Meanwhile, backed against the brush at the base of the tree, stood Merlin. His face showed an expression Basil had never expected to see on a great wizard. Fear. Heart-wrenching fear. Merlin's long black hair brushed against his shoulders as he swung his head, searching desperately for some way to escape. Yet no way existed. Between the wall of thorns and the kreelix's wide wings and hooked claws, he was completely surrounded.
An idea burst into Basil's mind. As dangerous as it was desperate, the idea instantly took hold.
I can't defeat this monster—or even hope to harm it. But I can buy Merlin some time! He might still escape.
His brow furrowed.
Even if I won't.
Ignoring his painful shoulder and wing, he started to crawl farther out on the branch. Hard as he tried not to lose his footing on the slippery, warped bark, he nearly slid off when a twig supporting one of his hind legs suddenly snapped. Then, just when he'd righted himself, the kreelix released another terrible shriek. This time, Basil knew, the kreelix intended the cry to be the last sound its prey ever heard. The force of the shrill cry shook the cedar's branches, almost knocking Basil off his perch. Barely, amidst the rain of needles and cones, he clung on.
Not for long, though. Even before the shriek ended, Basil saw that the kreelix's mouth was open to its widest. And he knew that the moment for his idea had arrived.
Gathering all his strength, he dashed a few steps farther on the limb. Then, without a second's hesitation, he leaped. Through the air he plunged—right into the mouth of the monster.
He tumbled between two of the deadly fangs, just missing their gleaming tips by a hairsbreadth. As light as a twig, he landed on top of the kreelix's bloodred tongue. And then he did something no twig could have done.
He bit the tongue. Hard! Clamping his slim jaws on the soft flesh, he squeezed with all his might—so ferociously that one of his tiny front teeth cracked and broke off.
A new shriek erupted from the kreelix. The noise, for Basil, was deafening, echoing all around him in the cavernous mouth. But he barely noticed, since he needed all his concentration to stay focused on one goal: hanging on.
The kreelix writhed and shook its head madly. All the while it continued to screech, and also to wag its tongue, bashing Basil against the roof of its mouth again and again. Soon he felt dizzy, as well as nauseous from the overpowering stench of the kreelix's breath, something like curdled vomit.
Still he hung on. Biting with every last morsel of strength, he endured the shrieks in his ears and the assaults on his body. His shoulder and back stung with excruciating pain; the smell made him gag; his jaws felt ready to explode.
And still he hung on. He didn't notice the blood pouring down from his broken tooth, nor the fact that he could no longer hold his wounded wing against his back. The wing, now just a mass of broken bones and ripped flesh, slapped lifelessly whenever the beast's tongue moved.
And still he hung on. Darkness seeped into his mind, like poison polluting a stream. He began to lose awareness of where he was, and why. He even forgot, as the darkness stifled his thoughts, what had caused him to sacrifice his one life.
At last, the darkness overwhelmed him completely. His battered body finally relaxed, slumped lifelessly in the mouth of the kreelix. Even then, however, some of his muscles remained rigid, so firmly fixed that no force in Avalon could possibly budge them.
His jaws still held tightly to the monster's tongue.
31:
A
M
ISSING
T
OOTH
Funny thing about awareness: What is right there in front of our eyes is often harder to see than what's missing.
Ugh . . . what a terrible taste!
When Basil formed that thought, the first one to enter his mind in what seemed like a very long time, he did the best thing possible. He spat. Out of his jaws flew a large hunk of raw, bloody meat that smelled even worse than it looked. It was the smell, as putrid as decomposing flesh, that fully revived him.
"Yuck!" he exclaimed. "That tasted as bad as—" He stopped, both because he was at a loss for the right word—and because he had just opened his eyes. The sight that greeted him suddenly flooded his mind with memories. And also with questions.
He was still in the forest of Woodroot. Towering trees, draped with moss, grew everywhere. Rich aromas of cedar and spruce and lute's neck fern sweetened the air. A flock of summer geese honked enthusiastically as they flew overhead. But something even more wondrous captured his attention.
Gazing down at him was a strong, clear-eyed man with a thick black beard. Long locks of black hair fell to the man's shoulders. His open hand, which held Basil, felt both sturdy and gentle at once. This was a man Basil recognized immediately, a man he could never forget.
"Merlin! You're alive."
"Only thanks to you, my little friend." The wizard lifted his hand, examining the small creature closely—so closely that his prominent nose, as pointed as the beak of a hawk, almost poked Basil's side.
"Yes, now I'm sure of it," Merlin proclaimed. "We have met before, haven't we? Twice before! At my wedding—and then atop a cliff in Stoneroot."
"Why . . . yes," mumbled Basil. "But how did you survive? I mean, the kreelix—"
"Is dead," finished the wizard. "Because of your bravery." He smiled gratefully at the tiny creature in the palm of his hand. "And so I am in your debt twice over. For the life of my son, whom you saved from being crushed to death by a sleeping giant." His dark eyes danced with amusement. "Though Shim, to this day, puzzles over what ever happened to that honey." Then his face grew serious again. "And now for my own life, as well."
He regarded Basil fondly. "Tell me your name, little friend."
"First tell me what happened! The kreelix—the tongue—all that shrieking . . ."
Merlin spun around. He tilted his hand, revealing the new scene. But the instant Basil saw what lay on the forest floor, he shouted in surprise and leaped into the air, flapping his small wings wildly. The realization that he was flying again, painlessly working his wings, shocked him almost as much as the sight Merlin had shown him: the lifeless body of the kreelix. Struggling to comprehend, Basil flew so erratically that he barely managed to land back on the wizard's open hand.
"What—my wings . . . when? And the kreelix! It's . . . it's all—but . . . well, errr, but how?" he sputtered.
Amused, the wizard stroked his fulsome beard. "Shall we take your questions one at a time? Or shall I attempt to answer them in that same fashion?"
Still in shock, Basil merely stared at the hulking form of the dead kreelix. It lay crushed beneath a toppled tree—the old cedar where Basil had first landed. The beast's wings, once so powerful, were now utterly lifeless, just contorted folds of skin, no more dangerous than discarded rags. And its mouth, only partly open, dribbled blood that stained the needle-strewn ground dark red. Just one look at the mouth was enough to make Basil shudder in revulsion.
"Hmmm," said the wizard thoughtfully. "I take that as a request to go one at a time."
Stepping over the hooked wing tip of the kreelix, Merlin explained, "Your courageous gambit—sweet Dagda, you actually
leaped into the mouth of a kreelix!
—totally distracted my assailant. For just a few seconds, mind you. But that gave me time to escape from its trap. And then to call for help."
"From the hhhwind," breathed a familiar, airy voice.
"Aylah!" shouted Basil, flapping his wings ecstatically. "You're here."
"I hhhwas never far ahhhway, little hhhwanderer." Sweeping closer to Basil as he sat in the wizard's hand, she encircled him with warm air. Above all the fragrances of the forest, he now smelled the scent of cinnamon. "You are even braver than I thought."
"Crazier, you mean," he replied. He grinned at his invisible friend, revealing his missing front tooth. Then he turned back to the body of the kreelix. "And this tree?"
"We pushed it over, Aylah and I." Merlin walked over to the fallen cedar. Gently, he placed his hand upon its rippled bark and stroked the ancient trunk. "Though it was near the end of its days, we still asked its permission to die for this cause. It agreed—and most grateful we are for its sacrifice."
For an instant, Basil thought some of the cedar's dead needles actually moved, quivering ever so gently. It could have been merely a breath from the wind sister . . . or maybe something more.
He looked up at Merlin and spread his small, bony wings. "And these? You healed the broken one?"
"Broken, torn, shredded, and pulverized," corrected the wizard. He nodded with a hint of pride. "You challenged me considerably to fix that one. Is it stiff at all? Skin too tight?"
Basil rustled the wing. "Supple as a new sapling."
"Good." With a wave at the corpse, the wizard continued, "The hardest part, frankly, was removing you from that mouth. It wasn't the kreelix who made it difficult, either. It was you." He turned his hand to look into Basil's face. "Although you were completely unconscious by then,
you simply would not let go
."
A touch of pink colored Basil's normally green eyes, then melted away.
"In fact, I had no choice but to cut you out."
Again, Basil shuddered. "So that piece of meat in my mouth . . ."
"Was part of the kreelix's tongue." Seeing the little fellow's frown of disgust, Merlin reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out a sprig of greenery.
"Here," he said, handing the sprig to Basil. "Sweetwater mint. I always carry some to freshen my breath. Especially," he added a bit shyly, "when I'm about to meet Hallia." He gave an encouraging nod. "Go ahead, chew it. Even the terrible taste of a kreelix is no match for fresh mint."
Cautiously, Basil bit off a strip of one leaf. As soon as he began to chew, a burst of cool sweetness exploded in his mouth, as if he'd just taken a drink from a river of mint. He gladly took another bite, and chewed avidly.
"Excellent," remarked the wizard. Abruptly, his face fell. "Sorry about your front tooth, though."
Basil stopped chewing. Probing with the rip of his tongue, he felt the gap at the front of his jaw. "You couldn't fix it?"
"No," replied the wizard. "You need a specialist for that. I do bones, skin, even internal organs. But not teeth."
The lizard in his hand shot him a mystified glance.
"It's true," Merlin went on. "I can fix all manner of bones. In your case, twenty-seven! But teeth—that's a different matter. Someday, I predict, there will be a certain type of healer who will only do teeth. And only by appointment. Dentists, they'll be called."
Basil shook his head, a bit worried about the wizard's sanity. Then, pushing his tongue into the space between his teeth, he announced, "Truth is, I rather like this little gap." He grinned. "This missing tooth is, in a way, a reminder."
"A souvenir," agreed Aylah, ruffling his wings with her breath. "From your battle hhhwith the kreelix."
"Right," said Basil with a chuckle. "If any dactylbird attacks me in the future, I'll just flash this gap at him! If he has any sense, he'll flee for his life."
The wind sister gusted merrily.
Suddenly Basil's expression changed. Glumness showed in every wrinkle on his snout. "That's only fantasy, I know. After this day, I'll still be a scrawny little . . .
whatever
. Tempting prey for dactylbirds, unless they want a full meal instead of half a bite."
"No," declared Merlin. His dark eyes gleamed. "You are much more than that."
Hefting the tiny creature in his hand, he went on. "How someone so small could accomplish so much is, indeed, a mystery. And yet . . . do you remember hearing these words at my wedding?
Just as the smallest grain of sand can tilt a scale, the weight of one person's will—
"
"
Can lift an entire world
," finished Basil. He nodded at Merlin. "I remember. And I suppose that could be true. You know, I never thought I'd really feel this way—but maybe . . . I'm just about the right size, after all. For me."
Waving a wing at the kreelix, he added, "After all, if I'd been any bigger, I couldn't have jumped into that thing's mouth."
"Couldn't have hhhwon against the kreelix," added Aylah, her breeze buffeting his face.
"And couldn't have saved my life," declared Merlin.
Feeling strangely content, more than he'd ever felt before, Basil gazed thoughtfully at the fallen beast. He looked at the huge head, the slack jaw, the crumpled black wings. All of a sudden, he noticed an odd vibration near the fur at the base of one claw. The air in that spot quivered, distorted, throbbing like a wound.
Peering closely, he concentrated on the source of the vibration. All at once, his vision cleared. He could see without any distortion. And what he saw confirmed his worst fears.
32:
A
N
EW
T
HREAT
Some words, I've found, carry more weight than others. There are even words that, like literary oxen, bear enormous loads of meaning and metaphor. Yet there is no word, in any language, that carries more weight than this one: friend.
A leech, swollen and dripping dark red blood, crawled out from the lifeless folds of fur. Although it was twice the size it had been when Basil last saw it, he guessed that the leech would have been even larger by now if its only goal had been to suck the kreelix's blood. Instead, as Basil knew all too well, its primary goal had been to tap into the bloodstream of the monstrous beast—and to add its own evil energy and purpose, enough that the kreelix couldn't possibly fail to kill Merlin.
And yet . . . it had indeed failed.
Instantly, the leech started to scurry away over the needles, twigs, and other debris on the forest floor—but not before it turned to meet Basil's gaze. The blood-drenched creature shot him a look of intense malice, full of hatred and vengeance. Propelled by dark magic, it struck Basil like a body blow.