She puttered around the house, neatening and washing and fixing, until the shafts of sunlight faded and shadows began to spread.
Jacklo landed on the windowsill. “Mayka? Are we going on our adventure now?”
“We aren’t going,” she corrected him. “I am.” She didn’t know what to expect in the valley. It was best if she went alone and didn’t put anyone else at risk. “You heard Nianna. Only one is needed for this.”
Gathering up her courage, Mayka walked out the door—and saw sunset. Rosy clouds filled the sky above the mountains, and the valley was already deep in shadows.
Kalgrey curled around her ankles. “You missed the light,” the cat said.
“Darkness won’t hurt me,” Mayka said. But she hadn’t meant to leave at night. In every story, adventures always began on a crisp, clear day. I shouldn’t have delayed.
“You could trip and fall and break in the darkness,” Kalgrey said. “Don’t be foolish.” In cat speak, that was almost I love you.
Risa flew to them and landed on Mayka’s shoulder. “She’s right. It isn’t practical to leave at night. Begin at dawn. Like a bird.”
“Or. Don’t. Leave. At. All,” Etho the lizard said. He always talked slowly, each word punctuated by a flick of his tongue.
“I’ll be back soon,” Mayka promised. She estimated that it would take her a day to reach the valley, a day or two to find a stonemason, and another day to return—less than a week. I can be away for less than a week, can’t I? It was a snap of the fingers, compared to how long they’d lived here. Badger had once spent an entire week studying a single mushroom, and Jacklo had once devoted two weeks to thinking up every rhyming word he could. “Come on, let’s feed the animals.”
While the stone rabbits readied the greens for the flesh rabbits, Etho slunk off his rock to gather mushrooms in the forest for the goats. Badger tossed seeds to the chickens, and the stone fish refilled the water buckets.
Mayka let herself into the coop, and the chickens clustered around her, pecking at her feet. She shooed them back as Badger threw them another pawful of seeds. She checked the roosts for fresh eggs—they could be given to any foxes or predators from the forest who were tempted to snack on either the chickens or the rabbits. Nianna, with her night vision, would watch for them while Kalgrey patrolled the fences.
“Will you all be okay while I’m gone?” Mayka asked.
Sitting on a fencepost, Kalgrey spread her claws and made a show of examining them. Father had worked hard to make her claws retractable—each claw was made of diamond. “I will take care of the chickens.”
“Very funny,” Mayka said.
“If I wasn’t meant to hunt, Father wouldn’t have given me instincts. But I will try to leave the chickens intact. Can’t understand why you like them. Messy creatures. You do realize you will be among lots of messy creatures in the valley, don’t you? Not only chickens, but humans and their flesh creatures. Horses, donkeys, pigs, dogs.” At the word dogs, Kalgrey shuddered all the way to the tip of her tail.
Jacklo fluttered down on the fence beside the cat. “Oh! What if you meet others like us? What if you like them better than us? What if you don’t want to come back?” Agitated, he flapped his wings to demonstrate his bravery—and promptly fell off.
He righted himself. “Meant to do that.”
Squatting, Mayka dusted him off. “Of course I’ll come back. This is home! And you’re my family.” All of them drew closer, clustering around her.
Badger, the oldest of them now that Turtle slept, pushed forward and took her hand in his large paws. His voice creaked, for he seldom used it, and his words were stilted, as if he were reciting poetry. “We are family. No blood binds us, for we have no blood, but we are bound by time and love. You will carry our love and hope with you to the valley, and it will strengthen you.”
Mayka looked at all her friends, and she felt warm, as if the sun shone on her brightly. I’ll go in the morning, she told herself. “Will you all watch the stars with me tonight?”
They climbed, flew, or were helped onto the roof of the cottage as the last of the sun dropped out of sight and deeper blueness spread across the arc of the sky. Lying side by side, they watched the stars pop out one by one, until the sky was filled with so many that they could see stars between the stars.
Sometime late in the night, she told an old story about the stars. And then a tale of the pine forest. And then another about birds learning to fly.
Together, they watched the stars until dawn.
And at dawn, Mayka climbed down from the roof and began to walk—away from the cottage, away from home, taking nothing and leaving everyone.
Chapter
Three
Mayka looked back only once—to see her friends gathered by the gate, waving, while the chickens pecked and clucked in their coop and the goats munched on pinecones that they’d found in their pen and the rabbits nibbled on clover. She waved back and wished she could etch the moment in stone. It all looked so perfect in the morning light, with the pine trees framing their home and the peak of the mountain above them.
I’ll be back, she promised silently. Very soon.
She followed a deer trail between the trees. The dirt was padded with a mat of old pine needles that tickled the soles of her feet. Rocks and roots jutted into the trail, so she had to watch where she stepped and skip between them. After a while, she heard the trickle of a stream up ahead, and then the trail twisted to run alongside it. When the trail narrowed so that blueberry and dingleberry bushes were scraping her ankles, she splashed through the stream, holding her arms out for balance as she hopped over the slick rocks.
As she walked, she felt her mood begin to shift. She wasn’t looking back anymore; she was looking forward. This is my first adventure, Mayka thought. I never thought I’d have one. She found herself wondering what the valley would be like close up, and she imagined what she’d say when she encountered her first stranger. She’d never met a stranger before.
Maybe she would meet another stone person. Maybe a girl. She’d never met anyone like her. That would be amazing, she thought, to share stories with someone just like me.
Overhead, birds tweeted and squirrels scurried up and down the trees and into the bushes. She saw a deer once, through the trunks, frozen as it stared at her before it bounded away, leaping over logs as if it had springs in its knees.
After a little while, she noticed that the tweeting birds sounded very much as if they were arguing.
“Hey, this is my branch.”
“You can’t own a branch. They’re for everyone! Besides, I saw it first.”
“You landed second.”
Ordinary birds did not talk. Scanning the trees, she looked for her friends. “Risa? Jacklo? Did you follow me?”
“Um . . .” Jacklo said. “No?”
Mayka put her hands on her hips and glared at the trees. “Tell the truth.”
“Yes?” Jacklo said.
She heard leaves rustle. Turning in a circle, she spotted them: high up in an oak, two gray birds side by side on the same branch. Risa smacked Jacklo with her wing. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
“She said tell the truth.”
“You could have evaded.”
“She figured out we’re here,” Jacklo said. “She’s very smart.”
Risa made a birdlike snort, which was more of a whistle. “If she were so smart, she would have brought us in the first place, instead of making us have to sneak behind her.”
Mayka glared at them both. “I didn’t make you sneak behind me! You were supposed to stay home! Didn’t you hear Nianna yesterday? Father wanted us to stay home; it’s bad enough that I’m leaving.” The birds looked at each other, and Mayka put her hands on her hips, hoping it made her appear fiercer. “Besides, you have tasks to do! What will the chickens do without you?”
“Peck at things,” Risa said, with a shrug of her wings.
“The others will take
care of them,” Jacklo said. “We were elected to come with you.”
“Oh? Who elected you?” Mayka asked.
“It was a small election,” Jacklo said. “Very small. Only two votes. But we won in a landslide! There was a lot of cheering.”
Risa sprang off the branch and glided down to Mayka’s left shoulder. Jacklo followed her, landing on Mayka’s right shoulder. “Don’t be stubborn,” Risa said. “With us helping you, we’ll find that stonemason and be back before Nianna even notices.”
“She’s not the boss of us anyway,” Jacklo said.
The water from the stream rushed over Mayka’s feet, tickling her toes and burbling as if it wanted to talk. She felt the cold and wetness, but it didn’t distract her—it would take a long time for water to erode her feet. “I don’t need help.”
“You will,” Jacklo said confidently.
“How do you know that?”
Jacklo dropped his voice. “Because you might meet . . . the giant monsters!”
Risa sighed. “Jacklo!”
“What giant monsters?” Mayka didn’t know what she’d find in the valley. Aside from a few stories that weren’t true anyway—there was no such thing as sky people—she didn’t know anything about life there. “Do you know stories I don’t know?”
“Er, um . . . Well, there could be giant monsters. Maybe?” Flapping his wings, he flew into the air and circled above her head.
Mayka rolled her eyes at him. No monsters. He was inventing excuses. “Jacklo—”
“If we’re with you,” Risa said, “we can scout ahead and warn you about any danger. Even if it’s not monsters.” She leveled a look at her brother.
“You say you don’t want us, but we know you do,” Jacklo said, still circling Mayka.
“Father left the valley for a reason,” Mayka said. “It could be dangerous.” But that’s a reason to let them come, part of her whispered. You don’t have to face this alone. Just because she’d claimed this as her quest didn’t mean it was only hers, no matter what Nianna said. It would be nice to have Jacklo and Risa with her.
“At least let us come with you to the bottom of the mountain,” Jacklo bargained, “so we can tell the others that you made it down safely. Please, Mayka!”
That sounded reasonable. And truthfully, Jacklo was right: she was glad to have their company. We can be alone together. “Fine. Come with me.” As Jacklo began to cheer, she added, “But only until I’m down the mountain. No promises after that.”
“Very well,” Risa said. “For now.”
With Jacklo flying above and Risa still on her shoulder, Mayka continued downstream. She liked the sound her stone feet made when they clicked on the rocks in the water, and she liked the feel of the water-worn pebbles. A few tiny fish darted in the deeper pools, and she thought of the stone fish at home. They’d never left the pond by the cottage. She wondered if they ever thought about swimming in a stream down the mountain or about what it would be like in a lake, or even the sea.
“How far from home have you flown?” she asked Risa.
Jacklo answered from above, flapping his wings to stay close to them. “All over the mountain,” he said proudly. “Even up to the top! Ooh, you should see the view! You can see forever from up there! I think you can even see so far you can see tomorrow!”
“But the valley? Have you flown there?”
“Father never wanted us to,” Risa said, from Mayka’s shoulder. “And we didn’t want to make him unhappy.”
“Now that you’re going, though, we can fly far and wide!” Jacklo performed a loop-de-loop in front of them.
“You said you’d go back when I reached the bottom,” Mayka reminded him.
Finishing his loop, he dipped down as his wings drooped. “Oh. Right. Unless you change your mind and want us with you. It’s not that we don’t want to be home. It’s only that we want to see the world! And then we can go home.”
Mayka understood that: now that she was on her way, she was eager to see the valley too. It was a strange, unexpected feeling. I think I’m actually excited. She resolved not to tell Nianna that, after this was over. “What have you seen of the valley from the sky?”
“Houses,” Jacklo said promptly.
“And fields, with rivers between them,” Risa added.
“And tiny people who look like ants swarming a garden.”
Mayka halted midstep. “What?”
“Jacklo, you are hopeless,” Risa said. “They only look tiny because we’re far away. Up close, I am sure they’re ordinary size. And I don’t know if they’re stone or flesh.”
“Oh.” No giant monsters and no ant-size people. She felt foolish for thinking he meant it, even for a second. It’s only that I don’t know what to expect. For all Mayka knew, the people in the valley could breathe fire. She wished she knew more recent stories in addition to the long-ago myths. “I guess we’ll see.”
They traveled on in silence.
The forest was still thick on either side of the stream, with branches that wove together into knotted clumps that looked to have no beginning and no ending. Ivy vines grew over all of the underbrush, masking the individual plants, so that the forest blurred into a solid mass of green. Now that they were farther down the mountain, Mayka noticed that there were different kinds of trees. Plenty of pine still, but she also saw a lot more oak trees with gnarled, maze-like bark, and birches with white papery bark. She loved the birches. They stood out like white candles against the dark forest. In fall, their leaves were a yellow so bright it looked like flames, but now they were deep summer green. A woodpecker hammered somewhere nearby, its rat-a-tat-tat echoing through the forest.
“This is it,” Mayka said, “the farthest down the mountain I’ve ever been.”
“Congratulations!” Jacklo said, and she grinned at him. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but she was glad the birds were with her. Something this momentous should be shared.
After a little while, she began to hear a steady sound in the distance, like a whoosh or a whir. “Jacklo, can you go see what that is?”
He flew forward, while Risa stayed on her shoulder.
It sounds, Mayka thought, like a windstorm. She’d been through plenty of storms, huddled in the cottage while the wind and rain pelted the face of the mountain, with all her stone friends and all the flesh-and-blood animals safe around her. She’d retell Father’s best stories to keep them calm. But today the sky was blue, and she didn’t feel more than a breeze. The trees weren’t even swaying.
It was getting louder as Mayka walked on.
“Jacklo? Where are you? What is it?”
If Jacklo answered, she didn’t hear him—any answer was drowned in the whoosh-crash. The stream she’d been following had deepened and widened, and it ran so fast that it frothed as it jumped from stone to stone. Other streams ran beside hers too, also burbling as they raced over rocks. Ahead, the streams merged together, which was fine, she thought, as long as they didn’t knock her off her feet.
Perhaps I should—
And as she began the thought, the water slapped harder at her leg, and she stumbled. Stepping on slippery rocks, she couldn’t get her balance. Her arms windmilled on either side. Risa took flight with a cry.
Above her, Jacklo screeched, “Waterfall!”
He dove toward her, waving his wings, but she was already falling, crashing into the stream. The bubbling water flew into her face. Splashing, she grabbed for a root that jutted over the stream. Climbing onto it, she wiped the water from her eyes.
“Very, very long way down,” Jacklo said, landing on the root. “Don’t go that way!”
Risa flew forward and then back. “He’s right.”
More carefully this time, Mayka crawled off the branch. Her feet squished into mud, and it sucked at her toes as she inched forward through the stream.
Several streams ran into one another and then spilled over the edge of a rock. So this is a waterfall, she thought. She knew what on
e was, of course, and she’d seen plenty of little ones all over the mountain. The forest was full of streams that cascaded off of rocks, but she hadn’t known it could sound like this, as if there were thunder just ahead.
She waded farther into the water, toward the falls.
“Don’t!” Jacklo cried.
“I just have to see . . .” Grabbing behind her, she held on to a branch, wrapping both hands hard around it, and leaned forward. Only a few inches, and she’d be able to see where all the water was going.
But she couldn’t. It was tumbling into air, into a cloud of droplets.
“Wow! That’s amazing!” she cried.
“Come back!” Jacklo called.
She retreated. Maybe if she went beside the waterfall, she could climb down. Picking her way carefully across the streams, she finally reached solid land. She inched to the edge and looked down—straight down.
It was a cliff.
Beside her, the water plummeted into empty air, churning with bubbles and foam, until it crashed down on the rocks far, far below. Directly below her, also far below, were more rocks.
She looked left, then right. Left again.
In both directions, as far as she could see, roots and vines dangled over the drop-off. I could climb, she thought dubiously. She usually avoided cliffs. It was only sensible.
If she fell hard enough, she could break. Her fingers were fragile. The braids in her hair could snap off. Her nose. Her ankles.
“We’ll go around,” Mayka said. “Can you scout to see which way will be faster?”
“Jacklo, fly north,” Risa said. “I’ll fly south. Return after fifty wingbeats.”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Obeying, Jacklo flew along the cliff, and Risa flew in the opposite direction. Mayka settled against a rock to wait.
Telling herself not to worry, she looked out beyond the cliff at the valley. What had looked like a patchwork quilt from high on the mountain now looked like rolling fields, with rivers splicing them. Farmhouses dotted the valley, nestled in groves of trees or framed by golden and green stretches of land. And was that the city of Skye in the distance? Maybe. She couldn’t tell. Anyway, she didn’t plan on traveling as far as Skye. All she needed was to reach the valley itself—the nearest stonemason would do. She would locate a road, then a house, and then ask directions, either from a stone creature or from a flesh person. It was a simple plan, but that was fine. It didn’t need to be complicated to be good.