The Kneebone Boy (25 page)

“What about sailing a full-rigged ship and navigating by the stars?” Otto said. “What about rescuing people on islands?”

“Don’t you remember what Haddie said?” Lucia replied. “That people should have all their adventures before
they’re fourteen because if they don’t they lose their passion for adventures? What if we get older and forget what it’s like to want a big adventure? What if we become like all other grown-ups, only thinking about how much money we make every year and if we’ve remembered to lock the door at night? I couldn’t bear it, Otto.” She looked at his worried face. “All right?” she asked again.

The shadows cast from the beam of the torch made him look more careworn than a thirteen-year-old boy should. Maybe he’s too old already, Lucia thought. Maybe he already slipped into that grown-up world when I wasn’t noticing, and now it’s too late.

Otto’s elbows quickly bumped against each other. “All right.”

“Good,” she said under her breath, smiling. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. It was icy cold, and it didn’t squeeze back.

In which Lucia wonders if Big Adventures are all they’re cracked up to be

The stones beneath their feet were slippery, and wearing trainers didn’t help, so they moved along slowly. In the distance they could hear a hollow, quivering sound like the tail end of an echo.

“I wonder why Haddie let us go?” Lucia mused as they made their way through the tunnel. “She promised Dad she’d keep us out of trouble.”

“I don’t think Haddie likes rules,” Max replied. “Even her own.”

They turned round a snaky bend, their eyes squinting into the torch’s beam to find the tunnel’s end. There was only more darkness as far as the eye could see. There was nothing to do but walk and try not to think about rats.

“Imagine Haddie back at Little Tunks,” Max said.

“We’d never have to stay with Mrs. Carnival again,” Lucia said.

“Dad wouldn’t always have that look about him.”

The beam of light from the torch began to dance around so they glanced at Otto.

“Listen,” he said.

They stood still and listened. At first they heard nothing, but soon there was the faintest scurrying sound.

“Rats probably,” Max said.

“No, not really!?” Lucia said, horrified. Her bare legs instantly felt goose pimply and she quickened her pace.

The tunnel seemed to go on and on. It always takes forever to go places when you have never been there before, but when you are travelling subterraneously, with the expectation of rats underfoot, it can feel like an eternity. After a while, though, the passageway took another sharp turn. When they rounded it, they saw that the tunnel walls abruptly ended and opened out into nothing at all. A vista of black sky faced them. The ground dropped off, and the sound of water idly splashing against rocks far, far below warned them that they must be on a cliff.

Otto shone the torch around, and they spied a crooked stone bridge jutting out from the ledge, spanning the void between where they stood and another sheer cliff to the right. This cliff was taller than the one they stood on, and quite jagged with small bushes and stunted trees sprouting here and there in the crannies.

Lucia eyed the bridge warily. There were no handrails,
just a dizzying walk high above the sea. To fall off it would be massively unlucky.

“You can crawl across it,” Max suggested when he saw her expression.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lucia said, although she had just been thinking that very same thing. But the way Max said it made her decide not to. “Well, Otto can if he wants,” she added.

“My scarf would get caught,” he said. “I’ll walk it.”

They did. No one fell.

Though there was one awful point where Otto lost his balance and had to crouch down for a moment and grab hold of the bridge. It was a horrifying few seconds for everyone involved so you’ll understand if I just skip it.

Now that they had reached the other cliff, they could see that it was in fact the cliff that Kneebone Castle sat on. If they bent their necks back they could just make out the lumpy stones of the castle’s keep. Mind you, they had to bend their heads back while their spines were pressed against the cliff face because they had come to the most dangerous part of the secret passageway. All that stood between them and the ocean below was a narrow ledge, about the width of your hand if you are over the age of nine and under the age of sixteen. If you press your hand against the bottom of your foot, you’ll see just how narrow this ledge was.

Max was first in line, then Lucia, last of all Otto. Now Lucia truly could not tell the difference between Otto’s thumping heart and her own.

“All right?” Max said, getting ready to move.

And to Lucia’s own surprise she answered, “No. Not all right. Not even the smallest bit all right.”

Otto said something then. Out of the corner of her eye, Lucia could see his hands moving, but she was too scared to turn her head to see what he was saying. Even looking at him sideways made her dizzy so she shut her eyes.

“He says—” Max started to translate, but then he stopped in confusion and asked Otto to repeat it.

“Right. He says,” Max tried again, still sounding uncertain, “that ‘if you look straight ahead, you can see the Orion constellation.’ ”

She didn’t want to open her eyes. Still, after a few deep breaths, she forced herself to. There, dead ahead, was Orion’s belt, the three bright stars each with its pale blue nimbus, surrounded by a cluster of pinprick stars. She had been so scared she hadn’t noticed how curiously the sky encircled them. Where the sky bottomed out, the ocean took over, its black slick waves stretching out to the tail ends of the world in all directions. This must be how it feels to be on a ship, she thought.

Lucia had never had to
try
to imagine anything. Her mind just naturally slipped into stories, sometimes without her even knowing she’d done it. But now, when a single misstep would mean a tumbling plunge to her death, she had to try. A ship, a ship, she thought. I am on a ship.

No, you are on a cliff! her brain screamed back at her.

I’m on a fully rigged sailing ship, she thought, ignoring
her brain. I can even hear the waves crashing against the starboard side.

It’s the cliff that the waves are crashing against!

Shut up, it’s the starboard side, she told her brain. The weather’s dirty tonight, lads, and the sea is a demon.

She felt Otto’s hand grab hers. “But my crew is brave and my ship handles well in fair weather or foul.”

Max grabbed her other hand. Then step by tiny step she began to move across the ledge, her eyes and her mind held steady by the sight of Orion’s belt. Each step, she told herself, is one step closer to the sultan. One more, and one more, and—

“Nearly there,” Max cooed.

They say that if you force yourself to laugh when you are feeling especially dismal, you will automatically feel cheerier about things. It’s something to do with glands, I think. That night, Lucia discovered a similar remedy for fear. With her spine pressed straight against the wall and her chin tipped high so that her eyes could remain fixed on Orion, she assumed the universal pose of courage. And do you know, she began, ever so slowly, to feel more and more courageous. By the time she felt comfortable enough to let her mind wander (she was contemplating the sultan’s face when he saw the Hardscrabbles burst into his room), the ledge began to widen. Max stopped. He let go of her hand.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We can walk normally now. Just stay close to the cliff.”

Well, one doesn’t quite walk “normally” while on the
edge of a precipice, but it was certainly an improvement. Before long they came to a fissure in the cliff, wide enough for a child or a smallish grown-up to slip through.

“This must be it,” Max said. “Give us some light in there, Otto.”

It looked like a cave at first glance but the torch found a set of crudely carved stairs along the back wall. The stairs rose up, through a vertical tunnel of stone, twisting round and round at a steep incline.

“Ready to climb?” Max said.

Lucia and Otto nodded. Up they went, Max at the lead, Lucia in the middle and Otto holding the torch upwards from his position at the bottom. The stairs were shallow and the space was tight. They had to press their hands against the walls for balance as they climbed. Round and round they went in the most dizzying way, higher and higher, until their thigh muscles felt like they’d been pummeled.

“How much longer to the tower, do you think?” Lucia asked, panting.

“The tower? I doubt we’ve reached the castle’s dungeon yet,” Max said, also breathless.

They continued on, with Otto staring up at Lucia’s bum, Lucia staring up at Max’s bum, and Max having the lucky bumless view. Suddenly the rock face changed. The stones were now the rough-cut lumps of the castle wall. Up close they were mud brown with red veins creeping across them, and they gave off the smell of long-buried coins.

“Okay, we’re in the castle,” Max whispered. There was
no reason to whisper really, but it did make them feel eerie to be inside. It was like travelling beneath the skin of a giant. The castle’s stones even felt different from the cliff’s rock. The stones were warmer beneath their hands, and there was a smoothness to the lumps, like great, clenched muscles. They could hear sounds now too, a faint humming from somewhere deep in the bowels of the castle and once, as they climbed higher, the sound of someone crying. That made them stop in their tracks until the crying ceased. Then, without a word to one another, they kept climbing. There was nothing else to do after all. Not really.

“There’s something up ahead,” Max whispered suddenly. “Here. Otto, pass me up the torch.”

The torch was passed and Max shined it above his head, waving it this way and that.

“Bad,” Max said finally.

“What? Bad
what
?” Lucia cried.

“They’ve built an extension,” Max said.

It was a close thing. Lucia had even formed a fist and was about to make contact with the back of Max’s thigh when Otto squeezed her ankle to keep her from doing it.

“That’s not funny, Max!” she said. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“No, it’s
not
funny,” Max said. “Don’t you understand? The extension blocks the stairs. Look.”

Lucia climbed a little higher and gazed up. He was right. There was a narrow space between the wallboard and the stone wall but then it was blocked off altogether by wooden beams and, above that, solid wood planking.

“But how do we get to the sultan then?” Lucia said.

“I don’t know,” Max said.

At first she thought he was joking. Max always knew what to do next. She waited for him to say, “Never mind, just wanted to see you squirm. Here’s what we do.” And then he would tell them his brilliant idea.

But he didn’t.

“Well, there must be something!” Lucia said. “We can’t just turn back now.”

“I don’t see what else we
can
do,” Max said.

They stood there, all three of them, not quite believing their bad luck and hating extensions in general and wondering bitterly, and out loud, why a castle as big as the Kneebone Castle would even need an extension to begin with.

It was Otto who surprised them and began to climb again. He squeezed past Lucia, then Max, grabbing the torch out of his hands.

“It’s no use, Otto,” Max said.

But Otto kept going until he came to the narrow space between the stone wall and the wallboard. With a hop, he pulled up his legs and pressed the soles of his trainers against the wallboard while pushing his back against the stone wall. Now off the ground, his body forming an L, he began to shimmy up the wall. He managed to shimmy all the way to the top of the wallboard wall before he could go no further.

“Come on down, Otto,” Lucia said. “It’s no good.”

Instead of coming down, though, the torch light suddenly went out and Otto vanished in the darkness.

“Otto?” they called up blindly.

There was no answer. Of course.

Lucia felt the first stirrings of panic beginning to set in.

“Go, go!” she said, pushing at Max’s leg.

They both hurried up the stairs as best as they could in pitch blackness. Max yelped suddenly, and Lucia cried out, “What is it?”

“Hit my head on the wallboard,” he said.

Suddenly light shone above them, seemingly from nowhere, illuminating the narrow space. Otto was nowhere in sight but they could hear a soft knocking against the wall, on the inside.

“He’s in!” Lucia said. “But how—? Oh, look, there are spaces between the beams. He slipped in through there.”

“Well, who could see it from down below?” Max said sulkily.

“Otto did somehow,” Lucia said.

“Lucky guess.”

“Oh, budge up and let me pass if you’re just going to stand here and whinge about it,” Lucia said.

That made Max move. They both shimmied up the wall, just as Otto had done, and when they got to the top they squeezed between the beams. Max went headfirst, which was unfortunate because it was a long drop to the floor. Otto caught him seconds before he cracked his head
open. Lucia turned on her stomach and put her feet through the opening, then lowered herself slowly. She dangled for a minute before she had the courage to let go. Otto caught her too.