David Baldacci - The Keeper

But Delph did not come back. He was gone.

I slowly rose from the ground and picked up my tuck. That’s when I realized that Delph’s tuck was gone. How could that cloud? How could...?

The vile Thorne had told me that nothing was impossible in the Quag. Thorne! Could he have...? But if it had been Thorne, he surely would have taken me too.

As Harry Two and I walked slowly along, I looked down at my feet. I focused on placing one foot in front of the other. I was trying to block out everything else. Most of all, I was trying to not think about Delph not being next to me. I still couldn’t quite fathom how it had happened. I even stopped and closed my eyes once, and then opened them, hoping that my nightmare would be over and there Delph would be.

He would look at me with his silly, endearing grin and say, “Wotcha, Vega Jane?”

But he wasn’t and so he didn’t.

I was just a fifteen-sessions-old female from Wormwood who felt like bawling her eyes out because her best friend was gone.

Only I couldn’t. I had no tears left to shed.

I looked ahead. The Quag stretched endlessly.

I looked above and my jaw dropped. The storm was still raging and skylight spears and thunder-thrusts had grown so ubiquitous as to be quite unremarkable. But there was something else in that sky.

It was a huge flying creature nearly the size of the inficio. I didn’t know if it was ally or foe. Then, as it swooped lower, I got a better look at it. It was a firebird. Its plumage was a mess of brilliant colors that shone like a beacon even in the darkness of the storm. Its beak and huge claws were hideously sharp. Quentin’s book had said that a firebird could be either enemy or ally. I couldn’t afford to find out which right now.

“Run!” I cried out to Harry Two.

There was only one possible escape. I saw the opening in the rock up the first ridge. I sprinted toward it, looking over my shoulder for the gigantic bird. But the skies were so dark now and the rain falling so hard that I couldn’t see much of anything.

We reached the cave opening and I stopped. Rushing headlong into a dark, confined space in the Quag might be the last thing I ever did. I took a moment to light my lantern and reached in my pocket for my glove, gripped the Elemental and willed it to full size.

I lifted the tuck over one shoulder. With the lantern in my other hand, Harry Two and I cautiously slipped into the mouth of the cave. We had gone about twenty paces when I heard a sound. It was not the growl of a beast, nor could my nose detect a foul odor of any kind. It was more like someone mumbling.

“Hello!” I called out. “Who’s there?”

Next moment the mumblings stopped. I did not take this as a good sign. My hand tightened on the Elemental. I crept forward with my canine next to me. The cave was deep and the farther we went into it, the higher and wider it became, until I could easily stand straight up.

“Hello?” I said again.

Something raced across the passage in front of us and plunged into darkness on the other side.

I dropped the lantern and aimed the Elemental. “Come out right now or else I’ll... I’ll hurt you,” I said, my voice cracking embarrassingly.

Inch by inch the thing came back into view. I picked up my lantern, holding it high and lighting the passage more fully. The creature was small and it wore a hooded cloak.

“Who are you?” I said breathlessly.

“They calls me Seamus,” it replied in Wugish. “What be you, dearie, dearie?” He curiously eyed the Elemental cocked in my hand.

“I’m Vega Jane.” I added, “Could you tell me what you are?”

He lowered the hood. “Me’s a hob, me is.”

I knew this as soon as he dropped the hood. I’d read about hobs in Quentin’s book on the Quag. And there had also been a picture. The hob was about half my height, thick in figure with a small but wide jaw, a stout nose, and brown eyes set close above the nose, peaked ears like my canine, only longer and fuller and pinker on the inside. The fingers that had lowered the hood were long, curved and spindly with sharp-looking nails. The bare feet revealed at the hem of the too-short cloak were large and hairy. His cloak was ragged and dirty, and his face, hands and feet not much cleaner.

“I’m a Wugmort,” I said.

He inched closer and once more eyed the Elemental. I had forgotten I was still aiming it at him. I lowered it.

“Why’s you want to hurt things, dearie, dearie?”

“I don’t, unless they want to hurt me .”

“Hobs don’t hurt nobodys.”

Quentin’s book had said hobs would help you. All you had to do was give them little presents from time to time, though I had no inkling what an appropriate gift might be. “I’ve heard that of hobs,” I said. “Do you live in this cave?”

“Till I moves on.”

“It’s stormy outside,” I said.

“Storms and storms let a hob roams and roams,” he said nonsensically.

“Do you live in the Quag?”

“What, this here place, you mean?”

“Yes.”

He gave me a crooked grin, revealing misshapen teeth. “Where else would I live, dearie, dearie?”

“You can just call me Vega.”

“I could if I would if I could.”

My head started to throb.

“You says you’s a Wugmort? What’s that, dearie, dearie?”

“Wug for short. It’s what we call someone from Wormwood. It’s a village. The Quag surrounds it.”

He nodded, though I wasn’t sure he even knew what I was talking about.

“Look,” I said, “I have a friend, Delph. We were sitting together a ways from here when a dark cloud came down and covered us. When it lifted, he was gone. Can you help me find him? I have to find him. I have to.”

Instead of answering, the hob turned his back on me and ventured farther into the cave. I hurriedly grabbed my tuck and lantern and Harry Two and I followed him deeper into the bowels of the place.

We came to a little chamber that was outfitted with a couple of crates, a rolled-up blanket, a bucket and two lighted candles perched on rocks.

I looked around and set my tuck and lantern down and then sat on a crate. It was cold in here and winds from the storm were managing to reach us even this far, causing the candles to flicker. I shivered and drew my cloak closer around me. The next moment I felt terrible guilt. Poor Delph might be out in the storm with nothing over his head.

“You cold, dearie, dearie?” asked Seamus.

I nodded.

He sat down on a crate, drew his hand in his cloak pocket, and what he pulled out of it made me fall backward off my seat and caused Harry Two to start barking.

Seamus ignored this commotion and placed the small ball of blue fire he held in his hand on the dirt, sprinkled a bit of something he had pulled from his other pocket on the tiny tendrils of flames, and they immediately grew to over a foot in height.

I regained my seat and said, “How did you do that?”

He looked up at me with an innocent expression. “Do what?”

“Pull fire from your pocket?”

“I pulls it, I does. Does yousey?”

“No, I does notsey,” I said before catching myself. “I mean I do not. I can’t . Where did you learn to do it?”

“All hobs cans pull fires from their pockets. We just cans, dearie, dearie. We just cans.” He finished this statement off with a cackle.

I drew closer to the flames and felt immediate and deep warmth even though it was not a large fire. Flashing through my mind was a remembrance from many sessions ago.

My mother and father and my brother were sitting in front of the fire back at our modest digs in Wormwood. We had eaten our usual small meal. We never had much in terms of things. But I remember sitting on the floor in front of that fire and looking around at each of them, my father with his ready smile, my mother with her kind ways, and my brother staring at a spider in the corner of the ceiling and silently counting its legs, and thinking I was the luckiest Wug there ever was.