Diamond Age

"I ca

"Then I will come back up the rope and stay with you," Princess Nell said generously.

"No!" Harv said, and reeled in the rope, trapping Nell on the outside.

"But I will be lost without you!" Princess Nell cried.

"That's your stepmother talking," Harv said. "You are a strong, smart, and brave girl and can do fine without me."

"Harv is right," said the Raven, flying overhead. "Your destiny is in the Land Beyond. Hurry, lest your stepmother return and trap you here."

"Then I will go to the Land Beyond with my Night Friends," said Princess Nell, "and I will find the twelve keys, and I will come back here one day and free you from this Dark Castle."

"I'm not holding my breath," Harv said, "but thanks anyway."

Down on the shore was a little boat that Nell's father had once used to row around the island. Nell climbed in with her Night Friends and began to row.

Nell rowed for many hours until her back and shoulders ached. The sun set in the west, the sky became dark, and it became harder to make out the Raven against the darkling sky. Then, much to her relief, her Night Friends came alive as they always did. There was plenty of room in the boat for Princess Nell, Purple, Peter, and Duck, but Dinosaur was so big that he nearly swamped it; he had to sit in the bow and row while the others sat in the stern trying to balance his weight.

They moved much faster with Dinosaur's strong rowing; but early in the morning a storm blew up, and soon the waves were above their heads, above even Dinosaur's head, and rain was coming down so fast that Purple and Princess Nell had to bail using Dinosaur's shiny helmet as a bucket. Dinosaur threw out all of his armor to lighten the load, but it soon became evident that this was not enough.

"Then I shall do my duty as a warrior," Dinosaur said. "My usefulness to you is finished, Princess Nell; from now, you must listen to the wisdom of your other Night Friends and use what you have learned from me only when nothing else will work." And he dove into the water and disappeared beneath the waves. The boat bobbed up like a cork. An hour later, the storm began to diminish, and as dawn approached, the ocean was smooth as glass, and filling the western horizon was a green country vaster than anything Princess Nell had ever imagined: the Land Beyond.

Princess Nell wept bitterly for lost Dinosaur and wanted to wait on the shore in case he had clung to a piece of flotsam or jetsam and drifted to safety.

"We must not dawdle here," Purple said, "lest we be seen by one of King Magpie's sentries."

"King Magpie?" said Princess Nell.

"One of the twelve Faery Kings and Queens. This shore is part of his domain," Purple said. "He has a flock of starlings who watch his borders."

"Too late!" cried sharp-eyed Peter. "We are discovered!" At that moment, the sun rose, and the Night Friends turned back into stuffed animals.

A solitary bird was diving toward them out of the morning sky. When it drew closer, Princess Nell saw that it was not one of King Magpie's starlings after all; it was their friend the Raven. He landed on a branch above her head and cried,

"Good news! Bad news! Where shall I start?"

"With the good news," Princess Nell said.

"The wicked Queen lost the battle. Her power has been broken by the other twelve."

"What is the bad news?"

"Each of them took one of the twelve keys as spoil and locked it up in his or her royal treasury. You will never be able to collect all twelve."

"But I am sworn to get them," said Princess Nell, "and Dinosaur showed me last night that a warrior must hold to her duty even if it leads her into destruction. Show me the way to the castle of King Magpie; we will get his key first."

She plunged into the forest and, before long, found a dirt road that the Raven said would lead her toward King Magpie's castle. After a break for lunch she started down this road, keeping one sharp eye on the sky.

There followed a fu

"But I have followed the road carefully," Nell said.

"The road is one of King Magpie's tricks," Purple said. "It is a circular road. In order to find his castle, we must put on our thinking-caps and use our own brains, for everything in this country is a trick of one kind or another."

"But how can we find his castle if all of the roads are made to deceive us?" Peter Rabbit said.

"Nell, do you have your sewing-needle?" Purple said.

"Yes," said Nell, reaching into her pocket and taking out her mending kit.

"Peter, do you have your magic stone?" Purple continued.

"Yes," Peter said, taking it out of his pocket. It did not look magic, being just a gray lump, but it had the magic property of attracting small bits of metal.

"And Duck, can you spare a cork from one of the lemonade bottles?"

"This one's almost empty," Duck said.

"Very well. I will also need a bowl of water," Purple said, and collected the three items from her three friends.

Nell read on into the Primer, learning about how Purple made a compass by magnetizing the needle, thrusting it through the cork, and floating it in the bowl of water. She read about their three-day journey through the land of King Magpie, and of all the tricks it contained-animals that stole their food, quicksand, sudden rainstorms, appetizing but poisonous berries, snares, and pitfalls set to catch uninvited guests. Nell knew that if she wanted, she could go back and ask questions about these things later and spend many hours reading about this part of the adventure. But the important part seemed to be the discussions with Peter that ended each day's journey.

Peter Rabbit was their guide through all of these perils. His eyes were sharp from eating carrots, and his giant ears could hear trouble coming from miles away. His quivering nose sniffed out danger, and his mind was too sharp for most of King Magpie's tricks. Before long they had reached the outskirts of King Magpie's city, which did not even have a wall around it, so confident was King Magpie that no invader could possibly pass through all of the traps and pitfalls in the forest.

Princess Nell in the city of King Magpie;

hyena trouble;

the story of Peter;

Nell deals with a stranger.

The city of King Magpie was more frightening to Princess Nell than any wilderness, and she would have sooner trusted her life to the wild beasts of the forest than to many of its people.

They tried to sleep in a nice glade of trees in the middle of the city, which reminded Princess Nell of the glades on the Enchanted Isle. But before they could even make themselves comfortable, a hissing hyena with red eyes and dripping fangs came and chased them all away.

"Perhaps we can sneak back into the glade after it gets dark, when the hyena will not see us," Nell suggested.

"The hyena will always see us, even in the dark, because it can see the infrared light that comes out of our bodies," Purple said.

Eventually, Nell, Peter, Duck, and Purple found a place to camp in a field where other poor people lived. Duck set up a little camp and lit a fire, and they had some soup before going to bed. But try as she might, Princess Nell could not sleep.

She saw that Peter Rabbit could not sleep either; he only sat with his back to the fire looking off into the darkness.

"Why are you looking into the darkness and not into the fire as we do?" Nell asked.

"Because the darkness is where danger comes from," Peter said, "and from the fire comes only illusion. When I was a little bu

Peter went on to tell his own story, just as Dinosaur had earlier in the Primer. It was a story about how he and his brothers had run away from home and fallen afoul of various cats, vultures, weasels, dogs, and humans who tended to see them, not as intrepid little adventurers but as lunch. Peter was the only one of them who had survived, because he was the cleverest of them all.

I made up my mind that one day I would avenge my brothers," Peter said.

"Did you?"

"Well, that's a long story in itself."

"Tell it to me!" Princess Nell said.

But before Peter could launch into the next part of his story, they became aware of a stranger who was approaching them. "We should wake up Duck and Purple," Peter said.

"Oh, let them sleep," Princess Nell said. "They can use the rest, and this stranger doesn't look so bad."

"What does a bad stranger look like exactly?" Peter said.

"You know, like a weasel or a vulture," Princess Nell said.

"Hello, young lady," said the stranger, who was dressed in expensive clothes and jewelry. "I couldn't help noticing that you are new to beautiful Magpie City and down on your luck. I can't sit in my comfortable, warm house eating my big, tasty meals without feeling guilty, knowing that you are out here suffering. Won't you come with me and let me take care of you?"

"I won't leave my friends behind," said Princess Nell.

"Of course not-I wasn't suggesting that," the stranger said. "Too bad they're asleep. Say, I have an idea! You come with me, your rabbit friend stays awake here to keep an eye on your sleeping friends, and I'll show you my place-y'know, prove to you that I'm not some kind of creepy stranger who's trying to take advantage of you, like you see in all those dumb kids' stories that only little babies read. You're not a little baby, are you?"

"No, I don't think so," Princess Nell said.

"Then come with me, give me a fair hearing, check me out, and if I turn out to be an okay guy, we'll come back and pick up the rest of your little group. Come on, time's a wasting!"