Shadows on the Stars (17 page)

“And may you find yours,” Elli replied, “to Coerria.”

I will try, my dear. I will try.

Suddenly, the mist exploded in a burst of silver light.

14
•
Sailing the Rainbow Seas

Water everywhere!

That was Elli’s first thought when the silver-shot clouds evaporated. She and the others were standing on some sort of ground (except for Shim, who was sitting in a murky puddle). But this was certainly the wettest ground she’d ever known. In fact, it seemed to be made more of water than soil.

For water was, indeed, everywhere. It dripped from the soggy branches of moss-draped trees, coursed down the streams that crisscrossed the ground, and floated in the misty air and the lumbering gray clouds overhead. It shone in the dewdrops that rimmed every twig and blade of grass. It seeped through the muddy soil underfoot. And it rested in countless pools—some as small as a clamshell, some as broad as a dragon’s back.

“Suchly mud,” groaned Shim. He tried to stand up in the puddle, lost his balance, and fell back again with a splash. “Too slipperly! And stinkerly also.”

He scrunched his potato of a nose, now splattered with mud. “Totally, certainly, disgustingly.”

Lleu sloshed over, the bottom of his priest’s robe dragging through the water. “Here you go, my friend.” He reached down and tugged Shim, who came to his feet with a loud
slurp.

But Shim, whose woolen vest was soaked and sagging more than usual, just frowned at him. “This neverly would happen if I hadn’t gotten so smallsy again.” He blinked his eyes, now more red than pink. “It just isn’t fairly! Once I was big and high, as high as—”

“The highliest tree,” finished Brionna, stepping lightly through the puddle to put her arm around the little fellow’s shoulders. Unlike the fabric worn by the others, her green elven robe, made from sturdy bark cloth, repelled water. So while it glistened with liquid beads, it looked drier than anything else around—and significantly drier than Shim.

He blinked up at her, clearly touched. “You is a friend to me, Rowanna. A fine, courtly friend.”

She made a wry grin. “Ah, but you’re my uncle Shim, remember? So I’m really a fine, courtly niece.”

Scowling, he pulled away. “A blind, wartly beast?” He shook his head, making his white hair slap his ears. “You is just too crazily! Even for an elf.”

“Look there,” urged Elli, suddenly pointing a dripping finger at the horizon.

“Why?” demanded Nuic, who had plopped himself into a rushing rivulet near her feet. Lazily rolling in the water, he had turned a tranquil shade of green, much like the pendant tied around his middle. “Anything worth seeing is right here.”

“But,” disagreed Elli as she stared into the distance, “what’s out there is so, so . . .”

“Glorious,” suggested Lleu, now gazing the same direction. Catha piped an admiring whistle from his shoulder.

The others looked where Elli was pointing—except for Nuic, who continued bathing happily. At once, they stood as still as the mossy trees around them, struck by the sight.

For as wet as this place was, it wasn’t nearly as wet as what surrounded it. This was an island, they now realized: one of many sprinkled across a wide, churning sea that seemed to stretch forever on all sides. Waves rolled across the reaches, line after line of them, an endless army of whitecaps, ultimately to slap against the island’s soggy shore. The breeze smelled of seawater, rich with brine and kelp, and something more, as well: a wisp of immense, uncharted depths.

But it wasn’t just the size of this ocean that arrested the companions. It was the
color.
For underneath the surface, glowing currents flowed and swirled, mixing and blending waters into every conceivable hue. And so each individual wave shimmered with iridescent red, green, orange, purple, yellow, and violet, as well as the underlying blue. Like liquid prisms, the waves trembled with radiant colors, making the entire sea a vast, rippling rainbow.

And so it was that Elli knew beyond doubt that they had arrived, as Rhia had promised, at the Rainbow Seas. Somewhere in this part of Waterroot, the highlord of the water dragons kept his lair. But where? And would they find it soon enough?

Just offshore, a pod of purple-toned dolphins leaped out of the waves. Their sleek bodies glistened with lavender; their dorsal fins shone with gold. As they jumped from the colorful currents, they hung in the air for an extended moment of delight—part bodies, part water, part unjaded joy.

Behind the dolphins, past the farthest visible island, a huge, spiraling cloud rose into the sky. It started from a single point on the horizon, then lifted higher and higher, growing wider as it climbed. Though very far away, it seemed enormous to Elli—a billowing funnel of vapors that lifted into the cloud banks above, and perhaps higher still. Maybe, she wondered, it rose all the way to the magical mist that swirled around the roots and trunk of the Great Tree.

She caught her breath. That spiral didn’t just rise into the mist. It ww the mist.

“The Wellspring,” she breathed in wonder. “Right there!”

“Dear Dagda,” exclaimed Lleu, “you’re right! I’ve heard so many bards’ songs about it, but never thought I’d actually see it:
The Wellspring of Mist, wonder and whist
.”

Catha cooed softly, eyeing the cloud.

“All the mist that surrounds our world,” the priest said in awe, “begins in that place. Or so the explorer Krystallus believed. He wrote about it after sailing across the Rainbow Seas to the Sea of Spray.”

“So did Serella, first queen of the elves,” added Brionna. Thoughtfully, she ran her finger down the full length of her honey-colored braid, flicking off the water at the end. “She also believed that the mist rising from the Wellspring never ends, never dies—that it just keeps on flowing out from that spot and returns as rain to the surrounding seas, only to rise once again into the sky.”

“Which could mean,” Elli mused, “we’re looking at the same mist that hugged the shores of Lost Fincayra, ages ago. And that flowed out of the Otherworld, long before that. So the misty air we’re now breathing—” She inhaled slowly. “Could have been breathed by Merlin himself.”

“Or Serella,” said the elf maiden at her side.

“Or Dagda,” added Lleu. He glanced at the falcon strutting on his shoulder and nodded. “Or even Merlin’s own hawk-friend, Trouble.”

“Hmmmpff,” bubbled the voice of Nuic from the stream. “Let’s not forget Hargol, now. He breathes, too—though fortunately for us, not fire.”

“Once I heard an old bard say,” Lleu recalled, “that when water dragons get very angry, they breathe
ice.
Blasts of ice. I don’t know whether or not it’s true.”

“Let’s not find out,” suggested Elli. Then she asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Where do we find Hargol?”

“Not far from here, I think.” Brionna looked westward, away from the Wellspring. Concentrating on a dark patch that she could, with her extraordinary sight, make out on the horizon, she tapped her longbow, knocking off the row of drops that had gathered on its string. “Whenever I came here with Granda, to visit the sea elves at Caer Serella, he taught me about Brynchilla’s geography. Since this, like El Urien, is a realm of my people, he believed I should know it well enough so I could find my way around even . . .”

She swallowed, but her voice had turned raspy. “Without him.”

Elli gave her a gentle smile, encouraging her to continue.

“And so I recognize, to the west, the Willow Lands.” She glanced EUi’s way. “Something tells me you will like that place.” Turning back to the horizon, she declared, “Just beyond that is the lair of the water dragons. Which is a spot,” she added bleakly, “that Granda always warned me to avoid.”

“But since we must go,” asked Lleu, waving at the colorful waters, “how are we supposed to get there? Swim?”

Brionna cocked her head to the left. “If we go to that side of the island, I’ll wager, we’ll find a boat or two. The elves, for centuries, have left boats on the southern shore of every island in the realm. It’s a tradition that comes in handy around here.”

Elli gave Lleu a mischievous wink. “And if there’s no boat, you can swim over to the next island and get us one.”

“Certainly, my lady,” the priest answered teasingly. “Right after you!” He gave her a deep bow, despite the squawking of the bird trying to stay on his shoulder. “Anyone who wears the crystal of élano has all my allegiance.”

She fingered the amulet of leaves that hung from her neck. “So if Hargol steals it from me, you’ll be loyal to him?”

Lleu nodded. “Maybe, but only as long as it takes to steal it back.”

“Good.”

“Hmmmpff,” said Nuic, shaking himself as he climbed out of the stream and onto the turf. “Easier said than done.”

Elli scooped him up, and the group followed Brionna through the grove of moss-covered trees, their feet squelching loudly in the wet mud. They soon arrived at the other side of the small island, where they found a crescent harbor rimmed with golden brown sand. There, above the tide line, they found a single boat, turned on its side with its mast against the sand so that the hull wouldn’t fill with rainwater. Outfitted with a furled sail as well as oars, in the fashion of the water elves, it looked small but quite seaworthy.

“Ah,” said Brionna with gratitude. “They’ve left us something else, as well.”

She nodded toward a thick patch of shrubs growing farther up the shore. Berries of many kinds hung there, glistening with spray: blue rivertang, dwarf harkenfruit, purple raspberries, and more. The group needed no urging to tramp right over to the shrubs and start pulling fruit off the branches.

Like hungry bears, they stuffed their mouths with berries that exploded with flavors sweet and zesty, tangy and tart. Everyone, for the moment, forgot about the perils ahead and concentrated on the demanding task of eating as many berries as possible. Even Nuic joined right in—and turned the color of white moonberries, his personal favorite.

“Hmmmpff,” he said gruffly while swallowing another handful. “No one but me has any manners.” He then released a loud belch.

Elli shot him a smirking glance. But before she could say anything, he frowned at her and scolded, “Oh, Elli. That was
disgusting
.” Then he went right back to eating.

The berry feast continued, with juices dribbling down every chin and colors staining every hand. Finally, Shim patted his swollen belly and gave Elli a lopsided grin. “Wellsy now, methinks I needs a nap.”

He promptly fell onto his back on the sand. Wriggling a bit to make himself comfortable, he said sleepily, “Really, truly, honestly.”

Seconds later, he was snoring, his large nose blowing like a bugle with every breath.

Lleu cocked his head at the little giant. “Not a bad idea, really.” He turned to Elli. “We have time, don’t we?”

“Sure. Just try not to snore as loud as Shim.”

“Impossible,” grumbled Nuic, who had also settled down on the sand for a nap.

Lleu grinned, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, and gave a nod to Catha. The hawk fluttered over to a twisted piece of driftwood, her bright eyes scanning the shoreline for anything more tasty than berries to eat. A gray-backed beetle on the driftwood nudged one of her talons. With a snap of her beak, it was her appetizer.

The priest lay back, shifting to stretch out his legs. Before long he, too, was snoring.

Brionna worked her long fingers, sticky with berry juice. She glanced at Elli. “Are you sleepy, too?”

“Not really.” She watched the prone forms of the others for a moment, then turned back to the elf. Eyes shining, she asked, “Do you have the same idea I do?”

Brionna smiled. “Of course. How can we come all the way to Waterroot and not take a swim?”

Together, they peeled off their clothes, all except the amulet that Elli kept around her neck. Pausing just long enough for Brionna to untie her braid, they waded into the water. Cool waves lapped against their legs, making their skin feel taut. Their toes slid on the algae that coated the stones in the shallows, making their first steps awkward, but soon they fell forward with a pair of gentle splashes. Brionna’s long hair floated behind her like strands of seasilk, while Elli’s curls glistened upon the water.

Elli’s first sensation was the coolness, which slapped her neck, her belly, her arms. She felt the chill water swirl under her armpits, flow behind her knees, and slide between her shoulder blades. Then, gradually, it faded away, as she became one with the water, floating with her chin on the surface. Small underwater currents ran across her ribs, tickling.

She noticed something new.
Apples
, she said to herself in surprise.
This sea smells like apples! Crisp and tangy, like the ones Papa used to bring home every autumn.

She drew a long breath, savoring the fruity smell that hung there, mixing with the scents of brine and salt and kelp. Then she turned onto her back, relaxing into the water. It lifted her body, bouncing her gently, rhythmically, with the waves. She felt as buoyant as a scrap of spongewood on the sea.

In time she turned over again, the water sliding off her bare shoulders, just as a black-winged cormorant skidded to a landing, splashing her face with droplets. The bird ruffled its feathers, curled its long neck, and floated contentedly by.
The sea holds us both
, Elli thought.
And who knows what else?
She imagined a mackerel, sleek and strong, swimming beneath them even now. Under that, perhaps, a sea turtle slid past, stirring its graceful flippers. And under that, a tiny crab scuttled through the waving wands of kelp.

And such colors! Now, close up, she could see the astounding richness of the greens and blues, scarlets and violets, that wove through these waters. Like rivers of rainbows, layers upon layers of color flashed and trembled. Nothing she’d ever seen, save her crystal itself, held so much color—and didn’t just hold it, but shared it, painting everything within reach.

Something more was in this sea, as well. Light. It belonged to every drop of every wave, as much as the water itself. Tiny specks of phosphorescence sparkled throughout, ringing Elli’s body like thousands of shimmering stars.