Kendra Kandlestar and the Door to Unger (6 page)

IF YOU HAVE EVER LOOKED long and hard for something that meant a lot to you, then you will know how Kendra now felt. She gazed down into the shaft in the floor and her heart gave a leap at the sight of the long staircase spiraling into the darkness. At last, they had found the way out of Een. At last they had found the way to begin the search for the Door to Unger.

“Come on,” Kendra said excitedly as she helped little Oki to his feet. “We have to get the others and go tell Uncle Griffinskitch!”

Within the hour, they were all back at the Yew tree house, sitting at the table and describing their morning’s adventures to the old wizard. Now that they had discovered a way to the outside world, Kendra assumed that they would spend the next few days making preparations for their long quest. But Uncle Griffinskitch had other ideas.

“We leave tonight,” the whiskered wizard declared after all was told. “We mustn’t risk Burdock waking up and alerting the rest of the council. Otherwise, we may all find ourselves in chains.”

“Over my dead green body,” Jinx said, gritting her teeth.

“Well, that might be,” said Uncle Griffinskitch, “but the important thing is to be on our way. You’ve all been outside of the magic curtain before, so you know what to pack. Gather your things and meet back here at midnight.”

For Kendra, the next few hours were a whirlwind of activity. There seemed so many things to do, yet so little time in which to do them. She set to work preparing for the long journey ahead. First she rubbed down her traveling boots with oil so that they would stay waterproof. Then she mended the holes in her long green cloak. Next, she packed her clothes and a few important supplies into her small knapsack. Somehow, she even found a moment to help Oki write a note to his parents, telling them that he was off to search for rare mushrooms in the distant hills of Wight with his master.

“Do you think it’s wrong to lie?” Kendra asked her friend, for while the Hills of Wight were far away from Faun’s End, they were still safely tucked inside the magic curtain of Een.

“I don’t see how we have a choice,” Oki said. “It’s illegal to leave Een now, so we can’t tell anyone what we’re about to do. Besides, my parents will be less worried this way. Remember the last time I left Een? My mother kept imagining that I would end up as lunch meat for some terrible monster.”

“Well, that should make you feel better this time, then,” Kendra said.

“Not really,” the little mouse said. “I’ll still worry!”

Before Kendra knew it, night had fallen and the small company of adventurers was creeping through the town of Faun’s End, towards the crypt and the secret tunnel. Kendra could not help to think of how different this adventure was from the last time she had left the land of Een, the previous summer. Then, she and the others had been seen as would-be heroes, specifically chosen to go and search for one of Een’s most precious treasures: the Box of Whispers.
But everything’s turned on its head now,
Kendra thought.
Now, we have to sneak out of Een. Now, we’re outlaws.

Outlaws or not, they encountered the first problem of their new adventure the moment they arrived at the crypt, for there was no sign of Burdock Brown. Of course, they had expected to find the ornery Een fast asleep, right where they had left him.

“Ratchet, I thought you said this powder of yours was supposed to keep him asleep for days,” Uncle Griffinskitch said.

“Well, I guess I’m still working out the kinks,” Ratchet explained, scratching his head. “I guess old Browny woke up.”

“Humph,” Uncle Griffinskitch muttered, and Kendra knew it was the type of humph that meant he wasn’t at all fond of kinks. “Let’s make haste,” the old wizard said. “I suspect Burdock will soon be on his way to stop us.”

The old wizard had no sooner spoken, when they all heard a clatter on the stairs that led down to the crypt.

“Halt in the name of the Law!” someone shouted. They could hear a great many footsteps headed towards them.

“Eek!” Oki squeaked. “It’s him! It’s Burdock!”

“And it sounds like he’s brought help,” Kendra added.

“To the tunnel!” Uncle Griffinskitch ordered.

Quickly they crossed the floor of the dark crypt. Kendra had closed the door to the secret tunnel before leaving last time, so now she knelt to the floor and quickly pulled up on the lever. The floor shifted and creaked as the shaft opened again.

Jinx bounded into the dark tunnel, clenching a torch in one of her many hands. “Come on, everyone!” she called. “I’ll lead the way.”

They all crawled through the narrow opening in the floor, with Uncle Griffinskitch and Kendra the last to enter. Just as her long braids brushed the lip of the hole, Kendra could hear Burdock and his guards enter the crypt.

“Traitors!” Burdock shouted angrily, and Kendra could imagine his one eyebrow arching furiously on his forehead. “Come back here!”

“Humph!” muttered Uncle Griffinskitch, and with that, he pulled a small lever from the inside of the tunnel and the hatch closed above them.

There was a series of loud thumps on the floor above their heads.

“What was that?” Kendra asked her uncle as they crouched together in the darkness of the stairs.

“Burdock’s guards threw their spears at us,” the wizard replied. “I guess I closed the hatch just in time.”

Kendra turned and gazed down the stairwell. Jinx had already led Oki, Ratchet and Professor Bumblebean into the darkness and she could only see the faint glow of the grasshopper’s torch, far below. She guessed that they had started descending the stairs without realizing that she and Uncle Griffinskitch weren’t right behind them. Still, Kendra waited with her uncle, for now she could hear more footsteps above them—Kendra knew it was Burdock and his Een guards running across the crypt to find the lever for the hatch. She clutched at her braids nervously.

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Griffinskitch said, as if he could read her thoughts. “Even if they find the lever, we’ll be long on our way.”

With these words, the old wizard waved a wrinkled hand over his staff to make it glow like a torch and began leading the way down the long, stone stairs.

Now that she could see better, Kendra caught her breath. The stairs spiraled downward, like a corkscrew with no railing or wall on either side. Peering cautiously over the edge, she could not see any bottom to the long sheer drop. One wrong step would mean a plummet to the death. Complicating this treacherous journey was the fact that each step was quite long—certainly, the stairs had not been built by Eens—and Kendra and her uncle almost had to hop from one step to the next.

“Oh, dear,” Kendra murmured with a gulp. “Poor Oki must be terrified!”

As for Uncle Griffinskitch, he did not seem bothered at all by the steepness of their path. He marched steadily downward, grunting here and there and never letting go of Kendra’s arm. Kendra felt as though the chasm was enormous. The air was stale and cold and each time Uncle Griffinskitch grunted, the sound echoed. Kendra pulled her green cloak tighter to her shoulder and tried to concentrate on the faint light of her uncle’s staff.

After what seemed like hours, Kendra and Uncle Griffinskitch reached the bottom of the mighty chasm. Here, the stairs ended in a sort of dock that jutted out over a vast underground river. The water looked deep and inky as it slowly wound its way down a long horizontal tunnel.

The others were waiting at the end of the dock.

“What now?” Jinx asked as Kendra and her uncle joined them. “We didn’t bring a boat and I don’t think we’re going to swim.”

“You won’t catch me in that water,” Oki squeaked. “Not for all the turnips in Turnipville.”

“Turnipville?” Professor Bumblebean asked. “I do say, where is that?”

“I just made it up,” Oki said with a shrug.

“What are we going to do, Uncle Griffinskitch?” Kendra asked, toying with her braids.

“Humph,” the old wizard muttered, and Kendra knew it was the type of humph that meant he had to think.

The white-bearded Een sat down on the cold, rickety dock, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands in front of him. Kendra and the others knew enough to be quiet so he could think. They moved off into the distance and waited glumly in the darkness. After awhile, Uncle Griffinskitch opened his sharp blue eyes and said simply, “Kendra, find me a walnut.”

It seemed a strange request, but the girl did indeed have a small supply of nuts in her pouch. Of course, these were Een-sized nuts, and quite tiny. Kendra passed one to her uncle. He eyed it carefully in the light of his torch then placed it on the ground and cracked it open with a heavy stamp of his foot.

“Do you really think this is the right time to stop and snack?” Ratchet asked the wizard.

“Humph,” Uncle Griffinskitch snorted. “You will see, Ringtail, how well magic works when one
does
work out the kinks.”

With that, Uncle Griffinskitch picked a perfect half shell of the walnut from the ground and cleaned it out with his finger. Then he waved his staff over the shell and murmured an incantation. Almost immediately—and to everyone’s great surprise—the shell grew to an enormous size and sat wobbling at the edge of the dock.

“My word!” Professor Bumblebean exclaimed, fussing with his glasses as if he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “What do we have here?”

“That,” Uncle Griffinskitch said, “is our boat.”

EVEN THE MOST STEADFAST VESSEL is of little use without a way to steer it, and now Kendra and her companions realized a new problem: They were without oars for their boat.

Thankfully, Jinx soon solved this problem, for near the dock there stood a row of large stone Fauns, and each figure held a long wooden pole. The wood had not rotted, even after all these years, and from these poles, Jinx was able to fashion a pair of crude oars.

“They’re not the prettiest,” the tiny grasshopper declared, “but they’ll certainly do the job.”

The small band of adventurers was soon on their way down the dark, underground river. The water was shallow and murky and had a slow current, so each passenger had to share in the duties of rowing the walnut boat. This they did dutifully, each of them thinking that the tunnel would soon come to an end and lead them to the ground above. But it did not. The river wound ever-forward into the darkness, hour after hour. Indeed, there seemed to be no end in sight.

“I wonder if we’ll ever see light again,” Oki murmured, for he was already growing quite terrified of the darkness.

“Not to fear, little one,” Professor Bumblebean said, rather cheerfully. “All roads come to an end.”

The professor had finished his turn at the oars and now had his nose buried in one of the many books he had packed. Kendra wondered how he could read in the dim light cast by the single torch that they kept burning to guide their way, but the professor did not seem at all bothered. He loved to read and rarely found a reason that was good enough to inhibit his passion. Indeed, even though they were going on a long journey, Professor Bumblebean had found it fit to pack a great many books, parchments, maps, and other such things to study along the way. Kendra could hardly believe that the frail Een could carry such a load, but carry it, he did.

“Who built the dock and the stairs leading up into the crypt?” Kendra asked the professor. “The steps were much too big for tiny Een feet.”

“I do agree,” Professor Bumblebean said, quite pleased to address Kendra’s curiosity. “Why, it was the Fauns, of course, who constructed the works. This book that I am now reading,
Myths and Legends of Flavius Faun
,
the Founder of Faun’s End
, explains that Flavius came through the tunnel many hundreds of years ago with a small band of followers. Their journey came to an end in our tiny town—and hence the reason it is called Faun’s End. Afterwards, I suppose the ancient Eens found it only appropriate to bury Flavius above the tunnel.”

“I wish they would have buried him above an open road, with sky over it,” Oki declared. “Then we wouldn’t be stuck under here, on this underground river.”

“Why that hardly makes sufficient sense,” Professor Bumblebean declared. “One can hardly build a road over sky.”

“I know it,” Oki said. “But I wish it anyway.”

Their journey up the river continued on through the night and into the day (you will remember, they had begun their journey at midnight). The river sometimes twisted and turned, and sometimes it forked in different directions. Since they had no map of the tunnel, they had no advice as to which fork to take in these instances, but Uncle Griffinskitch always made the decision with confidence, so Kendra trusted that the old wizard was relying on his magic to guide them.

The days turned into a week. Really, time had little meaning, for they could not see when the sun had set or the moon had risen; it was one long, dark journey. But they had to make the best of it. They had not packed a great deal of food, for they had hoped to forage for seeds and berries in the outside world. Of course, there were no berries or seeds to be found on the long underground river, so mostly they nibbled at their supply of Een cake, which, in all truth, is a poor name for it because it is nothing more than dry, bitter bread made from the nectar of dandelions. Still, Een cake lasts a very long time, so it is the perfect thing when one is going on a journey to distant lands.

The members of the company took turns sleeping and tried not to get on each other’s nerves in the confines of the small boat—for indeed, as a nut, the boat was quite large, but as a place to live in, it was incredibly crowded. They amused themselves in the ways they knew how. Professor Bumblebean delighted in reading his various books, of course, and attempted to continue Jinx’s reading lessons, though the tiny grasshopper much preferred to spend her time sharpening her weapons. Ratchet dreamed of strange new inventions, and Oki murmured fretfully about turnips, hoping that this practice would help him forget his fears. Uncle Griffinskitch spent long hours sitting at the front of the walnut boat, his eyes closed in concentration.

As for Kendra, she passed the time imagining what it would be like to find her family, at long last. Now that she had been given the clue of the Door to Unger, she knew she was closer than ever to finding them. If she could only find this mysterious door, then she would discover the truth about her family. At least, that is what Oroook the Unger had told her. Of course, he had also told her that she had the strange mark of a star on her hand, but no matter how hard Kendra studied her palm, the mark was invisible to her.

Then early one morning (at least it seemed early to Kendra; she really couldn’t tell) the walnut boat was jostled so roughly that it nearly capsized. In normal circumstances, Kendra would have been frightened; but in truth, she had grown so bored, that she was ready to welcome any excitement.

“What happened?” she asked eagerly.

“Something just bumped us,” Jinx declared, jamming one of the long poles into the thick mud at the bottom of the river, so as to stop the boat.

“EEK!” Oki squeaked. “What’s a ‘something’?”

“Maybe it was a turnip,” Ratchet said in jest.

“Shh,” Uncle Griffinskitch said, leaning far over the boat. He waved his hand over his staff, and the staff cast a light over the dark water. “Did you see it, Jinx?”

“No,” the grasshopper replied sternly. “But I sure felt it.”

“Humph,” the old wizard muttered.

For a time, everyone was leaning over the boat and silently scanning the dark surface of the water. Then, suddenly, Kendra saw a long shadow streak through the murky depths of the river.

Oki saw it too. “Look!” the little mouse squealed, pointing a paw to the water. “I see scales!”

“Scales?” the professor asked. “I do say! We must have encountered some fish.”

But this was no fish—that much became clear in the very next instant when a terrible creature came shooting up from the ink-black water. Now, to a human such as you or me, this creature would have seemed large—but to Kendra and her companions, it was simply enormous, a horrible beast that reared out of the water, a tangle of eyes and teeth. It was long like a whip, and it had a thick body covered in copper-colored scales; indeed, in many ways, it was like a snake. But unlike most snakes, this one had three heads.

“Why, it’s a skerpent!” Professor Bumblebean declared, quickly flipping through one of his books.

“A what?” Kendra gasped, her eye fixed on the monster.

“A skerpent!” the professor repeated. He had now found the proper place in his book and happily read out the following passage: “Skerpent are nocturnal creatures, preferring to live underground in moist or wet environments. In a group, they are known as a coil. Their diet consists of—,”

“Oh, do shut it!” Jinx scowled, drawing her sword. “Skerpent or not, this thing looks like it means business!”

The tiny grasshopper was right, for at that moment, the beast lunged towards the walnut boat with all three heads, its jaws snapping, eyes gleaming, tongues flickering.

“EEK!” Oki screamed. “Don’t think of turnips! Don’t think of turnips!” In his fright, he reached out and grabbed hold of the nearest thing he could find—which, in this case, happened to be old Uncle Griffinskitch’s beard. In the next moment the old wizard and the mouse had tumbled to the bottom of the boat in a great pile.

“Days of Een!” Uncle Griffinskitch exclaimed. “How will I save us now?”

But Jinx was on the job. Just before the skerpent could strike, Jinx launched herself at the creature and drove it away from the boat with a mighty kick of her long back legs. Both grasshopper and beast plunged into the river, disappearing beneath the surface.

“Jinx!” Kendra cried. “Where are you?”

Only a moment later the giant skerpent burst out of the water, the feisty Jinx riding its thick coils.

“That’s the way, Jinx!” Professor Bumblebean shouted, leaning over the boat. “It says in this book that skerpent don’t like confrontation!”

“Do you mind?” Jinx called back. “I’m kind of busy here!”

She now struck down at the skerpent with every weapon she had. None would seem to break through the leviathan’s strong scales, but the skerpent now let loose a horrific squeal that seemed to shake the entire cavern. It thrashed madly about the water, causing a tidal wave that sent the tiny walnut boat—and all its occupants—hurtling against the rocky shore.

Like any good nut, the boat was shattered and Kendra and her companions were sent sprawling across the rocks. No one seemed hurt, but even as they crawled from the wreckage, Jinx continued to wage battle with the terrible skerpent. It snapped at her with each of its three heads, and yet the speedy grasshopper seemed to avoid every attack, jumping here and there and thrusting at the skerpent’s writhing body with her swords.

It was a noble fight, but at last the skerpent was able to wrap each of its three long tongues around Jinx. Soon the skerpent’s angry heads were all pulling the grasshopper in different directions. It was like a game of tug-of-war—and Jinx was the rope.

Then, just as it seemed as if the tiny grasshopper had met her end, a loud, sharp voice cut through the darkness of tunnel.

“Who dares to play with the pet of his royal majesty, King Reginaldo IV?”