THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WELL

Chapter 11 – page 11

Soon G heard a faint little voice that echoed: "Granma, they’re down here." said J. "They found some more green stuff on the walls." "Well, you should have taken their bridles. How are you gonna get them back here?" called out Granma with her hand cupped to her mouth. "Oh," said J. And he sorta tried to snap his fingers. Well, he had a belt and he could take off Muff’s headlight and use the cord. If he just led Mober, Pepper would follow. What a plan. So that’s what he did. Such a smarty pants. He put Muffs ball on his neck with his own, and used her cord, tying it to his belt. It was barely long enough, but Mober got the idea, and Pepper followed.

G caught Pepper, bridled her and put the blanket on, then the baskets that were quickly becoming empty and much lighter. "You better put your frog in one of the baskets, Hoo, so he won’t get so dried out," said G. "Good idea," said the Hoo as he went to get the frog. There he was, all plump and water logged again. J took some of the shelf wood and soaked it in the pool for awhile, then put it in the bottom of the basket for the frog to lay on. He also tore off some of the lichen and moss from the walls and put it in there for a nice, soft, wet bed.

G was busy getting Mober dressed now while Julio got the Muff’s headlight fixed up again. G gave Julio back his little red cord and belt. They decided to walk and lead the horses and look inside some of the rooms. More light was coming in the white stripes now and they could see better.

Ka clompity klomp .. Ka clompity clomp clomp … went the horses hooves on the rock floor. Julio let go of Pepper and was already inside the door of the first room. It wasn’t so scarry now that more light was coming in. You could barely see the marshmallow lights glowing now. "Hey Granma," cried out Hoo, "Look what I found! Some purty stone jars with lids and some metal ones too! The rock ones are too heavy, but we can put water in the metal ones and take some with us," said J. "Great idea Hoo," says G. "I wanta take some of these little pink stone jars; they’re cute. And here’s a dark red one, and a white one too," says G. "I’ll just put them in the windows with the rest of my bottles and stuff." So G collected 5 or 6 small stone jars without even thinking of what might be in them, or that she might be stealing from dead people. Some had swirls of pink & white and looked like the Peppermints themselves. The dark red ones and white ones were plain but very smooth and pretty. The red almost looked like a ruby and the white one a pearl. "Hey!" said J. "If you can take jars, I can take swords and stuff!" "So you can .. So you can, said G. "but not from a burial ground where dead bones are." "Oh," agreed Hoo.

This room had more armour in it, hanging on stones embedded in the wall. It looked like someone had made holes in the rock walls and stuck other stones into the holes like wooden pegs. Along one side, where the light now shone in from the doorway, pieces of shells were inlaid in the stone. "Looks like abalone shell," says G. "And look here, these are either diamonds or clear crystals; I can’t tell."