The esophagus narrowed, and Jack and Jill were forced to crawl, their hands and knees sliding along his slimy throat. The growling grew louder. And then it was joined by a buzzing.
"What"s that?"
Jill was slapped in the face by an enormous bug. She frantically swatted it away. Another one crashed into Jack"s neck. Jack screamed and then shuddered.
They pushed on. The darkness became heavier.
"Look for treasure. Or a giant mirror," Jack whispered. Jill nodded.
The two children slid out of the esophagus and into the stomach. This was a burbling swamp of acid that burned their skin when they touched it. Foul-smelling gloop dripped from the ceiling and coated their bodies and then began to sting. Jack and Jill winced in pain. They couldn"t hear the frog any more. "Hurry," said Jill. They pushed deeper. Bugs slapped them in the face and got caught in the sticky, stinging gloop. The children pulled them off, and the bugs protested and stung at their hands. Jill thought she might cry. But she gasped, "Deeper."
On they pushed. They felt with their feet under the pool of acid for treasure chests or strings of pearls or golden mirrors. Anything that might be the Seeing Gla.s.s.
They found nothing.
"It"s not here," Jack said.
"Maybe Eddie got mixed up."
"Maybe he digested it."
"I can"t believe it"s not here."
Sudden panic gripped the children. "What are we going to do now?" Jack demanded.
They arrived at the back of Eddie"s stomach. There, in the dim light that filtered from Eddie"s mouth and down his throat, they could make out a round little hatch of muscle. It led, they figured, to his intestines.
"That"s all there is," said Jack. "The end."
But suddenly Jill was pointing at something.
It did not look like a bug, or like anything edible.
It was a round disc, about a foot in diameter.
"What"s that?" Jill asked. They waded up to it. It was lodged in the hatch of muscle.
"Dunno," said Jack.
"Pull it out."
"If I do it I think I"m going to throw up."
"Well, I know I will," said Jill.
So Jack grabbed hold of the little disc that was lodged between Eddie"s stomach and intestines and yanked at it. It came out easily, and Jack fell backward into the burbling stomach acid. The acid burned his skin. He shouted and scrambled to his feet.
Suddenly, everything went black. Eddie"s entire stomach began to shift, and Jack and Jill were thrown into the fleshy back wall. Eddie was rearing up. Stomach acid poured all over the children, burning their faces, their arms, their hands, submerging them utterly. Jill began swimming upward to get to air, but Jack, holding onto the little disc with one hand and the spear with the other, could not. Jill reached the surface, looked for Jack, and began to scream. Suddenly, Eddie slammed back to the ground, sending Jack crashing into Jill, and both sprawling into the stomach acid again.
They got to their feet and groped frantically through the pitch darkness toward the throat.
"What"s going on?" Jill asked, terrified.
"No idea. He forgot?"
"Or he"s decided to eat us?"
"Was it a trap?"
And then the darkness was cut by an orange glow. Jack and Jill looked in the direction of Eddie"s mouth. It was still tightly shut, and no light came through at all. Where was the glow coming from, then? They looked back into the stomach. A small fire was burning there at the back. A small fire. But growing.
"He"s erupting!" Jill shouted, and though that wasn"t exactly the word she was looking for at that moment, it was in fact exactly the right word. For the fire was blooming up the length of Eddie"s stomach. Jack thrust the disc to Jill and gripped the spear with both hands.
"What are you going to do?" Jill screamed.
"I don"t know!"
The fire boiled toward them.
"This way!" Jill shouted, and she grabbed Jack"s arm and they crawled through the esophagus and into Eddie"s mouth.
"Eddie, open up! Open up!" she cried. Something exploded in Eddie"s stomach. The fire burst into Eddie"s throat. Jack aimed the spear at the roof of Eddie"s mouth.
"You"re going to kill him!" Jill shouted.
"What else can I do?" Jack cried.
"EDDIE!" Jill screamed.
And Jack sent the spear straight up at the soft part of Eddie"s palate.
And then, just before the point of Jack"s spear hit Eddie"s flesh, the giant mouth opened and the great tongue flung Jill and Jack and Jack"s spear out of Eddie"s mouth. They spun through the air and hit the ground hard as an arm of flame burst from Eddie"s throat and cut a line through the air just above the children"s bodies.
The flame died. Jack and Jill turned and looked at Eddie. He roared.
"Good G.o.d!" the frog cried.
Eddie kept roaring.
"What happened?" Jack and Jill shouted at the same moment.
"He had to burp," said the frog. "I kept telling him not to. Eventually he closed his mouth to keep the burp down."
"Why didn"t you call to us?" Jack demanded.
"I did! You didn"t hear me?"
The children shook their heads.
"What"s all over you?" the frog said. Jack and Jill looked at their arms, hands, bodies. They touched their faces. Their skin was raw and blistering, and totally covered in stomach acid. "You look horrible," the frog added.
"Thanks," Jill replied.
"And no treasure?"
Jack held up the little disc. "This is all we could find." The frog turned and croaked at Eddie. Eddie nodded and roared.
"That"s it," said the frog.
"What? That"s the whole treasure?"
"According to him," the frog shrugged.
Jill, still lying on the ground, let her head fall against the craggy black stone. Jack stared at the disc. It was so coated in stomach gloop he couldn"t make it out. "What is it?" he said. No one answered.
Jack sat up, cradled the thing in his lap, and pawed at the gloop with his fingers. It stung them. He pulled at it, but it just drooped back into place, hugging the little disc.
"Maybe it"s a mirror," Jack concluded.
"We better hope so," agreed Jill.
Eddie roared. Jill looked up wearily at the giant, ecstatic salamander. "What is he saying?" she asked.
The frog sighed. "He wants to ask us more questions."
Some hours pa.s.sed while the children recuperated from their ordeal and fielded such questions as, "If a tree falls in a forest and there"s n.o.body around, how did it fall down?" and "What does the word "is" mean?" But finally Jack stood up and said, "I think we should go now." Jill, who had been coming up with the bulk of the answers to Eddie"s questions, gratefully agreed.
"The problem is," said Jack, "there"s no way Begehren is going to believe that this thing is all the treasure that"s down here." He waved the disc in the air. The gloop was beginning to harden. "How are we going to get him to lift us back up?"
The frog offered a suggestion, and then Jill did, and then Jack came up with one of his own. None seemed particularly promising. Jill tried another, and another. Jack added to one, subtracted from the other. The frog offered a variant. After a while, the two children were nodding.
"That might work," said Jill.
"It"s the best we"ve got," said Jack. "Let"s try it."
Jill turned to the frog. "Tell Eddie."
When the frog informed Eddie of their intent to leave, Eddie was crestfallen. But when the frog elaborated that they would need the giant salamander"s help, he looked like it might be the very best day of his long, long life.
"Tell him to lead the way," Jack said to the frog. So Eddie began crashing through the tunnels that had led them there, smashing stone as easily as one might smash gla.s.s. Jack and Jill ran after him, the frog nestled in Jack"s pocket.
Jack and Jill stood at the bottom of the sinkhole and stared up. Far above, they could see the dim red light of the Goblin Kingdom. Beside them lay Eddie, still as death. Jack nodded at Jill. They cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, "Begehren!"
Their voices echoed up the sides of the sinkhole and then died away.
No answer came.
Jill nodded at Jack. Again they cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, "BEGEHREN!"
Again, no answer.
A third time they cupped their hands to their mouths, turned them to the great hole, and bellowed.
This time, far up above, a tiny round shape appeared, framed by the dim red light. "QUEEN? JACK?" called a voice. It ricocheted off the walls of the sinkhole all the way down into the ground.
"YES!" the children shouted. "WE GOT IT!"
Their answer was met by a burst of sound. Excited voices seemed to be calling out to one another. Then they heard, "Begehren is coming!"
A few minutes later, another round shape appeared in the dim red light far above the two children. "DO YOU HAVE IT?" The caretaker of the Goblin Kingdom"s deep voice echoed down into the hole.
"YES!" the children called back.
The large bucket came plunging down through the darkness and landed with a crash beside them. "START LOADING IT IN!" Begehren cried down.
"WE CAN"T!" the children shouted back up. "IT"S IN THE IDECKWHATEVER"S STOMACH! WE KILLED HIM AND LOOKED IN HIS MOUTH. IT"S ALL SOLID INSIDE!"
Begehren cried, "YOU KILLED HIM????"
"IT WASN"T VERY HARD! HE WAS SLEEPING!"
There were cries of surprise and joy above.
"WHAT"S IN HIS STOMACH? GOLD? DIAMONDS?"
"YES!" the children called. "AND MORE! MUCH MORE THAN THAT! ALL IN ONE GREAT BALL!"
Shrieking laughter echoed down the hole.
"WE"LL NEED A BIG PLATFORM," Jill cried up. "YOU CAN LOAD HIM ONTO IT AND HAUL HIM UP. WE"LL COME UP AFTER."
"YES, YES, GOOD!" Begehren called down. "JUST WAIT WHILE WE GET IT!" More shrieking laughter and giddy voices. Begehren"s voice returned. "YOU ARE THE GREATEST HEROES KNOWN TO GOBLIN OR TO MAN!" And then he shouted, "HOLD ON!"
They waited, and waited, and then down through the darkness came an enormous platform with three dozen of the strongest goblins the children had yet seen. The ropes that suspended the platform were reinforced with enormous, thick chains. When the goblins saw the giant salamander, lying as if dead in the clearing, they all huddled together, as far from the great body as possible.
"It"s okay," said Jack. "He"s dead." Beside Eddie, out of sight of the goblins, the frog was whispering into the salamander"s ear.
"HURRY UP!" came the imperious cry from above. The goblins reluctantly moved toward the salamander until they stood nine at a leg. Then they began hauling, dragging Eddie toward the platform.
Jack watched Eddie carefully. It looked like he was trying not to smile. The frog, unnoticed by the grunting, heaving goblins, hopped awkwardly alongside Eddie"s head as it dragged along the ground. The goblins finally managed to get Eddie onto the platform.