Not long after dawn’s first rosy rays touched the top of my dune, I awoke. Though I couldn’t be sure, I thought I heard a rhythmic rumbling in the distance. Grabbing my staff, I scurried up the sandy slope. When I reached the ridge, I realized that the congregation of sea birds had swollen to enormous size. Thousands of them milled and chattered, filling the entire beach and shallows right up to the edge of the rolling wall of mist. I saw pelicans and gulls, cormorants and kitiwakes, long-legged cranes and gray-necked swans, as well as ducks, herons, gannets, and many more kinds I could not name. Some marched around squawking or honking; some flapped their wings or danced vigorously; some stood aloof on one leg, paying no heed to the tumult surrounding them.
As the morning light swelled, so did the birds’ raucous noisemaking. At the same time, the distant rumbling also grew louder, enough that some of the birds at the edges of the crowd started to take notice. In groups of three or four, they lifted off and circled through the folds of mist, wings spread wide, trumpeting loudly to their companions. Not until the ground actually started to shake, however, did most of them take to the air. Then, by the hundreds, they took off, wings whooshing in unison.
I stood atop the dune, drenched in golden light, watching the awesome scene unfold. Higher and higher rose the mass of birds, a great spiral of airborne bodies darkening the sky. Rhia’s dreamlike words, spoken at the stargazing stone, came back to me:
Imagine taking time to rise above the lands below, your spirit along with your body.
Now, viewing these winged creatures ascending into the sky, I understood her words in a whole new way. Here was freedom, true freedom, as pure as I’d felt in my dreams of flying—but more tangible, more real. I still longed for the speed and directness of Leaping, of course, but physical flight offered something more than that: a fullness of feeling, a grandness of motion, an endless soaring of the senses.
The spiraling cloud of birds angled eastward and began pouring toward the rising sun. I watched them depart, fading into the shredding light. Their tumultuous cries, too, began to fade, blending into a single melancholy chord that echoed across the shore.
As trails of mist arose, obscuring the last of them, I felt I was watching not a vast flock of birds, but my beloved homeland itself, slipping away. Fincayra was vanishing, no less than these creatures. Its colorful scenes and richly varied sounds were disappearing, no less than their own.
An instant later, they were gone. I stood above the beach, so recently charged with life, now utterly empty. Everything was quiet, but for the pulsing of the sea—and the rhythmic rumble, steadily growing. Spinning around, I gazed past the dead trees to the wide floodplain beyond.
Before long a great, shaggy head appeared on the horizon. With each new rumbling step that rocked the ground, the head grew larger. Soon I spied the red flames of Shim’s eyes above his bulbous nose, along with his immense neck, brawny shoulders, and massive chest. In his hands, he held a wide-brimmed hat made from woven branches, while on his chest hung a vest infinitely bigger than my own.
Leaning on my staff for balance, I peered at him closely. My brow knitted, for I could see no children. None at all! A feeling of dread swelled in my chest. Something had gone wrong with the plan. Seriously wrong.
I gasped, seeing a subtle movement inside the bowl of the hat. Heads—tiny heads! Lots and lots of them, more than I would ever have predicted. Why, there must have been at least seventy or eighty! Shim had, indeed, done his job well.
Then my wave of relief vanished. There were too many children for one raft! I looked over at the straight trunks of the whitened trees, counting them. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Enough, perhaps, to build a very large vessel, one that might just hold everyone. Could I control it, though? Guide it through the spells?
My attention turned back to Shim. As he came nearer, his feet slamming against the ground, I could make out the faces of some of his passengers. There were bright-eyed ones, eager ones, doubtful ones, and several very sleepy ones. One little girl, wearing her hair in two braids that stuck out sideways from her head, sat on the shoulders of a boy with a chin so slender, he reminded me vaguely of Hallia. Both of them were pointing at the sky, in the direction of the departing birds, probably still visible from their higher vantage point.
I searched the sea of faces for Lleu, but with no success. Perhaps he was standing behind someone else, or even sleeping down inside the bowl. Still, I did recognize one lad who was wriggling out of the hat onto Shim’s thumb: the boy whose life I’d managed to spare in the goat pen of Caer Darloch. Another girl was seated on the brim of the hat, grasping one of the branches beside her for support. Sunlight streaming through her long brown hair, she watched the coils of mist rising from the shore, her face full of awe.
In a few more thunderous strides, Shim reached the dunes. I barely kept my balance as powerful tremors coursed through the sand. Just before the dead trees, he stopped, planting his bare feet on the ground. As always, his sheer size amazed me. His ankle, thick with hair, reached nearly halfway up the dune.
“Well done, Shim!” I called up to him.
Beneath his gargantuan nose, the giant’s lips parted. “You asks me to do some crazily things befores, Merlin, but this is the crazilyest.”
He released a bellowing yawn, the force of which knocked over several of the children in the hat. “I is so sleepily, after walkings for two nights, trying to find all the orphanly kids! Some in villages, some in mountains, some by roads . . . It wasn’t easily! And somelytimes they is scrapping with each others, pulling out hairs and ripping clothes. Then, for mostly of the night, they wants me to sings, and tells them stories. Now . . . I really needs to rest. Sleepily, definitely, absolutely.”
Many of the children, some of whom were giggling hysterically from being blown over by Shim’s yawn, piped up. Their voices rang across the dunes, as discordant as the departed sea birds.
“No sleeping, master Shim! We want some more bumpy rides.”
“Sing some more, Shimmy! Sing us your longest song, pleeease?”
“Hey! Hey! How’d you getta be so big ‘n’ fatlike? Didja eat a whole big mount’n fer brekkyfast?”
“Heeyah, after that mount’n, now ya need ta drink up the sea ta wash it all down. Yah! Then you’d make a great big waterfall, hee-heeyah, hee-heeyah.”
At that, a deeper voice called from the rear of the hat. “Now children, we don’t need—”
“It’s all right, don’t worry! The waterfall won’t spray you.”
Gales of wild laughter followed. But my attention was focused on the source of the deeper voice. My mother! So she had come, too!
In the midst of the joyous chaos surrounding her, Elen looked at me with a sparkle of genuine amusement in her eyes. Shim, for his part, stifled another yawn and started to lower the hat. Carefully, he placed it on the sandy shore, between the braid of kelp that marked high tide and the base of the dunes.
“Oh please, please, master Shim,” cried the girl with the two horizontal braids. No older than three, she was now seated on the brim of the hat, her legs swinging freely. “Don’t put us down yet! Fly us, like them birdies was flyin’ before.”
Shim bent down to her, so that his lumpy nose pressed against the sand beneath the brim. “Don’t you be worriedly, little one. I’ll gives you another ride somelytime soon.”
She gazed at him, wide-eyed. “Really will you, master Shim?”
“Of course, you sweetly girl.”
She crawled across the meshed willow branches of the brim until her face was right next to Shim’s. Timidly, she leaned forward, then planted a kiss on his massive cheek. The giant’s face, always ruddy, reddened more deeply. And for the first time in quite a while, he smiled, his wide lips wrapping around his face.
By the time I trotted down to them, other children had already started scrambling over the edge of the hat. Oblivious to the chill air, several of the older ones started climbing up the dunes, rolling in the sand, or running off to explore the beach. A few stayed around to help me with the smaller children, coaxing them to jump into our waiting arms, or carrying them if they were too cold to walk. Shim grabbed by their feet a pair of boys who had been hitting each other, holding them upside down for a moment while they squealed and squirmed in protest. Finally, when they’d calmed a bit, he laid them down on the sand.
At the same time, my shadow emerged from the darkness behind Shim’s vest. With an unmistakable air of smugness, it slid down the seam, through a buttonhole, and leaped to the ground. I was about to remind it that its vacation, while earned, hadn’t begun yet, when my attention was diverted by a lanky girl, about ten years old. She was boldly climbing out of the gap between Shim’s ear and his temple! Catching hold of a lock of his hair as if it were a rope, she swung from it and dropped to the ground before taking off down the beach.
“That girl Medba reminds me of your sister.”
I spun around to face my mother. Her hair was tangled, her blue robe soiled, and she looked almost as sleepy as Shim. But her face glowed bright as she tousled the hair of the young boy beside her.
“Lleu!” I exclaimed, giving his woolen scarf a playful tug.
He looked up at me, his lone ear catching the sunlight through his curls. “I be much glad to see ye, master Merlin.”
“And I you, my friend.”
He beamed at me, showing the gap where his front teeth would someday appear.
I turned back to Elen of the Sapphire Eyes. “So,” I said through my grin, “you couldn’t resist a chance to escape from that village?”
“Certainly not,” she declared, her own mouth curling in a grin. “But much as I dearly loved the place, somebody
had
to help Shim take care of all these children.”
Glancing at the figures scampering down the beach, splashing in the tide pools, kicking sand at each other, and jumping in and out of the hat, I had to agree. “I’m sure Shim was glad to see you! As am I.”
We embraced, and I felt her patting my back through the astral vest she had given me. As we separated, she scrutinized me carefully, her brow wrinkling with concern. “You’ve had some troubles, haven’t you?”
“Oh,” I said as casually as possible, “a few here and there. Right now, though, my challenge is how to build a vessel big enough to hold everyone.”
“Why not ask Rhia? She’s always brimming with ideas.” Her eyes swept over the dune, then back to me. “Where is she, anyway?”
“She’s . . . ah, gone a different way. Riding Ionn, which you know she loves to do.”
My mother scowled. “She’s not riding for pleasure.”
“No,” I admitted, feeling the weight of her gaze. “She’s fine, though. Believe me.”
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t believe you, Merlin. None of us are fine, what with all that’s happened.”
“Wait, now.” I waved my staff at the children spreading out along the beach. “
They
are. And what’s more important, for a brief moment, at least, they’re safe. Free from the threat of that sword-armed scourge, who is probably still searching for me near the place we last fought, far away from here.”
“Still, my son, he’s bound to find out where we are. Then the children—and you—will be in danger again.”
“Eventually, yes. But I have a plan that, if it works, would keep them safe forever. I just need to . . .”
Suddenly, I felt something tug on my satchel. I whirled around to find Lleu withdrawing his hand, a guilty grin on his face.
“No harm, master Merlin. I jest be . . . well, curious. ‘Bout yer bag.”
“You mean, what’s in it?”
“Well, yes, master Merlin.”
I couldn’t help but feel amused, since sneaking a peek into someone’s satchel was just the kind of thing I’d have done at his age. Elen’s expression, too, had softened; no doubt she was thinking something similar. With dramatic tones, I proclaimed, “Behold, young man, I shall grant your wish! View now the world famous, roundly acclaimed, triply enchanted . . . magic feather.”
“Magic feather?” he repeated skeptically.
Delicately, I lifted the satchel’s leather flap, holding my breath in mock anticipation. Silently, I summoned the required powers, bidding them to follow my will. As the air above the satchel started to quiver, Lleu gasped. Slowly, very slowly, Trouble’s feather rose upward. The boy drew back, standing next to Elen, his back pressed against her thigh, while the feather floated higher.
Lleu stared in amazement as the feather rose higher, drifting lazily toward him. Like a fluffy butterfly it floated, spinning past his chest, over his shoulder, and along the length of his arm. It hovered, twirling, before his face. Suddenly it darted closer, tickling his nostrils.
The boy laughed, swatting the feather away. He tried to catch it, even as the feather spun behind my mother. Eagerly, he swung around to reach it. As he did so, he knocked his head into her side, bashing the scabbed remains of his ear.
He yowled in pain, covering his wound with his hand. Elen bent down and stroked his head with compassion, whispering sofdy as she did so. But he continued to whimper painfully.
“Oh, Lleu, I’m so sorry,” I offered, steering the feather back into my pouch. “That was a foolish, clumsy idea.”
After a moment, he turned to me, a thin trickle of blood running down from his ear. “Nay, master Merlin,” he said weakly. “I likes yer idea, very much. I be the clumsy ‘un, bangin’ me noggin like that.”
I started to speak, when Shim kneeled beside us, flattening a spur of the dune and a jumble of firewood with his great knee. He looked down on us glumly. “I is sorry, Merlin, but I has some badly news.”
I groaned. “What now?”
The giant’s face contorted, twisting his oversized nose. “Hardly as I tried, I couldn’t convince any other giants to comes to the battle. Not even Jingba, my oldest friend. When I tells him about Rhita Gawr and all, he just laughs at me and says I is full of exaggeratinglyness.”
The report made me wince. “That’s terrible! Without at least some of the giants, we won’t stand a chance.”