Milo and the Dragon Cross Read online

  “We couldn’t just leave our parents without going back to the island first,” Deryl said. “We wanted to say good-bye to our mother and the other people we’d known all our lives. It was like, all of a sudden everything had changed. We weren’t part of the island anymore. We weren’t fishermen. Everything we had ever known up to that point was rubbed out. We were strangers there.”

  “Leaving was scary, even if leaving was what we wanted,” said Teryl.

  So they went back to the only home they had ever known, said their good-byes, and returned to the mainland. Savoy met them as he had promised, and started training them as they traveled from tournament to tournament. They lost some games, but never a tournament. Their reputation grew, but they were always poor, without a sponsor, and looked on by the established teams as upstarts who had no business playing in the major leagues. That cut them out of the tournaments that would have brought larger purses and full acknowledgment.

  “But then when we saw the butterflies, Savoy told us we had to play in the End of the Earth tournament,” Teryl explained. “And that’s why we’re here.”

  8

  At the End of the Earth

  The five of them—Teryl, Deryl, Beryl, Milo, and Bori—sat in the shade of an apple tree on the side of a hill munching some honey rolls that a kindly person had given them. Except for Bori, of course, who didn’t like honey rolls. He was eating a piece of cheese that Milo had saved for him from their last meal. They were overlooking the road and noticing how many butterflies—and pilgrims—there were now.

  “There’s more every day,” Deryl observed.

  “The closer we get to the End, the more there are,” Beryl added.

  “I guess we must be getting close, then,” Milo said. “It should be a full moon in just a few more nights.”

  “So?” Deryl asked.

  “My...uhh, the person who suggested I go on the pilgrimage said that I should be there by the full moon.”

  Just then, Milo saw a pilgrim he recognized: Count Yeroen. Even from a distance he looked put upon. He had a companion—a lackey apparently—who tugged along a mule loaded with baggage. Since Milo and the boys were a ways off the road, Yeroen didn’t see them, or at least seemed to take no interest in them. Milo, for his part, was okay to let Yeroen go on his way without trying to hail him. It wasn’t something Milo felt particularly obliged to do.

  “Do you know that man?” Milo asked his companions as Yeroen passed on up the road.

  “Looks like a wizard or something,” Deryl commented.

  “We’ve seen several,” Beryl added.

  “And some witches and stuff,” Deryl noted.

  “There must be some sort of Walpurgis Night or something at the End of the Earth this year,” Teryl speculated.

  “So I’ve heard,” Milo said.

  Bori, who hadn’t said a word since they had met the boys, gave Milo a significant look and expressive wave of his tail.

  “How do you know a wizard or a witch when you see one?” Milo asked.

  “Oh, I dunno,” Teryl answered. “They just have a certain look about them.”

  “They’re serious,” said Beryl.

  “Self-absorbed,” Deryl added.

  “Do I look like a wizard?” Milo asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Deryl laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Well, what do I look like?” Milo pushed on.

  “A pilgrim! What else?” Beryl answered.

  “If you were a wizard or something,” Teryl explained, “your cat here could talk, I expect.”

  Bori gave Milo a sly, self-satisfied look that seemed to say, “There you go.”

  Milo let the topic drop.

  The day before the full moon, Milo, Bori, and his three ballplayer friends arrived at their destination. After all the long, hard days of walking, the End of the Earth was a bit of an anticlimax. Milo was even sort of sorry because as long as he had been a pilgrim, with walking his only concern, he didn’t have to worry about the Hunt and how he’d figure out what to do next.

  Not that The End wasn’t a beautiful place with a wild and windswept coast overlooking an ocean where waves smashed into the cliffs and sent white spray high into the air. But there was no town, no houses, no signs of any habitation. Milo hadn’t known what to expect, but this wasn’t it. If you looked underneath the wiry branches of the heather, you could find ruins of old stonework, as though something had been built here long ago but had fallen down and been forgotten.

  “No, nobody lives here,” Teryl said when Milo asked. “It’s been generations and generations since anyone has.”

  “Why’s that?” Milo asked, looking at the heather-covered roll of the land with flower-filled little valleys. Clusters of butterflies flitted everywhere, often swirling together in spiraling columns. They looked happy to see one another, and ready to play.

  “Just because,” Teryl said as an explanation. Then, “Come on, let’s go see the ball court.”

  The ball court was in much better condition than the rest of the place. It had been built in a deep notch in the hillside, allowing the onlookers to look down into the court from the slopes around it. The court itself was built of gigantic slabs of stone. Weeds grew out of the cracks between them, probably because there hadn’t been a game played there since the last pilgrimage. But pilgrim/slinger players were already cleaning out the debris and de-weeding it.

  “This is the oldest court there is,” Teryl told Milo. “They say it’s the birthplace of slinger.”

  Milo believed it. The monumental walls were so old that they looked geologic, and the granite surfaces were mottled with lichen. The slabs of the floor were set so closely that the cracks between them almost disappeared. The goalposts were granite uprights and were so weathered that the carved designs that had once adorned them could no longer be deciphered.

  While B, T, and D joined in cleaning the slinger court, Milo and Bori climbed the slope above it. Milo wanted to get a better view of the whole place from the knoll above, the highest point in the immediate area. After wading through the scratchy brush, they reached the top and looked around in all directions. The peak—well, the highest point on the ridge—was mostly free of brush, with a flat shelf of weathered granite that served as a fine viewing point. Milo could see plenty of other pilgrims camped out in the dips and swales. They apparently chose to take a low profile: white threads of smoke from their modest campfires were all that gave away their location.

  At first, Milo assumed that the stone underfoot was bedrock, until he noticed that the cracks in it were too geometric and regular to be the result of natural forces. In fact, when he studied them, he thought that they looked like paving, not unlike the floor of the court below. If so, they were very large stones cut and fitted with remarkable precision.

  As Milo walked to and fro, tracing the lines of the joints in an effort to decide whether they were really man-made, he noticed that a smaller stone, seemingly fit into a large one, rocked a little underfoot. Curious, he pried at the edge and found that he could lift it, if only slightly. Gravel in the joints prevented the stone from being lifted out, but after digging with the tip of his knife, he freed it. It was heavy—almost too heavy—but after some prying and tugging, he heaved it out.

  To his surprise, he found that it was set very precisely into a socket cut into the larger stone. Inside the socket a pocket had been cut, and inside the pocket someone, apparently a very long time ago, had placed another stone of an entirely different sort. He could see that even though this stone was caked with moss and old mud that had probably washed in over the ages, the stone had a polished surface and a carved shape. Prying it out of the cement of mud and moss, he saw that it was roughly disk shaped, less than half an inch thick. He rubbed at it with his thumb to clean it, and old gunk broke away to reveal four evenly spaced notches around the edges. The disk looked like a skewed “X” or a warped cross, depending on how you held it, with four short arms of even length. It was made of very ha
rd, well-polished stone, maybe a dark green jade, and it fit very neatly into his palm. It was shaped like this:

  Milo liked it immediately. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put it there. On the other hand, that had been done a very long time ago, and it was unlikely that whoever had taken the trouble to hide it so well would be coming back for it. He rubbed it until its polish came up. Old dirt still stuck in what looked like scratches on one side and pits on the other, but after studying the scratches, he decided that they really were an inscription of some sort.

  Why not keep it then? he thought. Although it could be considered an artifact in an archaeological sense, and as such should be left in place to be excavated properly, as far as he knew there were no archaeologists here to do that. He slipped the disk into his pocket and wrestled the stone cover back into place. Then he scattered loose dirt and gravel over it, brushing the debris back into the cracks so that he left the spot looking the same as he had found it.

  He wanted to see if he could find any of the other contestants, especially Analisa. As he and Bori went down the slope away from the ball court, he rubbed the disk inside his pocket, liking the smoothness of it. It felt, well, very special.

  Walking through the webs of trails in the heather, he saw several of the pilgrims he had chanced to meet on the road, but none of the other contestants. Who he did find, however, was a surprise.

  Milo heard a flute. He looked at Bori and Bori looked at him.

  “Do you think that’s who I think it is?” he asked the cat.

  “If who you think it’s the same person I think it is, I think you’re right,” the cat replied.

  They followed the notes of the flute, and sure enough, the floating tones led to Tinburkin.

  “So!” Tinburkin said, putting down his instrument. “You’ve made it this far.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?” Milo asked.

  “I thought you would,” Tinburkin said lightly. “And you have. How are you faring?”

  “Okay, I guess. I’ve seen a few things I never dreamed I’d see, and I’ve become something I would have never thought of being: a pilgrim.”

  “I’d heard about the Crane King, and something to do with his Grail,” Tinburkin said. “Do you know anything about it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself, but you’ve got time, I think. How do you like being a pilgrim?”

  “It’s okay. Did I do the right thing by guessing the pilgrimage could be the next clue?”

  “I hear you came with some friends,” Tinburkin said, not answering Milo’s question. Or did it? You never knew with Tinburkin what an answer was. Milo wondered what Tinburkin didn’t know about his affairs. “Yeah, some slinger players.”

  “That’s good. Have you seen any of the other Hunt contestants yet?”

  “No.”

  “They’re around. Everybody seems to have arrived for the slinger tournament in time. Do you know yet what you need to do next?”

  “No. I guess I need to puzzle that out, but I haven’t a clue how.”

  “Don’t worry. The others haven’t figured it out either.”

  “What are you doing here?” Milo asked him.

  “Pilgrim. There hasn’t been an End of the Earth pilgrimage in my lifetime, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Can you tell me what this whole pilgrimage thing is about?”

  “Didn’t Ayuthaya explain that to you? It’s about coming to the End of the Earth at precisely the right time.”

  “I still don’t get how that’s supposed to help me.”

  “Someone from your own homeland said something like this: eighty percent of success is showing up. You showed up. You need only the last twenty percent.”

  “You’ve been to where I’m from?” Milo asked in surprise.

  “I’ve been to a great many places. I’m a Ranger, after all. It’s what I do.”

  “A Ranger?”

  “Sort of like a monitor or a scout for magical affairs.”

  “But you don’t exactly answer questions, right?”

  “Oh, I answer questions. You just aren’t ready to understand answers.”

  “Then tell me what this pilgrimage is about. I’ve walked for weeks without knowing why, and not meeting anybody who did—at least, not really. All I know is that Ayuthaya and Blai said I should.”

  “And you trusted them?”

  “Yes. Shouldn’t I?”

  “Don’t ask me who you should trust. How do you know you can trust me?” Milo didn’t answer that. Two could play that game, he decided. “I’ll ask you another question,” said Tinburkin. “Are you stronger today than you were when you started your walk?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Then you’ve already gained something tangible from it, not so? What else have you learned?”

  “That I still haven’t got a clue. Those other Hunt contestants...they all got here okay. I don’t think they had to ask Ayuthaya and Blai where to go and how, like I did.”

  “They had to walk every day to get here just like you did. You knew nothing about the pilgrimage at all, but it was something they’ve known about all their lives. Yet you got here just as quickly as they did. I’d say you’ve learned a lot.”

  “If you say so,” Milo answered in resignation.

  “I can tell you something about the history of the End of the Earth pilgrimage, if you like,” Tinburkin offered.

  Without waiting for Milo’s consent, Tinburkin launched into his story. “Long, long ago, the Elder Race built a special place here. They probably came the same way you did, following the migration of butterflies, just as pilgrims have ever since. They may have known why the butterflies come here and why it was here that they built their ritual ball court to commemorate their legends. I don’t know why, but they knew a great many things, especially about the primeval world. As newer races came into the land, the Elder Race taught much of their lore to those who wished to learn. Some, but not all. They taught the newer people skills, trades, and ways of thinking. They helped the newcomers to develop the arts that we often call civilization. But not all the contacts were peaceful. Some of the newcomers were quarrelsome and unwilling to live in peace side by side with the Elder Ones.

  “The people of the Elder Race were very long lived but always few in number, while the newcomers multiplied quickly. As time went on, the numbers of Elder Race dwindled even more. Some, worn down by struggle with the newcomers, left these shores and vanished over the seas. They sailed away to the West in ships from this very place. That’s why it’s called the End of the Earth. Legends have it that they went to a refuge hidden from us. We’re known as the race who displaced them.

  “As they left, they took most of their secrets with them, leaving behind fragments and structures that they had built, and also what they had taught those of the newer peoples who had been willing to learn from them.”

  He stopped, cocking his head to one side to fix Milo with a teasing look.

  “In your homeland, you have very similar stories about an older race. And over time, you’ve reduced them in stature, but not in awe. You call them fairies. Or gods. In either case, they aren’t around to be encountered anymore, though some say there are a few of them to be found in special places.

  “But of course, you’re one of the few people who would know about this better than anyone else, right?” Tinburkin pointed out.

  “What do you mean?” Milo asked, with an answer already dawning on him. “Do you mean Ayuthaya and Blai?”

  Tinburkin nodded. “Do you think that just anyone can walk up to the door of the Glass Tower—or of Crane Castle, for that matter—and knock to ask for dinner and directions?”

  “I...don’t really know,” Milo said. “But I think Tivik may have.”

  “Tivik, if you recall, is a highly accomplished warlock and seer, as all the other Hunt contestants are. How he, or any of the others, might have guessed the clue re
lies on his or her skill in deciphering evidence and lore. In Tivik’s case, I believe he was led by the chance sighting of the White Hind, a huge stroke of luck that was enough in itself to tell him what he needed to know to discover the next clue. But the renewed migration of the butterflies worked the way a neon sign does in your land to tell the Hunt contestants where to look.”

  “It wasn’t obvious to me,” Milo protested.

  “Were you there? Did you find the Glass Tower? Did the butterflies lead you here?”

  “Yes...but I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Milo, did you get here? Yes. How you did it isn’t significant. Doing it is what counts. Don’t discount your accomplishments because you achieved them in a way different from how you assume it should be done.”

  He stopped chiding Milo so he could get back to his story.

  “The End of the Earth was the last stronghold of the Elder Race,” he told Milo. “When the last of them left, it fell into ruin, but our traditions reminded us that it was a special place and that it retains connection to ancient wisdom. It became a place for pilgrimage and the reenactment of the ritual tournament.”

  “I guess that means that this slinger game is more than a sport.”

  Tinburkin gave him another mysterious look. “Some still think so. Maybe it is. People tend to find what they seek and overlook what they didn’t think to look for.”

  “So the whole point of the pilgrimage is...?”

  “...to submit to what you find.”

  Milo didn’t think this conversation was likely to get any more enlightening. “So now that I’m here, what am I supposed to do? What do the pilgrims do once they get here?” he asked.

  “It might be a good idea to watch your friends play in the slinger tournament.”

  The three ballplayers were back at camp, simmering a pot of stew for supper.

  “We’ve seen some of the other teams,” Beryl told Milo as he and the cat came up to the fire.

  “We’ve already beaten some of them,” said Deryl confidently.