The Last Summoning---Andrew and the Quest of Orion's Belt (Book Four) (45 page)

He stood tall, and bounded onward. The closer
he got to the tower, the bigger the tower became, and the smaller
he felt in comparison. The sun had set. The sky had clouded over
once more. The chill in the air had stiffened, blowing through his
whiskers and deep into his bones. His well-worn feet throbbed, and
his stomach growled. The tower loomed taller and taller until he
finally found himself at its base, just as the first drop of slushy
rain fell from the darkening sky.

Compared to the colossal tower, he felt like
a grasshopper standing next to a redwood. “I’m here,” he breathed.
His heart beat excitedly. His eyes glistened and shone with awe and
wonder. “I’ve made it! That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

He hugged his hands to his chest, and stared
up at the tower. He felt very small as he looked at the towering
structure. The tower was grand and intimidating like an ancient
soul who knew the secrets of the world, and kept them all hidden.
It was a fearsome structure built out of various shapes and sizes
of bricks and rocks, as if each stone had been carved with meaning
out of gray, smooth marble that glistened as the slushy rain fell
over it. Each stone was carved with curious etchings, words of a
different time and century.

Gogindy could see strange, gaping holes in
the tower walls as if it had grown tired and weary standing strong
and steady under so much darkness, and was slowly, brick by brick,
giving way and readying itself for destruction that was sure to
come.

The tower extended high above Gogindy, into
the clouds. Somehow, he thought getting to the tower would have
made him feel different. Yet he felt the same. The urgent nagging
in his heart had not ceased. In fact, it had increased, hammering
against his mind making his head ring, as if someone had implanted
a bell inside him that would not stop gonging. In fact, he felt
worse. He was wet, cold and miserable. And to top it off, he
couldn’t even see the top of the tower anymore. It was like the
bell didn’t even exist. Somehow, not seeing it made him feel very
disturbed and uncomfortable.

He looked around him, warily, and shivered.
The slushy rain stuck to his whiskers, causing all his whiskers to
melt down like cotton and stick to his cold body like wet, sticky
yarn. He felt as grungy and graceful as a wet mop.

“Burr,” he chattered, rubbing his cold
fingers together. “Where’s some shelter for poor Gogindy? Poor wet,
miserable me. I should like a shelter. Why weren’t we born with
built in umbrellas? Yes, that would be very nice.” He shivered
again and made his way around the tower until he found a dark,
arched doorway that led up to what looked like a never-ending row
of steps. The sinister stairway wrapped around the tower’s
crumbling walls, climbing it like a dark snake frozen in place.

Gogindy peered into the dark passageway and
sniffed. He could smell nothing, only stale cobwebs, and emptiness.
“Any nasty personages, or creepers habitating this tower are to
leave immediately!” His voice echoed into the tower, then died out.
“Understand?”

When no one answered him, he slowly crept
inside. He smiled, glad of the shelter the tower offered. “Oh, this
is much better,” he breathed wringing out his dripping fur.
“Water’s much too wet for my liking. If it was up to me, I’d make
water less drippy.” He poked his nose back outside. His snout was
bombarded by flecks of frosty snow.

“Burr!” he cried, quickly retreating inside.
“Oh, would you look at that? It’s snowing now. Can you believe it?
Snow! Well, I don’t like snow either, it’s much too solid. Much too
cold and shivery for me.” He stretched his sore muscles and
explored his new surroundings. The small place in which he stood
was nothing more than a doorway where a steep flight of
dusty-looking steps spiraled upward, vanishing into the darkness.
Except for a few stray spiders, the tower looked unguarded,
abandoned, and as lonely as he felt.

He scowled at the puddle of water that was
accumulating underneath his dripping body, and quickly hopped onto
the first step of the ominous stairway leading into blackness.
“Guess it’s just you and me,” he said, taking out his trusty rock
footprint and laying by his side. “What’s that?” You’re hungry?
Well, me too. Let’s see what’s for dinner.”

He fished around in his little pack, and drew
out a small handful of crackers that had gone soggy from the rain
and sleet. Gogindy’s eyes grew dark. “What is this? The very last
of the crackers? It can’t be? Wet…yucky…gooey…ucky…soggy, squelchy,
damp, sodden, waterlogged crackers!” He fingered the wet crackers.
Anger accumulated in his face with each second. “This is an
outrage! A Twisker can withstand many things. But wet, drowned food
is not one of them. No. This is an injustice that I will not stand.
Someone is responsible. Was it you?” He held up his rock. “Yes, it
was you. I know you did it. You ate most of my food. Mashed it up
while you were hiding in my purse, then you let water drip inside.
This is an outrage! I will not stand it. For that, you will be
punished. Yes. Punished.” He threw down the foot print, and glared
at it. “I shall leave you there, alone. Forever!”

He leapt up and glared around the room, the
wet crumbs still in his fists. He stood there panting for a long
moment. Finally his face softened, and he sat back down. “Oh dear.
I don’t know what has gotten into me. I’m sorry, Mr. Footprint
rock. I know you didn’t mean to crumble all my crackers. I won’t
leave you here alone. That would be too cruel.” He opened his fist
and slowly picked the wet crumbs out of his hand, eating them with
little pleasure. After he had eaten what was left of his soggy
crackers, he stared mournfully at his rock friend. “Oh, I’m sorry.
Did you want some? I am a dreadful piggy snout. If it makes you
feel any better, it wasn’t even tasty. Oh, this is a sad day
indeed. That sloggy slosh was the last of my food. After this, it
seems that we shall both starve. But then again, you’re just a
rock, and rocks don’t eat anything. So you shall go on being your
same, boring self, and I shall turn into a pile of bones and wet
whiskers.”

He folded his arms and hugged his wet body,
still shivering. “I’m in a soggy mood myself. But I can’t help it.
Being out in the wet weather does that to a person. Makes them damp
and moody. Makes their bones rust and their joints go stiff. Yes. I
do feel stiff and sore. Why can’t it rain warm snow, warm rain,
like in Boreen? That would be ever so nice.” He closed his eyes,
remembering warmer times. Warm food, steaming cups of chocolate,
boiling stew, summer days, warm baths. His body started to warm up.
He leaned back, breathing evenly, feeling himself being drawn into
warm slumber.

A cold wind blew in through the opening in
the tower, blowing snow and sleet into the corridor, tossing out
his warm thoughts in one gust.

Gogindy’s eyes flew open. “Rude! I had though
you, wind and I, had made a truce. But it seems you have broken
your promise. That was outright disgraceful---blowing spit on me
when I was trying to rest. I should have thought better of you
nasty, rude wind. I shall not be agreeable anymore. No. We are
friends no longer! I shall find a better place to rest my poor
tired bones.” He stood up, placed his rock in his pack, and started
up the dark stone steps, wondering if perhaps, further up, he might
escape the wind. “I am the bell ringer of Conroy,” Gogindy told
himself. “This, in a way,
is
my tower. So I shouldn’t be
afraid of it. In fact, yes…this is my tower.” He liked the thought
of that, and looked fearfully up the dark stairway, wondering what
it held. “Hate stairs. They are too flighty, with many flights. And
steppy, with too many steps. They are so square, and I hate
squares. And let’s not forget stairs are steep, and tall. I don’t
like tall things either, they make me feel small.”

He paused, twitching his whiskers as he
looked around him, sure that some terrible creature might come down
the steps and toss him away.

When nothing happened, he slowly crept onto
the second step. He stood there waiting, twitching his nose and
looking around with nervous apprehension. In the darkness he
thought he saw a scrap of paper in the corner. He carefully bent
down and picked it up.

“What is this?” he wondered, squinting at the
soiled piece of paper. The paper was oily, and ripped in several
places. It felt rough, like dragon’s skin. He held it up. For a
moment he thought he could make out the outline of very poor
handwriting scrawled across it. It was too dark in the room for him
to read what the words said. So he rummaged around in his pack, and
drew out a small glowing mushroom he had collected from the
Mushroom Forest, and held it up to the paper. The words on the page
were smudged and difficult to understand. It looked as if the
writer had hurriedly dipped his ink and scribbled out letters so
that one word could not be defined from another, just like soup
that had boiled too long making all of its contents taste the
same.

“Oh,” Gogindy breathed, glancing down at his
footprint rock. “This person is very fluent in Scribbly. Good thing
we Twiskers are excellent readers of such scrawl. Some teachers
don’t like scribbly, but we Twiskers use it all the time so that
our enemies cannot intercept our messages. It is an ancient art and
only the most intelligent of creatures are able to learn it.”

He glanced at his footprint rock, and smiled.
“You don’t believe me? Well, it’s true. Scribbles, are in fact, a
code. A very important code only few can read. You should really
learn how to do it sometime so that if we are ever separated you
can send me a message.”

He lowered the paper so the rock poking out
of his pack could see it. “See. Can you see what it says?”

When the rock did not answer. Gogindy jumped
up and down, and growled. “No, no. NO! You’re doing it wrong. It
says, ahem
,
I am a fat
flumpkin, with flubjus fluzzily flat flair
.
“
And then it says a bunch
of other scribbly stuff. But then…wait…if you look harder, you can
see that it really says…”

Gogindy paused, and stared at the page,
perplexed. “It actually says…um…well…it says.
The
fluttering flapjacks are flying south for the winter
…No…umm.
Actually it says.
Jumpering japsticks are jabbing
the drums
...
No…never mind. This is
really hard scribble, scribbly to read. Even I can’t write like
that. This is hard-core stuff. Ah...oh now I see. It
says…
eating onions actually aggravates
ostriches
.
Wait. Ah. Now I have it.
Really, I do.
This tall stower molds, take fare
ants forks, ants spoons rutlings and turning backaches, befog you
crying.”
He looked up from the page, perplexed. That doesn’t
make any sense. “There are a lot more words, but I can’t read
anything in this horrible light. My scribbly is a bit rusty. Maybe
I’ll read it again when I’m not so tired. Plus this mushroom isn’t
the best thing to read by at night.” He carefully folded the note
and put it in his pack. Then he crept further up the stairs until
the draft from the doorway was far behind him. With each step he
felt his legs grow heavier and his eyelids droop. Tired and
breathless, he curled up on the stone steps falling into a troubled
asleep.

Alone

Andrew awoke to the sound of hushed whispers. They
were soft and gentle, like water washing onto the shore. The sounds
whispered, and laughed, like far-off echoes of something familiar.
He lay face up in the snow, staring at a hazy sky, unsure of where
he was. The sun had risen over the Fractured Mountains, bathing the
smoky land in a stilted, red horizon. The strange echoing noises
continued. They collided with the words he had read in Croffin’s
book, causing his head to throb and ache. They crashed together,
bunting heads and clashing against his skull.

Darkness and light battled in his mind. The
words pounded, cried out, shouted like bolts of lightning, rumbling
with thunder, over and over. The words were prickly and jagged,
pricking him with guilt and confusion.
The Fallen
is Good,
the dark words echoed, over and over again in his
mind.

No
, soft, brilliant
words shot through his head,
The Fallen is evil.
Pay the darkness no mind
!
Andrew
lay there listening for a long time, wondering if he was still
asleep or dreaming. The colliding words swirled through his mind
hammering against his head, back and forth, louder and louder.
Then, a voice rose louder than any other. It was the voice of
Croffin. “I’m sorry, Andrew. I didn’t mean too hurt you. Please
forgive me.” The words were desperate and pleading. “I fed you a
lie. A dark, deceptive lie. It was an untruth. Do not believe what
you read in my book. The Fallen
is
darkness. The Fallen
is
bad. He
is
death. Heed these words. Listen to
them. LISTEN!” The last words fell on his ears, soft, and pleading,
drowning out all other voices, until the darkened words grew faint
then hushed.