They followed carefully–stepping warily–unsure what to expect. As it turned out, when they passed into the light beyond the tunnel, they found a large rift valley opening before them.
Blinking dumbly in the light, the boy found himself only able to stare in wonder.
Stretching before them was a ravine: long, twisting, narrow and deep. Tall trees crowned the rugged tops of the valley walls on either side, as well as spotting the cliff-sides too. The rift would have been nearly impossible to find, except from the sky above.
Fleat was a little way ahead of them, waiting. “The secret village,” he said, with an encompassing wave of one thin hand. The bones under his skin shifted as he moved, making his skeleton seem almost translucently visible. It took the boy a moment to understand where the village was. He could see nothing on the valley floor–no house, no town, no walls–the valley was an empty expanse of rough-tumbled boulders. A few trees. A few tussocks growing in lines, like an old man’s eyebrows.
Then he looked up. There was something angular and wooden in the crown of one of the massive trees that grew out of the side of the cliff. Many of the trees that grew from the cliffside hung in mid-air, and only a slight angle, so that it would be possible to walk along each huge trunk–with care. Sunlight shone against something that glinted in the foliage. It took the boy another long moment to realise that it was a window. There was a sprawling house in the crown of the tree, with little rope bridges and rough stairs connecting rooms. When the boy looked again, more carefully now, he saw that many other cliff-trees had house in them too, with their massive roots plunged deep into the rock and their branches outstretched into the valley air. A black and silhouetted shape left one crown and glided to another, then vanished within. It was a big owl. There was another flitting shape, and that too was an owl. There was a whole village perched in a small forest of dizzyingly angled, cliff-clinging trees. A town of owl-skin changing hob-houlards.
“Well, who’d ever have thought this was here?” said Caewen.
“Yes,” replied Dapplegrim, casting a rather suspicious eye on Fleat. “Hur. Quite the surprise. Even for me. That sort of thing can make a fellow suspicious.”
If Fleat noticed the insinuation, he did not seem to care. “Come,” he said, and he skipped onward, jumping from stone to stone, then running along little dusty trails where such paths were visible. He stopped at a large, but tightly hunched willow where some cloaks, sundry clothing and boots were hanging from hooks and sitting on small wooden stools. Fleat collected some of the clothes and dressed himself. The clothing was all in shades of browns and russets with little decorative feather patterns in black and white along the hems. A voluminous brown and yellow cloak that he pulled last around his shoulders swallowed up his thin frame and gave him the strong appearance of being owlishly puffed up by feathers. He scratched his large nose and said again, “Come,” and they followed him.