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CHAPTER 20
Irene's Clue
That same morning early, the princess woke in a terrible fright.
There was a hideous noise in her room - creatures snarling and
hissing and rocketing about as if they were fighting. The moment
she came to herself, she remembered something she had never thought
of again - what her grandmother told her to do when she was
frightened. She immediately took off her ring and put it under her
pillow. As she did so she fancied she felt a finger and thumb take
it gently from under her palm. 'It must be my grandmother!' she
said to herself, and the thought gave her such courage that she
stopped to put on her dainty little slippers before running from
the room. While doing this she caught sight of a long cloak of
sky-blue, thrown over the back of a chair by the bedside. She had
never seen it before but it was evidently waiting for her. She put
it on, and then, feeling with the forefinger of her right hand,
soon found her grandmother's thread, which she proceeded at once to
follow, expecting it would lead her straight up the old stair.
When she reached the door she found it went down and ran along the
floor, so that she had almost to crawl in order to keep a hold of
it. Then, to her surprise, and somewhat to her dismay, she found
that instead of leading her towards the stair it turned in quite
the opposite direction. It led her through certain narrow passages
towards the kitchen, turning aside ere she reached it, and guiding
her to a door which communicated with a small back yard. Some of
the maids were already up, and this door was standing open. Across
the yard the thread still ran along the ground, until it brought
her to a door in the wall which opened upon the Mountainside. When
she had passed through, the thread rose to about half her height,
and she could hold it with ease as she walked. It led her straight
up the mountain.
The cause of her alarm was less frightful than she supposed. The
cook's great black cat, pursued by the housekeeper's terrier, had
bounced against her bedroom door, which had not been properly
fastened, and the two had burst into the room together and
commenced a battle royal. How the nurse came to sleep through it
was a mystery, but I suspect the old lady had something to do with
it.
It was a clear warm morning. The wind blew deliciously over the
Mountainside. Here and there she saw a late primrose but she did
not stop to call upon them. The sky was mottled with small clouds.
The sun was not yet up, but some of their fluffy edges had caught
his light, and hung out orange and gold-coloured fringes upon the
air. The dew lay in round drops upon the leaves, and hung like
tiny diamond ear-rings from the blades of grass about her path.
'How lovely that bit of gossamer is!' thought the princess, looking
at a long undulating line that shone at some distance from her up
the hill. It was not the time for gossamers though; and Irene soon
discovered that it was her own thread she saw shining on before her
in the light of the morning. It was leading her she knew not
whither; but she had never in her life been out before sunrise, and
everything was so fresh and cool and lively and full of something
coming, that she felt too happy to be afraid of anything.
After leading her up a good distance, the thread turned to the
left, and down the path upon which she and Lootie had met Curdie.
But she never thought of that, for now in the morning light, with
its far outlook over the country, no path could have been more open
and airy and cheerful. She could see the road almost to the
horizon, along which she had so often watched her king-papa and his
troop come shining, with the bugle- blast cleaving the air before
them; and it was like a companion to her. Down and down the path
went, then up, and then down and then up again, getting rugged and
more rugged as it went; and still along the path went the silvery
thread, and still along the thread went Irene's little rosy-tipped
forefinger. By and by she came to a little stream that jabbered
and prattled down the hill, and up the side of the stream went both
path and thread. And still the path grew rougher and steeper, and
the mountain grew wilder, till Irene began to think she was going
a very long way from home; and when she turned to look back she saw
that the level country had vanished and the rough bare mountain had
closed in about her. But still on went the thread, and on went the
princess. Everything around her was getting brighter and brighter
as the sun came nearer; till at length his first rays all at once
alighted on the top of a rock before her, like some golden creature
fresh from the sky. Then she saw that the little stream ran out of
a hole in that rock, that the path did not go past the rock, and
that the thread was leading her straight up to it. A shudder ran
through her from head to foot when she found that the thread was
actually taking her into the hole out of which the stream ran. It
ran out babbling joyously, but she had to go in.
She did not hesitate. Right into the hole she went, which was high
enough to let her walk without stooping. For a little way there
was a brown glimmer, but at the first turn it all but ceased, and
before she had gone many paces she was in total darkness. Then she
began to be frightened indeed. Every moment she kept feeling the
thread backwards and forwards, and as she went farther and farther
into the darkness of the great hollow mountain, she kept thinking
more and more about her grandmother, and all that she had said to
her, and how kind she had been, and how beautiful she was, and all
about her lovely room, and the fire of roses, and the great lamp
that sent its light through stone walls. And she became more and
more sure that the thread could not have gone there of itself, and
that her grandmother must have sent it. But it tried her
dreadfully when the path went down very steep, and especially When
she came to places where she had to go down rough stairs, and even
sometimes a ladder. Through one narrow passage after another, over
lumps of rock and sand and clay, the thread guided her, until she
came to a small hole through which she had to creep. Finding no
change on the other side, 'Shall I ever get back?' she thought,
over and over again, wondering at herself that she was not ten
times more frightened, and often feeling as if she were only
walking in the story of a dream. Sometimes she heard the noise of
water, a dull gurgling inside the rock. By and by she heard the
sounds of blows, which came nearer and nearer; but again they grew
duller, and almost died away. In a hundred directions she turned,
obedient to the guiding thread.
At last she spied a dull red shine, and came up to the mica window,
and thence away and round about, and right, into a cavern, where
glowed the red embers of a fire. Here the thread began to rise.
It rose as high as her head and higher still. What should she do
if she lost her hold? She was pulling it down: She might break it!
She could see it far up, glowing as red as her fire-opal in the
light of the embers.
But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope
against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon
recovered the level of the thread only however to find, the next
moment, that it vanished through the heap of stones, and left her
standing on it, with her face to the solid rock. For one terrible
moment she felt as if her grandmother had forsaken her. The thread
which the spiders had spun far over the seas, which her grandmother
had sat in the moonlight and spun again for her, which she had
tempered in the rose-fire and tied to her opal ring, had left her
- had gone where she could no longer follow it - had brought her
into a horrible cavern, and there left her! She was forsaken
indeed!
'When shall I wake?' she said to herself in an agony, but the same
moment knew that it was no dream. She threw herself upon the heap,
and began to cry. It was well she did not know what creatures, one
of them with stone shoes on her feet, were lying in the next cave.
But neither did she know who was on the other side of the slab.
At length the thought struck her that at least she could follow the
thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She
rose at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to
feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led
her hand up to the heap of stones - backwards it seemed nowhere.
Neither could she see it as before in the light of the fire. She
burst into a wailing cry, and again threw herself down on the
stones.
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