The Monster Hunter's Manual Read online

  “I’m sorry for laughing,” I muttered. “I really didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t see myself as a lord.”

  She looked at our faces and smiled. “All right, but those two can’t come with us.”

  Eleanor became bright again – a light in the darkness. She glided across the room to stand as close to Alex and me, and as far from Roger and Uno, as she could. She scowled at them and crossed her arms.

  “They are our friends,” Alex protested. “Roger said he was sorry. Can’t you just pretend they’re our servants or something?”

  “Oh,” Eleanor said softly. “I guess that’s fine.”

  “I am no one’s serving person,” Roger declared and with that, he made an ugly face at Eleanor and ran down the stairs.

  Uno stayed on inching slowly closer to Eleanor.

  Eleanor watched Roger go with a hint of anger.

  We could all hear Roger as he stumbled down the stairs and out of the door. The door slammed shut, with a bang and I could almost hear him as he stomped through the courtyard and back into our little portion of the castle. I felt bad for him. I imagined him going up to his attic and sitting alone surrounded by cans of diet blood and old board games. It seemed like a pretty depressing way to spend your day.

  “You shouldn’t treat him like that,” I said.

  Eleanor cast me a wicked glance. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a good guy and because we’re alone in this castle. We should be nice to each other.”

  Eleanor’s face softened a little. I almost thought she was going to call after him. “I’ll be nicer to him next time.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Eleanor smiled. “Would you like me to show you more of my friends?”

  I nodded eagerly, but Alex had something else on his mind.

  “I was wondering…” he spoke hesitantly. It was a tone that wasn’t common for Alex. “I, um…” His voice trailed off and we waited. “…You’re dead. And I just wanted to know if you ever see any other dead people while you are, you know, being a ghost in the ghost world?”

  Eleanor’s eyes filled with genuine empathy. “I’m just a ghost,” she whispered. “A phantom. I have no more power or knowledge than you.”

  “But you must know something,” Alex said. “You died. What happened after you died?”

  “I think I was supposed to leave. I should have followed the light, but my mother was weeping, so I stayed and the light faded and I stayed here.”

  “So, don’t other people stay here? Can’t we find the other people that didn’t follow the light?”

  “Alex,” I said. “Mom and Dad are dead…”

  “So is Uno. So is Roger. So is Eleanor, but they are all still here. Why can’t Mom and Dad be?”

  “You have to let them go,” I said gently. “They are in a better place.”

  “Don’t say that! Why do people always say that! You don’t know that. You’ve never been dead, but Eleanor has.”

  “I don’t know how to find other ghosts,” Eleanor said.

  “There has to be a way.” Alex’s eyes filled with tears.

  Eleanor frowned. “Maybe there is.”

  “How?”

  “The old ones know the old magic. They know many things of this world and the next. Maybe they can tell us.”

  I didn’t like the way she said, “the old ones.” They sounded like the type of creatures you wouldn’t want to visit. They didn’t even have real names and I couldn’t trust anything that didn’t have a name. The old ones sounded dangerous.

  “Where do we find them?” Alex asked.

  “They aren’t far. They live by the dolmen and the ancient places of old magic.”

  “Isn’t this place ancient.”

  “It’s old,” Eleanor said. “But I lived here. No, the ancient places were here before the English, the Franks or the Gauls. They were here before the Romans or the Celts. They were here in the twilight time, before men wrote. In those dark years, people worshipped the old ones and built the dolmen, to honor them. They buried their dead beneath them. They say there are many people buried there.”

  The thought of old stones on top of lots of dead people didn’t sound like a fun day in the sun to me and it certainly didn’t sound like a good idea. In fact, it sounded like a completely crazy idea. I couldn’t think of a much worse idea than marching off into the woods to look for old spirits on top of a bunch of dead people. “I don’t like this, Alex.”

  “Where are the dolmens?” Alex asked.

  “They aren’t far, just past the village, in the old woods,” Eleanor answered.

  “Will you take us?”

  Eleanor hesitated and looked down at the ground. She was unsure. “The old ones can be crabby.”

  Alex was more determined than I had seen him in a long time. His jaw was set the way it used to get when he told Mom he didn’t want to eat broccoli. “I don’t care,” he said.

  I shook my head. “We can’t do this.”

  “Don’t you want to even try to see them again?” Alex implored. “Don’t you miss them at all?”

  “I do, but…but…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’ll take you,” Eleanor said. “But don’t tell your Aunt.”

  We followed Eleanor down the stairs and out of the castle. We followed her into the village where the villagers gave us strange looks. It was morning and most of the people must have been at work, because only a few people were out. Some greeted us with a hesitant bonjour, but others saw Uno in his robes and looked at us as if we were just a little bit loony.

  It didn’t take long to walk through the narrow, cobbled streets of the medieval village to its edge. The village ended but the road continued on through lush farmland covered in sunflowers and grape vines. Occasional farmhouses dotted the landscape. We walked through the farmlands to the end of the pavement. The road ended abruptly and the woods began. Tall, dark trees toured over us like giants staring down at us with angry eyes. The main road was made of gravel and it widened a little, but Eleanor took us off it and down a hidden path into the deeper parts of the woods.

  There were many dolmen along the path. Small dolmen were little more than piles of rock, but at the end of the path were five large stones piled up to make a table and they were surrounded by a circle of even larger stones. The woods parted for these old stones, the grass thin and dotted with tiny flowers.

  I stopped on the edge of the circle and looked in pensively. There was an eerie silence about the place. There were no birds, no animals, and no wind. It wasn’t natural.

  Eleanor walked into the circle and sat on one of the large stones. Alex followed her and stood beside her. Uno stood on the edge of the circle like me.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” Uno whispered. “Bad things happen when people mess with magic they don’t understand. Look at Roger. That’s what happens when people mess with stuff. Poor Roger.”

  Eleanor stood on the stone and a cloud passed in front of the sun, making the forest dark. Everything was still and Eleanor became luminous in the dark. She raised her arms and extended them to the woods. She spoke in a language I had never heard and then she sat back down.

  I looked around. Alex seemed nervous. He chewed his nails when he was nervous. Before our parents died, I always tried to avoid Alex as much as I could. He was never into the things I was into. He liked sports and spent most of his time riding his bike or playing ball. It had always irritated me that he was as big as I was even though he was younger. I had a few friends and we were pretty tight, but Alex always acted like he ran the whole neighborhood. Generally, Alex drove me nuts. I had thought he was spoiled, irritable, and annoying, and he thought I was a, know-it-all, bossy, killjoy. But looking at him in the field chewing his nails, I felt sorry for him. So I stepped into the circle with him.

  A wind passed through the leaves of the trees and the clouds thickened. I could hear branches crunching and cracking in the distance and leaves rustling
on the ground. There was a whisper of wings, like birds flying away.

  Eleanor smiled. “They are coming,” she said.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Wait,” she said.

  At first, I didn’t see them. The trees moved. I saw them move, but I thought it was a trick of the light. Alex stepped back and I could see the fear in his eyes. The forest swayed and the trees grew limbs. I suppressed a yell that got caught in my throat. I didn’t want Eleanor to know how afraid I was. Alex gasped. The trees turned into living beings. The beings had faces like people, but bodies like trees. They were part of the forest. Their long limbs moved and swayed and propelled them forward. Eyes stared out of the bark and into the shadowy wood that surrounded us. The old ones were everywhere. They were the bushes and the shrubs and the trees and they surrounded us. The leader was a woman or, at least, she was shaped like a woman. She had long leafy hair and birds nested in her tresses. Her eyes were green as the grass and her lips were pretty and red.

  “Eleanor,” the woman said. “Here again? Have we not warned you?”

  “I did not come for myself, My Lady.”

  The woman looked at Alex and me and raised a single, mossy eyebrow. “Time has passed so quickly,” she said. “A thousand years has come and gone and now it’s time to start again.”

  “My Lady?”

  “Tell your mother that Angerboda walks again,” the woman said. “I see Perrine has already chosen her heirs.”

  Eleanor looked bewildered by what they were saying. “I don’t understand.”

  “It is not yours to reason why, little phantom. We speak and you do. Thus it has always been. You must tell your mother Angerboda walks again.”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Eleanor answered.

  “Alex…” The woman turned to my brother. “You have come with questions.” Her voice was like the wind, like birds flying away. Bugs crawled along her arms. Ladybugs climbed up her legs. Flowers grew at her feet.

  “Y-yes,” Alex stammered.

  “What have you to ask Druantia the Forgotten?”

  “I…I,” he stammered again and stepped backwards. “I…I want to know…if there are other…ghosts?”

  “You seek your parents?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I am of this earth and this life. I do not know the dead.”

  Druantia turned to leave, but Alex chased after her. “Please, don’t you know anything that could help me?”

  “The dead bring danger with them. Not all ghosts are sweet like Eleanor. Not all skeletons are funny like Roger. Be careful what you seek.”

  Alex was desperate. “Please.”

  “Light the Lantern of the Dead. It will guide lost spirits home.”

  Alex nodded and stepped backwards again. Druantia turned to leave, but before she vanished she leaned towards me and her body grew long so that even though her feet were rooted to the ground she could whisper in my ear. “Be brave, little prince,” she said. “It is a dark road before you.”

  With that Druantia and her army of old ones moved back to the forest. They raised their arms and grew back into the ground until they became the very trees that protected the dolmen.

  The air grew cold and the wind blew. I shivered. The clouds parted and the sun shone down on us like nothing at all had happened.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Eleanor began to drift away from the stone circle. Her light flickered in the shade of the trees. “I like Druantia. I used to come here all the time, but she says she is too old and too forgotten for this world. She says I should let her rest.”

  I reached out and touched the tree that had once been Druantia. “But you don’t let her rest?”

  Eleanor hopped down off the rock. She was barely visible in the noonday light. “Sometimes I do get lonely,” she confessed. “It has been so many years. She remembers the old days, when my father was lord of the land and I was betrothed to one of the king’s sons. I was going to be important, a princess. She remembers the good days, before the dragons and the fire.”

  “Dragons?” I asked, remembering Aunt Perrine’s story.

  “Before all the wars and battles,” Eleanor continued. “She remembers how it was.”

  “I guess it must be lonely up there in that tower. Can’t you cross over now…now that your mother is gone?” I asked.

  Eleanor laughed and shrugged. “We should go back. Your Aunt will be back soon. She might notice you are gone.”

  There were so many questions I wanted to ask Eleanor. So many things I had to know. Why did everyone keep calling me little prince? Why did the Molemen give me the cross. Why did Druantia tell her to tell her mother about Angerboda? Who was Angerboda? But before I could open my mouth to speak, Alex was standing beside Eleanor.

  “Where’s the lantern of the dead?” he asked her.

  “Not far from the castle. In the village. In the cemetery. You have to light it at night.”

  I cast a harsh glance at Alex. “At night? Oh no, don’t even say it, Alex, because there is no way we are going to the cemetery at night to try to call back the dead. We are not doing it. End of story.”

  I began walking back to the castle and everyone followed me. I was walking as fast as I could without running. Alex caught up to me and walked with me. He looked at me with his biggest puppy eyes, but he knew enough not to say anything.

  “When I was young,” Eleanor said. “They used to light the Lantern of the Dead for funerals, and on All Soul’s Day, but never at night. That’s why it had no power. We had power. My mother and I knew the secret magic, but we had to be quiet or we would be called witches. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s mother came here once and was so impressed by mother and me that she named her after me…”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at the fading ghost. She looked like a child in the sunlight. She looked even younger than Alex.

  “But you said that you were named after Eleanor of Aquitaine?” I said angrily.

  “I did? Sometimes I forget things. I meant that she was named after me.”

  “When did you live in the castle?”

  Eleanor looked up in the air above her as if she was searching for an answer. “1012.”

  “I read a book about France on the plane and it said the Eleanor of Aquitaine lived in the 1200s or something like that. You were dead a long time before her.”

  Eleanor opened her mouth and then closed it. She shrugged her shoulders. “I lie sometimes,” she said. “It was all so long ago and hardly anyone ever listens to me in any case. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “I am so sick of all this,” I said. I stomped away down the road to the castle leaving everyone else behind.

  I trudged all the way back to the castle, thinking about how irritating all of the monsters and ghosts and spirits were. I thought that it would be better if I learned French and found some nice, normal friends down in the village.

  I walked in the house, sat down at the table and turned on the CD. “Bonjour,” it said. And I answered back because sometimes it is better to sit alone talking to a CD player.

  Chapter 6

  The Lantern of the Dead

  I didn’t know where Alex went. I didn’t even care. I spent the next hour practicing my French. I learned how to say How are you? and Where is the bathroom? I learned how to say a lot, when Aunt Perrine came in, I was happy to show her everything I had learned.

  She sat with me and listened and checked my work. “Very good,” she said and slapped her hands together in delight.

  “It is too bad your brozer didn’t study,” Aunt Perrine said with a sigh. She opened a bag and gave me my special treat. It was incredible and it wasn’t little. It was a small replica of an old castle with tiny knights, ogres and monsters. Each piece was perfect in its detail and the castle was so realistic I could almost see the moss on the gray stone.

  “You like?” Aunt Perrine asked.

  “I love it.” I threw my arms around her and hugged her. She hugged m
e back.

  “I’m very glad you and your brozer are ’ere,” she said sweetly.

  “Me too. I mean, out of every place we could have ended up, this is the best.”

  “Merci.”

  She took me in the kitchen and we ate a lunch of fresh bread, strange cheese, ham, and fruit. It was delicious. Even the Orangina was pretty good. I told Aunt Perrine about our life as we ate. I told her about our little house just outside the city and about our school. I told her about my friends and karate. I even told her about my favorite video games. She listened attentively.

  “Do you miss it terribly?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do. Sometimes I miss it so bad my chest hurts, but it’s not so bad here and you are really nice.”

  “Merci. And what about brozer?”

  “He misses our parents. He was always a little impulsive, but he’s gone a little bonkers lately.”

  “Bonkers?”

  “Yeah. You know, crazy?”

  “Oh, yes. We all go crazy sometimes.”

  I looked at Aunt Perrine and wondered how many secrets she kept hidden in the old castle. I knew nothing about Chateau Larcher. I didn’t even know when it was built. Big Foot could be hiding The Holy Grail in the basement for all I knew. “Tell me something about this castle. How old is it?”

  “Zey built zee first walls around 900 and zey didn’t finish until 1066.”

  “It’s a strange place.”

  “Every place ’as secrets if you ’ave zee eyes too look.”

  “My mom used to say that.”

  “Your mamman was a very smart woman.”

  Aunt Perrine seemed to like my mom. She smiled when she talked about her. She spoke with such fondness it seemed like they would have wanted to spend more time together. You would think they would have looked for every chance to visit and talk. I thought Aunt Perrine was someone my mother would have loved. I couldn’t imagine what fight my father could have had with her to keep them apart for so long. “What did you and my father fight over?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “Zat’s a hard question. I ’ave no children. No family. Your grandfather and I were very close. He loved me deeply and I helped your grandmother and he care for all their children. I always felt closest to your fazer. I vanted him to have zis castle and its responsibilities. Your fazer said yes, but later changed his mind. I told him he couldn’t change his mind. We fought. Zat’s all. He didn’t want the responsibility.”