There was no time for lengthy goodbyes, for the tide had turned. Little Fur stepped onto the trunk and found a place beside her cloak. Ofred climbed into the crook of two branches, followed by Silk and the traveling lemmings. Once Ofred was in place, he closed his eyes, as if, for once, he preferred his dreams to reality.
Now it was Danger’s turn. He had been standing atop the outcrop, watching them calmly, but the moment Little Fur looked up at him, a shiver ran over his shining coat. Little Fur could smell the battle raging inside him. Several times he crept forward, whiskers and ears twitching, tail coiling and uncoiling, and then he would shrink back. It seemed he could not force the shape to do something so unnatural. But, paw by paw, Danger won his battle, and at last he clawed his way along the tree trunk and sank into an unhappy crouch.
“Now or never,” Ofred whispered as a great wave washed into the inlet, lifting the tree.
“Now!” Little Fur cried.
The wander pushed hard at the trunk with his front paws. The tree dislodged with a great creaking and scraping of wood. When the water flowed out of the inlet, the tree, with its small band of passengers, was carried out, too.
“I will wait!” Wander shouted. “Come back and tell me the end of the story!” He rose onto his hind legs, looking utterly undoglike as he lifted his hairy paw in farewell.
The tree rotated as each wave met the one behind it. The travelers were forced to cling to their raft to keep from being flung into the water. After a long buffeting period, the waves flattened out. They were already so far from the land that it was no more than a dark smudge against the starlit sky.
Little Fur felt as if she were abandoning all that was certain to journey upon the vast watery riddle that was faith: faith that Gem and the old Sett Owl had been right, faith that Ofred’s dreams would bring them to the earth spirit. And what is faith, truly, she thought, but another name for hope?
Little Fur did not know how the others felt, for they had barely spoken since leaving the shore. Danger slept, claws sunk deep into the dark red wood of the tree trunk. Ofred slept, too, though he cried out often, and each time he did, Little Fur anxiously wondered what he was dreaming.
Little Fur could not sleep. Perhaps it was the ache of moving farther and farther away from Ginger and Crow, or the deeper pain of being cut off from the flow of earth magic—or maybe the heaviness weighing down her spirit came from the weakening of her elf blood. She would have felt lonelier if several of the lemmings had not come to sit on her knees. The lemmings only spoke to her if they had something important to say or if she asked them something directly, but she liked hearing their soft words to one another. Their warm, reverent, sometimes absurd chatter about their adopted master, as they called Ofred, made her smile.
Little Fur gazed down, and one lemming immediately looked up into her eyes. It was Silk, whose eyes shone and whose nose twitched. In that moment Silk looked so like Lim that Little Fur’s own eyes filled with tears. She saw the lemming’s eyes widen and fought to control a wave of despair and fear and weariness.
“What is the matter, Healer?” Silk whispered.
“It is only that I am unhappy to be so far from … from the land,” Little Fur said.
This was true, but it was such a small part of the whole truth that Little Fur wondered if it was a lie. Was it a sign that Little Fur’s troll blood was beginning to overpower her elf blood? Yet she did not want to burden the little creature. And if it was a lie, could it be bad if the teller meant only kindness with it? She stroked Silk until the lemming curled back to sleep, and in soothing the lemming, she found that she was soothed herself. She drowsed and then dreamed.
In her dream, she heard the cracked and ancient voice of the old Sett Owl, saying, “All is not as it seems. You must go to the source.”
“How can riding on the back of the great sea bring me to the source?” Little Fur asked.
“Under sky, under water, under all that the humans build, is earth,” answered the Sett Owl.
“But how are we to get to earth through all this water?” asked Little Fur.
“Only in the deepest green will there be understanding.” The owl suddenly looked straight into Little Fur’s eyes. “The wizard understood. She saw what was needed. Do not fail her.”
Little Fur puzzled herself awake, for the words of her dream were not all words that the old Sett Owl had spoken in reality. Yet she had the feeling that she had heard some of them before, somewhere else. She opened her eyes and forgot her dream in wonder at the unimaginable bright endlessness of the great sea, heaving and yearning to the horizon on all sides.
Both the moon and the sun were visible, hung at either side of the sky, as if between them they would stop time.
CHAPTER 11
The White Tower
For hours the raft was gentled and nudged along by the shimmering swells. All of the travelers were awake, but still there was almost no talk. It was as if in leaving the land they had lost that which connected them and made talk possible. Whenever Little Fur looked at Danger in the midst of that long, dreamlike day, his eyes were closed but his tail was flickering.
In the afternoon, the dull peace that had lain over her wits began to erode with hunger and thirst. Little Fur got out the food that Wander had brought them and poured some of the water from the gourd into a hollow in the tree; then she called the others to eat. She hoped that she was not making a mistake in rousing Danger and that his panther shape would not make him want to eat some of the lemmings, but he came as quietly as Ofred to lap at the pool of water. Danger even refused her offer of food, saying that he felt too ill. Ofred and the lemmings nibbled at the nuts and grasses and roots.
In the midst of this strangest of meals, Ofred suddenly rose up on his hind legs and raised his arms as if he were about to make a speech.
“Ofred?” Little Fur said, but the lemur was only stretching. When he subsided, Little Fur had the mad desire to laugh, but somehow she knew that if she began, it might be hard to stop.
The sky and sea dimmed to gray, a distant rumble of thunder sounded, and the wind began to blow more briskly, ruffling the sea into low gray peaks edged in a froth of white foam. Little Fur looked up and saw that a monstrous bank of black clouds edged in purple was blotting out half the sky. Lightning flickered from the undersides of the clouds, and the air smelled of rain. They were right in the path of a storm.
“Take shelter! Storm!” Little Fur called to the lemmings as she snatched up a piece of twine and tied it around Ofred’s waist.
The lemur blinked at her with wide red eyes and said softly, “The storm will break us.”
There was no time for Little Fur to ask Ofred if he had seen this in a dream, for the wind was growing stronger by the second. The waves reared high, the foam at their upper edges torn away into long, wet veils. The tree spun and rocked so that Little Fur could barely keep on her feet, but the widespread branches kept it from rolling over.
Little Fur took another length of twine and crawled to Danger, but he reared up at once and snarled horribly. She struggled back to Ofred, half blinded by the wildly fluttering streamers of her red hair. She wedged herself into the branches alongside the white stuff, which was strangely warm, as if returning her own body heat. No wonder the lemur had pressed himself to it! Cuddling close to him, she shouted out to Danger to join them. He stayed where he was, pressed flat to the trunk, claws plunged deep into the wood.
As the storm closed in on them, lightning cracked and forked overhead, growing brighter until each flash cast a brief light over waves that rose up in black crags. Thunder rumbled overhead. The wind gathered force, and the crags became sheer mountains of darkness marbled with foam that reared up and toppled over.
Little Fur was grateful for Wander’s twine, for without it she and Ofred would have been swept away as the waves began to wash over the tree. She feared for Danger, but whenever she glimpsed him in the flickering light, he was still grimly clinging to the trunk. She could only h
ope that the lemmings were not drowning in their holes.
Gasping for air in a world turned to water, Little Fur again felt the wildness of the magic in the great sea. In all that wetness, she reminded herself that Ofred had dreamed of land. It was hard to believe in it now—hard to believe in anything but the bellowing storm and the raging sea. Little Fur looked at Ofred, huddled beside her, and saw that his eyes were open, and shining red and wild as a blood moon.
It cannot get worse, Little Fur told herself. It must end soon. But it did get worse, and it did not end. The air became so wet with spray that it was impossible to know where the sea ended and the air began. Ofred curled into a furry ball, and Little Fur could not see Danger at all.
Then, suddenly, it became utterly still and silent.
Little Fur roused herself from her stupor and looked about, still imagining she could hear the howling of the storm. But she was not imagining it, for all around them wind and water roared and churned and heaved. It was as if the two elements were determined to destroy one another or to create some other element altogether.
Only the circle of sea where the tree-raft floated was still, as if they were caged in peace. The water shone, bright silver. Little Fur stood and looked up to see the moon staring down through a hole in the clouds like a cold eye. She shivered and wondered what powerful magic this was, and what it could mean.
“We are in the eye of the storm,” Danger said. He was shivering, but his words were calm. He had managed to separate himself from the terror of the panther shape he wore. Indeed, the calmness in his voice appeared to soothe the panther shape. Danger rose and stretched his back into a bow; then he stretched each paw and shook his tail before saying, “The she-human who kept the key to my cage said that there was a storm in me, but that, like all storms, there was a silent center, too. The eye of the storm, she called it.”
Little Fur was about to ask how Sly had managed to get the key when she saw that the battered tree was approaching the edge of the circle of calmness. Only then did she understand that if this was the center of the storm, then they must pass yet through the other side of it. She glanced in dismay at Danger as he flattened himself to the tree once more. Little Fur barely had time to sit down before the storm snatched them up again.
The roar and violence of the waves felt all the more brutal because of the brief respite. The tree sank, then climbed a gigantic peak of water only to be slammed down under a bigger wave. Little Fur heard the snap of branches. When the lightning flashed again, she saw that the loss of the branches had unbalanced the tree, so that it tilted in the water. Danger was now in a precarious position, clinging to the side of the tree trunk, his eyes slits of fear.
Terrified for him lest more branches should break, Little Fur loosened the line about her waist until it was long enough to allow her to reach Danger. Then she tied another length of twine to it and began to crawl toward him. As she crept along, she tried to find a pattern in the motion of the water so that she would know when to reach for Danger and tie the line about him. It would not hold his weight, but it might steady him enough to allow him to claw his way up to a safer position.
Again and again waves rushed over the tree trunk, but at last she reached the sodden panther. Even over the wild wet smell of the storm she could smell the sharp reek of his fear. “I am going to tie a line around you,” she shouted.
Danger’s eyes widened. With a chill, she saw that he was not looking at her, but behind her. Then she saw rising up in his eyes the shadow of a wave, green and monstrous, and she reached out desperately to Danger. She felt his soft wet fur under her fingertips; then a mountain of water slammed down on them. Little Fur felt the roughness of bark under her cheek the moment before she was torn away from the tree and dragged into the churning tumult of the sea. She gasped in a mouthful of water as the line about her waist tightened; then something struck her on the head and she was knocked unconscious.
Little Fur awoke to a cloudless lemon-colored sky and a dazzle of sunlight reflecting off still water. Her nose told her that it was late afternoon. She tried to sit up, only to feel a sharp pain in her middle. She looked down and saw it was from the line around her waist, which was pulled painfully tight. Working at the knots with her stiff fingers, she sat up and found that she was on a floating piece of the white stuff that had been trapped in the branches of the tree.
There was no sign of the tree itself, save for the single thick branch floating close by. It had splintered at the end where it had broken away from the tree, taking her with it. The line about her waist was connected to the branch, and her heart leapt when she saw that her precious cloak was not lost. This reminded her of the green stone. Little Fur put her hand to her neck. It was still there.
There was no sign of Ofred. Little Fur tugged the branch until it was bobbing alongside the white stuff. She untangled her cloak, and there lay Ofred, curled beneath it!
Blinking away tears of relief, Little Fur shook him gently. She whispered his name until he stirred and uncurled himself. Then he picked his way onto the white raft. Settling back on his haunches, Ofred blinked at her with pale red eyes before turning to gaze out at the shimmering sea.
Little Fur thought of Danger and the lemmings. A sharp, dark part of her wanted to hurt Ofred because he had lived and the others had not. After all, had he not dreamed they would all come safe to land? Little Fur knew that the desire to punish came from the growing imbalance between her elf and troll blood—how could she blame the lemur? And in the end, Danger had chosen to follow the lemur’s dreams on his own.
“I am thirsty,” Ofred said, but their gourd of fresh water was gone.
Little Fur gave Ofred some of the seeds from inside one of the pockets in the hem of her cloak. He nibbled at them stoically. Little Fur looked around at the glittering water and thought how strange it was to be surrounded by wetness and yet unable to drink. They floated for a thirsty while; then Ofred curled back to sleep. Little Fur found she could not do the same. Her mouth was too dry, and her heart hurt too much. She also felt the aching pull that came from being so far away from Ginger and Crow.
At last the sky darkened and stars began to prick through the blackness. The moon had not yet risen, and the sea offered the reflections of the stars so that it looked as if they were floating in the sky. A faint wind began to blow. Little Fur broke two sticks off the larger branch and pushed them very carefully into the white stuff, for their new raft was far less sturdy than the tree had been. She tied up her cloak between the sticks to catch the wind. She had no idea where it would carry them, but it lifted her spirits to see how the cloth belled out gently as they began to move.
The wind bore them gracefully across the dark water, until it felt to Little Fur that the hours had turned to water and were trickling away through her fingers before she could drink them. But they did not come to land. Little Fur eventually lay down beside Ofred. She tried to remember all that the old Sett Owl and Gem had said, but it seemed as if she had not seen them for many years. She thought again of Lim’s little golden pulse of life, which she had failed to hold, and a coldness touched her.
Little Fur opened her eyes and discovered that she had slept after all, for now the air about them was thick with mist. The dampness eased her parched mouth, and when she saw that there were tiny drops in her hair, she ran her fingers lightly over the strands and licked the moisture from them. Then she noticed that there was a little puddle of water where mist had run down the folds of the limp cloak to pool in a depression in the fabric. Whether it was elf magic or simply the way the cloth was made, it held the water safe.
Little Fur shook Ofred until he awoke and made him drink some of the mist-water. Then she drank, too. It was not enough for either of them to properly quench their thirst, and yet it meant they would survive. Little Fur was carefully arranging the cloak to catch more water when she saw that Ofred was haloed in a shimmer of radiance cast by a great shining beam of false light blazing from behind him.
And false light meant humans.
Heart hammering, Little Fur shifted so that she could see past the lemur. She squinted her eyes against the beam of light cutting through the mist. The light was coming from a high window in a white tower that rose straight up out of the sea like an admonishing finger.
CHAPTER 12
The Deepest Green
The powerful beam of false light arced away, but in a short time it swung back. Little Fur was terrified that the human directing it had seen them, but the light swung away again. This continued to happen until Little Fur’s fear ebbed. It was clear that the light was not seeking them out, but following some pattern of its own. They were simply in its path.
Little Fur knew that a human might still become curious about the flashes of white as the light hit the raft, so she untied her cloak and draped it around herself and Ofred. It was not wide enough to conceal the raft, which worried Little Fur. And a current was carrying them slowly and inexorably toward the white tower.
As they drew nearer to the tower, Little Fur saw that it did not rise up straight out of the sea, as she had first thought, but had been built upon a small, rocky island. This island was ringed by a maze of rocks and other small, stony islands. Little Fur could not help feeling curious about why humans would build a tower in the midst of the great sea. Were they seeking the same mastery over the water that they had achieved over the land? And what was the purpose of the beam of light, playing out its dance over and over upon the misty sea? Unlike the high houses in the city, the tower was not made of unmelting ice, but of smooth stone. It was completely round, with only a door at the base and small windows high up from which shone the beam of false light.