“Nay, little friend, you have not lost my crown. I have lost it. For to effect our escape, it was necessary to throw it to Slysyth. He was more than satisfied with the exchange. But never mind, what has been lost can again be found. And indeed, Slysyth does not know what a prize he has lost. For like the animal he is, he does not see farther than the ground. Before I escaped this isle, no one had known of its existence and we could but guess at what had become of our ships lost at sea. My own father, King L’iss himself, lies imprisoned on that isle in a vermilion shell. And one day soon I shall find a means to rescue him. Till then, let us row, you and I, to my land, which lies not far from here, I think. And then my own sailors shall bring you home again.”
“But I cannot go home as yet,” cried Lann.
“What, so young and yet parted from your so-wise mother by your own choosing?” asked Queen Ail’issa. “In our land it is not ever so.”
And so it was that Lann told her his tale, of his mother and his grandfather, of the overheard spell and the Thrittem pledge. And when he was done, Ail’issa looked quite thoughtful.
“My sailors have seen the seventeen seas and all the lands hereabout. If there is such a pool that from a salt sea springs, they shall know of it or they shall find it. And I shall save your grandfather as you have saved me.”
So they set to rowing with their hands and came, after three more days, hungry and thirsty and half dead from the sun, to the coast of the land of Iss.
11. The Crystal Pool
THE LAND OF ISS was strange and beautiful in Lann’s eyes. For though in Solatia much was owed to the sea, in Iss the sea itself seemed to have invaded the land. Houses were built of green bricks made of seaweed, with mosses lining the cracks. Sea buds and sea blossoms were on every shelf. Fish was served at each meal. And the tall green-skinned women and their tall green-skinned men spent fully half their lives in the sea, swimming or diving for pearls or sailing far off alone or in pairs in their turtleshell boats.
Lann had not been there half a year than he began to worry about his vow, and to grow weary of the endless tales the sea-colored Issians told. For they were a race devoted to long stories, the points of which were most often lost on the lad.
At first Lann had been delighted with the strange new ways of the seafolk and had hoped to find the crystal pool in one of their tales. But now he grew despondent. It was as if a scant two seasons had aged him a hundred years.
By guestrite, Lann had been forced each day to sit the morning by Ail’issa’s side and listen to the returning sailors spin out their yarns over large draughts of brine-flavored wine. The wine was sour to Lann’s taste, and so, at last, were the tales. And if the women sailors were more or less boring than the men, Lann could not tell, for they had become the same to him.
“My Lady Ail’issa,” Lann said at last one morn when another Issian sailor had been about to begin his tale, “I do not mean disrespect to your folk. But I have been here both summer and fall, and still have not begun my search for the crystal pool. I do not see the point of sitting here and telling tales and taking no action at all.”
Ail’issa laughed and clapped her hands then, and the sailor, who had been standing, sat before them, his legs folded under him, waiting for the signal to begin.
“My young friend Lann,” she replied, “if there is one thing my people know, it is the long patience of the sea. The sea rolls in each day and rolls out each night and never wearies of this, its ancient role. Perhaps this is the difference between your people and mine. But I think it is rather the difference between the young and the old. You must learn that to hurry is not necessarily to hasten.”
“But to do nothing at all is neither,” complained Lann. “And now I have less than half a year to save my grandfather.”
“Do you think that what we do here is nothing?” asked Ail’issa. Her voice was not hard or threatening, indeed there was a teasing laugh in it.
Lann nodded miserably. Then he softened his words. “At least, I do not see the use of it.”
“My sailors have been the world over,” Ail’issa said. “Or at least the world where it is touched by the sea. And each man returns with knowledge which, though it may seem unworthy to your mind, serves to enlarge our books. For with such tales, the books of knowledge are made larger and the world is made smaller. And with each new friend found, the world is brought home.”
Lann thought about what she said. Then at last he spoke. “I think you are as wise as my mother,” he said.
“Well, perhaps we are both wise in different ways.” And she signaled for the man to speak.
This sailor was more brown than green, which Lann knew was a sign of age. His sea-green eyes were slightly faded, as when the sea is seen through fog. He was smaller than most Issians Lann had met, but wiry and looked very strong.
“My queen, I am Syss, of the Cyth clan. My trip is of little worth. I sailed many days to the south and east of here in a single boat. There I found a group of islands strung out like broken pearls on a chain. Of the other isles, cruised by fishermen and blasted by the sun, I have nothing to say. But of one, where I stayed a day and a night, I speak.
“This isle was small, but a droplet in the sea. Oval in shape, it had a deep groove in one side that served as a cove. And naught was on it but a copse of trees and a pool. Yet you said, be ware of pools. So I stayed.
“Of the pool, know this, it is crystal and the water pure. No sea fish or sea creature can live in it. Yet by its very side lie the bones of a giant fish. Yet no fish at all that I can tell, rather a great fishtail. There is a golden bird that circles the pool and drinks from it but once a day. And when it is finished drinking, it sings a song that goes like this.” And here Syss pursed his lips and let out a call that sounded like “Sia, sia, sia, sia.” Lann and Ail’issa and then Syss himself set to laughing so hard that it was fully a minute till they recovered.
Syss looked serious again and ended, “My queen, it seemed then and now of little worth. Yet because of the pool, so crystal and pure, I hurried back to tell of it instead of going on.”
“You did well, my friend,” said Ail’issa. “And now you may go.”
“Wait!” cried Lann. “This golden bird. Was it, perchance a Gard-lann, a king-lark?”
“Such a bird I have never seen,” said Syss. “What is a lark? I know naught of birds and what they be called elsewhere. Ask me of the sea.”
“But if this is perhaps a lark, and a golden one, then it is perhaps the Gard-lann after which I was named,” said the lad excitedly. He turned to the queen. “Dear Ail’issa, surely there cannot be another such in the world. And if this crystal pool has a fishtail by, perhaps it is from that salt-sea fish that it springs.”
“Nay, little man,” said Syss. “The pool does not spring from the tail. Of that I am sure. They lie close together. That is all.”
“But perhaps…” began Lann.
“There are too many perhapses in this tale,” said Ail’issa. “You must be patient and it will come aright. Or if it does not, then it was not meant to be.”
“You are wise, my royal friend,” said Lann, “but my mother is wise, too. And she has oft repeated to me a Solatian saying, ‘There is a time of dreaming and a time of doing.’ That time, I think, has come. Sailor Syss, show me the way to this isle.”
Syss looked questioningly at the queen.
“Show him,” she commanded. “A man must do as he will.”
And so Lann and Syss got in one of the turtleshell boats, and Syss rigged it with a sail. They packed plenty of provisions for the trip and set off by the stars, for so it was done in the land of Iss. And within a large number of days, they came close by an isle that seemed but a droplet in the sea.
“That, young master, is the isle,” said Syss.
“But,” said Lann, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice, “I know that isle. It is the Outermost Isle, I am sure.” He looked closely at the small island, then off a short distance at a group
of three islands nearly touching one another. Farther on was a ridge of mountainous isles. And farther still, yet another group. And then a long, sweeping coast.
“Does it matter?” said the sailor. “To recognize something is not necessarily to know it. And often what we seek for far away has always been close at hand. It is only distance that lends perspective.”
Lann sighed and nodded then, and climbed out of the turtle boat. Syss would have come with him, but Lann signaled him to stay and waded ashore alone. “I must do this myself,” he called over his shoulder.
So Lann walked along the strand that sparkled with familiar iridescent shells. Presently he came to a small pool. He looked down into its depths and could see all the way to the bottom.
Lann plunged his hand into the pool and brought the water to his lips. It was as cold and pure as Syss had said. Lann drank it greedily. Then he walked around the side of the pool and there, as the sailor had told, was a giant fishtail, its scales still shimmering in the light of the sun and making rainbows on the sand. Lann bent down to pick it up and as he touched it, it crumpled into dust. At that very moment, a golden bird came out of the trees and flew once around Lann’s head singing, “Sia, sia, sia.” Then it settled on his shoulder and would not fly off again, even when he stood up.
“I do not know how this pool came here,” Lann said aloud, “except that it has somewhat to do with the fish’s tail. But if I were to guess from the stories my mother told me, I would guess that this is the doing of the seawitch, Dread Mary. And if she had aught to do with it, it springs from the salt sea.” Saying this, Lann plunged his shell flask into the pool and brought it up full. Then he capped it with care and, the bird still riding his shoulder, walked back to the boat.
12. And After
AND SO LANN AND his sailor friend Syss came to the Solatian shore. When Lann stepped onto the shining strand, the children playing there recognized him at once and ran to tell Sianna of her son’s return.
They bathed Sian in the pure crystal water and slowly, over the months, feeling returned to his limbs. Though he was not a young man again, he could walk and move with ease. And his constant companion was the golden bird, which could now say “Sian, Sian, Sian.”
When Lann tried to return the Magic Three to his mother, Sianna said, “You have used it more wisely than I.”
“But I did not use it at all,” replied Lann.
“That is what I mean,” said Sianna. “And so you shall keep it. For someday you may have need of it. I think I shall have no more.”
At the end of that year, in a small ceremony at the chapel, Lann was called man. Chando gave him yet another lute. “But use this one to sing with, not to paddle,” he cautioned.
Then Lann sat down in the chapel and began to play. If he noticed his mother and Chando walking out the door, their arms around one another, her head resting lightly on his broad chest, Lann did not disapprove. For now that his grandfather had returned to health and now that he was himself a man, it was a time of new freedom for him. And he knew it was his mother’s time as well.
Here ends Book III
BOOK IV
Wild Goose and Gander
Book IV is for Jason
Before
WHEN A MAN COMES to be twenty years old, it is time to leave his mother’s house. At least, that is what is said in Solatia, a land of much greenness and harvest gold.
So it happened that Lann, a minstrel untried in his songs except among his neighbors and friends, decided to do more than leave his mother’s house. He decided to leave her land as well.
“And if I find fortune or fame, it is fine,” he said. “But more, I should like to travel to all the lands both near and far, and even to the back of beyond, to seek what I know not. To sing I know not what. And to call many ‘friend’ along the way.”
So his mother, Sianna, blessed him and gave him an amulet to wear on his breast. But when he was but a little way off, he placed the stone in his pack, for sometimes a man wants to try his own magic without his mother’s aid. And Lann had faith in the power of his songs, for there is a kind of magic in music as well.
Besides, if truth be known, Lann had a chain around his neck on which there hung a button. It held magic so powerful that it had never been used. For magic has consequences, this Lann knew. Yet he knew, too, that if sometime a terrible need arose, those consequences, no matter how dear, would have to be borne.
And so Lann traveled, lute on his back, out into the wide wide world.
1. Wild Goose and Gander
IN A FOREST AT the back of the world lived a brother and sister. By day they were wild geese and soared in the sky high above the tops of the tallest trees. But at night they flew back to their forest hut and in human form dined on red berries, green salad, and wine.
They had no one but each other, and it had been so from the first. They had been left in the forest by their frightened nursemaid on the day after they were born. For in the evening they had been babies wrapped in swaddling, but in the daylight they turned into soft-feathered goslings in the folds.
The wizard who had changed them was named Bleakard. He lived in a gray-green stone castle perched high on a mountain crag that rose in the middle of a lake. Each day he summoned the brother and sister to his castle with a magic flute. They were forced to fly away from their forest hut and circle the mountain-top. As day closed, he would let them go, and they winged home with fear-filled speed.
So the brother and sister lived in the forest at the back of beyond with one another as company and no one else in the whole wide world to call a friend.
Late one afternoon, into the forest came the young minstrel Lann. He had been gone from his home a year and a day and had spent each night under a different roof.
When he saw the forest hut covered with wild goose grasses, he smiled. He was tired, and it seemed a likely place to stop. So he laid his flute against the wall and tapped lightly on the door. When no one answered, he pushed the door open and went in.
Inside he saw two beds neatly made and a table neatly set for two. He saw two wardrobes filled with clothes and two stone basins brimming full. But no one was there to greet him.
“I shall wait for the owners to return,” thought Lann, and settled himself outside on the ground by the door. He was so weary from traveling that he soon was fast asleep.
Scarcely had he dozed off than a great whirring filled the air, the sounds of wings beating. Two shadows fell upon the minstrel’s sleeping form. A wild goose and gander sailed down from the skies and landed at his feet.
At once they changed to human form. The brother, a tall lad, was named Bred, with eyes so black they seemed to have no bottom. The sister was named Bridda. Her hair was soft as feathers, her face as gentle as the wind.
Bridda clung to her brother when she saw the sleeping stranger. But Bred was more courageous and put out his hand.
“Awake, friend, and welcome.” he said, as the minstrel opened his eyes.
“I did not hear you come,” said Lann, jumping up. “I beg your pardon…”
“It is no matter,” Bred replied, and led the way into the house.
Because they had only two dishes and two cups, Bred had to wait until the minstrel finished his meal. And because the minstrel tuned his lute and sang one song after another to the smiling Bridda, Bred finished his dinner alone.
When the dishes were washed and carefully set aside for the morning, Bred joined his sister and the minstrel outside under the trees and they talked and sang until almost dawn.
Just before the sun rose, the minstrel fell into a dreamless sleep. And when the sun had fully lit the path to the hut, Bred and Bridda returned to the air. They circled once, and the goose cast a sad backward glance at the sleeping man before she joined the gander in their wingtip-to-wingtip journey across the sky.
2. The Enchantment
THAT EVENING THE GOOSE and gander returned. As before, they touched the earth in front of the sleeping man. He was s
unk again in a magical sleep so that he would not see them change.
When he awoke at last, Lann said to Bred, “This is most strange. I was asleep when you left and asleep when you returned. Yet I was not tired. There is some enchantment here that I do not understand.”
“It is no matter,” said Bred, and he led Lann into the house.
That evening the minstrel and Bridda ate in silence, watching each other with love-filled eyes. For Bridda had never seen another human, except her brother and the wizard. And Lann, though he had seen many maidens in his year of traveling, had never met one who so combined silence and singing, wisdom and beauty, shyness and courage.
And Bred was content to eat alone after them.
Then the three friends talked until dawn.
For three nights it was thus. But on the fourth night, before they settled down to talk, the minstrel took the stone charm from his saddlebag. He remembered what his mother had said when she had given it to him. “If you are ever in a land of strangers and strangeness, place this amulet upon your breast.”
The minstrel placed the charm over his heart. And after breakfast, though he was not tired at all, he pretended to fall asleep.
Just as the sun came up, Bred and Bridda began to change. First their hair turned to feathers, then feathers soft and white grew on their arms. At last their bodies were covered with down. And as they beat their great wings, they were transformed entirely into giant birds that rose up into the air and set off past the sun.
That evening when the geese returned to their forest home, they found the minstrel awake and waiting.
“Am I dreaming still, or is this enchantment?” Lann asked them when they touched the ground and turned back into humans.
“It is enchantment,” said Bred softly.
Bridda wept silently. She feared that the minstrel could not love a girl who was a bird by day.