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Boy 412

Boy 412 had fallen down a hole He hadn&039;t meant to, and he had no idea how it had happened, but there he was, at the bottom of a hole

Just before he had fallen down the hole, Boy 412 had becoirl and the Wizard-boy They didn&039;t seem to want him with them, and he felt cold and bored So he had decided to slip off back to the cottage and hoped that he et Aunt Zelda to himself for a while

And then the haar had co had prepared hiy night, his platoon of boys had been taken out into the Forest and left to find their oay back Not all of them did, of course There was always one unlucky boy who fell foul of a hungry wolverine or was left lingering in a trap set by one of the Wendron Witches, but Boy 412 had been lucky, and he kne to keep quiet andAnd so, quiet as the haar itself, Boy 412 had started to e At some point he had actually passed so close to Nicko and Jenna that they could have put their hands out and touched hi his freedo of independence

After a while Boy 412 reached the large grassy mound at the end of the island This confused him because he was sure he had already walked across it, and by now he should have been nearly back at the cottage Maybe this was a different grassy mound? Maybe there was one at the other end of the island too? He began to wonder if he ht be lost It occurred to him that it would be possible to walk endlessly around and around the island and never get to the cottage Preoccupied with his thoughts, Boy 412 lost his footing and fell headlong into a small, and unpleasantly prickly, bush And that hen it had happened One moment the bush was there, and the nextinto darkness

His yell of surprise was lost on the thick damp air of the haar, and he landed with a heavy thud on his back Winded, Boy 412 lay still for a ht as he sat up slowly, nothing seemed to hurt too much He was lucky He had landed on what felt like sand, and it had cushioned his fall Boy 412 stood up and promptly hit his head on a low rock above hi the top of his head with one hand, Boy 412 stretched up his other hand and tried to feel for the hole he had fallen through, but the rock sloped save hi but silk-smooth, ice-cold rock

It was also pitch-black No chink of light shone from above, and however et used to it, they didn&039;t It was as though he was blind

Boy 412 dropped to his hands and knees and began to feel about hiht that ers scrabbled the sand away he soon hit a smooth stone floor, so sht be uard at the Palace, but he couldn&039;t i out here in the Marram Marshes in the middle of nowhere

Boy 412 sat down on the sandy floor and nervously ran his hands through the sand, trying to think what to do next He ondering if ainst so metallic At first Boy 412&039;s spirits rose -for, a hidden lock or a secret handle - but as his fingers closed around theBoy 412 lifted the ring, cradled it in his palh in the pitch blackness he could see nothing

"I wish I had a light," Boy 412his eyes as wide as they would go, as if itsat in his pal alone in a chill dark place under the ground, it sloarmed up in the small human hand that held it for the first tio

As Boy 412 sat with the ring, he began to relax He realized that he was not afraid of the dark, that he felt quite safe, safer in fact than he had felt for years He wasArmy, and he knew that they would never be able to find hiainst the wall He would find a way out, that was for sure

Boy 412 decided to see if the ring would fit It was far too big for any of his skinny fingers, so he slipped it onto his right index finger, the biggest finger that he had Boy 412, turned it around and around, enjoying the feeling of war froe sensation The ring, which felt as if it had coer; it now fitted perfectly Not only that, but it was giving off a faint golden glow