The Legend Begins

“You think humans could smell me?” Little Fur asked in horror.

  “Humans can’t smell, but trolls can,” Sly answered. “If they smell your fear, they will come to see if what is so frightened is also small and tasty. Better to think of nothing.”

  Little Fur did not know how to think of nothing, but perhaps she could think of something that did not make her frightened, like lying on one of the hill meadows in the wilderness, watching the clouds. Before she could try, however, bells began to toll.

  CHAPTER 5

  Still Magic

  Little Fur gazed through a barrier of metal spikes at the enormous, misshapen stone dwelling which Crow assured her was the beaked house. It was the queerest building she had ever seen. Set in the middle of a stone-paved yard, it was tall in some places and low in others, wide in parts and narrow in other parts. There were sections where the walls went suddenly in or out or had been made to bulge into round shapes. It was tall, but not as tall as the high houses, and rather than being flat-topped as they were, it had a peaked roof. One part of the roof rose steeply from the rest, like a bird’s beak, which had given the house its name. There were even two small sticks fixed at the tip as if a great bird were carrying twigs to its nest. This ought to have made it look silly, but somehow the beaked house had a grave, still air that made Little Fur feel grave and still, too.

  “What do humans do here?” she wondered.

  “They sing,” Sly said.

  “Humans sing?” Little Fur was astonished.

  “Humans singing very badly,” Crow cawed, hopping neatly from the top of one spike to another. “Not like Crow.”

  “Are there any humans here now?” Little Fur asked quickly, knowing how very loud and bad Crow’s singing was. “I mean, I suppose one of them must have rung the bells.”

  Instead of answering, Crow fixed Little Fur with a stern look. “Cats cannot going with us now. Sett Owl not liking cats.”

  “I like owls,” Sly said. She sat on her haunches and began to lick one paw daintily.

  “Will you wait here for me with Ginger, please, Sly?” Little Fur pleaded. “The Sett Owl might refuse to speak with me if you come. And, Crow, it might be better if you don’t come in either.”

  Crow gave an affronted croak. “Well, then. If Crow not being wanted . . .”

  “Oh, Crow, please don’t be difficult.” Little Fur reached up to touch his feathers.

  She found a gate in the spiked barrier. A chain of heavy metal loops held it shut but she could slip through the gap. Little Fur stepped gingerly onto the cobblestones and was relieved to feel earth magic flowing under and between them.

  She crossed the yard to the beaked house and began searching for niches and ledges where an owl might roost. There were patches of a pale unknown moss growing over the wall and she stopped to take a little piece for her pouch. When her fingers accidentally brushed the wall, she gasped in shock, for she had felt the tingling touch of magic, only it was not earth magic.

  Heart pounding, she reached out again and put her finger on the bare stone. Again she felt it. A strange, still magic potent enough to make the hair stiffen on her neck. It felt how earth magic might feel if it were to build up in a great pool behind a dam. But Little Fur had no feeling that this power would ever overflow. It was as if the beaked house were a bottomless vessel.

  The wind suddenly gusted to life, making her cloak and hair billow and snap, and all at once the air was filled with the strange and mysterious scents of the world outside the wilderness.

  Little Fur caught a flutter of movement on a ledge jutting out from the wall above her.

  “Pigeon,” she called softly. She smelled that the bird did not want to answer her, but it could not ignore her since she had called it by kind. At last it came out and she saw that it was a young pigeon with pretty pink-and-gray speckled feathers and a bright gaze.

  “Crooo! Who is calling pigeon?” asked the pigeon. Its words had the same scrambled quality that Little Fur found in all bird minds, but unlike Crow’s voice, there were no shadings to suggest a deeper intelligence.

  “I call,” Little Fur said slowly. “I have come far to ask the advice of the Sett Owl. Do you know where she roosts?”

  “Crooo! What being important to you may not being so to Sett Owl,” the pigeon warned. “What question would you asking?”

  Little Fur answered politely that her question could only be told to the Sett Owl because it was so difficult and complicated. She crossed her fingers, hoping that this pigeon would be as scatterminded as those she had healed in the wilderness.

  “Complicatings,” sighed the pigeon. “Crooo! What is pointiness of making things so?”

  “Some things just are complicated without anyone making them so.”

  “That being truthfulness,” the pigeon admitted. It puffed out its chest in sudden decision. “Above great doors is round hole with torn metal web. There can you getting in to see Herness.”

  “The Sett Owl roosts inside the beaked house?” Little Fur was dismayed, for how could she get to the Sett Owl without losing touch with the flow of earth magic?

  The pigeon smelled her disappointment and misunderstood it. “Crooo! You are having winglessness. Very inconvenient. But there being another way into beaked house for creeping things.”

  Little Fur did not much like being called a creeping thing, though perhaps it was a fair description from a bird’s point of view. She doubted that she would be able to use this other entrance either, but she might as well go and look at it.

  It did not take her long to find the opening, which was a square of darkness at the base of the stone wall bathed in moonlight. To her delight, it was the mouth of a tunnel that ran under the wall, so its base was made of good earth. Her moon shadow knelt beside her on the wall as she sniffed. The smell of the strange magic was much stronger here. As Little Fur crawled into the opening, she shivered, wondering if she would see the source of the still magic.

  The tunnel was long because the walls of the beaked house were thick, but there was little to see other than mouse droppings and a few leaves caught in a tattered spider’s web. As she came closer to the end, Little Fur began to smell human feelings all muddled together—weariness and sadness, despair and longing—but her nose also told her that there were no humans inside. It was as if they had found some way of leaving their feelings in a place even after they had left it. Brownie had never spoken of that, so perhaps it had something to do with the magic in the beaked house.

  She poked her head out of the tunnel and it was like dipping into water, only it was not water but magic that lapped about her. Sitting back, Little Fur rubbed her tingling cheeks. There was just one great chamber in the beaked house. Long wooden benches faced a raised part of the floor at one end, where there was a table draped with a rich, sinuous cloth. Metal objects sat on it, gleaming in a false, red-tinged light. Huge stone vessels of cut lilies stood on either side of the table, filling the air with the melancholy scent of their dying. Little Fur was so lost in wonder at the queerness of it all that it was some time before she remembered to look for the Sett Owl.

  Her troll vision made light of the shadows, but the room was vast and there were many corners. Little Fur looked for a long time but could not see the owl in any of them. The roof of the chamber mimicked the shape of the outer roof, so that one end went steeply up where the beak rose on the outside. There was a glimmer of gold in the gloom gathered at the tip, which must be the metal bells that had rung as they approached. No doubt they had been made to ring by one of the devices that humans were so clever at making to do things they could not or did not want to do.

  But stare as she might, she could not see the Sett Owl up there either.

  Leaning out of the tunnel as far as she could, Little Fur craned her neck to look along the wall. A giant stone shaped into the likeness of a human stared down at her, its face sternly sorrowful, as if she had done something very bad and it knew and pitied her for it. But the stone human had been ma
de by humans, so the pity in its eyes must be meant for its own kind.

  Little Fur was just beginning to wonder if she dared to shout out to the owl when there was a rough, scruffling sound behind her. A fat he-rat wriggled past her, muttering crossly.

  “It is forbidden to block the way of other pilgrims,” he snapped, turning to glare ferociously at her.

  “Have you come to see the Sett Owl, too?” Little Fur asked.

  “Certainly not! I serve Herness.” The rat lifted his head so that he could look down his nose at her. “Do you have the proper payment?”

  Little Fur was about to say she had nothing of value when she remembered the second pear. Untying it from her back, she found that it had gone to mush, but the smell of it was still good.

  “You must carry it to the offering place.” The rat pointed his twitching nose toward the raised part of the floor.

  “I can’t leave the tunnel,” Little Fur said.

  The rat sniffed. “Herness will not attack you.”

  “I’m not frightened of the owl,” Little Fur said.

  “But you must ask if she will come down here, so that I can ask my question.”

  “Certainly not!” huffed the rat. “Herness is too important to make house calls.”

  Little Fur had no idea what the rat was jabbering about, but she saw how his greedy eyes never left the pear, which was giving off the most delicious smell. Her own stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had not eaten for some time, and the rat bared his teeth. “Must not eat offering!” he hissed. “Sacreligion is forbidden.”

  Little Fur wondered why all of the creatures who lived close to humans talked such nonsense. “Ask the owl to see me, or I might as well have my supper.”

  The rat let out an anguished squeak and darted away.

  Little Fur sat back on her heels and drank some water, calm because the worst of her journey was behind her. How Brownie would gasp to hear of her adventures! But perhaps he would be disappointed, too. His stories never told of being hurt or frightened or bruised during adventures.

  There was a great fluttering of wings overhead and Little Fur leaned forward and looked up. An enormous owl was descending in a rush of air, her talons and wings outstretched.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Sett Owl

  Little Fur cringed but the great owl merely landed heavily on the nearest wooden bench. One of her wings would not fold properly and hung down like a ragged cloak. The rat came running along the floor toward them, his toenails scratching against the flagstones. He stopped beside the pear, his eyes going from the fruit to Little Fur to the owl with crafty uncertainty.

  Little Fur turned back to the owl, who regarded her with the same sternness as the stone statue had done. Little Fur said meekly, “Herness, here is my offering.” The rat gave her a baleful stare, which puzzled her.

  The owl chuckled. “Gazrak does not like it that you have insisted I come down. Usually he would eat the best of the offering and then bring what is left to me.”

  The rat squealed with indignation. “No, Herness! What filthy creature has been lying to you about me? Never would faithful Gazrak do such a low thing. Never.” He sank to his belly, groveling.

  The owl sighed. “Eat, Gazrak, but leave the seeds.”

  The rat abandoned his cringing, gouged a great, juicy chunk of the pear and darted away.

  “He took the best bit,” Little Fur said.

  “He is a rat,” the owl responded mildly. “Creatures generally behave as their natures dictate, unless there is something that causes them to do otherwise. Such as the threat to the wilderness from whence you came, Little Fur. Neither troll nor elf would normally make such a journey as you have undertaken.”

  Little Fur’s mouth fell open. “How do you know who I am?”

  “I often know who comes, because those who have sought my advice are sworn to bring to me such news as I might find useful. It is part of the price they pay for failing to solve their own problems. And it causes those who come to feel the proper awe.”

  “I see,” Little Fur said, though she didn’t quite. “But if you like everyone to be in awe of you, why did you tell me how you knew I was coming?”

  “One does not need to create the illusion of mystery when true mystery exists,” the owl said. She fluffed herself up and then resettled. “I heard that an elf troll meant to come to see me. I knew of you because I have sometimes sent wounded creatures to you to be healed, or others to seek refuge in the enchanted wilderness of the Old Ones. I thought the rumor of your intention to journey here was nonsense. Then, from dusk yesterday, I began hearing reports from animals and birds who claimed you were moving through the city. I might still have thought it foolish gossip, but then the trees began to dream that Little Fur would vanquish the tree-burning humans. That she swore an oath.”

  Little Fur was aghast. “But I didn’t!”

  “Did you not take the seeds of a tree when it offered them?” the owl asked.

  “I did, but only because it wanted me to plant them somewhere safe.”

  “Do you not know, Little Fur, that to take a seed freely given by a plant is to make a promise?”

  “No . . . I didn’t know that,” Little Fur stammered, but immediately she realized that somewhere, deep down, she had known it. “I mean, I didn’t understand what the tree was thinking. I only promised to plant the seeds somewhere safe.”

  “But where will be safe in a world where the tree burners have their way?” the Sett Owl asked gravely.

  Little Fur’s heart was beating very fast. “I can’t stop the tree burners, Sett Owl. You know I can’t. I am not a hero. Humans have chased me and a road monster tried to kill me as I was coming here and I would have been caught or killed if not for my friends. I only want to know how to protect the Old Ones. And if you can tell me that, then I can keep my promise to the pear tree.”

  “Is that all you would ask of me?” the Sett Owl said. The flecks in her eyes were star clusters in a dark sky and Little Fur had the oddest sensation that the unknown magic pooled in the beaked house was deepest around the Sett Owl.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered.

  “Would you not rather ask how you could save all of the trees?”

  She licked her lips nervously. “I am only—”

  “Only a small creature who undertook a difficult and dangerous journey with the help of a treacherous crow.”

  “Crow is—”

  The owl’s eyes flashed. “You came for my advice. Have the courtesy to listen to it! I cannot give you any power to save your wilderness. But I can tell you that unless the tree killers are stopped, the Old Ones will burn.”

  Little Fur’s eyes filled with tears. “Why are the humans doing this?”

  “The tree-killing humans are consumed with a desire for deadness and blackness. The seeds of destruction exist in all humans, but in the tree killers, that seed has flowered monstrously because of a potion given to a greep by the Troll King. At his command, the greep passed it on to the humans who became the tree burners.”

  Little Fur was shocked. Of all the answers she had imagined, not one was this. “Can . . . can the tree burners be healed?” she asked.

  The Sett Owl looked at Little Fur for a long moment, her gaze cool and strange; then she said, “It is to your credit that you would think first of healing. But it is too late for the humans who have drunk the potion. Yet there may be a way to save the Old Ones and all of the other trees as well.”

  “How?” Little Fur asked eagerly.

  “You must travel three days toward the high houses, and then turn your steps toward the place where the sun will open its eye. Go in that direction until you come to the burying place of humans. Beyond is a wood, and in that wood is a deep crack in the earth. Humans do not go there, for within it sleeps an ancient power that turns their minds and eyes away.”

  “An Old One?” Little Fur asked in delight.

  “I do not know what form the power takes,?
?? the owl said. “But whatever sleeps there has done so since the first age of the world. Some say that the earth spirit flowed from its dreams.”

  “Will you ask it to help us?” Little Fur said in a small voice. Her heart was beating fast, for she feared that she knew the answer and dreaded it.

  “You came to me to learn how the trees may be saved. I tell you this: if you would stop the tree burners, you must go into the crack and awaken the sleeper,” the owl said implacably. The flecks in her eyes seemed to whirl and Little Fur felt that it was no longer just the owl with whom she was speaking, but something greater and vastly stranger.

  “Are . . . are you the earth spirit?” she asked softly.

  “No,” the Sett Owl answered. “But in this place where power lies in a deep, secret pool, I am more than owl. Little Fur, understand that it is not only the life of thousands of trees at stake. If the tree burners are not stopped, they will keep burning until the flow of earth magic dies in this city. Then will the trolls make it a place of such dreadful power that a darkness ravenous enough to entirely devour the earth spirit will rise from it. That is the heart of the Troll King’s desire.”

  “Herness, please, isn’t there someone else who can go to this chasm? Someone strong and brave?”

  “The task of thwarting the Troll King has been appointed to you, Little Fur,” the owl said. “Will you accept it?”

  Little Fur was trembling but she said, “Herness, I do not know how I can succeed. But if you say that I must, then I will go.”

  The owl blinked its lambent eyes, just once. “So then it is true. The sum is greater than its parts.” Her eyes closed and Little Fur heard a gentle snore.

  The Sett Owl had fallen asleep!

  CHAPTER 7

  The Making of Promises

  “I promised,” Little Fur told the others. They were all sitting under a tree growing just outside the spiked fence around the beaked house.

  Crow cawed doubtfully. “Sounding farsome to this burying place.”