Willow (17 page)

“Fishing village,” Madmartigan grunted.

“We can get a boat there,” Franjean said, hopping out of Willow’s pocket. “I’ll lead the way!”

“Franjean,” Willow asked, his brow creased with worry, “are you sure Fin Raziel’s there?”

“Certainly. You heard the legend! Cherlindrea told you.”

“But . . . but it was a long, long time ago. She may have died.”

“Died?
Impossible! What a stupid Peck you are! Of course she isn’t dead. Sorceresses never just
die
!”

“Never!” Rool said, looking at Willow as if he were an idiot.

“But what if . . .”

Franjean waved his arms. “No more! No more! I haven’t got time to answer a lot of stupid questions. Hurry up! You’ll see for yourself when we get there.”

They emerged into the misty dunes of a broad beach, crossed to the water’s edge, and followed the shore toward the village they had glimpsed from above.

It was very quiet. Uneasy, Willow held Elora close, trying to peer through the dazzling clouds of mist. At home on Ufgood Reach, morning was the noisiest time of the day. Fish jumped, dogs barked, cattle moaned to be milked and fed, and myriad birds greeted the dawn from high perches. But here there was no sound, except the distant rumble of the falls. No children shouted from the beach in front of the village. No oars creaked in the mist. No animals announced their presence.

It was too quiet. It was eerie.

Madmartigan stopped them when the first houses appeared. “Wait here,” he said softly. “I’ll be back.” He had tied the skirt into a loincloth. Naked except for this and his boots, he moved across the beach and vanished into the mist like a hunting animal, soundlessly, crouched low. They didn’t wait long. In a few minutes he was back, loping along the water’s edge. “Deserted,” he reported. “Every last house. A long time ago. Plates on the tables, weapons on the walls. See?” He displayed a stiff leather buckler and a rusty sword—no warrior’s weapon, but the sort of implement a farmer or a fisherman might keep. “There are some boats that might still float. Come on, we’ll have a look.” He led them into the center of the village.

Here fishermen once landed with their catch. Here the boats were hauled up, the trout cleaned, the nets strung on drying-posts in the breeze. Once the place had been filled with life; now, it was strangely still. The drying-posts vanished like a line of sentinels into the mist.

“Let’s try this one,” Madmartigan grunted. He kicked the side of what appeared to be a sound little boat. Unlike most of the others, which had been abandoned to the weather and had rotted, this one lay overturned on logs. Madmartigan flipped it right side up. Oars clattered inside. He skidded it down to the lake and launched it. Some water seeped in through the dried-out seams, but it floated. “In you go, Peck. Best of luck to you and the little one. As for these wretched brownies . . .”

“Glad to be rid of you,” Franjean grumbled.

“You eat too much,” Rool said, scrambling into the prow of the boat. “And you make too much noise!”

Willow stood in the sand, dismayed. “But you’re not coming
with
us?”

Madmartigan laughed and shook his head. “No, little Peck. You’re safely here, and this Fin Raziel, this sorceress, will look after you.” He peered into the mist, where the first sun was touching the tree-tops on Fin Raziel’s island, and he shook his head again. “Sorcerers, enchantresses, magic wands . . . No, my friend, I’m a warrior, and what should a warrior do with all of that? You deal with Bavmorda in your way, and I’ll deal with her in mine.” He patted the sword. “Hop in, now, and I’ll push you off.” He touched the child’s head as Willow climbed over the gunwale, and then he sent the boat gliding out onto the mirror surface of the lake. He stood a moment with his fists on his hips. Then waving farewell, he strode up among the huts. Soon he was lost in the mist.

“I’m going to miss him,” Franjean said.

“Me too,” Rool said.

“Teasing a Peck just isn’t the same as insuiting a Daikini!”

Willow unslung the papoose-basket and settled Elora safely on his lap. As the boat drifted farther out he fitted the oars into their locks. The lake was still quite shallow, and both brownies, Rool in the stern and Franjean in the bow, were gazing down through the limpid water at strange markings on the bottom. So preoccupied were they, and so busy was Willow struggling with the oversized oars, that none of them noticed a young boy appear suddenly out of the lake.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked.

Both brownies vanished in a flash, under the seats. Willow dropped the oars and reached for Elora. The boy was smiling radiantly. He was fair, and tanned, and blue-eyed. He stood waist-deep in the lake, his palms brushing its surface.

“We’re just borrowing this boat,” Willow said. “To row out to the island. We’ll return it. There was no one home. We thought . . .”

“That island’s cursed, didn’t you know?” The boy kept smiling, blue eyes fixed on Willow. He brushed little ripples toward them.

“Cursed?” Franjean’s head appeared above the gunwale. “The legend says nothing about a curse.”

The boy laughed innocently. “Oh yes. All this lake is cursed. Queen Bavmorda’s powers control the elements here. Venture on it at your peril!”

“Fin Raziel . . .” Willow began, but the boy was gone. Only a little whirlpool remained where he had been, sucking the ripples back into its vortex.

They stared at this whirlpool. They stared at the island. Except for the very tops of its trees it was still dark and misty, although the rest of the lake was bathed in sun.

“Odd,” Franjean said. “Odd boy.”

“I don’t think Elora should go out there,” Willow said.

“I don’t think
we
should go out there,” said Rool. “Aha! Idea!” Franjean held up a finger. “Of course
you
should go, Peck.”

“Of course,” Rool agreed.

“That’s your mission, after all, to deliver Cherlindrea’s wand to Fin Raziel. But you’re right about the child. Crossing the lake might be, uh, rough.”

“Winds,” Rool said, nodding.

“Waves. So leave her with Rool and me. Back there. On shore. In one of those huts.”

“You’ll guard her?”

“With our lives! Right, Rool?”

“Right!”

Reluctantly, Willow rowed the small craft back to the beach and carried Elora into the nearest hut with a sound roof. “Sleep well,” he said, kissing her. “I won’t be long, and they’ve promised to look after you.” He gave Franjean a small bladder of the fox milk he had gathered the night before. “Give her this if she wakes up, and keep her warm.”

“Of course.”

“And dry.”

“Certainly.”

“And
safe.”

Franjean peered out the door, up and down the empty beach. “Nobody! Deserted! What can happen in the time you row out there and back? Off with you! Stop your silly Peck fretting.”

So, Willow rowed alone to the island. The lake had changed. It was no longer silvery, no longer clear and sparkling. It had become opaque, darkening to the color of lead. And it had thickened, too. It dragged on the boat, and when Willow dipped his oars they got so heavy he could hardly lift them to pull again. The island, which had seemed so close to the shore, now receded as he approached.

It was slow, hard rowing, and by the time the prow ground into the gravel of the island beach, Willow was exhausted. Worse, he was frightened. The morning had grown ominously black during his crossing. Rumbling thunderheads moved in from the north, and strange winds came scudding down the valley, swirling clouds of sand around the mainland beach. He could no longer see the hut where he had left Elora with the brownies. Soon, he could no longer see even the mainland.

The island was eerily still.

Willow scrambled up the bank and laid his hand right on the face of a brown skull.

He screamed, lurching back. “Fin Raziel! Where are you? Come out, please! Help us!”

The black clouds closed down around the island. A flock of dark birds swooped low, hard eyes all fixed on Willow.

“Please! Fin Raziel!”

“Go home! Get away! Are you
mad
?”

He spun around. He had backed against the trunk of a large tree, and the voice came from overhead. A furry creature hung there by its tail, snarling. It had a skinny tail, black legs, and squirrellike claws. It was alert, intelligent, and energized.

“Are you mad?” it asked again. “Who are you?”

“I-I’m Willow Ufgood, and I’m here to find Fin Raziel, the great sorceress.”

“That’s me! I’m Raziel!”

“What? No! It can’t be true!”

“It
is
true. It is!” Chattering, the creature swung in furious little circles. “Bavmorda transformed me! First she imprisoned me on this island and then in this wretched body.”

“But the legend didn’t tell . . .”

“
I
can’t be responsible for the legend! Well, why have you come here? Why have you risked your life?”

“Because of this,” Willow said, drawing out the wand, which glowed and shimmered in the growing darkness. “From Cherlindrea.”

With a wild shriek the little creature leaped off the tree onto Willow’s chest, her claws digging through his shirt and into his flesh. “Cherlindrea! Then the prophecy has come true? The Empress Elora has been born?”

“Yes. She’s here. On the shore. And she needs you, Fin Raziel.”

“Here!”
The little creature howled a bitter cry of rage and fear. She scrambled up onto Willow’s shoulder and peered toward the shore, now invisible behind the clouds and spray of the wind-lashed lake. “Hide the wand! Bavmorda knows she’s here! She’ll destroy you if she can, and the child! Hurry! Into the boat! We must get off this island and into shore!”

“But the lake! The storm!” Willow shouted over the howling wind.

“Don’t think! Trust me! Into the boat, quick!”

She scampered across the shore and into the little craft, one paw beckoning Willow to hurry. He launched them out into the maelstrom. “Row for your life, Willow Ufgood! Row for the Empress!”

With all his might, the little Nelwyn strained toward shore. “Oh Mims,” he whimpered. “Ranon. Oh, Kiaya!” If he had had a free hand he would have taken his wife’s braid from his pocket and pressed it to his lips, for he was certain he was doomed. Never, never would he cross that lashing strait and reach the mainland safely. Never again would he see his beloved family.

“Kill him!” Fin Raziel shrieked suddenly. “Kill him!”

“What?” They were in the middle of the lake, driven toward the falls by winds and towering waves. The mainland was invisible, the island had vanished.

“Kill him!” Fin Raziel screamed again, pointing at the prow of the little boat.

Willow turned.

The boy he had seen earlier, in the shallow water at the village, was climbing over the gunwale. He was as radiant and as innocent-looking as ever, his face creased in a broad smile, his flaxen hair windblown.

“What? But he’s a child!”

“No, no!” Raziel shrieked. “He’s no child! Look!”

The boy now had one foot in the boat, but it was not a foot. It was a webbed fin. And although he was still smiling, the smile revealed sharklike teeth. His innocent eyes had reddened with the lust for blood.

Willow swung an oar and jabbed it as hard as he could into the middle of this creature. Laughing, it flipped into the churning lake, bobbed porpoiselike, and vanished.

“Too late!” Fin Raziel wailed, her voice tiny in the roar of the wind.

Back the creature came! He was huge, now. His furry back foamed through the troughs of the waves. His eyes glowed red out of the depths of the lake. His jaws with their rows of glittering teeth, yawning open to engulf the boat, loosed a gagging stench of death and decay. Willow choked, tumbling back, seeing the front half of the boat vanish into the creature’s maw. He had time only for one solid crack with the oar on the thing’s snout, and then he was overboard and sinking, his legs tangled in the old fishnet and rope that bound him to the monster. So fast was the creature’s downward rush that Willow’s lungs were bursting before he found his knife and slashed himself free of the beast.

He bobbed through the surface like a cork, sputtering and gasping. Huge waves rolled him over. Clinging to the wreckage of the boat, Fin Raziel shrieked unintelligible warnings, but Willow was too far gone to hear her properly. In fact, he heard nothing. All had gone silent for him. In silence the great breakers rolled over him. In silence the maw of the returning monster yawned open to gulp him down. And in silence, with the last of his meager strength, Willow groped into his pocket, fumbled out one of the magic acorns, and threw it.

No force lay behind that throw. Had the monster not been rushing forward, the acorn would have fallen short. As it was, it looped up and dropped straight down his gullet.

Sheer momentum carried the beast over Willow and a few feet farther. But the horrible hairy scales that brushed against the Nelwyn were not soft now, but rock-hard. The dreadful red eye was fixed forever in gemlike brilliance, and the jaws with their quartzite teeth would yawn through eternity. The acorn had done its work.

Bavmorda’s monstrous guardian had been turned to solid stone. And like a stone he sank.

“Willow!” Fin Raziel was crying. “Hold on!” He heard her voice like a glimmer of light in darkness. Reflexes kept him alive, kept him afloat, kept him paddling while breakers foamed over him. Reflexes opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, and drove him forward with his last energy to clutch the end of the oar shoved out from the ruined boat. Clinging to that oar and to the sound of Raziel’s voice, Willow lost consciousness.

He was not aware when the wind fell, when the waves subsided and the sky cleared. He was not aware when the hulk of the little boat to which he and Fin Raziel clung was drawn away from the precipice of the falls and borne on friendly currents to the beach, or when Franjean and Rool hurried anxiously down to drag him up on shore.

The first thing Willow Ufgood knew after his defeat of the monster was the laughter of Elora and the delighted clapping of her small hands.

“I don’t know why she’s so happy,” Franjean grumbled. “You just ruined a boat and nearly killed yourself. You didn’t even bring Fin Raziel!”