The Tree of Water (38 page)

Any more than we could.

A word formed in Ven's head. He was not certain if the thought was his own, or if the great tree had put it there with its pounding thrum. Either way, he wanted to give voice to it in his brain.

“Frothta,” he whispered.

The song he had been hearing for so long echoed in agreement, ringing through his spirit.

“We've found her,” he said to the others.

“We sure have,” said Char in awe.

Coreon said nothing. He just stared above him, then pointed at the base of the tree.

Then suddenly, like a rock falling out of the sky and smacking my head, I remembered something.

The drawing I had seen of Sagia, the oldest of the World Trees, was in a book of pictures that all had one thing in common.

Coiled around the giant trunk, almost invisible against the gleaming bark, was a dragon. Just as Lancel had seemed enormous after the tiny Spicegar, this beast was many times the size of Lancel, who by comparison would have seemed like floating weeds. Ven knew immediately that the creature was female. Her scales were all shades and hues of blue and green, like the colors that were seen in the water of the sea, with frosty white tips that looked like sea foam. Her body was filmy, almost clear, like their spirit forms, but her eyes glowed intensely with a clear, almost unnatural light as intense as that of the air stones, only vastly brighter. The shape of her body was fluid, and her enormous head was crowned with ridges where horns might have been, scalloped like the waves of the sea.

The giant beast rose up and looked over the edge of the mountain at the three boys below. As she did, she resembled a great wave rising to a crest before it crashed to shore.

“Welcome,” she said. Her voice vibrated in their heads, ringing with a deep and beautiful music that had a comfortable, reassuring sound, a little like the patter of steady rain on a roof in the night. “I imagine it feels like it has taken you a long time to get here.”

Ven and the other boys could only nod in response.

“My name is Dyancynos,” said the beast. “I bid you welcome, Char and Coreon. It has been a very long time, even by my measure, since anyone of your kinds have ridden a diving bell to the bottom of the sea.” Her vast head swiveled, and she looked directly at Ven.

“As for you, Ven Polypheme, a special welcome is due. You are the first son of Earth ever to come into the Deep—and certainly the only one to live. A few of your race have fallen from ships or met their ends in the Sunlit Realm, but none have ever ventured past where the light ends—especially on purpose.”

“You know—how we came here?” Ven asked.

The massive beast's eyes blinked, and her jawline seemed to expanded into a large smile.

“Anything the sea touches is known to me, Ven Polypheme. I heard your name in the Sunlit Realm when you first thrummed it. I had hoped you would survive until I could come to know more about you. We are distantly related, after all.”

Ven almost swallowed his tongue. “We
are
?”

The beast chuckled, a merry sound that thrummed through the moving water at the base of the Tree.

“Dragons and Nain are both children of the Earth,” she said.

“Oh.”

“And your coming was foretold long ago.”

“It was?”

“Of course, we didn't know what your name would be, or anything about you. But the prophecy said that one day a son of Earth would come to the depths, as impossible a task as that seemed.”

Ven's head was ringing. “An impossible task? Foretold?”

A huge spray of bubbles rolled out of the great beast's nostrils. Ven was fairly certain that she was chuckling.

“Not all of Time runs forward, Ven Polypheme. There are some that see it in reverse—that have lived in the Future and are growing younger as the rest of the world ages. Those that have been to the Future often speak of it in riddles, because their way of seeing the world is topsy-turvy to us. So your coming here must have been a very important event, because the sages of the Future spoke of it.”

“Why—why would there be a riddle about my coming here?”

The dragon's face lost its wide smile, and grew solemn.

“To give us hope,” she said.

“How—what do I have to do with that?”

The dragon's massive eyes narrowed. The light from them hit Ven like a shining beacon, making him squint from the brightness.

“Why do
you
think you came here—to the depths of the sea?”

Ven swallowed hard. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I've been trying to learn the answer to that from the beginning of my journey. Why—why was it foretold that a Nain would come here?”

Dyancynos watched him for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and serious.

“The sea needs a miracle—and the only way for it to happen was to have a Child of Earth come to the depths, where all five elements, all of the Five Gifts of the Creator, could be present at the same time.”

Ven's head was throbbing so hard he could barely form thoughts to thrum in response.

“The
sea
needs a miracle? How can that be?” He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the vibrations of the tree, and the dragon, the molten bubbles of lava, the explosions of fireworks, and the pressure of the sea all pressed against his spirit form so hard that he felt it might explode and vanish. “That's why I came here, to the Trenches. But I was looking for my own miracle. I am trying to save the life of my friend.”

“I can understand that,” Dyancynos said. “I, too, am trying to save the life of my friend.”

“Who is your friend?”

The dragon exhaled a great stream of bubbles.

“Frothta. The Tree of Water is dying, Ven. And when she dies—all the magic of the sea will die with her.”

 

41

The Fulfillment of Most of Two Prophecies

At the moment the dragon's words sounded in my head, I had the distinct feeling that my brain was drowning.

My thoughts had been overwhelmed ever since I came into the sea, but those words of thrum were like a great tidal wave blasting through what little awareness I had left. I could only blink and stare at the towering tree above me, humming and alive with rings of swimming fish, dolphins, and whales, its arms dancing in the heavy drift at the bottom of the world.

Dying.

Only two thoughts were able to form.

The first was the unsuccessful attempt to imagine what Frothta would have looked like in health, if she was this magnificent in dying.

The second, and far more terrifying, one was the idea that I could do anything about it.

Because in the deepest part of my heart, I had no clue about how to help save her.

 

“What—what do I have to do?” Ven's thrum stammered. His thoughts echoed extremely slowly, between the pressure and his fear. “I don't know how to heal the Tree of Water. I can't even imagine how to try.”

The dragon's gigantic body stretched and uncoiled a little, sending gusts of sand and starfish swirling upward. “You've already done it—you came.”

“That's—that's it? That's all I had to do?”

A throaty laugh vibrated through the depths.

“That's all? Look what it has cost you to come here, Ven Polypheme. You have come close to meeting Death many times on your journey. And, worse, you have had to watch your friends do so—death of their bodies
and
of their souls.” Her thrum grew solemn. “Even now, you still are facing that.” She nodded, and Ven felt a gentle tap of pressure on his hand.

He opened his hand and looked at Amariel's red cap of woven pearls.

It had shrunk to nothing more than ashes. A gust in the heavy drift lifted them, and before he could catch them, carried them away among the floating lava bubbles. He was able to seize just one small pearl as the rest of the cap disintegrated.

Ven gasped. His mouth opened, and the bitter water of the Deep started to swell in.

The dragon's eyes gleamed a little brighter. The water in his mouth vanished, and his teeth banged shut.

“Can—can you fix it?” he thought desperately to Dyancynos. “Can you—make it whole again? Get the pieces back?”

The dragon shook her massive head solemnly, or at least to Ven it seemed she did.

“The merrow's cap is gone, Ven Polypheme,” she said. “Gone, and not able to be replaced.”

Ven felt his throat start to close. He turned to Char, who looked back at him. The sadness in his best friend's eyes was visible, even in the dark water.

He glanced over at Coreon, but the Lirin-mer boy was still staring at the revolving rings of fish and sea creatures swimming through the arms of the Tree of Water.

“So—she is dead?” Ven asked. “Amariel is—
dead
?” His thrum choked on the word.

The dragon's thrum grew even more solemn.

“She may be—it is
very
likely. But I cannot tell for certain, because it seems you left her within the diving bell—so at the moment, the sea is not touching her. I can only see what the sea touches.”

“What do I have to do?” Ven asked desperately. “What do I have to do to make your miracle, and mine, happen?”

“Well, the prophecy given to me by the sages of the Future has been fulfilled—a son of Earth has come in the time of Frothta's dying. But I do not think it will matter, unless you are able to fulfill the destiny that was spelled out for you. What was the prophecy you were given, Son of Earth?”

He thought back to the last time he had seen the light of the sun below the surface of the ocean, to the magically colorful Summer Festival. Until he had seen the glowing lava of the seafloor, the fireworks, and Frothta herself, he had thought the Festival grounds to be the most amazing thing he had seen beneath the waves. He remembered the Epona's words, even as she had spoken them in her flighty, singsong voice. He closed his eyes and thought them to Dyancynos.

“Wanderer, out of place in the drift,

This riddle is to you a gift.

Free the captive who stays by choice

Sing a hymn without your voice

Find the souls forgotten by Time

Believe the view is worth the climb.

Follow the path without using your eyes

Five gifts the price to spare one who dies

Until the stars shine in the depths of the sea

Home again you will never be.”

The dragon looked thoughtful.

“I'm not certain that prophecy applies to either of our needed miracles, Son of Earth,” she said sadly. “It really only tells you what you need to do to return home.”

Ven shook his head against the pressure of the heavy drift.

“I'm not going home,” he said softly.

Both Char and Coreon turned to him in shock. The same word thrummed forth from them both.

“What?”

“I mean it,” Ven said. “I am not leaving. If Amariel is dead, if the Tree of Water is dying, and I cannot save either one of them, I have no need of going back.”

“Why?” Char's thrum demanded. It was not angry, just weak and resigned.

“Because nothing I do makes any difference,” Ven said. “What's the point in returning to the Crossroads Inn—to let the Thief Queen find me? I've—we've—come all this way, through all these trials, and it was all for nothing.” He pointed to the ancient tree towering above him. “Is she any better, Dyancynos? Has she stopped dying, just because I am here?”

The dragon exhaled, a long, slow stream of fizzy bubbles that took on the color of glowing lava.

“No,” she said.

“See?” Ven's thoughts were growing so heavy that he could barely thrum. “I am done,” he said to Char and Coreon. “You two, go back now, while you can. Find the diving bell, get your bodies back, and go home—”

“Stop it, Ven,” Char said. “You know better than that by now. If you're really stayin', then I'm stayin', too.”

“Let's look at the prophecy again,” said Coreon. “It seems to me we've accomplished most of the things on your list. I'm not sure about the captive who stays by choice—”

“Maybe it was one o' those ghost spirity things in the diving bells,” Char suggested. “They chose to come down in those cages into the Deep.”

“Perhaps,” said Coreon. “But it seems to me the one you're really missing is that ‘Five gifts the price to spare one who dies' part. I know you have at least two of the Five Gifts of the Creator that Lancel told us about, Water,
obviously
, and Earth, meaning you. But what about the other three?”

“Well, there's Fire all around us,” Char said. He pointed to the rivers of lava flowing brightly over the seafloor and the bubbles floating above their heads.

“What about Air?” Coreon asked.

Char's brow furrowed. “Goodness knows there's none o' that down here.” A moment later his eyes stretched wide in wonder. “Wait—o' course there is!” He put his hand into his filmy pocket and drew out the air stone, the only solid thing on his spirit form. It gleamed in the darkness, forming a circle of blue light around them all.

The greens of Coreon's eyes glowed brightly.

“That's it—that's it! Now all we need is starlight—Ether—the first of the Five Gifts.”

Char released the bubble of elemental air, keeping his hand above it. It floated upward, glowing brightly, and hung without moving in the thick water.

“That's gonna be a bit harder,” he said reluctantly.

“No, it's not,” Ven said. His thrum seemed to be speaking only to himself. “No—it's been here all the time.”