Childhood's End

6. TWO SEARCHES

"Hist! 'Nerva!"

At home after the day's adventure, Minerva had collapsed onto her bed and fallen into a deep dreamless sleep. Of course she didn't tell Da about discovering the Crypt, much less about Petey's cowardice. Duncan Macnair and Jupiter McGonagall maintained a relationship built on schoolboy friendship, blood ties, Scottish pride and the wizarding brotherhood. It did not seem to Minerva a warm relationship, like, for example her friendship with Gig, but she would not be the one to spoil it by embarrassing Lord Macnair's youngest son.

"Hi! Wa-ke u-PP!"

It was Giggie. No one else exploded their consonants like that in an effort to be understood. Minerva wrestled with the bedclothes and leaned out the casement window. It must be almost midnight, she thought.

"Gig, whatever do you want?" she hissed.

"Come down. I got thumsing to yell tou."

"Can't it wait?"

Gig shook her head vehemently.

Minerva swung out onto a sturdy limb of the beech tree that curved sinuously under her window, and dropped to the ground. It was too cold really for a mere shift and the bed scarf she'd pulled over her shoulders, but she hid her discomfort. Gig looked almost as scared as she had earlier in the cave. They huddled together on the steps outside the kitchen door.

"Petey--he never hum comb."

"What?"

"Laird Macnair came to our house about ten. Da got me up and they asked me stuff. When I last saw Petey and such."

"What did you tell them?"

"Said I went on home after we grot the gass. Didn't see him after that. I didn't say aught about the cave."

"Why not?"

"I thought it would tree bubble for you and your dad."

"But Petey might still be in there, Gig. We never did see him after he ran. What if he--what if he's down the Hole..."

"Serve him right if he is!"

"You don't mean that, Gig. I know he's a bit of a braggart, but he's--he's kin to us--to me anyway. And we've been through lots of stuff together. Remember, he brought you an infusion when you had the haingles and there was that time he let us watch when he pulled that big scab off his knee...and he snuck you into his father's library and showed you all his hunting trophies."

"It wasna the haingles, 'twas the buffits, so the potion didna help...and that scab--och, it wasn't the least bit icky...

"We gotta help him, Gig, for auld lang syne."

"Aye, well, the Nundu heads and the 'Rumpent horns...they were really tecspacular...pecstacular...stecpac--really great...and he always helps me fix the noal get when it breaks...All right... but I'm not going back in that cave."

"I'm not saying we have to. But Laird Macnair has a right to know where Petey was today."

"But we'll gret in tubble."

"Leave that to me."

~*~

In the end, Minerva couldn't figure a way to let Lord Macnair know about the cave without also admitting that she had been there. But she kept Giggie out of it, saying that she and Petey had gone back out on the mountain spur after Gig went home. She stripped the story down to the bare essentials with just a passing mention of the various rooms, but said nothing of Petey's entering the Crypt itself, or the encounter with the Erkling. She couldn't help implying his cowardice in leaving her alone in the dark, but to salve the Macnair pride, she hinted that the way out was relatively short. She hoped no one would mark the disparity when they started exploring the chambers.

Lord Macnair owled clan leaders for a search party. Daybreak saw Minerva leading large hairy Macmillans, Sykeses, Campbells, and Flynts to the sinkhole. The McGonagalls, excepting herself, had not been asked. Magnus MacDonald, an underfed, tow-headed boy of Minerva's age, trailed behind them unbidden. Magnus had a smooth face of no distinguishing feature, except rather paler-than-usual blue eyes and a large space between his upper incisors. He looked puny and awkward. But he was brave (some said reckless) and what he lacked in talent he more than made up for in a dogged insistence on being included in any and all adventures and a penchant for describing said adventures afterward in exacting, tedious detail.

After she led them to the mouth of the cavern, Minerva watched a few moments as Lord Macnair gave orders. The volunteers descended one by one into the earth under his brooding scrutiny. Though he had ignored her utterly throughout the trip, he now gave Minerva a piercing glare and squeezed his bulky frame through the opening.

She plodded on home, sick at the possibility of their finding Petey's broken body at the bottom of the Erkling-hole. For surely that must be his resting place. Clan Macnair had already combed the countryside and found no trace of him. If he'd run a mindless course from the Crypt in his panic, he would have made straight across that cracked, earthen floor, not thinking, not remembering the crater at its center.

Magnus visited her later with a wide-eyed report. For once Minerva was grateful for his need to boast, although his meandering way of telling a tale made her at times want to shake him. They didn't find Petey in the cave. But he did find this unusual rock, shaped like an Erumpent head, if you held it just so...Did she want to see it? Well, yes, they'd searched every room, even as far as the front door, with the Laird leading the way to ward off ghosts and curses. Did she know there were three Unforgiveable Curses? Banned by the Ministry, they were. They'd learned about them in Defensive Arts last-- Anything unusual? Oh,just some rusty sand at the base of a wall in the library, not far from the doorway--which might or might not be blood. By the way, did Minerva know the twelve uses for dragon's blood? The first --Yes, yes, they'd found the hole in the floor and Magnus himself had insisted on being lowered into it. He being light and slender--and, thought Minerva, otherwise useless--the adults had agreed. But first they put many spells of protection and disillusionment on him, which he proceeded to name.

She stopped him mid-list and questioned him closely about the hole, but not too closely. After all, she hadn't told anyone about her encounter with the Erkling. She was able, in a roundabout way, to ascertain that there was nothing, not so much as a bone or a scrap of cloth, at the bottom. And no tunnels leading off it either, into which the creature might have dragged itself, mortally injured. Where then had the Erkling's body gone?

She and Gig puzzled over this anomaly, and, at Gig's suggestion, snuck around listening at keyholes and peeping over balconies, searching for clues in the adults' whispered conversations. But they had scant reward for their spying, except for a conversation they overheard two days after his disappearance, one that she was even now trying to put out of her mind.

They'd watched from the gallery as Lord and Lady McNair paid a visit to Da. He escorted them into the parlor, and closed the double doors. But Gig and Minerva ran down the wide curved stairs, then tiptoed across the Great Hall and pressed an ear apiece to the stout oak planking and strained to hear the latest news.

"...but what were they doing in that cave?" Milady's voice, quivering with some emotion Minerva could not gauge.

"You've questioned my daughter. She fell through a sinkhole and Petey insisted they explore it."

"My son would not do such a dangerous thing. I have always forbidden--he knows..." The voice trailed off. Minerva tried to imagine the redoubtable Lady Macnair curled over her handkerchief, silently weeping.

"Boys will be boys, my Lady."

"Do not speak of Peter as if he was some Muggle turd!" Lord McNair's voice. Minerva had to pull back from the door. The latch reverberated under his booming rasp.

"Sir, I did not mean..."

"That's your weakness, Jupiter, you never mean--and you never think--not about the important things. You sit here in your hidey-hole, brooding over petty inventions, tending your sheep, mucking about with Squibs and halfbreeds. Once a year you travel to Inverness and show lesser mages and those stinking Muggles what a great Highlander you are, tossing a puny tree trunk about and some hunks of lead not even worthy to be called Bludgers. But what do you know of policy, of power? You've no sense of your place, man. Married a sickly Muggle-born. And no son to carry on your name. You eschew your very birthright..."

"Enough!"

Minerva was having trouble following the train of thought in this conversation, but even through the door, she was quick to catch the change in her father's tone. It had started out gentle, almost servile, with him calling his neighbor and boyhood chum 'Sir.' Now his voice was still quiet, but pricked with menace. She gave Gig a warning look. If Lord Macnair pursued this line of talk, he'd find himself bounced out on his ear and they'd be discovered. They started to edge away from the door, but then Minerva heard Petey's name and strained for more.

" ...disappearance has obviously upset you, so I forgive your insult. But Minerva is scion of my flesh, and she will have my land and title when I move on."

"Not if I have any say in the matter--and I am thane of this valley!"

Da's voice became quieter still. "Why would you do such a thing--supposing of course that you could."

Milady McNair reentered the fray, her voice now under control. "It is because of her that our son is missing."

"You wouldna blame a child..."

"No babbie she. I've seen the knowing look in her eyes. Canny she is, and older than her years. And she's not told the truth of Peter's disappearance, not the half of it."

"Begging your pardon, but you're no mind-reader, Milady. And I'll not have you calling my daughter a liar in my own house. Minerva's not perfect, but she knows what's right and she has a very scrupulous conscience."

"I may not be a Legilimens, but I am a mother--and I know! I've seen her in action, your little hoyden. She's got your brains, Jupiter McGonagall, and her mother's wild and secretive ways. She leads the boys around like they were Nifflers and she a piece of purest gold. I don't believe a word of her story, but you're so wrapped up in your 'bairnie girl' you can't see it! There's something she's not telling us." And in the silence Minerva thought she heard a whispered "...and I'll have it out of her..." But she didn't wait for more. She ran, Gig after her, back across the Hall, through the kitchen doors and outside to the comfort of the beech tree.

~*~

So when Minerva visited the family Crypt with her father by the dark of the moon, it was with a certain hesitancy and guilt. She hoped that there would be no evidence of Petey's visit remaining in the catacombs. But would the ghosts of her ancestors recognize her as one of the intruders of the week before? She'd put the question to Gig, who replied without hesitation, "You said yourself your pin are good keeple. They hon't warm one of their own."

Minerva hoped not. But what of the Erkling she had killed? Would its shade be haunting the Crypt, seeking vengeance?

These questions plagued her as she climbed the foothills with her father. His bulk cleared a path through the heather, and she dogged his steps. He chattered incessantly over his shoulder about his adventures at Hogwarts and her own undoubted success once there.

Now another worry assailed her. Most kids her age would have buried the subject immediately as bold, even risible, to broach with an adult. But this was not Minerva's way; her relationship with her father had always been an open, easy one.

"Da, how will you get along--when I'm gone to school?"

He stopped and turned.

"You think your auld Da canna take care of himself?"

"No...I mean, yes...of course you can." But she looked doubtful.

"I think I can learn to mix my own brose again, if that's what you mean. And of course there's Goodie and the servants..."

Minerva grinned wryly. She'd witnessed the many arguments her Nurse and Da had got into over the years. They could go at it hammer and wands for hours, and always, after the Master put his foot down--"my final word on it, auld woman--I'll not hear another"--Goodie Gudgeon would stretch out the argument for days with 'humphs' and 'tuts' as often as their paths crossed. Would she return home over the holidays to find that they'd hexed each other into oblivion? She knew she was letting her imagination run wild again. But there was another, more cogent concern.

"But Goodie's old, Da. She relies on me to--to remember where she puts stuff and help fetch things..."

"When her spells go wrong, you mean. Aye, I've noticed her Craft is failing a bit. I'll keep an eye on her..."

"Gently, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll try not to hurt her feelings. I promise, Minerva."

"Thanks, Da."

She hugged him hard--as if for the last time. After all, she'd be starting on the path to the Magicosm's deepest secrets soon. Who knew what that knowledge would do to her relationships, her outlook, her very self? Every one of her playmates who had gone to Hogwarts before her had come back in summer, changed in ways she couldn't express. Much as she would like to deny it, even featherbrained Petey had come home the summer before more grown up and aware of his magical birthright than she could have imagined.

Petey! She hoped and prayed that the spells he had learned at school were somehow keeping him alive, wherever he was.

~*~

"Here we are," intoned her father with pride, as they reached the porch of the Crypt. Without ceremony, he raised his wand and boomed the password.

"Gonagalohomora!"

The doors swung inward and a cold breeze brushed their faces. Minerva swallowed an upwelling of terror--those final words of Lady McNair resonated with her guilt. She hadn't told the whole truth, but nothing of what she'd held back could possibly have kept them from finding Petey--could it?

Her father waved his wand in an elaborate tracery of arabesques. Torches flared into brilliance along a wide hallway ribbed with delicate wooden arches. It seemed endless, but at least there were no shadows here, no corners or niches or holes where an enemy might hide. All the same, she felt for and clasped her father's hand.

He gave her fingers a little squeeze.

"Awesome, isn't it? Tons of earth pushed back and sculpted by magic. But there's no need to fear, lass. The ceiling's held up by invisible wards as well."

"I thought wards were supposed to glow, Da."

"Aye, some mages add a coloring charm, especially if they feel the need for periodic reassurance that the energy field is still in place. And others just like people to admire their handiwork."

At the end of the hall was a great round metal door embossed at its center with the figure of a rose. A halo of thorny branchlets surrounded it.

"You know the symbology of the Connghaill Rose, do you not, Lass?"

"Aye, Da." Goodie told her long ago: love comes not easily to a McGonagall, they put up all their thorns against it, but when it takes hold, they cling on fiercely and loyally, like a rambler rose to the side of a mountain. Da of course had his own masculine interpretation. The French, despite their other shortcomings, said it best, he opined: Il n'y a pas de rose sans epines. There is no rose without a thorn, no prize worth having without a struggle, no war worth winning without bloodshed, no goal worth reaching without some loss along the way.

He waved his wand again. Bars, chains, springs and tumblers released themselves, creaking and groaning, and the door swung wide.

The sarcophagi of her ancestors were ranged in concentric circles over a vast area. Those she could see had a niche or a slot in the top containing one or more wands. Yes, she remembered, some witches and wizards carried several wands for different spell effects. A mage might choose a slender willow switch for a delicate conjuration, a stout combat-blackened oak faggot for Heavy Defense. It reminded her irrationally of the Muggle game of golf, which she had once witnessed at Inverness. It involved choosing from a bag full of implements of various shapes and sizes the one best suited to hit a Snitch-sized ball through bog or woodland or high grass towards some distant goal, she couldn't remember what...

"Where do you feel you should start, Minerva?"

"What? Oh. I don't know, Da." She had expected that he would guide her through this, but here he was giving the choice over to her, as if she had a clue where to begin. "Should we try the oldest wands first?"

"Start with Auld Fearghas?" He waved his hand at a large black column in the center, which rose out of the thicket of tombs like a single spike of heather in a field of scrub grass. "Nae, child. We've not time for that. There are over a thousand tombs here. All your magical ancestors in an unbroken line and many of its branches. But we can narrow it down a bit. You've heard stories about your forbears. Surely you favor some over others, as you like some of your friends better than others. I've watched you staring for hours at the portraits in the gallery. Which picture, which stories speak to your heart of hearts?"

Minerva turned shy. Rowdie the buccaneer was her favorite, but she only said, "I'm kind of partial to the folks of Queen Mary's time, Da."

"Really? Bunch of Frenchified dandies if you ask me--except for Lady Anne of course and auld Nicholchannich. Anne McCutcheon...mmm yes, you're a bit like her...clever, nervy..." He rumbled on, leading her about the edge of the great chamber. "Down there. Lady Anne's is...well, you should try whichever one takes your fancy." He went on in a whisper, "I may not accompany you, Lass, lest my own vibrations influence the Choice. Go on. You know what to do."

She picked her way among the tombs and came upon Jenny Blair's. It had her name on it, spelled out in a ribbon of stone held up by two fat cupids. She picked up the wand, which lay in a hand-shaped shallow on the top. It was light and a tad brittle. She was almost afraid to wave it. But she did, and nothing happened.

It was easy to find Lady Anne's sarcophagus. It was very simple, with just the words Semper Fortis carved in the side and a relief of a witch standing on a cliff, overlooking the sea, her hair streaming in the wind, watching a fleet of galleons sail towards her. Her wand too gave no reaction. Minerva thought she heard a little sigh of disappointment behind her.

She laid it down gently and moved on. The next two tombs held no wands, one being the resting place of a child and the other of an ancestor whose wand Aunt Gerrie at present possessed. The next gave her a sudden thrill. She could see by the battle scenes of Muggle ships firing into each other at close range that it belonged to her dear Rowdie. She lifted the wand from its niche, which was a slot in the side of the tomb, like a dagger's sheath. It was slender, but sturdy, quite long too, of a sort of blond wood--ash or birch perhaps. She gave it a wave, but again, nothing, not a spark. But for some reason, she held onto it. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, there was such a thing as a delayed reaction. She moved to the next tomb. This was Meg of Dundee's. It had astrological symbols all over it, and a crystal ball on top.

She picked up the wand, and felt a quiver of life. She didn't have to do anything at all. There was a loud boom, and the wand began shooting out orange smoke, flecked with sparks. It smelled like burning metal. Her father came running up to her. He looked a bit bemused.

"Hmmm, Meddlesome Meg. There's a surprise. But one never knows. Perhaps you're destined to be a Seeress, dearie,--predict the next Muggle War, eh? Though I would have expected stardust or tea leaves to come out of Meg's wand. Well, we've one more thing left to do."

In a daze, Minerva slid Rowdie's wand back into its place and followed her father to another door, clutching her new wand, pondering its lineage. She had no particular desire to learn fortune telling. Meg of Dundee spent all her time pressing on visitors cheerful prognostications of victory in battle, successful investments, and great riches. None of which had ever come true, so far as she knew. And her ditzy aunts, the twins, Frannie and Philly, were always gushing about palm reading and the Tarot, which alone was enough to make Minerva skeptical of this branch of magic.

The minute they were through the door, Minerva's inner grumblings were replaced by a new fear. This was the room full of banners that Petey had abandoned her and Gig in. She passed through it and the other chambers tight-lipped,wondering anew how they had managed to pass through them in total darkness without stumbling or getting turned about. If Jupiter McGonagall noticed that she seemed unimpressed with the richness of her surroundings, he didn't let on.

But when they walked by the Hole, she broke down.

"Da," she whispered, "what--what's that?"

"They call it Bearach's Borehole. You've heard the tales of Auld Fearghas."

"Many times, Da. He lived high on a cliff. And he loved animals, especially birds."

She knew his early history. Fearghas mac Bearach, sech clenni Conn'ghaill, was the root and trunk of the family line, and as such, a staple of Goodie's bedtime stories. Born on an island off the north coast of Ireland to thoroughly unmagical parents, young Fearghas showed his gifts early on and innocently, Summoning birds out of the sky or crabs from the sea to impress his playmates. He spent much of his time among the nesting colonies of kittiwakes and puffins on the stoney north cliffs. From here, on an occasional mist-free day, he glimpsed the west coast of Scotland, whence, he was told, came his ancestors.

At some point in his youth, townsfolk and members of his family, became frightened or jealous of his power and drove him away. He made a home of sorts in a cliff cave, lived on kelp and turtle eggs, and made friends with all manner of creatures. There was a story that a mob of drunken sots came upon him dozing on the beach one day and beat him almost insensible. He managed to wish himself away to depths of his cave before collapsing. Some spiders wove webs across the mouth of the cave and all over its interior, blanketing even his inert body. The mob, searching for him, was fooled by the camouflage.

After healing up, Fearghas determined to leave the island. He felt a pull towards the land of his forbears across the North Channel. One day, in a fit of longing, he accidentally Summoned a huge bird of a type he had never seen before--an erne from the western sea. It bade him, in the voice of the raptors, which he understood because of conversation with the occasional golden eagle, to climb onto its back. This he did, though he was afraid, and it bore him across the channel to a finger of land--the Mull of Kintyre.

Her father broke into her meditation. "This place is the crater of an ancient volcano, over eons filled in with debris. Yer ancestor came here in his old age looking for something, in response to a voice only he could hear. You ken the story?"

"No, Da."

"You know that as a lad, he escaped his wretched home and made his way across Kintyre, and up through the mountains as far as Kingussie. There he met a wizard--we know not his name, but undoubtedly he was a Merlin of great learning. The wizard showed him how to fashion a wand from the ash wood of the Old Forest and taught him how to use it.

"One of his first wand-spells saved a Highland chieftain and his hunting party from a Gryphon attack. The chieftain declared Fearghas to be mac Conn'ghaill--a 'son of high valor', and granted him land in a lush hidden valley--and the Gryphon's hide.

"He settled down, took a wife, and raised a family--many sons, many daughters. He it was built the first Connghaill Keep. And true to his childhood, he continued to love high places and seek out the eyries of eagles and ospreys. It was on this very mountain that he started hearing a voice, urging him to dig, to free someone or something from its innards.

"He used magic to scoop out this crater from its top, and then re-form a roof over it." He gestured to the ceiling overhead which Minerva now saw was of a different consistency than the walls or floor, smooth and glossy like candle wax. "And here at its bottom," continued her father, "he blasted out a tunnel, which led him to discover a most puissant artifact. And that's where we're headed."

"Is it d-down there? The Pleezant Ardavak?" She pointed to the hole-within-a hole where she had last seen the face of the Erkling, distorted by fear.

"Down the Borehole? Och, no, there's only a warren of old lava tubes down there, just a blind alley. One of his early efforts. No, the way is through here." He led her into the Wardrobe and on to the Armoury.

But Minerva was thinking about his last words. A warren. That was not the way Magnus had described what he found at the bottom of the Erkling-hole. Surely if there had been other tunnels...But the light of her father's wand, blazing bright, recalled her to the task at hand. It penetrated every corner of these last chambers. She knew where they were going.