Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
The road deteriorated rapidly after they left the ruins. Where it forked, the better of the two roads always curved south, but they never took it. Occasionally a track would taper off to the north, but these were overgrown, and soon vanished into the wilds. If anyone used them they did so seldomly. Travellers sometimes set out for the north, but they rarely returned. There was something fearsome about the mountains that loomed on the northern horizon, and there were old tales of horrors that came down out of those mountains in the worst winters. Unidentifiable dead things sometimes floated down the Yar from the mountains; these were quietly burned, or else buried outside the Wall.
To the east now the hills grew steeper, rising towards a fog which would occasionally part to reveal mountainsides covered with thick forest. The curves in the road tightened as they ascended. The farmlands were now interspersed with stands of forest, and dark woods frowned like brows on the ridges.
The cart was not sprung, and with each pothole it jounced up like a bucking horse. Pickle, impervious, trudged on. When the cart became bogged on a steep pass, she simply stood there with her head down, waiting for the humans to do whatever they had to do. Ward thought she could have pulled the cart out if she wanted to.
Mr. Slooper cheerfully freed the cart using a pump-like contraption with a rubber balloon on the end of it, which he inserted under the cart and pumped full of air by depressing a bulb with his foot. The De-Bogulator, as this invention was called, was evidently a test unit, and being used for the first time. It was a great success, and Mr Slooper was ecstatic as they all got back in the cart.
Pickle plodded on.
The land about them grew steeper and wilder. The road wound about itself so tightly now that Ward soon lost all sense of direction. Occasionally he spied a cottage through the trees, laid snug against a hillside, a plume of smoke rising from its chimney. Fast-running streams tumbled down out of the mountains. Meadows bright with flowers in purple and yellow drowsed on sunny hilltops. Giant trees crept closer and closer to the road, until they reached over it, forming a dripping canopy overhead. Ward could smell the streams tumbling down through the valleys, rotting tree-trunks and leaf-fall, the musky scent of the animals that moved through the undergrowth. The calls of birds sounded through the trees like distant bells. They were like sounds heard in dreams.
They rounded a steep hillside and came suddenly upon Croakumshire. It lay on the other side of a gully through which the road dipped, crossing a stone bridge so black with moss that it was like something that had grown there. The town lay in a great clearing, like a fat sweet. The forest leaned in towards it on all sides. It was a jumble of quaint plump cottages, dim shops, and crooked alleyways, sprawling across the side of a steep hill. A black building stood at the summit of the hill. It seemed carved from the hill itself, and was so tall that its narrow spire pierced the clouds. Its shadow lay over the town.
Pickle led them across the bridge and they rolled into town. Dogs barked, chickens squawked, men roared, hammers clinked, ponies snorted, children laughed, and carts rattled. Ward smelled woodsmoke and coal soot, manure, fresh hay, blackleaf, wet slate, sawn wood, and something he couldn't place, aromatic and smoky like blackleaf, but of an altogether different cast. He couldn't decide whether or not he liked it.
Mr. Slooper brought Pickle to a halt. "I'll get her settled in," he said to Mrs Slooper, nodding at a nearby stables. "Meet you at the town hall dear."
"Come on," Slops said to Ward. "We'll go see her straight away."
"Mind your manners," Mrs Slooper said. "She doesn't tolerate insolence. If you come back as a frog it'll be nobody's fault but your own."
"She can't turn people into...?" Ward said.
Slops shrugged. "Knowing my luck."
Ward mulled over this possibility as he followed Slops across the boggy street.
"Do we need to make an appointment?" Ward said. He had caught up to Slops on the other side of the road, and they now proceeded together down the street.
"She knows we're coming."
"How?"
"Just does. You'll see."
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