Free North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson

down to the bridge, if it existed. Theother side of the Blapp looked no different—wet boulders and shale that sloped up to a tree line. He knew from maps that the river evenly divided Glipwood Forest. Beyond the forest in the north lay the Stony Mountains and then the Ice Prairies. He had always dreamed of seeing more of Aerwiar, but he never imagined it would be on the run from Fangs, trolls, and horned hounds.
    “Look!” Leeli cried.
    She and Nugget stood a stone’s throw ahead of the rest, where the river took a sharp turn to the right and seemed to course straight into a towering cliff and disappear.
    “I see it!” Leeli said. “Fingap Falls, and then the sea. It’s beautiful!”
    At these words, Podo bowed his head and closed his eyes—in prayer or worry, Janner couldn’t tell. The old man’s mouth drew down at the corners, and his nostrils flared. The youth he had gained from the water from the First Well was gone. Janner now saw a tired old man in wet clothes, gray-white hair dangling from his head in stringy locks. Podo’s eyes opened and looked right at him. They stared at each other for a moment, then Podo winked, forced a smile, and pushed on to the next boulder.
    Behind them, Janner heard the growl of a troll and the howl of a horned hound.
    He pulled his mother to the next boulder and kept hold of her hand as they hurried on. Podo helped Oskar, while Tink kept close to Leeli and Nugget. Janner was glad to see that Tink turned around every few steps to be sure his bow wasn’t needed.
    Finally, they rounded the bend in the river and beheld, far below, a plume of rainbow-lit mist, the hissing cloud that churned up from Fingap Falls. The river was split by jagged, towering crags into hundreds of roaring courses that tumbled downward in white madness. Far beyond and below the mist lay the wide, silent gray of the Dark Sea of Darkness.
    Such a view demanded that the company stop in its tracks. They huddled together, sopping wet and weary. If Janner had been able to read minds, he would’ve learned that each of them had the same thought: with the Fangs behind and the falls ahead, it seemed certain the river would kill them. It would suck them in and hurl them into the cold black Deep.
    Tink stood in front of his grandfather, trying to be heard above the roar of the falls.
    “What?” yelled Podo.
    “I said, I don’t see a bridge!” Tink shouted.
    Tink was right. The idea that there had ever been a bridge at Fingap Falls struck Janner as ridiculous now that he could see the place with his own eyes.
    “What do we do?” Janner cried.
    “We go!” said Leeli. Wind whipped her hair across her face, and she looked at the sea with a familiar look of fierce determination.
    Podo’s face, however, was ashen. He stood with a steadying hand on Oskar’s shoulder, and his eyes shot every which way but toward the sea. The two men were a pitiful sight. Oskar’s belly was wrapped in bloody bandages, and the top of his head glistened with moisture. Water and sweat dripped from Podo’s eyebrows. Their shoulders sagged, and their mouths hung open. It was unfair that two old men—two
good
men who ought to be sitting by the fire with their feet up and their bellies full—clung to each other on the banks of the Mighty Blapp with death before them and death behind.
    “Grandpa,” Leeli said. “I can see the sea from here, and it’s not dark at all. It’s wide and terrible and beautiful. We’re supposed to go that way. I don’t know why, and I know I should be afraid, but there’s something…
right
about it. Something about the size of the ocean, about the way it stretches out forever and flat—it makes me want to sing.”
    It seemed a silly thing to say, but Leeli’s eyes were steady. She angled her chin and pulled her hair from her face so that the wind blew it out behind her. Podo smiled at his granddaughter and nodded. Janner looked beyond the mist but saw only the ocean and felt nothing other than a