Hamelin Stoop: The Lost Princess and the Jewel of Periluna

Chapter 1

The Other Side

He made it. He was on the other side. But he was more than disappointed. His main reason for coming—to find his parents and learn who he really was—now seemed like a distant goal.

The eagle started moving away from him toward the shaft the great bird called the Tunnel of Times. Hamelin had no time either to enjoy his success at passing the test or to keep his frustrations from simmering. He would have to follow the radiant bird unless he wanted to be left in this spot, with no light and no way back except across the footbridge and over the chasm.

He would follow, but it wasn’t fair. He had just finished completing the hardest task of his life—coming back into this mysterious cave, following the eagle through dark spaces and along narrow ledges, and finally making his way across the footbridge over a massive chasm. He had failed to cross it three and a half years ago, but this time he had done it. And he had done it to find his parents.

The darkness below the footbridge had obviously tried to reject him. It was more than just darkness. It was a nothingness that was something. The burning smell of tar and the hot winds that blew at him as he tried to cross the bridge had nearly succeeded in knocking him off and into the abyss. But the gloves of strength that the eagle had given him had enabled him to hang on, even when one of the ropes of the bridge came undone.

The eagle had done nothing to help him, except of course for giving him the gloves years ago, when he was eight. Now, however, with agonizing effort, he had made it across, but the huge bird was pressing on, giving him no time to rest.

It’s not fair! he thought. I came over here to find my parents, and now the eagle tells me there are other things I’ve got to do, something about fighting in battles and recovering a kingdom. I just want my parents! I just want to know who my family is!

Hamelin answered his own frustrations by remembering that the eagle hadn’t said he couldn’t look for his parents, only that there were other reasons as well to come over here and that the Ancient One would include Hamelin’s reasons in his, whoever this Ancient One was.

Hamelin had been raised in an orphanage in West Texas in the early 1950s, and he knew what it was like to feel lonely. But even the loneliness of not having parents had hardly prepared him for the darkness of this cave. And now the eagle had told him that they were going through the Tunnel of Times and that the times would change, whatever that meant.

He had failed to cross when he was eight years old, but he’d been given another chance. He was now eleven and a half, and he had passed the test, according to the eagle. But what was this “Atrium of the Worlds” the eagle said they were heading toward? Would his parents be there? Probably not. The eagle made it sound like finding them was something a long way off, if it could be done at all.

Hamelin was tired, frustrated, and even angry. He kicked at some loose pebbles on the path in front of him, but he had no choice. The only light he had was moving forward. He had to follow.

They entered the shaft, and almost immediately the terrain began to change. Though they were still inside the caverns, the ground beneath Hamelin’s feet felt a bit softer. There were still rocks in the path and low places overhead to watch out for, but the space was different, more confined. He remembered learning the word claustrophobia in Mr. Waverly’s fifth-grade class, and now he began to feel it.

The light shining from the eagle gave the impression of rounded sides on both his left and right. Hamelin calculated that he could have stretched his arms out full length and there would have been only two to three feet remaining on either side. The ceiling now was eight to ten feet high in most spots, and it felt like the shaft was gradually but steadily descending. This must be the Tunnel of Times. He hoped that it would be only a short time before they emerged from the cave. But he was wrong.

The eagle ran on quickly in front of him, occasionally hopping and even taking short flights of thirty to forty feet. Hamelin found himself jogging at first, then running at nearly half speed to stay up with the great bird. He was in good shape, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep up the pace.

The air was stale, and now Hamelin felt no breezes whatsoever. He kept smelling a moldy odor and occasionally a faint rotten-egg stench, which he remembered being told at school was like burning sulphur. He had trouble getting a good breath of air. After fifteen minutes, the eagle slowed a bit, but Hamelin found that he still had to run to keep up. He knew from hikes and other activities around the children’s home that he could jog for an hour or more if he had to. Still, these conditions were different. The ground was uneven, the air was not fresh, the path they were on always seemed to be moving downward, and the eagle’s pace was much harder than a jog. The backs of his knees began to ache.

After what seemed like at least forty-five minutes, just when he thought he couldn’t go much farther, the eagle slowed to a walk, and Hamelin caught up.

“We can’t stop yet,” said the great bird, “but we did make up a little bit of our time.” Hamelin panted and nodded.

“Although,” said the eagle, who looked at him for a second before continuing, “we lost three and a half years when you failed to cross the first time, we’re close to being on schedule for our present assignment.”

Hamelin looked down. While he had always had it in the back of his mind, there was something he knew he had to say. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. He was embarrassed that it sounded so childlike.

The eagle looked at him carefully and then responded, “I am only a guide. There are others you must tell—”

“I . . . I just couldn’t do the footbridge before—”

“I know,” said the eagle. “You were younger then. Perhaps—”

“So why didn’t you just carry me?” said Hamelin with a sudden note of frustration in his voice. “The first time, when I failed, you carried me back to the opening. Why didn’t you just fly me over the bridge?”

The eagle stared at Hamelin. He blinked slowly and finally said softly, “Because you begged to go home.”

“Well . . . why didn’t you help me this last time when the footbridge was coming undone? You just stood there.”

The eagle’s eyes narrowed. “My strength wasn’t in question. Yours was. It was a test. Both times. But you’ve passed. And now you know—and so does the Ancient One—that you can go forward.”

Hamelin looked down. “It’s just . . . I was afraid of—”

“No need to explain,” said the great bird. “You’ve already apologized. That’s a good beginning. The consequences are still with us, but even your failure, in the hands of the Ancient One, may give us other opportunities. But that’s not ours to know ahead of time. There will certainly be other tests. So you must stay alert and never again turn back.”

Hamelin still wasn’t sure who this “Ancient One” was, but he was glad that the great bird seemed to accept his apology.

“May I ask again . . . if you don’t mind . . . where are we going?” he said softly.

“You may, but I’m not sure I can tell you, as there are many points along the way. You’ll have to learn as you go along. That’s part of the plan that will allow you to succeed . . . if you can.”

Hamelin was stung by the eagle’s if. “So what am I supposed to do along the way?”

“Others will tell you more,” said the Great Eagle, “but I can tell you that you’re going into a very dangerous realm. On your way, you’ll meet others who also have their assignments. You must join them. In helping them, you will also discover your mission. The Hospitable Woman will give you more details as to where you’ll go after you meet her and what you’re to do.”

“What’s her name?”

The eagle fluffed his wings slightly and shook his head but said nothing. Hamelin figured he had said something dumb and now was afraid that the great bird would quit talking.

“She sounds like a nice person,” he said, trying to keep the conversation going.

The eagle had a rasping sound in his throat, the scraping wood sound. Hamelin thought maybe it was the way eagles groaned.

“Nice?” the great bird finally said. “I wouldn’t call her nice, but she is kind.”

Suddenly the eagle stopped and turned toward him. He lifted his head and looked at Hamelin for a long moment and then spoke. “I know you want to find your parents, but what you have been summoned here to do is not a task designed to make you feel happy. That may happen, if you succeed, but first of all you must do what is good and true, and perhaps we may join in the Ancient One’s defeat of the rebels.”

The great bird continued to stare at him, and Hamelin dared not look away. He suddenly had many questions, but now was not a good time to interrupt, since the eagle was talking, and he normally didn’t talk much.

“You are entering a war,” the eagle continued. “And as you go forward, you must remember that the fight is not fair.”

“Not fair?” said Hamelin. “Why not?”

“Didn’t I say it was a fight?”

Hamelin’s eyes widened. He was used to short fights, ones that some adult came along and stopped before anything bad happened.

“And of course you are limited by the truth and good of others.”

Hamelin had been taught to tell the truth and to be nice to others, but from what the Great Eagle said, the task ahead sounded a lot bigger and harder than just staying out of trouble or being nice and not telling lies.

The eagle quickly turned again and said, “Come, we must be off. Time grows short.” The pace immediately returned to a steady run for Hamelin, and there was no more time, or breath, for questions. The eagle was apparently making up for the minutes they had spent talking.

As they went on, it struck Hamelin that the insides of the hills were bigger and more expansive than they appeared from the outside. In fact, he had long since lost all orientation with respect to the width and depth of the hill, much less the direction of the opening where he had entered.

As for time, Hamelin likewise had lost his sense of how long he had been gone from the children’s home. He knew it had been several hours, perhaps as much as five or six, he guessed, but he really didn’t know.

The eagle’s pace picked up, and Hamelin had to take his eyes off everything but the radiant bird. The eagle now seemed to be in a low glide, and Hamelin found himself running at top speed. He knew he couldn’t keep it up for long, and just when he thought he’d have to break stride, the Great Eagle’s feet touched ground and everything slowed down. For a brief moment, he had the strange sensation of running in slow motion.

Just then the shaft leveled off and took a sharp swing to their left. The eagle noticeably slowed his pace. The tunnel continued for another hundred yards or so, then suddenly opened into an expansive cavern.

The Great Eagle paused for a moment at the entrance, looked around as if remembering something, and then strode into the cavern. As he entered, the light that shone from him leaped up to the walls. If the great bird had the ability to increase the light emanating from him, then at this moment he must have done so, for Hamelin found himself looking in awe at what could have been the inside of a natural cathedral.

The area was massive. With walls and ceilings of enormous height, the cavern must have been one hundred twenty-five feet long and at least sixty feet high and maybe forty feet wide. Magnificent stalactites hung from the expanse of the ceiling, and there were natural nooks and arches on the lower walls and what appeared to be small benches and tables here and there on the floor. The features apparently were not hand crafted, but they were somehow—Hamelin couldn’t figure out how—molded right there within the cavern itself.

The great bird led Hamelin across this hall of splendor and out the other side. After walking about twenty paces through a smaller, adjoining cavern, almost like a hallway, the eagle stopped, sniffed the air, and shook his great shoulders and beautifully shaped head. He looked at Hamelin, who thought the radiant bird seemed almost sad. Had something happened here?

They then rounded a corner, came to what looked like another, much larger area, and stopped. The eagle’s light was present, but not as extensive here. Hamelin knew that there was much he couldn’t see. This cavern was huge. It appeared to be a perfect square, about one hundred fifty feet in length and width. The spacing between the walls was, for the first thirty feet up each wall, the same size as the square floor, but as the walls continued upward, the corners rounded, and the sides of the cavern arched and grew closer together. It was like the inside of a great rounded tower that grew smaller as it went higher. So high was the dome-like ceiling inside this last but very beautiful cavern that Hamelin couldn’t even see it.

The walls glistened. Were they moist? Four great boulders were visible at equal distances from one another around the sides of this cavern. The boulders, which almost looked as if they had been hand carved of granite, were smooth and resembled chairs without legs. If they were chairs, the people, or creatures, who sat on them would have to be huge, Hamelin thought.

“How high is the ceiling of this cavern?”

“I don’t know,” answered the eagle, “unless you could measure the sky itself.”

“You mean, it has no ceiling?”

“No rock ceiling,” said the bird.

“But I can’t see the sky,” said Hamelin.

“That’s because it’s nighttime. If it were daytime, you would see an opening at the top.”

“Nighttime?” asked Hamelin. “But I haven’t been gone from the home that long. Surely it can’t be night.”

“You started your journey nearly twelve hours ago. In any case, as I said before, once we crossed the footbridge and came through the Tunnel of Times, time didn’t change, but the times have.”

“I still don’t know what that means,” Hamelin said.

“I mean that now you are at a different place in time.”

Hamelin’s eyes narrowed. “So where am I?”

“This place intersects with many kingdoms, but the people you meet here will look the way they would have looked to you hundreds of years ago. Time moves at the same pace for them as it does for you, but the times are different.”

The talk of time reminded Hamelin of something. With a slight hesitation in his voice, he said, “Earlier . . . you said we had lost three and a half years.”

“Yes, it has been almost forty-two months of great evil. It would trouble you greatly if you knew how much loss and suffering have occurred since then.”

Hamelin looked down and shook his head. He realized then that the tension and exhaustion of fighting his way across the bridge and the hard pace through the tunnel had made him forget the girl he had failed, the one who had waited on him in vain. He wanted to ask more questions about her, but the eagle had already explained that she had joined Chimera’s side. There was apparently to be no more talk of her. The eagle was pressing on to other topics.

“The times of evil are still with us, but remember—your own failure is in the past,” said the eagle. “And with that failure, and perhaps even because of it, we have, finally, another opportunity.”

“Another opportunity?”

“Yes. Often that never happens. One failure just closes a door. But the Ancient One does unusual things. Though we can’t go back to the former time, what happened then can be used for something new.”

Hamelin didn’t want to hear any more about the past, so he said quickly, “Well, I’m ready to go on.”

“Not yet. First, we must pass from the Atrium of the Worlds into the other kingdoms. But to pass into those realms, we must wait for the sun to rise. We need its light. For now, we need rest. Lie down over there.” The eagle indicated a spot slightly behind Hamelin.

Hamelin understood nothing of what the great bird meant by the sun’s light and how it would help them enter “other kingdoms,” but he was more than happy to rest for a little. He moved to the area pointed to by the eagle, found a spot that felt smooth and dry, and made himself as comfortable as he could. The eagle walked away, and suddenly the room was pitch dark. Hamelin took off his jacket and used it for a pillow. But though he was exhausted, he couldn’t fall asleep. His legs and back were sore, and the rock floor was hard. And the darkness was the darkest he had ever known. He kept the gloves on. His mind was cluttered with questions. What was he doing here? Why couldn’t he find his parents now that he had passed the test? Was this where he should have been forty-two months earlier?

On top of all that, he suddenly realized how hungry he was. He reached into his right blue jean pocket and pulled out the apple, biscuit, and cookie he had stuffed there when he left the children’s home so many hours ago. The apple was bruised and the biscuit and cookie were in pieces, but thanks to the long pocket Mrs. Kaley had sewn into his jeans, they were still there. He wolfed down everything and wished he had some water. He sat there in the darkness and then heard something.

Was that the sound of running water?

He was thirsty, but the apple had helped. Besides, it was too dark without the eagle’s light to go stumbling around. Where is he? Finally, Hamelin fell asleep.