Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

faint echoes of his progress dying quickly away. He tried reaching out to the Forest as he had before, but there was nothing there. He was too tired and too faraway. His head pounded unmercifully, and he found it hard to concentrate. It was nothing serious, he knew that, just strain and tiredness. A few hours’ sleep and he’d be fine. He was tempted to lie down and sleep for a while on the packed earth of the tunnel floor, but somewhere deep inside him he knew that if he lay down here, he might never find the strength to get up again. And so he plodded on, head hanging tiredly down, putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again.
    Some time ago he’d heard the Beast scream, but the long, agonized howl had come and gone, and the tunnel was still here. Nothing had changed. He had wondered if the Beast’s dreams would vanish with its death, and if so whether he might fade away along with the dream he walked through, but it hadn’t happened. Or perhaps it had, and he just hadn’t noticed. No, you couldn’t feel this tired and hurt this much unless you were still alive. But if the dreams were still real, then maybe the Beast wasn’t dead after all… .
    The sudden thought shocked him out of his dazed state, and he stopped and looked back down the tunnel. The Beast was dead. It had to be. It couldn’t have survived the Infernal Device… . But he had to be sure. He sat down cross-legged in the middle of the tunnel and cautiously opened his mind, letting it drift out, reaching for communion with the trees. He was still too faraway to be able to touch the Forest, but there was no trace remaining of the dark, oppressive presence of the Beast. It was gone, as though it had never been. Jack smiled grimly and rose painfully to his feet again. Maybe there was some justice in the world after all. Just a little. He walked on up the tunnel.
    After a while the shadows up ahead seemed strangely different. Jack held the lantern higher and squinted against the gloom. His heart leapt as the patterns of light and darkness ahead of him resolved themselves into a set of rough wooden steps leading upward. He was almost there; all he had to do was climb the steps and clamber out through the trapdoor, and he would be free of the darkness and among friends again. He frowned suddenly and came to a halt at the bottom of the steps. He remembered how the steps had seemed to go on forever on the way down, and a faint twinge of fear went through him. He pushed it quickly aside. It didn’t matter how many steps there were. He was almost there, and he wasn’t going to be stopped by anything or anyone now. He was going home, to the trees.
    He almost ran up the simple wooden slats, pushing himself on as fast as his aching legs would carry him. He held the lantern out as far ahead of him as his arm could reach, hoping for a glimpse of the trapdoor that would let him back into the fort’s cellar, but for a long time there were only the stairs and the darkness. It wasn’t until some of the frost in his hair began to melt and run down his face like tears that he realized the air wasn’t as cold as it had been. In fact, it was almost bordering on warm. His hands and feet and face tingled with returning feeling as the numbness slowly left them. He gritted his teeth against the pins and needles that followed, and kept on climbing. He began to smile, until he was grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. The trapdoor suddenly appeared above him, and he lurched to a halt before he slammed his head into it. His smile faded away. What if the people in the cellar had bolted the trapdoor shut and had then been … overcome by something? He’d be trapped down here in the darkness forever… . Jack quickly decided he wasn’t going to think about that. He reached up and pushed the trapdoor with his free hand. It rose an inch or so and then fell back. Jack cursed softly. He’d forgotten how heavy the trapdoor was. He put the lantern down on the top step and placed both his hands against the trapdoor. It shifted uneasily and then rose an inch or two. Jack took a deep breath and held it, and forced the trapdoor up another inch. MacNeil had always made it look so easy. And then suddenly the weight was gone as the trapdoor was yanked away from him. Light spilled down through the opening, and Jack blinked up into it. Strong hands reached down to help him, and finally Scarecrow Jack left the tunnels in the earth and emerged into the light of the