Lost Children of the Far Islands (18 page)

Gus and Leo nodded. Ila did not move.

“It is also a danger in the other direction. If you choose the sea above all else, then you lose the land. That is the choice many made after the great battle.”

Gus thought of the wild joy that had overtaken her under the water. She might well have turned her back on the rock where the Móraí and Ila waited. She might well have dived deep and kept on going. She gave a slight shiver at the thought.

The Móraí rose to her feet. “Gus, Leo, why don’t you two go to bed. We can practice more tomorrow. Ila, stay with me for a moment, child.”

Gus and Leo obediently stood. They were too tired to ask any questions, much less to protest going to bed. As they left the room, Gus turned back to see the Móraí kneeling beside Ila. Her head was so close to Ila’s that the silver strands of her hair were interwoven with Ila’s red curls. She was speaking very softly, too softly for Gus to hear.

Ila nodded once and then began to cry again, but this time very quietly.

Gus and Leo pulled the mattress off of Leo’s bed and put it between the twin beds in the girls’ room. When Ila came to bed, Gus helped her into her nightie.

“You’ll be able to Turn too, Ila,” she said as she fastened the buttons on the back of the nightgown. “The Móraí will help you. Now take Bear and hop into bed.”

Ila grabbed Bear and, holding him tightly, climbed into her bed. Leo, lying on his mattress on the floor, told her a silly story about a cat with wings until she fell asleep with one of Bear’s paws in her mouth. She looked very young, and Gus was seized again by guilt that they had almost left her forever. Because no matter what she had told Ila, she and Leo had almost gone for good.

“Do you think she’s OK?” she whispered to Leo.

He nodded. “She’ll be fine.”

Gus wasn’t convinced, but she was too tired to think more about it. She closed her eyes and dropped abruptly off into uneasy, restless dreams. Leo lay awake for a few more minutes, thinking. Then he sighed and rolled over and fell asleep as well.

But while the children slept, the Messenger returned.

Ila had been dreaming about a puppy. It was a small white puppy with caramel-colored spots. It didn’t have a name, not yet. She would be the one to choose its name, because it was hers. Not Gus’s, or Leo’s, but hers. And it didn’t care how well she talked, or if she could read, or if she turned on lights at night like normal people always seemed to remember to do. The little puppy snuggled closer and nuzzled Ila with its damp nose. She laughed and tried to push it away, but it nuzzled her again, becoming more insistent, pushing at her face until she dropped out of the dream and opened her eyes to find herself staring into the round brown eyes of the sea mink.

Ila drew in a quick breath, but the creature shook his head, warning her to silence. His eyes gleamed in the light from the rising moon. The sea mink pushed his cold nose against her one more time and then turned and slipped through shadows to the window that was set between the two beds.

Ila looked over at Gus, and then down at Leo asleep on the mattress on the floor. They were both just lumps under their covers. The sea mink leapt lightly onto the nightstand and touched the glass of the window with his nose, and then looked at her. Moving slowly, feeling as though she might still be in a dream, Ila reached forward and unhooked the window, allowing it to swing outward into the night.

The sea mink laid his bristly muzzle against her cheek and breathed the words “Follow me. Quiet.”

Then, without glancing back at her, he stretched to the open window and sprang up and out into the night. Ila looked over at Gus again, uncertain. Shouldn’t she wake her? She’d be mad if Ila had an adventure without her. The thought made Ila smile. Gus
would
be mad. So would Leo. She would have a night adventure with the Bedell, maybe even turn into a fox again, and they would miss the whole thing. Then at breakfast she could just say casually, “Oh, last night when I was running through the woods with the Bedell …,” and their eyeballs would pop out of their heads!

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Even though she had started speaking, Ila was still more comfortable with silence. Words felt prickly and difficult in her throat, like things that had to be shoved out. Talking, she was discovering, was
tiring
.

She couldn’t say why she had not spoken most of her life, or why she was speaking now. Both Gus and Leo had asked her about it, at separate times, but all she could
tell them was that for a while she wanted to be quiet, and now she wanted to speak. It was as simple as that, really. Her answer hadn’t satisfied either of them. And she could tell they still thought she was a bit of a weirdo, even if she could talk.

And then there was what had happened on the beach. Gus said they would never leave her, but Ila wasn’t so sure. She had watched the seals leap joyfully into the waiting sea. The thought brought a jolt of pain with it, so she turned to something else. They had looked at the book the first time without her! She forgot that she had been sent out of the room for biting and instead just felt the heat of being left out
again
. That heat was enough to propel her up onto the nightstand and the windowsill.

But as she leaned out the open window, Ila suddenly remembered the Móraí. She might be mad too. She might punish her, even. But the Móraí had said she was special. Not
weird
, but
special
. And special meant you got to do special things, like sneak out in the night. So Ila boosted herself over the windowsill, landing on her hands and knees in the cool, damp grass.

She scrambled to her feet, drying her palms on her nightie. The moon was up and the air smelled like salt and wet grass. The Bedell was in his human form.

“Where have you been?” Ila asked. “We looked all over for you!”

Instead of answering her, the Bedell put a finger to his lips. “Follow me to the beach,” he whispered.

“But wait,” Ila whispered back. “I want to be a fox.”

“Not now,” he answered. “Just follow me.”

Ila felt her face getting hot. Her adventure was supposed to be as a fox, not as a kid in a stupid nightgown.

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

The Bedell stepped closer and leaned down to Ila.

“Ila,” he said very quietly but with an edge of urgency. “We must catch the tide.”

“I only like the fox,” Ila said. “And I want to be one, now.”

“Listen to me, you silly thing,” the Bedell hissed.

Ila drew back, frightened.

The Bedell took a deep breath. “My apologies,” he said, with a slight bow. “But time is of the essence, Ila.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ila said, glancing back toward the open window. Maybe she could scramble up without Gus and Leo hearing her come in. She could just crawl back into bed and no one would know that she had even been gone.

The Bedell began speaking very quickly and so quietly that Ila had to lean toward him to hear his words. “It means we have to hurry if you want to help.”

Ila said nothing. Her plan to roam the woods as a fox and return triumphant for breakfast was rapidly fading.

“Me?” she finally said. “I’m the smallest. I can’t even Turn yet.”

“But you are the strongest,” the Bedell said. “You have the blood of three forms in you, Ila. That makes you very
strong indeed. The question is, are you brave enough to do this? I can help you, but you must be brave. You are the only one who can save your mother, Ila.”

“I can save my mom?” Ila said. “How? Tell me!”

She took a step toward the Bedell, her hands fisted.

He smiled but took a step backward. “Now, now,” he said soothingly. “We just have to go to the island where the Dobhar-chú is held prisoner and defeat him. You are strong enough to do that, believe me, Ila.”

“And I get to be a fox?”

“Soon,” the Bedell promised. “Very soon.”

“And you’ll tell Gus and Leo that I did it and you only helped?”

The man sighed.

“OK,” Ila said. “Let’s go.”

She took the Bedell’s hand, which seemed to startle him.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Let us go.”

The skidbladnin was waiting for them, bobbing gently on the night sea. They walked together to the end of a long, slick rock and then the Bedell hopped lightly aboard and helped Ila step onto the boat.

“Now sit,” he said, and before he had finished speaking the little boat leapt forward eagerly and sped into the darkness. Ila held the Bedell’s hand as she watched the water pass under them. She
could
see in the dark, better than Leo or Gus, but out here there was nothing to see.
Just water below and a faint sprinkling of stars above. After a few minutes, she curled up on the deck, still holding the Messenger’s hand, and fell asleep.

The man watched her. Her small hand was limp and warm in his, but he didn’t let it go. He held it tightly as they traveled, as if Ila’s warmth could draw out the despair and shame and fear that poisoned his blood. The boat moved swiftly forward, and the cold wind tore the tears from his eyes before they could touch his face.

The boat bumped against something and woke Ila.

She stretched and looked around her. They were tucked into a narrow, wedge-shaped cave that the ocean had cut into a rough, reddish granite cliff. Waves crashed at the mouth of the cave, splashing the little boat. All around them was more of the red rock—great chunks of it scattered at the edge of land as though a giant child had been playing and then abandoned his blocks. When Ila peered upward, she could just see dark pine trees perched on top of the cliffs. They seemed very far away.

By standing on the edge of the boat (Ila on her tiptoes), they could scramble onto a ledge that jutted out from the side of the cave. It was only big enough for one of them to stand on, so the Bedell went first. Once he was on the ledge, he showed Ila how to climb up and out of the cave by using chunky hand- and footholds in the steep wall. Ila followed the man’s instructions, and after a moment of clambering in the semidarkness, she was
able to pull herself to the top of a wide, rough rock about ten feet above the crashing surf.

“Oh, you forgot the boat!” Ila said. She waited for the Bedell to scramble back down for the skidbladnin, but he just shook his head.

“It will be fine there,” he said. “We have no more need of it.” Then, before Ila could ask any more questions, he held out his hand to her.

“Come. There is a path from here. I know how to go.”

They followed a twisty, nearly invisible path that led them up the rocky side of the island. There was a lot of jumping and climbing and scrambling, and Ila was relieved when they reached the dark pine forest. She was tired from the climb and beginning to wonder how they were ever going to find the Dobhar-chú in this forbidding place, and also how long it would be until she got some breakfast.

But in the end, they didn’t have to find the King of the Black Lakes. He found them. Or rather, his wolves found them. Tall and long-legged, as gray and lean as smoke, they slipped out of the underbrush without a sound and stood in front of them.

“His wolves,” the Bedell said. Ila clutched his hand, but he did not sound frightened. He sounded tired.

The wolves suddenly bent down as one, so that their chins rested on the ground and their haunches were up in the air behind them. They looked like cats stretching
in the morning, except for their thick fur and their tails, which stuck up straight behind them like gray brushes. Then they rose to their feet in one silent wave, and melted backward into the thick pine trees.

The wolves had been standing in front of a small pool of water. When Ila could see what was in the pool, she took an involuntary step back, and then another.

“Ah, so,” the Dobhar-chú said softly.

Ila opened her own mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She felt a wave of nausea wash over her, followed by a chill that ran down her spine and brought up goose bumps on her arms.

The body of the creature in the pool was hidden under the water. Only his head, set on a sea serpent’s long, curving neck, showed. The Dobhar-chú had pointed black ears, and black lips that curled back on a dog’s muzzle. But the head, bony and cadaverous, was as large as Ila’s torso. There was no fur on it. Instead, black, oily skin was stretched like wet leather over the angles of the skull. Barnacles were growing in a pebbly patch on one side of his face. They had spread down from his eye onto his long muzzle, pulling his black lip on that side away from his teeth in a permanent sneer. Wet black gills fluttered along the sides of the muzzle and down the long neck. It was impossible to tell if the creature was floating or resting on the bottom of the pool. Its eyes, pure black all the way to the edges, stared unblinking at Ila and the Bedell.

When the Dobhar-chú spoke, Ila remembered what
Leo had told her once about sharks, that instead of one row of deadly teeth, they had many rows, so hundreds of teeth could fit in their mouths. He also said sharks sometimes swam up water pipes into bathtubs, so she had written the entire thing off as a lie. But now that she could see the Dobhar-chú’s teeth, she understood exactly what a shark’s mouth must look like. The Dobhar-chú’s mouth was
full
of teeth, crammed in not only next to one another but behind as well. She forced herself to look away as the creature spoke again.