Emily Rodda Quotes

“Yet, incredibly, it is his help they need when the stream that flows from the top of the Mountain dries up. Without its water, their precious bukshah herds will die, and Rin will be doomed. The six strongest villagers must brave the unknown terrors of the Mountain to discover the answer to the riddle. And Rowan, the unwanted seventh member of the group, must go with them.”

“Seven hearts the journey make. Seven ways the hearts will break ...” The witch Sheba’s prophecy is like a riddle. A riddle Rowan must solve if he is to find out the secret of the Mountain and save his home. To the sturdy villagers of Rin, the boy Rowan is a timid weakling. The most disappointing child ever.

“Bravest heart will carry on when sleep is death, and hope is gone. Rowan doesn’t believe he has a brave heart. But when the river that supports his village of Rin runs dry, he must join a dangerous journey to its source in the forbidden Mountain.”

“To save Rin, Rowan and his companions must conquer not only the Mountain’s many tricks, but also the fierce dragon that lives at its peak. ”

“After five days the pool was so shallow that even little Annad, que was only five years old, could touch the bottom with her hand without getting her sleeve wet. And still the stream failed to flow. On the evening of the sixth day the worried people met in the market square to tall. “The bukshah could drink at all today, ” said Lann, the oldest person in the village and once the greatest fighter. ‘If we do not act soon, they will die’.”

“Rowan knew, as Annad did not, that without the bukshah there would be not rich, creamy milk to drink, no cheese, curd, and butter to eat. There would be no tick gray wood for cloth.There would be no help to plow the fields or carry in the harvest. There would be no broad backs to bear the burden on the long journeys down to the coast to trade with the clever, silent Maris fold. The life of Rind dependen on the bukshah. Without them, the village, too, would die.”

“Hundred of years ago they had climbed through the hills, carrying the few things they owned on their back, looking for somewhere in this strange land that they could claim as their own. They had come from far away, across the sea. They had fought a terrible enemy. On the coast they had heard, from the wandering native people called the Travelers, of a place at the bottom of a forbidden mountain in the high country far inland.”

“Annad could not imagine the valley without the village. But Roawn could. Reading the old stories in the house of books, listening half asleep to Timon under the teaching tree, and most of all, sitting on the grass by the stream while the bukshah grazed around him in the silence of the morning, he had often imagined this place as the first settler must have seen it.”

“They had been tramping for many days in search of it. They were very tired. Some had almost given up hope. Then, one afternoon, they had topped a rise and looked down. There below them, nestled between a towering mountain ahead and the hill on which they stood was a green, secret valley. Th people stared, speechless. They saw trees loaded with small blue fruits and field of flower they did not recognize.”

“They had been walking beside the dry bed of the stream for hours and had let the village for behind. Looking back, Rowan could no longer see even the tall stone walls of the mill, the highest building, because the trees had screened in from view. In front of them, like massive wall, rose the Mountain. In another two hours, the others said, they would reach it. The map showed clearly that they must begin their climb at the place where the water gushed from its underground tunnel to form the stream.”