~*~
We reach the lake by late morning. It looks real and alive, a welcome respite from this dead world. It has begun to ice over, but only at the edges, and there is movement in its depths. But as always there is something wrong with it, something missing. I feel it more sharply in these places that look real, for they do not feel alive but only broken.
“This must be it,” says Therrin: “only the treasures could keep a place so alive in this world. Do you see anything, Arrek?”
“There are shapes in the water,” I tell her: “very large shapes. If they are fish, I'm sure they could swallow us whole. But they are too deep to know we are here, I think.”
“Perhaps you'd better be sure it's here, as the witch said,” Ty prompts her.
“Yes, of course,” Therrin says nodding, and takes out the green necklace, and looks through it at the lake, frowning. At last she says: “There – under that hill – there is something there. But I can't see it clearly. Perhaps the lake extends under the hill? I hope we shan't have to swim in this cold!”
“We'll see,” says Ty. “Now, the words –”
“I remember!” She tucks the necklace back under her shirt, and stands at the edge of the lake, and calls in a clear voice: “Shree ara vyanin!”
For a moment nothing happens; then the great shapes beneath the waves turn toward us. I begin to be afraid, but when they break into the air I see that they look almost human, with laughing faces and bright eyes. Almost. Their mouths are filled with long thin teeth, and their webbed fingers are tipped in long nails like claws, and below their naked waists they have no legs but dark shining tails like those of fish. And there is something wrong with their eyes.
I take a step back from the bank, afraid of them after all. I wonder if I am going mad at last: surely this cannot be.
“Who calls us?” they ask in the shared tongue.
“I do,” says Therrin. She looks a little surprised, but her voice is calm. Does she see this madness? Surely not.
“And who told you the words by which to call us?”
“The woodland witch, who lives North of here.”
“And why did she tell you the words?”
“There is something I must have – it is there, beneath that hill, and it has been there for a thousand years.”
“Oh! Are you the Princess, then?”
“Long have we waited,” they say, speaking by turns. “Long have we wished to know what is hidden there.”
“But we must not enter the cave without the Princess –”
“We must not!”
“It is the first thing we are taught.”
“It is forbidden.”
“But now you are here, and at last we can see what it is we have been guarding! We'll find you a way to enter the cave without drowning, nor freezing in this autumn chill.”
“Don't leave!”
Perhaps half of the strange fish-people dive back underwater. Those that remain watch us curiously.
“You look like one of the Wind People, except for your eyes,” says one of them; “your eyes look human.”
Therrin answers: “That is because my mother was one of the Wind People, and my father was human. What do you know of my mother's people?”
“Oh, we haven't seen one of them for hundreds of years. They stay where they are, now, afraid to leave their clouds and find them gray and stony when they return. And we cannot leave our lake.”
“And what of his eye?” asks one of them, pointing at me with a long curved claw. I burn with shame, noticing only now that I have forgotten to wear my eyepatch. I did not think we would be meeting people here, and now the demon in my eye is bare for them to see.
I don't want to answer. I am afraid of these strange fish-people and I am afraid of the shared tongue they speak in and I am afraid of this world. I don't want to say anything. I shake my head and look down.
The silence grows long and painful. At long last Ty says: “It is a demon which acts in place of an eye.”
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That was not his question to answer. But I am grateful to him for answering it. I was already in his debt. How can I ever repay him? I have nothing.
“That one does not have eyes at all,” says another, looking at the curse.
“She doesn't need them,” says Therrin.
I don't like this lake. I don't want to go under the hill to find the treasure. But neither will I stay here alone. I must come along.
Now the others return, bringing with them a great turtle, perhaps as long across its shell as Ty is tall. It speaks in the shared tongue, with a slower, older voice: “The world is dying around us, and if whatever is hidden may help you to save us, I am glad to bear you. Come and climb onto my back.”
So we are to ride this strange beast. But not a beast at all; she is something else, something more, something with intentions that go beyond food and shelter, with great thoughts of the state of the world. I whistle to Snake. I don't want to touch her. I don't want to come nearer the icy lake.
But Therrin thanks the great turtle, and steps onto her shell, and Ty as well, and so I must follow. It is wet and cold and slippery. I grip the bony edge fearfully. Why have I climbed on the back of something which could never know me? What is this; what strange nightmare have I fallen into? I want to keep myself. I want to be all alone and sealed away in blankets.
I have always liked animals, but perhaps what I liked about them was their ability to be without thinking, to know without words, to speak without voices. The animals here who have eaten the sacred food of this world and who know the shared tongue are different. They are like humans in a different shape, and I am afraid of them as I am afraid of all strangers. I don't trust this turtle. I don't want to ride on her. But I haven't a choice.
The witch said not all animals who have eaten the true food will speak. Some remain animals. Some do not have the minds of humans, whatever they may understand, whatever they might be able to speak if they wished it. Some do not wish it. I would feel better among these. Sometimes I am one of them.
“Hold tight, children,” this speaking turtle says, and swims into the lake with mighty strokes of her flippers. The fish-people escort us, and there are so many of them swimming around nearby that the water is alight with glittering scales and flowing tresses. They laugh and chatter among themselves happily. They look so content. I am so afraid of them.
Now we pass under the bank of the lake, and we are beneath the hill. There is no light here, but the demon in my eye can see well enough: the walls of the cave are lined with crystals, and in the center there is a little island just large enough to hold the silver chalice.
“Oh, it's pretty!” cry the fish-people, who must be as able to see in darkness as I. “To think we stayed away from a place so beautiful!”
“I shall be glad when the thing is gone, for then we can play here in this pretty place, as we do in all the lake.”
“Yet the thing itself is pretty too! Perhaps we could keep it after all?”
“Humans, can you see in this darkness?”
“No,” says Ty shortly. He seems ill at ease for once. Perhaps the many voices and plashing movements of the fish-people make him unsure in this darkness. They echo strangely against the crystal walls; without my sight I'd have no idea where they are.
“I can see but glints,” answers Therrin; “but Arrek, you can see, can't you?”
I nod. Then, remembering that she cannot see me, I say it aloud: “Yes.”
“Do you see it, then?”
“Yes.”
“I am bringing you thither,” says the great turtle beneath us.
We are almost to the little island when one of the fish-people snatches the chalice away. “See, it is a pretty little cup!” he cries. “Why should we give it away? It was in our cave; it is our toy. Seek your treasure elsewhere, Princess!”
“Yes, yes, seek it elsewhere!” they all cry as though we could. “This is ours! Perhaps, if it has lasted a thousand years
here, it mayn't break as quickly as our other toys; we shan't give it up!”
I tell her: “They have taken it. They have it.” I have lost it; I don't know where it is now, beneath this icy black water.
Louder I say, “Give it back!” but my voice quavers and dies. I have never known how to make demands. As a child I let my siblings have whatever I was playing with whenever they wanted it, and if I had nothing left, that was how it was. I was often too afraid even to beg, and preferred to steal for food, although I was bad at it and easily caught.
And I hate this language that twists my tongue into words I have never learned.
“Why should we?” they ask. “It is ours! It has always been ours! It is in our lake!”
So are we. Are we but toys of the fish-people, then? For what reason did they bring us here to this dark cave? I cannot help but to think of their sharp thin teeth and long claws tearing into our flesh and the cold black water stained red with our blood. I try to put the image out of my mind.
“Come now, children,” says the great turtle: “shall we guard the Princess' treasure for a thousand years only to refuse it to her when she comes at last?” – But isn't she one of them?
“Yes! Why not?”
“Fools,” says Ty. He has been oddly pleasant since we arrived in this world – perhaps he was too curious to be cruel – but now the biting tone is back in his voice. “Do you think keeping it can save you from destruction? This lake may be more alive than all the world around it, but the bane will spread to it in time, despite the chalice; and by then it may be too late for the Princess to save you, and you'll be doomed to fade away and lose your love for life – what you have left of it. Is that what you want?”
For a while they don't respond. They stare at him with wide eyes, stricken. Even these strange laughing fish-people will listen to Ty.
“You will die if Therrin is not allowed to free the dragon,” he repeats. It doesn't sound like a threat. Indeed, he sounds almost amused to think of them dead. But he always speaks like this, always, always.
“She has a name?”
“She will bring back the dragons?”
“She will bring back Karr?”
“She needs this little cup to save him? And them? Are you sure?” Their voices are uncertain, now, almost afraid. Ty wrought so great a change in them only by speaking. I am no longer afraid of them. Now I almost pity them, these little living parts of this dying broken world.
I wonder if they even know they are broken.
“Yes,” says Therrin firmly. “I need the chalice, and if you give it to me now I will bring Karr back to this world, and save the dragons.”
“Oh.”
“Here, then.” One of them swims up to the turtle and holds the chalice aloft. I take it from her and give it to Therrin, and she puts it away in her satchel. “Thank you,” she says.
“Tell him hello from us! And tell him to visit us here!”
“After the others are freed. That comes first.”
“We're glad that awful King is dead now. It was so sad what happened to Karr.”
“No one must betray a dragon. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. But see what he did to our world, even after he died.”
“Everything is dying. Everything, for one human man's cruel ambition.”
“How could he do that? To Karr? How could he?”
“He was a cruel man.”
“I hope it will be enough to bring the dragons back. I hope they will stay.”
“Is there anything more we can do to help you help Karr?” they ask.
Suddenly they are so helpful and so serious. It is hard to think of them playful and laughing as they were before. Maybe I am remembering it wrong. Maybe they were like this from the start.
Therrin nods in the darkness. “Yes,” she says. “I cannot see my map in this darkness, so I cannot show you; but there is a little hillock just North of a river that flows Eastward from this lake, and that is whither we must travel next. Can you help us reach it more quickly?”
“I will take you thither,” says the great turtle, and Therrin thanks her.
“Is another treasure there?” ask the fish-people, and Therrin tells them no.
“Why do you go thither, then? I don't think the ghost is usually very friendly to visitors. Not like us at all.”
What ghost?
“What ghost?” asks Ty.
“Surely you know. What else could you want there?”
“He was buried there, a long time ago. He hurt some woman when he was alive, and she cursed him –” I shiver. “– to haunt the knoll by night, until she forgives him.”
“She can't, of course. She's long dead. But he doesn't know that.”
“Maybe you'd better sleep somewhere else.”
Therrin thanks them for their advice. “Still, that is whither we must go,” she says.
“Good luck, then! Farewell!”
“Hurry back!”
“Set them free!”
“I will,” she promises, and then the turtle bears us away, leaving the fish-people behind.