The Tree of Water

  “Well, they kinda glow every now and then when a burst of lava shoots out. I don’t think any o’ them are shinin’.” Char’s spirit form dimmed again.

  “Try not to thrum too much,” Ven advised. “We have an enormously long climb ahead of us. I can’t even see the peak of this mountain, and I know there are more than we can count on either side of it and beyond. It may take us the rest of our lives to find Frothta.”

  “I stopped thinkin’ a long time ago,” Char answered. He paused for a moment. “Can you imagine what Amariel would have said in response to that if she was with us?”

  “She is with us,” Ven said. “I have to believe that, or there’s no point in going on.”

  “How is the pearl cap?” Coreon asked.

  Ven looked down at Amariel’s most prized possession. It had shrunk considerably, and was now fraying at the edges.

  “Let’s just keep going,” he said. He was finding it hard to get his thoughts out of his head in the heavy water.

  They climbed the drift, swimming up along the mountain face, stopping to rest every so often, until it felt almost as if that was all they had ever done in all their lives. The starfish-covered mountain seemed endless in height, and Ven was beginning to despair of ever reaching its summit, when something shot off above them like a firework in the depths of the sea.

  It seemed to come from beyond the mountain.

  “We’re almost at the top,” Ven said excitedly. “Keep going if you can. We’re almost there.”

  “You go on ahead,” Char said. “I have to stop.”

  Ven saw his best friend’s spirit all but disappear into the drift.

  “No, we’ll wait until you’re ready,” he said. “No point in getting separated now. You all right, Coreon?”

  “Right here beside you,” the Lirin-mer boy said.

  “Good.” He tried to force back the excitement he was feeling as they neared the summit of the mountain. His curiosity was pulsing through him like a strong heartbeat. But he kept his thoughts to himself and struggled to be patient until Char became more clearly visible again.

  Then he waited until the deep thrum song he had heard filled his ears again, and followed it once more.

  Once they started climbing again, they kept going until they could see the summit. Beyond it, the tips of many more mountains rose, even taller above the distant floor of the sea below them.

  “Don’t look down,” Ven advised Char, whose pale spirit had dimmed even more when he cast a glance at the seafloor. “We can’t fall—our bodies aren’t really here.”

  “It still feels like they are,” Char said. “Now I finally get what Amariel meant when she said everythin’ in the sea was bigger or taller than everythin’ on land. I don’ think I’ve ever seen a mountain this big. And they seem to never end.”

  Ven turned around as they reached the summit and looked at the seafloor below. The tube worms, giant clams, and starfish were much too far away to be seen now. Rolling clouds of gas from the vents in the ocean floor bubbled up occasionally, and the rivers of bright orange lava now looked like tiny threads so far below.

  “I guess that riddle can’t really be about us,” he joked as he watched the lava wind its way thought the undersea canyons in the dark. “I don’t really think the view from up here was worth the climb.”

  “That’s because you aren’t looking in the right direction,” said Coreon. “I think you might feel differently if you turned around.”

  40

  The Real Queen of the Sea

  Ven turned slowly.

  As he did, an enormous display of what looked like undersea fireworks exploded above him. Red and gold sparks sped through the drift, leaving glowing trails hanging in the water before they began sinking slowly to the floor of the sea.

  Beyond the summit of the mountain they had just climbed were more mountains filling the Trenches for as far as they could see. Unlike the view from the bottom of the world, however, these mountains were lit by a ring of glowing red vents that exploded molten fire into the drift around them like a giant cauldron of bubbling lava. It reminded Ven a little of the huge pumpkin shell full of boiling squash soup in the Gated City that he and his friends had sampled on Market Day when they had visited there.

  Great molten lava bubbles three feet or more across floated past, then burst into the freezing cold seawater all around them. Farther off in the range of endless mountains, volcanos erupted, filling the drift with rolling smoke. Hazily Ven was aware that they would never have been able to stand so close to such things in the upworld if they were still in their bodies, and it was only the intense pressure of the water that had suppressed the violence and heat of the undersea volcanoes.

  Madame Sharra’s voice echoed in his memory.

  If you are looking for lost magic that was born in the Before-Time, you will need to find a place that no one else could look for it. It might be in a place of extremes—the hottest and coldest part of the sea, the highest and lowest place in the world, the brightest and darkest realms, all at the same time.

  “Criminey,” Char whispered.

  Ven looked up even higher, following his gaze.

  Rising into the drift beyond the summits of the mountains was another peak, larger and taller by far than all the others. It stretched up like a wide flagpole in the middle of the mountain range.

  High atop it was a giant tree, a tree bigger than anything Ven had ever seen before.

  At first he did not know what it was.

  The enormous trunk and arms, branches, twigs and leaves all seemed to be made of water, water that pulsed clear in the hazy black drift, running like a stream flowing upward, gleaming with a light of its own and rippling with power. Ven was not certain that there was anything solid to it, as if it were made of the same kind of elemental magic as his air stone. Its thrum rang all around him, shouting joyously over the mountaintops and echoing through the drift until it filled his spirit with the same vibration. He could see that Char and Coreon were feeling the same thing.

  The song they had all been following.

  The tree’s gigantic supple arms reached far out over the mountain range, swirling and dancing in the moving drift and the flickering light from the flowing lava of the sea volcanoes. Its lacy leaves cast shadow patterns all over the mountainsides, making the depths of the seabed flicker and swirl with light. The leaves resembled those of an upworld oak tree, but the body of the tree was more like an undersea kelp plant, fluid and flexible, unlike the solid bark of oaks that lived on the land.

  What is an oak tree doing at the bottom of the sea? Ven wondered, amazed.

  Even more amazing, however, were the creatures that had taken shelter within its boughs. Bright fish in every color of the rainbow, and some colors Ven had not seen in the upworld, hovered amid its branches, decorating them with their hues. Dolphins with a metallic shine to their skin chased each other playfully through the giant tree’s boughs, and shimmering silver whales circled the upper limbs, singing in high, sweet tones.

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure if the sea creatures were spirits, like Coreon, Char, and me, because they seemed almost clear at times. I was certain there was something special about them, because a normal whale, fish, or dolphin could not have survived the pressure and the temperature of this place.

  Any more than we could.

  * * *

  A word formed in Ven’s head. He was not certain if the thought was his own, or if the great tree had put it there with its pounding thrum. Either way, he wanted to give voice to it in his brain.

  “Frothta,” he whispered.

  The song he had been hearing for so long echoed in agreement, ringing through his spirit.

  “We’ve found her,” he said to the others.

  “We sure have,” said Char in awe.

  Coreon said nothing. He just stared above him, then pointed at the base of the tree.

  * * *

  Then suddenly, like a rock falling out of the sky
and smacking my head, I remembered something.

  The drawing I had seen of Sagia, the oldest of the World Trees, was in a book of pictures that all had one thing in common.

  * * *

  Coiled around the giant trunk, almost invisible against the gleaming bark, was a dragon. Just as Lancel had seemed enormous after the tiny Spicegar, this beast was many times the size of Lancel, who by comparison would have seemed like floating weeds. Ven knew immediately that the creature was female. Her scales were all shades and hues of blue and green, like the colors that were seen in the water of the sea, with frosty white tips that looked like sea foam. Her body was filmy, almost clear, like their spirit forms, but her eyes glowed intensely with a clear, almost unnatural light as intense as that of the air stones, only vastly brighter. The shape of her body was fluid, and her enormous head was crowned with ridges where horns might have been, scalloped like the waves of the sea.

  The giant beast rose up and looked over the edge of the mountain at the three boys below. As she did, she resembled a great wave rising to a crest before it crashed to shore.

  “Welcome,” she said. Her voice vibrated in their heads, ringing with a deep and beautiful music that had a comfortable, reassuring sound, a little like the patter of steady rain on a roof in the night. “I imagine it feels like it has taken you a long time to get here.”

  Ven and the other boys could only nod in response.

  “My name is Dyancynos,” said the beast. “I bid you welcome, Char and Coreon. It has been a very long time, even by my measure, since anyone of your kinds have ridden a diving bell to the bottom of the sea.” Her vast head swiveled, and she looked directly at Ven.

  “As for you, Ven Polypheme, a special welcome is due. You are the first son of Earth ever to come into the Deep—and certainly the only one to live. A few of your race have fallen from ships or met their ends in the Sunlit Realm, but none have ever ventured past where the light ends—especially on purpose.”

  “You know—how we came here?” Ven asked.

  The massive beast’s eyes blinked, and her jawline seemed to expanded into a large smile.

  “Anything the sea touches is known to me, Ven Polypheme. I heard your name in the Sunlit Realm when you first thrummed it. I had hoped you would survive until I could come to know more about you. We are distantly related, after all.”

  Ven almost swallowed his tongue. “We are?”

  The beast chuckled, a merry sound that thrummed through the moving water at the base of the Tree.

  “Dragons and Nain are both children of the Earth,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “And your coming was foretold long ago.”

  “It was?”

  “Of course, we didn’t know what your name would be, or anything about you. But the prophecy said that one day a son of Earth would come to the depths, as impossible a task as that seemed.”

  Ven’s head was ringing. “An impossible task? Foretold?”

  A huge spray of bubbles rolled out of the great beast’s nostrils. Ven was fairly certain that she was chuckling.

  “Not all of Time runs forward, Ven Polypheme. There are some that see it in reverse—that have lived in the Future and are growing younger as the rest of the world ages. Those that have been to the Future often speak of it in riddles, because their way of seeing the world is topsy-turvy to us. So your coming here must have been a very important event, because the sages of the Future spoke of it.”

  “Why—why would there be a riddle about my coming here?”

  The dragon’s face lost its wide smile, and grew solemn.

  “To give us hope,” she said.

  “How—what do I have to do with that?”

  The dragon’s massive eyes narrowed. The light from them hit Ven like a shining beacon, making him squint from the brightness.

  “Why do you think you came here—to the depths of the sea?”

  Ven swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve been trying to learn the answer to that from the beginning of my journey. Why—why was it foretold that a Nain would come here?”

  Dyancynos watched him for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and serious.

  “The sea needs a miracle—and the only way for it to happen was to have a Child of Earth come to the depths, where all five elements, all of the Five Gifts of the Creator, could be present at the same time.”

  Ven’s head was throbbing so hard he could barely form thoughts to thrum in response.

  “The sea needs a miracle? How can that be?” He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the vibrations of the tree, and the dragon, the molten bubbles of lava, the explosions of fireworks, and the pressure of the sea all pressed against his spirit form so hard that he felt it might explode and vanish. “That’s why I came here, to the Trenches. But I was looking for my own miracle. I am trying to save the life of my friend.”

  “I can understand that,” Dyancynos said. “I, too, am trying to save the life of my friend.”

  “Who is your friend?”

  The dragon exhaled a great stream of bubbles.

  “Frothta. The Tree of Water is dying, Ven. And when she dies—all the magic of the sea will die with her.”

  41

  The Fulfillment of Most of Two Prophecies

  * * *

  At the moment the dragon’s words sounded in my head, I had the distinct feeling that my brain was drowning.

  My thoughts had been overwhelmed ever since I came into the sea, but those words of thrum were like a great tidal wave blasting through what little awareness I had left. I could only blink and stare at the towering tree above me, humming and alive with rings of swimming fish, dolphins, and whales, its arms dancing in the heavy drift at the bottom of the world.

  Dying.

  Only two thoughts were able to form.

  The first was the unsuccessful attempt to imagine what Frothta would have looked like in health, if she was this magnificent in dying.

  The second, and far more terrifying, one was the idea that I could do anything about it.

  Because in the deepest part of my heart, I had no clue about how to help save her.

  * * *

  “What—what do I have to do?” Ven’s thrum stammered. His thoughts echoed extremely slowly, between the pressure and his fear. “I don’t know how to heal the Tree of Water. I can’t even imagine how to try.”

  The dragon’s gigantic body stretched and uncoiled a little, sending gusts of sand and starfish swirling upward. “You’ve already done it—you came.”

  “That’s—that’s it? That’s all I had to do?”

  A throaty laugh vibrated through the depths.

  “That’s all? Look what it has cost you to come here, Ven Polypheme. You have come close to meeting Death many times on your journey. And, worse, you have had to watch your friends do so—death of their bodies and of their souls.” Her thrum grew solemn. “Even now, you still are facing that.” She nodded, and Ven felt a gentle tap of pressure on his hand.

  He opened his hand and looked at Amariel’s red cap of woven pearls.

  It had shrunk to nothing more than ashes. A gust in the heavy drift lifted them, and before he could catch them, carried them away among the floating lava bubbles. He was able to seize just one small pearl as the rest of the cap disintegrated.

  Ven gasped. His mouth opened, and the bitter water of the Deep started to swell in.

  The dragon’s eyes gleamed a little brighter. The water in his mouth vanished, and his teeth banged shut.

  “Can—can you fix it?” he thought desperately to Dyancynos. “Can you—make it whole again? Get the pieces back?”

  The dragon shook her massive head solemnly, or at least to Ven it seemed she did.

  “The merrow’s cap is gone, Ven Polypheme,” she said. “Gone, and not able to be replaced.”

  Ven felt his throat start to close. He turned to Char, who looked back at him. The sadness in his best friend’s eyes was vi
sible, even in the dark water.

  He glanced over at Coreon, but the Lirin-mer boy was still staring at the revolving rings of fish and sea creatures swimming through the arms of the Tree of Water.

  “So—she is dead?” Ven asked. “Amariel is—dead?” His thrum choked on the word.

  The dragon’s thrum grew even more solemn.

  “She may be—it is very likely. But I cannot tell for certain, because it seems you left her within the diving bell—so at the moment, the sea is not touching her. I can only see what the sea touches.”

  “What do I have to do?” Ven asked desperately. “What do I have to do to make your miracle, and mine, happen?”

  “Well, the prophecy given to me by the sages of the Future has been fulfilled—a son of Earth has come in the time of Frothta’s dying. But I do not think it will matter, unless you are able to fulfill the destiny that was spelled out for you. What was the prophecy you were given, Son of Earth?”

  He thought back to the last time he had seen the light of the sun below the surface of the ocean, to the magically colorful Summer Festival. Until he had seen the glowing lava of the seafloor, the fireworks, and Frothta herself, he had thought the Festival grounds to be the most amazing thing he had seen beneath the waves. He remembered the Epona’s words, even as she had spoken them in her flighty, singsong voice. He closed his eyes and thought them to Dyancynos.

  “Wanderer, out of place in the drift,

  This riddle is to you a gift.

  Free the captive who stays by choice

  Sing a hymn without your voice

  Find the souls forgotten by Time

  Believe the view is worth the climb.

  Follow the path without using your eyes

  Five gifts the price to spare one who dies

  Until the stars shine in the depths of the sea

  Home again you will never be.”

  The dragon looked thoughtful.