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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.