Brokedown Palace Read Free Page B

Bölk, gently.
    Miklós sighed and put wood into the shallow pit where the fire had been placed the night before. He kindled flame using flint and thin pieces of bark he had picked up while traveling through the forest. When the fire began to burn, he took a loaf of bread and cut it into strips which he set on the rocks next to the fire.
    From the pack which he had purchased at the same time as the cloak, he took a slab of bacon and pushed a stick through it. Holding the stick with his left hand, he used his knife to make a checkered pattern on both sides of the bacon. Then he held the slab over the flame exactly the way his brother Vilmos had taught him.
    By the time the bread was toasted, grease began to drip from the bacon. He used his right hand to occasionally hold pieces of bread under it to catch the drippings as it cooked. Bölk watched him in silence.
    A gentle wind came from the west, shifting slightly every minute or so. Miklós sat facing the wind, though the smoke stung his eyes, so he could more easily stare at the Mountains of Faerie as he ate his breakfast and cooked his lunch.
    “Bölk,” he said at one point.
    “Yes, master?”
    “I’ve never seen you eat. Don’t you?”
    “Not as you do, master. I am fed by the use folk such as you make of me.”
    Miklós turned from the mountains to stare at him. “Is that true?”
    “I cannot lie, master.”
    “But … then are you always accompanied by someone or other?”
    “No. Often I go for years, or hundreds of years, seeing no one who needs my help. Or no one who can use it.”
    “What do you do then?”
    “I starve, master.”
    Miklós continued staring at him. “I can’t leave you!” he burst out at last.
    Bölk chuckled. “Yet you wish to go to Faerie. So, from that time on, you can’t make use of me whether you want to or not.”
    Miklós, with no answer to this, continued looking at the horse for some time until, at last, his gaze was drawn back to the mountains.
     
    MIKLÓS WIPED WATER DROPLETS FROM HIS FACE AND TURNED his back to the spray. Behind and above him, the waterfall towered white and blue and brown, and there was thundering in his ears.
    “You can go no farther?” he asked.
    “No farther,” said Bölk. “But I assure you that getting to Faerie will be easy. Up this cliff to the lake, then west, and down the other side. You can see that the climb will not be difficult.”
    Miklós studied it, then nodded (wiping more water droplets from his face).
    “It’s funny,” he said. “You don’t realize how sharply you’re climbing until you see how far you’ve come.”
    “Mountain trails are like that.”
    “Yes.” Then, “Will I see you again?”
    “I don’t know, master. Returning to Fenario will be harder than leaving it. But if you wish to, and you manage, we may meet again. But then, I will no longer be the same.”
    Miklós snorted. “Nor will I.”
    Bölk nodded slowly. “Perhaps,” he said, “you will come to understand.”
     
    “WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP HERE, LITTLE GIRL?”
    “That was a pretty horse, mister.”
    “My name is Miklós.”
    “I’m Devera. Where are you going?”
    “I’m on a journey to Faerie. The horse couldn’t take me any farther.”
    “Where’s Faerie?”
    “Huh? Why, just down the mountain, over there.”
    “Oh. Is that what you call it?”
    “What do you call it?”
    “What’s down that way?”
    “That’s Fenario. Why don’t you … say! You’re from Faerie, aren’t you, Devera?”
    “Well, sort of.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I have a … friend, who said I should go to … what did you say it was called?”
    “Faerie? Fenario?”
    “Fenario. He said I should go to Fenario because I would be able to learn something about—well, I’m really not supposed to say. But I must have missed, since I’m way up here, and that means I’m probably early, too.”
    “Early?”
    “Never mind, Mister Miklós. I like your name.”
    “Thank you. You sound like