Leo whirled on his cousin then, his fists clenched. “Dragons eat you, Foxbrush!” he growled and stormed from the room. Foxbrush’s laughter trailed behind him as he went.
He was not scared of the monster, Lumé help him! Neither was Leo scared of bad weather, or even of his nursemaid’s wrath. He pounded up a flight of stairs to his bedroom, retrieved Bloodbiter and his rain hat, then galloped all the way back down to the lower floors. Sneaking like a ghost so as not to be caught by the household staff, he slipped out into the wet of the garden. The brim of his hat immediately flopped to his ears under the heavy torrents.
He slogged across the wet garden until he found Mousehand tying up some drooping starflower vines. The gardener did not notice the boy until Leo burst out with, “Is there really a monster?”
Mousehand cast a sideways glance Leo’s way but continued his work. His gnarled fingers didn’t want to twist the twine the way they once had, and he had to be methodical to accomplish his tasks. So he let the boy stand there, breathing hard and getting more drenched by the moment, until Mousehand was quite done. Then he brushed his hands on his trousers and turned his sopping beard to look down into Leo’s pale but determined face.
“What do you think, young master?”
“I think you know,” said Leo, clutching his beanpole with both hands. “I think you’ve always known. I think you know more than anyone else on this mountain.”
Mousehand stuck out his chin, and rainwater dripped heavily from the end of his beard. “I don’t know ’bout that. What I know is just different from what everybody else knows.”
“There is a monster, isn’t there.”
Suddenly the gardener’s face went dark, as though all the storm clouds flowing in from the ocean were gathering just above his face. His eyes flashed like lightning, and he glared down at Leo.
“Boy,” he said, “if you ain’t figured out by now that there ain’t no monster on this mountain save that which you brought yourself, you’re a greater fool than you look.”
Leo took a step back. Mousehand’s face was so dark, so angry, so . . . disappointed. Leo gripped Bloodbiter’s Wrath and backed away, unable to break his gaze from those eyes.
Then Leo turned and pelted across the yard, his boots slurping in the mud. He was through the garden gate and up the beaten path in a matter of minutes, still running. He broke into the forest where the red-scarfed sapling indicated, the ground slick with wet leaves beneath him. But he climbed the deer trail leading up, past the place where he had first met Rose Red and her goat, past the turn that led to the Lake of Endless Blackness (which must be overflowing by now, he thought, with all this rain). He climbed through the gloom and the rumble of thunder until at last the trees began to give way and he reached the higher slopes of the mountain.
They’re all lying to me, he thought. There is a monster. I know that boy didn’t make it up. There is a monster, and I’m going to find it.
He wondered about Rose Red as he climbed. He hadn’t seen her in a week, had not come across her in the woods all afternoon. Perhaps the monster had taken her, or taken that dragon-eaten goat. All because those who admitted it existed were too afraid! Like Rose Red, always thinking up excuses not to hunt it. And the rest pretended it never was.
Well, Leo was not to be put off any longer. He would find that cave again, and when he did, he knew he would also find that monster.
But the first flush of determination wore off as the rain continued to pour and he continued to get nowhere. Out in the open above the forest, there was no protection from the gales, and he started to shiver. The stones were slippery too, and several times he fell and hit his knees or elbows hard.
“All right,” he muttered as he used Bloodbiter’s Wrath to support himself. “All right, this wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. Oof ! ” He fell again, and this time he remained where he landed for a long moment. The rain was beginning to lessen, and when he looked up, Leo thought he glimpsed the sun shining through in patches, low on the horizon. The afternoon was wearing out and evening drawing on. The rocks loomed lonely and dark around him, and the forest waited below.
“I’m lost,” Leo whispered. Somehow, it was better to admit it out loud than to sit there pretending otherwise. He’d climbed all over this part of the mountain, and still there was no sign of the cave or even of the impossible rock face up which Rose Red had led him that day so many weeks ago. Nothing, as though it had all been a dream.
The rain beat in one final rush like the last roll of a drum. Then it stopped. Thick clouds churned overhead, but the mountain was silent without the sounds of the storm.
Leo pushed himself back up on his feet. No point, as far as he could see, in wandering about the mountaintop searching for a cave that he must have imagined. He huffed a few irate curses between his teeth and made his way carefully back down the rocks and into the shelter of the forest.