A light.
At first faint and distant, glowing from deep, deep down, no more than a pinprick but impossible to miss in that darkness. It grew, and now Leo could see ripples moving on the surface of the water. The light continued to grow, and he thought it might be fire, but that was impossible, so deep underwater. Strange too, for this pool by which he knelt couldn’t be more than a few feet deep, and that light seemed to shine from leagues away. And still it grew, drawing nearer and nearer.
Suddenly it was blinding. Leo put up his arm to shield his face as the light burned away the shadows in a brilliant flash. Then it was gone, replaced by a glow that gleamed out of the water to illuminate the walls of the cavern. Leo lowered his arm and looked in the pool.
He saw the monster.
The next moment, Leo was on his feet and storming from the cave as fast as he could in that semidarkness. It wasn’t fear that drove him, breathless, out through the cave mouth and into the biting cold of the mountain air. It was anger. Blinding, unreasonable anger.
He stood panting with his back to the cave, grinding his teeth and twisting his beanpole in both hands. He heard Rose Red’s soft footsteps behind him but wouldn’t turn to look at her. His hands strained as though he would like to break the pole in half.
“Leo?” Rose Red spoke softly.
He smashed his beanpole against the nearest rock, and it rang through the bones of his hand. “Dragon’s teeth!” he swore and smacked the rock again. “Dragon’s teeth! Dragon’s teeth and fire and tail! Why did you do that to me, Rosie?”
“You wanted to see—”
“A reflection. That’s all there was! After all that, dragging me all over this dragon-kissed mountain, scaring me to death with caves and spooky voices . . . Just a reflection!”
“Leo, I—”
“This was the rottenest idea you ever had, Rosie, and it’s not funny! You should have told me there was nothing to see, not run me ragged just for a glimpse of . . . of my own fool face!” He started walking then, hardly caring where he went, scraping his beanpole on the rocks behind him as he went. “That was rotten, and now I’m going to be in more trouble than you can imagine, being out so late. They’re probably worried sick, and they’ll never let me out of their sights again. And for nothing! Nothing, you hear?”
“I hear you, Leo,” Rose Red whispered.
Without a word, she guided him back down the mountain, listening to his rants all the way. Then she led him through the forest, seeing him all the way to the road, for it was too dark for him to make his own way. He did not say good-bye to her, only waved an arm angrily and burst into a run, as though the Black Dogs themselves pursued him, all the way to Hill House’s gardens.
He was scolded soundly and sent to bed with threats of all kinds hanging over him. Yet Leo didn’t care. He was too furious as he crawled under his covers that night. But as soon as his head touched the pillow and he’d pulled his quilts up over his face, he became angrier still.
For he started to cry.
“Dragons eat her,” he growled and dashed the tears away. “Dragons eat her to pieces!”
They did not let him out of their sight, just as Leo predicted.
He didn’t care. His aunt wrote a letter to his mother and sent it off posthaste, and even that didn’t bother him. Foxbrush dropped snide remark after snide remark, impressing himself with his own witticisms. Yet Leo couldn’t even work up the ambition to knock his cousin over the head. He remained in his room most of the time, practicing juggling and headstands, sometimes even working on the bits of reading he had been told to accomplish over the course of the summer but that he had not even looked at yet. There were several essays he was supposed to have begun as well, and he was irked to find that his nursemaid had used up most of his parchment and ink on love letters to her young man . . . irked enough to threaten reporting her to his mother, but not irked enough to follow through.
The reply arrived from his mother. Just as expected, that fine lady was shocked to discover that her son had run off against orders and caroused all over the dangerous mountain well after dark, scaring everybody in Hill House out of their minds. He was to return home immediately.
The packing began. Dame Willowfair dithered over whether or not to send her son along with Leo. Foxbrush usually spent his autumns with Leo’s family down in the tablelands, but it was early for him to go away, and what if Leo’s corrupting influence began to get the better of her angel boy?
And still Leo kept to himself. He sat at his bedroom window, gazing out at the mountain country that had become so familiar to him. One tree in particular rose above the rest, a lordly grandfather oak, and he wondered idly what it would be like to sit in its topmost branches and survey all the world below.