The Death of Yorik Mortwell

take my brother and run.”

“Can I repair the seal?” asked Yorik. His ghost hands passed through the stone, tingling as they did.

“No, Yorik, you can’t,” replied Doris. “And your time is gone.” Behind Doris, Yorik could hear Thomas’s burbling cries.

Yorik thrust his head into the portal. Doris screamed.

A warm stench blew over him as he blinked in a sudden wash of raw blue light. Confused at first by what he saw, the images slowly came into focus. All around him, for what seemed like thousands of miles, was a vast blue expanse. The light was not blue like the sky, but blue like the color of cold flame. Floating everywhere were rich green masses, stinking like rotting plants dug up from loamy earth. And there were Dark Ones, millions of them, numbers beyond counting. Some were small like the ones he had already seen, and some were as immense as mountains or moons.

Yorik pulled his head from the opening and turned. “Doris,” he began.

But Doris was no longer there. In her place stood Dark Doris, the girl he had met on the stone bench, the girl with the beautiful dress and expensive hat and perfect shoes. The girl with the proud laugh and flashing eyes, behind which Yorik could now see lurked the Yglhfm.

And behind her, filling the mammoth graveyard, perched on ribs and skulls and spines, were countless Yglhfm, thoroughly blocking the passage out.

This land was once ours, said Dark Doris. Now we will possess her again.

“She is dying,” said Yorik. “If Erde is dead, you can’t possess her.”

Dark Doris chuckled. She is not dying. She is only returning to our service. Now you will serve us as well. Come, Yorik.

Dark Doris drifted raggedly toward Yorik, her body dragging like a marionette on a string.

Yorik backed away. But there was nowhere to go. The Yglhfm were everywhere.

Then Thomas, crying, waddled toward his sister.

“Ds!” he cried. “Ds!”

“No, Thomas!” shouted Yorik. “Don’t touch her. You can’t—”

Thomas grabbed his sister’s shoulders.

Blue flame coursed over him, and he staggered. When he straightened, his neck cracked into place and his eyes flashed with the cruel, angry look Yorik had last seen when a large rock came hurtling at him in the elm.

Yorik, said Master Thomas. It is time.

Chapter Thirteen

A wave of chittering laughter swept over the Yglhfm horde. As Yorik listened, he felt a tremor in the air, and a lambent blue light flickered through the cavern.

Come, Yorik, said Master Thomas, sweeping forward. Lord Ravenby has broken at last. Everything changes now.

Dark Doris approached too, murmuring sweetly, her teeth bared in a maniacal smile. She and her brother glistened with new strength. The darkness beyond, full of Dark Ones, was deepening. There were more and more of them each moment, the floor of the cavern slowly filling like a pond in a downpour.

Dark Doris reached her small white hands for his.

Then Yorik spotted a faint red glow, a space on the floor of the cavern where there were no Yglhfm. The broken stone tablet lay there.

With a leap, Yorik was astride the tablet, one foot on each broken half. Power tingled in his feet.

Master Thomas chuckled, then cleared his throat. When he spoke, he sounded almost human again. “Give in, will you, Yorik? My father has. Let us take back what is ours.”

“Erde isn’t yours,” said Yorik. “And you’re not Thomas.”

Dark Doris’s pretty laugh echoed through the cavern, piercing the sea of Yglhfm whispers. “Oh, dear Yorik. Erde was ours for many millennia, more than you can imagine. Long before the humans came and spoiled things. For ten thousand years, we longed to draw her back into us, to embrace her, to drain and diminish her, to bring her back into bondage.” She licked her lips. “And now we have.”

“You can’t take her completely,” said Yorik, his eyes casting about for a means of escape. “You’re still scared of the Princess.”

“Dear Yorik,” sighed Dark Doris. “Our masters have nothing to fear anymore. Look!”

She gestured to the portal. Yorik saw that it was no longer small enough to be blocked by the tablet. Now it dwarfed even the mammoths. With faint pops, giant Yglhfm were bubbling out, one after another. Ignoring Yorik, they rumbled toward the cavern entrance, stretching to fill it completely with their vast bodies, squeezing up toward the surface.

Thousands more of the tiny Yglhfm surged around them. The cavern was filling, pools of Dark Ones flowing in swift currents all around the tablet but never close enough to touch it. He felt their hunger grasping for him, as it had outside the mews. And as before, he felt a crawling sensation of panic and fear. His head filled with nightmare images of Erde enslaved by the Yglhfm, her defenders lying dead around her.

No, Yorik thought. It’s them. The Dark Ones do this. He concentrated on Susan and the clear lament she’d sung in the attic. He hummed a few bars, and the nightmares receded.

Master Thomas growled and edged closer, grimacing as he eyed the tablet.

“Yorik,” he began—but Yorik darted forward with ghostly speed, his right hand flashing into Thomas’s pocket. Then he was back on the tablet. He opened his hand and revealed Erde’s last two mud-balls.

Master Thomas hissed and spat.

“I wanted these back,” said Yorik.

Dark Doris laughed like tinkling glass. “Yorik, Yorik, poor little ghost. Two muddy bits against a million Yglhfm? Now that Lord Ravenby has succumbed, we can consume you quite easily, you know. Why don’t you come and take my hand?” As she reached toward Yorik, she began to change. Her face hollowed, her eyes became voids, and her skin smeared and faded. Master Thomas, too, seemed to be melting.

You will ssserve usss, they hissed, reaching out with their spindly arms, the remains of their flesh blackening and burning.

“I’m not anyone’s servant any longer, ever again,” said Yorik, and he jumped.

He clung with one hand to a mammoth’s rib jutting several feet over his head. Yglhfm pooled around Doris and Thomas, then boiled up into a mound, bearing them regally upward.

Yorik mounted the rib, then slid down to the mammoth’s spine, but Yglhfm were flowing onto that too. He leapt to the next skeleton and the next as Yglhfm tumbled after him. He spied a pile of mangled and broken bones with another skeleton lying on top of it, the highest point in the cavern, its ribs poking up toward the ceiling. In three swift, vaulting leaps, he landed on the pile. All around him the dark tide rose, lapping at his feet as he ran to the final skeleton and climbed its last rib.

A cluster of small Yglhfm blocked his path.

Ghost …, they began, their formless mouths gaping.

A mud-ball struck the cluster, bowling them aside. They fell into the swirling pools below. Yorik heard children’s laughter behind him.

At the tip of the rib, Yorik leapt, his hands thrusting into the stone ceiling. Like swimming, he reminded himself, hoping. And it worked—up and up he went, swimming into the stone, swimming up as fast as he could, the chaos of the cavern passing into silence as stone became dirt. He swam until