“They got so caught up in their exploring, I guess, that fewer and fewer of them ever bothered to come home. Eventually, nobody at all returned. The settlements fell apart or blew away, since there was nobody around to take care of them. And the treelings themselves died off, one by one.”
I kicked at a tuft of grass. “I can’t blame them for wandering. It’s in my blood, too. But it sounds as if they never felt at home anywhere.”
Rhia studied me thoughtfully, the wind off the water ruffling her leafy garb. “And is feeling at home somewhere in your blood, as you say?”
“I hope so, but I’m not sure. What about you?”
She stiffened. “Arbassa is my home. My family. All the family I’ve ever had.”
“Except for Cwen.”
She bit her lip. “Once she belonged to my family. But no more. She gave that up for a sackful of goblin promises.”
The butterfly lifted off from my staff. It flew over to Bumbelwy, who was still gazing glumly across the channel at the Forgotten Island. Just before landing, the butterfly apparently changed its mind and returned to the gnarled shaft of hemlock. I watched its dull brown wings, one of which was badly frayed, slowly opening and closing.
Looking again at Rhia, I declared, “We must find her.”
“Who?”
“Cwen. She might be able to tell me what those piles of stones cannot.”
Rhia made a face as if she had eaten a handful of sour berries. “Then we are lost. There is no way to find her, even if she did survive losing her arm. Besides, if we did find her, we couldn’t trust her.” Fairly spitting the words, she added, “She’s a traitor, through and through.”
Below us, an enormous wave crashed against the cliff, sending the kittiwakes and terns screeching from the spray. “Even so, I have to try! Surely somebody saw her after she left. If treelings are all that rare nowadays, the sight of one would be noticed, wouldn’t it?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Treelings not only weren’t satisfied to stay in any one place. They weren’t satisfied to stay in any one body, either.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes! They knew how to change form! You know the way most trees change their colors in the autumn, and take on a whole new garb in the spring? The treelings went far beyond that. They were always swapping their treelike shape for a bear, or an eagle, or a frog. “That’s why they were named in the Song about Changing. They were masters of it.”
My hopes, already as fragile as the butterfly perched on my staff, vanished entirely. “So Cwen, if she’s still alive, could look like anything.”
“Anything at all.”
Bumbelwy, sensing my despair, spoke up. “I could sing you a song, if you like. Something light and cheery.”
Since I didn’t have the strength to protest, he started to sing, swaying his bell-draped hat in time to the rhythm.
Life’s unending curse:
It could be far worse!
Yet I’m full of glee.
None gladder than me.
Though death fills the air,
I do not despair.
It could be far worse:
Life’s unending curse.
Be merry! You see,
Far worse it could be.
So much worse than now!
Just . . . don’t ask me how.
“Stop!” shouted Rhia. “If you really feel that way, why don’t you just jump off this cliff and put an end to your misery?”
Bumbelwy frowned triply. “Weren’t you listening? That’s a joyous song! One of my favorites.” He sighed. “Oh dear, I must have botched the delivery. As usual. Here, I’ll try it again.”
“No!” a voice cried out.
But the voice did not belong to Rhia. Nor to me. It belonged to the butterfly.
With a frantic fluttering, the tiny creature left its perch, rose into the air, and started spinning downward. Just before it hit the grass, a loud crraackk split the air. The butterfly vanished.
In its place stood a slim, gnarled figure, part tree and part woman. Her hair, as rough as straw, fell over the barklike skin of her face, framing two dark eyes the shape of teardrops. A brown robe encircled her, covering her body down to her broad, knobby feet that resembled roots. Only one arm protruded from the robe, its hand wearing a silver ring on the smallest of six fingers. The sweet scent of apple blossoms clung to her, in stark contrast to the sour expression on her face.
Rhia stood as stiff as a dead branch. “Cwen.”
“Yessss,” whispered the treeling, her voice rustling like dry grass. “It issss Cwen. The ssssame Cwen who took care of you assss a baby, and nurssssed you through many a ssssickness.”
“And who tried to give me to the goblins!”
Cwen’s lone hand ran through her ragged hair. “That wassssn’t my dessssire. They promissssed they would not harm you.”
“You should have known they would lie. No one can trust a warrior goblin.” She stared at the twisted figure. “Now no one can trust you.”
“Don’t you ssssee I know that?”
A kittiwake landed on the grass nearby and started tugging at some strands with its beak. Though the bird pulled vigorously, the grass wouldn’t budge. “Watch thissss,” said Cwen, taking a small step closer. In her most gentle voice, she asked, “If I tried to help you build your nesssst, good bird, would you let me?”
The kittiwake screeched and flapped its wings angrily at her. Only after carrying on for some time did it finally settle down and return to work, still watching Cwen warily with one eye.
Sadly, the treeling turned back to Rhia. “You ssssee? Thissss issss my punisssshment.”
“You deserve it, every bit.”
“I am misssserable, totally misssserable! I thought thingssss could get no worsssse. Then ssssuddenly you appeared.” She aimed a knobby finger at Bumbelwy. “With thissss . . . voicccce of doom.”
The jester raised his head hopefully. “Perhaps you prefer riddles? I know a terrific one about bells.”
“No!” shrieked the treeling. “Pleasssse, Rhia. I am sssso full of remorsssse. Won’t you forgive me?”
She crossed her leaf-covered arms. “Never.”
I felt a strange pang. The word never rang in my ears like a heavy door slammed and barred. To my own surprise, a feeling of sympathy rose inside of me. Certainly Cwen had done something terrible. Something she regretted. But hadn’t I also done things I deeply regretted?
I stepped close to Rhia, lowering my voice. “It’s hard, I know. Yet maybe you should forgive her.”
She stared at me coldly. “How can I?”
“The same way my mother forgave me after what I did to her.” At that instant, Elen’s parting words came back to me. The butterfly can change from a mere worm to the most beautiful creature of all. And the soul, my son, can do the same. I bit my lower lip. “Cwen did something awful, to be sure. But she deserves another chance, Rhia.”
“Why?”
“Because, well, she could change. All of us, all living things, have the potential to change.”
Suddenly my staff flashed with bright blue light. The wooden shaft sizzled, as if it were burning. A split second later, both the light and the sound disappeared. As I twirled the staff in my hand, I found a marking, as blue as the sky at dusk, engraved upon the shaft. It was in the shape of a butterfly. I knew, in that moment, that Tuatha’s spirit still touched my staff. And that, somehow, I had discovered the soul of Changing.
Hesitantly, Rhia stretched her hand toward the treeling. Cwen, her slender eyes glistening, took it in her own. For a moment, they regarded each other in silence.
Finally the treeling turned to me. “Issss there any way I can thank you?”
“Seeing you two like this is thanks enough.”
“Are you ssssure there issss nothing I can do?”
“Not unless you know the power of Leaping,” I replied. “We must go now to the Lake of the Face, far to the north.”
 
; “Ten days’ walk,” moaned Bumbelwy. “No, more like twelve. No, make it fourteen.”
Cwen’s teardrop eyes probed me. “I don’t know the sssskill of Leaping, but the sssskill of Changing may be usssseful to you.”
Rhia caught her breath. “Oh Cwen, if only we could swim like fish . . . “
“It would ssssave you sssseveral days.”
I jumped. “Is it really possible?”
A crooked grin spread over Cwen’s face as she wiggled her bony fingers at Bumbelwy. “You, voicccce of doom, will go firsssst.”
“No,” he pleaded, backing away. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”
“Flippna sssslippna, hahnaway sssswish,” intoned Cwen. “Kelpono bubblim tubblim fissssh.”
All of a sudden, Bumbelwy halted, realizing that he had backed up almost to the edge of the cliff. He looked down at the crashing surf, his eyes wide with fright, his sleeves flapping in the wind. He looked back at Cwen, and his eyes grew wider still.
“P-please,” he stammered. “I hate f-f-fish! So s-slimy, so v-very wet all over! S-so—”
Crraackk.
An ungainly fish, with enormous eyes and quadruple chins under its downturned mouth, flopped helplessly on the grass before finally plunging over the cliff. Yet I found it hard to laugh, for I knew I would be next.
16: LIQUID THRILL
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
Wind rushed past. I fell down, down, down. I fought to take in some air. No use! The howling wind tore at me. Yet I could not fill my lungs with it, as I had always done before. Then, with a splash, I hit cold water. My gills opened wide. Gills! I breathed again at last. As water moved around me, it also moved through me.
No more arms. No more legs. My body was now a single, streamlined tail, with flexible fins above and below and on both sides. One of the fins curled around a small stick, which I guessed was all that remained of my staff. What had happened to my satchel, boots, and tunic, I had no idea.
It took me a moment to find my balance, for whenever I tried to move my fins, I flipped over on my side. And it took more than a moment for my second sight to adjust to the dim, scattered underwater light. Except for the layer of water closest to the surface, there was practically no light at all. Only gradations of darkness.
After several minutes of struggling, however, my confidence began to improve. I discovered that swimming required completely different movements than it had with my human form. Stroking was out of the question. So was kicking, at least in the old way. What I needed to do was sway my entire body from side to side, like a living whip cracking. Every single scale on my skin, from my gills to the tip of my tail, joined in the motion. Soon I found I could whip through the waves. And I could move up or down as well as left or right.
A slender fish, mottled with greens and browns, swam over. I knew at once it was Rhia, for although she had been underwater no longer than I, she moved with the grace of the current itself. We waved our fins in greeting. She made some sort of coughing sound, and I realized that she was laughing at the sight of my miniature staff.
At that moment Bumbelwy, trailing a torn ribbon of kelp from his tail, swam slowly toward us. While he wore no bells, there was no mistaking him. From the front, his sagging chins made him look like an eel wearing a ruffled collar. It was the closest he had ever come to being funny, although he had no idea.
Our first task was learning to keep together. Rhia and I took turns in the lead position, with Bumbelwy always following behind. In time, Rhia and I began to swim with increasing coordination. A sixth sense slowly emerged in us, the same sense that binds an entire school of fish together. After the first full day of swimming, the two of us moved almost as a single, connected being.
A quiet, liquid thrill moved through me as we swam through vast forests of swaying kelp or leaped through the rolling waves. I could taste feelings as well as flavors in the currents; I could sense the joy of a family of dolphins, the lonely struggle of a migrating turtle, the hunger of a newborn sea anemone. Yet I never forgot the seriousness of my quest. Even as I reveled in the experience of being a creature of the water, I knew that all of this was merely a means of saving time—and, perhaps, Elen. Still, I promised myself that if I ever survived this quest and one day actually became a wizard, perhaps even the mentor of a young king or queen, I would remember the virtues of transforming my student into a fish.
One of those virtues was discovering the great amount of food that the sea could provide. Why, the sea was really one enormous, floating feast! Day after day, I ate enough insects, eggs, and worms to feel bloated. Rhia, for her part, proved adept at catching tasty little crayfish. While Bumbelwy drew the line at worms, even he tasted many of the sea’s strange delicacies.
At the same time, we tried to stay alert to the danger of becoming someone else’s delicacy. Once I swam through a tunnel of bright yellow coral only to find a very large, very hungry fish waiting for me at the other end. As quickly as I darted away, I surely would have been caught but for the even larger creature who suddenly appeared, scaring off my pursuer. Although I just barely glimpsed the creature who had helped me, it seemed to possess the tail of a fish and the upper body of a man.
For six days and five nights we swam steadily northward. Often after dark, the pale light of a swelling half moon danced upon the waves. Yet the moon’s beauty escaped me. I saw in its face only the face of someone else, someone I feared losing forever. Less than three weeks remained.
At last came the moment when Rhia veered sharply toward the coast. She led us to a small delta where a freshwater stream emptied into the sea. I could taste, mixing with the salty flavors of the wide waters, the purity of melted snow, the playfulness of otters, and the unwavering patience of a stand of ancient spruce trees. We surged up the stream as far as we could. Then, concentrating my thoughts, I repeated the command that I had learned from Cwen.
All of a sudden I stood knee-deep in a tumbling cascade, clutching my staff in one hand and Rhia’s arm in the other. Just downstream, Bumbelwy threw himself on the marshy bank, coughing and sputtering. He had, it seemed, forgotten that people tend not to breathe too well with their heads underwater.
While Bumbelwy recovered, Rhia and I shook some of the water from our clothes and ourselves. Meanwhile, she explained that she believed that this stream flowed down from the Lake of the Face itself. Before long, all three of us were trekking along the stony stream bank, climbing with the rising ground. A tangled forest of alder and birch that clung to the bank made the going difficult. Every time Bumbelwy tried to shake free of the branches that grasped at his cloak, his bells rattled soggily.
At one point I paused, panting hard from the climb. Spying a shaggy-topped mushroom growing among the roots of a birch, I pulled it from the ground. “Strange as it sounds,” I said as I took a bite, “I’m going to miss those little white worms.”
Rhia wiped her brow and grinned at me. She picked her own mushroom. “Maybe you’ll find more worms at the Lake of the Face.”
“How did it come to have such a name? Do you know?”
She chewed pensively. “Some say it’s from the shape, which is a little like a man’s face. Others say it’s from the power of the water.”
“What power?”
“If you look into it, according to legend, you will face an important truth about your life. Even if it’s a truth you would rather not know.”
17: BINDING
We continued on, following the stony stream bank as it climbed through the alders. Though roots tripped our feet and thorns tore our clothing, our pace hardly slackened. Several hours and scraped shins later, the waterway opened into a snug valley surrounded by steep, wooded hills. The spicy scent of pine trees wafted over us. Amidst the trees, outcroppings of white quartz gleamed in the late afternoon sun.
Yet the valley seemed eerily silent. No birds sang, no squirrels chattered, no bees buzzed. I listened closely, hoping to hear the stirring of something alive. Rhia, reading my thoug
hts, gave a knowing nod. “Animals and birds stay away from this valley. No one knows why.”
“They’re smarter than people,” observed Bumbelwy, still dripping water from his bells.
I watched Rhia walk down to the shore of the lake in the center of the valley. The lake, its water almost black, was so still that hardly a ripple broke its surface. Its contours resembled, from this angle, the profile of a man whose jaw, strong and defiant, jutted outward—much like my own father’s. Remembering him, I stiffened. I wished he had been as strong in reality as in appearance. Strong enough to stand up to Rhita Gawr when he had seen the chance. Strong enough to help his own wife, Elen, when she had needed him.
A shriek jolted me out of my thoughts.
There, by the edge of the lake, stood Rhia, gazing into the dark water. She held her hands in front of her protectively, while her back arched in fear. Yet if something in the lake had frightened her, she made no effort to move or get away. She stared straight into the water, completely transfixed.
I ran down to her. Bumbelwy followed me, alternately tripping over his torn cloak and the mesh of vines that grew along the shore. Just as I reached her, she turned around. Her skin, usually full of color, looked deathly pale. She gasped when she saw me, as if she were suddenly afraid. Then she shuddered and grabbed my arm for support.
I braced myself to support her weight. “Are you all right?”
“No,” she answered weakly.
“Did you see something in the lake?”
“Y-yes.” She shook herself again, releasing my arm. “And you—you’d better not look.”
“Fine,” declared Bumbelwy, glancing nervously at the dark water. “Let’s go.”
“Wait.” I stepped to the edge of the lake. As I peered into the still water, I viewed my own reflection, so clear that for an instant I thought that my own twin was in the lake, staring back at me. What, I wondered, could have been so frightening about such a perfect reflection? There were my useless eyes, looking like lumps of coal beneath my brows. And my scarred cheeks, ravaged by flames that I could still almost feel. Stroking my cheeks, I wished that I might someday grow a beard to cover those scars. A beard, curly and white, like the one I imagined that Tuatha himself had worn.