Lost Children of the Far Islands (16 page)

“The sea minks,” Leo whispered as the animal hunched its back and hissed.

The battle might have been won and the King of
the Black Lakes defeated, Leo read, if the other magical creatures—the kelpies, the mermaids, and the finfolk—had not refused to help the Folk. But they did refuse. The battle, they told the Folk, was not theirs. An image passed over the page then, showing dark-haired men and pale women with fish tails sinking slowly beneath the surface, followed by galloping ponies who kicked up white foam with their heels before they dove. They were lost to the world, Leo read, never to be seen again.

The image shifted. The new picture showed the sea, but it was a red sea, tinged with blood from battle. The orange dragon floated across one section of the page, its body torn and bloody. He could see the flat fish with the silver claws as well. And everywhere there were seals. Their ripped coats were brown, gray, mottled, and the pure white of babyhood, all floating and jostling like so much driftwood, carried along by the currents.

The story was woven around the pictures in brilliant cursive lettering. Leo read about the imprisonment of the Dobhar-chú, and the terrible price that the Folk paid. Those who did not die in the battle disappeared. They left behind only one person, the Watcher, whose job it was to watch over the imprisoned monster and maintain the impenetrable fog that encircled the Dobhar-chú’s island. The book did not mention the little girl Rosemaris, trained by the Watcher to take her place. But it did mention something else. As Leo read, he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle with fear. There was a prophecy.
The prophecy said that whoever killed the Dobhar-chú would be cursed. That person would die within a day of the creature’s death.

As Leo read, the sea mink, moving as quietly as a mote of dust, slid through the living room and out the front door. Leo lifted his head at the
snick
of the front door latching. He peered into the darkness around him, but saw nothing moving. When he looked back at the book, the words were fading on the page. Then the light coming from the book softened and went out, leaving Leo sitting in the cold, with the book quiet on the trunk. He heard rather than saw its cover close.

Leo stayed there until a dull gray light began to fill the room with early morning. The writing on the cover of the book was gone, leaving only plain, somewhat battered leather. Finally, he stood up. Without glancing at the book on the trunk, he left the living room. His head felt heavy, and something in him ached. Moving stiffly from kneeling for so long, he went back to his room and crawled into bed.

While Leo tossed and turned in the early morning, the Messenger moved low and swift through the woods. He was the Messenger, and he had come to feel that he was one of the Folk. He was the one who should be training to defeat the King of the Black Lakes, not three children who did not yet even Turn on their own. But the last few days had shown him what he truly was: an outsider, an extra, a thing with no true family. The children were
allowed—no,
invited
—to hear the poem of protection, something that had always been forbidden to the Bedell. They were privy to the secrets of the Folk, while he was sent from the table like a child that was too young to hear anything of import. They probably laughed at him, the poor Bedell, sent away to slink through the darkness alone! For he
was
alone, and he felt the true weight of that solitude settle on him for the first time in his long life.

The Bedell came out at dawn by the small beach where he had landed with the children. It had been just a few days ago, but it felt like forever.

For a long time, a small man in a dapper green suit stood looking across the gray water of the Atlantic. Then with one last look back, a sea mink slipped into the water and began to swim toward his fate. It had been waiting for him, all these many years. It was time to go and meet it.

When Leo woke up, the sun was streaming in his window. He jumped out of bed and ran across the hall to the girls’ bedroom, but they were not there. He found them in the kitchen, eating breakfast. The Bedell was not at the table. Neither was the Móraí.

Leo sat down in front of a bowl of steaming oatmeal topped with chopped apples and a puddle of honey. He took a large bite and then said, “We need to talk.”

“Do you mind swallowing first?” Gus said crankily.

Leo swallowed and was about to tell Gus and Ila about what he had seen in the book the night before, but telling them what he had read would mean telling them he had snuck out of bed without them. His indecision was resolved for him when the Móraí came into the room. He was definitely not yet ready to confess to the Móraí.

Gus spoke first. “We’ve decided,” she said as the Móraí settled into her chair. “We’d like you to train us. We want to fight the Dobhar-chú.”

The Móraí nodded. “Very well. We will begin tonight, when the moon is full.” She looked at the empty chair where the Bedell usually sat. “Has the Messenger been here?” she asked.

“No,” Gus said. “And he’s supposed to take us back to the sea.”

The Móraí smiled. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. Would you girls mind clearing the table while Leo and I go to the lighthouse? There was a problem last night with one of the lenses.”

“Sure,” Gus said. “Then can we look for the Bedell?”

“Yes, you may,” the old woman said. “Leo?”

Leo hastily shoved a last spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth and followed the Móraí out of the kitchen.

They fixed the lens, which had come loose from its mounting, and then polished all the brass fittings with soft cloths until they gleamed. Leo tried to tell the Móraí what he had read and seen in
The Book of the Folk
. But every time he opened his mouth to say something, his courage failed him. When he finally did say something, he surprised himself by asking, “What was my mom like? I mean, as a little girl?”

The Móraí paused at the window, where she was cleaning the glass. “Well, she looked exactly like Gus, but her temper was more like Ila’s. She wanted to do everything, right from the start. She was so impatient to turn eleven!”

“I think Ila can almost Turn by herself,” Leo said. “I mean, she fought with the Bedell when he tried to Turn her back, and she almost won.”

The Móraí smiled. “She’s very strong,” she said. “But your mother, she was also like you.”

“How was she like me?” Leo said eagerly.

“Well, she was always sketching and drawing. Everything she saw, she had to put down in her notebook.”

“Oh,” Leo said, feeling disappointed. “But I can’t draw.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant she was the way that you are about your books. Always looking, always wanting to know things, always trying to learn more and understand more. She was very like you in that respect.”

“She isn’t really your daughter, is she?” Leo said. “I mean, if you were around at the time of the great battle and all.”

The Móraí looked at him sharply. “How did you know that?” she asked.

Leo tried to drive the image of the book out of his head. “I don’t know,” he said vaguely. “You must have told us, I guess.”

“Hmm,” the Móraí said, looking unconvinced. “No,” she added after a moment, “I am not your grandmother. I am something like your great-great-great-great-grandmother, I suppose.”

“Do you miss her?” Leo asked.

The Móraí nodded. “I do,” she said.

They did not talk again after that. Eventually, the Móraí left Leo to his work. He didn’t even notice the time passing until the setting sun lit the small room with vivid pink light.

Dinner was quiet. Leo was preoccupied with thoughts of what the Móraí was going to teach them. Gus and Ila were sunburned and tired from searching for the Bedell all day. They had not found him. When they were done eating, all three children looked expectantly at the Móraí. Outside, the moon had risen, fat and full. It was time.

“Gus,” the Móraí said, “please go and get the book that you and Leo were looking at yesterday.”

Leo felt his face grow hot. He pretended to be looking for his napkin under the table.

“The book that tells about the Folk?” Gus said.

“Yes. Bring it to me. Don’t open it.”

It took Gus a minute or two to find the book. Its plain brown cover looked the same as that of the book next to it, but when she passed her hands over the spines of the books, she could feel the heat coming off one of them. When she pulled it from the shelf, she could see the cover just barely pulsing. It was definitely the right one. She held the book lightly on her fingertips, away from her body, remembering the monsters and the sleek, steel-gray creature patrolling its pages.

“Thank you,” the Móraí said as Gus laid the heavy book gently in her lap.

Leo stared down at his plate.

“Now tell me, children,” the Móraí said. “What is it that humans have that the beasts do not?”

“Candy,” Ila said.

“Language?” Gus guessed.

“Goodness no, child. Humans have no claim to that. Every creature speaks to its kind.”

Gus blushed, feeling foolish.

Then Leo spoke, very quietly, without looking up. “Writing,” he said. “And reading. Most people, that is.”

“I can almost read,” Ila said defensively.

The Móraí nodded. “Leo is right. When an animal is born, it is given memories from generations back, but they are faint and hazy. They feel like distant voices—like what you might call
instinct
. But humans, because they can read and write, can capture memories. They can send their thoughts across space and through time, even to generations not yet born. It’s a kind of immortality. It’s powerful, powerful magic.”

Gus and Leo had learned in school of the great library of Alexandria, in Egypt, burned to the ground thousands of years ago. At the time Gus had wondered idly about the books and stories lost to the flames. But now she wondered what else had perished—what memories, what warnings, what spells and magics had gone up in the orange heat of the marauding fires. It seemed, suddenly, like an incalculable loss. The Móraí interrupted her thoughts.

“And it is more than that. This book not only tells the tales of battles won or lost, it tells of your family, your blood that stretches back thousands of years and circles the globe. There is power in the stories. It’s the same power that connects you three—the love you share.”

“Well, maybe,” Leo said, forgetting his guilt over the
book for a moment. “You have no idea how annoying sisters can be.”

“Who chews like a pig?” Gus asked.

“Yeah,” Ila said. “A snorty, porky pig.”

She and Gus sniggered.

“See what I mean?” Leo said pointedly.

Gus’s face became serious. “What about the other creatures?” she asked the Móraí. “The water ponies, and—”

Ila interrupted her. “Water ponies!” she said excitedly. “Could I ride them?”

“No way,” Leo told her. “Not these ponies. They’d rip you apart and eat you.”

Ila looked skeptical. “They’d eat me?”

“They’re actually called
kelpies
,” Leo said. “And everything you read says that kelpies are carnivorous.”

Ila narrowed her eyes.

Gus spoke quickly before Leo said anything more about reading. “But where are they?”

The Móraí looked sad. “They are long gone, I’m afraid. The kelpies, the mermaids, the finfolk. All gone now.”

“The book said they wouldn’t help in the battle,” Leo said.

“I don’t remember that part,” Gus said. “Where did it say that, Leo?”

“Um, somewhere in there,” Leo said, blushing. “I was reading pretty fast. I probably read a little more than you did.”

The Móraí gave Leo a sharp look but said nothing.

“What exactly
is
that book?” Gus asked.

“It’s the story of the Folk,” the Móraí said. She opened the book, and Ila hopped down and went to the end of the table to climb up on the old woman’s lap.

“Is that gold?” she asked.

Gus and Leo both crowded around Ila and the Mórai to look at the book. Instead of monsters or corpses or a blood-red sea, this page simply showed a tree. It was an oak tree with an emerald-green trunk and long, branching arms covered in leaves of gold that had been shaped and affixed to the paper. The trees branches snaked over both of the open pages, filling every bit of white space with gleaming gold. Ila reached out one hand.

“Ila, don’t!” Gus said, but it was too late. Ila’s fingers brushed one of the leaves.

“It feels real,” she said in amazement.

As she spoke, the leaf curled itself closed and then reopened, unfurling as a flower, with each gold petal opening independently. The tree shivered on the page with a sound like a sigh, and every leaf on every branch closed and unfurled until the tree was hung with shimmering gold flowers.

“Oh!” Ila said, but the page was not done changing. At the center of each flower was an image. Gus saw an ocean in one, flat and blue. In another was a rising sun. In other flowers, fish leapt out of sparkling seas, gulls called, and dark birds tucked their wings and dove. But most of the flowers held seals. There were seals in the
bright white of infancy, mottled seals with round brown eyes, strongly built gray seals, seals sleek and dark with water, and seals lying on sunbaked rocks. The tree hummed with their voices as they called and barked and dove in the blue water. Then some of the seals, the ones who were resting on rocky outcroppings or floating with their heads just above the surface of the sea, began to sing. They sang wordless, meandering tunes that worked their way around one another like smoke from fires, winding and twisting and joining together in the air of the cottage.