Molten lava, coursing out of the nearby volcano, had forced its way through channels in the ground, then drained out to leave the lava tubes, long, narrow tunnels just below the surface. The molten lava was long gone, now, but Eoin had heard that the tubes riddled these lava fields like hollow roots of the volcano itself.
There was no need to discuss which way to go. In one direction the lava tube ended abruptly with a drop into the chasm that Eoin had so nearly fallen into; the other way pointed straight towards the volcano itself, like a highway towards their destination. With luck, thought Eoin, with enough luck this tube will take us straight to the volcano.
For quite a while it seemed as though their luck would hold. The lava tube ran almost straight. In many places the roof had collapsed, and the dawn light streaming in lit up the passage and let them pick their way through the fallen rocks with ease. Other parts were dark and uneven, and Eoin and Freya had to take great care not to crack their heads on rocks sticking out of the ceiling. Once Freya smacked her head into a stubby stalactite and a brief shower of sparks left them momentarily blinded and confused. But they kept pressing on, aware that the Ice was not far behind. They had thought once that the Ice had given up and abandoned the chase; they would not make that mistake again. There had been no sight or sound from the Ice since they had entered the lava tube, but Eoin was painfully aware that water could flow down this passage at a speed that would make a mockery of their own efforts, and kept one ear permanently cocked for the sound of rushing water. This was not made any easier by Willow, who had started to babble continually to herself and to Eoin. The words were only half-formed, as though she were speaking in code, but Eoin had no time to make sense of it today and kept trying to shush her, which only made her giggle.
Once in a while they came to an opening where the roof had collapsed leaving a pile of boulders which Freya could hop up on and poke her head out into the fresh air above. The air outside was starting to heat up but the dawn chill had not yet left it and it made Freya shiver after the relative warmth below. Each time she checked to make sure they were still heading towards the volcano, but the lava tube seemed as determined to head towards the volcano as they were.
Their luck finally ran out as they got close to the volcano. Small tributaries had been leading off more and more frequently, but they had been able to ignore these in favour of the main tube. Now, however, the passage started to slope upwards and it forked abruptly. Freya explored a little way down each path but there seemed to be no reason to choose one over the other. There was faint daylight ahead down each path but when they walked a little way down one of the paths it forked again into two smaller tubes, both angling upwards. They stood a while in indecision, aware that they couldn't afford to give the Ice any time to whittle away their precious head start.
"Perhaps it doesn't matter which path we take," said Eoin. "We're at the foot of the mountain here. I expect all the paths head into it. They were all made by lava from the volcano, after all."
Freya thought for a moment. "If the tubes get smaller and smaller, we're going to get stuck quite soon. And if the Ice catches up with us we wouldn't be able to run away. There must be a way through. Try the book again. You have still got it, haven't you?"
Eoin pulled the book out of his waistband where he had wedged it earlier to keep his hand free. He placed Willow on the ground, and she immediately grabbed Freya's hand and snuggled into her leg.
"No, Willow!" cried Eoin, "you'll burn your hand!" Willow looked up at him with big eyes but kept hold of Freya's hand, even though Eoin couldn't touch Freya's hand himself without getting burnt.
"She doesn't seem to mind," said Freya, shrugging.
Eoin turned his attention back to the book. He flipped through the pages, but they were still blank. Not a smudge or a mark to be seen anywhere, except for the words Earth, Wind and Fire stamped in gold on the front cover. He rubbed at the gold letters, tapped the book all over, then eventually bashed the book on a rock in disgust and frustration, but he only managed to break the spine of the book open. He threw it down on the ground.
"It's no use, Freya," he said. "Maybe Dad meant it would help us as a doorstop or something. It's no use as a book."
Freya bent down to look at it, Willow still wrapped around her leg. She didn't want to touch the book for fear of burning it like she had the bridge, but she could see something dull and metallic in the broken spine. "Eoin, look!" she cried. "Those are hinges, tiny hinges. You haven't broken the spine. You've opened it!"
Eoin snatched up the book again, the hinged spine swinging loose, and as he did so the pages fell open in his hands. Not the way he expected them to open, though. The book fell open at the spine, the pages unfolding themselves from the back, the whole book spreading like an accordion between the two separate covers. On this side the pages were covered, not with words but with diagrams. Eoin flicked through them excitedly, but his excitement soon turned to frustration as he realised that he was no better off than before.
"There!" exclaimed Freya. "Go back to that page with the tree on it."
Eoin flicked back to a page showing a spindly black tree with a massive thick trunk. It was an unusual tree, for the main part of the trunk kept bending round to the right, and all the branches seemed to grow off the left-hand side.
"It's a tree," he said. "A bent tree. A flag tree. We've seen trees grow like this on the ridge below the Gasping Gorge, where the winds always come in from the north."
"No, we haven't," Freya corrected him. "On the flag trees, the trunk and the branches both grow away from the wind. What if this isn't a tree at all, Eoin? What if it's a map? A map of the lava tubes?"
"Then that would mean..." Eoin traced the trunk of the tree up to where it touched the top of the page. "Look, it seems to turn into an arrow here at the top. That might mean we just need to keep heading right to get to... well, to wherever this goes."
"Great!" said Freya. She scooped Willow up into her arms. "Let's go right."
"Let's hope you're right," said Eoin, and with a quick look behind him, they jogged on up the right-hand lava tube.
The going got progressively harder. The tube became narrower and lower, and they had to walk with their heads bent awkwardly. It was getting darker too, and Eoin found it trickier to make out anything other than dark shadows.
"Freya!" he said suddenly. "Freya, I can't see you."
"I'm just here, ahead of you," said Freya, puzzled. "I can see you fine. Well, not fine, very faintly, but I can see you. And the walls. Can't you see the walls?"
Eoin shook his head. "I can't see anything."
"Well," thought Freya out loud. "I can't give you my hand, you'll get burnt again. Just follow my footsteps, then."
"Footsteps? Freya, the rock is soft and spongy. You're not going to make any..." He broke off suddenly as he realised that he had been hearing Freya's footsteps all the way through the lava tubes. Not his own, not once, but he'd heard Freya's.
"Soft and spongy? Eoin, the rock is, well, it's rocky. It's solid rock. At least it is where I'm walking. What are you walking on?" When Eoin didn't answer, she walked on a few paces. The sound of her footsteps was short and flat in the enclosed space. "Can you hear that, Eoin? Can you follow it?"
"Yes," said Eoin quietly. "Keep going. I'll call out if I can't hear you."
They walked on in almost total silence, Eoin padding silently behind Freya. It was very unnerving for him, walking in complete darkness through the narrow passage. He had been worried about cracking his head on the ceiling which kept rising and dipping unexpectedly, but the first time he hit it he realised it was just as soft and spongy as the floor and he might as well have smacked his head on a pillow for all the damage it did. After that he hurried less cautiously after the girls, sometimes bouncing off the walls, sometimes tripping up, but feeling strangely numb.
Freya came to an abrupt halt ahead of him and he almost knocked her flying. He heard her gasp of frustration.
"What is it? What's happened?"
Freya gestured at the path ahead, although Eoin couldn't see her arm. "It's a dead end. There's been a rock fall or something. The whole passage is blocked." She pushed on the massive boulder that ended the passage but it was like pushing on the mountain itself.
"No way round?" asked Eoin.
"No." Freya was bitterly disappointed. If this was the only way into the volcano, they wouldn't make it now. Just as she'd foreseen, they were trapped.
"Let me try," said Eoin. Freya pressed herself and Willow in to the side as he felt his way up to the boulder. As he touched it he gasped involuntarily. "Hot," he said. "Very hot. We can't be far from the volcano now." He went to put his hand back on but instead groped about in empty air. "Freya?" he said. "What's happened? Where's it gone?"
Freya slowly closed her mouth. "It... rolled away," she said in disbelief. "You touched it and it rolled away."
Eoin stepped through the gap where the boulder had been but could walk no further. He felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. The air was hot, steaming hot, hot enough to make all the hairs on his arms and legs tingle like they were on fire, and thick with smoke which brought tears to his eyes and made him retch. He could see a little, faint red glowing through the smoke, but then his eyes were streaming and he stepped back out of the inferno, blinking furiously and straining to breathe. He tried to warn Freya but he couldn't get the words out.
Freya stepped through the gap instead, into the cavern beyond. It was much wider and higher than the passage they'd been walking in, more the size of a large house, and as close to Freya's idea of hell as she could have experienced. Willow coughed in her arms as they breathed in the smoke but a sudden blast of cool air rushed down the passage behind them into the chamber. At first Eoin thought the Ice had caught up with them, but after a few seconds the gale abruptly died away to a steady breeze. The fresh air filled his lungs and he found himself breathing easily and feeling thankful for the well-timed gust. He ventured back into the chamber behind Freya.
The smoke had blown away almost entirely, and the red glow off the walls had dimmed a little. Standing behind Freya, he could no longer feel the intense heat.
Freya checked behind to make sure he was okay, then walked on through the chamber. The path was hard to walk along, and Eoin realised that they must be walking uphill, though with no flat lines anywhere to guide him it was hard to tell exactly where uphill turned into downhill. Smoke poured out of fissures in the ground all around with a snake-like hissing sound, and the breeze still passing through the chamber swept the smoke away ahead of them, up through a hole at the top of the path.
The last part of the path became so steep they almost had to climb to get up it and through the hole. The sight that greeted them on the other side was well worth the wait.
"We've done it!" cried Freya. "We're inside the volcano! This must..." She broke off suddenly as she heard the rasping coughing coming almost from behind her. She spun around, and there, waving the smoke away from his face and coughing heartily, was a man.
"Welcome," he said in between the coughs. "Welcome, Earth, Wind and Fire."
There was no need to discuss which way to go. In one direction the lava tube ended abruptly with a drop into the chasm that Eoin had so nearly fallen into; the other way pointed straight towards the volcano itself, like a highway towards their destination. With luck, thought Eoin, with enough luck this tube will take us straight to the volcano.
For quite a while it seemed as though their luck would hold. The lava tube ran almost straight. In many places the roof had collapsed, and the dawn light streaming in lit up the passage and let them pick their way through the fallen rocks with ease. Other parts were dark and uneven, and Eoin and Freya had to take great care not to crack their heads on rocks sticking out of the ceiling. Once Freya smacked her head into a stubby stalactite and a brief shower of sparks left them momentarily blinded and confused. But they kept pressing on, aware that the Ice was not far behind. They had thought once that the Ice had given up and abandoned the chase; they would not make that mistake again. There had been no sight or sound from the Ice since they had entered the lava tube, but Eoin was painfully aware that water could flow down this passage at a speed that would make a mockery of their own efforts, and kept one ear permanently cocked for the sound of rushing water. This was not made any easier by Willow, who had started to babble continually to herself and to Eoin. The words were only half-formed, as though she were speaking in code, but Eoin had no time to make sense of it today and kept trying to shush her, which only made her giggle.
Once in a while they came to an opening where the roof had collapsed leaving a pile of boulders which Freya could hop up on and poke her head out into the fresh air above. The air outside was starting to heat up but the dawn chill had not yet left it and it made Freya shiver after the relative warmth below. Each time she checked to make sure they were still heading towards the volcano, but the lava tube seemed as determined to head towards the volcano as they were.
Their luck finally ran out as they got close to the volcano. Small tributaries had been leading off more and more frequently, but they had been able to ignore these in favour of the main tube. Now, however, the passage started to slope upwards and it forked abruptly. Freya explored a little way down each path but there seemed to be no reason to choose one over the other. There was faint daylight ahead down each path but when they walked a little way down one of the paths it forked again into two smaller tubes, both angling upwards. They stood a while in indecision, aware that they couldn't afford to give the Ice any time to whittle away their precious head start.
"Perhaps it doesn't matter which path we take," said Eoin. "We're at the foot of the mountain here. I expect all the paths head into it. They were all made by lava from the volcano, after all."
Freya thought for a moment. "If the tubes get smaller and smaller, we're going to get stuck quite soon. And if the Ice catches up with us we wouldn't be able to run away. There must be a way through. Try the book again. You have still got it, haven't you?"
Eoin pulled the book out of his waistband where he had wedged it earlier to keep his hand free. He placed Willow on the ground, and she immediately grabbed Freya's hand and snuggled into her leg.
"No, Willow!" cried Eoin, "you'll burn your hand!" Willow looked up at him with big eyes but kept hold of Freya's hand, even though Eoin couldn't touch Freya's hand himself without getting burnt.
"She doesn't seem to mind," said Freya, shrugging.
Eoin turned his attention back to the book. He flipped through the pages, but they were still blank. Not a smudge or a mark to be seen anywhere, except for the words Earth, Wind and Fire stamped in gold on the front cover. He rubbed at the gold letters, tapped the book all over, then eventually bashed the book on a rock in disgust and frustration, but he only managed to break the spine of the book open. He threw it down on the ground.
"It's no use, Freya," he said. "Maybe Dad meant it would help us as a doorstop or something. It's no use as a book."
Freya bent down to look at it, Willow still wrapped around her leg. She didn't want to touch the book for fear of burning it like she had the bridge, but she could see something dull and metallic in the broken spine. "Eoin, look!" she cried. "Those are hinges, tiny hinges. You haven't broken the spine. You've opened it!"
Eoin snatched up the book again, the hinged spine swinging loose, and as he did so the pages fell open in his hands. Not the way he expected them to open, though. The book fell open at the spine, the pages unfolding themselves from the back, the whole book spreading like an accordion between the two separate covers. On this side the pages were covered, not with words but with diagrams. Eoin flicked through them excitedly, but his excitement soon turned to frustration as he realised that he was no better off than before.
"There!" exclaimed Freya. "Go back to that page with the tree on it."
Eoin flicked back to a page showing a spindly black tree with a massive thick trunk. It was an unusual tree, for the main part of the trunk kept bending round to the right, and all the branches seemed to grow off the left-hand side.
"It's a tree," he said. "A bent tree. A flag tree. We've seen trees grow like this on the ridge below the Gasping Gorge, where the winds always come in from the north."
"No, we haven't," Freya corrected him. "On the flag trees, the trunk and the branches both grow away from the wind. What if this isn't a tree at all, Eoin? What if it's a map? A map of the lava tubes?"
"Then that would mean..." Eoin traced the trunk of the tree up to where it touched the top of the page. "Look, it seems to turn into an arrow here at the top. That might mean we just need to keep heading right to get to... well, to wherever this goes."
"Great!" said Freya. She scooped Willow up into her arms. "Let's go right."
"Let's hope you're right," said Eoin, and with a quick look behind him, they jogged on up the right-hand lava tube.
The going got progressively harder. The tube became narrower and lower, and they had to walk with their heads bent awkwardly. It was getting darker too, and Eoin found it trickier to make out anything other than dark shadows.
"Freya!" he said suddenly. "Freya, I can't see you."
"I'm just here, ahead of you," said Freya, puzzled. "I can see you fine. Well, not fine, very faintly, but I can see you. And the walls. Can't you see the walls?"
Eoin shook his head. "I can't see anything."
"Well," thought Freya out loud. "I can't give you my hand, you'll get burnt again. Just follow my footsteps, then."
"Footsteps? Freya, the rock is soft and spongy. You're not going to make any..." He broke off suddenly as he realised that he had been hearing Freya's footsteps all the way through the lava tubes. Not his own, not once, but he'd heard Freya's.
"Soft and spongy? Eoin, the rock is, well, it's rocky. It's solid rock. At least it is where I'm walking. What are you walking on?" When Eoin didn't answer, she walked on a few paces. The sound of her footsteps was short and flat in the enclosed space. "Can you hear that, Eoin? Can you follow it?"
"Yes," said Eoin quietly. "Keep going. I'll call out if I can't hear you."
They walked on in almost total silence, Eoin padding silently behind Freya. It was very unnerving for him, walking in complete darkness through the narrow passage. He had been worried about cracking his head on the ceiling which kept rising and dipping unexpectedly, but the first time he hit it he realised it was just as soft and spongy as the floor and he might as well have smacked his head on a pillow for all the damage it did. After that he hurried less cautiously after the girls, sometimes bouncing off the walls, sometimes tripping up, but feeling strangely numb.
Freya came to an abrupt halt ahead of him and he almost knocked her flying. He heard her gasp of frustration.
"What is it? What's happened?"
Freya gestured at the path ahead, although Eoin couldn't see her arm. "It's a dead end. There's been a rock fall or something. The whole passage is blocked." She pushed on the massive boulder that ended the passage but it was like pushing on the mountain itself.
"No way round?" asked Eoin.
"No." Freya was bitterly disappointed. If this was the only way into the volcano, they wouldn't make it now. Just as she'd foreseen, they were trapped.
"Let me try," said Eoin. Freya pressed herself and Willow in to the side as he felt his way up to the boulder. As he touched it he gasped involuntarily. "Hot," he said. "Very hot. We can't be far from the volcano now." He went to put his hand back on but instead groped about in empty air. "Freya?" he said. "What's happened? Where's it gone?"
Freya slowly closed her mouth. "It... rolled away," she said in disbelief. "You touched it and it rolled away."
Eoin stepped through the gap where the boulder had been but could walk no further. He felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. The air was hot, steaming hot, hot enough to make all the hairs on his arms and legs tingle like they were on fire, and thick with smoke which brought tears to his eyes and made him retch. He could see a little, faint red glowing through the smoke, but then his eyes were streaming and he stepped back out of the inferno, blinking furiously and straining to breathe. He tried to warn Freya but he couldn't get the words out.
Freya stepped through the gap instead, into the cavern beyond. It was much wider and higher than the passage they'd been walking in, more the size of a large house, and as close to Freya's idea of hell as she could have experienced. Willow coughed in her arms as they breathed in the smoke but a sudden blast of cool air rushed down the passage behind them into the chamber. At first Eoin thought the Ice had caught up with them, but after a few seconds the gale abruptly died away to a steady breeze. The fresh air filled his lungs and he found himself breathing easily and feeling thankful for the well-timed gust. He ventured back into the chamber behind Freya.
The smoke had blown away almost entirely, and the red glow off the walls had dimmed a little. Standing behind Freya, he could no longer feel the intense heat.
Freya checked behind to make sure he was okay, then walked on through the chamber. The path was hard to walk along, and Eoin realised that they must be walking uphill, though with no flat lines anywhere to guide him it was hard to tell exactly where uphill turned into downhill. Smoke poured out of fissures in the ground all around with a snake-like hissing sound, and the breeze still passing through the chamber swept the smoke away ahead of them, up through a hole at the top of the path.
The last part of the path became so steep they almost had to climb to get up it and through the hole. The sight that greeted them on the other side was well worth the wait.
"We've done it!" cried Freya. "We're inside the volcano! This must..." She broke off suddenly as she heard the rasping coughing coming almost from behind her. She spun around, and there, waving the smoke away from his face and coughing heartily, was a man.
"Welcome," he said in between the coughs. "Welcome, Earth, Wind and Fire."
5 comments:
I think that Father Tim will tell them that some pages of the book had been torn out and he'll say that they'll need to go to Colossal Canyon to find the rest of the pages. Then he tells them their powers and that they need to use them wisely.
Father Tim could teach them some of their powers but then the ice comes back in forces father Tim says he will hold it of and gives them orders to hold willows hand whilst he is throwing when he throws they go flying until they land next to a cave they go inside and see ancient writing about three young children who will defeat the ice
Earth, Wind and Fire.
Farther Tim guides Freya, Eoin and Willow to a mini tunnel under a secret boulder.
They go through the tunnel and end up in an ice palace. Farther Tim follows them through the tunnel.
"I created all the Ice, so me and your Parents could communicate with you." Farther Tim saids.
They follow Farther Tim to a throne made out of ice.
"This is my palace." Farther Tim saids.
Fraya gets angry and turns the ice into water then turns the water into mist then the mist turns into a cloud and it turns itself into an ice storm.
The man that greets him at the end is a helper of father Tim and takes them to him. But he doesn't call
them their actual names he calls Freya Fire, Eoin Earth and Willow Wind. Then he says that their journey
must go on because he can sense that the ice is coming close. So they run through the volcano then they
can see that the water has now formed into a giant wave.
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