Shadows of the Dark Crystal (14 page)

Kylan put away his writing and rose to help them prepare their lunch.

“Did you learn to use that thing?” he asked. “Did it, eh . . . help you catch this feisty wild shrub?”

Naia snorted. “No. urVa doesn't use arrows for hunting.”

“What for, then? Picking his teeth? Doesn't he have bones for that?”

She didn't answer, stuffing her mouth with leaves, and Kylan got the hint to leave her alone. She didn't want to talk about arrows that weren't used for anything but shooting out into the wood. She didn't want to talk about opposites being the same, or whether or not words needed to be spoken aloud in order to be
true. The leaves and berries were bland but filling, and even Neech nibbled on one or two. Before long, their hunger was sated, and they picked up their things and continued on their way.

Without urVa's help, Naia imagined the Dark Wood would not have been completely impenetrable. However, she recognized that had she and Kylan tried to make the journey alone, it certainly would have taken them much longer. urVa knew every tree, every lump of moss, every disk-shaped fungi growing on every slime-backed slug. He was passive, blending into the forest seamlessly, sometimes so much so that Naia feared she would lose sight of him. Fliers landed on him in pairs, pecking at his robes once or twice before fluttering onward. Though he didn't use the bow for hunting, Naia remembered the speed with which he'd caught her
bola
, back in the Cradle-Tree's basin. Should urVa ever find need to use his bow for quarry, she was sure he would be a stealthy, deadly hunter.

urVa slowed sometime later in the afternoon, waiting until Naia and Kylan had caught up before remarking, “Someone is looking for you.”

Naia stiffened, turning her ears in all directions, but she heard only the cacophony of the wood. Kylan came up with the same as well, because he said, “How can you tell?”

urVa pointed up, and Naia looked. With a gasp she recognized the cliff pass above them, the limb of the broken bridge dangling like an inverted tree. She could see now that the bridge was just another limb of the Cradle-Tree, broken and fallen at some point during the great tree's possession by the darkened crystal veins.

Now there they were in the valley between the two cliffs, nearing the opposite side. Naia's heart leaped. If they were here, the Black River couldn't be much farther off. Perhaps her journey to Ha'rar could finally continue, detour and all.

“What are we looking at?” Kylan asked, reminding Naia why she had turned her face to the cliffs overhead. urVa stretched his arm up, giving his point more definition, and when Naia followed the direction, she saw the silhouette of a figure traveling along the ridge. Beside it was a larger figure, loping in long-legged strides. Squint though she might, the brightness of the sky and the distance made it impossible for her to see anything else worth recognizing.

“Could just be a traveler,” Naia said. “How would you know they're looking for us?”

urVa shrugged and lurched into motion again.

“An archer knows the path of an arrow from either end.”

Another way of saying a hunter knows when he's being hunted
, Naia thought. At least sometimes his riddles made sense to her. She took a last look up the cliff where the figure had moved out of view, then quickened her step.
Even if he says he's not a hunter . . .

“Come on, then,” she said. “If they're skilled enough, we'll meet them sooner or later. No reason to slow our own steps waiting up.”

urVa brought them through the valley, over little streams that grew more robust the farther they walked. They saw no more of their follower upon the ridge, and Naia didn't dwell on it. If they were being pursued, it would eventually come to a resolution one way or another, and she didn't have time to worry about which way it would be. Her mind inevitably returned to the frights of the
previous night, but when she tried to pick any meaning from it, all she could come up with was that she had no grasp of the truth. And that, she reminded herself, was why she was on this journey in the first place.

When they reached the other side of the gorge, urVa stopped alongside one of the streams and placed his two top hands upon his bow.

“If you follow this stream, it will take you to the river,” he said. “There are falls, down into the deeper wood, but Gelfling should be able to climb on foot. After the falls, the river flows through Gelfling Stonewood, then onward north.”

Naia committed the directions to memory, clasping her hands and bowing.

“Thank you, urVa. And for showing us the way to the river.”

“May we meet again,” urVa replied. “Even be it in a different form.”

Then Naia and Kylan waved their farewells as urVa turned, vanishing into the forest from which they'd come. The wood folded around him so completely, it was as if he had never been there, just another ghostly projection of the Dark Wood.

“What do you think that meant?” Kylan asked.

“I don't know. He seems very wise, but what good is wisdom when it can't be understood? I didn't understand half of what he told us this entire time.”

“Maybe it will make sense later,” Kylan suggested. “Sometimes it can take a lot of time before things come together, but when they do, there's no missing it.”

“It was about time you said something like that, Song Teller,” Naia teased. “Now come on. Most of urVa's words were in riddles, but his directions to the Black River certainly weren't. If we hurry, we can make it before sundown.”

T
hey walked for another quarter day before the light pattering of rain started. Though it was gentle—hardly there—it did not let up and was only a warning of what type of storm was to come. Instead of taking shelter, Naia and Kylan did their best to stay close to the gorge cliffs, avoiding most of the rain and the occasional buffet of strong wind. There was no sign of the figure they'd seen on the ridge, and Naia hoped it would stay that way.

“Hey, Naia?”

She stopped and looked back to where Kylan stood behind on a boulder. She faced him and waited, though she half expected it to be nothing, or close to nothing, as it had been in the past. He huffed a sigh and skipped down a few steps, nearing her so he could speak without raising his voice. When his words came, they were serious, and full of the weight of respect.

“When we dreamfasted, after we saw the ruffnaw in the Podling burrow. I could tell you held back. But in the forest—I heard . . . things.”

Naia shivered, looking back at him, searching his face in an attempt to know exactly what things he'd heard. The same things she'd heard? She didn't know what she might do if those echoes, preserved forever in time by the Cradle-Tree, had reached his ears.
Kylan stepped closer, keeping his voice gentle.

“I know it was probably just my imagination, and things made up by the tree in its darkness, but I . . . I was wondering if you'd tell me. Whether or not what I heard was true . . . that your brother has betrayed the Skeksis Lords.”

So he'd heard it after all. Naia's heart sank in dread, but she couldn't escape it, or Kylan. That wasn't the honorable thing to do, and anyway, no matter what Gurjin had done, his actions were his, just as Naia's belonged to her. As she read the loyalty in Kylan's face, she knew she could trust him. Especially after the journey they'd undertaken so far.

“I don't know,” she said finally. “The truth is, the All-Maudra sent a soldier to my clan looking for my brother because he had been accused of treason by the Skeksis. After they accused him, he suddenly went missing, which only made things worse. Now I don't know whether he really is a traitor, or whether something bad has happened to him. That's why I'm traveling to Ha'rar . . . to represent my clan before the All-Maudra, and also, I hope, to learn the truth.”

Her confession brought nothing but a nod from Kylan.

“So the voice I heard in the wood . . . the one that sounded like a soldier saying . . .”

“Saying those awful things about the Skeksis?” Naia finished, throwing her hands up in frustration. “I don't know! I asked urVa, and all he did was tell me more riddles. This and that about how the Cradle-Tree only echoes words that were truly spoken—but then he went on to say words don't need speaking to be true. All I
wanted to know was whether Gurjin said those things or whether he's been falsely accused . . . all I want to know is whether he is really a traitor or not.”

“Words don't need speaking . . . maybe he meant words of the heart,” Kylan said. “But then, whose words? The fears of your heart?”

“Or spoken words from Gurjin's mouth, said somewhere in the wood? The Castle of the Crystal lies within the Dark Wood, just as Stone-in-the-Wood does. There must have been days or nights when Gurjin spoke near a branch of the Cradle-Tree. I just don't know, and I can hardly stand it.”

Naia grunted and kicked a rock, sending it bouncing down the path ahead and into the creek. The sound of it was hard, hard, hard . . . and then
soft
. They had nearly reached the bottom of the highlands. Spongy turf crept up between the rocks, blanketed with moss and vines, spiked here and there with tube-shaped red flowers full of sugar-tipped pistils glistening in the daylight. She left the topic behind and so Kylan did, too. There was no use in talking it over and over. The longer Naia thought about the dilemma—the truth about Gurjin—the more she knew there was only one way to find out, and that was to find him herself.

It wasn't long before Naia could hear the sound of water, slow-moving but deep, and she could smell the cool earthy scent of the riverbed. Beyond the nearer
plunk
s and
brrr-blunk
s of the raindrops falling on the river was a distant white noise, growing ever closer—the falls urVa had mentioned. Naia's pace quickened in excitement, and she pushed back the circle-shaped fronds of the
lusher riverside plants. As the leaves gave way and the scaled tree bark tightened away from her, the view became clear. A sparkling obsidian river moved steadily to the west, where it poured over the last of the highlands to a frothy lake far below.

At the sight of it, Naia let out a whoop of joy and, despite their tense words earlier, threw an arm around Kylan and gave him a hug so tight, he laughed. They had arrived at the Black River.

They stowed their shoes in their packs and rolled up their leggings, wading into the strong cool current. Along the bank, the riverside was carved with pockets of shallow water and smoothed stones, full of speckled green and blue swimmers. Each faced up-current, swimming in a lazy
S
shape, seeming perfectly still, though in reality they were in constant motion to avoid being swept down the river to the falls. Neech zipped out from Naia's pack and dived, dipping into the water and resurfacing with a spray of water droplets, one of the swimmers thrashing in his jaws. He landed on a nearby rock and gulped the swimmer in two bites, shaking drops from his fur and chattering happily.

“It's beautiful!” Kylan exclaimed while Naia filled her cupped hands with water and took a fresh cold drink. Though the river appeared black from far away, up close she saw that it was the hard black gravel and stone that lined the riverbed and gave it its midnight color. When the sunlight hit the bottom of the river, she could see thousands of diamond-shaped facets glittering with dark blues and purples. Even the silty sand at the shallow portions was black. A handful of the stuff looked like the night sky, twinkling with silver speckles when the light hit it just right. Naia poured
some into one of her empty water skins, hoping to gift it to her parents when she eventually returned home.

Their meeting with the river added some necessary levity. For a moment, Naia forgot all she had before her and could instead appreciate how far she'd come. They dried their feet and put their shoes on before carefully making their way down the jutting rocks that comprised the front of the falls. The rocks were damp from the rain and spray from the falls, coated in a thin layer of slippery algae that made finding a safe handhold more difficult than it would have been otherwise. Still, the drop was not too far, and before long they had reached the basin, all sounds drowned out by the thundering of the falls. The air was thick with mist and the dark flickering shapes of bats darting in and out of their roosts within the cliff face. Naia gave the highlands a last glance, and then together, she and Kylan headed into the dense forest.

“Let's follow the river a ways. Then we'll need to make a raft . . . and from that point, we can rest.”

“Jarra-Jen once made a boat from half a shell of a giant skorpus,” Kylan said. When Naia gave him a sidelong glance, he grinned and for a moment held her gaze with just a smile. Then he broke away and said, “But I think we can do with logs.”

Before Naia could come up with some teasing response, they heard an approach from within the depths of the wood—quick and loud and coming closer. Before they could take cover, a tall white beast burst into the clearing. It reared before it trampled them, wheeling around with a whistling trumpet as Kylan cried out, falling back. Naia held her arm in front of her face, standing
between the long-legged animal and Kylan, but there was no need. A familiar voice called out over the din of the beast's cry, “
Doye, doye
—at last, I've found you!”

At the call, the creature turned, planting all four hooves on the soft ground and snorting with an agitated gurgle. Naia lowered her arm and took in the creature's large gray ears and wrinkled pug-nosed face punctuated by a long red proboscis. It was indeed a Landstrider, a creature she'd only heard of and then glimpsed along the wide Spriton plains. Seated on its gray-furred shoulders, arm in a sling and sleek silver hair flowing between her folded wings, was none other than Tavra of Ha'rar.