PART III: Encounters in the Night

 

Chapter 18

 

The boys went to bed, but only Kinsmere fell asleep.

Almost immediately he sank into a dream. The dream was about a tournament, a sort of collage of the countless contests he had attended as a child, always stuck on the sidelines, clapping and cheering for his favorite knights, desperate to get in on the action himself.

Kinsmere’s father was there. The words he had said at the boys’ send-off feast boomed in the background, providing a kind of accompaniment to the dream’s various scenes.

Don’t be cocky, Sir Colton had said. Don’t be foolish. And don’t do anything to make me regret agreeing to send you out there in the first place.

If you’re half the man I was at your age, you’ll be fine.

Kinsmere was up on horseback, the butt-end of a lance tucked in his armpit. He was galloping toward another knight, big and ugly and sticky with peach juice and –

POW!

Kinsmere knocked the guy square in the chest, sending him toppling off his horse and crashing to the ground.

Even in his sleep, a grin curled onto the boy’s lips.

Over on the opposite side of the boy’s cold, cramped room, leaning back against the wall, Gehry sat with open eyes.

Bruce found this enormously frustrating. Laid out on his plank-bed, he had been waiting impatiently for his friends to fall asleep. Kinsmere had drifted off quickly enough, but Gehry – it seemed he was so uncomfortable that he wasn’t even trying to get any sleep. Bruce was close to giving up, to climbing down off his plank and just telling Gehry what he wanted to do. And if Gehry tried to stop him? If he made a fuss or tried to hold Bruce back physically?

Fortunately for Bruce, he didn’t end up having to answer such tricky questions. Seconds before he swung his legs off his plank, Gehry began to squirm around. Bruce shut his eyes, assuming his friend was finally trying to get cozy on the stone floor. Once it was quiet again, Bruce opened his eyes and looked back down, but he couldn’t find Gehry anywhere.

Rubbing at his eyes, trying to get them better adjusted to the darkness, Bruce scanned the room. The floor was empty. And the tiny door – it was open.

Gehry was gone.

Bruce sat up on his plank. For a moment, he forgot all about his plans. He only wondered where Gehry was going.

It didn’t take him long to figure it out. He thought back to before, to when the boys were sharing that loaf of bread. Gehry hadn’t taken any himself. He hadn’t even asked for any. He had eaten the soggy bit that Kinsmere threw to him, but no more.

Why?

Bruce nearly laughed out loud when he realized that Gehry had had the same idea as him all along. Careful not to wake Kinsmere, he got off his plank, dropped down onto his hands and knees, and crawled through the door. Out in the corridor, back up on his feet, Bruce pulled the small door shut behind him. Then he went to meet Gehry in the Peachy Knight’s kitchen.

 

Chapter 19

 

Bruce was wrong about Gehry. He had no interest in returning to the Peachy Knight’s kitchen. Unless, that is, the kitchen had a bathroom in it. If there were a cozy little chamber tucked away, say, behind that giant wheel of cheese, then Gehry would have been extremely interested in a visit.

He had to pee. He had to pee far worse than he had ever had to pee before. What’s more, he had had to pee for several hours now. His stomach was in knots, and the lower half of his body had long ago begun to go numb.

He made his way down one corridor after another. But it was too dark in the castle to see much of anything. The handful of torches still lit hadn’t been fed in hours, and their flames cast such a dim light that they seemed to make it harder, not easier, to see. Gehry was forced to rely on his nose as opposed to his eyes, sniffing about the castle’s corridors for a bathroom’s telltale scents.

As he did, he began to think about all of the knights and knights-to-be in the great and glorious history of the Realm, the countless stories he had been told by his lesson masters and the innumerable tales he had read in his favorite books. He had marveled over each and every one of those stories, lovingly read and reread all those highly detailed account of the great men’s adventures and deeds. Yet the boy couldn’t recall a single instance in which a knight or even a knight-to-be had been struck by the need to pee. Had he missed something during his lessons? Was he different from everybody else? Had all those brave and noble knights rode around defending the Realm in dirty pants?

Gehry didn’t know, but if he didn’t stop thinking about it, he was going to have dirty pants. So he put all these extraneous thoughts out of his head and focused on finding a place to pee.

 

Chapter 20

First things first, out in the corridor, Bruce stopped by the bathroom. Conveniently, there was one located right outside the boys’ room. Bruce had noticed the chamber earlier. Or, it should be said, his nose had noticed it. For purposes of privacy, Bruce supposed, the chamber had been tucked into the corner of the corridor, out of reach of the nearest torches and thus enveloped in shadow.

With his bathroom business taken care of, Bruce set off for the kitchen. Here, his nose was once again hard at work. It picked through the layers of scent trapped within the castle walls, seeking out the smells of dough and cheese, cinnamon and cardamom.

It wasn’t long before Bruce found himself a few steps from the kitchen doorway. He paused beside it, closed his eyes, and sent a brief prayer up to whatever gods oversaw fresh bread and deliciously stinky cheese. Please, ran the prayer. Please don’t let me turn this corner and find they’ve locked everything up for the night. I need some cheese. I need it bad.

Bruce turned the corner – and his knees gave out beneath him. He had to clutch the nearest wall in order to keep from toppling over. Because nothing, not a single morsel of food, had been put away. If anything, there seemed to be more to eat in the kitchen than there had been before. It was better than Bruce could have possibly hoped for. The mountains of sugar and piles of peaches, the gigantic bags of spices and great big gobs of dough, the heaps of vegetables and mounds of dried meats and, most importantly, that colossal wheel of cheese. Every last bit of it was there, just begging to be consumed by a famished, empty-stomached boy named Bruce.

He went for the cheese first, swerving around a bunch of turnips and grabbing a fresh, still-warm loaf of bread on his way. As he tore a hunk of bread off the loaf, steam poured out and heated his palm. It was a beautiful sensataion, and it made Bruce’s head spin.

By the time he finally reached the cheese, Bruce looked more like a rabid dog than a hungry boy, and he was just about to dive mouth-first at that massive wheel of gooey goodness when a voice stopped him short.

“You mustn’t do that.”

Gehry?

That was Bruce’s first thought. His second thought, however, was, No. Gehry wouldn’t say ‘mustn’t.’ Who says ‘mustn’t,’ anyway?

The realization that the voice behind him didn’t belong to his friend was a powerful one, momentarily shoving aside Bruce’s hunger and replacing it with another feeling – fear. Frantically searching his brain for an excuse as to what he was doing in the Peachy Knight’s kitchen in the middle of the night, Bruce slowly, cautiously turned around.

 

Chapter 21

 

In his dream, Kinsmere had once again knocked the Peachy Knight off his mount. Enraged, embarrassed, the rogue knight climbed to his feet, spat at his horse, and tossed his jousting lance aside. He reached for his sword, then, gripping the hilt in a big, angry fist, and unsheathing it with a single fierce tug.

The slice of steel letting go of leather sang through the air, and before the sound had even ceased ringing in Kinsmere’s ears, the Peachy Knight charged.

But the boy was ready.

Well before the rogue knight made it within striking range, the boy had his own sword drawn. He stood there, waiting, his muscles tensed and prepared to send him dodging this way or that. And when the blade finally came swinging toward him, Kinsmere leapt back, swung his own sword upwards, and blocked the attack.

Steel struck steel with a resounding clank. The Peachy Knight was surprised that he had been thwarted, and Kinsmere didn’t waste a second taking advantage of it. He threw his weight forward, driving his shoulder into the rogue knight’s chest, sending the big man staggering backwards.

The move bought him only a few seconds, but that was all Kinsmere needed to ready himself for the next attack. He got into position, knees slightly bent, muscles tensed, the hilt of his sword loose and maneuverable in his hand.

Meanwhile, the Peachy Knight had regained his balance, and now he came rushing at Kinsmere again, this time raising his sword high over his head, preparing to bring it bearing down like a battle-axe.

Kinsmere swung his own weapon upwards, putting everything he had behind it. Blade met blade, and the devastating force of the Peachy Knight’s blow traveled down the length of the boy’s sword, jolting the thin bones of his fingers and wrists.

Strangely, though, there was no clank. When the rogue knight’s sword struck Kinsmere’s, it made more of a thud – a soft, almost hollow sound, like knuckles rapping on a door.

But there was no time to worry about that – the Peachy Knight already had his sword raised up high over his head again.

Kinsmere knew he couldn’t get his own weapon up in time to block the blade. All he could do was dive out of the way.

So he dove, his body hitting the ground with a soft, hollow knocking sound.

He looked back in time to see the Peachy Knight’s sword hack into the ground. It sunk several inches down into the dirt with a soft, hollow knocking sound.

Kinsmere blinked.

He opened his eyes in darkness. It was thick, close, and pressed down on his body like an itchy blanket on a hot night.

It took him several seconds to remember where he was. At which point he looked around for his friends and found that they weren’t there.

“Guys?” he asked the darkness, even though he knew he was alone.

Of course there came no answer.

But a moment later, there was a soft, hollow knock at the room’s tiny door.

 

Chapter 22

 

Gehry still hadn’t found a bathroom, and now he was lost in the castle. He had started out memorizing each of the turns he was taking, figuring he would be able to retrace his steps to get back to his room. But now he couldn’t remember whether he had taken two lefts and then a right, or a right and then two lefts.

“Ungh,” he groaned, adjusting his body to see if he could more comfortably accommodate his expanding bladder.

He couldn’t. But a moment later, he noticed something hopeful down at the far end of the corridor – a soft glow spilling out of a doorway.

Carefully, Gehry headed toward the light. And he had nearly made it to the doorway when a smell, terrible as any he had ever encountered, wafted out to assault his senses. It smelled like cheese and farts, and like cheesy farts. As big of an emergency as Gehry was dealing with, his good manners were deeply ingrained, and he waited with as much patience as he could muster for a turn in the chamber. It wasn’t long before he heard the voices.

There were two of them, both low and rough and far more similar than they were distinct. He listened for a moment, trying to make out  what the voices were saying, when he heard something that stopped him cold. One of those voices – it had just said something about him.

Or so it seemed.

The king’s son. That was what Gehry thought he had heard.

He leaned his head a little closer to the doorway.

“Do you not understand the enormity of that?” the same voice said. And then he said it again: “The king’s son. King Beribahn’s one and only child.”

 

Chapter 23

 

Turning around, Bruce didn’t find an angry Peachy Knight behind him. About that, he was glad. And he was even gladder to see that the person who was behind him was just a boy. He looked about Bruce’s age, or maybe even a little younger, and was dressed in a baggy brown robe-type thing. But despite the large, loose-fitting garment, Bruce could see that the boy was fairly scrawny. Which meant that if he tried to stand in the way of Bruce and that glorious, enormous wheel of cheese, Bruce could probably overpower him.

The boy, however, didn’t seem all that inclined to use force. He simply stood there in his silly robe, regarding Bruce with a sleepy, and somehow knowing, smile.

“It’s frustrating, I know,” the boy said. “But you mustn’t have another bite to eat tonight. It’ll ruin your appetite for tomorrow. And believe me, tomorrow you will need your appetite more than ever.”

Believe me? thought Bruce. Who was this kid? And who was he to act like he knew the first thing about Bruce’s appetite?

As if he had been listening in on Bruce’s thoughts, the boy said, “I am Gerwin, a wizard-to-be, and I know much more than the first thing about your appetite. And I am telling you that you must resist temptation tonight, for it is imperative that you be ravenous tomorrow morning. The safety of yourself and your friends depends upon it.”

“Wait,” said Bruce. “Hold on. How – ”

“How could I possibly know all this?” Gerwin interrupted.

Bruce, who had been about to ask exactly that, could only say, “Ah, yeah.”

“As I have mentioned,” the boy said, “I am a wizard-to-be, and during my quest thus far I have developed some relatively powerful visionary capabilities.”

“You mean – ”

“I know what you’re going to say before you say it, yes. It requires a great deal of concentration, but I can maintain such levels of focus for many minutes at a time. I can also see further into the future. Earlier this afternoon, for instance, I knew that you would be visiting the kitchen tonight, and I knew that, once here, you would be too distracted by that gigantic wheel of cheese to realize the true purpose of your visit.”

“The true purpose of my visit?” asked Bruce.

Gerwin’s sleepy smile livened up. “The true purpose of your visit, yes.”

“Which is . . . ” Bruce said.

But the boy just went on smiling.

“Um,” said Bruce. “Were you gonna tell me, or . . . ?”

Gerwin gave his head a single shake.

“No?”

He shook his head once more.

“Why not?”

Gerwin stiffened a finger, then ticked it from side to side.

“You’re not supposed to?”

He nodded.

“Oh-kay,” Bruce said. He looked around the kitchen before turning back to the boy. “Could you give me a hint, at least?”

Gerwin considered Bruce’s request. His expression became grave, his eyebrows and lips scrunching toward the middle of his face. But just as suddenly as it had disappeared, that sleepy, knowing smile returned. The wizard-to-be said, “It’s never wise to cross a troll.”

“Well, yeah,” said Bruce. “Everyone knows that.” He thought of Kinsmere. “Or should,” he added. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“Give it a second,” the boy said.

“Huh?”

“Just – it’ll come to you.”

“What will come to – ” Bruce stopped, a series of connections having just been made in his brain. His eyes popped wide. His head shook back and forth. “No,” Bruce said. “No way. Not me. I can’t do that.”

Gerwin, the wizard-to-be, simply went on smiling.

______

Text copyright © 2020 by Jarrett Lerner

All right reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Chapter 15

 

By the time the boys reached the castle, a small crowd had gathered on the lawn outside. There were men and women, boys and girls, all of them thin and sick-looking, their skin covered in layers of dirt and grime. Perched atop their horses, the boys were able to look down and see that the crowd was in fact huddled in smaller clumps of four or five, and that at the center of each group was a man, holding out a peach pie – one identical to those that the boys had just feasted upon out in the field. The men, scraggly and starved as could be, let the women and children have a turn scooping up a bite of pie first, and only then did they reach in for a taste themselves.

Gehry tried to get a better look at the people’s faces, wondering if each group was a family. But with all the dirt and grime caking their skin, it was hard to make out any particular features, and nearly impossible to then compare, say, the shape of a lip or the bend of a nose to the person’s beside them.

Kinsmere studied the castle. First the stones, then the ironwork, and finally the flag, bright white with a big peach painted in its center. And all of it – it looked so new. Kinsmere wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the castle had been built just yesterday, that the flag – clean and white as a field of freshly fallen snow – had been raised for the first time that very morning.

Bruce, meanwhile, looked back and forth from the pie-eating people to the castle. He wanted to know where the cheese was. Because the thick, greasy scent of pressed milk curds was now stronger than ever. It swarmed Bruce’s head, making him feel dizzy and desperate. But he hadn’t found so much as a smear of the stuff when the castle doors flew open with a bang loud enough to make him forget all about it.

Out of the castle strode a group of men who couldn’t have been more different than the crowd assembled on the lawn. They were big and brawny and obviously well-fed. And save for a smudge of peach juice on a cheek and the stray flake of piecrust in one man’s hair, they were all clean, a few of them even immaculately so. They looked, in a word, like knights.

The last of the men to emerge was by far the biggest, brawniest, and best-fed of them all. When it came to cleanliness, however – well, that was another story. The man looked like he had gone for a swim in a lake of smooshed peaches. Chunks of the fruit were wedged in the linked rings of his chainmail shirt. His once-black boots were stained an orange-brown color by years’ worth of crusted peach juice.

The man was chewing, loud as a herd of cows, and had a wide, glistening circle of pulpy peachiness slathered around his mouth. Suddenly, then, he tossed his head back and spat a peach pit into the air. The boys, the dirt-covered crowd, and the clean, knightly men all watched and waited for the pit to fall back down to the ground. After a minute had passed and it still hadn’t, everyone began to clap, the crowd as enthusiastically as their weak bones would allow, the knightly men a bit begrudgingly.

The peach-covered man, grinning hugely, planted his hands on his hips and looked around the lawn. When he spotted the three neat, clean, well-dressed boys sitting on horseback amidst the bedraggled crowd, the man’s grin disappeared with a swiftness that could only be described as terrifying.

Aiming a peach-stained finger at the intruders, he demanded, “Who are you?”

Gehry urged his horse forward. “I am Gehry,” he said, “son of Beribahn, King of the Realm and eldest son of Galaghand and Handelhar, who was daughter of Baghagelbisn, overseer of the Great Siege of Curnaffleflaffer and son to the one and only Todd, brother of Ferghelwergel, otherwise known as – ” Pausing, he took a quick look around. “ – as the Giant Slayer, and also sometimes Fungi Foot, who led the uprising at Yarlamik, and once met Penlaghel, also known as the Crazed King, at a party.”

The big man squirmed his mouth around as if he were trying to poke something out from between his teeth. Leaning toward Gehry, he spit out another peach pit. It struck the ground, bounced, and rolled up to tap the hoof of Gehry’s horse.

“That,” the man said, “is what I have to say about your royal lineage. Beribahn . . . ” He laughed. “He’s not the king of this realm.” He pointed down at his crusted-over boots and proclaimed, “This is my castle. My kingdom. For I am the Peachy Knight!”

The crowd once again clapped for the man, who, it was now clear to the boys, was some sort of rogue knight.

“Excuse me.”

It was Kinsmere, who had brought his horse forward so that he now sat beside Gehry.

“Did you say Peach-eee?”

“Uh, I – well, yes,” said the rogue knight. “Yes, I did. Peachy. Is there . . . why? What – what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Kinsmere shook his head. “It’s just – I figured – I thought you said Peach, that’s all.”

“You thought or you figured?” asked the rogue knight.

Kinsmere considered the question. Then he began to nod. “I guess I figured, yeah.”

The rogue knight frowned.

“No,” Kinsmere told him. “It’s not, like, bad that way. It’s just a little, I don’t know, strange, I guess? It’s different. You know, like when I hear ‘peachy,’ I’m not really thinking ‘knight’ is gonna come next. I’m more ready to hear something like – like ‘lady,’ I guess.”

The crowd let out a collective gasp, and the Peachy Knight’s eyes got as big as fists.

Kinsmere shook his hands as if he were trying to scrub away what he had just said. “Hold on,” he said. “Wait. I didn’t – I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t saying anything about you. I was just curious, that’s all.”

This seemed to quell, and also confuse, the rogue knight. “Curious?” he said, as if this were his first time encountering the word.

“Yeah,” Kinsmere said. “I was wondering, I guess. I mean, why not just leave it at Peach?”

The rogue knight winced a little, and sighed, and then, in the pinched, whiny voice of a child who has realized too late that he chose the worst of the desserts at a feast, he said, “I was gonna do Peach, but then I started doubting myself. I was all worried. Like, you know, is that right? Is Peach correct? Because, you know, I’m not actually a peach.”

“Right,” Kinsmere said, nodding sympathetically.

“And – and then – ” Tugging up a sleeve of his chainmail shirt, the rogue knight stuck out his arm so Kinsmere could see. “Look. It’s not like my skin’s really peach-toned, either.”

“I see that,” Kinsmere said. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward on his horse. “More of a . . . a sort of pale strawberry.”

“Really?” said the rogue knight, sounding touched. “You think?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kinsmere said. “For sure. I definitely see some strawberry in there.”

Turning over his arm in the sunlight, the rogue knight muttered, “I always thought it was kind of an ugly color.”

“Stop that,” Kinsmere told him. “It’s a lovely color.” He looked back at the crowd. “Isn’t it lovely?”

There was some murmuring among the crowd. Individual voices could be heard here and there, saying things like, “Oh, yes,” and, “Yes, indeed,” and, “Very lovely.”

“See?” Kinsmere asked the rogue knight.

The man shrugged, sheepishly, as if he wasn’t quite convinced. “Anyway,” he said, moving on. “I ended up going with Peachy, on account of my liking peaches so much, plus cause I’m always eating ‘em. And if I’m not? Well, you can be sure at least I smell like ‘em. All of which led me to believe that the adjectival form was the proper one to use. The Peach-eee Knight, as opposed to just the Peach Knight. Otherwise people might show up looking for a knight with a complexion a little more orange than mine. Or, I don’t know – ” He shrugged again, and this time the gesture seemed almost cheery. “ – maybe even a great big peach on horseback, all suited up with a sword and shield.” The rogue knight smiled at the thought of this, then uttered a single syllable of laughter: “Ha.”

The instant they heard this, the crowd erupted, throwing their heads back and hooting up at the sky. Several women slapped their knees. A few men toppled to the ground, gripping their splitting sides.

The rogue knight looked their way, a small, shy smile on his face. He lifted a hand and gave a tiny wave. “Thanks,” he said. “Ha. Thank you, yeah.”

As he was taking in the adoring crowd, the rogue knight’s eyes once again settled on the boys, and his smile began to fade.

All of a sudden he blurted, “Who are you?”

Gehry cleared his throat. “Oh, ah – we did that one already. Remember?”

The rogue knight’s eyes got glassy. He was, it seemed, casting his mind back into his memories of a few minutes ago. Finally, blinking himself back into the present moment, he said, “Oh, right. Yeah. Of course. Thanks.”

Gehry gave a little nod. “No problem,” he said.

Taking a second to compose himself, the rogue knight started over. “What are you?” he said, but began to shake his head before all the words had even passed his lips. “No, no, no,” he muttered. “That’s not right. It’s . . . well, it’d have to be . . . Aha!” he cried, and in a proud, booming voice, he declared, “What are you doing here?”

There was some polite applause from the crowd.

Gehry waited for the clapping to stop, then gave the Peachy Knight the answer he knew he was supposed to give. “We are knights-to-be, and have been sent forth in search of adventure, hoping to prove ourselves worthy enough to return to my father’s castle and become proper knights, after which we shall spend our lives protecting the Realm from the evil influences that seek to threaten its continued existence and eternal glory.”

The rogue knight cupped a hand around his sticky mouth and quietly asked Gehry, “You said ‘adventure,’ right?”

“Yep,” Gehry answered. “Back there in the beginning.”

“Ha!” barked the rogue knight. “If it’s adventure you’re after, then you’ve come to the right place! For you’ve arrived at the castle of the Peachy Knight at the outset of the world-famous, semi-annual – ” He leaned back and, putting his whole body into it, bellowed up at the heavens: “PEACHY-SLASH-CHEESY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS!”

The crowd – by now, perhaps, feeling the bolstering effects of those sugar-packed pies – cheered louder than ever.

“You missed the first event,” the rogue knight told the boys. “But that was pie-throwing, and it’s not like any of you could have beaten me, anyway. Normally I wouldn’t even let sad sacks like you compete, but seeing as that so-called king sent you here himself, I’ll make an exception.” He licked his lips, collecting some of the juicy peach flesh stuck to his skin and quickly swallowing it. “You’ll spend the night in my castle, and compete tomorrow in the rest of the tournament’s events. And once you’ve been beaten, once you’ve been humiliated and shamed, you can run home and tell Beribahn that no one can match the greatness of the Peachy Knight. And if he doesn’t believe it? Well, I’ll launch a pie clear across his itsy-bitsy little realm so it smacks him right in his stupid, ugly face!”

Bruce, who had been silent this whole time, kicked his horse forward, putting himself closer to the rogue knight. “Um, hi,” he said. “I think I heard – did you say ‘cheesy?’”

“Yes,” said the man. “Peachy-slash-Cheesy. That’s the name of the tournament. That’s my brother.”

“Who is?” asked Bruce.

“The Cheesy Knight.”

“I see . . . ” Bruce said. “Is there any way we could meet him?”

 

Chapter 16

 

The boys didn’t get to meet the Cheesy Knight, and didn’t get to enjoy any of his fine-smelling cheese, either. Instead they were instructed to get off their horses, at which point a thin, dirt-caked child led them into the castle.

First, the child took them up a staircase. This came as a great relief to Gehry, who had assumed the Peachy Knight, rogue that he was, would force the boys to spend the night in his frigid cellar or, worse, some kind of dungeon. However, not long after the boys had been led up the staircase, they were led back down to the first floor by way of a different one.

Gehry fell back a few steps and leaned in close to his friends. “You think he knows where he’s going?” he asked them quietly.

Kinsmere shrugged. “Better than I do, at least.”

Bruce didn’t contribute to the conversation. In fact, he didn’t even hear his friends talking. He was busy, completely consumed in an examination of the walls of the corridors they were passing through, each of which had been decorated with various weapons and, it appeared, instruments of torture. There was a pair of giant metal jaws, spring-loaded, ready to snap and bite off a foot or a leg with its large, sharp teeth. There were thick whips, thin whips, and heavy ropes that had been wound around elaborate networks of gears, pulleys, levers, and wheels. There were swords and spears, lances and pikes, daggers and knives – essentially every kind of sharp, pokey-thing that history’s more violent metalworkers had ever conceived of. The objects put Bruce in such a dark and fearful mood that even the regular torches that lit the corridors began to look menacing.

When the boys’ guide took a turn into a long, bare-walled corridor, Bruce felt a rush of gratitude and relief. His head began to clear, and was quickly helped to clear even more by the sudden arrival of a lovely smell. Or smells, actually. Because the first scent swiftly gave way to another, and so on and so forth until Bruce couldn’t even tell what he was smelling. All he knew – and all he needed to know – was that it smelled glorious.

At last, the boys were led into a big, hot, busy kitchen. The sight of the place stopped not only Bruce in his tracks, but also Gehry and Kinsmere in theirs. The kitchen’s size and scope and level of frenetic activity rivaled even that of the one in King Beribahn’s castle.

Between and around the bodies darting about the place, the boys glimpsed a quantity of food that was, in a word, astonishing. There were blobs of dough the size of foals that were slowly inflating, growing larger, and larger still. There were cloth bags, enormous things whose tops nearly touched the ceiling, with words like “CINNAMON” and “ALLSPICE” and “CUMIN” and “CARDAMOM” printed on their sides. There were small mountains of sugar and flour, a sprawling heap of peaches – and in one corner, leaning carefully against the wall, a wheel of cheese humongous enough to make a troll-giant feel faint. The wheel was surrounded by a group of thin, tired-looking women whose job, it seemed, was to fan the cheese, thus preventing it from softening in the hot kitchen and losing its perfectly round shape.

“Psst!”

It was the boys’ guide, trying to get their attention. The child was already over on the opposite side of the kitchen. He waved at them to hurry up, and the boys went, dodging the charging bodies of bakers and cooks.

They were led out of the kitchen – Bruce lingering a moment in the doorway, casting a glance of longing back at the cheese – and into another corridor, at the end of which they went up two flights of stairs, turned a corner, and crossed yet another corridor. There, at last, the boys’ guide stopped. The child poked a finger at a small wooden door. It was so small, in fact, that the boys hadn’t even noticed it before their guide had pointed it out. In order to reach whatever lay on the other side, they would have had to get down on their hands and knees and crawl.

Which, it became clear, was exactly what the boys’ guide wanted them to do. The child poked again at the tiny door, this time more forecefully. Then he turned around and walked away.

Gehry, Kinsmere, and Bruce all watched him go. His feet made little shushing sounds on the stone floor, the noise bouncing back to the boys’ ears down the otherwise empty corridor. Once the child had disappeared around the corner, the boys turned back to the small door.

Kinsmere nudged it with the toe of his boot, and the door crept open with a creaky whine.

“Well, then,” he said.

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled on through.

 

Chapter 17

 

The room wasn’t as bad as that tiny door had led the boys to believe. But that’s not to say that it was big and warm and cozy. In fact, the room was just the opposite. Extremely narrow, with a gaping hole of a “window” at the far end and a pair of stacked wooden planks fastened to one wall, it was small and cold and uncomfortable.

Kinsmere, however, didn’t seem to mind.

“I call top bunk,” he said, hoisting himself up onto the higher of the two planks.

Gehry pointed to the other. “You take that one, Bruce. I don’t mind the floor.” To prove it, he lowered himself down onto the cold stones, leaned his head back against the wall, and shut his eyes.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.”

This was Bruce. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking back and forth from one of his friends to the other.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “What about all that food?”

Gehry opened his eyes. “What about it?”

“I want some,” Bruce said.

From his perch atop the upper plank, Kinsmere chuckled.

“Don’t worry,” Gehry told Bruce. “I’m sure they’ll bring us something.”

Not two seconds later, there was a knock at the door. Bruce opened it and leapt back when a pair of scrawny, dirty arms thrust into the room, holding a pitcher of water in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. The pitcher and loaf were dropped unceremoniously to the floor, at which point the arms disappeared as abruptly as they had arrived.

“That’s it?” Bruce cried out into the hallway.

But there was no answer. The owner of the scrawny arms was already gone.

Heaving a sigh, Bruce picked up the bread. “Hard as a rock,” he said, then banged the loaf against the wall to show his friends that he wasn’t exaggerating. A few crumbs broke off and sprinkled onto the floor, but otherwise the bread remained intact.

“Here,” Kinsmere said.

He hopped down off his plank and took the bread from Bruce. Smashing the loaf over his knee, he broke it into half a dozen more manageable pieces. He picked one up and plunked it into the pitcher of water. After letting it sit in the liquid for a few seconds, Kinsmere popped the softened piece of bread into his mouth.

“Mm, mm, mm.” He patted his stomach. “Delicious,” he said, reaching for another hunk of bread.

Bruce grabbed a piece for himself before his friend could eat the whole loaf. Dunking it into the water, waiting for it to soften, he said, “This is ridiculous.”

“The life of a knight,” Kinsmere said between chews, “isn’t all fanfare and feasts.” Soaking a third piece of bread, he tossed it over to Gehry.

“Thanks,” Gehry said, blinking down at the soggy thing in his palm.

It took the boys just a couple minutes to finish the bread. At which point Bruce asked, “What do we do now?”

“We get some sleep,” Gehry said. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

Kinsmere grinned. “Our very first tournament.”

“Oh, joy,” said Bruce, his voice as unenthusiastic as Kinsmere’s was thrilled.

The boys passed the pitcher of water around until it was empty. Then they went to bed.

______

Text copyright © 2020 by Jarrett Lerner

All right reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Chapter 13

 

It took another hour, but the boys finally made it out of the Forest of Egergrel. After spending so long in that tree-covered darkness, the sun seemed cruelly bright. Standing at the forest’s edge, they squinted and groaned and even swatted at that distant star.

Kinsmere was the first to fully open his eyes. Looking around, he saw a large, flat field, much like the ones the boys had crossed to get to the Forest of Egergrel. But it couldn’t have been the same field, Kinsmere assured himself. He was mentally retracing their steps, trying to figure out if they could have taken a wrong turn somewhere, when he spotted another sign. From the back, it looked similar to the one that the boys had seen before: a wide, flat piece of wood nailed into another, taller and thinner piece of wood.

Grinning, feeling giddy, Kinsmere hurried around to the front of the sign. There he saw several painted symbols, just like he and his friends had seen on the other sign. There was the horse. The sword. The spear. The steaming kettle. The crooked stick. The dragon. The goblet. The shield. The hunk of smelly cheese and – Kinsmere’s heart picked up speed – an arrow.

The boy’s eyes leapt back and forth between the sign and the direction in which that arrow seemed to be pointing.

Slowly, his grin shriveled.

“Darn it!”

“What is it?” Gehry said.

“Another sign,” said Kinsmere. “It’s like the one before, and it’s telling us to go right back into this stupid forest.”

“Ah,” said Bruce. “Interesting. Say, you wouldn’t happen to mean the forest that belongs to the troll-giant you just crossed, would you?”

Kinsmere whirled around to face his friend. “Will you quit it already with the crossing the troll-giant stuff? We’ve got more important things to deal with right now.”

“Right,” Bruce said. “Such as the fact that we’re gonna have to go back in there” – he threw a hand toward the Forest of Egergrel – “if we want to find your oh-so-precious swords and spears. Because crossing a troll-giant isn’t enough for you, is it, Kin? And losing our horses and all our supplies? That’s not enough, either. No, no, no. We’ve also got to lose our lives. We’ve got to – ”

“Stop it!” Kinsmere spat. “You’re just hungry,” he said. “You’re hungry and grouchy because you haven’t eaten in the past five minutes.”

“Minutes?!” Bruce said. He tossed his head back and sent a bark of laughter up at the sky. “More like the past five hours. I haven’t eaten, and I probably never will eat again. Not if things keep going like this. I’ll be a troll-giant’s lunch before I get a bite of my own.”

Kinsmere smirked. “Let’s just hope you’re plump enough to satisfy the guy. Then maybe Gehry and I can get away.”

Bruce’s eyes popped open wide. His breathing grew heavy and erratic, and his nostrils flared like a teased and taunted bull’s. He let out a roar and charged Kinsmere, aiming to use his “plumpness” to tackle his “friend” to the ground.

But Bruce never made it over to Kinsmere. While still several feet away, he abruptly stopped, almost as if he had run into an invisible wall. Flinging his head back, the boy then began to turn and turn in small, tight circles, all the while gasping for air.

Bruce carried on like this for nearly a minute, at which point he came to another abrupt stop. Lowering his head, looking at his friends, he told them, “Cheese.”

Kinsmere, who had crouched down low in anticipation of Bruce’s attack, stood up straight. “Cheese?”

Gehry rushed to Bruce’s side. “Where, Bruce?” he said. “Where?”

Bruce went back to spinning and gasping. He did so more slowly this time, and it only lasted a few seconds. He came to a stop with his back facing the Forest of Egergrel. Lifting his arm, he pointed to a spot straight ahead of him and said, “There.”

All three boys peered into the distance.

“Oh,” Gehry said. “You mean where that little castle-shaped thing is?”

It was small, a pebble perched on the horizon, but very clearly a castle.

“And hey,” Kinsmere said, aiming a finger at a spot off to the side of the distant structure.

There were three brown lumpy things standing in an especially lush portion of the field. The front halves of these four-legged lumps kept dipping down to the ground and yanking up hunks of grass.

“Well,” said Bruce, “at least our horses are getting some lunch.”

The boys set off, first to fetch their mounts and then to head to the castle.

It was a few minutes into the walk that Kinsmere said, “Someone should really fix those signs.”

 

Chapter 14

 

With every step the boys took, the scent of cheese grew stronger. After a while, the air was so thick with the odor that they could nearly taste the stuff.

“I’m pretty sure this is torture,” Bruce said shortly after they had reached and remounted their horses. “Is torture something knights-to-be are supposed to experience? Cause, yeah – I think we’ve got that part covered right here.”

A few minutes later – the castle was now the size of a radish, and the boys could see a flag flying from its tallest turret, white with a big orange dot in its center – pies began to fall out of the sky. The first few landed forty or so feet in front of the boys.

“Those aren’t . . . ” Gehry said. “Are they?”

“It looks like it,” Kinsmere said as another pie-like object splattered to the grass.

This one landed close enough to startle the horses. The animals planted their hooves and refused to go any farther.

Bruce, however, could not, and would not, be stopped. He tossed aside his reins and hurled himself out of his saddle. He crashed to the ground, belly-first, with an, “Oof,” but was on his feet a beat later, running toward the nearest pie. Once there, he bent down to investigate, which of course didn’t take long, Bruce being an expert in all things dessert. He sprang back up almost immediately and, arms thrown high and triumphant over his head, he did a happy dance.

“Pies!” he sang, “Pies, pies, pies!” as another, and then another, splatted down around him.

Once the miracle had been properly celebrated, Bruce dropped to his knees in front of one of the juiciest-looking pies. “It’s peach!” he called to his friends. “A peach pie! Heaven-sent!” He dug a hand down into the smashed-up pastry and scooped a flaky, goopy handful toward his mouth.

“Wait!”

This was Gehry, now hopping off his horse and rushing over to Bruce.

“How do we know it’s not poisoned?” he said. “Or enchanted? Or – or worse?”

Bruce blinked up at his friend. Then, very slowly, he finished bringing his hand to his mouth. He pushed the smooshed peaches and bits of piecrust past his lips and carefully chewed. Once he had swallowed the last of it, he sat there calmly, doing nothing. He was giving the poison a chance to kick in, the enchantment a moment to take hold of him. But nothing happened. And so Bruce scooped up a second handful and shoveled it down his throat.

Gehry and Kinsmere dug in, too, and for several minutes, the boys ate in silence. Or not exactly silence. There were plenty of sounds – moans and grunts of pleasure, the sucking of fingertips, the smacking of lips – just no words.

Until Kinsmere said, “Look at that.”

The other boys looked, and saw a pie flying high overhead. It sailed higher, and higher still, and hung there in the air so long it was as if it were considering becoming a star. When at last the pie came down, it was such a long ways away that, despite the quietness of the field, the boys couldn’t even hear it splat against the ground. They could, however, hear the boisterous cheers that rose up from the castle in the distance.

______

Text copyright © 2020 by Jarrett Lerner

All right reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.