The Farthest-Away Mountain
Lynne Reid Banks
Illustrated by Victor Ambrus

Table of Contents

Title Page

A Preface

Chapter One The Call

Chapter Two The Wicked Wood

Chapter Three The Cabin in the Meadow

Chapter Four Drackamag

Chapter Five The Spikes

Chapter Six The Mountain Path

Chapter Seven The Gargoyles

Chapter Eight The Tunnel

Chapter Nine The Painted Snow

Chapter Ten Graw

Chapter Eleven Croak Again

Chapter Twelve Up the Mountain

Chapter Thirteen The Blue Bead

Chapter Fourteen Another Poem

Chapter Fifteen Who is the Master?

Chapter Sixteen The Witch

Chapter Seventeen The Story of the Mountain

Chapter Eighteen The Witchball

Chapter Nineteen Doom

Chapter Twenty Trolls

Chapter Twenty-One Changes

Chapter Twenty-Two Home

Chapter Twenty-Three The Ring

Chapter Twenty-Four The Palace

Chapter Twenty-Five Rally

Chapter Twenty-Six Gog

Chapter Twenty-Seven Back to the Mountain

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

A Preface

Once upon a time, in a little village which lay in a mountain valley, there lived with her family a girl calle Dakin.

Her country was beautiful. The air there was so clear that it sparkled in the sunshine as if it were made of diamond-dust. Every morning, winter or summer, Dakin could look out of her bedroom window and see the farthest-away mountain, its black peak standing up clear of the thick shawl of pine woods it wore on its lower slopes. Between the peak and the woods was a narrower shawl of snow. This snow changed colour in a most odd way. Sometimes it was a sharp blue, and sometimes purple, or pink, or even yellow or green. Dakin would watch this snow in great puzzlement, for snow, after all, is supposed to be white.

She looked at the pine woods, too. Forests always gave Dakin a shivery feeling, half unease and half excitement. There was no knowing what lay beneath those close-together branches, and no one could tell her, because no one in the town – not even her father, who had visited the city and the ocean – had ever been to the farthest-away mountain.

Old Deegle, the ballad-singer and storyteller who came once a year to bring them news and tales from all over the country, said that the reason no one had ever been to the farthest-away mountain was because however long you travelled towards it, it always stayed in the distance. This, he said, was due to a spell which had been placed on it by a magician from their very own village, whose wicked son had disappeared into the mountain long, long ago.

But now that you know as much as anyone then knew about the farthest-away mountain, I must tell you about Dakin. She is the most important person in the story.

Dakin was small and dainty and wore full skirts to her ankles over lots of petticoats, but no shoes except when it was very cold, and then she wore lace-up boots. She had long hair, so fair as to be almost white. She was supposed to keep it in plaits, but usually she didn’t, and it blew out behind her and got tangled; then her mother would have to brush and comb it for hours to get all the knots out. She had a turned-up nose and eyes the colour of the blue mountain flowers which grew in spring, and small brown hands and feet. She was fourteen.

In those days a girl was quite old enough to get married by that age. Dakin was the prettiest girl in the village; she could sing like a thrush and dance like a leaf in the wind, and besides, she was a marvellous cook. So that, until you know certain other things about her, it’s difficult to understand why her parents were so very anxious about her chances of getting married.

It had begun four years earlier, when she was ten, and had announced to her mother and father and two sisters and two brothers that she was not going to marry until she had seen some of the things she wanted to see, and done some of the things she wanted to do. She went on to tell them that there were three main things, which were these: she wanted to visit the farthest-away mountain; she wanted to meet a gargoyle; and she wanted to find a prince for her husband.

The family was at supper at the time. Her father and mother had looked at each other, and so had her brothers and sisters. Then they all looked at Dakin who was calmly drinking her soup.

“But Dakin, you can’t go to the farthest-away mountain,” said her father. “No one’s ever been there, not even me, and I’m the most travelled man in the village.”

“Dakin, what do you want to see a gargoyle for?” cried her mother. “If you ever saw one, you’d be so frightened you’d turn into stone.”

“You’re a silly goose,” said her elder brother, Dawsy.

Dakin had stopped drinking her soup and was looking out of the window towards the farthest-away mountain, which in the clear air looked as if it were just beyond the end of the village. “I must go to the farthest-away mountain and see what’s in the forest,” she said. “And I want to find out what makes the snow change colour.”

“There’s nothing in the forest that you won’t find in our own pine wood,” argued Margle, her second brother, who thought he knew everything. “And I can tell you why the snow changes colour, without you going to see: it’s the sun shining on it.”

“Shining blue? Shining green?” said Dakin scornfully.

“The gargoyle part’s silly, though,” said her littlest sister Triska, who was only six. “I’ve seen pictures of them in Paster’s book of church pictures, and they’re horrid and ugly.”

“I think they look sad,” said Dakin, “I want to find one and ask why gargoyles look sad.”

“They’re only statues of heads. They can’t talk!” scoffed Sheggie with her mouth full. “Anyway,” she added with some satisfaction, “You’ll have to give in about the prince. There’s only Prince Rally, and he can’t marry anyone until the Ring of Kings is found.”

“Which might be any time,” said Dakin.

“Which will be never,” said Margle. “It’s been missing for seventeen years, since it was stolen by a troll at Prince Rally’s christening. And no one in the Royal Family can get married without it.”

“Besides,” said Sheggie, “what makes you think he’d marry you? He’d want to marry a princess.” But a dreamy look came into her eyes, so that Dawsy, who was a tease, said, “Look at Sheggie, wishing he’d come and ask her!” And they all laughed.

Dakin’s brothers and sisters forgot what she’d said, and her father and mother hoped Dakin had forgotten too. Four years went by, and young men began to ask for her hand in marriage. But when her father would tell her that this one or that one had asked for her, Dakin would only shake her head.

“It’s no good, Father,” she would say. “I’ve made up my mind to visit the farthest-away mountain, and see a gargoyle, and find a prince to be my husband.”

Her father at first tried to reason with her, and later got angry and shouted, and as time went by he grew pathetic and pleaded, which was hardest of all for Dakin, who loved him, to resist. But her mind was made up and somehow she couldn’t change it.

So now she was nearly fifteen and there was hardly a young man in the village who had not asked for her at least once and gone away disappointed. Sheggie and Dawsy and Margle were all married, so that left only Triska at home to keep her company. But she seemed quite happy, and usually sang as she did her work round the house; only sometimes, on her way past a window or across the grass outside the back door, she would stop with a dishcloth or a plate of chicken-meal in her hands and look to the left, along the valley to where the royal estates lay, with the spires, high walls and shining golden gates of the palace.

Then she would turn and look the other way, towards the mountain. She would stand quite still, as if listening; then she would sigh very deeply before moving on again.

CHAPTER ONE The Call

One morning, very early, Dakin woke up sharply to find herself sitting up in bed.

“Somebody called me!” she thought. “I heard a voice in my sleep!”

She jumped up and ran to the open window in her long nightgown. Outside the sun was just appearing beyond the farthest-away mountain, breathing orange fire onto the strange, patchwork snow and streaking the pale sky with morning cloud-colours. It was still cold, and Dakin shivered as she called softly into the empty world:

“Did somebody want me?”

No one answered, and Dakin thought she must have dreamt it. But just as she was turning to jump back into bed again, she saw something which nearly made her fall out of the window.

The mountain nodded.

At least, that’s what it looked like. As the sun almost burst over the top, the black head of the mountain seemed to dip, as if to say, “Yes, somebody wants you.”

Dakin stared and stared, forgetting the cold, until the sun was completely clear of the peak and stood out by itself, round and red and dazzling. Nothing else happened, but all the same, Dakin knew. It was time to start.

Moving quickly and quietly, she put on her warmest dress with three red petticoats under it, her stout climbing boots which laced with coloured lacings up past her ankles, and the white apron she always wore. She hadn’t time to plait her hair so she pushed it out of the way under her long white stocking-cap. Then she tiptoed downstairs.

It was difficult to be quiet because of the boots, which she should have left till later. Her mother called from the bedroom:

“Dakin, is that you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Dakin, wondering how she would explain her going-out clothes if her mother saw her.

“Put on the water for the porridge, little one,” called her mother sleepily.

Dakin almost changed her mind about going in that moment. She wanted to run into her parents’ room and curl up under the big feather quilt, hugging her mother’s feet as she used to when she was little. It would be so safe and happy to put the water on the big black stove for the porridge, and later to eat it with coffee and wheaty bread with Mother and Father and Triska, and feed the hens and do the washing and go on all day as if the farthest-away mountain had never called her.

For a moment she paused on the stairs. Then she thought, “No. I must do what I’ve said I’ll do.”

So she went downstairs, and pumped the water very quickly and put it on to heat. Then she hastily filled her knapsack with the things she thought she’d need – a chunk of bread and another of cheese, a slab of her mother’s toffee, a mug and a knife, a candle and some matches. Then she looked round. On the window-ledge was a book of poems her father had brought back for her from the city, and she put that in.

Then, as an afterthought, she lifted off the mantlepiece the little brass figure of a troll that her father had found years and years ago on the very edge of the pine wood. She held the little man in her hand and looked at his impish, bearded face under the pointed hat.

“I shouldn’t take you really,” she whispered. “You’re brass, and you’re heavy.”

But nonetheless she slipped him into her knapsack and felt him slide between the loaf and the book and lie at the bottom. And she didn’t feel so lonely, suddenly.

Now she could definitely hear sounds of movement from above, and she knew that soon they’d be down. So she pulled her warm brown cloak down from the hook behind the door and wrapped it round her; then she put all her weight on the heavy latch, and the next moment she was out in the bright morning, running, running towards the farthest-away mountain with her white stocking-cap flying out behind her and her knapsack bumping.

First she had to go through the village, or rather across a corner of it. People she knew were just opening up their shutters and putting their bolsters and sheets on the upstairs window-ledges to air.

“Good morning, Dakin!” they cried as she passed. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“I’m going to the farthest-away mountain,” she called back over her shoulder. But they all thought she was joking, and laughed, and let her go.

CHAPTER TWO The Wicked Wood

Soon she had left the village behind. She climbed a little green hill and ran down the other side, and when she looked back she couldn’t see any of the village except the tip of the church steeple. She crossed a rushing, mint-green river by jumping from rock to rock, and then she was as far away from home as she’d ever been. The children of the town were never allowed to go beyond the river alone, because beyond the river was the wood, and the wood could be dangerous, even in daytime. Under the thick pine branches it was always like dusk, and every direction looked the same, so that it wasn’t just easy to get lost, it was almost impossible not to.

Dakin paused on the dark edge of the wood, and looked back over the sunny-smooth meadows with their knuckles of rock and the gay foaming river dashing on its way to the sea. She looked ahead, but being under the first branches she couldn’t see the farthest-away mountain any more, only the murky depths of the forest, its tree trunks filling in the spaces between each other until there seemed to be a solid wall of them.

“How will I know that I’m going straight towards the farthest-away mountain, and not walking in circles like Meggers Hawmak when he went in after his cow and was lost for three days?” she wondered.

“Better go back,” whispered a little voice inside her head, “before it’s too late.”

Dakin took a step back towards the rushing river, and then stopped.

“No,” she said aloud and started off under the trees.

Before she’d been walking for three minutes everything round her grew dim and every direction looked the same. She turned to look back the way she had come but it was just as closed-in behind as ahead, with only little trickles of sunshine penetrating the thick pine needles. When she turned to go on she found she didn’t know whether she’d turned in a half-circle or a whole circle, whether she was going back towards the village or on towards the mountain, or in another direction altogether. There were no friendly sounds of birds or scurrying of little animals, no sounds when she walked on the spongy needles and moss, no hum of insects or whisper of breeze – in fact, no sounds anywhere at all.

“I’m frightened!” realized Dakin. It was for the first time in all her life and it was a horrible feeling.

She had never felt so completely alone. She felt tears pricking her eyes like pine needles. And then she remembered.

She wasn’t quite alone, after all. She had the little troll.

Quickly she slipped undone the straps of her knapsack, opened it, and reached to the bottom between the rough loaf and the smooth book. Her fingers touched the small, heavy figure, and closed round it. It fitted her hand in a comforting way. She drew the little man out and looked at him. He reminded her of home and the warm kitchen. A tear fell off her cheek and splashed on his long brass goblin’s nose.

He sneezed.

Dakin shrieked and dropped him in the moss. She backed against a tree, her eyes huge and her hands to her face.

The little troll picked himself up. He stood knee deep in moss with his hands on his hips, looking up at her. For a long moment they stared at each other. Then the little man, in a voice like the far-away cracking of twigs, said:

“Could I borrow your handkerchief, madam?”

Without speaking, Dakin took it out of the pocket of her apron and gingerly held it out to him as if expecting him to bite her. He reached up his tiny hand and, holding the handkerchief by one corner with most of it on the ground, he wiped her tear off his face and carefully dried his beard.

“Thank you,” he said politely. “I’m quite tarnished enough,” he added. “Moisture doesn’t do brass any good, you know.” He sounded a little bit severe about it.

Dakin went down on her knees beside him, staring at him, quite unable to believe it.

“Would you mind explaining,” she said shakily, “how you come to be alive?”

“Certainly,” replied the little figure. “Only would you please pick me up? I’m getting a bit tired of shouting.”

Cautiously she laid her hand palm upwards on the moss beside him and he stepped briskly onto it, holding onto her thumb to steady himself as she got carefully to her feet. She looked at him in bewilderment. Of course, it was darkish and difficult to be sure, but he seemed just the same – that is, he hadn’t turned into a flesh-and-blood little man. He was still heavy for his size, and he still seemed to be made of brass. Only now he was definitely and undoubtedly alive. He was rubbing at his sleeves to try to get the tarnish off them, and gradually the metal was becoming brighter.

“That’s better!” said the troll.

“We did our best,” said Dakin, “but we couldn’t get into the cracks.”

“Quite. Quite,” said the troll. “I’ll soon have it all off. Now we must talk. By the way, where are you going?”

“To the farthest-away mountain,” said Dakin.

The little man was so startled he had to grab her thumb with both hands to save himself from toppling to the ground.

“You don’t mean – not to the – f-f-f-farthest-away mountain?” he whispered in a trembling voice.

“Why not?” asked Dakin.

“But you can’t! No one’s ever been there! It’s inhabited by gargoyles—”

“Gargoyles?” cried Dakin excitedly.

“Yes. And ogres and monsters and witches and—”

“If no one’s ever been there, how do you know?” asked Dakin.

The troll clapped his hands to his mouth, as if he had said too much.

“Well, I… I don’t really know… that is, I’ve heard—” he stammered.

“You’ve been there! You have!” cried Dakin.

“Well—”

“Haven’t you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact – I have. In fact I used to live there. Once. Years and years and years ago. And I don’t want to go back!” he added. “So you’d better go straight home like a sensible girl, and put me back on the mantlepiece where it’s safe.”

“I’ve got to go to the farthest-away mountain,” said Dakin. “It called to me.”

“What!” The little troll sat down suddenly in the palm of her hand. He looked up and clasped his knotty little hands together as if pleading with her. “It didn’t – by any chance – nod to you, too, did it?”

“Yes, it did – this morning,” said Dakin.

“Then you’re done for. Poor little girl. Done for,” whispered the troll, shaking his head sadly. A brass tear rolled down the side of his nose. Then he stood up again sharply. “Well,” he said, straightening his pointed hat, “I must be getting along.” He walked briskly to the edge of her hand and would have stepped off into empty air if she hadn’t grabbed him.

“Wait!” she cried, holding him while he struggled and kicked. “Stop! You can’t leave me here alone! Where are you going?”

“Anywhere!” he said. “Anywhere but where you’re going. Let me go this minute!”

“But you’ll get lost in the wood!” Dakin said. “I don’t know myself which direction leads towards home. And you were in the knapsack, so you can’t know either.”

The troll stopped struggling and looked at her.

“I can find the way out of the wood,” he said. “Or I could find the way up the farthest-away mountain. If I wanted to. Which I don’t. If the mountain’s called you, and nodded to you, well you have to go. I understand that. So I’ll show you which way to walk, and I’ll walk in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t go there again, not for a million golden pine-cones.”

With a sinking heart, Dakin put the little man gently down onto the ground and picked up her knapsack.

“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll go on alone. Which way is it?”

The little man pointed. “That way,” he said. “And if you want to keep straight, watch how the pine needles lie. Walk along them, never across. Oh—” He stopped, and dug in a hidden pocket of his jacket. “You’d better take this. You’ll never get past Drackamag without it.” He held something up to her. When she took it, it turned out to be what looked like a tiny blue bead.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s to suck,” the troll explained. “When you hear Drackamag roaring up ahead, put it in your mouth. Suck. Don’t chew.” He started to turn away, but again stopped. “One more thing,” he said. “Mark you, I wouldn’t give a bee sting for your chances of getting through alive, but there’s no reason to go without knowing anything. You must bathe in the Lithy Pool. That’s very important. With all your clothes on.” He paused. “I don’t know the password any more,” he said sadly. “It used to be ‘dragon’s fin’, but it might be almost anything now. Perhaps someone will tell you on the way. There used to be Old Croak – but he’s probably dead long ago. Oh dear.” Another brass tear sparkled among the mosses. “Goodbye.” He turned away very quickly and ran off as fast as his short legs would carry him.

CHAPTER THREE The Cabin in the Meadow

If Dakin had felt lonely and frightened before, she felt five times as bad now that her only friend had deserted her. But he had given her some help, and she supposed she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to come if it was as bad as he said.

She trudged on through the silent trees, her eyes on the ground to watch the way the pine needles lay. They pointed her direction like arrow-heads. The absolute quiet was like a heavy blanket over her head. She tried to sing, but her voice just came out in a little bleat.

And all the time, her heart was full of fears.

What – or who – was Drackamag? If he – or it – was as terrible as he sounded, what good was sucking a little blue sweet going to do against him? What was the Lithy Pool, and why should she have to bathe in it with all her clothes on? Who would ask her for the password, and what would happen to her when she didn’t know it? And who was Old Croak? He sounded as if he might be helpful – if he were still alive. It would be good to feel she had at least one friend ahead of her.

While she was thinking about all this, and following the pine needles, she suddenly noticed that there were little dapples of light on them. She looked up, and to her delight discovered that the trees were thinning.

She had reached the other side of the wood!

Through the last of the rough trunks, she could see a sunny meadow, speckled with flowers. In the middle of it was a little log cabin and beyond that the farthest-away mountain stood up against the sky, looking not far away any more but very near. She laughed aloud and began to run.

Just as she passed the last tree, she felt a sudden tug, and the next moment her hair came tumbling down her back. She stopped and looked back. Her bobbled stocking-cap was caught on a branch, high, high up.

She stood under the last tree, staring above her at the cap.

“But how could it have got up there?” she thought. “I can’t possibly reach it!” It was as if one of the high branches had reached down and snatched the cap off her head as she passed. She thought of climbing up to get it, but the tree was smooth all the way up.

“I’ll just have to leave it,” she thought. “Oh dear!”

But nothing seemed so bad now she was out in the sunny meadow and away from the gloom of the wood. The birds sang as she ran through the deep grasses to the cabin, with the heads of the long-stemmed buttercups bouncing off her skirts. The place seemed deserted. She peered in at one of the windows, but the glass seemed to be covered with dust inside so that she couldn’t see. She went round to find the door. She turned one corner, and another, and another, and – but here was the same window again! There was no door.

“But how do people get in and out?” she wondered aloud.

“They don’t,” said a voice that sounded like an old rusty pump. “That’s the idea.”

Dakin jumped. The voice had seemed to come from inside the house.

“Where are you?” she said, looking through the window again.

The dust on the inside of the pane was disturbed, and now Dakin could see something – it looked like a little hand – rubbing a tiny clear place. Then the hand disappeared, and there was a minute eye, looking out at her.

There was a pause while the eye looked her up and down. Then the voice said, “You look all right. You can come in, if you want to.”

Dakin wasn’t at all sure she did, but it seemed rude not to, so she said, “How can I, as there’s no door?”

“Down the chimney, of course,” said the voice impatiently.

Dakin looked round. Leaning against the side of the cabin was a ladder, which she hadn’t noticed before, and up this she climbed rather reluctantly. She thought how dirty the chimney was at home and wished she’d gone straight past the cabin without stopping.

“Come on, come on!” the voice called irritably.

On the roof, Dakin scrambled to the chimneystack and looked down. It was a very big opening, and it didn’t look sooty, so she sat on the edge of it with her legs dangling in.

“Don’t be afraid, you won’t hurt yourself!” called the voice.

Dakin was getting very curious to see what the owner of the voice looked like, so she pushed herself off the rim of the chimney.

It was rather like going down a slide: there was a quick whoosh and the next thing she knew was that she was standing in a big, open fireplace which obviously hadn’t had a fire in it for years, if ever. She looked round. The inside of the cabin was just one room, very small and bare; it had plants growing in pots here and there, and that was about all in the way of furniture, but the most curious thing was a pool, sunk into the floor, with lily-pads floating on it; and up above it a big silvery green witchball dangled like a moon.

Dakin looked for the owner of the voice, but couldn’t see anyone.

“Hello,” croaked the rusty voice. “Here I am.”

Dakin stared. Sitting on one of the lily-pads on the pond was the biggest, oldest, wartiest frog she had ever seen. It came to her in a flash who it must be.

“You’re Old Croak!” she cried. “You’re not dead, after all!”

“Certainly I’m not dead!” answered the frog indignantly. “Why should I be dead? Dead, indeed! I’m in the prime of life.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dakin humbly. “Somebody told me you might help me, if only you weren’t dead. So I’m very glad to meet you.”

“Can’t help you,” said the frog at once. “Can’t possibly help you. But I’m glad to meet you, too. Sit down, sit down. Have a fly.”

There didn’t seem anywhere to sit except on the floor, so Dakin sat there. Then she saw that Old Croak was holding out a large fly which he apparently expected her to take.

“What – what am I to do with that?” she asked.

“Eat it, of course,” croaked her host. “What else? Delicious! One of my last,” he added sadly. “And who knows when there’ll be any more? But never mind, I don’t entertain often. Nothing but the best is good enough for the only visitor I’ve had in two hundred years.”

Dakin naturally supposed he was exaggerating about the time. As to the fly, she didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t take the poor old thing’s last one, especially when she didn’t want it.

“Thank you very much,” she said, “but as a matter of fact, I ate before I came. So why don’t you have it?”

“Really?” asked the frog, his wrinkled old eyes lighting up. “Well, in that case—” He popped the fly into his wide mouth and gulped it down, beaming with pleasure.

“I suppose there aren’t many flies inside here,” said Dakin.

“Hardly any,” said Old Croak, shaking his head. “Windows sealed up, no door… They don’t come down the chimney much. I suppose I shall starve to death one of these days. No doubt that’s what she wants. No one will care.” He heaved a deep, wheezy sigh, and sat brooding on the lily-leaf with his chin in his green hands.

“Who is ‘she’?” Dakin ventured to ask.

The frog started and nearly fell into the water.

“Shhh!” he hissed warningly. He looked all round, and then beckoned her closer. She kneeled on the edge of the pool, and he hopped from one leaf to another until he was able to speak right into her ear.

“The witch!” he muttered.

Dakin grew cold. “A real witch?”

“Oh, she’s real enough – by night, anyway, he added strangely.

“Have you ever seen her?” asked Dakin doubtfully. Of course there were plenty of stories about witches, but she wasn’t prepared to believe unless there was some proof.

“Seen her? Seen her?” hissed Croak, his eyes popping. “I see her every night, every night, mark you! Down that chimney she comes, in her dark glasses and all her coloured rags – for she’s not one of your black witches, you know, colour’s the thing with her – and she reaches up to the ceiling and takes down her witchball. Look! Do you see it hanging up there?”

Dakin looked at it again. Now she knew that it was a real witch’s ball, not just a silver decoration, she realized how sinister it was with its strange greenish sheen.

“Lights up at night, you know,” continued Croak in a hushed whisper. “That’s how she searches, every night, hunting… through the woods, all over the mountain. Then at dawn she comes back. Hangs the ball up. Throws me a few curses (though I usually hide in the pool where it’s safe). Takes herself off—”

“What is it she’s looking for?”

“Ah! I could tell you—” He stopped and looked round again. “I daren’t though. Not with that thing hanging there. Not with her being the way she is during the day. I’ve heard she sleeps in a cave up there near the peak, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she ever sleeps! I—” He stopped again, and a look of terror came into his eyes. “Listen!” he whispered. “Can’t you hear?”

Dakin listened. Everything had gone very quiet – the same kind of quiet as in the wood. Outside the murky window the sun had gone in and the cabin had grown suddenly so dark that Dakin could hardly see Old Croak at all. She swallowed fearfully and put out her hand. The frog gripped one finger with his little cold pads.

“Can’t you hear?” he whispered again.

And now, Dakin did hear. A terrible roaring groaning gnashing sound, faint at first, and then growing louder and louder, as if some dreadful creature were approaching, grumbling and talking to itself.

“What is it?” whispered Dakin in the darkness.

The frog had to swallow several times before he answered. “Drackamag,” he gulped at last.

“But who – what – is Drackamag?” asked Dakin, as the terrifying noise got closer and closer.

CHAPTER FOUR Drackamag

“Shhh!”

Now it was almost as dark as night, and the grumbling and roaring was right outside the window, sounding as thunder would sound if it were right next to your ear. It stopped for a moment, and then a deep, rumbling voice shouted down the chimney:

“Croak! Who have you got in there?”

“Don’t speak!” muttered Old Croak hoarsely. “He’s very stupid. If we don’t speak, he may go away.”

“I heard that!” roared Drackamag, and the vibrations made the lily-pads rock like cockleshells on a rough sea. “Stupid, am I? We’ll see who’s stupid one of these days when I put my foot right down on this little house of yours, wait and see if I don’t!”

Croak cowered down as if expecting the cabin to be crushed over his head at any moment.

“Come on, you ugly little lump of nothing! Who’s in there? I heard someone laugh. Horrible! Frightened me out of me wits. No one’s laughed on this side of the wood since – well, not for two hundred years, eh, Croak? We can’t be having that sort of thing, it might lead to anything! Birds singing, bees humming – dangerous, dangerous, Croak! Eh? Eh?”

“You shouldn’t have laughed,” whispered the frog to Dakin in a shocked tone.

“Why not?” asked Dakin, feeling suddenly braver. If the simple sound of a laugh could frighten the terrible Drackamag, he couldn’t be such a monster after all, however big he was.

“I heard a girl’s voice!” exclaimed the thunderous voice outside. “She sounded happy! If you’ve got anybody good in there, Croak, I’m warning you – Madam won’t like it! Now, send her out this minute, or I’ll go and wake the old girl up and ask her if I can crunch your house down!”

Dakin stood up. Her legs shook a bit, but not too badly, considering.

“Don’t go out!” hissed her friend frantically. “Let him do what he likes!”

“I’m not going out,” Dakin assured him loudly. “I’m just going to laugh.”

“No! NO! Not that!” howled the voice outside, and now the lily-pads danced so wildly that Old Croak fell into the water with a splash.

But Dakin was already laughing, and didn’t notice. It wasn’t any too easy to laugh, as there was nothing very funny about the situation; but it was important, so Dakin did it. She remembered the time Margle, her brother, had scoffed at the calf who fell into the mud-hole and immediately afterwards fallen in himself. She thought of the expression on the face of the hen when the chick she’d raised turned out to be a duck, and had hopped into the pond. She recalled the hornet-fly that wanted to sit on the Pastor’s nose last Sunday in the sermon. New laughter bubbled up in her with each thing she thought of, and soon the mere idea of the dreadful Drackamag being frightened was enough to keep her going.

Her laughter rang out, peal after joyful peal, until the crest of the mountain seemed to echo it back to her. But at last she was so tired, and her tummy ached so much, that she couldn’t laugh any more, and she sat down on the floor, too exhausted by her effort to make another sound.

She looked round. The first thing she noticed was that it was light again: the sun was shining in through the dusty window. Dakin realized that the sun hadn’t really gone in, but that Drackamag’s body had shut it out, like a black cloud. Birds outside were singing and all the sounds of a sweet summer noon-time were pouring down the chimney like music. Drackamag and his fearful roaring voice were, for the moment, gone.

She looked for Old Croak, and finally found him huddled behind a plant with his eyes tight shut and his pads in his ears. She tried to make him hear her, but of course he couldn’t, so at last she gently touched him.

He leapt clean into the air with fright, landed on the ground and did a beautiful swallow-dive into the pond where he vanished, leaving only a bubble to show where he’d gone.

Dakin was alone again.

CHAPTER FIVE The Spikes

Well, it was time to be on her way. But there was one more thing she could do. Opening her knapsack, she took out the toffee, and laid it in the fireplace at the foot of the chimney. Almost at once, a fly who happened to be passing overhead saw it and buzzed down to investigate. Then came another, and another. Old Croak would find a feast awaiting him when at last he had to surface for air.

Getting out of the chimney, Dakin discovered, was a different matter from getting in, and for a while it seemed she was doomed to stay there for ever. But in trying to draw herself up, she accidentally touched a rough place in the bricks and a little rope-ladder suddenly fell out of the inside rim of the chimney-pot and dangled before her. In no time at all she was sliding down the sloping roof, and clambering down the ladder into the sunny meadow again.

The meadow was wide, and as long as she was out in the sunshine she felt strangely safe. Could it be that whatever dark forces held the farthest-away mountain in their spell were as afraid of the light as they were of the happy sounds of laughter and birdsong? If so, then Dakin felt she might have discovered a very helpful secret in Old Croak’s cabin.

But no meadow stretches forever and, quite abruptly, the grass stopped and she found herself walking on rocks, not the smooth, well-worn kind in the green river at home, but spikey, sticking-up rocks, like sharp teeth or knives. Her feet slipped between them and she had to wrench them free. Sometimes a piece of rock she hadn’t noticed would trip her up. She knew if she fell she’d hurt herself badly, and it really did seem, after a while, as if the rocks were alive and doing their utmost to make her stumble and fall in amongst them.

Whenever she looked ahead the jagged teeth, like the spears of a vast army, seemed to stretch for miles, ahead and on both sides; and even looking back, she couldn’t see any sign of the meadow. The sun had really gone in now and the sky overhead was grey and threatening. She grew more and more weary, but there wasn’t one friendly flat surface to rest on, just the endless, treacherous sea of spikes. It was no good turning back, she could only go on. It was worse than the wood.

At last Dakin grew so tired she knew that very soon she must either sit down and rest, or fall down. Her head had begun to whirl and she realized she must be terribly hungry. Even without the little troll, her knapsack felt like lead, and her heart felt almost as heavy.

As she staggered on she felt a lump come into her throat. First she told herself it was just tiredness, then, as it grew bigger, that it was hunger, but despite all her efforts to deceive herself, two big tears bloomed slowly on her lower eyelashes and made two wet, crooked paths down her brown cheeks.

They met on the end of her chin, and fell with a small splash on a particularly spiteful-looking point of rock.

What happened next would have surprised Dakin if she hadn’t already had more surprises that day than she knew how to deal with. The rock on which her tear had fallen began to melt, like a fast-burning wax candle. First the sharp point disappeared, then the thickening column beneath it sank and sank with a faint hissing sound, until it had quite melted away and there was nothing left but a flat place – exactly the size and shape of Dakin’s foot.

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