CHAPTER 1

Edgar Returns Home

It was the middle of the night when Edgar entered the fig grove alone. A heavy quiet filled the air, and he wondered if everyone was sleeping, unaware of the approaching danger. He touched the trunks of the trees as he went, and this helped him find his way through the darkness. Though he’d only been gone a few days, he had a deep feeling of having come home after a long time away.

His first few steps into the grove reminded Edgar of what it had felt like to sneak home after a night of secret climbing. How long had it been since the Highlands were looming far above on a pillar of stone? He couldn’t remember for sure. And when was the last time he’d climbed, really climbed, high into the grey evening sky against a forbidden wall? He couldn’t remember that, either. Time seemed to have lost its meaning.

“Don’t move another step!”

Edgar froze. Someone dropped out of a tree directly in front of him. He had let himself drift aimlessly into a tangled web of thoughts and emotions, and now he’d been caught.

There was hardly any light at all, only a dim whisper of dark grey, but Edgar could see a man carrying a club in one hand and a rock in the other. But it occurred to him that he knew the grove better than anyone and could make a quick escape if he wanted, especially at night.

“Edgar?” asked the man. He bobbed up and down like a rabbit, trying to catch an angle of light in the trees as he sized up the boy before him.

“Yes. It’s me,” said Edgar. The two did not know each other so much as know of each other.

“I’ve been gone awhile, but I’m back. There are some things I need to tell the people in the village. Can you let me pass?”

The man let the club he was holding hang down at the side of his leg and peered through the low branches of the trees, then his eyes settled back on the boy.

“Don’t expect things to be the same as when you left,” said the man. He was tired and unwilling to tell a young boy bad news. “Go that way.” He pointed with the club toward the village.

Edgar watched the man pocket the rock he’d held and clumsily make his way back up into the limbs of the tree. As Edgar walked past, the man spoke.

“Is it true you climbed all the way to the top of the cliffs and back again?”

Edgar nodded in the darkness. “I did.”

“And to the very bottom — to the Flatlands — you climbed down there as well?”

“I did,” answered Edgar. It seemed that word of his adventures had spread.

“I don’t believe you,” grumbled the man. And he didn’t. It had been so far to the bottom, and so difficult a stone surface to climb. It didn’t seem possible that anyone — let alone a boy of eleven or twelve — could climb down.

Edgar walked on, feeling suddenly in a rush to finish his task and get back to Dr. Kincaid and Vincent. He had two similar encounters along the way, in which men dropped from trees, asked him questions, and let him pass. Each of them knew Edgar by sight if not by name. He had been a quiet orphan boy from the grove, a good worker, a familiar face. There were stories circulating concerning his recent whereabouts that were hard to believe.

When Edgar reached the clearing before the village, he spotted a surprising number of wakeful men and women moving in the shadows of open fires. He did not see Mr. Ratikan among them and began to wonder where the master of the grove was hiding.

Edgar stepped out into the open of the clearing and shouted toward the villagers. “It’s me, Edgar!”

A small group approached, a single lit torch among them, and soon the two parties were shouting back and forth as the gap closed between them.

“Edgar?”

“Yes, it’s me!”

“Where have you been hiding?”

When Edgar didn’t answer, another question filled the air.

“Have you seen Isabel?”

This question scared Edgar. As he met the group in the middle of the clearing, he saw that the man holding the torch was Charles, Isabel’s father.

“Have you seen her, Edgar?” he asked, bending down on one knee. Charles knew his daughter liked the boy and had been hoping the two were together.

“I haven’t seen her in days,” said Edgar. “Where is she?”

Charles had the look of a man whose last hope had been dashed.

“She’s gone,” he said. The voice was cracked and dry, full with emotion.

“What do you mean, gone?”

Charles shrugged and Edgar thought the man’s shoulders looked unbearably heavy. A dead silence enveloped the clearing. Edgar’s mind raced to all the places Isabel could be, for he couldn’t bring himself to believe Isabel was lost. Charles put his arm around the boy and the group began walking back to the village.

“Where have you been?” asked Charles, stopping short and looking down at Edgar. “There are rumors of a climbing boy . . .”

Edgar took a moment to breathe deeply the smell of the grove before answering. The place smelled dry and dusty, like it was gasping for relief from a waterless world it couldn’t escape. And there was something more. Though it was dark, Edger felt a sense of discomfort at the thought of looking up and finding the Highlands were no longer there. Without the cliffs, danger lurked from in front and behind the grove in ways that it never had before, because the world of Atherton was flat.

“I’ve been to the top, before the Highlands fell,” said Edgar. “And I’ve been to the bottom, before the Flatlands rose up.” Edgar looked up to where the Highlands had once been. “But I suppose that’s little more than a legend now, because all the cliffs are gone.” Somehow, Edgar got the distinct feeling that Charles wanted to believe him.

They continued on beneath the canopy of trees and when they arrived at the shattered remains of the village, a small group gathered near a fire — Charles, Edgar, and a few others. Edgar told them everything he was meant to, leaving nothing out. He was surprised to find they already had knowledge of the Cleaners, though Edgar’s description of their size and viciousness startled them. For his part, Edgar heard of Mr. Ratikan’s demise and the battle with the Highlands, all new information he could barely bring himself to believe.

But even the knowledge of Mr. Ratikan’s death paled by comparison to the news of Isabel’s disappearance. Edgar asked over and over again about her — where she had been seen last, to whom she had spoken, whatever was known. The more he learned, the more he had a sense that she was not only alive, but that she may not be alone. He suspected that Isabel had found Samuel, his friend from the Highlands — and that they had gone somewhere they should not have.

CHAPTER 2

Intruders

“I think we fell asleep.”

“I believe you’re right.”

Samuel and Isabel were hiding in an abandoned drain carved into the earth near the wall that surrounded the House of Power. They had been lying in the narrow space for several hours, like a long snake that began with Samuel’s head and ended with Isabel’s feet. With the absence of water on Atherton, a profound thirst had settled on them both.

“It’s still dark outside,” said Samuel, his dry voice only a whisper. “We should keep moving before light begins to creep back into the courtyard. We just need to be quiet and careful.”

“If you say so,” said Isabel, but she was unsure. She wished Edgar were there with them. Isabel had always felt safe in the grove when he was near, and she missed his presence. As Samuel started moving slowly forward through the drain, she began to wonder if their search for water would come to a bad end.

“Where are you going?” asked Isabel. She could hear him shifting back and forth and moving away from her.

“Come on,” answered Samuel. “It’s late and the courtyard will be empty.”

Samuel felt a surprising confidence about his plans to find the hidden source of water within the House of Power. He had spent his entire childhood sneaking around this place and he knew its secrets. And more than that, in recent days he’d finally broken free of a long-endured fear of failure that he’d experienced since the loss of his father. He felt a new and unexpected boldness as the night grew deeper.

Isabel had no idea where they were going, but the two went on in silence, dirt falling all around them as they proceeded. The drain rose slowly before them in the dark until Samuel came to a place surrounded by something much harder than dirt.

“This will be a tight squeeze,” whispered Samuel. “Try not to make any more noise than you must.”

They had come to where the drain cut through the wall around the House of Power. Samuel reached out with his arms and gently shimmied back and forth, making slow progress until his fingers touched the hard edge of stone on the other side. He pulled as hard as he could, feeling bits of falling rock stinging his eyes, until he made it to the other side of the wall, where the drain widened to a space big enough for both of them.

Isabel’s smaller build allowed her to move quickly, and soon she was standing next to Samuel in the dark, where they faced each other in the small space. They were uncomfortably close.

“This is the end,” Samuel said in a quiet voice Isabel could barely hear. “Follow me and don’t make a sound.” The two stood silent for another moment as Samuel listened for the echo of footsteps overhead.

Then Isabel heard a grating sound as crumbs of dirt filled the air. Samuel held a square stepping stone from within the House of Power. He pushed it aside carefully, put his hands over the ledge, and pulled himself up with great effort.

The top of Samuel’s head poked out into the courtyard of the House of Power and he scanned the area. There were dots of light here and there where torches had been left glowing.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” whispered Isabel. The moment of entering the House of Power, where Lord Phineus ruled, had come. Isabel had always enjoyed a sense of bravado in the shelter of the grove, but this was different. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get so close to something that felt of darkness and evil.

“Take my feet and push me up,” said Samuel. He was holding steady above her, but in past adventures of his own he’d only gone down the drain, not up it, then he’d snuck back into the House of Power through the gate.

Isabel hesitated. She was farther away from home than she’d ever been, doing something that could get her into real trouble. What was she doing with this boy from the Highlands?

“We’ve got to go now, Isabel — I mean right now.”

Isabel took Samuel’s feet in her hands without thought or emotion, almost as if someone else was doing it and she was only watching it happen, and pushed until Samuel was halfway out and only his legs and rear end dangled wildly at the top of the hole. A moment later he had scurried out entirely.

Just then something happened that made Isabel think she’d done the wrong thing. Samuel looked down at her for a split second with panic in his eyes, and then he placed the square stone back over the hole. Isabel was all alone in the darkness of the drain.

Sir Emerik was sure he’d heard something. There had been a lot on his mind and he hadn’t slept but a few hours before waking in the middle of the night, and yet he felt certain he wasn’t imagining the noise. It had sounded like a piece of stone falling into a slot from a corner of the courtyard. What could it be at such a late hour but the sound of someone sneaking around?

He stood calm and unmoving, listening for the sound to repeat. Though it didn’t come again, Sir Emerik was a highly suspicious sort of man, and once his senses were alerted it was hard for him to turn them off. Something’s not right. I must go and see for myself.

As he moved ever so quietly along the winding path of the courtyard, Sir Emerik pondered his own grim circumstances. His home, the Highlands, had come crashing down and now sat even with Tabletop. Control over the House of Power, which sat alone at the center of the Highlands, seemed precarious. It was at once a time of great danger and a moment of opportunity. But first he would have to deal with Lord Phineus. And there was also the boy Samuel, who had escaped unexpectedly from his grasp. Samuel might cause me trouble. He knows far too much.

He would need a torch in order to search the courtyard properly, and this was a bit of a problem for Sir Emerik. He touched the scabs on his head and his eye began to twitch. Lately it happened involuntarily whenever he came within a few feet of a flame. He cursed the boy Edgar in his mind, remembering how Edgar had burned all the hair off his head. It was a memory he couldn’t shake. Sir Emerik took the torch with a shaky hand, holding it as far away from his face as he could. The flickering firelight made all the colors in the courtyard turn a bleary shade of orange.

Before long, he was standing near the stone that Samuel had moved to enter the House of Power. Isabel could hear him standing directly overhead on the stone. She had a terrible thought that whoever it was might break through and fall on top of her. Or maybe the person standing above her knew of the old hidden drain cover and was getting ready to slide it off. She kept very still, barely breathing as she waited for the person to leave.

From his hiding place, Samuel could see Sir Emerik as his boots clicked back and forth on the floor of the courtyard. The landscape within the courtyard was full with deep green rows of hedges and bushes trimmed into curious shapes, and it was easy for a small person like Samuel to encase himself within the grasp of branches or vines, completely hidden from view. Samuel’s anxiety rose as he watched Sir Emerik pause as if he’d found something. He had heard one stone sound different than the rest, as if it were covering a hollow space.

Sir Emerik lowered himself to the ground, carefully whipping his red robe behind him, and then with one hand he ran his fingers around the edge of the stone, feeling for a way to remove it. As he looked at the dancing flames of the torch in his other hand, his eye twitched, moving him to set the torch down next to him where it burned dimly on the cold floor.

Samuel didn’t know what to do when Sir Emerik took hold of the square stone by its corners. It crossed his mind to bolt from within the hedge and run through the courtyard to distract Sir Emerik, but he couldn’t risk anyone knowing of his presence in the House of Power. This thought froze him where he hid until Sir Emerik had removed the stone and was peering down into the drain.

Sir Emerik held the torch down into the hole, but he didn’t see anything, at least not anything he didn’t expect to see. He sniffed the air and touched the dirt with his hands, then pushed the stone back where it had been. This time he noticed small dirty fingerprints on the square slab. Sir Emerik looked up, suddenly sure. Samuel has returned by this secret way. He must be found and gotten rid of.

Sir Emerik rose to his feet, waving the flame over the hedge as he searched the courtyard. “I know you’re in here, Samuel,” he said softly in a raspy voice. “You can’t hide from me. You should know that by now.” He remembered how he’d found Samuel only a few days before with a secret book, how the book had foretold the Highlands’s descent into Tabletop, and how he’d captured the boy and locked him away in the House of Power. “Come out and we’ll go to see your mother in the kitchen. She’ll be very glad to see you.”

The idea of finding his mother seized Samuel and he nearly burst out of his hiding place. Samuel could hear and feel Sir Emerik getting closer. A few more seconds and he would be caught. He was ready to spring out of the hedge, to run into the twisting array of creeping plants. But just as Samuel was about to move there came another voice, much louder and meaner than Sir Emerik’s.

“Emerik!”

The booming sound of Lord Phineus calling for Sir Emerik filled the air as he shouted from the window of the main chamber. Hidden in a part of the courtyard that lay beneath a thick canopy of vine-covered trellises, Sir Emerik was momentarily torn. Though he felt sure he was close to finding the concealed boy, he knew he should not keep his master waiting.

“You can’t hide from me for long, Samuel,” said Sir Emerik. His eye twitched once more at the sight of the flaming torch in his hand. “You should come out now and save me the trouble of having to find you.”

“Emerik!”

The howling voice roared again, and this time Sir Emerik didn’t hesitate. The anger was growing in the lord of the House of Power, and it would not do to keep him waiting a second longer than he had to. He took one more look at the hedge, cursed the boy who hid there, and moved off toward the main chamber.

When Samuel felt sure he was alone, he crept out and removed the square slab of rock that covered the drain. He couldn’t see very far down, so he whispered Isabel’s name and waited. Nothing.

The House of Power was stirring from the sound of Lord Phineus’s voice, and soon people would be everywhere. Just when Samuel felt ready to jump into the hole and search for Isabel, he heard her moving around. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see her head poking out from farther back in the drain where it curved and narrowed.

“I am so ready to get out of here,” said Isabel. Her face was smeared with dirt and dead leaves hung in her tangled black hair. Her dark, thick brows lay heavy over her eyes as she looked up at Samuel.

“Better hurry,” whispered Samuel, glancing between the drain and the courtyard. “We’ve almost missed our chance.”

Either Isabel was heavier than he’d expected or he was weaker than he’d hoped; regardless, it was a mighty struggle pulling Isabel out of the drain and into the courtyard. She slid back down more than once before she was finally able to get her elbows over the edge and hoist herself the rest of the way out.

Samuel quickly moved the stepping stone back over the passage and grabbed Isabel’s hand. “He knows we’re here,” he said, pulling her along the vine-covered wall. “But he’ll be gone awhile.”

“I hope he didn’t send a guard to do his looking for him,” said Isabel.

“He wouldn’t do that,” said Samuel. “Sir Emerik wants me dead, and none of the guards would kill me if they found me. They’d take me straight to Lord Phineus, which is just what Sir Emerik is afraid of.”

Isabel started to ask him why Sir Emerik wanted him dead, but Samuel silenced her with a raised hand. Then he was running, waving to Isabel to follow. They swished past winding hedges, slithered under vines, and crawled beneath low, rounded walls until they reached the other side of the courtyard. Samuel heard the sound of boots on stone coming near and seized Isabel’s hand once more, pulling her down into a sea of thick ivy that lay before a bone white wall dancing with shadows.

When the guard had passed, they made their way up a set of darkened stairs to a narrow hall with a rail of grey stone that ran the length of one wall. At the very end of the hall was one of Samuel’s favorite hiding places, an alcove buried in thick ivy. The ivy crept down the side of the wall like dark green water, filling the space as high as their heads with waves of tiny leaves. It felt to Isabel as if a thousand tiny green hands were pulling her inside as she crept forward into the alcove.

“I wish Edgar was here,” said Isabel, feeling the itchy touch of leaves against her face.

Samuel peered out from their hiding place, which had a commanding view of the whole courtyard and the guard towers at the gate. He was thinking of the place they would soon be going, to a set of stairs leading up to the main chamber, in which Mead’s Head could be found.

CHAPTER 3

Mysterious Companions

Edgar walked quietly along the unlit path that snaked between the houses of the village. The hour had turned very late but only a few from the grove had settled in for a fragment of much-needed sleep before dawn. Some were scattered through the trees trying their best to keep a watchful eye on the sprawling grove, a nearly impossible task since it offered a thousand points of entry. The rest were hastily making plans, fashioning weapons, or piecing together places to hide.

Edgar did none of these things. He had said all that he’d been instructed to about how Tabletop had collapsed into the Flatlands. He’d told them about the approaching threat of the monsters known as Cleaners and the need to get ready by making spears and barricades, and now they were preoccupied with the preparations. It was time for him to go, for he was expected elsewhere. Edgar slipped away unnoticed, taking great care not to be seen or followed. Soon he had made his way to an outer line of trees where no guards were posted.

Edgar rubbed the bandaged nub where his pinky finger had once been and it stung sharply; then he made a fist with the hand and squeezed with the fingers he had left. It hurt, but not that much. His shoulder was still sore from the catastrophic fall he’d taken when he’d climbed down into the Flatlands, but it felt remarkably healed. His body wanted to climb if only a cliff could be found.

After a time Edgar spotted a dim figure approaching cautiously from the direction of the Village of Rabbits. The person carried no light to speak of and would have been visible only to those looking for him.

“Is that you, Vincent?” whispered Edgar. He was aware of the dryness of his throat when he spoke and of how thirsty he was. The advancing shape stopped short of the grove and Edgar heard the muffled sound of one man bumping into another in the night. It had looked like one man, but there were two, walking single file toward the line of trees.

“It’s me, Edgar,” said Edgar, sure that he’d found his two friends once more.

“It’s just the boy,” said Dr. Kincaid. “There’s no need to panic.”

“I didn’t panic,” said Vincent, who stood in front and had stopped short. “You shouldn’t follow so closely behind.”

“Come away from the clearing,” said Edgar. “This is a good spot, as I’d hoped.”

Soon the three were sitting beneath a tree whispering about their errands. Dr. Kincaid and Vincent, Edgar’s two mysterious companions from the Flatlands, had gone in different directions as they’d approached the grove — each to warn one of the other two distant villages about the coming Cleaners — while Edgar stayed to inform those in the grove.

“How did it go?” asked Dr. Kincaid, holding out a leather bag full of water. Edgar gratefully took it and eagerly began drinking. “Not too much, Edgar. It’s all we have.”

Edgar returned the bag of water and watched as Dr. Kincaid took a small sip. He was surprisingly alert for such an old man at so late an hour. He’d walked all the way to the Village of Sheep and back again in the night, which would have been several hours on foot, and yet Dr. Kincaid seemed reasonably well rested.

“They’re not used to seeing me as someone with information they could use,” said Edgar. “It takes awhile to convince people of certain things that are hard to believe.”

“Like monsters coming from the Flatlands into the grove?” asked Dr. Kincaid.

Edgar nodded, stretching his arms up over his head and feeling the dull roar of pain in his shoulder. He had the peculiar feeling of being exhausted and full of energy at the same time. He had only managed a couple hours of rest in the village, but he felt oddly alive. Maybe it was all the food he’d eaten or the unexpected time of rest at Dr. Kincaid’s home.

“That man Wallace in the Village of Sheep is a good shepherd,” said Dr. Kincaid. “They’re lucky to have him, though it’s hard to imagine they’ll be able to stay in their village when the Cleaners find it.”

“And you were right about Maude,” added Vincent. Edgar had pointed Vincent in the direction of the inn and the strong-willed woman he would find there. “She was quick to take the lead in the Village of Rabbits.”

Dr. Kincaid handed Edgar a chunk of Cleaner from his bag. The outside of the meat had dried in the night, but it burst with squishy liquid once Edgar broke the surface with his teeth.

“How long do you think it will take for the Cleaners to find this place?” asked Edgar. He had already gobbled up half the food and was wiping one of his hands in the dying grass at his feet.

Vincent looked off toward his old home. “I think they’ll go where there are more animals first.” It was the beginning of a logical if not gruesome assessment from the man who’d spent years protecting Dr. Kincaid. “They’ll go first to where they’ve always gone — near the Village of Rabbits and the Village of Sheep. They’ve grown used to finding lots of bones near the cliffs there. My guess is they’ll follow their noses to those places first and only stumble into the grove by accident sometime after that.”

“That’s good, I suppose.” The faces of Briney and Maude in the Village of Rabbits came to Edgar’s mind, and he felt terrible for being relieved that their village would likely be attacked before his own. “I mean, at least it will be good for the grove. They’ll have a little more time.”

“Did you tell them what I told you to say?” Dr. Kincaid asked Edgar.

“I told them to make as many spears as they could and to build fortresses from stones if they could find them,” said Edgar. “And I told them not to use wood, because the Cleaners would eat right through it, and that stone was the only thing that would hold them back.”

“And?” said Vincent, eyebrows raised as if testing the boy.

“And I told them not to try to hide up in the trees, because the Cleaners would knock the trees down. I also told them they could eat the Cleaners, if only they could kill them with the spears in the right way, and that the Cleaners were good to eat even though they were terrible to look at.”

“Very good!” cried Vincent. “You’ve done well. All we can do now is hope they heed our warning and prepare themselves. One dead Cleaner can feed a lot of people, and if they can protect themselves and fight well, who knows what might happen?”

Edgar felt a growing sense of dread as Vincent tried to hide the truth. He knew that the Cleaners were huge, vicious creatures. Could the people of the village really survive if a thousand angry Cleaners found the grove?

Dr. Kincaid could see the boy wanted to stay, to fight and protect the people of the place where he’d spent most of his life. “Your path leads out of the grove, Edgar,” Dr. Kincaid reminded him. “To the House of Power.”

Maybe the House of Power really did hold the key to saving Tabletop, and this gave Edgar hope. But he felt another pull to the House of Power: Isabel and Samuel. Edgar had a strong feeling that this was where both of them had gone. Friends can feel such things in times of peril, as if a long, thin string holds them carefully together, tugging at one another through the open space of a dangerous world.

The three of them were about to leave when Edgar turned back and pulled a clump of green figs from one of the trees. The figs weren’t ripe yet and they were still attached to the vine. Edgar had a chunk of the slimy Cleaner remaining in his other hand, which he’d been saving for this moment. He put the Cleaner into a small sack made of sheepskin which he’d taken from the village, then pushed the gathering of figs down into the squishy meat of the Cleaner in the sack.

“We’d better be getting on,” called Vincent. “It’s a world of chaos we live in now, and we need to travel as far as we can under cover of night.”

Sealing off the bag with a string, Edgar placed it in his pocket, and the three travelers went out into the open toward the Highlands.

CHAPTER 4

Unseen Ladders

Lord Phineus had recently emerged from a treacherous journey into a world beneath the House of Power that had not ended well. He had screamed twice for Sir Emerik and was growing impatient. Gazing out into the night he could not see that the Highlands had begun sliding down inside of Atherton, that his once lofty home was now the lowest place of all. Already the Highlands were three feet lower than they had been when he ventured into Mead’s Hollow. There were precious few who knew this secret, and Lord Phineus was not among them.

When Sir Emerik arrived outside the door to the main chamber he wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Lord Phineus offered no greeting. Instead, he began speaking as if Sir Emerik had been there all along.

“The problem is, you can’t see where we’re supposed to go,” said Lord Phineus. “Only I know where it is. No one else.”

Lord Phineus was covered in a cold sweat, his eyes swollen and rimmed in red. The frenetic and edgy way in which he spoke made Sir Emerik wonder if he was in the presence of a lunatic.

“Lord, what’s happened to you? Are you all right?”

In truth, Sir Emerik had not the least concern over the well-being of his master. In fact, if Lord Phineus were to take ill, it would be all the easier to do away with him. But why had the man’s demeanor changed so drastically in only a few short hours? Lord Phineus had always been so calm, logical, and calculating; now he was rambling, pacing, and speaking near nonsense.

“Did you hear what I said?” asked Lord Phineus. “No one else knows!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean,” said Sir Emerik. He was aware, suddenly, of all the candles in the room and how the light from them cast shadows on the walls showered with cascading ivy. It made the room feel alive with evil. Sir Emerik’s eye twitched at the sight of so much fire so near.

“What’s that absurd thing you’re doing there?” said Lord Phineus. “That terrible twitch. Stop it at once.”

Sir Emerik breathed deeply and stared at the floor. The twitching stopped, and when he looked up again Lord Phineus was bent over, scratching vigorously at his leg. “Something wrong, my lord?”

Lord Phineus’s eyes were inflamed with blood. He wasn’t feeling at all well. “The Crat,” he mumbled. “I should have killed them a long time ago.”

This made no sense to Sir Emerik, but he was more and more pleased to see that the man before him was not in his right mind. It might be easier than he’d thought to take control.

“There is yet another problem that must be overcome,” said Lord Phineus. His mind seemed to be righting itself, if only a little, as he stood up and leaned heavily against the wall. “We’ll need water to survive.”

“But we have all the water we need!” Sir Emerik was almost too animated in his response. He had understood this to be a problem already solved.

“I’ve told you before of the secret place where the water finds its beginning,” said Lord Phineus. Sir Emerik had to work very hard not to show his anticipation. Lord Phineus should have known deceit when it was before him, but it seemed that he did not. “The time has come for you to know of this place.”

Sir Emerik couldn’t stop a small rise at one corner of his mouth at the notion. Having power over the water had long been the one missing piece in his plans.

“Are there guards who can maintain order in the absence of us both? This will take some time.”

Sir Emerik tried to contain his glee. “There are, lord. There’s Tyler, a protégé of mine, a very good man at the gate. And there’s Horace — you remember Horace, don’t you?”

Sir Emerik was testing Lord Phineus to see just how mad he had become. Horace had been chief guard here for a long time, but he had been banned from the House of Power, like so many others, after the Highlands came even with Tabletop. He and the others had families who would gobble up resources and split their allegiance to Lord Phineus.

“What kind of absurd question is that?” said Lord Phineus. He was scratching his leg again and gazing knowingly at Sir Emerik. “You think I’m losing my mind.”

Sir Emerik hesitated. In the split second of silence Lord Phineus removed a long blade from his boot, shot across the room with alarming speed, and pinned Sir Emerik against the door. The sharp edge of the weapon lay horizontal against Sir Emerik’s chin.

“I know your intentions. You should not imagine them fulfilled.”

The blade was pushed harder against Sir Emerik’s chin and it broke skin. Sir Emerik whimpered as if he were a small, scared boy of six or seven. It had never crossed his mind that Lord Phineus might know of his deception.

“There are many lines and ladders in my mind,” said Lord Phineus. “Yellow lines and ladders that are mine alone. They are hopelessly out of your reach.”

Though his master was beginning to sound unstable again, Sir Emerik was strangely mesmerized by the voice as he felt blood dripping down his chin. It occurred to him that the world’s radical change was a prophetic sign that it was time for him to seize power, and as long as he had water and no Cleaners could get into the House of Power, his world would be better than it ever had been before.

Lord Phineus stepped back, releasing Sir Emerik. He casually put the blade back in his boot and scratched his leg once more, as if the encounter had never occurred.

“You will come with me,” Lord Phineus said at length. “And do as I say.” Sir Emerik nodded in agreement as he held back the blood dripping from his chin.

Lord Phineus took hold of the statue that stood in the main chamber. Mead’s Head. He turned the stone head right, left, and right again. Hearing the familiar click on the floor behind him, he turned and faced Sir Emerik with a grave and weary look on his face.

“I’ve lost control of the water,” said Lord Phineus. “And you must help me get it back.”

While Lord Phineus and Sir Emerik disappeared into Mead’s Hollow in the dead of night there were two others who discovered that the Highlands were descending into the center of Atherton. Until then, only Samuel and Isabel had known for sure. But that was about to change.

“What do you smell?” asked Horace.

“I’m not sure what I smell,” answered his companion, whose name was Gill. “Something . . . different.”

Gill was a wiry man, quick and stealthy on his feet. He had the unusual habit of sniffing the air around him in order to gain any insight he could, especially at night. His larger than average nose raised into the air as his long neck bobbed rhythmically from side to side. Gill had the look of an animal that had smelled something unexpected but could not see it. If he had ever experienced it for himself, he would have said the air smelled like a dirt road after a hard rain. But there had been no rain on Atherton — not ever — and he tried his best to place the smell somewhere simpler in his mind.

“Something is wet,” he whispered into the night.

Horace moved forward cautiously with Gill close behind, and with each step the smell grew heavier around them. When they came to the very place where the Highlands had once risen into the sky, Gill knelt down and felt the moist new edge of Tabletop. He held the gritty mud on his fingers to his nose.

For a moment he thought they’d stumbled into a place where the two lands hadn’t met flat against each other, but his mind was quickly changed. The Highlands had moved down inside of Atherton about the length of a man’s arm, and putting his fingers at the seam on the bottom, Horace felt it ever so slowly grinding. He gazed to his left — across the deep grey of night — and could see a dark line of land running long and crooked.

Horace stood, feeling his lungs swell with the knowledge of a changing world.

“I must go to the House of Power and reason with them,” he said. “We can’t stay in the Highlands any longer. This place must be forsaken.”

It was a rather gloomy way of putting things, and Gill shuddered as he stood.

“But what about those creatures — the Cleaners? This could be a good development. It could separate us from them.”

Horace was unmoved. Staying within the sinking Highlands seemed to him the worse of two approaching evils. What would become of a people trapped in a sinking world with cliffs rising all around? There was something altogether wrong about the idea of being trapped, of descending into inescapable darkness. And there was something else, something deeper in his awakening soul. He felt a bottomless guilt at the very thought of leaving those in Tabletop alone to battle a coming enemy they could never defeat alone. The Highlands had to be left behind, because if they weren’t, then Tabletop and everyone in it would be destroyed. All of Atherton would fail.

“If we are to learn anything from the past,” he said, turning toward Gill with the best argument he could craft in short order, “we should know better than to think the Highlands will stop. Soon it may be too late to get the horses and the families out, and then what? Everyone will be trapped in a growing darkness, and who’s to say the Cleaners couldn’t find a way in? We have to escape this place before our chance has passed.”

CHAPTER 5

A House Divided

“You there!”

The sound of the voice startled Samuel and Isabel. The man who’d shouted the words was outside the wall, where the two could not see.

“I know that voice,” whispered Samuel. “That’s Horace!”

Isabel put her finger to her lips and pulled a hard, dry fig from her pocket, expecting something terrible to happen at any moment and getting ready to fight. The two stayed very still and listened to the voices in the dark.

“Get back!” screamed the guard stationed in the tower atop the gate. He was holding a sizable rock over his head. Samuel could see him looking down at Horace, a man who had, until only recently, been the main guard in the House of Power.

“Put the rock down, Joseph.” Horace spoke with great authority. “It’s me.”

The man with the rock let his arm hang loose. He was a young man, only twenty-five, and he had no family to speak of.

“Horace? That you, Horace?”

Isabel leaned her head out of the ivy and glanced over the stone rail where she saw another guard running through the courtyard with a torch.

“Things are getting awfully busy around here,” she said. “Maybe this is our best chance to find the source of water. That is, if you truly know where it is.”

This came as something of a surprise to Samuel. Can she really think I’ve lied to her? She appeared to be losing confidence in him.

“Let’s listen for another minute,” said Samuel. “Then we’ll go.”

The situation at the wall grew more complicated as Samuel and Isabel looked on.

“It’s Horace!” shouted Joseph from the tower.

“Get rid of him!” said the other who had run up with the torch. He was a little older than Joseph but not nearly as seasoned a guard as Horace. His name was Tyler.

Joseph turned back to Horace. “You know I can’t let you in,” he said. “Lord Phineus won’t allow it.”

“I need to speak with him,” said Horace. His voice was stern and even. He knew the man above him well enough to know that he’d very much like to open the gate but that it might cost him his life if he did.

“I’m sorry, Horace, but he can’t be disturbed. It’s the middle of the night. Maybe if you come back tomorrow.”

Horace was a man in possession of a thunderously loud voice, deep and powerful and made for distance. He liked to use it to its full effect.

“You will open this gate and take me to Lord Phineus!”

Joseph was torn between the escalating demands of the men on either side of the wall. “Wait a moment. Both of you calm down,” he said softly, as if his quietness might bring things under control. But Horace only yelled louder, until finally Tyler could take no more and climbed up next to Joseph.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be going?” asked Isabel. “I can’t imagine a better diversion.”

“Just another moment,” said Samuel. “I’ve a feeling this is important.”

“Horace, you must leave this place at once!” said Tyler when he’d arrived at the top.

“I have something to say, and I will be heard!”

Soon everyone who remained in the House of Power was awake and wondering what was going on outside. Even Samuel’s mother had come running from her room at the sound of Horace’s voice. She and a group of others stood by the giant gates and clamored for information.

“That’s my mother!” said Samuel, seeing her within the crowd below. Isabel had the feeling that Samuel might suddenly try to run or call to her without thinking about the consequences.

“You know she’s alive and well,” said Isabel, responding with quiet force. “Trying to talk to her won’t help us find the water. It will only get us caught. Better to wait.”

Samuel was confused. This was a lot more adventure than he’d bargained for.

“Everyone please just calm down!” Joseph had abandoned his soft voice from the tower and resorted to hollering. Just when Horace was drawing in a giant breath in order to roar even louder than before, Joseph finally put an end to all the shouting. “Lord Phineus isn’t here,” he announced.

Tyler slapped Joseph’s shoulder and glared at him as if he’d said something he really shouldn’t have, but Joseph kept on. “We don’t know where he is. And Sir Emerik is gone as well. We can’t find either one of them.”

Samuel now realized their best chance to enter the main chamber really had come. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to leave his mother before knowing she was all right.

“Where do you suppose they’ve gone?” asked Horace, beginning to take command of the situation in the absence of power within the walls. “Could it be that they’ve left you and have plans of their own?”

“They’re here somewhere,” said Tyler, but he was lying.

“Are you sure of that?” asked Joseph. “You told me only an hour ago that they wouldn’t return until morning.”

Everyone heard — all the people who had gathered on the other side of the wall, and Horace, too — and control swiftly shifted entirely in Horace’s favor.

“Open the door,” said Horace. “I have something to show you.”

“We’re not opening this door!” shouted Tyler. “Come back in the morning and we’ll discuss it. Until then, you can scream all you want. This door stays shut!”

“What do you want to show us?” asked Joseph, who was a more curious sort than Tyler.

“Come down here and I’ll show you.”

“Back away from the door,” Joseph ordered. When he appeared to be pleased with Horace’s location he climbed down the narrow stone steps.

“This is a terrible idea,” Tyler said to no one in particular.

Joseph and another young guard from the House of Power removed the vast wooden beam that lay across the swinging wooden doors. Everyone backed away as one of the two heavy doors was pulled open just far enough for Joseph to slip out. At that moment Adele bolted from the crowd and into the opening, sliding outside as she shrieked at Horace, “Where’s my boy? Where’s Samuel?”

Horace had found her boy once before and she hoped he would know of his whereabouts again.

Samuel very nearly opened his mouth and yelled out, “I’m here, I’m here!” But Isabel immediately gave him a very stern look, telling him she might punch him if he made so much as a peep. And so he said nothing as he craned his neck to listen more carefully.

“Take this horse. I brought it for you,” said Horace to Joseph. “Ride it to the edge — where the edge used to be — and you will see. I’ll be here when you return, and then we’ll have something to talk about.”

Isabel heard the sound of hooves as Joseph galloped for the border of the Highlands. And then she heard Horace’s voice again, louder than it needed to be, as if he knew that Samuel was hiding nearby and needed to hear him.

“You and your son will cross paths again,” he said. “Though I believe you must leave the Highlands if you are to find him. We must all leave the Highlands.”

“But she’s the cook!” cried Tyler from his perch on the wall, his voice cracking. I’ve already lost a guard, he thought heavily. Now Sir Emerik is going to kill me for letting the cook escape.

Samuel had seen his mother escape the House of Power, and she was with someone he trusted. Now he held on tight to the words Horace had said. You will cross paths again. He turned to Isabel with a new resolve in his voice that surprised her.

“Follow me,” he said as he began moving cautiously toward the main chamber. “It’s time we made our way to the source of water.”

CHAPTER 6

Into the Hollow

As Samuel and Isabel approached the stairs leading up to the main chamber they could see that the way was lit, though unguarded. Everyone had gone to the wall. Samuel’s mother was safely away, and only the challenge of finding the source of water remained before him.

“This is our best chance,” he said. They started off, fast but silent, and soon the two were up the deserted stairs, down the hallway, and in front of the door to the main chamber.

Samuel tried the handle and found the door locked as he’d expected. Lord Phineus had been mistaken to assume Samuel wasn’t a clever boy, however, for Samuel had a secret known only to him, a secret left by his father, Sir William.

“This way,” said Samuel, waving Isabel toward a second set of stairs. At the bottom was a torch burning softly, and Samuel took it from its hold and carried it up the steps. They turned left at the top, and Samuel stood before the door to Lord Phineus’s private room. To the right of the door sat a square box made of wood with a leafy green plant inside.

“We need to move that,” said Samuel.

“How do you know?” asked Isabel.

“My father told me.” He glanced at Isabel and saw that she was surprised. “He used to show me all sorts of secrets about this place before . . .”

There was a long pause in which the two looked awkwardly at each other.

“Before what?” asked Isabel.

Samuel stepped away from the wooden box he’d been trying to move. “A year ago he fell from the Highlands, back when there was a Highlands to fall from.”

“I’m sorry,” said Isabel.

Samuel shrugged and took hold of the box once more. It was full of dirt and very heavy, so Isabel came alongside and helped.

“Whose door is this?” asked Isabel, glancing up as they scooted the heavy box across the floor. She didn’t like the dark look of it. The door appeared to be made of black wood, and there was a long crack down the middle that looked like a vein with blood running through it, as if the door were alive in the dancing flames of night.

“It’s Lord Phineus’s private room,” said Samuel, trying to move the box with one hand while he held the torch. He was not making much progress.

“I don’t want to go in there,” said Isabel, backing away. Samuel stopped trying to move the wooden box and looked at Isabel. It was unusual to see her lose her confidence.

“We’re not going inside. There are things hidden here, things we need.”

“Who hid them?”

There wasn’t time to explain everything about his father — about how he had stood against Lord Phineus and paid a terrible price — so he offered only a little of his father’s legend.

“My father hid these things when he became suspicious of the others,” said Samuel. “He didn’t trust Lord Phineus or Sir Emerik. He woke me late one night and showed them to me, in case anything ever happened to him, in case Lord Phineus tried to hurt me or my mother.”

Isabel moved back toward Samuel.

“Why would he hide something there?” she said. “It’s right in front of his door.”

“My father was fond of hiding things right beneath people’s noses. He thought it was the last place Lord Phineus would look. I hope he was right.”

Isabel moved Samuel out of the way with one arm, then took the edge of the wooden box in her hands and slid it to the other side of the door.

“Hold this,” said Samuel, giving Isabel the torch and kneeling down. The wall was made of stone blocks of two sizes. The larger stones were about the size of the box Isabel had just moved, but interspersed between those were smaller ones, the size of Samuel’s hand. He took hold of one of the smaller stones and tried to jiggle it free.

“I’m sure this is the one,” said Samuel. “It has to be.”

Isabel knelt down next to Samuel, holding the flame closer. The stone Samuel was gripping didn’t look like it was at all loose.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Isabel. “I mean, did you actually see your father put something here, or did he just tell you it was here?”

“I saw it,” answered Samuel. “It was dark when he showed it to me, but I’m sure this is the one.”

“Stand back,” said Isabel. Samuel looked up, confused and irritated. Isabel thrust the torch back into his hand and walked quickly, almost to the end, where a window looked over the House of Power. When she turned back, Isabel had her sling in hand, already loaded with a black fig.

“Move to the side, and hold that torch near the mark,” said Isabel. She began swinging the sling over her head, the circle it made in the air barely fitting into the width of the hall. It made a wonderful sound, a whirling echo that grew faster and faster down the deep length of the passage.

“You can’t throw one of those in here,” said Samuel, alarm rising in his voice. He was about to insist that she put the weapon away when he heard a snap! and then a crash as the black fig hit the stone wall. It ricocheted off the floor, up to the ceiling, and back through the hall toward Isabel. She ducked and the fig zipped past her head, then flew out the window.

“That made a lot of noise,” said Samuel. “Someone might have heard.”

Isabel peeked her dark brow around the corner of the window and saw the various lights aflame in the courtyard. It didn’t seem to her that anyone had noticed the sound, although people were moving away from the wall now, returning to where they’d come from.

“Better make it fast,” said Isabel. “See if it worked.” She had the feeling that someone might have been stationed near the main chamber, someone who would probably return any moment.

Samuel knelt down with the torch and examined the small square stone. The black fig had hit it dead center and left behind a spiderweb crack.

“You’re a really good shot with that thing,” said Samuel as Isabel came up beside him. “I hope you never have a reason to use it on me.”

Isabel smiled vaguely. She liked being praised for her strength, especially by older boys who thought that girls were weak.

Soon the shards of the broken stone were removed, and they found three items hidden inside a hollow. Samuel quickly put all of them in his pocket, and then they both struggled to get the wooden box back in place. The two moved cautiously down the stairs, hugging the wall as they went.

No one had arrived yet at the door to the main chamber. Samuel took out of his pocket the first of the four things his father had hidden for him. It was a key made for unlocking the door to the main chamber. It worked beautifully, and when the two were safely inside Samuel breathed a sigh of relief.

“No one comes in here uninvited,” he said. “We’re alone now, only we need to put this torch back where we got it. Someone will see it’s missing.”

The two searched the chamber and quickly found a second, unlit torch against one of the ivy-covered walls. Samuel touched the end and found it was moist with fuel. After lighting it, he sent Isabel quietly to return the one they’d been using.

While she was out of the room, Samuel wondered if he should tell Isabel everything his father had told him. He looked at the objects in his hand. One was another key, oddly shaped; another was a weapon, sharp but small; and the last was a folded piece of paper. He slipped all three items back in his pocket.

When Isabel returned she shut the door but neglected to lock it, rushing back to Samuel’s side.

“We’re okay,” she said. “No one saw me.” She turned her attention to the statue before them. It was the head of a man, made of a white sort of stone, sitting on a pedestal. Isabel thought the man had big ears.

“What’s that say?” she asked. Isabel couldn’t read the name etched into the white stone.

“Mead,” said Samuel.

“Who’s Mead?”

Isabel hadn’t heard a name like that before and it made her nervous.

“I don’t know,” said Samuel. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

He took hold of the head as his father had shown him when the two had secretly come to the main chamber in the deep quiet of a past night. He was reminded of how his father had stood next to him, guiding smaller hands. A hot feeling welled up in his throat. Memory had a special way of hurting sometimes.

“Do you need some help?” asked Isabel.

“No!” he shouted, surprising himself and Isabel. “My father showed me how. I can do it.”

“No one’s going to come in here, like you said,” offered Isabel. “Whatever it is you’re doing can take as long as you need.”

Something clicked on the floor behind the two, and Isabel swiveled around. “What was that?”

Samuel stepped in front of her and pointed to the floor amid the twisting ivy. “It will take both of us to remove the cover, but it’s unlocked.”

“What’s unlocked?” asked Isabel. Dread was rising in her voice as she stood next to Samuel, staring down at the tangled web of ivy that parted over a space not much wider than her head. Samuel knelt down, pushing the creeping ivy aside, and revealed the door leading to Mead’s Hollow.

“The source of water is somewhere behind this opening,” said Samuel. “My father told me how to find it.” Samuel pulled the slip of folded paper from his pocket. “He wrote it down for me, so I could find my way.”

There was a sound coming from outside the door, as if someone wearing heavy boots were approaching. Samuel shot a glance past Isabel’s head.

“You locked the door, right?” He didn’t think anyone would try to enter, but with Lord Phineus and Sir Emerik away, maybe someone would be so bold as to try. Isabel shook her head no.

The two went directly to work lifting the stone slab, frantic but careful to stay as silent as they could. Isabel was sure she did not want to make the journey to the source of water, but it was a place to hide, at least for a moment.

The sound of boots on stone stopped outside the door to the main chamber, then seemed to move from side to side, as if the person outside were unsure about trying to enter. A soft knock came on the door.

“Lord Phineus? Are you in there?”

It was Tyler, who was actually hoping not to find anyone. He thought he’d heard a strange scraping sound coming from behind the door, but he couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t slept in a long time. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

Samuel and Isabel had already started down the steps leading into Mead’s Hollow when Tyler put his hand on the latch to the door. Samuel crouched on the fourth step with the torch in one hand, while Isabel sat above him on the second step.

“Close it!” he whispered harshly.

Isabel slid it across the floor until it clicked into place. But the clicking sound sent panic rising within her and she tried to push up, regretting the decision she’d made. Suddenly, she didn’t care if she was caught; she only wanted to make sure she could get out. Isabel pressed all of her weight against the stone above her, but it would not budge.

“Please, Isabel,” whispered Samuel. “Be quiet. There are things down here you don’t want to wake up.”

Isabel turned to Samuel, the whites of her eyes wide and shining in the flame. She had been scared before, but never like this.

Tyler was surprised to find the door to the main chamber unlocked. He was also apprehensive about going inside and called out instead. “Is that you, Sir Emerik?”

No sound came from inside, and Tyler slowly peered around the corner of the door into the room, holding a flame into the air before him. There was no one, only the dark empty space of the main chamber and the window behind it. He ran his hand over his forehead and felt a cold sweat. Through the window he heard a commotion at the wall. Joseph had returned, and with him news of whatever Horace had wanted him to see.

Tyler closed the door and ran for the stairs, hoping the night would somehow come under his control as he made for the wall below.

CHAPTER 7

Dawn Breaks on a Changed World

By the time Tyler raced down the stairs and through the courtyard, everyone had returned to the wall where the giant doors stood secure to hear what Horace had to say. Tyler could already hear his unbearable, booming voice. For a man like Tyler, left in command of a great many things and losing control of them all, it was a maddening sound.

“Don’t anyone touch that door!” he howled on his approach. He went immediately up the narrow steps to the top of the wall and looked outside. Joseph had indeed returned.

“Open the doors!” cried Horace into his cupped hands with a bellow that felt like it would blow Tyler’s hair back or knock him clean off the wall.

“Shut up, Horace! I can’t take any more!” Tyler declared. He had been holding a rock in his hands, squeezing it as his nerves frayed, and without thinking he threw the stone hard and fast. Tyler was not a terribly good shot, and the stone, which was about the size of his fist, went right past Horace and hit the horse instead. The horse bucked into the air, then jerked the rope out of Joseph’s hand and bolted into the darkness.

Horace watched the horse run away, then turned back to Tyler. “You must come out of the House of Power!”

Joseph put a hand on Horace’s shoulder, asking him to please stop for a moment. He understood what Horace was doing, but he was just about as tired of hearing Horace yell as Tyler was.

“Horace is right, Tyler,” Joseph said to the man standing above him, speaking in an even tone. “We have to leave this place, and quickly.”

Tyler was resolved to keep his post — to make Sir Emerik proud of him and hold the House of Power from its enemies — but if others wanted to leave, he knew he couldn’t make them stay. He didn’t have the sort of authority that would force them to obey out of fear or respect. Who could have guessed things would have unraveled as they had in the middle of the night, and so quickly?

The group that had remained in the House of Power since the Highlands had fallen into Tabletop was comprised almost entirely of young men without families, along with a handful of women without husbands or children. Two of these men removed the beam that secured the doors, swinging them open. Everyone but Tyler streamed out and stood before Joseph and Horace in a circle three deep.

It was there that they were told the Highlands were sinking into Atherton.

Horace laid out the plans of where they were going and why, along with his conviction that the Highlands might very well be inescapable by morning. He was emphatic in his argument that the people in Tabletop could be trusted, and he explained how Lord Phineus had tried but failed to poison everyone in the three villages beneath the waterfalls.

Some in the group were not entirely convinced they should leave the safety of the fortress or that they could ally with the people of Tabletop. Among them were some of the guards — their lungs still tight from coughing — who had been hit with black figs and orange dust in the recent confrontation with the villagers. But their fears were overshadowed by the thought of being trapped in a sinking prison of walls and darkness. The very idea of it was haunting.

“We must take as much food and water as we can carry from inside,” said Horace.

“What if we run out of water? What then?” asked one of the guards.

“We no doubt choose between the lesser of two evils,” said Horace. “Stay here and sink into oblivion, or leave and risk a shortage of water.”

And then Horace said something no one had expected.

“A falling Highlands may mean rising water. It’s possible we could build a new basket system that can be lowered into the abyss to attain water. Better to be dipping into a giant well than be stuck at the bottom of one.”

Few had thought of this possible eventuality. The idea of a dark, watery grave was universally terrifying.

“What of the horses?” asked the man who’d been watching over them. Many of the horses were kept in a stable outside the House of Power, but there were ten or more inside, held at the inner stable on the other side of the courtyard.

“If you want them to live, you’ll need to get them out,” said Horace.

But the time for getting horses or anything else out of the House of Power had passed, for as the group turned back to retrieve horses and supplies, they saw the doors slamming shut. There was a mad dash toward the closed doors as Tyler lifted one end of the timber and dropped it into place. Then he darted to the other end of the timber, hefting it into the air with all his might as the crowd outside barreled forward and crashed into the doors. One of the doors began to swing open, but Tyler pushed hard against the beam of wood and wedged it tightly, locking himself inside.

He could hear the sound of angry voices outside, but it was muffled from where he stood, and this gave him a small measure of satisfaction. He backed away from the doors, so very hungry and tired, and walked unsteadily into the courtyard until he could hear the voices no more.

And so it was that while Sir Emerik, Lord Phineus, Samuel, and Isabel descended into Mead’s Hollow, a fourth village sprang up on Atherton. On the far side of the Highlands, as far away from the other villages of Tabletop as could be managed, there came into existence the Village of Horses. The village was comprised of all the people from the Highlands along with the horses that could be found outside of the House of Power. When the last of the horses leaped for the edge, the Highlands were a full five feet below Tabletop.

An hour later dawn was about to break on Atherton. Everyone in the Village of Horses stood at the edge looking down at their old home, filled with dread as they considered the day that lay before them. The Highlands were almost twenty feet beneath them now, and they could actually see them moving down ever so slowly, a gurgling, grinding noise coming from under their feet.

There was something at once beautiful and terrible about seeing their home collapse. It was a lonely place to look at in the coming light of morning, deep shadows casting over a once superior realm. And yet the House of Power had never before been seen from above, and it was a magnificent thing to behold with its gleaming white stone walls and green gardens, its rising turrets and winding staircases. From above it had the appearance of a magical, stately place being overcome by an evil darkness.

“What will become of us?” asked Gill of no one in particular.

“That all depends on the choices we make,” said Horace, who stood nearby. “It’s a brand-new day, a chance to set things right.”

Gill scanned the line of trees that surrounded the Highlands. They had once stood high and mighty around him — forty feet or more — but soon he would be staring down at their tops. He turned to say something to Horace and saw that he had moved off and was staring toward the far edge of Atherton with a troubled look on his face.

Horace’s closest allies, Gill among them, approached him as a group. “What is it?” asked Gill, gazing as Horace did toward the edge of the world. “What do you see?”

Horace knew what might be coming. They had talked at length in the night of what was to happen next, of how the people would need to be told of the coming danger, and of what each of Horace’s men must do. He turned to his men and spoke with fear in his voice, echoing the words he’d heard Maude say in the Village of Rabbits.

“We must all unite against the one foe. It’s our only chance.”

The Cleaners.

“Get some horses ready,” said Horace. “It’s time.”

When morning came to Atherton it felt as if a new world was being lit for the first time. All the changes that had come before seemed to rush into the one charged moment of dawn. From every vantage point, the same message was clear and sharp as a knife.

Atherton was not the place it had once been.

Briney and Maude, the keepers of the inn, stood motionless and silent in the Village of Rabbits, staring at the line of trees where cliffs had once risen into the sky. The Highlands lay dark and wide against the rising sun, and it felt like much of what had made this secret place so powerful had fallen away along with its descent. “I miss the cliffs,” said Briney, putting an arm around his wife. “It was a place to put my back against where no one could sneak up behind me.”

This feeling was shared by many. Three lands previously separated by tall cliffs were now together as one. It was unsettling for people like Briney and Maude who’d lived in the safety of the middle, in the peaceful round world of groves and pastures that had been Tabletop. Danger seemed to close in from all sides as it never had before, because the world of Atherton was flat.

Or was it?

“Those trees don’t seem as tall as they did last night, before dark,” said Maude, narrowing her eyes toward the Highlands and trying to remember. “I’m sure of it. Those trees are shorter.”

Briney looked at his wife and moved his hand to the small of her back.

“How long has it been since you slept?” he asked.

“I’m not seeing things, Briney!” The strain of all of the upheaval was apparent in Maude’s trembling voice. Briney had always been the more sensitive of the two, and he didn’t like what he was hearing. He was sure she was exhausted, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Maybe it would calm her down if he looked to the Highlands again and pretended to believe her, so he gazed hard in the direction of the trees, which stood clustered all along the edge of his sight.

There was a strange sound coming from a long way off, right along the line where the cliffs used to be. Briney and Maude both looked toward a small group of men on horses, the pounding of hooves growing nearer.

“That will be Horace,” said Maude. She could see it was him by the shining bald head atop the lead horse. “I wonder why he didn’t come across the middle of the Highlands, as he did before.”

This was Maude’s way of telling Briney she had been right. The Highlands had indeed begun to slide down inside of Atherton — why else would Horace take the long way around?

Maude turned in the direction of the Flatlands, her mind suddenly caught by another idea.

“I hope he has some good news,” she said. “I’m not certain everyone in the Highlands is ready to put the fighting behind us.”

Briney tried to remember how far away the edge of Tabletop leading down to the Flatlands had once been. He replayed in his mind the images of the creatures Maude had described in the night.

“The Cleaners are coming, aren’t they?” he said.

There was a long pause in which the two found each other’s hands and held tight.

“They’re coming,” answered Maude.

Somewhere off in the distance, in the craggy rocks of the Flatlands, a Cleaner caught the scent of horses on the air. It was a new smell for the creature, one it liked. Darkness was on the decline in Atherton and the time for eating had arrived. The beast clicked its sharp, crooked teeth together, calling its horde near, and a pack of evil monsters began moving toward the Village of Horses.

CHAPTER 8

The Falling Rope

“It must be thirty feet to the bottom, and it’s still moving,” said Dr. Kincaid. He had arrived at the edge of the Highlands with Vincent and Edgar. The three companions were astonished to see how far the Highlands had already crashed inside Atherton.

“This is taking place faster than I’d expected,” added Dr. Kincaid.

“You knew this was going to happen?” asked Edgar. He stared first at Dr. Kincaid and then at Vincent. He could see by the looks on their faces that they’d known all along.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Edgar.

“It would have only confused and frightened you more,” said Dr. Kincaid. “I’m trying to tell you things as you need to know them, no sooner. And besides, I’m finding Atherton not always as I expect. Some of my information is turning out to be . . . unreliable.” He stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. “I imagined we’d walk right in without any problem, but it appears the Highlands are descending quite a bit faster than I’d calculated.”

“It will make everything more difficult,” added Vincent.

Edgar looked over the edge into the Highlands and felt a sudden exhilaration, forgetting for a moment the chaos of the changing world around him.

“I can climb over this ledge. I can get down there.”

Vincent scanned the line of trees on the other side and wondered who might be waiting within them. Then his eyes settled on the boy. “The longer we wait, the more distance there is to climb down.” Vincent looked at Dr. Kincaid, who was mumbling to himself, and then back at Edgar with an expression that asked, Even if we could do it ourselves, how are we going to get Dr. Kincaid down there? He’s too old.

Edgar crouched down and scanned along the floor of the Highlands. “There!” he said, pointing. He had spied one of the giant baskets that used to hang down from the Highlands. The contraption was created for Highlanders to receive food from those in Tabletop, who alone harvested figs and supplied rabbit and lamb meat for the privileged living above them. It was strange to see the basket lying there on its side, discarded and useless, when it had once acted as the only lifeline between the two realms.

Edgar didn’t wait for Vincent or Dr. Kincaid to answer. He wanted to make quick work of the thirty feet, grab the rope attached to the basket, and bring it back. Without further thought he threw his legs over the edge and started sliding down until Vincent caught hold of Edgar’s good arm. He gazed long and hard into Edgar’s eyes.

“Are you sure you can do this?” he asked. “It’s a long fall to the bottom if you miss a step.” Edgar looked down and saw that there were plenty of places to put his feet and hands. He nodded.

“And are you sure this is a risk worth taking?” asked Vincent, looking now at Dr. Kincaid. “Our way is more treacherous than you anticipated.”

Dr. Kincaid bent down on one knee, ignoring Vincent and placing all of his attention on the boy hanging precariously from the ledge. “Do you think the Cleaners can be overcome?”

Edgar thought about the question. The Cleaners were giant, ferocious creatures designed to find and kill anything in their paths. They had always been trapped in the Flatlands, but the Flatlands had risen and a thousand Cleaners had been unleashed on the world of Atherton.

“No,” admitted Edgar. “Even with every person on Atherton in the fight, I don’t think we can survive against the Cleaners.”

“You’re wrong,” said Dr. Kincaid, touching Edgar on the shoulders. “They can be overcome. The answer lies in the House of Power.” He glanced over the edge. “Only you can take us past an obstacle of this kind.”

Edgar’s eyes sparkled beneath raised brows, and a wide smile revealed a gleaming row of teeth. He was about to climb, something he thought he’d never do again, and Dr. Kincaid needed him to do it. Without Edgar, their journey was over. It was he alone who could save the grove, the other villages, everything.

Edgar drew in a deep breath and Vincent let him go. The moment Edgar had all his limbs on the wall he felt fully alive. There was a comfort in climbing that he couldn’t explain, as if he were doing the one thing he was put on Atherton to do.

And yet, there was also a new sensation against his hands and feet that worried him. This wall was not like the others he had climbed. All of the other walls had been dry, but this one was damp and slippery, with bits of mud and mossy green patches between the rocks. The way down to the Highlands felt, and even smelled, soggy. It made Edgar think he could lick the stones before his face to quench his growing thirst.

“This won’t be a problem at all,” said Edgar, trying to encourage himself as well as his companions. He could already see the route he would take and that it would not be difficult for him to make it to the bottom as long as he didn’t slip on the moist surface.

As he went, it crossed his mind to take a longer way so that he could keep climbing for the sheer joy of it, but the wall began to shake in his hands and the slippery hold of one hand almost came loose. If the wall leading down to the Highlands were to continue shaking or become more violent, he could imagine his hand with the missing pinky letting go. That would be the start of problems he wasn’t sure he could handle.

Edgar focused more precisely on the task at hand, feeling the Highlands slowly grinding beneath him as they sank farther. He found to his surprise that he was taking not the fastest but the safest route he could find, and yet it was a daunting challenge. Still twenty feet from the bottom, both feet slipped free and he dangled from only his hands. He struggled against the slippery mud to hold his grip and managed to regain control, but his heart raced at the thought of such an unexpected, close call.

There were no more problems the rest of the way down as Edgar adjusted to the new feel of the rock face. Once he was standing at the bottom, he sighed with an uncharacteristic relief, gazing up at his two companions.

“This place will need to be renamed,” yelled Dr. Kincaid from above. “It’s feeling rather odd to keep calling it the Highlands, don’t you think?” He was trying to keep the mood light, easing his own worry that the boy wouldn’t make it back with the rope.

The tree trunks and mechanisms that had once held the ropes and lowered the baskets had been torn apart by the falling world, and the end of the rope lay frayed and loose on the ground. Much of the rope had been wound onto an enormous wooden core and ripped free, but Edgar thought there was enough rope attached to the basket to reach the top. He took the frayed end and tied it in a knot around his waist, then tried his best to untangle the mess at his feet.

When he was satisfied there was enough to make the climb all the way to the top, he began working his way up the wall of stone. He was a startlingly fast study, and this time he seemed to better understand how to overcome the slick surface.

As Edgar rose higher, the rope caught in the pile and he had to turn and hold on with one hand, yanking the rope back and forth until it was untangled. Soon he was a few feet from the top and the rope began to tighten around his middle. Looking down, he saw that he’d reached the end of the rope. The other end was tied firmly to the large, heavy basket on the ground below.

He was so close to his goal, and yet the wall kept moving down. It occurred to Edgar that if the Highlands were to really start falling, crashing into the center of Atherton with some speed, he would be pulled off the wall by the rope, the basket acting like an anchor yanking him into the open air.

“Can you untie the rope from around your waist?” asked Vincent. He was just out of Edgar’s reach, lying on his stomach with one arm hanging over the edge.

Edgar held on with his injured hand, feeling the sting of rock against the scabbed bump where his pinky was missing. With his other hand he frantically began untying the two knots he’d put there. The wall was moving down inch by inch, slowly but steadily, and every moment counted.

Just as he was getting the first knot undone the Highlands lurched violently and the rope tightened, very nearly pulling Edgar free from the cliff. After the cliff dropped the length of Edgar’s forearm in the space of a split second, the tremor halted as quickly as it had begun. Both Dr. Kincaid and Vincent were on their bellies, frantically calling and reaching out to the boy beneath them.

Edgar was such a calm climber that it seemed more like he was moving in water than air. He had shifted two steps down and was already through the second knot. He held the rope at his side, glad to be free of it.

“On the count of three,” said Edgar. He held the frayed end of the rope beneath his knees and counted, heaving it up over his head. Vincent caught the flying rope without trouble, but he hadn’t thought of how to secure it. His eyes darted around in search of some way to hold the few feet of rope he had to work with.

“Use these,” cried Edgar. From his pocket he pulled out two sharp wooden stakes. He had found them on the ground below, where they had once been part of the pulley mechanism. As he tossed them up they flew over Vincent’s head and Dr. Kincaid retrieved them.

“Such a resourceful boy, don’t you think?” asked Dr. Kincaid.

“You’ll find the wall is a little wet,” said Edgar. “It might be slicker than you expect.”

This seemed not to interest Dr. Kincaid and Vincent as the two men found a rock big enough to pound the stakes through the rope and into the ground. They did it quickly, but even as they did, they could see that it wouldn’t hold for very long. The Highlands were slowly descending, and the rope was tightening from the weight of the basket.

“Go!” cried Vincent, nearly pushing Dr. Kincaid from the ledge. The old man took the rope, clearly worried that it would not hold his weight, and he threw his legs over the ledge. Soon he was shimmying down the side of the wall, the rope growing tight and stretching in his hands. When he was far enough along to make room, Vincent started down. He didn’t realize he’d be falling on top of Dr. Kincaid if the rope snapped free.

Edgar had stayed on the wall, working his way down next to Dr. Kincaid, helping him to choose places to put his feet. The two of them were about ten feet from the bottom when the rope began to make a tearing sound from above.

“Hurry!” yelled Vincent. “It’s going to snap any second now!”

Edgar looked down. The basket that had been lying on its side was now upright and weighing heavily on the rope. Dr. Kincaid looked at Edgar in a panic. The rope was about to snap in two.

“Let go of the rope and hold on right here,” said Edgar, his voice calm but filled with authority. Dr. Kincaid followed Edgar’s lead.

“Now here,” said Edgar, guiding the old man free of the rope and out from under Vincent. They were only five feet from the bottom, but a fall that far for a man of Dr. Kincaid’s age could easily be a bone-breaking event. Vincent was closer to ten feet above the ground, and when the rope snapped in two he fell down the rocky face of the cliff. Dr. Kincaid was just barely out of the way, and he watched the descent of his protector as he flew past, arms and legs flailing, as if in slow motion.

Vincent landed in the basket with a crash. The rope followed, coiling inside on top of the fallen man as the basket leaned to one side and toppled over. When Vincent did not emerge right away Edgar feared he’d been injured. Vincent was by far the strongest among the three, and there wasn’t much hope of an old man and a young boy traversing the threatening world of the Highlands without Vincent’s help.

Edgar looked back at Dr. Kincaid and saw that the old man’s grip was beginning to falter.

“How far to the bottom?” asked Dr. Kincaid.

“Only a few more feet,” said Edgar. Dr. Kincaid looked down and saw just how close he was to the bottom, a little embarrassed to have been so afraid. He was able to navigate the remaining small distance without any help from Edgar.

The two went directly to the basket and peered inside. Vincent wasn’t moving.

“Why’s he not moving?” said Edgar.

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Kincaid, concern rising in his voice. “Maybe he stabbed himself with one of his own spears.”

There was movement from under the rope as Vincent came to. He moaned as he lifted his head, and when his face came into view, blood was pouring out of his nose like water.

“What happened?” he said, smearing the blood around his face, not realizing what a mess he was making.

“He’s broken his nose,” said Dr. Kincaid. When Vincent heard this, he felt the bulging arch of his nose and winced in pain. He rolled out of the basket and onto his feet, then threw his head back and held his nose shut.

“Thith ith going to thwell up really big,” said Vincent. Edgar felt himself wanting to laugh unexpectedly. Even though it wasn’t really funny, he experienced a rush of giddy relief after their harrowing descent to the Highlands.

“It already has,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Nothing else feels broken?”

Vincent glanced at Dr. Kincaid and saw that he was unharmed and looking surprisingly well. The old man was always looking surprisingly well. Vincent took his fingers from his nose before answering.

“I’m fine. This will stop bleeding soon enough.”

There was a sigh of relief among the three of them, but it lasted only a few seconds. From deep below the Highlands there came a bottomless, gurgling hum that didn’t stop for several minutes. The walls lurched out of the ground, slimy with mud. The soggy smell swelled strong and sharp in Edgar’s nose, and he couldn’t say if it was the smell of Atherton being born or withering away.

Very quickly they went from being thirty feet below Tabletop to a hundred feet, and Edgar wondered how in the world he would ever get his two companions back out again.

The three moved through the trees wordlessly and with great care, expecting to be overtaken or trapped by an enemy at any moment. When they reached the other side of the line of trees and gazed out over the beauty of the Highlands, it was Vincent who spoke first.

“There’s no one here,” he said. “They’ve all gone into the House of Power.”

“Even the horses are gone,” said Edgar. He was looking off toward the stable, the place where he’d first seen the giant four-legged animals he thought might try to eat him. It was silent there, too. He couldn’t imagine the horses crowded into the courtyard of the House of Power, trampling the flowers and making a terrible mess.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anyone here,” said Dr. Kincaid, stepping out from the shelter of the trees and into the open field that lay before them. “This place has been deserted.”

Samuel and Isabel were on a remarkably different path from Edgar as he moved beyond the trees and into the realm of the House of Power. Samuel was trying his best to lead the way through the gloomy world of Mead’s Hollow in search of the source of water. His father had told him where he must go and had instructed him on the many dangers to be avoided, but it was slow going in the underbelly of Atherton. They moved with a stone wall at their backs, feeling their thirst growing, following a path that would soon bring them face-to-face with Lord Phineus.

CHAPTER 9

An Unnatural Quiet

The people who lived in the Village of Rabbits were farmers who raised rabbits all day long. There was hardly a fighter among them — save Maude — and it had been quite a stretch to get them to stand firm against the recent attack from the Highlands. The fight had given them some courage and vigor, but it had also showed them the bleakness of war. People had died, and the violence had left them wishing they’d never have to defend themselves again.

They had spent a long night doing as Dr. Kincaid and Vincent had instructed, but the effort seemed futile to almost everyone in the village. They had taken what wood they could salvage from the broken-down houses to make what might be called spears by someone with an active imagination. Most felt that if there really were giant creatures on the way to the village by the hundreds, makeshift shelters and pointy sticks would not protect them.

When morning came upon them there were three hundred people milling around outside the inn, all of them waiting for word of hope from inside.

But there happened to be on that morning one who didn’t stand waiting to hear how the leaders inside the inn would decide her fate. She was a child of seven, and she loved her rabbits more than anything in the world. She especially fond of one particular rabbit, Henrietta, that was about to have babies.

The children were being watched carefully with so much danger afoot, but this particular girl had a way of slipping away unnoticed. She drifted away from the large group, kicking a pebble and pretending to play by herself. There came a moment when no one was watching closely, and she slid behind a house that was leaning unsteadily to one side. She skirted along the row of houses, noticing as she went that almost all of them were falling apart or already in a pile on the ground. The crashing world of Atherton had done its best to level the Village of Rabbits, and it had come very close to doing a perfect job of it.

As she approached the last house on the end of a row her heart leaped. This was her house, and it was still standing. There was a long narrow room that was open on one end and attached to the house, with maybe twenty rabbits in hutches along the walls. It was shaded from the sun toward the back where the rabbits were, just the way Henrietta liked it.

“Henrietta?” the girl sang softly. Just then she heard a strange sound, like two bones clanging together very quickly from somewhere in the dark corner of the skinny room. She stepped forward carefully, peering through shafts of light that were creeping into the dusty air of the space. The sound came again, and this time the girl screamed like she’d never screamed before. Something had latched onto Henrietta, holding the rabbit between its crooked teeth.

The girl fled back to the inn for help. Whatever it was didn’t follow her. Instead, it slunk back into the dark corner and devoured the beloved pet.

A group from the village soon arrived with sharp sticks and rocks. They pried the flimsy walls down and opened the room to the light of day, and there in the corner, clicking its bloody teeth, was the thing they’d been told about. It was a Cleaner.

The moment the walls were down it began racing in search of a new dark spot to hide in. The Cleaner cowered in the middle of a circle of men as they threw rocks at it. Soon the Cleaner was beaten enough that the men could approach it and poke it with the sharp sticks they carried. And then, without further violence, the Cleaner was dead.

There came a howl of excitement from the crowd. This was the monster that would come in great numbers to tear apart the rabbits and the children?

“I think we could handle a hundred of those,” cried one man.

“A thousand!” yelled another. There was genuine happiness in the group, except for the girl, who had lost her Henrietta and could not be consoled.

Then through the hollering crowd strode Briney, Maude, and Horace with a few of his men. The crowd parted like water as the group who’d been conferring inside the inn came to the middle of the circle and stood before the fallen creature.

“Killed it, did you?” said Maude. She was not in a favorable mood.

“We did!” came the cry of several men, holding their sharp sticks over their heads like great conquerors.

“It would have been more useful if you’d let it live. We could have studied its movements.”

This took a little wind out of the group. A quiet passed over them.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” asked Maude. She had seen a Cleaner from a distance and been told much more about them by Vincent. The night before, he had visited her while Edgar was in the grove.

“Why, it’s a Cleaner, like you said,” answered one of the villagers.

“It’s a baby Cleaner,” said Maude. She walked a few paces and stood over the fallen creature. “This thing must have wandered off from its den in the middle of the night, following the smell of rabbits.” Maude looked hard at the circle of people around her. “Imagine something bigger, with teeth as large as those sticks in your hands, and you’re getting closer to the truth of what we face.”

“How much bigger?” asked a woman holding the crying little girl who had loved Henrietta. The dead Cleaner was about four feet long and thick around the middle, and it had a disgustingly huge mouth full of jagged teeth.

Maude didn’t hesitate. “Eight or ten feet long, probably four hundred pounds. And aggressive. You won’t be throwing rocks at a pack of full-grown ones when they show up here. You’ll be running for your life.”

The short-lived glee was now completely gone from the group. Maude wondered if she’d told them too much. There could be a real risk of hysteria if she wasn’t careful.

“You need to form groups and go through all the houses. Make sure there are no more juvenile Cleaners hiding in the village. And someone should check with the scouts to see if they’ve heard or seen anything approaching.”

They had been smart enough to set up a line of villagers around the village and toward the Flatlands, a line that this one delinquent Cleaner had managed to avoid in the night. Big Cleaners were not quiet on their approach as a group, or so Vincent had told her, and hopefully the scouts’ forewarning would allow them a small amount of time to prepare.

“Give us just a little longer and we’ll have our plans set,” finished Maude. She turned to Horace and Briney and the group started back for the inn. She stopped short and called back to them.

“I’m told you can eat them,” she said, “but I’m not going to be the first.”

The villagers all looked back at the ghastly thing that lay dead on the ground, its slimy green insides oozing out into the dirt, and nobody dared even think of eating any part of it.

What the villagers didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, at least for a few more hours. This was the thought Maude had while walking back to the inn to finish talking to Horace and his men. Some of the crowd walked along with them, asking questions about the plans for the village, but Maude remained stoic in her response.

“We need more time,” she had kept telling them. She had wasted no time speaking her mind to Horace and his men the moment they were back inside the inn and the door was closed behind them.

“They have no chance,” Maude had said. “No hope whatsoever.”

“We don’t know that,” Briney had replied, coming to the defense of the villagers, as usual.

“They can’t build a shelter of stone that doesn’t fall over,” she began. She was building up a head of steam and her voice rose as she continued. “Did you see those weapons? I told them to make spears and they walk around with sticks in their hands. And even if they could make real spears, they don’t have the courage or the training to use them. This village couldn’t fight off ten Cleaners, so what’s going to happen when a hundred of them show up? They could be here in an hour or a day, but I know they’re coming. Either way, we don’t have time to whip this village into fighting shape. It can’t be done.”

Briney sat down. Then his chest began to sink inward, and soon he was staring at the floor. She was right. The village and everything in it would be destroyed. Maude put her hand on Briney’s shoulder, and her emotions threatened to get away from her.

“The Highlands have been deserted,” said Horace, and this refocused her attention on the matter at hand.

“Everyone has fled?” she asked.

“All who haven’t lost their minds.”

This was where they’d left off before being called out by the villagers. Now that they were back, Maude wanted more answers to questions she’d been thinking about.

“Where have all the people and those big animals, the horses, gone to?” asked Maude. She stumbled on the word “horses,” still getting used to the very idea of these foreign creatures.

One of Horace’s men who’d been silent until then now spoke up. He was black-bearded and wide across the face and shoulders, and his bright eyes cut through the darkened room.

“We took them out of the Highlands on the other side,” he said. “As far away from here as we could get them. The people of the Highlands fear you, as they feared Lord Phineus, and fear is fertile ground for fighting.”

Horace broke in. “Once there were three villages on Tabletop, and now there are four — at least for a short time. The people of the Highlands are far away, but we need to find a way to bring them to us. We’ll need the horses.”

“Who leads this group if not Lord Phineus?” asked Maude.

The man with the black beard looked at Horace. “He leads us.”

It was mildly comforting amid all the bad news to know that Maude had befriended the leader of a people she feared. She paused a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then she asked Horace what he thought they should do.

The plans he had were not what she’d expected, but there was something in them that rang true. It was a real solution that just might work. It had the advantage of at least getting them more time.

“The only problem is that I’m not sure those in the grove or the Village of Sheep will go along with a plan like that,” said Maude. “Someone will need to go ask them.”

CHAPTER 10

Flying Rocks

Edgar glanced over his shoulder, and he saw that he and his companions were utterly trapped in the Highlands. For some reason he thought of the old wooden cup he’d always carried to Mr. Ratikan’s house when it was time to get his water ration. He felt small, as if he were looking up from the bottom of the wooden cup, unable to escape.

“How are we going to get out of here?” asked Edgar. It struck Edgar as odd that they hadn’t been more focused on this very obvious and disastrous problem looming close in their future. They would need to get out at some point, and Edgar was the only one of them who could climb.

“We’ll figure that out when the time comes,” said Vincent firmly, as if it were a question he was unwilling to address even if he knew its answer.

The giant wooden doors to the House of Power sat closed in front of them, and there was not a sound from inside the courtyard. The only noise came from around them, an echoing murmur of rocks grating against rocks as the Highlands continued their slow descent.

How far could it fall? thought Edgar. He made quick work of the wall, climbing up to the top and turning back. Vincent carried with him a length of the rope that had snapped loose at the cliffs, and he flung the end up to Edgar. Soon the rope was secure, and Vincent was inside the fortress with Edgar. The two removed the beam over the wooden gate and opened it.

“Let’s be slow in our exploration,” said Vincent, motioning Dr. Kincaid to pass through the doors and into the courtyard. “There might be someone inside with a weapon, waiting for just such a moment as this.”

Already the courtyard was beginning to show signs of neglect. The brightly colored flowers seemed particularly delicate. The petals were brown and flaking at the edges and the long stems drooped toward the ground. The hedge was parched and leaves hung limp from small trees planted between the stone walkways. And there was a fountain to one side that was empty. There was a sadness about it, as if it had lost its reason for being. It was the deadest-looking thing in the courtyard.

The House of Power was showing the symptoms of death more sharply than other places in Atherton, as though the truth of its great beauty were being brought to bear: It was a fragile beauty, held together by great effort. The Highlands lacked the rugged sense of having been useful. It was a place with a colorful candy coating, hiding very little underneath.

“This place had a shabby kind of splendor, even at its best,” said Edgar, pride welling up inside him. “The grove is still beautiful, even without any water.” He touched the bag that held the three young figs and felt them squishing around inside, and he felt a little closer to home.

“Where has all the water gone?” asked Vincent. He looked at Dr. Kincaid with some alarm, and it seemed to Edgar that Vincent had expected the fountain to be bubbling with life. “I assumed that Lord Phineus was holding all of the water in the House of Power for himself and his loyal followers.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Dr. Kincaid. “I hope there are no more surprises awaiting us today.”

Vincent was already moving slowly ahead. “Do you know the way?” he asked. “I can’t be sure.”

“I know the way,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Follow the center path. It will snake back and forth through the ivy-covered terrace and end where the stair begins. We must go up the stairs in the middle.”

Edgar was startled that Dr. Kincaid would be so familiar with the House of Power. Hadn’t he been trapped in the Flatlands with Vincent since Atherton’s beginnings?

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone here,” said Vincent. “Maybe the lack of water has turned out to be a good thing for us after all. There was nothing to keep them here, and it has made our approach all the easier.”

Vincent continued winding his way through the courtyard with Dr. Kincaid and Edgar following close behind. With not a soul about the place, he became increasingly relaxed. At one point he stopped and looked back at his companions.

“How does my nose look?” he joked. It was absolutely dreadful and made Vincent seem like an entirely different person. His nose appeared to be even wider than it was long, which was saying a lot because Vincent had a very long nose.

“You look fine,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Can we please get on with it?”

Dr. Kincaid had seemed more nervous and quiet than Vincent along the way. Edgar wished he knew where they were going and why, but throughout their journey the older man had steadfastly refused to supply any useful information, so Edgar had given up asking. Wherever their ultimate destination was, the idea of getting there had turned Dr. Kincaid a little cold, and the old man wasn’t quite the fatherly figure he’d seemed to be when they’d first met.

At last they came up along a high white wall alive with climbing ivy, the green vines snaking brightly against the white stone. Vincent reached out and touched the wall, and when he did, a rock the size of Edgar’s head crashed down from above. It struck Vincent on the top of his shoulder and he howled in pain.

“Get away from there!”

Looking up, the three companions saw a man’s head sticking out. It was Tyler, and he was about to hurl another rock from above.

Vincent pushed Dr. Kincaid toward a nearby wall with open archway doors in it. Another rock crashed on the stone floor of the courtyard as Vincent and Edgar followed quickly behind Dr. Kincaid.

They were in Samuel’s deserted room. Everything was still there, including most of the books.

“Don’t you come out of there unless you want another on your head!” Tyler was not in his right mind. Alone and scared in the House of Power, he’d hoarded some food and water, hoping to survive the changing world and see what fortune it would bring.

“How bad?” asked Dr. Kincaid, looking at Vincent’s shoulder.

“It’s not broken, just badly bruised. I’ll be all right.”

“So you can still protect us?” asked Dr. Kincaid.

Vincent tried to move his arm back and forth and winced in pain. “I just need a minute,” he said.

Edgar fished around inside the pocket on the front of his shirt and pulled out his sling and a black fig. “I can protect us.”

Dr. Kincaid beamed at the boy, then turned his eyes on Vincent. “You stay here. The boy and I can handle one rock-throwing maniac.”

Vincent protested, but he knew Edgar’s skill with a sling, and soon Dr. Kincaid was running out into the courtyard waving his arms and dodging flying rocks. Tyler appeared to have quite a collection of smaller stones and he knew how to use them. Dr. Kincaid was hit once square in the back and was just barely able to dodge a near direct hit to the head.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” howled Tyler from above. But he hadn’t seen Edgar sneaking out into the open to hide behind a row of hedge. Tyler could hear the sound of the sling swishing over Edgar’s head and the snap! of the black fig as it came flying toward him, but it all happened so fast. The fig smacked him flat on the forehead and he fell out of Edgar’s sight. There was a dead silence in the courtyard.

“I got him,” said Edgar, looking into the room where Dr. Kincaid had taken shelter again with Vincent. “You can come out now.”

Dr. Kincaid and Vincent emerged from Samuel’s room, glancing up warily at the possibility of a heavy falling object. Then Vincent, with a burst of renewed vigor, charged up a flight of white stairs off to his right in search of the culprit.

When they arrived they saw that Tyler was not dead, but also not moving. Behind him sat a pile of rocks, a box filled with stale bread, and a rather large wooden bucket half filled with water.

“Edgar, you first, and quickly!” said Dr. Kincaid.

Edgar approached the water and cupped his hands inside, quickly gulping down as much as he could hold. He took a loaf of the stale bread, a kind of food he’d tried only once before, and he tore a large bite off with his teeth, chewing vigorously.

They ate and drank hastily, leaving most of the food behind. All three of them wondered who the person was and why he had stayed. He had the look of a man without a family, and they felt sorry for him.

“We’ll leave him be,” said Dr. Kincaid, “with water and some of the bread. He’s going to need it. Now, follow me.” There was a new resolve in his voice and a feeling in the air of having arrived at the very place where the answers they sought could be found. The three of them departed with a growing sense that this man was the only enemy they would find in the deserted House of Power.

Down the stairs they went, to the very end of the courtyard and into a rotunda with three sets of stairs. Dr. Kincaid hesitated only a moment — glancing in every direction — and then started up the middle set of stairs, two steps to a stride. At the top he continued on until he arrived at the door to the main chamber.

Dr. Kincaid looked back at Edgar and Vincent. All the color had gone out of his face.

“It begins,” he said, and he put his hand against the door, pushing it open.

CHAPTER 11

A Plan Set in Motion

Maude had never been on a horse before and it was a harrowing experience. She was riding with Horace, her arms wrapped around his waist as they raced across the barren landscape. There was no saddle, only a rope between the horse and the man, and the animal was difficult to control, even for a skilled rider like Horace. The speed at which they traveled was alarming, and Maude was convinced a fall like that would kill her. As this thought grew in her mind she tightened her grip around Horace’s middle until he could barely breathe.

“We’re almost there,” he said, trying to comfort her. “You’re a natural rider. Soon you’ll be doing this without me.”

“You can keep your horse,” said Maude. “I’m perfectly content to raise rabbits.”

Maude felt Horace’s body shaking with laughter.

“You won’t think it’s so funny when I fall to my death and pull you right off with me,” she said. This made him laugh even more, and she took one hand from around his waist and slapped him in the back of the head. Horace thought this was the funniest thing yet, and he nearly laughed himself right off the horse.

He pulled up short of the Village of Sheep and let the animal walk as they drew near. “I think we’ve run her hard enough,” said Horace. “Best we give her a rest.”

The two had already ridden to the village at the grove and talked through their plans, but their job was only half done. Already midmorning had arrived and with it the growing threat of Cleaners finding them. Now there was only Wallace, the leader in the Village of Sheep, to convince.

“He’s the wisest among us,” said Maude. Horace knew she was speaking of Wallace without her having to say his name. “If he’s unconvinced, our plan will fail.”

“I believe you’re right.”

The two dismounted the horse and began walking. Soon they spotted a group of four people approaching from the village, but Wallace was not among them.

“It’s me, Maude, from the Village of Rabbits!” hollered Maude. The four took this as a good sign and advanced more quickly. They’d seen horses the day before when they’d fought back those in the Highlands, and the sight of the big animal made them nervous.

“Where’s Wallace?” asked Maude as the two parties neared each other. “We need to talk with him right now.”

The four from the village hadn’t had the occasion to witness Maude’s direct approach to things, and it took them somewhat by surprise. “What’s he doing here?” said one of them, looking at Horace, then at the horse.

“We don’t have time for this,” said Maude, her voice rising just enough to let them know she meant business. “Take us to Wallace or we’ll sic the horse on you.”

Horace rolled his eyes and tried to explain the animal was harmless, but this got him nowhere.

“You’re not bringing that thing into the village. What if it tries to eat the sheep?”

Horace smiled and explained that horses don’t eat other animals, but the men were unmoved.

“You’ll have to leave it here.”

“If I do that it will run away,” said Horace.

The four men conferred briefly and the unluckiest among them was chosen to hold the horse while the rest went to find Wallace.

“This is ridiculous,” said Horace, observing the terror of the poor man who’d been chosen. Horace handed over the rope and told the man to stay clear of the back legs.

“She’ll just stand there as long as you don’t make any sudden movements,” said Horace.

The group moved off while the man holding the rope stood perfectly still, glancing sideways at the glossy shine on the horse’s neck. The animal turned and sniffed the man’s face, blowing his hair back through thick nostrils, and the man nearly jumped out of his pants.

“Don’t feel too bad,” said Maude as they departed. “At least you don’t have to ride it.” She was walking unnaturally bowlegged, feeling the tightness in her legs.

The Village of Sheep was beginning to look dry, less green, and a little worse for the wear. Soon the group found Wallace, who was standing among his sheep in one of the few remaining patches of green grass. He seemed genuinely happy to see them, though Maude and Horace were both alarmed by how little he and the rest had prepared.

“Wallace, what have you been doing all night?” said Maude. “This place doesn’t exactly look fortified for an encounter with Cleaners.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

“That’s not much of a plan,” said Horace. “I expected more from a man of your intellect.”

Wallace scratched the red hair on his head, smiling.

“You’re a man of action, and I was sure you would come with plans of your own,” he said. “One good plan is better than two competing ones. It saves an awful lot of time, and time has recently become more valuable.”

Horace was visibly pleased. If Wallace had forgone making plans and fortifying his village, it meant that the man trusted Horace to lead and that he was not attached to the idea of staying. These were significant steps in the right direction as far as he was concerned.

“Can I speak openly?” said Horace, gazing off at the three men who’d accompanied him and Maude. Others from the village were creeping quietly closer to hear what was going on.

“Come with me,” said Wallace, and he led Horace and Maude away to a rise out in the grass, where the three sat down together.

“Fresh air makes me think better, what about you?” asked Wallace, gulping a deep breath of air and releasing it with a great sigh.

Horace was a gifted communicator, and so it was that he was able to use few words to describe the escape from the Highlands, the formation of a new village, and the encounter with a young Cleaner in the Village of Rabbits. When he came to the plan, Maude broke in.

“We can’t know everything,” she said, concern in her voice. “There are some things we have to guess.”

Wallace gazed at the woman before him and understood her motive.

“You wonder whether I’ve guessed the same as you,” he said, an unnerving sort of coolness in his voice. “We shall see.”

Horace had the distinct feeling that Wallace had indeed made a plan after all, only he hadn’t chosen to share it. Somehow Horace felt the two men had thought of very nearly the same thing.

“The Cleaners,” started Horace, “are our biggest threat now. It is as Maude said — we must all unite against the one enemy — if there is any chance of surviving in these hazardous new surroundings. In another time or place we might have fought for what remains or kept our distance from one another, but this threat comes to kill each and every one of us.”

Maude was still the only one among the three who had actually seen a Cleaner, but she was incredibly persuasive when she knew she must be. “They will devour everything in their path,” she said. There was finality in her voice.

“But there are three things that work to our advantage,” continued Horace. “The first is that they appear to be dormant or at the very least quite a bit less dangerous at night. We must use this information wisely.” Horace said this with a nod toward Wallace. “The Cleaners crave meat and bones. They are carnivores. Maude has even seen them go after the weakest among them, so they make no distinction between what kinds of meat interest them. All meat interests them.”

This highly gruesome idea hung in the air on the pale green hill for a few seconds before Horace completed his thought. “They will follow the scent of food.”

Wallace only nodded as if Horace had spoken a rather obvious truth.

“People don’t smell as strong as animals do,” said Horace. “And there’s no way to quickly get rid of a smell that’s been festering for a very long time. I surmise that the Cleaners will go first to the Village of Rabbits and the Village of Sheep, because these places have the scent of food they will like. They might catch the scent of the horses and come by that way as well, but the really pungent odor of food is in the two villages, and it cannot be erased overnight.”

Horace was coming straight to the point now, and kept right on going.

“The grove will be the least interesting to the Cleaners. We may see a small number of them there, but the really big groups will go there last, after . . .” He realized he was touching on a difficult subject.

“After they consume everything in my village,” said Wallace, “and hers.” He nodded at Maude.

“Unfortunately, I believe that’s correct. And I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it.”

“I completely agree,” said Wallace. “Go on.”

“If we all converge on the grove but leave most of the animals behind, there is a chance of gaining an upper hand. The Village of Rabbits has already begun to empty out. Everyone is on the move to the grove. Even Gill, one of my men, is moving the Highlanders as we speak.”

“You must keep the horses, all of them,” said Wallace, breaking in uncharacteristically. “They will be needed.”

“We are of the same mind,” said Horace. “For now, they are all on the way to the grove, where I hope they’ll be happy to eat the figs off the trees and gain some strength.”

“Continue,” said Wallace.

“I think we can hold the grove,” said Horace. It was his most bold statement yet, one he wasn’t entirely sure of. “The trees will be of some help, and the greater number of us to fight with the aid of horses. I believe it’s our best chance.”

Wallace sat motionless, looking out over the green grass that was starting to turn brown in patches.

“So it is to be an exodus,” said Wallace. There was a calm force in his voice. “And then a stand to the last.”

Horace nodded slowly, not sure if he’d convinced the shepherd to leave his flock.

“Your plan gets us all through today and into the first night in a changed world,” said Wallace. “Who knows what another morning will bring that will force us to change course?”

Wallace had hit on precisely the thing Horace had been stewing about all morning. Atherton was changing rapidly and unpredictably. It was a variable that had to be accounted for.

“You said there were three advantages we held over the Cleaners. What is the third?”

And then Horace told of what he thought this third advantage was, and in the telling he could see that Wallace thought the same thing.

“It’s time I said goodbye to a good many of my sheep,” he said, a weary pitch to his voice creeping in. “We must be on our way.”

Cleaners were on the move, a wild fury boiling between them as they climbed over one another to get in front of the pack. The slippery suction cups on their long underbellies were scouring the dust as they went, searching for the trailing scent of food. They made a terrible slurping sound that blended with their clattering legs and snapping jaws. A deadly smell hung in the air.

The Cleaners lunged at one another, biting with their sharp teeth. They were almost three hundred in number, heading directly for the Village of Rabbits, and they had never been in such a rage. It was a slow journey, because one of the beasts would lash out at another and a war would break out between them until one was felled, and the Cleaners that were near heaped into a pile over the victim and devoured it. The race for fresh food sizzled in their tiny brains like acid, driving the Cleaners into an unprecedented frenzy.

They smelled food, lots of it. It was food they would have.

CHAPTER 12

Two Parties Unite

Dr. Kincaid went directly to Mead’s Head when they entered the main chamber in the House of Power and ran his hand along the chiseled hair of the statue.

“Just as I left it,” he said with some satisfaction. He glanced at Edgar, who was looking back and forth between the bust and Dr. Kincaid.

“Is that you?” Edgar asked.

“It most certainly is,” said Dr. Kincaid. The old scientist was in a high state of anticipation. “And it appears to be unharmed, which means it might still work as it once did.”

“But how . . .” What Edgar was seeing threw his mind into a state of confusion. How could a statue of Dr. Kincaid’s head have been in Lord Phineus’s chamber all this time, while Dr. Kincaid was in the Flatlands?

Before Edgar had a chance to voice his puzzlement, the floor beneath the group of three began to quake, slow at first but growing more violent. The three stumbled across the room to steady themselves by grabbing vines on the ivy-covered wall.

As the quake grew in intensity, Edgar glanced out the window of the main chamber. The Highlands were crashing fiercely, faster than he had ever seen or imagined any part of Atherton falling. It felt like a near freefall, and as they descended, shadow fell on the Highlands. Edgar could not understand the sound it made. If ever he had heard a massive wave breaking against a shore, he would have said it sounded like that, only the wave would have been filled with boulders the size of houses, exploding all around him.

The Highlands came to a brutal stop, which threw the three companions onto the floor of the main chamber in a heap. Edgar banged his head against Lord Phineus’s table on the way down and it nearly knocked him unconscious. The sound of liquid and stone lingered, slowly dying in the air, and Edgar felt as if the brains in his head were sloshing back and forth.

Vincent was the first to rise and look out the arched opening, but soon all three were standing there. Dr. Kincaid put his arm around Edgar.

“Are you all right?” he asked, examining the round bump forming on the boy’s forehead. It was bruised, but there had been no blood.

Edgar nodded, but looking out the window made him think differently. They were so deep inside Atherton now, deeper than he could have imagined was possible. Light poured in weakly from above, but frightening shadows now filled the once majestic Highlands.

Edgar looked directly at Dr. Kincaid, rubbing the bump on his head. “I’m not sure I can climb out of here,” he said. He could see that the walls in the distance were wet and slippery, and rock fragments were crumbling off and falling into the Highlands as he spoke. “This might be beyond what I can do.”

Dr. Kincaid knelt down before Edgar and put one hand on each shoulder, examining Edgar’s head. In his mind he pronounced the boy fit for travel.

“One disaster at a time,” he said, and then he was quickly up on his feet and moving toward Mead’s Head. He turned it back and forth, unlocking the secret passage in the floor, and then he turned to Vincent.

“Have you got what we need?”

“I do indeed,” said Vincent. He had been carrying a pack and two spears all along, but now he dropped the spears as if he planned to leave them behind. From the bag he removed a selection of weapons Edgar had never seen. One was a whip, long and leathery, which Vincent coiled in a circle and held in one hand.

“He’s quite talented with that,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Sort of like you with the sling and the black figs.”

Edgar was so confused that he simply watched as Vincent held his bag in the same hand as the whip and put his other hand inside. When his hand emerged it clutched a magnificent knife the likes of which Edgar had never seen or imagined. The blade was a foot long, made of something that reflected the weak light in the room.

“What are you going to do with that?” said Edgar. “You can’t get close enough to a Cleaner to use it.”

Vincent didn’t answer but instead looked at Dr. Kincaid. “I’m ready,” he said. “Open it up.”

“Open what up?” said Edgar. There was a deep ache in his forehead and it was making him irritable. He was growing tired of being kept in the dark.

Dr. Kincaid stepped over the ivy-covered floor near the wall and removed the cover to Mead’s Hollow.

“We’ll need light,” he said.

Vincent handed the knife to Dr. Kincaid and went into the outer hall without hesitation as Edgar approached the hole in the floor. He saw the words chiseled into the stairs leading down but could not read them.

“It’s called Mead’s Hollow,” said Dr. Kincaid. Vincent returned with a torch from outside and held it down into the dark passage. “It’s here, beneath the House of Power, that we shall find Dr. Maximus Harding.”

Edgar was thunderstruck. “What’s he doing down there?”

Vincent uncoiled the whip in his hand, playing it back and forth on the stairs like a snake.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering,” said Dr. Kincaid.

From the moment the door to Mead’s Hollow had been closed Isabel was unable to shake the feeling that she would never get back out again. It created a knot in her throat that would not leave, a knot that was telling her to cry and curl up into a ball in the dark where no one could find her. But Isabel forced the knot deeper down her throat, willing herself to go on.

She and Samuel had been in Mead’s Hollow for hours. At first there had been a steep switchback path surrounded by walls on every side. Down, down, down they’d gone, past the bottom of the House of Power and into Atherton itself. In the silence of her own thoughts Isabel wondered just how deep the Highlands had fallen into the middle of Atherton.

There came a moment when the air turned cold and the space changed in tone. Without warning, their way went from confined to abysmally wide open. There was but one wall to lean their bodies against, and as Samuel held the flame out and away from it, the darkness seemed to go on forever. Isabel had the feeling that if she walked out into the open space it would swallow her up. And what was worse, there was an almost unbearable sensation that the whole world of Atherton was crashing in around her. She clung to Samuel, desperate to find a way out of Mead’s Hollow.

“How much farther?” she asked, her voice drifting softly in the wide open space.

“We’ve got to be getting close,” answered Samuel. “I can’t imagine it being much farther.”

The two had followed the instructions that had been given to Samuel by his father a long time ago, and Isabel was beginning to think Samuel had read them wrong.

“Are you absolutely sure we’re going the right way?” she asked. There was a part of her that had no idea why she was trying to find the source of water to begin with. It was a journey begun with a purpose, but the purpose was starting to feel a little beside the point. Even if they could find it and make the water flow once again, the Highlands were sinking, so what good would it do? And how would they ever get out?

Samuel didn’t answer Isabel. She’d already asked him the same question three times. The truth was, he wasn’t at all sure. He only knew what his father had written down on the note, most of which he didn’t think he should share with Isabel:

— Find the blue line and follow it. Never waver from the blue line.

— If you see the Crat, click your teeth fast and loud; it will keep them away for a while. This is a secret known to me alone.

— Do not allow yourself to be bitten by the Crat. A scratch can be overcome, but a bite cannot.

— If the Crat attack, you must not try to run. Put your back against the wall and fight them.

“What about the yellow line?” asked Isabel, startling Samuel from his thoughts. He held the flame out from the wall of moist stone they walked beside. There, on the floor of rocks they walked along, was a line of yellow running off into the darkness where they could not see. The air felt vast and open in that direction, as if it might go on for miles.

“My father said to never leave the blue line,” said Samuel. “Wherever the yellow one leads, I don’t think we want to follow it.”

He brought the flame back in front of him and saw that it was waning. The sticky fuel supply, a substance like a glob of black mud at the tip of the torch, was growing smaller and wouldn’t last forever. Soon it would be out, and then what would they do?

“I think we should go back,” said Isabel. She eyed the blue line on the wall, which snaked like a thin ribbon of translucent blue rock cutting through the wall at eye level. It would lead them out of this place.

“We have to be close now,” said Samuel. “My father said it would take a few hours, so it has to be . . .”

The sound of the Crat crept up on them like a shadow and Samuel was cut short. Eeeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeeek! There were three or four of them, and they were near. The Crat made a shrieking sound, though not very loud, like a tiny person with a head the size of an eyeball screaming. It was, strangely, a sound of bitter sadness, as if whatever were making the noise wanted not to kill them but to rub up against their legs and be picked up.

Isabel and Samuel began slamming their teeth together in the air, opening their mouths as wide as they could, and the Crat seemed to stop. Samuel held the torch out, putting his back up against the wall, and peered into Mead’s Hollow. He saw something move, darting across his line of sight and then back into the dark where it was lost. Whatever it was had a very long, hairless tail and black eyes that shone in the firelight.

Isabel was surer than ever that they should turn back. It would take hours to follow the blue line out of Mead’s Hollow, but at least they knew the way. She dreamed of going back to her parents, to the grove, to her life the way it had been before Atherton started crashing in on itself. But she also knew that none of these things were possible. Even if she could get out of Mead’s Hollow, she was still trapped in the Highlands, and even if she could find a way out of the Highlands, there was still no water in the grove.

“Why are we doing this, Samuel?” she asked. “Do we really think we can find the source of water? And what if we do? What difference will it make?”

Samuel didn’t listen. There was something else occupying his every thought.

“Look there,” he said, pointing into the darkness. There was a dot of light, flickering but steady. It was not moving. “What do you think that is?” asked Samuel.

“Maybe it’s the source of water. There might be a door by that light.”

Samuel held out the torch and looked at the ground before his feet. There was another yellow line leading out into the dark. In fact, there were many yellow lines, all leading away from the safety of the wall at their backs.

“We can’t go out there,” said Samuel. “It’s not what my father said.” He glanced at the wall again, saw the blue line leading on, and touched it.

“But it’s a light, Samuel. Something’s over there.”

The two argued in whispers, but it was a quarrel they didn’t need to have, for the light began to move toward them. Soon it was noticeably closer.

“Someone’s down here,” said Samuel. His voice was electric with fear.

Isabel was naturally prone to acting on instinct in the face of oncoming danger, and she took out her sling. Her hands shook so violently that she had some trouble getting the black fig properly loaded.

“It can only be two people,” said Samuel. He was afraid to even say their names, but he whispered them anyway. “Sir Emerik and Lord Phineus.”

The sound of the Crat started filling the air, as if a great many of them were surrounding the approaching light. The flame began to twirl around in a circle, and Samuel could only imagine that whoever was out there was trying to keep the Crat from biting them. They could hear the sound of the flame swishing through the open space.

“Hello, Samuel.” The cold voice of Lord Phineus came from a few feet away.

Suddenly, the torch was ripped from Samuel’s hand and a blade poked playfully at his chest. Isabel screamed. She had not screamed in a very long time, and all the terror she’d felt came out at once as she beheld the twisted face of Lord Phineus in the dancing flames. The scream echoed into the vast and powerful space.

“Nobody can hear you,” said Lord Phineus. “At least no one who can do you any good.”

Lord Phineus looked positively insane, the black point of the widow’s peak on his forehead dripping with sweat over his pale face. His eyes were swollen and glistening.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked. There was a strange sort of glee in his voice.

The sound of the Crat grew nearer, and Samuel could hear Sir Emerik in a rage trying to drive them away.

“Back! Back, I tell you!” Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek!

It was horrible to listen as Sir Emerik approached, but Lord Phineus seemed unaware of the chaos around him.

“I asked you a question,” he said, pushing the tip of the dagger harder against Samuel’s chest. “What are you doing down here?”

Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek!

The Crat were nearly on top of them, and Isabel began banging her teeth together so violently it startled even Lord Phineus. He began to laugh like a madman, which gave the whole of Mead’s Hollow a feeling of mayhem. It was a symphony of maddening noise in a place not accustomed to such a racket.

As if to answer in reply, Atherton itself began to quake and shudder. It would not be outdone by mere mortals. Very soon the deafening sound of rushing water and crashing boulders filled the air, and the floor felt as if it were being pulled out from underneath them in fits and starts.

Meanwhile, Sir Emerik crawled clumsily toward the group, one hand swinging the flame all around him. But the Crat had gone away, and as Atherton settled into a dull, echoing roar, he looked up and saw Samuel.

“You!” screamed Sir Emerik. “It’s only you?”

Sir Emerik looked at Lord Phineus, who had stopped laughing and was leaning heavily against the wall.

“You sent me out there so we could catch two foolish children?”

Allowing himself to be unguarded with no wall at his back turned out to be a bad decision for Sir Emerik. At that moment a Crat came from behind and leaped onto his back, clamping its teeth into him. He squirmed and shouted, waving the flame in every direction until the Crat was struck with the torch and released him.

“I’ll only ask you once more,” Lord Phineus said to Samuel, unmoved by his companion’s plight. “Why have you come here?”

Samuel felt momentarily as helpless as he had when Lord Phineus taunted him in the House of Power. “We’re looking for the source of water,” he confessed, shaking.

Everything had gone quiet. The Crat were gone and Atherton was at rest. Lord Phineus knelt down and put his face a few inches from Samuel’s. White fluid dripped from Lord Phineus’s nose, the end of a trail that started in the corners of his eyes.

“Then you will be pleased,” said Lord Phineus. His eyes glared heavily at the boy. “The blue line stops here, Samuel. You’ve found what you came for.”

Lord Phineus hauled Samuel along the wall a few more feet and yelled behind him to Sir Emerik.

“Seize her!”

Sir Emerik took hold of Isabel and led her forward. He did not look well. What hair he had was matted grotesquely against his face. His eyes were bulging — not as much as Lord Phineus’s were, but bulging nonetheless. And the terrible twitch remained, jolting in the firelight.

The men dragged Samuel and Isabel along until they arrived in front of a door. The door was of average size top to bottom and side to side, but it had a feeling of thickness that could not be measured. There was a latch of a kind Samuel had never seen. Putting down his torch, Lord Phineus took hold of it.

“You came looking for the source of water,” said Lord Phineus. “You shall find something altogether different.”

He jerked the heavy door open forcefully. When the door was open far enough Samuel was thrust inside and Isabel thrown in behind him. Lord Phineus followed, for he had reason to want to see the boy’s reaction to what would be found inside. But this was a disastrous mistake. The moment he entered, Sir Emerik slammed shut the door and locked the three inside.

Every part of Sir Emerik shook with excitement. He had finally rid himself of Lord Phineus.

“No one remains! I am lord now, Lord Emerik, Lord of the Highlands!”

But the truth was Sir Emerik had been bitten by the Crat, and his weak mind was already awash in madness. He heard a familiar, quiet sound coming from the distance in Mead’s Hollow.

Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek!

Sir Emerik touched the wall at his side and began running.

CHAPTER 13

The Secret at the Source

Sir Emerik ran until his breath was gone, and still he heard the sound of the Crat behind him. They were on him, and this time they would not relent. Ten, maybe more, huddled in close. They had been denied a victim among many opportunities for too long, and Sir Emerik felt a deep concern that this time the creatures would not relent.

This was the first time Sir Emerik could really see the Crat. They were not as small as he’d supposed. The Crat were a full three feet long — five if you counted the hairless tail twitching behind — and powerfully built. They were black, which made them hard to see, but now it seemed that they wanted him to see them.

If Sir Emerik had ever seen a large house cat or a common city rat, he would have said the creature before him looked like both at once. This would have been correct, because that’s exactly what the Crat were — a hybrid species dreamed up by Dr. Maximus Harding and left to roam Mead’s Hollow. He’d had great hopes for the Crat but found them wild and unpredictable. And yet, as with so many of his creations, he could not bring himself to destroy the Crat. He preferred to hide his flawed inventions, and Mead’s Hollow had seemed as good a place as any.

Sir Emerik whipped the torch back and forth and managed to set one of the Crat on fire. He watched it roll and scream and smelled its burning hair. It reminded him of having his own hair burned off by Edgar, and for a moment he was distracted, letting down his guard.

It was then he felt the pain. Looking down, he saw the Crat at his boot. Its long, sharp teeth had pierced the leather, and jaws that seemed capable of crushing gravel into dust were clamping down around his big toe. He kicked furiously and set the beast on fire with the torch, but it would not let go. It wasn’t until Sir Emerik batted the creature repeatedly with the torch that it finally released him. He kicked the flaming animal out into the darkness and to his astonishment it ran off, rolling the fire off its back as it went, until he could see it no more.

“Get back! Leave me alone!” he shouted. Having witnessed the man set fire to not one but two of the Crat, the creatures seemed to rethink their idea of taking him down. They screamed horribly but moved off.

Sir Emerik felt a searing pain inside his boot, as if all of the skin had been torn off his toe. It was a pain that matched very closely that of the wound on the shin of his opposite leg. He had been bitten twice now.

Sir Emerik heard the snapping sound of a whip from somewhere in Mead’s Hollow. “Who could that be?” he muttered to himself. He looked toward the sound and saw light coming his way. “Maybe it’s that Tyler come to find me. How long have I been down here?” Sir Emerik heard the whip cracking again. “Tyler!” he howled. “Tyler, I’m here, against the wall! Follow the blue line!”

Sir Emerik felt suddenly better, as if he might escape Mead’s Hollow after all. He remembered that he was in charge, that he was Lord Emerik now and would rule, if only he could get out. And then it was as if these indulgent thoughts of power were almost too much for him to bear and his head were swelled to overflowing. His brain felt full of a liquid rumbling, like it was turning wet and about to run out of his nose. He was slowly losing his mind.

Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek! Snap! Snap! Snap!

The Crat and the whip traded turns echoing through Mead’s Hollow while Sir Emerik stood with his back to the wall, waiting for Tyler to find him.

But of course it was not Tyler who came upon this broken man, but Edgar, Dr. Kincaid, and Vincent. Vincent cracked the whip several times for good measure, and what Crat remained scattered at this new threat.

“Who are you?” said Dr. Kincaid, gazing at Sir Emerik as if he didn’t belong in Mead’s Hollow. “Who let you in here?”

Sir Emerik did not answer. His eyes lay heavy on Edgar, and he was consumed with one thought — to take the torch in his hand and set Edgar on fire. How could this terrible boy have climbed down in the Flatlands and yet be standing before him? Sir Emerik’s face contorted with rage, and he lunged toward Edgar.

Edgar was a very quick child, as we have come to know, and he dodged the oncoming flames without difficulty. Vincent snapped the whip toward Sir Emerik and caught him with a stabbing pain in the ear. Trying to set Edgar on fire qualified as a violent act, and Vincent acted in kind.

“Who are you?” Dr. Kincaid asked once more.

“It’s Sir Emerik,” said Edgar. “He serves Lord Phineus.”

This seemed to baffle Dr. Kincaid even further. “But what’s he doing down here? He shouldn’t be here.”

There was a little anger in his voice, as if he felt Mead’s Hollow was a sacred place for only a few and that he alone could invite people into it. It struck him that Sir Emerik was not the kind of person he would invite.

“Children!” cried Sir Emerik, touching the new wound on his ear inflicted by the whip. “Children will be my undoing!”

He was raving, but something about what he’d said made Edgar jump. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Samuel and that girl, and now you! Why must you all torment me?”

This was a shocking piece of news for Edgar. Could Samuel and Isabel be trapped in Mead’s Hollow?

“You mean there’s more?” said Dr. Kincaid, bewildered by the idea of so many people wandering around in such a forbidden place.

Even as he was losing control of his own mind, Sir Emerik had the capacity to dream up evil schemes. He stared at the group before him and heard the distant scuffling of the Crat.

“I will tell you where to find the boy and the girl, but you will let me pass. I must get free of this place, and of him!” Sir Emerik pointed to Edgar is if he were a monster, and wished with everything in his black heart that the Crat would tear the boy apart.

“You’ve been bitten, haven’t you?” said Dr. Kincaid. “You should know it won’t end well. A few hours, a day at most, and you’ll be finished.”

“Shut up, old man!” cried Sir Emerik. “I’ve never felt better in my life. And you should be more polite when talking to the lord of all Atherton. There are many who fear me.”

Dr. Kincaid didn’t have the slightest idea what Sir Emerik was talking about.

“He’s of no use to us,” Vincent assessed. Dr. Kincaid nodded and stepped back, giving Vincent authority to do as he pleased.

“You must let me go first, then I’ll yell back to you,” said Sir Emerik, starting along the wall with the blue line. Vincent cracked the whip, then took Sir Emerik by his filthy robe and held him out toward the open of Mead’s Hollow.

“Speak,” said Vincent. “Or I’ll throw you into the dark and you’ll be dinner for the Crat. Tell us where the children are!”

Eeeeeeeeeek!

Sir Emerik heard the Crat coming nearer, and his blood went cold. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “That way, you’ll find a door. The door to the source of water. The four of them are locked inside.”

“What do you mean, the four of them?” asked Dr. Kincaid.

“Just let me go! Please let me go!” Sir Emerik was crying out with such agony that Vincent simply couldn’t take it any longer. He hauled Sir Emerik along the wall, toward a far-off exit, and thrust him to the ground.

“Do not try to follow us,” he commanded. “You won’t like it if I see you again.”

There were two torches now, and Edgar threw one toward Sir Emerik. It sparked on the ground and was picked up, and then Sir Emerik was gone, racing for the door that led out of Mead’s Hollow.

The group of three moved on, cracking the whip as they went and occasionally connecting with a Crat coming too close to Vincent’s watchful eye. Soon they were at the door, a door Dr. Kincaid knew well.

“What did he mean by four?” said Dr. Kincaid. “I thought there were only two — Samuel and Isabel.”

“I think I know who will be the third,” said Edgar. “But I have no idea who might be the last.”

It was true Samuel and Isabel were trapped in a room with Lord Phineus, but as it turned out, there was something very special hidden in that room besides water.

The room itself was not like anything Samuel or Isabel had seen before. There was light, even though the room was far underground beneath the Highlands and there were no torches. What they saw was a different kind of light, creeping out from somewhere beneath a series of nine perfectly circular pools of water in the room. The pools were scattered randomly across a large, open area that was black and cold. It was haunting to behold — an unnatural path of round, watery light on the floor — and it made Isabel shiver. She leaned out over the first pool and thought it looked bottomless.

“What’s happened to this place?” asked Isabel. No one answered her.

There were chunks of wood and stone and frayed lengths of rope lying along the edge of the pools, as if once there had been some water-releasing system in place. Atherton’s collapse had destroyed whatever it had been, and Isabel had a lingering sense that the water was trapped here, in the nine pools, never again to flow freely. The children’s eyes moved curiously around the room, momentarily forgetting that they were not alone.

Lord Phineus was locked inside the vast room with them, and it had produced a chilling effect on the master of the fallen Highlands. He had moved off alone into a dark corner near one of the pools, intent on nursing his wounded mind. Lord Phineus knew there was someone else in the room, someone the children didn’t know anything about, but Lord Phineus was not prepared for the attack from behind, the ropes that tied his hands, the firm push to the ground.

“Who’s there?” asked Samuel, gazing into the dark corner of the vast room of circular pools and paths.

“It’s a trick,” said Isabel. “Lord Phineus is fooling with us.”

She was searching around for something she could use as a weapon and struck upon a long splinter of wood from one of the pulleys. Out of the darkness came the shadow of a man, tall and lanky.

“Get back, Lord Phineus! Get back, I tell you!” cried Isabel.

She very nearly began stabbing the stick toward the approaching figure when Samuel spoke.

“Wait,” he said hesitantly, as if he might be seeing a ghost. “That’s not Lord Phineus. It’s someone else.”

“Someone else indeed,” came a familiar and friendly voice from the past. Into plain view strode Sir William, Samuel’s long-lost father.

“Samuel!” he cried. There was a year’s worth of emotion in his voice. “Samuel!” he cried again, running around the rims of the pools and watching his boy do the same until they met.

Sir William knelt down and Samuel rushed into his arms. The two embraced, and it looked to Isabel as if Sir William would never let his son out of his arms again.

CHAPTER 14

The Yellow Line

There was an all-too-brief moment of happy catching up between the father and the son, in which Sir William was overjoyed to learn that Samuel’s mother was alive. Sir William looked unexpectedly well, for he had been drinking all he wanted from the source of all water. And there had been plenty of food, delivered in reasonably large quantity by Lord Phineus himself. He would bring supplies and the two would make adjustments to the flow of water together, adjustments that required two men to achieve.

Lord Phineus brought their happy reunion to a stop by shouting from where he sat at the edge of the third pool. As Samuel turned toward the awful voice it appeared to him as if Lord Phineus had been tied up and was struggling to free himself. A great many beams, frayed ropes, and metal gears were piled up around him. His boots were in the water, and his robe dangled heavy and wet over the edge.

“Is he trapped?” asked Samuel, looking to his father for an explanation.

“Untie me, you fool!” screamed Lord Phineus, his black boots splashing water as if he were a three-year-old having a tantrum. “We can’t stay in here!”

“He’s not as strong as he once was,” said Samuel’s father. “It wasn’t as hard to gain control over him as I thought it might be.”

“Was he bitten by one of those creatures?”

Sir William nodded. “I believe he’s going mad before our eyes.”

“Release me!” cried Lord Phineus again. He seemed to lose some of his vigor and hung his head, his chest heaving in and out.

Isabel had been listening carefully to everything going on around her, but she had remained aloof, standing with her back against the door.

“Who is this pretty girl you’ve dragged down here with you?” asked Sir William. His voice was gentle as he reached out toward her. He could see that she was afraid of him.

“I’m Isabel, and he didn’t drag me along.” Isabel wanted not to trust this man before her, but with his kind blue eyes and shaggy beard he looked more like he belonged in the grove than in the halls of power in the Highlands. “I came looking for the source of water so I could release it again,” she continued. “The grove is drying up.”

She hadn’t yet taken Sir William’s hand when it was held out to her, and seeing she was a spirited sort of girl, he pointed his hand instead at the first pool of water.

“It looks to me as if you could use some water yourself. You’ll find none better.”

Samuel went straight to the pool and began lapping up water into his mouth and came up with a huge aaahhhhhhh! But Isabel was afraid Sir William might push her in.

“Samuel said you disappeared over a year ago,” she began. “That you’d fallen from the Highlands. He and his mother thought you were dead. They felt lost without you for so long. What have you been doing down here all this time?”

“That’s a fair question,” answered Sir William. He ran his fingers through a beard flecked with grey that made him look older than he was.

“I was brought here against my will.” He looked at Lord Phineus, who had grown disturbingly quiet. “He made things very clear. Either I come here and turn the water off or on as he commanded, or Samuel and his mother would accidentally have a tragic fall over the edge of the Highlands.”

Sir William looked at Samuel. “If I’d tried to escape, you and your mother would have been killed. I had no choice but to remain here and do his bidding.”

Then Lord Phineus must have been as evil as she’d always imagined, Isabel thought. Satisfied with Sir William’s explanation, she started toward the pool of glowing water to drink her fill. Sir William smiled and touched her on the arm. “Everything will be all right. I’ll make sure nothing happens to either of you.”

It was the first time since leaving home that Isabel felt a keen sense of being protected. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the care of her parents, and it made her wonder what Edgar’s life as an orphan had been like.

Soon the reunion turned to darker matters. They were trapped behind a locked door, Atherton was violently collapsing in on itself, and Cleaners were on the loose. But though the news was harrowing and hard to imagine for Sir William, he never stopped encouraging Samuel and Isabel, and they felt mysteriously safe in a world gone crazy.

At length Sir William glanced across the pools of water at Lord Phineus and found that he should have been paying more attention to his captive. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the meager light in the room, he could see that his captive had been quietly working on the ropes and was very nearly free of them.

“Stay here!”

Samuel and Isabel nodded their agreement and watched as Sir William rushed between the pools to Lord Phineus. As if suddenly a lunatic, Lord Phineus began shouting but not forming words, struggling to free himself from the ropes that ensnared him. In the tussle, Sir William slipped and crashed into the water of the third pool as Lord Phineus kicked frantically with his black boots. One of the boots caught Samuel’s father across the face and he went under.

“No!” cried Samuel. He began running toward the scene with Isabel close behind. “Leave him alone!”

But Samuel needn’t have worried. Sir William had kept in very good condition as the keeper of the water. Lord Phineus was no match in his altered state of mind, and when Sir William exploded out of the water the tide quickly turned in the fight. Sir William turned Lord Phineus over and slammed his face into the stone floor. He tied his hands to a beam once more and sat him up.

“Stay put. I won’t be so friendly next time.”

“Cut me loose!” cried Lord Phineus. “I must leave this place!”

In the midst of all the hysteria, something happened that even Sir William could not have imagined.

The heavy locked door leading into the room began to move.

Isabel was the first to notice the door opening, which also made her the first to see Edgar barge into the room. She was speechless for a long moment — everyone was — but finally, it was Isabel who said something.

“Can it really be you?”

“I could ask you the same question,” said Edgar. This was how he’d always talked to her, and it didn’t cross his mind to change his ways now. But for Isabel, this was one time she could not allow herself to pretend as if she didn’t have feelings for the boy standing at the door. She ran to Edgar and embraced him. To Edgar’s great surprise, he hugged her back.

“I believe I’ll be all right now,” she said, gathering herself as she stepped back and looked at Edgar. “We’re going to get out of here.”

Everyone went about the quick business of hearing how in the world they’d all arrived in the same place. “I told you he didn’t fall!” said Edgar on hearing the news that Sir William was Samuel’s father.

Dr. Kincaid and Vincent, shaking their heads in disbelief, had moved off toward Lord Phineus. They seemed to have a great deal of curiosity about him. The two of them were standing over Lord Phineus, trying to talk to him, but it seemed as if Lord Phineus would not listen. He was kicking at the water and yelling at them to leave him alone. Whatever Dr. Kincaid and Vincent were saying, it could not be heard by the others from across the long room.

As Edgar watched this puzzling scene he began to sense that something was moving. It was the water in the pools. The light was shimmering and shaking on the walls and the ceiling, and suddenly, Sir William was alarmed.

“Move toward the door!” he screamed. The smile had vanished from his face as Atherton came alive again. The water in the pools began to slosh back and forth lazily at first and then began bouncing unnaturally.

“The water’s too high!” said Sir William, pushing the children back against the wall and staring into the pools.

“What do you mean?” Vincent shouted from across the room.

“The water was always somewhere far below, deep in the nine holes, but it’s finally come to the very top. We’re about to be flooded!”

Vincent gave his whip and the one lit torch they had among them to Dr. Kincaid, then he rapidly untied Lord Phineus and hauled him up on his feet. The captive struggled mightily at first, but Vincent knew well how to contain a man half his strength. He held his arms back in such a way that the slightest fight from Lord Phineus produced sharp pain from his knuckles to his shoulders.

When the nine pools began overflowing, the three men were nowhere near the door. In the blink of an eye the room became like a storm on an ocean, water flowing out of the glowing holes faster than anyone could have imagined possible.

“Take the children out!” cried Vincent. “Get them past the door, into Mead’s Hollow!”

Sir William guided Samuel, Isabel, and Edgar toward the exit. They were propelled off their feet by the rush of water, and the three of them tumbled into Mead’s Hollow where the storm had room to run shallow and wide.

They were soaking wet when Vincent came out into the dark with Lord Phineus. He had managed to keep the flame alive through the torrent of water by holding it high above his head. Throwing Lord Phineus against the wall, he gazed back at the door in search of his companion.

Atherton shook mercilessly, falling farther as waves of water reached as high as the middle of the doorway. Everyone had reached the other side of the door when they realized that Dr. Kincaid was not among them.

When Atherton began to settle into a low hum, the water flowed through the door more slowly, and finally, Dr. Kincaid came tumbling out into Mead’s Hollow, coughing and wheezing. Sir William pulled Dr. Kincaid out of the line of rushing water and slapped him on the back hard and fast.

“Stop that!” cried Dr. Kincaid, spitting and belching up water. “I’m fine. I only need a moment to recover.”

There was a brief silence as everyone listened to the gurgling and grinding of Atherton coming to a halt.

“We almost lost you in there,” said Vincent, still holding Lord Phineus so that his face was against the wall. “You must be more careful.”

“Tell that to Atherton!” howled Dr. Kincaid. Seeing all eyes on him, he was a little bothered by the attention he’d drawn to himself. He rose to his feet.

“Turn him around. He must look at me!”

Lord Phineus did not comply easily. He did not want to look at Dr. Kincaid. When he finally did there was a moment of terror on his face, then recognition.

“Mead’s Head!” he cried out. “How can it be you have Mead’s Head?”

But Dr. Kincaid was in no mood to answer the questions of a lunatic. He looked Lord Phineus square in the eye and commanded him to move.

“To the yellow line!”

Edgar, along with everyone else, had no idea why Dr. Kincaid wanted to follow the yellow line or why he suddenly thought Lord Phineus would listen to him. So it came as a surprise when Lord Phineus seemed to noticeably deflate. He began mumbling about Mead’s Head, yellow lines, and ladders. And then, to everyone’s amazement, he obeyed the command.

“I’m going to need light,” he said. There was a terrible, quiet anger in his voice. “If you expect me to go out there.”

Vincent held the only light they had among them, but he didn’t want to give the light to Lord Phineus, for fear that he would stick the torch directly into the water and snuff it out. The man was crazy. He probably wanted them all to die.

Vincent held the light over the watery ground. There was still an inch or more of water covering everything he could see, but the yellow line heading out into the wide open of Mead’s Hollow could be clearly discerned. He handed the torch to Sir William and had him stand nearby.

Lord Phineus did not hesitate when he saw the line. He began staggering toward it, with Vincent holding him tightly from behind. Everyone fell into step behind them, until all the light from the room was gone and only the one torch remained.

CHAPTER 15

One Village Remains

The world outside was rapidly changing as Lord Phineus led a group of people through the underground realm of Mead’s Hollow. It was midday, and the grove was bustling with activity. Everyone from the surrounding villages had come together amid the trees — three hundred from the Village of Sheep, about the same from the Village of Rabbits, and two hundred more from the Highlands. There were more than a thousand in total including those already living in the grove.

Everyone had either been given a task or guided into the safest places to hide. Some were working with the remaining animals, building pens and holding areas deep in the thickest part of the grove where their smell would hopefully remain contained. Many watched the perimeter of the grove, searching the landscape for anything that moved. Others were building things with parts of broken-down houses: makeshift shelters, spears or clubs, and ladders leading up into the largest trees.

One of the great advantages of coming to the grove was the trees that could be opened up and gutted. The orange insides mixed with a tiny bit of water was a quick and easy source of food, and it helped a great deal considering how little water and food they had been lucky enough to bring with them. They had been told not to kill and cook any of the animals. The smell would travel on the air even more than that of the live animals, and this would almost certainly attract Cleaners.

Gill, who almost always remained on a horse, traveled back and forth from the edge of the Highlands and around the grove. Throughout the morning Atherton shook violently, then settled, then shook again, and each time Gill returned to the edge of the Highlands to see how much farther it had fallen.

“How deep will it go?” he asked himself, gazing down into the shadowy land that had once been his home. He detected a scent with his long nose. There was something different in the air, very subtle but close. He made his way around the edge of the grove toward the Flatlands, feeling a little more nervous.

While everyone else was busy with the work of fortifying the grove, Maude, Horace, Wallace, and Isabel’s father, Charles, sat together on the porch of Mr. Ratikan’s house. It was the only part of the house that hadn’t been torn to pieces by Atherton’s violent changes. As they made plans, there had come an unexpected moment of silence in the group, and Charles sniffed the air.

“I can already smell the rabbits,” he said. “They really do stink.”

“That’s not rabbits — it’s the horses,” said Maude, feeling protective of the small and harmless animals she’d worked with for as long as she could remember.

“No, I believe it’s the sheep,” said Horace. “The sheep smell more than I’d expected.”

Wallace was the first to smile, but then the others followed, recognizing that their petty argument was beside the point. “We couldn’t leave them all behind,” he said. “There have to be some for a fresh start, when we find our way out.”

“We’ll need to tell the others soon,” said Horace. He was thinking of the many families in the grove, including his own son and wife whom he’d hardly seen since the trouble began. “We can’t stay here forever.”

Charles was the most concerned about their plans. His only child, Isabel, was missing, and he wanted to give her every chance of being found.

“We don’t need to leave for a while yet,” said Charles. “We could last a few days, maybe longer.”

Maude had never had children and could only wonder what it would feel like if one of her own were missing in a land teaming with Cleaners. And yet she could not help telling the truth as she saw it, her lack of tactfulness on full display.

“We risk losing everyone if we stay on too long,” she said. “Isabel could be anywhere.”

This did not comfort Charles. He knew it was true, knew that she might already be dead, and he felt helpless. He glared at Maude, but she would not look at him.

“Gill’s the best tracker among us, and he’s searching for Isabel,” said Horace. “If she’s out there, that nose of his will find her.”

“What if she’s in one of the other villages?” pleaded Charles.

“She’s not,” said Maude. “We moved everyone out. She’s just not there, Charles.”

Charles paused a moment, not sure how to proceed. “Do you think” — he stood and rubbed his hands nervously on his legs — “do you think she could be down there?”

No one answered, but there had long since been a feeling among the group that Isabel was very likely trapped in the Highlands and that she would never escape.

“Is there any way to get down inside?” he asked, his mind turning to desperate measures.

“The only way I know of would be Edgar,” answered Maude. “He could do it, but he’s missing just like Isabel. People in the grove say they saw him last night, but now he’s gone again. Nobody knows where he went.”

Charles stepped off the porch and began walking into the grove.

“Charles, we need you here — we have to . . .” Maude started, but Wallace stopped her.

“Let him go,” he said. There was an awkward silence and then Maude was distracted by something. She sniffed, staring off into the trees.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

Horace caught the same scent as Maude, the same troubling smell that Gill had barely been able to discern from outside the grove. Horace stood up, scratching his bald head.

“Someone is cooking meat,” said Maude. She’d cooked a thousand rabbits in her days and nights at the inn, and she knew the smell of meat on a fire.

Without waiting for a response, Maude bolted through the trees, darting this way and that for fifty yards or more until she came to the foot of a second-year tree where a woman and two children sat together. Horace came up behind Maude and the two stood there, nearly speechless.

“The children were hungry,” said the woman at the fire. She held in her hand a stick, at the end of which was a whole rabbit, sizzling over the flames. “They haven’t eaten anything but a wad of orange dough in two days.”

“You stupid woman!” yelled Maude, appalled at the selfishness of this defiant act. “You’ve put us all in danger!”

“Maude,” said Horace, his voice quiet and calm. “Let this woman feed her children. They deserve a moment’s peace.”

Maude was about to protest, but her eyes fell on the children and her voice caught in her throat. There were so few children on Atherton — not even a hundred — but how scared they must be! There was a girl and a boy, both very young. They were dirty and thin. And they were terrified.

“I’m sorry,” said Maude. She began to tear up — but only a very little — then she turned and walked away.

“Put the fire out the moment you finish,” said Horace. The woman nodded, smiling at her children, and Horace followed Maude through the trees.

Most of the Cleaners on Atherton were already busy at their gruesome work in the Village of Rabbits or the Village of Sheep, chasing what they could catch and tearing apart with their monstrous teeth everything in their path as they scrambled over and under one another in search of food. These Cleaners were very focused on the task before them, and they would not be easily distracted.

But they were not the only Cleaners on Atherton. There were a few that always rose later than the rest, that often had their food brought to them, and these were the oldest and largest of them all.

The smell of cooking rabbit drifted ever so silently over the trees and out of the grove, toward the Flatlands. And there the smell caught in the wet nose of a very large Cleaner that was chewing on a dry and dusty bone. This was an angry Cleaner, for it had grown accustomed to having food brought to it by the weaker among them, and in the feeding frenzy it had been forgotten.

The Cleaner reared its head and half of its body a full six feet in the air, pulling a row of suction cups off the ground and pulsing them sickeningly in the air. When it dropped back down its full twelve feet of length made the sound of breaking bones as it lurched forward on its mission. Seven more frightfully large Cleaners formed a line behind the first, and the group began charging for the smell of cooked meat in the grove.

CHAPTER1 16

Mulciber

“What’s that you’re doing?” asked Vincent. Sir William was chomping his teeth together loudly. Samuel and Isabel had joined in as Lord Phineus led the way deeper into the unknown realm of Mead’s Hollow.

“It keeps the Crat away,” said Samuel.

“He’s right,” said Sir William, beaming at his boy. “It’s a little trick I discovered by accident down here on one of my early journeys to change the flow of water. Lord Phineus and I were surrounded by a pack of the Crat and I was beating them away with a club. For some reason I started snapping my teeth at them. I guess it was involuntary — a sort of fear gripped me and made me act like a cornered animal. But the interesting thing was, the moment I made that sound, they ran away.”

Vincent glanced back at Dr. Kincaid and could tell the two were thinking the same thing.

“It must be an innate fear of Cleaners,” said Dr. Kincaid. “The Crat didn’t last long in the Flatlands.”

“Tell me about the Cleaners,” said Sir William. He had heard only bits and pieces of the news of these coming monsters and he was curious about them. He began clapping his teeth together again as Vincent provided a brief explanation of what a Cleaner was, what it ate, and how it behaved.

“And there are about a thousand of them upstairs,” Edgar added. “On their way to destroy the grove and the other villages.”

“That’s terrible!” said Sir William, between clapping teeth. “Can they be stopped?”

Dr. Kincaid glanced back at Sir William. It was cold underground in Mead’s Hollow, and Dr. Kincaid was shivering, his clothes heavy with wetness. “There’s only one person who can answer that question.”

“Who?” asked Sir William, but he got no reply. Vincent had seen something and was directing everyone’s attention to it.

“There it is!” he said. At the same time Lord Phineus wavered off the yellow line, away from where Vincent pointed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Vincent, tightening his grip on Lord Phineus.

“You can’t make me open that thing,” he said. A new darkness had entered his voice. The force of his personality had returned, as if it had only been sleeping and gaining strength. “Return me to the House of Power,” he demanded.

Vincent kicked the legs out from under Lord Phineus and put a knee in his back, holding him against the wet stone surface of the floor. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to do as you’re told.” He lifted Lord Phineus by the back of his robe and dragged him forward, kicking and screaming, until the yellow line ended about ten feet farther into the darkness.

What everyone saw on the ground at the end of their path was a large, solid yellow circle the width of a man’s outstretched arms that contained eight dials with letters on them. The dials were glowing as if there were a light somewhere beneath them, shining up into Mead’s Hollow. Edgar went directly to the circle and felt all around it, touching the dials and finding that they snapped from letter to letter. Though they were made of a clear substance, he could only see half of each one, because the other half was hidden beneath the ground. As he clicked one of the dials, new letters appeared and others disappeared beneath the yellow circle.

“What is this thing?” asked Edgar, looking directly at Dr. Kincaid.

Dr. Kincaid didn’t answer at first. He watched as Isabel and Samuel crouched around the circle and spun the dials back and forth.

“I’m too old to climb out of the Highlands, Edgar,” said Dr. Kincaid. “I think it may be too big a task even for you.” He smiled at the children, and his teeth chattered slightly from the dampness. “So we must find another way back to the Flatlands.”

“Wait,” said Samuel. “Is this a door? A way out?”

“Indeed it is,” answered Dr. Kincaid. There was a gleam in his eye. “Move away from it now.”

Edgar, Isabel, and Samuel stood together and loomed over the yellow circle as Dr. Kincaid moved in front of Lord Phineus. Vincent held him firm in his grasp.

“You must open that door,” said Dr. Kincaid. “You must open it right now.”

The lord would not look him in the eye.

“Pandemonium,” mumbled Lord Phineus. Then he flew into a rage and Vincent could barely contain him. “Pandemonium, I say! That’s what you aim to bring to my kingdom! You will not have it! It’s mine and mine alone!”

“You know how to open that door,” said Dr. Kincaid, his patience stretched. “The password is eight letters and you know them!”

Lord Phineus laughed. Only he knew how to open the yellow door, no one else.

“I know that word,” said Samuel. “I know where it comes from.”

Dr. Kincaid looked up. “What word?”

“ ‘Pandemonium,’ ” he said. “I know that word.”

Lord Phineus stopped laughing and looked at the boy. There was a crack in his confidence.

“You are a very stupid boy,” said Lord Phineus, trying to rattle Samuel with the cruelty of his voice as he had done so many times before. Vincent still held Lord Phineus by the arms and he wrenched them back.

“How do you know that word?” asked Edgar. “Did someone say it to you?”

Samuel answered without hesitation. “No. I read it.”

“Read it where?” Edgar prodded.

Samuel thought about all the books he’d enjoyed during his life of ease as a child of the Highlands. There had been so many. But that word. “Pandemonium.” Where had he read that word?

And then, like a sharp bolt of lightning, a vision of the book came to him.

“It wasn’t a normal book. It was more like a verse. I remember that it was very hard to follow and I didn’t finish it. It’s called Paradise . . . Paradise something,” said Samuel. “It’s big — a whole book — but it’s only one poem.”

“Of course!” Sir William chimed in. “I’ve read it as well. Paradise Lost.”

“Yes! That’s it!” cried Samuel.

“Shut up!” demanded Lord Phineus. “Not another word!”

Sir William and Samuel knelt at the yellow door and touched the dials.

“ ‘Pandemonium,’ ” said Sir William. He looked at his boy. “That was a dark and terrible place in the poem, the most terrible place of all.”

“And the ruler of that place, do you remember his name?” asked Samuel.

Sir William thought back, tried to remember, but could not.

“I remember it,” said Samuel. “I do, I remember it!”

“Don’t you speak that word!” screamed Lord Phineus.

“The ruler of Pandemonium is called Mulciber,” said Samuel. “That’s eight letters, and there are eight dials.”

“Don’t open that door!” growled Lord Phineus. He watched as Dr. Kincaid turned the dials.

Dr. Kincaid spelled the word in his head — m-u-l-c-i-b-e-r — the ruler of Pandemonium, and he turned the dials to match the word. He came to the last letter, paused with a glance at Lord Phineus, and turned the final dial to spell the name Mulciber. Steam poured from the edges of the circular door as it began to rise ever so slightly. Sir William clutched the edge of it and began to lift it open.

“Don’t!” cried Lord Phineus. “You can’t have him back!”

“What’s he talking about?” asked Isabel. She had been silently observing, trying to catch a clue here or there to the mystery that was unfolding around her. Lord Phineus turned and lunged at her like a wild animal, trying without success to break free of Vincent’s iron grip.

When Sir William had opened the mysterious entryway there was light in Mead’s Hollow as there hadn’t been before. A pale orange glow emerged from the circle in the ground. It might have been beautiful for a moment, except for the sudden sound of the Crat that exploded all around them. They had been near — nearer than they realized — and the light sent them into a frenzy. Eeeeeeek! Eeeeeeeek! Eeeeeeek! Everyone, even Lord Phineus, began crunching the air, trying to scare the Crat away.

“Everyone down the ladder!” cried Dr. Kincaid. “Now!”

He pushed Isabel, Edgar, and Samuel toward the light in the floor and there they saw a yellow ladder leading down. It hung in the air, ending well above the bottom, almost as if it were floating.

“Give me my whip!” shouted Vincent. Sir William took hold of Lord Phineus and Dr. Kincaid tossed the whip to Vincent. He cracked the whip over and over again toward the swarming Crat as the three children hurried down the ladder. They were followed closely by Dr. Kincaid, but the old man stopped with only his head poking out into Mead’s Hollow and he spoke to Lord Phineus.

“You must come with us,” he said. “It’s the only path left to you.”

Lord Phineus looked up, his eyes swollen and rimmed in red. Sir William pushed him toward the circle of light.

“You should not have opened that door,” warned Lord Phineus. “I tell you, you can’t have him. You won’t find him! I won’t allow it.”

“Get down here this instant!” screamed Dr. Kincaid. He moved down the ladder without another word. Sir William nudged Lord Phineus to the very edge of the opening.

Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! The Crat were circling very close, and Vincent was having trouble snapping them all away with his whip. Sir William saw one dart into the light and come for his legs. He kicked with all his might and sent the creature flying into Mead’s Hollow. He’d had enough.

Sir William had been shoving Lord Phineus toward the opening until finally the captive tumbled in, grabbing the ladder to steady himself. Sir William descended after him, forcing him farther down with the heel of his boot, until the two of them were through and only Vincent remained in Mead’s Hollow.

As Vincent made his way toward the opening, Atherton began to shake, moving like a rolling earthquake. The motion knocked Vincent right off his feet. The Crat were bowled over as well, disoriented and unable to attack. One of the Crat tumbled into the hole, landing on its feet next to Lord Phineus. It bit once and Lord Phineus shrieked, kicking the awful creature against one of the walls. The lone Crat darted into a corner, looking for a dark place to hide.

Vincent crawled toward the hole, rolling off course as he went, until finally he reached the yellow ladder. When he was almost all the way inside, he looked back. He could not see the water but he could hear it coming. He took the door by a handle on the inside and he flung it down over his head, shutting himself and the others away.

As Vincent neared the bottom, he saw that the lone Crat was huddled in the corner of a long corridor. Vincent uncurled his whip and snapped at the Crat until it lay lifeless.

“How lovely,” said Lord Phineus, a viscous sarcasm in his voice, “that you’re always here to protect us.”

Vincent had a very real desire to turn his whip on Lord Phineus.

“That way,” said Dr. Kincaid, seizing control of the situation. He pointed down a corridor that looked to Edgar as if it sloped downward. The entire floor along the way was illuminated from the bottom with soft orange light. It was a stone floor, but it held wide, clear sections of what appeared to be a murky sort of glass.

“There’s no place for him to hide,” said Dr. Kincaid, staring at Lord Phineus. “Let him lead the way, and keep a close eye on him.”

Vincent snapped his whip, startling Lord Phineus into motion, and the group began to move forward, toward where the light fell away.

Edgar fell into step beside Dr. Kincaid and the two walked in silence for a minute or two. When Edgar spoke, he chose his words carefully.

“How did Lord Phineus know how to open the door?” asked Edgar, a new thought rising in his mind. “Did he lock Dr. Harding down here?”

Dr. Kincaid smiled and pulled on his big earlobe, looking down at the boy.

“I believe he did just that,” said Dr. Kincaid.

“Mulciber, is it?” whispered Sir Emerik. He had long since abandoned his torch and traveled in utter darkness and quiet through Mead’s Hollow. He had stayed close to the others all along, but he’d hung back when they reached the round yellow door — far enough away to avoid the circle of Crat, but near enough to hear the word. “Mulciber!”

The water had come like a flood, but Mead’s Hollow was vast and empty and it would take a great deal of water to fill it. Sir Emerik stood in an inch of liquid that sloshed at his boots, listening for the sound of the Crat.

“I shall wait a moment, until they’ve moved away from the door.”

There was only one thing that remained in Sir Emerik’s mind. One task he must complete before dying, for he knew he was terribly ill, that the Crat had poisoned him beyond repair. He would die, but not before taking his revenge on the one who’d ruined him. Sir Emerik ground his teeth together and reached down into the water, spinning the dials to spell the word that would let him in. He felt the door move on the last letter, wrenching it up with all his strength.

I must kill that wretched boy, Edgar.

CHAPTER 17

Dr. Harding’s Laboratory

The group of three children, three adults, and one raving madman walked the orange corridor for a few minutes and found that it was quickly descending deeper into the ground. Chunks of stone had fallen from the ceiling and the walls, and they had to maneuver around them.

“Where are we, Dr. Kincaid?” asked Edgar. He had maintained his position next to the old man, hoping to gather some clues to their whereabouts. Samuel and Isabel were near, listening carefully as the two spoke.

After a few steps more in silence Dr. Kincaid offered a little something. “Inside Atherton.”

Edgar pondered the idea of the two words. Inside Atherton. It was a very big idea that he didn’t know how to begin exploring.

Dr. Kincaid went on. “You remember all our conversations about Dr. Harding and the Dark Planet?”

“Tell me again, won’t you?” said Edgar. He wanted Samuel, Isabel, and Sir William to overhear so they would understand as he did that Atherton was not what it seemed.

Dr. Kincaid glanced back at the others watching him. They needed to know — not everything, but something — and now was the perfect time to tell them.

“The Dark Planet was dying,” said Dr. Kincaid as they descended the long corridor. “But there was a young man, Dr. Harding — very smart — who found a way to make a new world. While the Dark Planet grew darker, the place Dr. Harding made grew larger. It was filled with clean air and water and all sorts of magnificent inventions.”

He had almost gotten lost in his thoughts for a moment, but now he stopped and stared at Edgar, Isabel, and Samuel. “Dr. Harding created Atherton. He brought you all here and made you forget your terrible past. And then, for reasons I don’t understand, he mysteriously disappeared.”

Samuel, Isabel, and Sir William didn’t know what to say. They’d thought it was possible from the bits and pieces they’d gotten from Edgar. But the plain truth of it was like being hit over the head with a heavy object. Atherton was made by a man, Dr. Harding, and the man had vanished. And what was more, Atherton was not their true home, the Dark Planet was.

Dr. Kincaid felt he had said enough. He left the group and moved quickly up the corridor to where Vincent kept a watchful eye on their prisoner.

“Lord Phineus,” said Dr. Kincaid. Lord Phineus had been hobbling along mindlessly and hadn’t looked back as they walked the corridor. But when he stopped and peered back into Dr. Kincaid’s eyes, the light in the room seemed to turn him into a monster. His mind was flooded with the sickness of the Crat, sweat beading down his pallid face and dripping from his chin.

“We come to the very place where you locked him away, do we not?” questioned Dr. Kincaid. “It is here we shall find the good Dr. Harding.”

Lord Phineus was unmoved. “I’m not taking you in there,” he said coldly.

Dr. Kincaid nodded at Vincent and he uncoiled the whip.

“You treat me like an animal!” screamed Lord Phineus. “I won’t have it!”

He lunged for Dr. Kincaid, but Vincent cracked the whip and Lord Phineus jumped back.

“Take him,” said Vincent, looking to Sir William.

“Wait a moment.” It was Dr. Kincaid. He moved closer to Lord Phineus, almost close enough to touch him. “Your time has come to an end,” he said. “There is no escaping me.”

A change came over Lord Phineus, as if he was only just realizing that something drastic had occurred. Without the aid of anyone pushing or pulling him along, he advanced three or four more steps. The orange corridor made a sharp turn to the right and Lord Phineus disappeared around the corner.

Everyone followed warily behind him. There was another corner, and another, each one turning back against itself until Edgar came around a last one. He entered a vast room that took his breath away.

The room was shaped like a giant rectangle, and throughout it were columns, each extending ten feet wide, filled with books, thousands upon thousands of books. The light on the floor had grown more yellow, almost white, glowing from behind cloudy, thick glass. But in this room, the floor was covered in numbers — five-digit numbers, scrawled wildly all over the immense floor before Edgar. Light from below shone straight through the numbers in the floor and their shadows struck the ceiling. The ceiling was lower here, only a foot or two over Dr. Kincaid’s head, and it was white like the stone used to make Mead’s Head. Edgar gazed above him at the countless rows of five numbers, eerie in their crudeness and random shape and size, that filled every part of the ceiling.

“What is this place?” said Sir William. “It looks like the home of a lunatic.”

“How right you are,” said Dr. Kincaid. “As Edgar could tell you, all of these numbers unlock something different in Dr. Harding’s brain. Each one hides an invention, a process. These numbers are the keys that unlock the mysteries of Atherton, but only one person can use them.”

Along the walls of the room there were stone tables and instruments Edgar could not understand. Lord Phineus stood facing away from them, gazing at something on one of the tables. Sir William and Vincent were directly behind Lord Phineus, watching for any sudden movements.

“Where’s Dr. Harding?” said Edgar. Samuel and Isabel were standing nearby, listening for an answer. The three of them thought maybe Dr. Harding was hidden behind one of the columns, or perhaps he was dead, left alone for too long in this madhouse of a laboratory. They were very curious to observe him.

Dr. Kincaid looked at all three of the children, smiled awkwardly, and then pointed toward Lord Phineus. “He is there, of course.”

“Where? I don’t see him,” said Isabel. But Edgar had already put two and two together. He looked at Lord Phineus who was tinkering with something at the table.

“Lord Phineus and Dr. Harding are one and the same,” said Edgar. “How can that be?”

Dr. Kincaid nearly laughed. “Could it be any other way?”