Kneeknock Rise, Page 2
Natalie Babbitt
In Ada’s arms, Sweetheart stiffened and the tip of his tail began to twitch.
“Listen!” cried Uncle Anson. “Listen!”
The wooden bird miraculously opened its beak and began to sing. “Awk-awk weep!” trilled the bird. “Brrrr weep-weep!”
A rust-colored blur shot from Ada’s arms and in a tangle of fur and red feathers the clock bounced off its peg and fell to the floor. There was a crash, a confused metallic sound of liberated springs and spinning gears, a last protesting “Weep-weep!” and then silence. And in the middle of the smashed debris sat Sweetheart, his yellow eyes glowing, and in his jaws the broken wooden body of the little bird.
“But I don’t understand,” burst out Egan at supper. “Why didn’t you do something to that cat? Chase him out of the house or something!” He looked over at the hearth, where Sweetheart sat contentedly washing his face.
Uncle Anson sighed heavily. He had been silent since the smashing of the clock and he was silent now.
“Well, why not tell him, Anson?” said Aunt Gertrude. “He ought to know these things if he’s going to be visiting in Instep.”
“I’ll tell him, Mother,” said Ada importantly. “Papa put a kneeknock bird into the clock, Egan. I guess he forgot about Sweetheart.” (Uncle Anson made a strangled noise.) “Sweetheart thought it was real. Cats are supposed to kill kneeknock birds. The Megrimum wants them to.”
Egan stared.
“Don’t be such a big dumb, Egan,” said Ada with a superior frown. “Don’t you know about kneeknock birds? They live in the trees at the top of the Rise. All the cats go up and kill them and bring them down. That’s how Papa got the feathers, I suppose. The Megrimum likes cats. He keeps the kneeknock birds up there just for them. We can’t go up to the top of the Rise, but the cats can. He likes them. And if people are mean to a cat, the Megrimum comes down and eats them up.”
“What about dogs?” asked Egan, slipping a bit of meat to Annabelle where she sat under the table, her warm chin heavy on his knee.
“Dogs! Pooh!” said Ada scornfully. “Dogs are nothing special. They never climb up the Rise. Annabelle couldn’t if she tried. She’s too old and fat. No, cats are what the Megrimum likes. Just cats.”
From the hearth came a low, self-satisfied rumble. Sweetheart was purring.
In the middle of the night Egan was jolted awake by a violent crash of thunder. In the sudden wind, raindrops pelted his window like handfuls of berries. Annabelle, who had been sleeping on the cot at his feet, lifted her head, listened, and began to tremble. With bulging eyes and tail pressed tight between her legs, she slid down and scrabbled under the cot, where she lay panting in the private darkness, bulky and pathetic with dread.
“Come on out, Annabelle,” whispered Egan. “It’s only rain.” But she wouldn’t budge. The rain increased and thunder boomed again. As the rumble ebbed, Egan heard a soft knock at his door and Ada, small and ghostly in a white nightdress, tiptoed into the room. Her red hair, unbraided for the night, was wild about her shoulders and her eyes were saucers of excitement.
“Now you’re going to hear it! Any minute now, Egan. Isn’t it thrilling?” She perched cross-legged on the end of the cot with her nightdress tucked primly under her toes, and cocked her head to listen.
Egan listened, too. “I don’t hear anything but rain and wind,” he whispered.
“It’ll start soon,” she answered. “But don’t be scared. Papa left a candle at the window like always, and a wishbone on the hearth. And Mother hung the onions on the door hinge.”
“What’s all that for?” asked Egan. A flash of lightning glared for an instant and they sat tensely, waiting for the thunder. It came with a roar that seemed to split the sky in two. From under the bed the pace of the dog’s panting quickened.
“I suppose that’s Annabelle under there,” whispered Ada. “She’s a big coward. Now Sweetheart, he’s out somewhere in the storm. He loves it.”
Egan ignored the slur against his friend. “What’re the candle and the wishbone for?” he asked again.
“My goodness, Egan,” sighed Ada. “Don’t you know anything? If you leave a candle in your window, the Megrimum knows you’re safe inside. When it sees the wishbone, it thinks all the food is eaten up and there’s none left to steal. And when it smells the onions on the door hinge…”
Just then, from somewhere high up in the night, a thin, wailing sound came riding down the wind. “That’s it!” hissed Ada. “Listen! There it is. First time in a month!” She hugged her knees and bounced with pleasure. Egan jumped out of bed and ran to the window, pressing his face against the cold glass. The wail dimmed and then began again, deepened to a moan, hollowed, wavered, and was lost in another crash of thunder.
At the window Egan clutched the sill and stared out at the wet, swirling darkness. Leaves and twigs, caught by the wind, hurried up, paused, and were swept away, and the rain chased in rivers down the glass. Once more, from far above, the low moan came faintly to his ears. It rose slowly, threading to a wail again, and held for a long, terrible moment. Egan stood speechless, and Ada, coming to his side, was quiet herself for once. At last the wail drooped, dwindled, died. They waited, staring out into the storm. Suddenly, as lightning lit the darkness for a bright, white instant, they both saw at the same moment a dim shape coming down the rocky side of Kneeknock Rise, just beyond the garden wall. They clutched each other. “Did you see that? What can it be? Hide! Quick!” They sprang to the cot, tearing at the quilts, and buried their heads. Thunder, farther off now, muttered briefly and then, through the thinning rain, they heard a tapping at the window. Egan’s heart thumped like a drum as he huddled frozen on the cot. The dreadful tapping came again and then, quite suddenly, Annabelle stopped panting and began to bark. At the same moment, the bedroom door burst open and they heard Aunt Gertrude calling. “Egan! What’s the matter?” Then, a shriek: “Oh, mercy! Anson! There—there at the window!” She screamed once, shrill as a whistle, and fainted into a heap. And Annabelle, emerging from under the cot, stood with her front paws on the windowsill, barking on and on against the glass, which now showed nothing but the empty, drizzling dark.
By breakfast time the news of the family’s terrible nighttime visitor had spread all over Instep, for Ada had hurried to tell a talkative neighbor or two, and any event to do with Kneeknock Rise, however mild or serious, was considered the rightful property of the entire village. The morning air was chilly after the rain, and Aunt Gertrude, limp on a bench at the hearth, beside a crackling fire, held court to a stream of eager visitors. To each she described the thunder and the moans from the top of the Rise (these they had all heard for themselves, but they listened anyway—it was her right, in view of what had happened, to speak for the entire night) and then, as they leaned breathlessly toward her, she tried, faintly but with emotion, to describe what she had seen at the window.
“A kind of a face, it was, but very white, with a wild glow around it. Two eyes, I think—though there may have been three. I don’t recall a nose at all, but the mouth was just a big black hole. Oh, dreadful, dreadful! I can hardly bear to think about it.” The visitors would cluck sympathetically and go away, some nervously, and some rather jealously. Egan heard one woman say to her friends as they left the house, “If Gertrude and Anson had only bought that weathervane I tried to sell them, it never would have happened. Everyone knows that an iron weathercock will crow at times like that and scare the danger away.”
“Nonsense,” said one of the others. “A weathervane’s no good. You have to grow poppies in your dooryard. No demon can stand the sight of poppies.”
“Poppies are all very well when they’re blooming,” said a third. “But the very best thing of all is still a bell. The devil himself will run when you ring a bell. It doesn’t even have to be a very large bell.”
The same kind of discussion went on in the little house all morning. And when Uncle Anson came home from his shop at lunchtime, Aunt Gertrude began on it again.
“See here now, Gertrude,” said Uncle Anson. “The Megrimum, if it was the Megrimum, couldn’t have seen the candle or the wishbone from that back window. And he couldn’t have smelled the onions, either.”
“But that’s just it!” cried Aunt Gertrude. “That’s the very thing that makes us out so foolish! Don’t you see? It never occurred to me before, but for all these years we’ve been assuming that if trouble came, it would come politely round to the front of the house—wipe its feet, even—and then knock on the door. The miller’s wife pointed it out, of course. In front of everyone. I’ve never been so embarrassed. And they were right to laugh at us.”
Uncle Anson frowned. “See here, Gertrude,” he said, “I don’t believe for a minute that the Megrimum did come down. He’s got his place up there and we have ours down here. I think it was just a stranger coming early to the Fair who thought it would be funny to scare somebody.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Anson. A stranger wanting to scare somebody! I’m sure I never heard of anything so mean. Yes, yes, you must be right. Well, Annabelle was some use after all, wasn’t she, with her barking? That stranger won’t come here again.”
Aunt Gertrude sighed with relief and gave Annabelle a large plate of the pancakes she had fixed for lunch. The old dog beamed at the unexpected reward and lay about all afternoon licking her syrupy whiskers contentedly. Just before supper, Egan heard his aunt say to a late-coming villager, “Well, it may have been the Megrimum and it may not. We scared it away, though. It won’t come back soon again, whatever it was. You may be sure of that!”
But later she said to Uncle Anson, “Just the same, I do believe that clock of yours with the feathers and all was bad luck, Anson. Let’s have no more of those feathers in this house again. Ever!”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Uncle Anson.
With nightfall coming on, they gathered close to one another before the fire. There was a special coziness in being together now, after all the uproar of the night before. Uncle Anson smoked his pipe and dreamed into the flames, devising new and daring clocks, while Sweetheart, curled into a furry wad in Ada’s lap, looked the very picture of innocence, a picture which from time to time he spoiled by stretching out a long foreleg and arching the claws wickedly from a taut, spread paw. Annabelle dozed on the hearth, snoring softly, and Egan poked at the fire with a stick, so nearly asleep that he jumped when Aunt Gertrude spoke to him. She was sitting on the bench, sewing, and she held out for his inspection a curious pouch-shaped object of bright, soft cloth.
“There, Egan, what do you think of that?” she asked. “It’s the last of forty sets.”
Egan looked at the object doubtfully. “It’s pretty, Aunt Gertrude. What is it?” he said.
Ada sighed. “You don’t know anything, do you, Egan?” she accused.
“Why, it’s to go over the legs of chairs or tables, dear. Couldn’t you tell?” said Aunt Gertrude, peering anxiously at her handiwork. “To keep the floor from getting scratched. Four to a chair, and four to a table, too, of course. I’ve made them for years to sell at the Fair. Mar-no-mores, I call them. They sell very well, too. I’ll send a set home with you for your mother.” She tucked the bit of cloth into her sewing basket. “There! All finished. How about a story before bed, Anson?”
Uncle Anson yawned. “Not tonight, Gertrude. Too tired. Have to get to bed early. After all, tomorrow is the Fair. Lots to do at the shop.”
Out on the road in front of the house someone in heavy boots came clumping along. Annabelle sat up, listened with lifted ears, and hurried to the door, her tail thrashing expectantly.
“No, Annabelle,” said Uncle Anson gently. “That isn’t Ott.” The footsteps faded away down the road. Annabelle’s tail drooped. She turned away from the door and lay down again heavily, her brown eyes empty. “Poor old dog,” murmured Uncle Anson.
“Why did Uncle Ott go away, anyhow?” asked Egan.
“Ott is never happy in one place for long,” said Uncle Anson. “He’s a funny fellow in some ways, and then in some ways he’s remarkable. Only thing he likes is reading and verses. And travel. He’ll be away for weeks and then he’ll get one of those wheezing spells of his. Trouble with his breathing. So he comes back here and rests till he’s better and then he wanders off again. He always took the dog along before, though. Don’t know why he left her this time. It isn’t like him, and that’s what worries us.”
“The Megrimum ate him,” crooned Ada.
“Hush, Ada!” said her father roughly. “That’s nonsense. Ott wouldn’t have climbed the Rise. He has too much sense for that. No, he’ll come back one of these days with all sorts of stories about where he’s been. I just hope he doesn’t stay away too long. Annabelle’s getting on. She won’t be able to travel about much longer.”
“How old is she?” asked Egan.
“Annabelle? Oh, well, I guess she must be eleven or thereabouts. Twelve, maybe. That’s a lot of years for a dog.” Uncle Anson stood up and stretched. “Bedtime, everyone,” he rumbled, and then he paused and turned shyly to Egan. “By the way, Nephew, would you like to see some of Ott’s verses? They’re not too bad, as a matter of fact.” He took a small sheaf of papers from the mantelpiece and held them out. “They’re really—well, that is, they’re not too bad, even if he is my brother. Look them over.”
“I’d like to,” said Egan truthfully.
“Certainly. That’s all right. Go right ahead,” said Uncle Anson, as if the whole idea had been Egan’s. He beamed at his nephew suddenly, gave him the papers, and marched off to bed.
Egan opened his bedroom window and leaned out. The dark bulk of Kneeknock Rise hunched against a sky rich in stars. There would be no storm tonight to disturb the sleep of the Megrimum. Egan leaned out farther, sniffing the chilly air, and craned his neck to see the top of the cliff. As always, it was hidden in its cuff of mist, mist made luminous now by the frosty stare of a newly risen moon. What would it be like, he wondered, if he himself were to climb to the top and slay the thing that dreamed there? He would come down again with its head on a stick and they would be so proud of him. He would be famous… A gust of wind fled by and from the clifftop came a restless sighing sound, faint and sad. Egan sighed himself, and drew in his head, closing the window softly. “The poor old thing seems harmless enough tonight,” he said to Annabelle, who was stretched once again across the foot of the cot. He scratched behind her ears and she licked his fingers. Then he settled himself on the cot, his back against the wall, and lifted the first sheet from the little pile of verses. The writing was round and graceful and clear in the candlelight and Egan began to read:
What’s on the other side of the hill?
Hush, they told me. No one knows.
I’ll climb and see for myself! I will!
Thus I bravely, gravely chose.
Up I climbed, for I had to know.
(Castles? Caverns? Oceans? Rills?)
Curiosity drew me so.
(Kings in velvet and fools in frills?)
Nobody’s going to make me stop.
I’ll climb, I said, and see. I will!
Here’s what I saw when I reached the top:
Another hill.
“Hmmmm,” said Egan. He wasn’t sure what the poem meant, but he liked the sound of it. He picked up the next sheet:
Tame as butter and wild as bears,
Annabelle snores and no one cares.
Annabelle eats without a spoon.
Nobody scolds if she sleeps till noon.
And Annabelle strolls in the marketplace
With nothing on but her awkward grace.
But I wear hats and must live with hope,
And polish my face with terrible soap
And hide my verses and show my smiles
And listen to everyone else’s trials.<
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Annabelle’s lucky. Annabelle’s free.
And she chose to be slave to the likes of me!
This was better. Egan smiled and smoothed Annabelle’s flank with his toes. “Uncle Ott loves you and so do I,” he told her. She opened one bleary eye, hiccupped, and went back to sleep. “Oh well,” he said indulgently, and picked up another verse:
I visited a certain king
Who had a certain fool.
The king was gray with wisdom got
From forty years of school.
The fool was pink with nonsense
And could barely write his name
But he knew a lot of little songs
And sang them just the same.
The fool was gay. The king was not.
Now tell me if you can:
Which was perhaps the greater fool
And which the wiser man?
Egan laid aside the verses. He blew out his candle and climbed in under the quilts, doubling his knees under his chin so as not to disturb Annabelle, who still occupied the foot of the cot. He wound his arms around the pillow and lay thinking about Uncle Ott. “I wish,” he said to himself, “that I could have seen him. He must be very wise, like the king in the poem. Or rather, like the fool. Except that I think he must be gay and wise both at the same time. Unless perhaps that’s impossible.” He tried to decide about the king and the fool but it was too immense a problem for so late at night. And, anyway, he was very sleepy. All at once he longed to stretch out his legs. His knees twitched. It was intolerable to keep them doubled up a moment longer. He tried Annabelle’s bulk with an anxious toe. Nothing happened. He pressed both feet against her back through the covers and she woke, growled once, and made herself heavy as a boulder. “Get down, Annabelle, for goodness’ sake,” he said, pushing hard. At last the old dog sighed dramatically. She heaved up, reproached him with a hard look in the dimness, and gave up her soft hollow for the cold floor, where, for perhaps a minute, she lay awash with self-pity. Then a snore. Sleep had claimed her again.
