This wasn’t true. Leo wouldn’t have minded much if the monster did carry him off, or at least made the attempt. He put off coming in until the very last minute, just before his nursemaid would feel obliged to sally forth and fetch him. But no matter how long the shadows in the mountainside garden grew, he saw neither hide nor hair of anything monsterlike.
Then one day he took the servants’ stairway down from his rooms, for it was a quicker route to the gardens. He overheard furtive voices and could not have stopped himself from eavesdropping for the world.
“I swear on my hand, I saw it!” said the voice Leo recognized as belonging to Leanbear, the carriage man. “I was on my way up the mountain trail to my old granna’s house, and I saw it clear as day!”
Leanbear was a strong man, used to working with the tough mountain ponies that pulled the carriages in this rough part of the country. But his voice quavered and remained low as he spoke.
“What did it look like?” Mistress Redbird, the cook, asked in a tone rather too dry to be sympathetic. “Was it big and shaggy? Did you see the Wolf Lord’s ghost? He was said to prowl these parts back in the day.”
“This was no wolf, Redbird, I’ll tell you that straight,” said the carriage man. “I’ve hunted down my share of wolves, and I’m proud to say I’ve yet to feel even a twinge when they set up their howling on winter’s nights. But this was no wolf.”
“What, then?” demanded Redbird. “A troll? A goblin? A sylph?”
“More like . . . a demon.”
Leo shuddered in his dark stairway, a delightful shudder of terror such as only boys of a particular spirit may experience. But Mistress Redbird laughed outright. “I’d have sooner you said dragon, Leanbear.”
“You know as well as I that it’s out there,” the carriage man growled.
For a moment, Mistress Redbird’s voice became more serious. “I know what I know, and the rest I don’t pretend to understand. But I say it’s best you keep such fool talk to yourself, especially while the little mister is running about the place.”
Leanbear grunted, and both of them moved on without seeing Leo where he stood in the dark stairway.
Leo did not move for a long moment. He’d made plans for his day already, packing up the fine library chess pieces into a leather sack to sneak them out to the garden, where he intended to dig a dirt fortress and wage a battle that had nothing whatsoever to do with chess. But such paltry games were as nothing to the inspiration that now filled his soul.
His chess pieces rattling in their sack, Leo turned and raced back up the stairs and on to the Hill House library, where he could be certain to find his cousin, Foxbrush.
Foxbrush was a pale, sickly, self-styled cherub, and a favorite of Leo’s mother. She thought him a good influence on Leo, so she insisted the two of them be the best of friends. Leo wouldn’t have minded this so much—not even his mother’s constant nagging of “Why can’t you be more like your cousin?”—if once in a while Foxbrush could have been convinced to put down his books and get out of his overstuffed chair.
“Foxbrush!” Leo cried, bursting into the library. His cousin looked up from behind the cover of his book. It was one of his “improving reads,” something like Economic Concerns of the Trade Merchant’s Status, full of numbers and dates and other hideous things of that nature. Foxbrush pretended to enjoy them and was so good at the pretense that Leo sometimes believed him. He’d even picked up one or two of these books himself but had found them to be rubbish.
“Foxbrush!” he cried. “There’s a monster in the mountains!”
“No there isn’t,” said Foxbrush.
Hill House belonged to Foxbrush’s widowed mother, which meant that when any disagreement arose between the boys, Foxbrush could usually win with a final swipe of, “This is my mother’s house, so you have to do what I say!” However, Leo’s was by far the stronger personality, so if he made the effort he could sometimes barrage Foxbrush with so much enthusiasm that his cousin forgot to employ that dreaded line.
Foxbrush took one look at Leo’s face, flushed and bright-eyed with the prospect of adventure, and ducked behind his book as though sheltering from a siege.
“Yes there is!” Leo said. “The carriage man saw it!”
“He also sees pixies dancing when he’s been into last year’s cider.”
“We must hunt it!”
“No, we mustn’t.” Foxbrush nestled more solidly into his comfortable chair. “Aunt Starflower wouldn’t like it.”
“Mother’s not here!”
“She’d find out.”
“And praise us for catching a demon that’s been terrorizing the countryside!”
“There isn’t any demon.”
“How do you know?”
Foxbrush’s face emerged from behind the book, this time wearing his patient expression, the one that made Leo want to poke him in the eye, and said, “I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve heard people babble nonsense for years. But I’ve not seen it. I’ve not heard it. It doesn’t exist.” Back behind the book again, he added, “Go away.”