CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER
4
Get off! Get off of me!”
Peter came to his senses and rolled over onto his side. A gasping, spluttering Louisa lay on her back, her perpetual smirk replaced by a look of stark terror.
“What … you … where did you take me? What did you do?” She was practically screeching.
“I didn’t do anything. You followed us and then you ran the wrong way and we had to rescue you.”
“Some rescue! What is this place, anyway?”
Peter looked around. They were inside a massive stone room. Chandeliers hung from a ceiling far above their heads and elaborate stonework covered the walls. He looked about for Julia and found her collapsed at the far end of the room. As he watched she propped herself up and stood, looking out a small window. She turned to face them, and Peter recognized the smile on her face.
“We’re back,” she said simply. “We’ve made it back.”
“Made it back where?”
“Oh, do be quiet,” Peter snapped at Louisa. He hopped up and went over to the window, standing beside Julia. The window was long and narrow, but they were high up and he could see a long way, over rolling hills and valleys, all of it lush and green and just as he remembered it. He breathed in deeply, letting the air of Aedyn fill his lungs, and for the first time in a long time he felt that he was home.
“It’s all so quiet,” said Julia, and with a start Peter realized that it was. They were in the Great Hall of the Citadel of Aedyn—there was the dais where the three thrones of the Lords of Aedyn had sat, and there was the blackened spot on the floor where he had shown them how to use gunpowder—but there was none of the ordinary noise and bustle that one would expect to hear in a castle. No servants going about their duties, no clomping of heavy footsteps on the stone floors.
“What’s going on?” whined Louisa behind them. Peter stifled a low groan, and Julia turned and went over to her. She put out a hand and helped her to her feet. “We’re in a place called Aedyn. It’s a different kind of world, and I think we must have been called here. Peter and I have been here before, so you’re just going to have to trust us, all right?”
“But how do we get home?” Louisa wailed. Julia stopped herself in the middle of rolling her eyes and tried to speak patiently.
“I don’t know yet. First we have to figure out why we’re here.” She turned her head to look at Peter.
“Right?”
“Right. And we start by figuring out where all the people have gone.” He walked toward the big oak doors at the opposite end of the Great Hall and, with a great deal of pushing and grunting, heaved them open. “Follow me, ladies,” he said.
The rest of the castle was just as empty as the Hall. There were no signs of a great struggle, and the place did not seem to have been long abandoned. There was no dust on the window ledges or chairs, and all the furnishings were perfectly in order. Indeed, it seemed as if the castle’s occupants had simply vanished.
Julia and Louisa followed Peter down a long corridor lined with tapestries. At the end of the corridor he pushed open another door—this one not nearly as heavy and ornate as the entrance to the Great Hall. The three children entered a room warmly lit by the afternoon sun. Huge legs of cured meat hung from the ceiling and pots and pans lined the walls. Long tables fairly groaned under the weight of bulging sacks and heavy bowls. The fire in the grate seemed to have burned out some time ago, but a big black pot full of some kind of soup hung suspended from a chain above the ashes.
“We might as well get something to eat,” suggested Julia. “We don’t know what we’ll find out there—and it may be some time before we have a decent meal again. Remember last time, Peter?”
He gave a rueful grin. He did indeed remember. Upon their arrival in Aedyn they had found themselves without food or water for most of a day, and it was not a day he would care to repeat. “Agreed. Let’s take anything we can carry. Julia, see if you can find some skins for water, and Louisa, you take some of that sausage.” He gestured at a long string of links that was hanging near her head. “Here, put it in this,” he said, and threw his satchel at her. She caught it and looked at him.
“Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t we’ll leave you here all alone forever,” said Peter. “Get to work.” She stared at him blankly for a moment, then pulled down the string of sausages and started gathering it into the satchel. Peter thought she might be about to cry, but instead she began to hum in her thin voice. Except her voice wasn’t as thin as it had been at home, and whatever melody she was humming wasn’t quite so tuneless.
Julia, meanwhile, had found some wineskins and was starting to work the long arm of the water pump in the corner of the kitchen. Up and down it went, up and down. She motioned to Peter, and he came over to hold the skins under the steady stream of water. “You don’t have to be so beastly to her, you know,” Julia said under her breath.
“Me? Beastly?”
“You know what I mean,” said Julia, her eyebrows furrowed as she concentrated on her task. “She’s a spoiled wretch but it won’t be easy on her, being here. The least we can do is be decent to her.”
“Decent? When was the last time she was decent to either of us?”
“Never. But that doesn’t mean we can’t show her a little kindness.”
Peter glanced over at his stepsister. “I suppose not,” he said. The skin was full to bursting, and Peter pulled it out from under the stream, tied off the neck tightly, and thrust the next one under the pump. “Does seem rotten luck, though. We finally get back here and we have to bring her along with us.”
“I know.” Julia shrugged her shoulders and stopped pumping. The water slowed to a trickle—just enough for Peter to fill the last skin. He tied the neck of this skin as well.
“Are you done with the sausages?” he asked Louisa.
“Done.” She’d slung the satchel over her shoulder. “And now will you tell me where we’re going?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Peter. “Here”—he flung open a cupboard door and peered inside. “There’s bread and cheese in this cupboard.” He took out two hard loaves and a wheel of cheese and slid them over the counter to Louisa. “Carry those too, will you?”
They exited the kitchen the same way they’d come and left the castle by way of a twisting, turning road that went down through the village and out into a green meadow. What Peter and Julia remembered as little more than a deer trail was now a heavily traversed lane leading … Peter pulled the compass out of his pocket and flicked it open with his thumb. South. The lane must be leading them down to the sea.
Julia, walking beside him, was positively gleeful. It was strange to be called here again, certainly, but the tingling in her fingertips told her that an adventure was at hand. And whatever dangers might lie ahead, she was free of school and grades and horrid Bertram and horrider …
The contented sounds of munching that came from behind reminded Julia that she and Peter were not alone on this adventure. She turned and saw that Louisa had already seen fit to break into one of the hard loaves of bread. She had broken off a large chunk and was carrying it in her fist, gnawing off big bites as she walked.
“You did just have Christmas dinner a few hours ago,” Julia reminded her. “And we might need that bread before long.”
“Need it for what?” Louisa asked, her mouth still half full of crumbs. “I thought we were trying to get home. Aren’t we going home?”
“Eventually, I suppose,” said Julia. “But before we do we need to find out why we were called here in the first place.”
“We’ll be whipped for being out so long.” Louisa tore off another chunk of bread with her teeth. “At least the two of you will. I’ll tell Mummy that you made me come along and you promised me sweets and then you left me out in the woods. And then she’ll send you both to that special school for horrid children and you’ll never be allowed to come home on holidays ever again.”
Peter was about to say something particularly nasty—Julia could see it in his face—but before he could open his mouth the three of them heard a very different sort of sound indeed. It was a woman’s scream, high and loud. And it was coming from just over the ridge.