Read The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) for Free Online

said another.
    “Now you can all see why he must be taken down below,” said the Wallekki who commanded them. This time all the men agreed.
    And so Obst, who wanted only to be a hermit living all alone in Lintum Forest, became a missionary to the Heathen.
     

CHAPTER 6
A Horse for Wytt
    Coming down from the mountain, even with Martis to help them, took Jack and Ellayne several days. They had to stop, too, to gather food. Jack was lucky enough to bag a squirrel with his slingshot, and in one of their snares they caught an animal the likes of which none of them had ever seen before.
    It was about the size of a small dog, the color of a fawn, but with white stripes instead of spots, and feet with little toes instead of hooves. Along the top of its neck stood a stiff mane of bristly black hair; and it had large, liquid eyes. Ellayne had to turn away when Martis killed it.
    “I’ve been in these mountains before,” he said, “but I’ve never seen one of these.”
    Wytt stood over it and chattered. “He thinks it’s a horse,” Jack said. “Well, it’d be about the right size horse for him. Maybe if we could catch one alive, he could learn to ride it.”
    “What do the Scriptures say about all these new kinds of animals coming along?” Ellayne said. “Remember the knuckle-bears!”
    “And the giant bird I saw that night,” Jack said, “and that great beast that ate a knuckle-bear.”
    “I’ve seen the birds, too,” Martis said. He was thinking of the monster bird that killed his horse and devoured it, and the birds that chased him and Dulayl across the plain and nearly caught them: only the Heathen horse’s speed saved them.
    He had never been so afraid of anything in all his life. But now, coming down from the mountain, those creatures seemed less fearsome. The black, mind-paralyzing terror that had almost unseated his reason—he’d lost that. He didn’t think he would ever be afraid like that again.
    “I don’t know the Old Books much better than you do,” he said. “I can’t think of any verse or fascicle that speaks of such things.”
    “It doesn’t make much sense for God to bring a lot of new animals into the world if He’s going to destroy it soon,” Ellayne said. It was all very confusing, Jack thought.
    They had the striped animal for supper, and found its meat sweet and succulent.
    “I think we’d be wise to make for Lintum Forest and get there as fast as we can,” Martis said. “We can keep to the fringes of the forest if we decide to go on to Obann. We don’t know when the war will break out, and we don’t want to be caught on the open plains when it does.”
    “My father was in the militia,” Jack said. “He fought the Heathen.”
    Jack’s father died right after Jack was born, so Jack had never known him. He envied Ellayne her family: her father and mother were still alive, and she had brothers. That they lived in a fine big house, and her father was chief councilor of Ninneburky, he didn’t envy. But he supposed that was why Ellayne refused to believe the world was soon to end: it must have been a very happy world for her.
    And yet she’d left it all behind to journey to Bell Mountain with him. No one else would have.
    “Martis,” Ellayne said, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. I hope you don’t mind. How old are you? You have a young man’s face, but your beard is as white as snow. Was it always white?”
    Martis’ hand went involuntarily to his chin. “White? My beard is white?” he said. “But it should be brown, like the hair on my head.”
    “It’s white now,” Jack said.
    Well, how long had it been since he’d looked into a mirror? Martis shrugged. “It was brown when I went up the mountain,” he said.
    “Abombalbap once met a young prince whose hair turned snow-white after he spent a night in the Accursed Tower,” Ellayne said. The old stories of Abombalbap were her chief source of knowledge concerning adventures.
    “Never