Starflower (14 page)

The girl shook herself and stepped back from him. She signed something he did not understand but which he guessed from her face to mean, “I'm fine on my own!” A bold-faced lie, but at least the creature had spirit.

“We're nearly to the falls,” Eanrin told her. He rubbed a hand uncomfortably down the back of his neck. Why did he still feel the warmth of her hands gripping his arms? A strange sensation, not altogether unpleasant, but utterly terrifying. “When we get to the River, be sure to stay close beside me. Not too close, mind! Don't get in my way. But . . . well, do not touch the water. Understand?”

She nodded. Her gaze met his, eye for eye. She seemed to be daring him to try something. What, he could not guess. To coddle her? To treat her like a helpless kitten? Well, was it his fault if that's just what she was?

“Keep up,” he said in almost a growl.

The voice of the River was unmistakable now.
Give her back to me!
it roared, and Eanrin guessed they must be near indeed to the falls. Weeping willows grew thickly here, at the water's edge. He parted a curtain of trailing leaves, gazed out, and nearly turned back then and there.

He had not realized that Cozamaloti Gate, the only entrance to Etalpalli, was on the very brink of a waterfall.

Imraldera, curious to see why the poet, even in his man's shape, bristled from head to toe, pressed up behind him and, standing on tiptoe, peered over his shoulder. She gasped at the sight that met her eyes. She had seen waterfalls in the Land before, places where the rivers met and rushed white over steep drops, and she had thought them beautiful. But nothing in the Land compared to this. A vision of absolute power. The beauty of it, the awfulness made her tremble. For a moment, she was thankful—she would change nothing from her previous life and risk losing the chance to gaze upon something as marvelous as Cozamaloti.

“Well,” said Eanrin through dry lips, “that's certainly more than I expected. Is that a bridge?”

Suspended across the brink of the falls, attached by ropes to tree
trunks on either side of the River, was a rope bridge of a sort. Its fibers were frayed, and many of the planks along the walk were rotted and broken. It swung above that mist-shrouded chasm, stirred by even the slightest breeze.

And just beyond the brink, just where the water took its final gasp before making that plunge, was the invisible Faerie gate.

Eanrin drew a long breath. That was an awful lot of water. He did not care for water.

“Mighty deeds await,” he told himself. “Fair Gleamdren must be rescued . . . and besides, no one ever called a cat a coward!”

Imraldera gave the poet a look. When he started his descent to the bridge, she caught his sleeve. “What are you doing?” she signed when he looked back.

“Come along, sweet princess. We must reclaim my true love, which means taking the dive.” Eanrin continued down, calling over his shoulder as he went, “My one comfort is that Glomar could not possibly have gone before me! I cannot imagine the faithful badger working up the nerve to jump off the bridge, for all his noble intentions. We've got the advantage, Imraldera, my girl, I feel it in my whiskers!”

Imraldera's jaw dropped.
Jump off the
 . . .
No!

She latched onto the branches of a weeping willow, bracing herself as though afraid that, by sheer force of will, Eanrin would draw her after himself. There was no chance she was going anywhere near that bridge.

Eanrin stepped onto the rotting boards and fraying ropes, the River roaring beneath him, its words drowned out by its own noise. Taking cat form for better balance, the poet slinked out to the middle and, his ears flat, crept to the edge.

“Oh, Great Lights preserve us!” he gasped and drew back his pink nose, pressing his orange body flat.

The River laughed at him.

Yet Eanrin was no coward. He was simply bracing for the proper spring. Any moment now, his muscles would flex, his paws would gracefully clear the ropes, his body arching elegantly as he soared over that death drop and landed on his feet (as a cat must) in the demesne of Hri Sora. He could see it all in his mind, a leap worthy of epics!

He was simply preparing himself. That was all.

He realized suddenly that Imraldera was not beside him. His whiskers quivering (along with the rest of his body), he looked back up to the bank. There she stood, staring after him with those wide eyes. Coward indeed! At least he'd had the nerve to venture this far! That little mortal, living forever in fear of her own imminent death, hadn't made a single step down. Serve her right if he left her there, leapt into Etalpalli, and continued his quest alone. And that's just what he would do.

As soon as he was ready.

Maybe a quick groom was in order? After all, one doesn't want to step into a foreign demesne looking shabby, especially not when on a mission of rescue.

The River moved.

Of course the River was in constant motion, flowing and churning and rushing to this moment of cascade. But this was a movement unnatural to rivers. It swarmed up the side of the bank, a long, sinuous, grasping arm.

Mine!
it roared in a voice mortal ears would not understand.
Mine!

Eanrin gasped. The next moment he was a man clutching the bridge's rope to balance himself as he shouted, “Run! Imraldera,
run
!”

She could not hear him. She could see him shouting and waving his arm, his cloak flapping like a warning flag. But she could not hear him.

And she did not see the River's arm until it wrapped around her legs.

Eanrin saw her mouth open in a silent scream. Then she was gone, dragged down the bank in a moment, vanishing into the churning white water. He stared, gasping as though it had been he who was dragged beneath the deathly waters, his mind unable to accept what his eyes saw.

For an instant, her dark, matted head surfaced. She vanished again, only to reappear moments later. Her desperate arms reached out, grabbing at a boulder. The River tried to smash her against it, but instead she was able to wrap herself around it, holding on. The River was cruel. It pressed her, harried her, battered at her. She could not hold on long.

The falls waited.

In a flash, Eanrin saw the only escape appear before his mind's eye. Only one instant to decide.

Then he was hauling himself over the side of the bridge farthest from
the falls. The River pulled, and Imraldera lost her grasp, disappearing once more into the foam.

“I hate water,” Eanrin growled. Then he jumped.

His fall seemed to take forever. But it ended suddenly as he plunged through roiling whiteness into black depths. The pull of the falls was incredible, and he thought he would never break the surface.

Yet Imraldera's head popped above the water just as his did. Her eyes locked with his in a moment of terror.

MINE!
the River roared.

Eanrin reached out and grabbed tight hold of Imraldera's shoulder. Then they were on the brink. Eanrin had just enough air in his lungs to scream,
“Etalpalli!”

Cozamaloti hauled them down.

A
VOICE RUSHES
in her ears. The voice of the River.

Pretty maid, be mine! Mine!

How silly. Rivers do not speak the tongues of men. But then, many incredible things have happened around her. No world exists beyond the Land. Yet when she left the mountain circle, had she not fled into this very forest? Animals cannot speak with intelligent words. Yet had she not conversed with the cat? Or perhaps it is one long nightmare.

Pretty maid, be mine!

The words tumble through her mind with the power of the waterfall. Then they transform, and it is no longer the River she hears snarling on the edge of her consciousness.

“You were always meant to be mine.”

“No,” she pleads, but no one hears her, for she has no voice. “No, please . . .”

“Wet! Wet! Wet!
Wet!
”

Imraldera opened her eyes and found that she lay on bone-dry stone,
her soaking hair heavy around her. So she wasn't dead. Every muscle in her body remained tensed for impact, but otherwise she could discern no hurts. Except she could not breathe.

When her lungs heaved, she rolled over and coughed up a fountain of river water. It darkened the red stone underneath her to deep brown. She kept on coughing and retching until she thought she must heave up all her insides. But at last she stopped and lay immobile, her face pressed into the dark patch of stone.

There was no waterfall, no River. Sucking in a great lungful of air, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and pulled back her dripping hair. Sniffling and sputtering still, she looked around for the poet. Being a cat, he had landed on all fours, of course, and was shaking his feline body with such violence she thought his legs might drop off. He paused to give his paw a lick, then shook again, dappling the stones with droplets. He looked like a large, orange, waterlogged rat, all his fluff plastered to him.

“Ugh.
Reeeeowl.
” He swore in cat and Faerie tongue and set to grooming his bedraggled tail. “My coat is ruined. My life is over.”

Imraldera, her breath beginning to come in more normal draughts, sat up slowly, drawing her knees beneath her. Her eyes could not have grown larger as she struggled to take in what she saw.

They were no longer in the Wood Between.

The towers of Etalpalli were blistered by heat on the outside.

Inside, they were full of palpable shadows.

Hri Sora sat in the darkness inside Omeztli, hiding from her own prisoner, that wretched Faerie maid who knew Amarok's name. Oh, how could she have let that slip? Trust the little gnat to pester and harp on it! Bite, bite, bite—she could worry even a dragon to death! Hri Sora would devour the creature if she dared.

But she could not risk Queen Bebo's wrath. Nor this one chance to find the Flowing Gold.

She clutched herself into a ball, rocking slowly back and forth. The shadows did not frighten her. They were shielding, so different from her
fire. In here, no one could see her shame. No one could see her without her wings.

Outside, the children were brawling.

Wait. That could not be true. It was only the sound of the Black Dogs chasing that intruder. She was in Etalpalli. She was in her own city, not back in that dark, dank little hut in the mortal world. She was queen here. Queen over nothing but the ghosts of her people, yet queen even so.

But she heard them just outside, scuffling. Their voices raised in battle against each other.

Hri Sora rocked herself, her mind slipping in and out of the present as the fire inside flickered, rose, diminished, and flickered again. Her dragon mind was precarious without the appropriate body in which to house it. Time itself could not hold her. She was simultaneously in Etalpalli and in . . .

. . . her prison.

Outside, the children snarl like the little beasts they are, flailing in the dirt, bashing each other's faces. They will come to her when they are through, full of cuts and bruises, expecting her sympathy.

The fire roils in her gut. How long has she suppressed it, here in this world full of mortal stench? How long has she believed herself one of these decaying creatures of dirt? For years now, the fire of her dragonhood has stirred so faintly that she hasn't noticed it. But now it grows. And with it grows her memory.

“I . . . I am no woman,” she gasps. Smoke escapes her mouth.

If only those children would stop their squabbling!

She sits in a hut high in the mountains. It is dark. She should light a fire. Her man will be home soon, expecting a meal. But her fire circle lies empty, the ashes cold. A fresh kill is piled against the outside wall, undressed, swarmed over with flies. She can smell it, the stink of mortality. Her throat constricts and she gags.

“I hate this world,” she murmurs.

Someone outside, one of her young, yelps in pain as its sibling catches it with a hard hit. Monsters! She hopes they'll eat each other up and never bother her again.

A groan escapes her lips, cut off abruptly by a sharp hiss. Her eyes bulge, and in the darkness of that mountain hut, they gleam like two bright coals. The pain, the fire in her gut—it threatens to explode.

The children fall silent. Drawing a deep breath, she smells the reason. Their father has returned, reeking from the hunt. She hears his heavy breathing as he approaches the hut, hears the soft scramble of her young as they hasten out of his way.

Then he is at the door.

“Woman!”

His voice is a growl.

She sees him silhouetted against the dusk. His shoulders are broad, his hands enormous as they grasp the doorway on either side as though to bar her passage. But she makes no move to escape her prison. She sits on the hut floor, in the dirt, in the dark, her teeth clenched.

“Woman, how can you let our brood tear into each other so?”

Her gaze rises to meet his.

The shadow of his form draws back in surprise. “What— No, swallow it back!”

The woman gasps as though breathing for the first time in years. Then she speaks:

“Swallow what back, Amarok? My words? Or my fire?”

Her jaw drops, and flames pour from her throat.

Fire lit up the walls of her tower, and Hri Sora was once more back in Etalpalli. Her flames hurled themselves against the stone and died ineffectually as they struck and found no hold. With difficulty she swallowed them. The last embers fell and sizzled upon the floor, leaving her standing once more in darkness but in possession of her true mind.

Or so she hoped. It was so difficult these days to tell past from present, waking from dreaming.

Etalpalli trembled.

Someone else had entered her city. Someone she had not herself opened the gate to. Which meant someone had actually dived over the edge of Cozamaloti Falls in its true form.

She snarled and felt her way to the wall, searching with hands and
feet until she found the narrow stairway. The Sky People had never used stairs when they lived in Etalpalli. Why would they? But they had built crude stairwells out of courtesy to foreign guests who were not blessed with wings. Hri Sora had always sneered at these. Now she found herself painfully grateful. Otherwise she, the city's queen, would have been unable to access her own tower.

Lady Gleamdren's voice was a canary's twitter coming from the birdcage in the middle of the rooftop. Hri Sora ignored her, striding to the edge of the roof and looking out. She saw the dark patch in her otherwise flame-bright city where the Black Dogs still pursued that luckless captain. This did not interest her. They would catch him eventually. They always did.

But who had dared cross her boundaries without her knowledge? Only one of great courage. Someone powerful.

She saw them, there at the edge of her city. She frowned.

“What are you looking at, Dragonwitch?” Gleamdren cried, her chirpy voice setting Hri Sora's teeth on edge. “Have they caught poor Glomar?”

“We have more visitors,” the dragon replied.

“Really?”
Gleamdren could not have been more delighted. “I
knew
they would come at last! How many? Oh, I do wish I had a mirror and some sort of comb. I'll be such a wreck by the time they get here! I can't wait to see their dear faces when they realize what peril I am in. Such a battle it will be! I do hope Eanrin has come along so he can put it all down in verse.”

“It is the poet,” said Hri Sora. Her eyes were mere slits as they pierced the distance. “I recognize him, for he came to me in the Wood and nearly saw through my glamour. By some miracle, that selfish rat has now entered my world. But who . . . who is that with him?”

“Might be Sir Danu. He pretends indifference, but I know he's quite mad about me. A girl always knows. Or it could be young Rogan, such a favorite—”

“It is a woman.”

“A 
what
?”

Hri Sora hissed, and smoke twirled in the air as it rose from her nostrils. She studied the maid crouched on the stone beside the poet.
She took in her clothing, her skin, her hair. And when the girl raised her face and seemed to look across the long miles, straight at Hri Sora, the dragon gasped.

The girl was from the Hidden Land.

“Silent woman!” Hri Sora snarled. Fire dripped from her tongue.

All was red stone around them. At first, Imraldera could have sworn she and the poet had landed inside a deep red canyon. But when she blinked the water out of her eyes, she saw that the rocks formed towering buildings, windows and doors and spires and balconies, all stretching to the seared sky as though they would touch the heavens. The stone blocks of which they were made fit so seamlessly together that each structure might have been chiseled from a single huge boulder. Carvings of feathers and wings in patterns more complex than she could discern wrapped around each tower and formed the banisters of stairways and balconies.

Imraldera had never seen anything like this place. Her mouth moved in a soundless prayer to some unknown god. Then, with a moan, she covered her face with her hands. The air was so hot that her wet skin and hair steamed. Her clothes shrank and shriveled as they dried, smelling almost as bad as the sodden cat.

“Well,” said Eanrin, “I must say I'm relieved.” He didn't look relieved. He looked a sight. Even when he took his man form, his appearance did not improve. His bright red cap had lost all shape, and his cloak and clothes looked uncomfortably damp in that sultry air. He fumbled with the buckles and let the cloak drop to the stone cobbles, all the while looking about him. His nose twitched as he sniffed. “I was uncertain what to expect at that gate. This place was once known as the City of Wings, and the Sky People lived here. They had wings sprouting from their shoulders, if you can believe it. Wings! Great, shimmering feathers. Or so I'm told. I never saw them. And naturally, being winged, they flew everywhere. I half wondered if Cozamaloti Gate would open into empty sky . . . which would have been the worse luck for us today. We'd have had a hard landing!”

Imraldera wiped her face, now wet with perspiration. The city, as far as she could see, was dry. Nothing had grown here for decades.

The poet-cat added his outer doublet to the discarded cape, leaving only a thin white shirt and breeches beneath. “All my beauty stripped,” he sighed with a forlorn shake of his head. “What has my life become? But all and more for the sake of my beloved! She owes me a new hat.”

He shook his hair one last time. It was nearly dry already and standing out like straw all around his face, which made him seem quite wild. But he smiled and strode over to Imraldera, offering his hand. “Up, up, my girl. Hymlumé spare me, but you smell a fright! We must away ere darkness falls. These streets will be perilous at night.”