The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [90]
“When Daedalus mentioned the King of Crickets,” Charles said to Bert, “I thought you were going to be felled in a faint. What was it about the name that bothered you so?”
Bert suppressed a shudder. “It’s another old story, one that proved too dark even for the Brothers Grimm,” he said, “although it was Jacob who originally retold the tale in one of the Histories.
The other wolves had already begun to growl…
“The King of Crickets is the quintessential boogeyman,” Bert explained. “The movement in the dark. The creature under the bed. The monster in the closet. He is Nightmare personified, and he is very, very real.
“There are many such monsters in the world. They have always existed, and probably always will. But what frightened me was the idea that the King of Crickets was also a Pan. That would explain how his legend grew among the children, more so than grown-ups.”
“Do you think the King of Crickets and Orpheus are one and the same,” asked John, “since the myth originated with him?”
“I hope not, lad,” Bert said, shuddering again. “From what Daedalus said, Orpheus’s only motivation in taking the children was to bring them here, to be playmates to Hugh and William. But according to Jacob Grimm’s History, the children taken by the King of Crickets were never heard from again.”
“Why is it that all fables and fairy tales involve children in peril?” wondered Charles. “Was there some great assembly of storytellers that decided the best tales to tell children should also frighten them to death?”
“It’s the Longbeards who do it,” said Jack, playing hopscotch with his own shadows. “They tell us those stories to frighten us into behaving, so that we’ll value their protection. But we don’t listen, because we know the one thing that grown-ups forget….
“All stories are true. But some of them never happened.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Gilded Army
Unlike the crossing between Croatoan Island and Haven, which could be forded at low tide, the gulf between Haven and Centrum Terrae could only be traversed by bridge.
The west side of Haven ended in a high bluff, to which the bridge was anchored. It was constructed of thick cables and ancient wood, which, although weathered and faded, had once been painted in the colors of the rainbow. John recognized the architecture as being Scandinavian and was nearly too fascinated by it to cross.
“There are descriptions of a ‘Rainbow Bridge’ in some of the writings related to the Eddas,” he said excitedly. “I wonder if this has any relation to those?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Bert said. “Stellan’s specialty was Norse mythology, and there are several islands in the Archipelago that have deep roots in the Eddaic stories.”
“I say,” Charles commented, “wasn’t the original compiler of the Norse stories, Snorri Sturluson, one of our predecessors?”
A quick check in the endpapers of the Imaginarium Geographica showed that Charles was correct: the thirteenth-century scholar had indeed been a Caretaker.
“Amazing,” said John. “I wonder if Sturluson ever came to the Underneath, then? There were tales about the great serpent—a dragon, basically—that stood guard at the roots of the world-tree, Yggdrasil. That bears a great similarity to the story about the Golden Fleece and the dragon that guarded it.”
“Maybe there were clues in the Eddas that can help resolve this,” suggested Charles. “What happened to the dragon and the tree?”
“According to the myth, the dragon was slain, the tree felled, and the world died in fire and ice,” Bert replied.
“Oh, well,” said Charles. “Never mind, then.”
The bridge, while old, was sturdy and stable, and they were able to traverse it in a matter of minutes. What they found on the other side John immediately named an “ur-forest.” A first-growth, dawn-of-man forest, with trees of such immense stature that every other forest in the world might have been only an image reflected in a child’s looking glass.
It was dark,