The Legend Begins (11 page)

“Ah, but humans have cut themselves from the flow and so they see their dying as an end. That makes them want to destroy anything that will live longer than they do, or which reminds them that they will die. But now look, the dream goes into the world.”

A thick green vapor was rising from the pool and coiling into the air to mingle with the murk. Very slowly, brown gave way to green and the air went from being thick and dry to being as damp and sweetly scented as the wilderness after a spring shower. Little Fur sent her own longing into it just as she sent her mind inside trees, and she had the strange sensation of being unraveled into the mist.

Then it was over.

Little Fur felt that she ought to feel triumphant, but instead she felt strangely sad.

The tree guardian's eyes were kind. “You are weary, Halfling, for you sent your own song into the dream I brewed, and who knows what that will mean.”

Little Fur struggled to open eyes that had closed without her quite knowing it had happened, but when she managed it, she could see neither the tree guardian nor the pool. All of the world had become a shifting green fog-cat, winding itself about her.

“Sleep, Halfling,” the tree guardian whispered. “Dream your dearest desire, and I will dream it with you.”

CHAPTER 16

Seeds

Little Fur dreamed that she was walking over hills and valleys of mist. Ginger paced at her side, and Crow flew overhead. Then all at once she was alone and hurrying down the rabbit track winding into the hollow where the Old Ones stood. When she was among them at last, her heart gave a great salmon-leap of gladness. The seven great trees had never looked more lovely to her than in that moment, all silver-sheened in the tender pink light of the sun's awakening, their leaves quivering in a breeze so faint that Little Fur could not feel it.

Then, to her everlasting delight,
the trees began to sing to her.

Little Fur woke to the eye of the sun on her face and stirred at the unmistakable scent of fresh mushrooms.

“See, I
told
you it would wake her,” Brownie said.

“Sun waking her,” Crow snapped.

Little Fur smiled inwardly at their familiar squabbling and opened her eyes. She was lying in the broken leaf shade at the edge of the shadow cast by the Old Ones, and it was very early in the morning. She sat up and Crow gave a startled scream.

“Are you all right?” Brownie demanded anxiously.

Little Fur touched his velvet muzzle softly. “Oh, Brownie, I am so glad to be back.”

“But how we coming back? That is what Crow is wondering,” Crow said.

Little Fur frowned. “Did I smell mushrooms?”

“Now I know you are all right,” Brownie declared, neighing his laughter. “Eat, and then you must tell us what happened because I should go back to my field very soon.”

Little Fur ate, wondering
how
to explain what she hardly understood herself. Had there really been a strange tree creature in the chasm that had brewed a green mist of dreams to stop the tree burners? Wasn't it just a story she had told herself? And how had she returned to the wilderness with Crow?

“Where are Ginger and Sly?” she asked.

“Ginger was here with you and Crow when I came, but not Sly,” Brownie said. “Ginger went to look for her. But what happened? Did you find a great power in the chasm?”

“I . . . I think so, but it is hard to remember.”

“What was the power?” Brownie asked eagerly. “Was it a great elf or a dragon?”

“It was . . . well, it looked like a tree, but it said it was a tree guardian and seemed to think I ought to know what that was. I asked it to help us and it sent a dream to all the humans who were sleeping, showing them who the tree burners were.” Little Fur stopped because what had happened in the chasm seemed all at once too rare and strange to talk about.

“That's wonderful!” Brownie cried, and he pranced and reared, kicking up his hooves in delight. “My human said the other humans want very badly to catch the tree killers, but they could never figure out who they were. Now they will be able to catch them and stop them.”

“Dream,” Crow said disparagingly. “Will dream be enough to making humans punishing tree burners?”

“The tree guardian's dreams are not like our dreams, Crow,” Little Fur said. “They are stronger. I think that's how we got here, you and Ginger and I. The tree guardian told me to dream my heart's desire and it would dream with me. So I dreamed of us all coming back here. I don't know why Sly didn't come. Maybe she didn't want to.”

There was much to do that day after Brownie had gone, for there were many birds and small creatures waiting for Little Fur to heal them. One poor sparrow had a crushed wing and would never fly again, and there was a baby bat whose paw had been broken. Each creature that she tended had heard of her quest, so that Little Fur found herself delayed by having to answer countless questions. In the end it was Crow who took to telling their story, and Little Fur hid a smile as the tale became more and more fantastical and impossible with each retelling.

When the sun closed its eye at last and the line of patients ended, Little Fur left on the pretext of gathering herbs to replenish her stores. Crow was telling a crowd of small animals how he had battled a fierce mad dog who lived in a web, like a spider. In truth, Little Fur wanted a moment alone. It seemed to her that she had hardly had a chance to take in the strangeness of what had happened, and maybe a part of her would always be wanting quiet moments to wonder at it.

She climbed up past the thicket and sat on the hillside facing the human high houses, thinking of what the Sett Owl had said about the desire of the Troll King to destroy the earth spirit. He would gnash his teeth in fury when he understood that his human servants had been thwarted. But soon his fury would turn cold and deadly, and he would begin to think of other ways to use humans against the earth spirit.

The Sett Owl had said she was supposed to stop the Troll King, and all at once she understood why she did not feel as happy as Brownie: because her quest to save the earth spirit was not over. How could it ever be over while the Troll King lived? She had won an important battle, but a war was unfolding, and it seemed to Little Fur that the war would be played out in the world of humans.
They
were the battleground and the trolls would never stop trying to claim them.

So someone must work to claim them for the earth spirit. The dream of the tree guardian might have helped some of them to resist their darkness, and perhaps some of them had woken with a longing to be part of the flow of life again. But many of them would wake and forget.

Little Fur had vowed in the moments after waking that morning never to leave the wilderness again, but she realized now that this was a promise she could not keep. She must go out of the wilderness into the human city as often as she could and plant seeds wherever there was earth that could nourish them, for each seed that grew would summon the earth spirit until the flow was strong enough to encompass humans.

She was small, but sometimes small things could do what greater creatures could not.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Suzanne Wilson, who began editing
Little Fur
with me; Nan McNab, who stepped into the breach to finish it so beautifully; and Janet Raunjak, who was so sweetly there every step of the way.

I would also like to offer heartfelt thanks to the artists who helped this decided non-artist: my partner, Jan; my brother, Ken; Peter Cross; Ann James; and most of all, Jirí Tibor Novák, whose own art so inspires me, and who gave so generously of time, technical advice and even equipment. Without these real artists, I would never have managed to put Little Fur onto the page. I also want to thank Marina Messiha, who so beautifully art-directed this book.

Additionally, I want to thank all of the above and others—fellow writers, friends and, in the case of Tibby, children of friends—who so ably defended
Little Fur
from my anxieties and despair.

And, as ever, I must thank the cafés and their generous owners and staff, who put up with me sitting for hours over coffee, working. I wrote
Little Fur
in Cafe 145, The Sea Grape and The Bay Leaf, all in Apollo Bay, and in the Contemporary Art Museum café in Prague.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isobelle Carmody began the first of her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while she was still in high school, and worked on it while completing a bachelor of arts and then a journalism cadetship. The series and her short stories have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia.

She has written many award-winning short stories and books for young people.
The Gathering
was a joint winner of the 1993 CBC Book of the Year Award and the 1994 Children's Peace Literature Award.
Billy Thunder and the Night Gate
(published as
Night Gate
in the United States) was short-listed for the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature in the 2001 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Isobelle divides her time between her homes in Australia and the Czech Republic.

ALSO BY ISOBELLE CARMODY

Night Gate

Winter Door

The Obernewtyn Chronicles

Obernewtyn

The Farseekers

Ashling

The Keeping Place