42 pages • 1-hour read
The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet
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Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Forbidden City”
Before leaving to help King Zello, Galen gives Eric an invisibility cloak to use in rescuing Keeah. He warns the children not to take anything from Droon back to their world and not to leave anything from the Upper World in Droon. If they leave anything behind, something from Droon will appear in their world—and it could be something bad, like a Ninn, “or worse” (49).
As the children and Max ride on Leep and head toward the Forbidden City of Plud, they see a white falcon circling above them. Eric thinks it is the same bird that he saw following Keeah in the forest. Just as they arrive at the gates of Plud, they hear a car and realize that Sparr is approaching. The sound of the car frightens Leep, who bolts away. Max rushes off to retrieve Leep, but the children realize that when Sparr’s car enters the gates, this will be their only chance to sneak into Plud, so they reluctantly leave Max behind and enter the gates after Sparr’s car passes by.
Ninns come outside to meet Sparr. They tell him that Keeah is being held in the main tower. Eric, Neal, and Julie covertly follow them inside the fortress, hoping to sneak up to the tower and rescue Keeah before Sparr gets there. However, they find the tower door guarded by two Ninns.
Eric puts on the invisibility cloak and pokes one of the guards in the shoulder. The guard, not seeing anyone there besides the other guard, believes that the other Ninn must have jabbed him. The two begin to fight, and when one chases the other down the hallway, the children slip into the room to find Keeah. The princess recognizes Eric and urges them to move quickly. Unfortunately, when they all enter the hallway, they are confronted with Sparr and several Ninns.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Prisoners!”
The children are marched to a small tower room. Lord Sparr paces back and forth in front of a blue curtain, demanding that Keeah give him the Red Eye of Dawn. When she asserts that her father will soon come to rescue her, he laughs and tells her that neither of her parents will ever see her again. Keeah is confused by comment and tells him that her mother is dead. Lord Sparr starts to say something about her mother, but he breaks off when he spots a leather pouch attached to Keeah’s wrist.
Sparr grabs the pouch. Keeah tries unsuccessfully to wrestle it from him, exclaiming that it was a gift from her mother. Sparr uses his powers to transform the pouch back into its true form—a small glowing red jewel. Eric rushes at Sparr, demanding that he return the jewel to Keeah, but a Ninn intercepts him.
Sparr turns his attention to the three Upper World children. He reveals that he knows about the stairs in Eric’s house, and he claims to know many things about the three friends. He pulls the blue curtain to reveal the children’s soccer ball on a display stand. He tells them that he has used the ball to learn many things about the Upper World, and he promises that he will learn even more about that realm now that he has captured the children.
Max suddenly enters the room through the tower window, scurries down the wall, and weaves a sticky web around the Ninns’ feet. Eric grabs the soccer ball and tosses it to Neal, telling him to kick it like he did in the basement. Neal kicks the ball, which hits the nose of one of the Ninns. Julie follows up by kicking the ball into another Ninn’s stomach. As the Ninns try to escape the ball, the sticky web around their feet causes them to tumble into one another and fall to the floor.
Sparr raises his hand and fires a red bolt of lightning toward Keeah. It misses her but blasts a hole in the wall. The children and Max escape through this hole and run down a corridor. With Sparr and the Ninns in hot pursuit, Eric leads them into a small room and slams the door.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Into Thin Air!”
The Ninns pound on the door, but Eric and Neal hold it closed. Keeah spots a pile of carpets and realizes that one of them is a magic carpet that has the power of flight. She and Julie spread out the rug, and the children climb aboard just as the door begins to splinter. Julie asks, “Now what? We fly?” (67), and the rug rises up into the air. Keeah is surprised that the rug is responding to Julie’s voice.
Max says that he will not come with them because he gets airsick and he still needs to find Leep. He opens the window and climbs down the side of the tower. Just then, Sparr and the Ninns finally break into the room, and Sparr sends bolts of red lightning shooting toward the children. Suddenly, the white falcon flies into the room and attacks Sparr. Julie uses this distraction to maneuver the flying rug out the window and away from the tower. Sparr yells after them, promising to “hunt [them] down” (71).
Chapter 10 Summary: “The World Under the Stairs”
Keeah is thrilled to be free and is grateful to Eric and his friends for their help. She says that she had a dream that the rainbow stairs are located in “the ice hills of Tarabat” (73), so she directs Julie to fly the carpet north. The air grows colder, and snow begins to swirl around them. Below, they see icy mountains, and then they spot a rainbow glow as the magical staircase comes into view. Julie pilots the carpet down to the foot of the stairs.
Eric hands Keeah the invisibility cloak, and she hands him the soccer ball. As the magic carpet rises up into the sky, Eric calls out to Keeah to ask whether they will ever see her again. Keeah replies, “If the magic works, you will!” (75). Puzzled by her words, the three friends hurry up the stairs and back into the safety of Eric’s basement.
When they turn the closet light on, the stairs disappear. Eric, Julie, and Neal can hardly believe that their adventure in Droon really happened. Julie is concerned that their parents will be worried about their long absence, so she suggests that they go upstairs to talk to Eric’s mother. When they see Eric’s mother, however, she is surprised that they have come upstairs again so soon, and the children realize that even though they spent many hours in Droon, only 10 minutes have passed in their own world.
They go back downstairs to work on clearing out the basement. To their surprise, the soccer ball is now floating in the midair. A message in backward letters is written on its surface. It reads, “Your dreams will tell you to return” (79). The children realize that Keeah’s magic is indeed working. They are thrilled that they will be able to have another adventure in Droon.
Chapters 7-10 Analysis
As the first book in a planned series, The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet ends with both a resolution to its own plot and heavy foreshadowing of the adventures to come in future installments. In this story, Eric has learned to show courage as he navigates a very different world from his own, and he also preserves his integrity by remaining true to his priorities, such as helping his new friend Keeah and ensuring that his two original friends return safely with him to the Upper World. In order to accomplish these weighty goals, he must fully embrace the process of Escaping the Mundane World and Embracing New Growth.
Thus, Eric emerges as the driving force behind the successful accomplishment of these objectives. In Chapter 7, he demonstrates his emerging heroic qualities when he invents and implements a strategy to evade the Ninns guarding Keeah. Similarly, in Chapter 8, he is the one who grabs the soccer ball and directs Neal to kick the it at the Ninns, thereby initiating the chaos that facilitates their bold escape. Finally, he is the one to lead Max, Neal, and Julie out of the tower room and into the storage room, where they seek refuge from Sparr and the Ninns. Significantly, in the full-page illustration depicting the children going back up the stairs toward Eric’s home (74), Eric is now the one in the lead, not Julie, and this shift in placement foreshadows his leadership role in the stories to come.
Keeah is also instrumental in the children’s success when she takes the initiative and finds the magical flying carpet in the storage room, enabling their escape from Sparr’s indomitable fortress. Her guidance is crucial to the children’s rediscovery of the elusive rainbow staircase. Keeah helps the children in these ways because she is grateful for their rescue, but she also feels a particular obligation to Eric. As she explains to him, “You helped me, even though you didn’t know me,” and it is clear that their initial bargain in the forest in Chapter 3 has initiated a much deeper bond that will continue to strengthen in future books as the children return to Droon for many more adventures.
After Eric and his friends accomplish the goals that they promised Keeah and Galen that they would achieve, they can return home with clear consciences, knowing that they have been instrumental in Joining the Battle against Evil and have remained true to The Importance of Honoring Commitments. Significantly, the conclusion of this particular book is really no conclusion at all because the author has planned a lengthy series of adventures in the days to follow. For this reason, the first book focuses on leaving a plethora of promising loose ends, such as the mystery of the white falcon’s true nature. Similarly, Sparr’s taunts about Keeah’s mother foreshadow a development in the next book in the series, Journey to the Volcano Palace, which will confirm that Queen Relna is still alive. The white falcon’s attack against Sparr in Chapter 9 suggests that the falcon cares about Keeah enough to risk its safety for her, and this detail will eventually prove to be another clue about Relna’s whereabouts, for in the fourth book in the series, City in the Clouds, Keeah will learn that the falcon is actually Relna herself.
Additional plot points for future novels can be found in the fact that Julie takes the lead and pilots the flying carpet, for this detail foreshadows an event that occurs in a later book in the series, when she will go on to develop the power of flight. The author emphasizes the significance of her affinity for the magic carpet by including a full-page illustration of her and Keeah in this scene (69). Julie’s intuitive understanding of how to navigate the flying carpet also hints that the three Upper World children are already more entangled with the world of Droon than they realize; Julie’s ability to control the flying carpet implies that she is somehow meant to be in Droon.
Later books will also reveal that—although he does not remember it—Eric interacted with Keeah and other residents of Droon when he was just a toddler. This future development will emphasize the fact that Eric and his friends have always been destined to enter Droon, and it also helps to explain Sparr’s instant decision to target them after their first visit to this magical kingdom. Sparr knows that they are a particular threat to his continued plans for power, and he knows that they will be back; in this light, his final, shouted threat to “hunt [the children] down” (71) bears considerable weight.
Just as Sparr anticipates the children’s return, Keeah’s actions also suggest that she is aware of this eventuality as well, for she offers them an explicit reassurance that they will someday come back to Droon, and she leaves them a magical message telling them that their dreams will guide them on this point. The magical inscription on the soccer ball both promises future adventures in Droon and suggests that the children’s focus on Escaping the Mundane World and Embracing New Growth will allow them to embrace new experiences and learn important life lessons in the near future. Thus, the book’s conclusion allows the characters to enjoy the best of both worlds. Eric, Julie, and Neal get to return to familiar surroundings and the people they love, but they also carry the magic of Droon back with them. From this point, they will incorporate aspects of both worlds into one existence.
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