Before entering Druma Wood, we passed through a verdant meadow. Ribbed with streams, the grasses of the meadow moved in waves like the surface of the sea. Every rivulet splashed and rippled, lining the plants along the banks with sparkling ribbons of water. I thought how full of beauty this spot might have seemed to me under different circumstances, beauty not caused by a magical instrument or a great wizard. Beauty that was simply there.
Finally, with a crackling of twigs and needles underfoot, we entered the ancient forest. The bright meadow disappeared, and all went dark. Powerful resins, sometimes pungent, sometimes sweet, spiced the air. Branches whispered and clacked overhead. Shadows seemed to drift, silently behind the trees.
Once again, I felt the eeriness of this forest. It was more than a collection of living beings of varied kinds. It was, in truth, a living being itself. Once it had given me my hemlock staff. But now, I felt certain, it was watching me, regarding me with suspicion.
I stubbed my toe on a root. Though I winced with pain, I held tight to the stretcher. My second sight had grown stronger since I was last here, but the dim light still hampered my vision. Sunlight struck just the topmost layers of these dense groves, while only a few rare beams reached all the way to the forest floor. Yet I was not about to slow down to get my bearings. I didn’t have time. Nor did my mother.
Following Rhia, we pushed deeper into the forest, bearing the stretcher of vines. The strange sensation that the trees themselves were watching, following our every move, grew stronger with every step. The clacking branches sounded agitated as we passed beneath them. Other creatures seemed aware of us, as well. Every so often I glimpsed a bushy tail or pair of yellow eyes. Squeals and howls often echoed among the darkened boughs. And once, from somewhere very near, I heard a loud, prolonged scraping sound, like sharp claws ripping at a layer of bark. Or skin.
My arms and shoulders ached, but hearing the swelling groans of my mother hurt more. Bumbelwy, at least, seemed moved enough by her suffering to contain his grumbling, although his bells continued to jangle. And while Rhia moved through the woods with the lightness of a breeze, she often glanced back worriedly at the stretcher.
After hours of marching through the dark glades draped with mosses and ferns, my shoulders throbbed as if they were about to burst. My hands, nearly numb, couldn’t hold on any longer. Was there no shorter route? Was it possible that Rhia had lost her way? I cleared my dry throat, ready to call out to her.
Then, up ahead, I glimpsed a new light in the branches. As we pushed through a tangle of ferns, which clung to my ankles and thighs, the light grew stronger. The spaces between the trunks widened. A cool breeze, as fragrant as fresh mint, slapped the sweaty skin of my brow.
We entered a grassy clearing. In the center, rising from a web to burly roots, stood a majestic oak tree. Arbassa. Older than old it looked, and taller than any other tree we had seen. Its massive trunk, as wide as five or six trees fused into one, lifted several times my height before its first branches emerged. From there it soared up, up, until at length it merged with the clouds.
Set in the midst of its lower branches, made from the limbs of the oak itself, sat Rhia’s aerial cottage. Branches curled and twisted to form its walls, floor, and roof. Shimmering curtains of green leaves draped every window. I remembered first seeing the cottage at night, when it had been lit from within and glowed like an exploding star.
Rhia lifted her arms like rising branches. “Arbassa.”
The great tree quivered, raining dew on all of us. With a pang, I recalled my clumsy attempt to make the beech tree in the Dark Hills bend down to me. On that day, Rhia had called me a fool for trying such a thing. Whether or not she had been right, I knew, as I gently lowered my mother’s stretcher onto the grass, that I had been far more of a fool on this day for trying something else.
“Rosemary,” said Elen, her voice hoarse from moaning. She pointed at a shrub, decked with leafy spires, that was growing near the edge of the clearing. “Get me some of that. Please.”
In a flash, Rhia plucked a sprig and offered it to her. “Here you are. It’s so fragrant, it reminds me of pine needles in the sun. What did you call it?”
“Rosemary.” My mother rolled it between her palms, filling the air with its striking scent. She brought the crushed leaves to her face and inhaled deeply.
Her face relaxed a bit. She lowered her hands. “The Greeks called it
starlight of the land.
Isn’t that lovely?”
Rhia nodded, her curls bouncing on her shoulders. “And it’s good for rheumatism, isn’t it?”
Elen gazed at her in surprise. “How in the world did you know that?”
“Cwen, my friend, used it to help her hands.” A shadow crossed Rhia’s face. “At least she used to be my friend.”
“She made a pact with the goblins,” I explained. “And almost killed us in the bargain. She was a tr— Rhia, what did you call her?”
“A treeling. Half tree, half person. The very last one of her kind.” Rhia listened for a moment to the whispering oak leaves above us. “She took care of me ever since I was a baby, after she found me abandoned in the forest.”
My mother winced in pain, though her eyes remained fixed on Rhia. “Do you . . . do you miss your real family, child?”
Rhia waved her hand lightly. “Oh, no. Not at all. The trees are my family. Especially Arbassa.”
Again the branches quivered, showering us with dew. And yet I couldn’t help but notice that, despite Rhia’s carefree words, her gray-blue eyes seemed sad. Sadder than I had ever seen them.
Bumbelwy, frowning with his eyebrows, mouth, and chins, bent down next to the stretcher and touched my mother’s forehead. “You are hot,” he said grimly. “Hotter than before. This is just the occasion for my riddle about my bells. It’s one of my funniest—especially since I don’t know any others. Shall I tell it?’
“No.” I pushed him roughly aside. “Your riddles and songs will only make her feel worse!”
He pouted, all of his chins wobbling above the clasp of his cloak. “Too true, too true, too true.” Then he drew himself up a little straighten “But someday, mark my words, I will make somebody laugh.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. It might even be you.”
“Right. And the day you do that, I’ll eat my boots.” I scowled at him. “Get away, now. You’re worse than a curse, a plague, and a typhoon combined.”
Elen moaned, shifting her weight on the stretcher. She started to say something to Rhia, her blue eyes wide with anxiety. Then, for some reason, she caught herself. Instead, she took another sniff of rosemary. Turning to me, she asked, “Fetch me some lemon balm, will you? It will help calm this headache. Do you know where any grows?”
“I’m not sure. Rhia might know.”
Rhia, her eyes still darkened, nodded.
“And some chamomile, child, if you can find it. It often sprouts near pine trees, alongside a little white mushroom with red hairs on the stem.”
“The trees will guide me to it.” Rhia glanced up at Arbassa’s mighty boughs. “But first we’ll bring you inside.”
She peeled off her snug shoes, made from some kind of bark, and stepped into a small hollow in the roots. Then she spoke a long, swishing phrase in the language of an oak. The roots closed over her feet, so that she stood like a young sapling at Arbassa’s side. As she opened her arms to embrace the huge trunk, a leafy branch lowered and laid itself across her back. All at once the branch lifted, the roots parted, and the trunk creased and cracked open, revealing a small, bark-edged doorway. Rhia entered, beckoning us to follow.
As I bent to pick up the front end of the stretcher, I looked at my mother. Perspiration flecked her cheeks and brow. Such torment in her face! Seeing her this way felt like a spear twisting in my chest. Yet . . . I couldn’t shake the feeling that not all of the pain she was feeling this day had been caused by me.
Bumbelwy, grumbling to himself, picked up the rear. Together, we stumbled across the maze of roots toward the doorway. When I was only two paces away, the bark-edged door began to close. Just as it had done before, when I first came to Arbassa! Once again, the tree did not want to let me inside.
Rhia shrieked. She waved her hands, swishing a stern reprimand. The tree shuddered. The belligerent door stopped closing, then slowly opened again. Rhia shot me a glance, her expression grim. Then she turned and began to climb the gnarled, spiraling stairway within the trunk. As I followed, ducking my head to pass through the door, I was struck by the smells, rich and moist like autumn leaves after a rain. And by the sheer enormity of the trunk. Arbassa seemed even larger inside than she had outside. Even so, I had to concentrate hard in the dim light not to bump the stretcher against the walls or tilt it so far that my mother might slip off.
Carefully, we climbed the stairs of living wood. Strange writing, as intricate as a spider’s web, flowed across the walls. Its interwoven runes filled the entire stairwell from top to bottom. But it was as incomprehensible as before. My hopes sank further.
Finally we came to the thick curtain of leaves that marked the entry into Rhia’s cottage. Pushing through, we stepped onto a wide floor of woven boughs. All around us, wooden furniture sprouted straight out of the interlaced branches. I recognized the low table by the hearth, the pair of sturdy chairs, the honey-colored cabinet whose edges were lined with green leaves.
“Oh,” breathed Elen, as she shifted slightly to see better. “It’s so beautiful.”
I nodded to Bumbelwy and we set down the stretcher as gently as possible. Even as he straightened himself stiffly, his frowns lessened ever so slightly. He looked around, captivated by the interior of the cottage. My own thoughts, however, remained in the stairwell below.
As if reading my mind, Rhia touched my arm. “I have some herbs to fetch for your mother.” She removed the Flowering Harp from her shoulder, placing it against the wall near the stretcher. “And you, if you still hope to save her, have much work to do.”
10:
A
RBASSA’S
S
ECRET
Deep within Arbassa, I toiled. I tried everything possible to find the key to the puzzle. Time after time, I trudged up the spiral stairs and down again, searching for the right place to start. I backed away, scanning the walls for some sort of pattern. I came very close, laying my forehead against the cool wood, examining each individual rune in turn. To no avail.
Hour after hour, I pored over the mysterious writing on the walls. Writing that might somehow guide me to the cure Elen so desperately needed. Yet while the intricately carved script seemed full of hidden meaning, it left me empty of understanding.
Sunset came and went, and the dim light in the stairwell faded away completely. For some time I struggled to use my second sight, even less reliable than usual in the darkness, until finally Rhia brought me an unusual torch. It was a sphere, as big as my fist, made of thin but sturdy beeswax. Within it crawled a dozen or more beetles that glowed with a steady, amber light. It was enough to illuminate at least a small portion of the script.
Grateful though I was for the torch, I accepted it without a word. The same was true for the two bowls, one filled with water and one with large green nuts, which Bumbelwy brought me sometime later. Despite the fact that he tripped on the stairs, spilling half the water on my neck, I hardly noticed him. I was too absorbed in my work. And also my guilt. For all my concentration on the strange runes, I couldn’t keep myself from hearing the recurrent sighs and moans from the woman lying on the floor above me. The woman I had brought to Fincayra.
Outside, I knew, a pale new moon was rising over Druma Wood, painting Arbassa’s boughs with the faintest glow of silver. Now I had one month, less one day, to find the cure. As difficult, perhaps impossible, as that task would be, I could not even begin it until I deciphered the script. And the script showed no sign of sharing its secret.
Wearily, I lay my hand against the wooden wall. Suddenly I felt a brief spark of warmth from the runes. It barely pricked the palm of my hand before it vanished. Yet it left me with the feeling, deep in my bones, that this writing had indeed been carved by the great wizard Tuatha. Could he have known that one day, years later, his own grandson would struggle to read these mysterious words? That the words would offer the only hope of finding the stairway to the Otherworld and the Elixir of Dagda? And could Tuatha have guessed that the Elixir would be needed to save the life of Elen—the woman he had once predicted would give birth to a wizard with powers even greater than his own?
Some wizard I had turned out to be! When I wasn’t bearing a magical instrument, what had my powers wrought? Nothing but misery. To me and those in my wake. I had not only snuffed out my own two eyes, I had nearly snuffed out my own mother’s life.
I shambled down to the bottom of the stairwell. Despondently, I leaned close to the wall. Reaching out my hand, I touched the very first rune with the tip of my finger. It looked something like a squarish sunflower wearing a long, shaggy beard. Slowly, I traced its curves and creases, trying yet again to sense even a glimmer of its meaning.
Nothing.
I dropped my hand. Perhaps it was a matter of confidence. Of belief.
I was born to be a wizard, wasn’t I? Tuatha himself said so. I am his grandson. His heir.
Again I touched the first rune.
Again I sensed nothing.
Speak to me, rune! I command you!
Still nothing. I slammed my fist against the wall.
Speak to me, I say! That is my command!
Another painful moan echoed down the stairwell. My stomach knotted. I drew a slow, unsteady breath.
If not for me, then for her! She will die if I can’t find some way to learn your secret.
A tear drifted down my cheek.
Please. For her. For Elen. For . . . Mother.
A strange tingling pulsed through my finger. I caught a whiff of something, not quite a feeling.