We followed Shim into the trees, leaping over the branches that his enormous legs had broken loose. The ground rocked beneath us, but I never felt imperiled, for my stag’s legs tensed and flexed with ease, treating the land as an extension of my body. Once again I noticed the Drama’s vitality, as if it refused to accept the onset of winter. Even amidst its leafless branches, bright mosses bloomed; among patches of ice, fresh water flowed. As I ran, I heard a dragonfly’s whirring wings, smelled a sprig of scented fern, and felt the hidden passageways under the soil where tiny animals burrowed and ancient roots stood secure, as they had for centuries upon centuries.
We entered a clearing, wet with the spray of rushing water. Shim’s bare feet, covered with curly hair, stopped just before us. Hallia and I slowed, first trotting and then walking. Our backs narrowed and lifted upright; our chins withdrew. We stepped forward, walking on two legs once again.
Before us, the clearing fell away sharply, making a cliff that overlooked a loudly splattering stream. There, at the edge of the Cliff, stood Rhia. She seemed in deep concentration, giving barely a glance to the giant towering above her, and no notice at all to the two people standing by his ankles. It looked as if she was, as Shim had said, holding a sizable bird upon her back. Then I realized that it wasn’t a bird at all.
It was a pair of wings! Made from the broad, reddish-brown leaves of marshland cabbage, woven into a frame .of flexible willow shoots, the wings had clearly taken a substantial amount of work. Her craftsmanship was evident, too, in the frilled strips of lichen that dangled from the outer rims like colorful flags. Right now, she was busily tying the whole thing to her back, using some of the same bright green vines that served as the threads of her gown.
I shook my head. How many days (or weeks) had she spent building her contraption? No doubt she’d chosen this cliff carefully to try it out, storing it nearby while she worked on it. And she probably would have tried it out yesterday if she hadn’t taken so much time to prepare our dinner.
But for the steady rumble of Shim’s breathing, we watched in silence. I chewed my lip. Did she really know what she was doing? Yet I knew better than to try to stop her. She was, after all, Rhia.
Her jaw firmly set, she backed away from the cliff. Meanwhile, Scullyrumpus, wearing an expression of self-importance, scurried down her leg and placed himself at the edge of the precipice. As Rhia came to a halt, she quickly untied the Orb of Fire from her belt and set it down on the grass. Then she stood alert, her eyes fierce with determination. Slowly, she spread her arms out wide, extending the wings to their fullest. The frills of lichen fluttered in the breeze.
Scullyrumpus, his ears standing erect, glanced behind himself at the churning waters below. All of a sudden, he waved his paws. “Start flyfly! Start flyfly!”
Rhia leaned forward. She started running and flapping her makeshift wings, causing a loud rustling. As she reached the edge, she leaped upward, floating in glorious freedom above the stream, her wings sweeping the air. She was aloft! Joyous, she released a cry of exhilaration and flapped again—when a hole suddenly burst open in one wing. Several willow shoots sprang loose, tearing the fabric of leaves. In midair, she careened wildly to one side and plummeted downward, disappearing behind the cliff. Scullyrumpus started jumping up and down, shrieking.
“Rhia!” shouted Hallia and I simultaneously. We ran to the spot where she had vanished. Scullyrumpus stood peering over the edge, his little brow furrowed.
Below us lay a twisted mass of leaves, sticks, and vines, sprawled in a pool at a bend of the stream. Several torn cabbage leaves drifted through the air and fell on the heap. Instantly, I started scrambling down the steep bank, joined by my shadow, whose arms were waving wildly. Then a much larger shadow fell over us. Down reached Shim’s great hand. With surprising delicacy, he plucked the crumpled, winged form. He hauled the dripping tangle up to the clearing and laid it gently beside us.
Scullyrumpus scampered over, tugging on Rhia’s soaked hair. To my relief, she lifted her face and weakly rubbed noses with the little beast. She twisted on the grass, groaning miserably. Though too weak to stand, she gave the drenched leaves on her arms a disgusted shake, then tore off the harness and threw off the whole contraption.
“What’s the point of having wings,” she groused while rubbing her forehead, “unless they hold together?”
I laid my hand on her sopping shoulder. “I’m glad you held together.”
“As am I,” added Hallia, examining a cut on her neck.
“I also,” boomed Shim, bending low to examine the wreckage of the wings. “You is full of madness, Rhia, just likes your brotherly.”
“Oh no,” she replied, pulling a broken willow shoot out of her curls. “He’s much worse than me.”
I started to grin, when Scullyrumpus added in his squeaky voice: “Much worse, he is. So muchymuch worse! But Rhia clumsy, too! Hoo-hoo-hoo, clumsy woman! Heka-chika-chhha-ha-ha.”
Still chortling, he started to climb up her sleeve, using the vines of her gown as a ladder. Rhia flicked some water on his face. “Don’t get sassy with me, Scully. I’m still your favorite ride, remember.”
“Unless you wearing wings!” he replied in his lightning-fast delivery. “Better you stick to viny ropes for flying, I saysay.” Ears flapping, he ducked into her sleeve pocket before she could spray him again.
I knelt by her side. “Anything broken?”
“No. Just a few cuts and bruises.” Her gaze moved to the ruined contraption beside her. “I really hoped it would work.”
Determinedly, she pushed herself to her feet. As she reached for the Orb and affixed it to her woven belt, she said gratefully, “At least I remembered to take this off. If I’d broken it . . . well, that would have been a real disaster.”
I squeezed her arm. “Rhia, there’s been a different disaster. Mother’s in trouble.” She stiffened, watching me severely as I continued. “Stangmar—he’s escaped! And he’s looking for her.”
Her whole body shuddered. “We planned to meet tomorrow night at Caer Aranon, that village east of here, by the great river. Cairpré’s going to read a poem when they open their village theater.” She took a deep breath. “Stangmar! We must warn her.”
“Yes,” I agreed. With a glance at Hallia, and another at Shim, I cleared my throat. “But first, there’s something more I must tell you. All of you.”
The wind gusted, showering the clearing with crisp dead leaves from a linden tree. As the leaves settled on the wet grass, I began to describe my vision from the night before. I spoke of the heavy clouds, the tension in the air, the anguish on Dagda’s face, and his warning about winter’s longest night. And I recalled his parting, ominous words: Fincayra ‘s fate has never been more in doubt. You may find unity in separation, strength in weakness, and rebirth in death, but even that may not be enough to save your world. For in certain turns of time, when all is truly gained, all is truly lost.
“In certain turns of time . . . ,” repeated Hallia, her voice somber. “It’s a terrible, terrible dream.”
“And a perplexing one,” added Rhia, as a dead leaf twirled down from the branches and landed on her shoulder.
I stomped my boot on the wet turf. “It was no dream at all! The whole thing was as real as Shim right here.”
“Rightly now I wishes I is a dream,” muttered the giant, his breath blowing down some more leaves. “What is we goings to do?”
I paced over to the cliff’s edge. Twisting the base of my staff into the mud, I surveyed the briskly flowing stream, as full of light and song as springtime, as magical as the land through which it flowed. Turning back to my friends, I declared, “We’re going to save what we love, that’s what! Rhia, I want you to come with me to the village, where we can warn Mother. And I’ll tell Cairpré about the vision. Learned as he is, he might know something about Dagda’s prophecy, something that could help us.”
I angled my face upward, gazing at the gargantuan figure who stood higher than the
trees. “You, Shim, will return to Varigal. Try to convince the others there to help. Our whole world is at stake! If Rhita Gawr’s forces overrun Fincayra, even the giants won’t be safe for long.”
Shim scowled, twisting his prominent nose. “That’s impossibly,” he grumbled. “Lots of giants won’t even speak to mens and womenses, let alonely fight alongsides them.”
“Try to win them over,” I insisted.
“And worsely, some of thems won’t even listens to me. They thinks I is a traitorly spy for the dwarves, or really ones of them, since I lived with dwarves when I is small.”
I nodded, peering up into his massive eyes. “You’re not small now, my friend.”
“No,” he replied with an emphatic shake of his head. Lowering his face almost to my own, he spoke in his version of a whisper, which sounded like a thrashing windstorm. “I is big now, as big as the highlyest tree. But Merlin . . . I is still afraid.”
I bit my lip. “So am I.”
Shim straightened up. “I will try, my verily hardest.” He added under his breath, “But I thinks somelyhow I won’t succeed.”
“Remember now, no one thought the Dance of the Giants would succeed either. And today all that remains of Stangmar’s castle is the circle of stones your people call Estonahenj. Let us meet there, on the day before the longest night.”
“Meets there we will,” promised Shim. “Even if I is all alonely.” He lifted a huge foot and started off, slamming the ground with every step.
Turning to Hallia, I tried to keep my voice from cracking. “You, I don’t want to leave.”
“You don’t have to,” she answered, her voice as gentle as the breath of a fawn. “You never have to.”
“But I do. You, too, have a task—one even more important than staying by my side.”
She stared at me, unconvinced. “I’m going with you and Rhia.”
“No.” I took her hand, feeling the slender fingers that had so recently been a hoof bounding next to my own. “You must go to the dragon lands, far in the north. Find Gwynnia, convince her however you can. She’ll only listen to you, Hallia. And we’ll need her to prevail! Fincayra’s last dragon must help us.”
Shadows darkened her eyes. “She’s not a fighter, young hawk. You know that! Why, she hasn’t even learned how to breathe fire. She’s a peaceful dragon.”
“And I am a peaceful wizard. Yet even above peace, I cherish life.”
Hallia stamped her bare foot on the muddy soil. “I won’t leave you.”
I moved closer, gazing at her. “If Fincayra is lost, then our future together is also lost.”
She swallowed. “I might not find her at all. What if I get all the way to her lair and discover she’s gone off somewhere? It could take me longer than the two weeks we have left just to locate her.”
Softly, I said, “Do your best.”
She frowned, and her hand shook inside my own. “That I will, but I’ll feel no joy until we’re running with each other again.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came.
She kissed my cheek. “May green meadows find you, young hawk. Remember always . . . I am with you.”
I tapped the charred bracelet, tied with a wizard’s knot around her wrist. “Like honey on a leaf,” I said hoarsely.
Briefly, she embraced Rhia, then spun around to go. In a blur of tan, a magnificent deer sprang from the clearing. I watched her depart, wondering how her journey would end. And how swiftly our lives, our futures, had pulled apart.
“Rhia,” I said at last. Then the two of us began an uncertain journey of our own.
7: CAER ARANON
All the rest of that day, Rhia and I ran eastward through the forest. A frigid wind blew in our faces, rattling the trees and stinging our cheeks. The hand clasping my staff felt stiff with cold. Yet for both of us, a colder wind blew upon our thoughts, rasping like the breath of Rhita Gawr himself.
As usual, my vine-clad sister outdistanced me, hurtling over tumbled trees and racing up hillsides slick with frost. Atop each hill, she would wait for me to catch up, her face uncharacteristically grim. On her shoulder sat Scullyrumpus, watching me with a disapproving eye while I climbed after them, panting heavily, my breath making white clouds. Though Rhia never spoke a word, I knew that now, more than ever, she was wishing she could truly fly—just as I was wishing I could tap the power of Leaping. Why did that particular magic have to be so difficult?
The temperature dropped as we reached the banks of the River Unceasing. Black clouds rolled overhead, sending down a sprinkling of snowflakes which melted into the water and frosted our backs and shoulders. Rhia plunged straight into the rushing river, and I followed. The incessant current lifted my boots, as if urging me onward. But it didn’t last long. As soon as I reached the other side, my sopping boots slapped the ground, feeling heavier than before.
By the time we reached the village of Caer Aranon, the sunset was seeping across the sky like blood soaking through a cloth. The village gate, like the leafless tree by its side, took on the same reddish-brown color, while a lone thrush, rounder than a gourd, watched us from the tree’s lowest branch. Beyond the gates stood a collection of square-shaped hovels, made from mud brick and thickly woven thatch. Each of them seemed to be leaning, though in different directions, like an assembly of drunkards. Atop one, a rooster sat alone; two or three scraggly goats milled about. All in all, it reminded me of the squalid village in Britannia where I’d spent so much of my childhood—and lost forever the use of my eyes.
Two dozen people, of all ages, clustered around a raised floor of uneven planks that rested on the dirt common between the huts. This was, no doubt, the theater. And this little throng could have turned out to hear Cairpré’s reading. That man could read poetry like no one I’d ever heard.
At one side of the stage stood a flagpole, flying a banner marked with the image of a black quill pen. At the base of the pole lay a pile of old robes, along with one tattered gray wig and a couple of roughly carved masks. At the other side, the stage planks ended abruptly, as if the builders had simply run out of wood before they could make any railing. Nearby, a pair of upright timbers suspended a brown sheet that would, during any production, allow the performers to change costume (or perhaps hide from thrown objects).
“Lovely placeyplace,” piped Scullyrumpus. He shook his head, causing his long ears to slap his cheeks. “Need a good strong flood, they do, not a stage.”
“Hush, Scully,” came Rhia’s stern command. “We’ll get back to our forest home soon enough.”
“Promise, youyou do?”
“Hush, I said. Merlin, do you see Mother in that crowd?”
“Not yet. Let’s—”
I stopped as a loud whinnying echoed across the common. A great black horse, his broad back glistening, came trotting toward us.
“Ionn!” I cried, stretching out my arms to greet the stallion who had borne me so often since childhood. To Rhia I said, “Mother must be here. Weeks ago she asked if she could ride Ionn in her travels with Cairpré.”
The horse approached, crunching the dirt beneath his hooves. I reached to rub his nose, to feel his warm breath on my hand. But he turned sharply away. Instead of nuzzling me in greeting, he whinnied shrilly.
“Something’s wrong,” Rhia declared.
“Very wrong,” I agreed. “Ionn, take us to our mother.”
The stallion tossed his mane and trotted over to the mass of people surrounding the theater. Pushing our way past all of them was made more difficult because everyone else, it seemed, wanted to get closer to the stage. Hearing their gossipy whispers, I realized they weren’t gathered for any performance. No, this was the kind of crowd that assembled to gawk at someone who’d been injured—or worse. Ionn’s sturdy neck pushed others aside, clearing us a path. Yet my temples pounded. Were we already too late?
At last, Rhia and I broke through. With relief, I saw our mother, kneeling on the planks near the middle of the stage. Her long hair, as radia
nt as the sun, fell over the shoulders of her dark blue robe. She was bending low, scrutinizing something intently—so intently she didn’t even look up when I called her name.
Then I saw what occupied her: A boy, dressed in a tattered tunic, lay on the boards beside her. He was shivering, staring open-eyed. Elen was dabbing a cloth against the side of his face, trying to clean a wound. I caught the smell of lemon balm, a sure sign she was trying to ease his pain. As she lifted her hand to reach for a bowl of herbs, I stiffened. For this boy’s wound was something I had never seen before.
His ear was gone—sliced off completely. Nothing but a blackened stub of skin remained.
“Mother!” cried Rhia, shouldering past me.
She turned our way, her sapphire eyes not so bright as usual. “My children.” Setting down her cloth, she reached out a hand to each of us, drawing us nearer. She leaned over, kissed our foreheads, then gazed at us somberly. “I have wicked tidings for you.”
“As do we,” I declared, “for you.”
“How could any be worse than what I have seen, but cannot heal?” She retrieved her cloth, dipped it in the bowl filled with water and herbs, and went back to work. The boy winced at her touch, but didn’t make any sound other than his ragged breathing. Without looking up, she continued, “This dear boy was attacked, for no apparent reason, at a tarn not far from here.”
“His ear . . . ,” I began.
“Was cut off.” Elen herself shivered. “A farmer, bringing his cow for a drink, saw it happen, though he arrived too late to help the poor lad.”
I clenched my fist, convinced that this was the latest example of Stangmar’s cruelty. “How could he have done such a monstrous thing?”