“What do the dolphins say?” another one of the pod questioned.
Music danced across my mind, and I saw rising waves with deep troughs, purple, green, and black in the failing light.
“I vote for the island,” the female voice said.
“I don’t like it,” Silver Mane said. “On that island something remains. They were powerful in their day.”
“But would have nothing to do with Dis, I’ll bet,” the female voice contributed.
“That’s true,” Silver Mane agreed. “Tomorrow we can swim to the gates and take her to a place of real comfort.”
“Listen,” one of the other dragons commanded. “Listen. One of the great blue whales is singing.”
And again music floated into my mind. It told of a land frozen summer and winter alike. Of bergs drifting, glittering like diamonds in an all too brief sunlight; of bears white as the snow packs over which they hunted; birds that didn’t fly but swam, insulated by their feathers in an almost frozen sea; of shrimp so thick the water was almost a soup. This is the harshest, yet richest, ocean of the world. Then the song ended with a vision of the sunset far out to sea, with rills of light on the water.
“Is it not lovely?” the female voice asked.
It took me a moment to realize she was speaking to me. “Yes,” I answered. “Do they all sing? All the sea creatures?”
“Yes,” she said. “And all have different songs. We, the dragons as you call us, have our own. You are very tired, little one. Hold on to my husband tight, and we will take you to our island. It belongs only to us and the birds now. The most recent inhabitant was a hermit from the great foundation of Iona. He sought the love of God, union with the love of God, and we think he found it. Then he returned home to his brethren, there to die, be buried, because if he was one with God, he was one with them also, and he wished to take joy in their faces before he set out on his last voyage alone.”
Then I heard the cries of seabirds, and a shadow loomed up through the fog. The dragon, Silver Mane, came on land, moving up the beach using his flippers the way a turtle would. The wind from the sea blew away some of the fog; and beyond the beach, in a grove of white birches, I saw the beehive hut of the anchorite. It was half buried in the new blooming gorse bushes, and the yellow flowers were sun gold against the grayness.
He had kept a garden near the hut, and while the vegetables were gone, the wild rose, grown for its hips, stretched over the top of the stone hut, and sage and rosemary bloomed near the door. Briar vines were twined among the birch trunks and were covered with flowers as the night sky is sprinkled with stars.
“Nothing larger than a bird lives on this island. Here you may sleep in peace,” Silver Mane said. He moved rather well, I thought,, on land, but it was obvious he didn’t care for it, because he went back to the water as quickly as he could.
The first order of business was to build a fire. The beach was filled with driftwood, and there were many deadfalls among the trees.
As you know, I have no problem lighting a fire. Then I took a torch and investigated the hut.
It had a bed of sorts, with an animal hide webbing, and there was’s package in a cowhide pouch near the bed. I opened it and found a fine, soft gray blanket. There were two stone crocks against one wall. They had tight fitting lids, and one still held salt, the other honey, now hard and crystallized. The blanket I placed on the webbing. There was enough to cover the webbing, then turn to cover me.
“How is this possible?” I asked the dragons, because I could hear them off the beach in the water, speaking in low voices to each other.
“He made it of thistle fiber,” she said. “It is some of the strongest and longest wearing of fibers in nature, but it takes a long time to gather, and still longer to weave. Immersed as he was in the love of God and the beauty of the world, the holy man cared nothing for time and had the patience to weave the silk of spiders and decorate it with the scales of a butterfly’s wing. He left it here, since he would not need it any longer, so that if some troubled wanderer found it, it would serve to warm him as it warmed its maker long ago.”
It was dark by then. The dragons tossed a big fish ashore. I made a cutting stone, cleaned the fish, then cooked it on heated stones in the pit near the fire and fell to. I ate every scrap. I had in my whole life never been so hungry. Then I finished another one, this one wrapped in seaweed and seasoned with both salt and the crystals of honey.
I don’t remember repairing to the bed in the hut and wrapping myself in the blanket, but I must have, because I woke in the night hearing voices but not understanding what they were saying. For a moment, I was confused. Then I remembered the dragons. I must be overhearing the sounds of the conversation as they fished among the waves. So I slept again.
When I awakened, I lay quiet, looking at the gray light through the door of the hut. The blanket was warm and had a good smell of dried herbs about it—rosemary, sage, and something more elusive, lavender. Kyra had been keen to teach me herb lore, and I learned about it, as well as cooking, from her. The Gray Watcher taught me to hunt with the stone knife I had made to clean the fish last night. I thought I’d been lucky in my friends and companions. They had taught me to make my way anywhere.
Are you awake?
The query was in my mind. “Yes,” I said. Then I rose and folded the blanket, replacing it in its cowhide pouch.
I was thirsty. Last night it hadn’t bothered me. There was moisture in the fish, and I had swallowed more water than I wanted while being swept down the underground river from the halls of Dis. But now I felt thirst, and I wondered if there was fresh water on the island. I asked, because I found if I didn’t project my thought, the dragons wouldn’t hear me.
“There is a terrible storm rising,” Silver Mane said.
I hurried out of the hut and saw the sun rising in a sea of flame.
Then his wife’s voice joined his. “We must swim out to sea. To remain this close to shore could well mean our deaths. We could be dashed against the rocks and killed.”
I dithered a moment. The danger was great. Summer storms can be fierce. If I journeyed with the dragons, I might be swept from my perch on Silver Mane’s back. And drowned. They would be hard put to save themselves in the towering seas, but this island might not be safe either. By day I could see that it was saddle shaped, narrow and low in the middle, but with high, rocky cliffs on either end. The monk had located his hut a little above the lowest portion, to one side of the center, where trees and shrubs grew. But at the lowest point in the center, I could clearly see a rocky, sandy trench, overgrown with salt loving plants—samphire, and thorny yellow flowered herb—interspersed with wild sea grass, whose heads bowed to the wind now beginning to gust wildly. Another copse of birch and willow clothed the rocks that rose steeply to the cliff.
“If you will come with us into the maelstrom, come now,” Silver Mane commanded.
“This is a killer storm,” his wife said. “The whales are in it, and they sounded to escape the fierce blast. It is no natural storm. This Merlin hunts you, and he will throw all his power against you, wherever you are.”
“Then flee,” I said. “I am a land creature. I can shelter in the rocks up there.”
“Are you sure?” Silver Mane asked.
“Yes.”
I dashed back to the hut to pick up the hide pouch with the blanket.
“Whatever you both do,” Silver Mane’s wife said, “do it quickly.”
The rising sun had been extinguished by sooty thunderheads on the horizon, and waves began to pound the beach hard. When I ran back out into the open, the two dragons were already swimming away.
Which end of the island? I looked to one side. The cliff seemed almost sheer. On the other side, a gradual slope led up the cliff. I turned to go that way and saw Mother. I stopped, gasped, and my eyes teared. She seemed to rise out of the sea itself.
A gray wave lifted, arched; and the form at the top curled into a wolf’s head, back, and shoulder. She sprang clear of the breaking sea, falling water melting into paws, then a plumed tail, and ran toward me. I saw the direction in the lines of her body. This way, and she led me to the steeper cliff. I followed without question, through a giant rock garden where wildflowers grew in mad profusion, their colors burning against the pervasive grayness of granite and the rising storm. Hawthorn, purple vetch, blue cornflowers, yellow cowslip, and marsh marigold.
Mother bounded from rock to rock over what seemed an enchanted carpet, until she reached the cliff. And here there was a stair. I was afraid and the wind was already battering me, but I could see human hands had chipped out this stair, even though the heavy spring growth seemed ready to choke it. Pliant willows and hawthorn canes were rooted between the stones and covered with starlike flowers; rowan and holly with its thorny green leaves were dug down into it on either side, and brambles coiled across the inner face of the risers.
The steps were deeply worn by the passage of many feet; the hollows filled with moss and lichen. How long? I was able to think as I followed Mother up and up, until we reached a well at the top. The well looked as though some mighty force had tried to blast it into ruins. I could see the wall of rock. Behind and around the rock was blackened, burned by the fury of the assault. It was clear that in some places the stones themselves had melted in the heat directed at them. I knew no force more powerful than lightning or more dangerous than fire, so I wondered what it might have been. Then I reached the well curb itself. It was made of volcanic glass of the kind you see on the vitrified forts and flints created in volcanic earthly fires, yet the water still ran.
All this must have happened long ago. How long ago I couldn’t begin to imagine, because the detritus of the attack was deeply stained, pitted by the erosion of centuries, dotted with lichen, gray green and gold, and thick with the wiry stems and lacy fronds of bracken and the clear emerald velvet of moss. The water trickled in a steady stream from the shattered cliff face and fell down, down, below the well curb into darkness, where I heard the steady plunk of the stream where it vanished into the rocks.
On the other side of the well, a tree trunk poked up through a crack in the stone. Or perhaps the tree made the crack, because it was very old and the marble and granite stones through which it grew were pushed back by the strong, twisted roots that erupted through them. The wind was no longer gusting. It was blowing a gale now; and as I looked out to sea, I saw the sunrise, purple, red, and gold, leaping like a conflagration among the soot stained clouds of the rising storm. I suppose I was afraid, but now I cannot remember the fear, only the beauty and the exultation, and I did not have to be told this was a place of magic.
Mother had paused on the other side of the broken well curb. “Drink,” she said.
I leaned over the well, the darkness below, and pressed my lips to the mossy trickle of water that ran down into the well. I will never forget the taste of that water. Only a few drops completely satisfied my thirst, and I felt I had been given the fairest beverage I had ever had. The water tasted of morning, of the few moments between the glow on the horizon and sunrise. And of the violet light of evening when weariness and a sense of accomplishment fill the soul. Of summer, when the smell of new mown hay is heavy on the wind, and of winter midnights, when the air is still and the stars are a fountain of light.
The wind had, it seemed, ceased to blow, and I knew I stood outside time. And then I saw her.
She is the Flower Bride. The tree clinging to the cliff on the other side of the well was a quince, and she seemed—no, was—formed of the flowers. Blue eyes the color of the martin’s breast; long dark hair, brown as the quince’s bark; and skin pale, creamy white, and brushed with the merest hint of flame like the flowers. Mother sat at her feet, and one hand rested on Mother’s head. She looked at me with the detached assurance of an immortal gazing at one of the creatures of time. I tore my eyes away from her face and looked down into Mother’s. I felt her love.
“Up,” she told me.
I saw another stair, this one choked with winter burned blackberry vines and barren gorse bushes. It led to a shelter in an overhang at the top of the cliff.
“I don’t know if I can get through,” I said.
Mother grinned—as much as a wolf can grin—tongue lolling, eyes sparkling. “Burn your way through,” she said. “No fire of yours can harm anything of hers.”
The Flower Bride smiled.
Then the wind was a shriek in my ears, and both Mother and the guardian of the well were gone. Then I knew why they had come. Merlin’s use of Dis involved the kind of favors the powerful do for one another. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. But this time Merlin had laid it on the line, and if he failed to destroy me, the spell he used to call the storm would rebound on him.
Fire poured from my fingers into the dead wood that blocked the stair. It roared to life even though it was beginning to rain now. As the savage wind drove the outlying rain bands, they struck like whips lashing the island. In a flash the dead vines were a blazing mass, and then they were carried away by the blast, the first cold downdraft of the squall line moving in.
I ran up, sometimes having to stop and cling to the stubs of bracken and briar the fire hadn’t touched as the wind tore at me, trying to fling me off the stair into the roaring sea below. Then I was at the top, under the overhang, the rain beginning to teem down. The approaching storm was a giant mass of cloud robed in gray veils of rain, ready to slam into the island. There was a hole in the rock wall at the overhang, and I went in like a snake, landing in a little cave carved by the wind and rain. It was no more than a hollow in the rock.
I pulled the blanket out of its pouch, wrapped it around myself, and watched the storm rage. There was light in the cave, and I saw it came from a small hole in the roof, worn by ages of wind and rain. A vine—it must be getting enough light—covered one wall. Though the storm was at its height, no rain came in that way, and the cave was dry. Lightning flashed blindingly, dancing, it seemed, over the whole island. I rose and hurried away from the opening and pressed my back against the wall. I felt a shock. The air crackled with electricity. He was seeking me, even here.