

‘This is not a thing to be discussed.’

‘I’m not discussing it,’ Jane murmured.

Trinket stared at Jane, as though trying to see through her facade to Jane’s underlying intention. After a moment she clicked her tongue, and her narrow mouth turned down. She put a hand on the saddle of her horse, hooked her toes into the stirrup and sprang up. Her leg swung over the rump. She sat tall.

The dwarves now stood in a group of four, with their arms crossed. The closest dwarf uncrossed his arm and pointed up at Trinket.

‘Behold the thrip is making demands of a human as though it considers itself an equal to the human.’

Trinket looked at the dwarf, and she smiled weirdly.

‘As I was riding up through the catacombs,’ she said, ‘I noticed a snail on the path. I watched this horse step on the snail. I watched the horse squash the snail into oblivion. I felt nothing.’

The dwarf put his hands up to his face and smacked his cheeks twice.

‘Oh my, isn’t that scary?’ The dwarf turned to his fellow dwarves. ‘The princess is threatening us.’

‘Be respectful of our princess,’ said the tall thrip who was towering over the dwarves like some giant stick insect.

The thrip shut his mouth when one of the dwarves turned and glared, one eye squinting, the other eye as round as a dish.

Tom said, ‘Why do dwarves dislike the princess?’

‘Good question Elion,’ said the squinting dwarf. ‘The thrips have a deep history of betrayal. Just ask the elves who were supposed to share the Wistern Woods with the thrips. A deal was made … but what happened to the deal?’

The dwarf shouted the last part up to Trinket.

Ignoring the dwarf, Trinket reached down and said, ‘Come on Elion.’

‘Do you want me to ride with you?’

‘Yes.’

’You said that two on a horse would be dangerous while passing the silent children.’

‘I have a bow made by Grange elves, and a full quiver of arrows. You will be safe.’

The witchy horse groom stood. She removed the feed bag from the second horse’s nose, and she turned and sank her grey eyes into Jane’s eyes. A moment later she turned and walked back toward the Inn.

Jane immediately stood and placed her hand against her horse’s shoulder. The horse lifted its head and a snort vibrated through its ears and mane and neck muscles. Jane mounted.

‘I will ride with Jane,’ said Tom.

’Jane isn’t coming with us … she is staying here at the Inn.’

Jane’s mouth quivered.

‘I am coming.’

’Then you will die while passing the silent children,’ said Trinket, and she no longer sounded like the green creature friend that Jane had met just over a day earlier.

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’Not if she rides ahead of you,’ said the talkative dwarf. His little barrel chest burst up from his leather vest. ’You ride behind, Princess, and protect the girl with your arrows.’

Trinket made a motion in the air, the gesture directed at the front door of the Inn, where a stone carving of a vine made an architrave over a heavy door, the door shining like polished obsidian.

Two men, armed with short swords, came out of the doorway and down pink marble steps. They wore leather vests and iron rings around their biceps.

Trinket called to the men.

‘It is as I feared.’

’You hired the Innkeeper’s guards.’

The dwarf in the leather vest put his hands up toward Trinket in a gesture of outrage.

‘Shutup dwarf,’ said Trinket, then she turned to Jane. ‘Go with these men.’

Tom tapped Jane on the ankle and said, ‘I need a hand up.’

Jane leaned back and reached down. Tom took her hand with one hand and squeezed her arm with his other hand. He braced a foot against the back of her leg, then paused. The talkative dwarf came jigging over and put his hands out in a cup. Tom put his foot into the cup of the dwarf’s two hands.

A moment later Tom was seated behind Jane. He placed his hands on Jane’s shoulders and looked into the vertical skeets of Trinket’s eyes and said:

‘I will ride with Jane.’

The Innkeeper’s guards stopped walking. They looked at Trinket for instruction.

Just then Trinket screamed out a furious command to her horse, and jabbed her heels into its side. The horse jumped and roared into a canter, running around the back of the courtyard and back out to the road, between the scattered rocks and the blocks of crystals, past stalactites that formed giant spun columns.

The two guards watched her until she was out of sight, then turned and walked back to the Inn.

‘Let’s go,’ said Jane.

Jane and Tom fell into an easy canter around the courtyard and onto the path. The minerals gave off a smell like oil and hard candy. The path was dark blue and speckled with deep emerald, and the metal horse shoes clattered. The path left the large chamber and went into a narrow cave. Soon the cave tightened up into a tunnel, its floor worn uneven and strewn with rocks.

Complicated caverns wove in and out, entrances and exits pouring into every direction. Stalactites shone orange in the light of flaming torches. An underground precipice presented dreadful darkness just inches from the horse’s feet.

Ahead, Trinket guided her horse with confidence, sure of every turn and every climb and every decision between a dozen caverns that might be heading off in various directions. Following as close as she could, Jane lost all sense of direction.

They passed creatures that Jane couldn’t identify. Creatures with flat noses, or with spikes around their eyes, or with fans across their heads. They passed an old, withered woman, with a snake curled around her neck. They passed a fawn with a head of curly hair and small horns. They passed a woman wearing shells strung together to form a dress. They passed a gleaming eyed man in a black helmet with a knife in his hands. They passed a pale skinned woman seated on a stone bench.

They crossed a railway track where a group of dwarves were rolling slowly along in a mining wagon, their arms hanging and their fists clenched as though ready for a fight.

‘Dwarves seem to carry a generalised hatred,’ said Jane.

They continued on into a narrow tunnel that grew so tight the horses had to push past the leaning stone. Jane and Tom curled their knees up to stop their legs getting crushed.

In a cavern litten by milky light they came across a group of marble-faced men walking in formation like a dance troupe, with their chins up and their eyes straight ahead. The men didn’t turn their heads to look at Elion - they just continued to march straight, their arms swinging in rhythm.

The light alternated between the misty light that came from the milky walls, and the blue light from phosphorescent biology.

The two horses approached another underground town where a short woman with milky skin in a chalk dress walked toward them. She had a flat face and an honest mouth and buggy eyes that followed the passing horses.

The town was made up of thirty or so houses carved into the stone. There was a shop with goods stacked on shelves, and women sitting on a bench outside, with the same honest faces as the bug eyed woman, eating bread. In between the stone houses there were gardens, with flowers and trees and tomatoes on vines and carrots and peas and some very large zucchinis. There was a huge pumpkin that lay on the roadway at the end of its stripy green vine.

Two white skinned women saw Tom, recognised him as Elion, and fell to their knees, and put their heads down. Other white skinned women approached, with their eyes down, as though intimidated.

They left the town behind.

Now Trinket pulled her horse back into a slow walk and Jane drew adjacent to her.

’You and Elion go first,’ said Trinket. ‘There is only one path from here, so you won’t get lost.’

‘Would you have gone first if I was riding alone?’

Trinket grinned and looked like the fun loving thrip from back in the WisternWoods. She looked like the thrip that had saved Jane’s life as if it was no big deal.

‘Just let your horse walk so that it is rested when the time comes for it to gallop like its life depends on it.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I’m saying … oh don’t worry, just have fun.’

Jane’s horse began to walk.

They walked into a tunnel that was almost like the inside of a pipe, smooth and round and with a manufactured look. The tunnel glowed with the faint white light given off by the milky stone. Then the tunnel grew darker, and soon it was impossible to see. Jane put her hand in the horse’s mane.

Finally the dark cave opened up into a truly stupendous underground chamber. The vault soared above like the vault of the sky. A thousand feet above was a ceiling made of blue ice. Light filtered through the ice, casting the huge cavern in dull blue. A cloud hung in the sky beneath the ceiling, and flakes of snow floated down from that cloud. The snow landed in deep drifts that covered the steep slope that made up the floor of the cavern.

‘Now,’ said Trinket quietly from behind.

The lead horse sensed the meaning in Trinket’s now, and it leaned forward, and pushed out with its bottom and thighs, pushing into a gallop that had Jane and Tom clinging with their knees and hands. The horse ran on a thin path that rose between deep drifts of snow. Its nose pushed forward, and its mane lifted with the wind of its speed.

Jane leaned forward and hung on, while Tom gripped her at the waist.

Then Jane saw a tiny footprint in a snowbank, and she caught a glimpse of a shadow that moved across the snow like a child.