Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  (Before the Beginning Began)

  In the Village of Thistle

  Beyond the Village

  Cat the Dog and Willie Wimple

  The Short Cut, the Long Cut, and the Curious Storm

  A Very Civilized Place

  Wild Ravening Beasts

  No Room for Wiggling

  The End of the Rope

  Down and Down and Further Down

  Heading Home, and Arriving

  (After, and After That)

  Darling reader, gentle...

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This book is for

  Mose and Lewis.

  My boys.

  —L.S.

  (BEFORE THE BEGINNING BEGAN)

  OUR STORY doesn’t begin Once upon a time or Back in the days of yore. It didn’t happen as long ago as all that, but still it happened before televisions and interstate highways, and even before your grandma was a little girl. Back then, the world was a different place.

  Nowadays people can visit anywhere they please, because of silver airplanes and big ocean liners. Nowadays people can go to France or Zimbabwe, Topeka or Kathmandu, and be home in time for dinner. But back when this story began, the world had tiny corners—pockets nobody ever visited because it was too hard to get there.

  In one such corner of the world, beyond two continents and across a wide ocean (nowhere near France or Topeka), there was a corner of the world that was chockfull of rolling hills and jagged mountains, rivers and streams, and walled villages. And in that land, which was called the Bewilderness, there was a village called Thistle. And just inside the village walls of Thistle there was a blue barn. And beside the barn—close enough that the red-and-white cows sometimes munched on the window-box geraniums—there was a tiny house.

  It was a stone house—a white one—with a thatched roof and a smokestack that chuffed cheerfully. In the house there was a family that consisted of a papa, a mama, and two little girls named Sally and Lucy. The family was happy almost all of the time, which is as happy as anyone can really expect to be.

  Sally was only two years old, but she was helpful, quiet, and well behaved. Her brown hair hung straight and was never mussed, and somehow her shoes stayed remarkably clean. Everything about Sally was clean—in fact, her very favorite game of all was helping Mama fold the dish towels, which is unusual for a child. Sally was good.

  Lucy was not. She was a tiny baby—fresh and bright and snappy, with a peach glow and a head of rosy curls—but she screamed all the time. She screamed when she was being put to sleep and when she was waking up, and sometimes she even screamed when she was snoring. She screamed when she was eating mashed peas, so that the peas fell out of her mouth in a blurp. She screamed when her papa chucked her under the chin and when he left in the morning to milk the cows. And she screamed loudest whenever Sally tried to hold her, because Sally’s arms were too small. So sometimes Lucy slid free and landed with a thunk on the floor.

  In fact, the only time that Lucy didn’t scream was when her mama held her in the rocker and sang to her softly. Since nobody liked to hear Lucy scream, her mama sang to her most of the day, and often at night. She sang every song she knew, and some she didn’t really know. When she ran out of songs to sing, she made up tunes of her own and sang the words from her cookbook:

  Oh, take two cups of sugar,

  And put ’em in a pot,

  Then add a bunch of raisins,

  And stir it up a lot.

  When it gets to bubbling,

  Chop an apple in,

  And now I can’t remember

  Where I put my rolling pin!

  When her voice wore out, she hummed. And Lucy listened and cooed all the while. But Lucy’s favorite song, the song that put her right to sleep every single time, was a song that her mama had learned when she was a little girl herself, before she came to live in Thistle. The song that Lucy loved so dearly and so quietly was a song that the goatherds sang on the slopes of the Scratchy Mountains. Lucy’s mama called it the “Song of the Mountain,” and it went like this:

  Though winter snows may freeze us,

  and spring storms flood our beds,

  We’re glad to feel the mountain grass

  is pillowing our heads.

  Though goats may be our closest friends,

  and life is simple here,

  We like it on the mountain,

  where the air is sharp and clear.

  We have no use for fancy things,

  so keep your lace and jams.

  We have no need for company,

  just labor for our hands.

  And goats to sleep beside us,

  and bread to keep us full.

  And stars above to guide us,

  and blankets made of wool.

  We think of you with kindly thoughts,

  but seek the simple life.

  We choose the mountain over

  all the joys of hearth and wife.

  We’ve felt the sun from heaven,

  and breathed the mountain air

  And now it seems that city life

  is too much life to bear.

  By the time Lucy was one year old, she no longer needed to be sung to sleep every four minutes. She had discovered that there were other kinds of trouble to make and that most trouble was best executed in silence. So she stopped screaming and began crawling, eating bugs, opening cupboard doors, and pulling on her mother’s skirts. She was no less trouble, but at least she was quieter. In fact, she never made a peep.

  Each day her parents tried to coax her to speak. Her mama would lean over her and whisper, “Mama? Papa? Blankie?” And Lucy would look up at her mother and open her lips as if she wanted to speak. But then her little mouth would snap shut defiantly, and she’d return to pulling the dog’s ears or chewing on a chair leg. Her father would toss her in the air, hoping to hear her scream, but it never worked. Usually she just drooled on him.

  Lucy never spoke at all. She was silent as a stone until one night when she was two years old. Lucy’s mama was putting her girls to bed, and as she tucked them in, she began to sing the goatherd song. “Though winter snows may freeze us…,” she began.

  Suddenly Lucy sat bolt-upright in bed and opened her mouth. “…and spring storms flood our beds,” she sang in a warbling little-girl voice.

  Lucy’s mama shrieked and clapped her hands to her mouth. Sally shrieked too, and Lucy’s papa came running from the next room. “Hello? What’s all this screaming about?”

  Lucy’s mother pointed and stammered, but Lucy kept right on singing. She had never said Papa or Mama. She had never said yes or no or dog or cat or Lucy or uh-oh. She had never uttered a word, but now she was making up for lost time. Lucy sang the entire song from memory as her family stared in surprise. When she was done, she lay back down, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and closed her eyes. She had sung herself to sleep.

  In the long silence that followed, Sally turned over like the good four-year-old girl that she was and went to sleep. But then, the very next day, something terrible happened. To Lucy and Sally, who barely remembered, and to their poor papa, who could never forget.

  …she’d return to pulling the dog’s ears…

  Yes, in the time shortly after Once upon a time—in the little white stone house beside the blue barn—in the village of Thistle—in a corner of the world known as the Bewilderness—in the shadow of the Scratchy Mountains, where the goatherds sang—something terrible happened.

  Just as it was getting dark, and with no warning whatsoever…Mama was there
, and then…she was gone.

  IN THE VILLAGE OF THISTLE

  MANY YEARS passed, because that is what happens, even when something very sad has taken place. It is the nature of years to pass, and the nature of little girls to grow. Sally and Lucy grew tall and strong and very busy, with birthdays and chores, sneezes and haircuts, school and snowstorms. Sally and Lucy learned to swim and read and bake cookies. Just like you.

  Lucy grew to be the loveliest little milkmaid in the village of Thistle, or anywhere else in the Bewilderness. She had striking red corkscrew curls that danced wildly down her back. She had exceedingly long lashes that fringed the biggest, bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. Her cheeks were pink, but her skin everywhere else was the creamy white of the milk in her milk pails. And she moved quick like a feather—dipping and swinging her buckets as she went, in a kind of dance. From a distance, Lucy seemed just perfect.

  But sometimes our outsides do not quite match our insides. This was indeed the case with Lucy. Because underneath her skirts, Lucy’s knees were scratched and scraped from tree climbing and puddle jumping. And when she opened her mouth, people meeting her for the first time were always startled by the sharp tone of her voice. There was no way around it—Lucy was bossy.

  Lucy’s best friend was a boy named Wynston. He happened to be a prince, but that wasn’t his fault. It also wasn’t his fault that his ears stuck out or that he was a little too thin and tall for his feet, so that he often stumbled over himself. Lucy didn’t mind.

  Lucy and Wynston spent most of their days together. They wandered through wide fields of goldenrod, sneezing where they walked. They gathered bird eggs in the hills and they paddled in the river, where tiny silver fish tickled their ankles. They swung on vines, sang silly songs, and argued. They enjoyed arguing, and they were very good at it.

  Often their arguments revolved around how Wynston didn’t like to get his shoes muddy or stain his breeches, which Lucy found utterly silly. She’d wrinkle her nose, toss her long red curls, and laugh at him.

  “You know, Wynston, some princes journey to faraway lands in great sailing vessels, or tromp through frozen wastelands in search of magical beasts—but noooo, not you. You wouldn’t want to upset your papa by spoiling your best vest!”

  Wynston had been raised in the castle and trained to keep himself tidy, so there were limits to just how messy he’d get. Lucy, on the other hand, took great pride in her stained skirts and ran barefoot whenever she could get away with it, which was often.

  But cleanliness wasn’t all that Lucy and Wynston fought about, not at all. They argued about everything, about whether the field was greener than it had been the day before, and about whether the moon followed the sun or the sun followed the moon. Lucy and Wynston argued about what to eat for lunch, but not until after they’d finished arguing about where to eat it.

  Every day, when Lucy met Wynston at the cobbled corner of Mill Road and Willow Way, she stuck out her milkmaid tongue and said (in her sharp, loud voice) something like, “You’re slower than a sleepy snail on a cold morning, slower than a turtle in the road!”

  And every day Wynston tapped her on the nose and replied, “I can’t help it if your father’s a jackrabbit and your mother was a hummingbird.” Then he straightened the thin circlet of gold he was, by law, required to wear on his head at all times. Or he pushed aside his floppy brown bangs. Or he tucked in his purple velvet shirt. (Later, when he wasn’t looking, Lucy usually untucked it in the back, because she could.)

  Most days, Lucy’s sister, Sally, complained that Lucy and Wynston gave her a headache with their bickering. Wynston’s royal father, King Desmond, just shook his chubby royal finger and said in his most royal voice, “Wynston, my boy, this isn’t fitting for a prince.”

  Wynston smarted when his father said such things, but King Desmond was cranky about almost everything Wynston did, so Wynston didn’t always listen. Certainly he didn’t listen when the sun was sunning and the fields were fielding. Not with Lucy waiting at the gate with her tin lunch pail, tapping her toe impatiently and squinting her blue eyes against the sun. “Oh, Wynston, do you ask your father for permission to use the bathroom too?”

  These sun-drenched days passed pleasantly, and became weeks, which turned into months. But with each season, Lucy had a little more milk to deliver and more butter to churn in the creamery behind the barn. Meanwhile, Wynston had new royal duties. He learned how to count the chests of gold in the tower and how to sign his name with big swirly letters in purple ink. By the time he was twelve, he’d learned how to properly shine rubies against his shirt, and precisely when to look disapproving. His father had even shown him the hidden doors to the secret passageways in the cellar, though nobody could remember where they went.

  Then one Saturday Wynston was practicing his royal walk on the stone staircase. King Desmond cleared his throat, patted his brocaded belly, twisted his impressive silver mustache, and said, “Ahem! Wynston, my boy, the time has come.”

  “For what?” asked Wynston.

  “For what?” repeated the king with a hint of humor in his blustery voice. He ran his fingers, which flashed with gold and diamonds, through his thinning hair. “For what? For life! For you to grow up, my lad.”

  “Grow up?”

  “Yes indeed! All the ruby-shining in the world won’t make you a good king if you haven’t got a suitable queen, and a suitable queen begins as a suitable princess.”

  “But I’m only twelve,” said Wynston, “and I’ve kind of got my hands full right now, with lessons and lectures and practices. Besides, I’ve got forever to think about queens.” His voice wobbled and threatened to crack.

  “That’s what you think,” answered the king impatiently. “Why, with all the various negotiations, meetings, royal visitations, contracts, and tournaments—not to mention the party-planning that your aunt’s got to take care of—it’ll be a good seven or eight years before we can turn a prospective princess into a suitable wife for you. And if you decide on a foreign girl, say, from Flandeurestine, or Montrapucinonininonino, and she has to learn our language, you can add another two or three years to the process. So we better get cracking now.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Wynston, feeling a little nervous. “I guess I didn’t realize—”

  “Of course you didn’t…,” the king interrupted.

  “But I suppose you’re right….”

  “Of course I am, but it’s nice that we’re in agreement. Handy, since I’ve already made arrangements for you to meet with a princess this week. Halcyon is her name.”

  “So fast?” Wynston made a face and scrunched his nose in an odd lopsided way.

  “Yes, my boy. Right away. It’s time to get down to the business of Queening!”

  Wynston looked up from his curtsy and nodded his head. But when he did, he lost his balance, stumbled on a crooked stair, and fell in a heap on the dusty floor. The king, his head full of plans and contracts, just stepped over Wynston as he made his way up the stairs. Wynston stayed on the floor until dinner, thinking about queens and princesses, and feeling bewildered. He didn’t even move when a mouse scurried past his nose.

  The next day, Lucy couldn’t find Wynston. He wasn’t waiting at the crossroads as usual. So Lucy stopped at the back door of the castle on her way to pick blackberries, but Masha the cook shook her head. “Sorry, my love. I haven’t seen Wynston anywhere. And there’s strange business in the castle—itchy business.”

  “But it’s Sunday!” said Lucy. “We always go berrying on Sunday, and Wynston knows I need his help—for carrying all the berries, and in case there’s a wasp or something. Plus, he knows I hate to go by myself.”

  “You get a little lonely, my sweetums?”

  “That’s not why!” exclaimed Lucy, though she blushed as she said it.

  “Oh, Lucy, there’s no need for embarrassment,” said Masha. “Nobody likes to be lonely. But even so, I can’t stand here chattering today. I’ve got to dust the dustbins, s
hine the curtains, and polish the cats. And the king wants fourteen different kinds of pie. Fourteen!”

  “Fourteen kinds of pie?” said Lucy. “What could anyone possibly need with fourteen kinds of pie?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Masha. “When I asked him, he said, ‘Well, Masha, we need every flavor you can think up, since we don’t know what kind they like over there.’ Over where is what I’d like to know. As if there’s a place where folks don’t like a nice cherry pie. A crazy place that’d be! Nevertheless, I need to make the pies, so if you’d be so kind as to bring me any extra blackberries you find, they’d be appreciated.” Masha wandered away, knotting her apron strings in frustration and mumbling, “Lemon, apple, mince, strawberry-rhubarb, rhubarb-strawberry. Oh heavens!”

  Lucy sat on the castle gate to think for a minute, and two fat tears began to roll down her cheeks. She rubbed them away furiously, but they came right back. Lucy hated to cry! Usually, she could make up a song or think of a silly face Wynston had made and the tears would stop. Only, today no songs were coming to her, and Wynston was the last person she needed to think about. So she balled up her fists, hopped down from the fence, and marched away with a sense of purpose. She wouldn’t let him ruin her Sunday.

  The only problem was that when Lucy was feeling cranky, she always talked to Wynston. Now that she was fussy at Wynston, there was nobody to talk to. She tried to think of who might listen to her frustrations, but nobody came to mind.

  Sally? Sally was boooring, and prissy besides. Papa? A girl couldn’t talk about feelings like this to her father, especially not Lucy’s quiet, stern father, however nice he was on the inside. No, there was really nobody to talk to…nobody at all. Lucy felt…lonely.

  “If only my mother were here, I wouldn’t need Wynston at all,” Lucy said to a gray squirrel carrying an acorn. “Yes, Mama would know what to do about a goofy prince.”

  The squirrel looked doubtful.

  “Yes, she would so too,” added Lucy indignantly. “Mamas are very good for talking, and feelings, and stuff…or that’s what I’ve heard anyway.”