by Jane Yolen
As the final notes hung in the air, sweet and simple and achingly pure, the turtles began to move. But not again in a menacing manner or toward Lann. Rather, many turned off and went toward the farther end of the isle. Lann heard an enormous splash and guessed that the giant tortoise had dived back into the sea. At that moment, a vermilion-colored turtle, about the size of a small dog, came slowly, majestically toward Lann, and laid its head on his boot. He bent down and scratched the creature’s underjaw.
“I see,” said Lann, with more than a little relief in his voice, “that we are now all friends.”
Before long, the turtles were hurrying to the young minstrel with offerings, gifts of food, familiar-looking berries that he ate greedily and strange-looking plants he dared not try. One turtle even brought a broken eggshell. The halves were hard and leathery, and Lann soon discovered he could use them as a cup and bowl.
So Lann spent the rest of the day and the night at Turtle Isle, as he called it. He roamed over the isle and found one small muddy salt-free pool from which he could drink. It was as close as he came to finding a crystal pool. “But,” he thought to himself, “not nearly close enough.”
The turtles remained friendly enough, except for the monster, which Lann could occasionally see swimming far offshore and snapping its beak as if it were guarding the island. But after awhile, Lann grew bored. The turtles could not talk or sing. All they could manage was a hiss. He would have to find a way off the isle in order to fulfill his pledge.
But he had no tools. Without tools, he could not make a boat. Without a boat, how could he escape the isle? The more he thought, the more hopeless he felt. And suddenly, all at once, Lann was overcome with grief. He remembered how brave and strong he had felt when he made his vow at the Thrittem, and that served to make him unhappier still. And when he thought of his mother saying “There comes a time when a boy and his mother must part,” he put his head in his hands and began to weep loudly. It had been only two days ago. It seemed like years.
“Oh Mother, oh Grandfather, oh friend Chando,” he cried out in a shaky voice, “that I were with you now.” Then he reached inside his shirt and brought out the Magic Three and looked at it thoughtfully.
Just as he did, from far off on the other side of the isle he heard a clear, crystalline voice singing.
7. The Singer
LANN LEAPED UP. “ANOTHER voice,” he said aloud. The familiar words of the song bore down on him. It was the tune he had sung the day before, “The Magic Song.” It was so good hearing a human voice again instead of that infernal hissing! He quickly tucked the Magic Three back into his shirt and vowed to find the owner of that voice. On such a small isle, it should not be so difficult a task.
Lann slung the lute upon his back and started up. The voice was singing still, the same song over and over. He followed it around the isle. The isle was not much larger than the village where Lann had lived, and in a single day he had gotten to know it well. It was shaped somewhat like a turtle, which had not surprised him. It was high in the middle, with four spits of sandy beach that jutted, like legs, into the sea. Where the head should have been was a cliff with an undersea grotto, as though the turtle isle had brought its head back into its shell. Lann had swum into the grotto, guided by his turtle companions, the day before. There was no tail to the island at all.
It was toward the place where the tail should have been that Lann set off, for from there he was sure the voice was coming.
Just as he rounded the curve in the isle where he thought to find the singer, the music stopped.
“Sing on,” he cried out. “Sing on, and I shall come to you.”
But there was only silence, except for the constant hiss.
Lann swung his lute in front of him and began the first notes of “The Magic Song.” As he had hoped, the notes from the lute coaxed the singer. The high pure voice sang the song again. But it was then that Lann understood what had been bothering him about the singer. The voice was like an echo, without change or emphasis. It sang the song as he had sung it. Not a note, not a word was wrong, but neither was there anything individual and new. Chando had always told him that it was important for the singer to bring something of his own to a song.
Lann followed the bodyless voice to a small willow tree. There, at the foot of the tree, where buds beaded the branches like a rosary, he found a tiny turtle no bigger than his palm. Its back was studded with pearls that looked to be newly plucked from the sea. There was a tiny pearl crown upon its head. The turtle’s tiny beak was open—and it was singing.
Lann’s disappointment was so great that he flung himself to the ground beside it. He put his hand on its shell. “Little turtle,” he said, “why, oh, why are you not of humankind?”
The turtle stopped singing and, strange to say, began to weep.
It was then that Lann noticed his own hand upon the turtle’s pearly shell. He lifted his fingers to his face and stared. Surely he was mistaken. Yet as he looked more closely, he could see that his skin was becoming rough and scaly. And in between the fingers, where the skin is thinnest, was the faintest tint of green.
“I am becoming turtle,” he said. He said it not with fear or even surprise, but with a kind of resignation, as though he had already suspected it long before.
8. The Shellboat
LANN MUST HAVE LAIN next to the turtle for a long time, thinking or dreaming, it was hard to say which. One or two times his hand had strayed to the chain around his neck. Yet each time the memory of his mother’s words, “Its consequences may be too hard to bear,” stopped him from using the Magic Three. He could not imagine what consequences could be harder to bear than remaining here as a turtle on Turtle Isle. Yet the remembered pain in his mother’s voice made him pause.
Finally he came to a decision. “I shall have to make a boat. Or swim if I must. But get off this island I will!” How different he felt from an hour ago, when he had collapsed in a miserable mound of tears. He was not sure what made him so determined, except that he had come to the end of all of the paths. Of that he was sure. If he could not find or make a boat, he would use the button.
So he got up and left the lute where it lay by the willow. He would need to be unencumbered for his task. In his mind’s eye he drew a picture of the isle and divided it into sections. He determined he would search the isle methodically, step by step, to find something of use for his plan to escape. If he was certain there was no other way…well, he would have to bear those very consequences his mother so dreaded.
And so he began.
He searched each quadrant with care. He began with the beachside up and down. He progressed to the undergrowth that grew low and thickety, then up upon the hilly peak till he reached the top. But though he found small sticks and limbs abundantly upon the ground, they were not strong enough for a raft. And there was no way that he could see to bring down a mighty tree and hollow it out.
He was on the fourth fruitless journey up the side of the hill when he stumbled on something half hidden in a hole in the ground. He bent down and dug around it with his hands. Slowly he unearthed it. It was the shell of a turtle more than twice his own size. It was a mottled green-brown and reminded him of something.
“Why, of course,” he said out loud. “It looks just like Song of the Sea, only smaller. I can use it as a boat.” He dug it out of the ground where it had lain hollow down, and turned it over.
The insides were clean as if scoured by beetles, and smoothly rounded. Having no tools, he could make no mast. But surely he could use branches as oars. It was not perfect, but it would do. Funny he had not thought of it before.
So Lann pushed the shell before him and started down toward the beach. But, coming upon the shore, he saw swimming toward him the giant turtle, no longer on patrol. It had somehow sensed his plans for escape. It pulled with its mighty legs and moved through the water at incredible speed. Its head was up and snapping as it came.
Lann had one thought then, to run. But he needed the shell-boat
in order to escape. So he hoisted it upon his back and began to climb the hill again, away from the monster that was approaching the isle.
He could hear the turtle behind him as it came ashore. Its lumbering gait upon the beach, its loud hiss and snap-snap filled his ears. The shell upon his back grew heavier and heavier with each step. He could feel his neck and arms grow sweaty and the shell pressing down, sticking to his shoulders. He had an awful urge to fall upon his knees and crawl the rest of the way to the top, but he fought the urge. Just then he reached the peak.
Barely taking time to look behind him, where he knew the monster was gaining at every step, Lann threw the shell upside down onto the ground. He could feel it rip his shirt and swore his own skin had come away from his back almost as though it had become attached to the shell. He pushed the shell down the slope and jumped into it. It slid easily along the well-worn path, gathering speed as it went. The giant tortoise was soon far behind.
The shell cannoned into the water with a loud splash. As Lann looked behind him, he saw the giant tortoise creeping down the hill toward the shore.
In the water, Lann saw his lute floating in the shellboat’s wake. On top of the lute, near the neck, was the pearly turtle, paddling with its front legs as if in a boat.
Lann leaned over and grabbed up the ruined lute and the turtle. As he did so, he noticed that his hand on the lute’s slim neck was no longer rough and scaly. The green that had been between his fingers was gone. He felt relieved but not surprised.
“Come, little friend, and welcome,” Lann said to the turtle. “I see my lute is ruined for play. So let us put it to work instead.”
Placing the turtle beside him in the boat, he picked up Chando’s golden lute. He glanced at his hand again and, with a smile, he put the lute’s body into the sea.
“Row on,” he said to encourage himself, and began to paddle as fast as he was able.
9. Ail’issa
THEY HAD GONE BUT a little way when the giant tortoise slid with an enormous splash into the sea and started after them.
Lann pulled on the lute paddle with all his might, but there seemed no way they could escape. The giant came closer, swimming as no other turtle swims and snapping its jaws angrily as it came.
Lann thought desperately of the Magic Three, yet he determined to try one more thing. He remembered how the turtles had responded to his singing before. If he could sing, and sing loudly, paddling all the while, perhaps he could tame—or at least slow down—the fearsome beast.
He wondered quickly what he might sing, then decided to sing all the songs he knew. And since he had so recently sung them and knew them well, he began with his Thrittem songs, “Come Make Me Man” and “A Year of Growing.” As he sang, the giant turtle slowed down and stopped snapping its jaws, swimming silently around the boat as if waiting for the spell to end.
Lann finished each song and began another with the same breath. He sang the seven gypsy songs his mother Sianna loved. He sang all the songs that Chando sang so well: songs of love gained and love lost and love never found. He sang of spring blossoms and winter snow, of western winds and eastern rains. And when he had finished all the songs that sprang from the farming people, he sang the chapel songs as well. He sang the Seven Psalms of Waking and the songs in praise of silence, which was ever the Solatian way. Then he began the songs of the sea, but by this time his voice was nearly a croak. The sun straight up in the sky burning down into his turtle boat was making him mad with thirst. He paddled more slowly with each passing hour.
And all the while, the giant turtle swam about the boat, its head high out of the water. Its black eyes, as large as darkened windows, were angry. But it made no threatening move.
Lann continued to sing in his ruined voice, watching the giant with slight hope. But feeling his voice failing, he began to sing especially to the little turtle beside him in the boat, a song he made up to an old tune:
Little one, our time has come,
There are no more songs to be sung.
My voice is cracked, my throat is numb,
I feel no movement in my tongue.
So if you can, please add a note,
And lift your voice to aid our case.
Take pity on my weakened throat,
Or else right here we end our race.
But the little turtle did not reply. And Lann, singing and paddling still, turned his head to see why. In the bottom of the boat, the little turtle lay as if dead, its shell cracked open from the blazing sun.
“Oh, friend,” cried Lann, dropping the lute in the water and picking up the tiny creature. He began to weep then, partly for himself, but also for the turtle whose death he thought he had caused. As he cried, he stopped singing and the giant tortoise snapped its mighty jaws and came toward them. It raised its head and brought it down angrily upon the lute again and again. The lute was shattered into hundreds of pieces.
But Lann, still weeping, seemed not to hear, though the small boat tossed madly with the fury of the waves. The tears came twinkling down from his eyes and landed upon the cracked shell of the tiny turtle. As they fell, they soothed the broken carapace. And while Lann watched, the water from his eyes began to shimmer and glow on the turtle’s back. The shell came apart in his hands, and he placed the tiny turtle without its shell on the bottom of the boat trying to shade it with his hand. But a strange thing occurred. The turtle began to grow and change. Its beak and scaly skin sloughed off, and before Lann’s wondering eyes it grew into a tall, slim, green-skinned woman with a pearl crown, a green mantle, and a short green kirtle beaded with pearls. The woman had a grim look on her face as she ripped the crown from her sea-green hair and flung it at the monster.
The giant tortoise saw the pearly crown sail through the air. It raised its massive head and snapped at the delicate crown with its beak. It seemed a miracle that it caught the crown without crushing it. Then the giant sank like a stone and did not come up again.
Only then did the green-haired woman turn to Lann. “Come, my brave lad,” she said. And when she smiled at him he thought her teeth were as white as the pearls on her dress. “Let us row to my country. It is not so far that we cannot bend ourselves to the task. It is called Iss, and I am Ail’issa, its queen.”
10. Ail’issa’s Tale
AS THEY PADDLED ALONG with their hands, Ail’issa told Lann her story. It was as strange as she.
“I am descended from the great turtles of long ago, and so are my people,” she said. “We are seafarers and plow the waters of the world in turtleshell boats. We fish for our food and dive for pearls, which we use in trade, and we live a happy life by the grace of the sea.
“But we are not the only great-grandchildren many times removed of those ancient turtles. For, many thousands of years ago, the turtle clan made a branching. One half took the road to manhood, one half remained great tortoises. One half knew singing and laughter, one half knew hissing and grief. And the turtle crown, the pearl of great price, was given to my people.
“So the giant tortoises grew angry. For many hundreds of years there has been a war between their kind and ours. The pearl crown has been won and lost many times over.
“For a thousand of our years, which is as one in theirs, the giant tortoise you have seen has been the ruler. Slysyth is his name, and he is twisted and evil and hates all of us who can walk upright upon land.
“But thirteen years ago, foul number, Slysyth established a magic isle in the middle of our waters with the help of a wizard cast out from his own land. Upon that isle, a man is condemned to walk as a turtle, house on his back, and creep about with no speech save a hiss. In exchange for his help in creating the isle, the unknown wizard learned from Slysyth the magic of change, how to make man a beast. For that is ever Slysyth’s way, to bring us, who have moved away from the beast’s dumb ways, back to the ground.
“Now one day, when I and my sailors were skimming the sea in my boat, we beached upon Slysyth’s broad back and were carried off
to Turtle Isle, where we were as you found us. And my ship, Song of the Sea, was seen no more.”
“But I have seen it,” cried Lann, interrupting the flow of her tale. “I have ridden in it. I was in it when I, too, ran aground upon the green back of that beast.”
“Why, then,” said Ail’issa, “that explains how you came to the isle. For never had I known Slysyth to strike at other than my own folk. If you were in my boat, he thought you of my kind.”
“So that is why I was not immediately turned to turtle,” said Lann. “Because I was not of turtle kind.”
“But eventually you would have changed. Longer it might have taken, but the power of change cannot be stayed as long as one remains on Turtle Isle.”
“How came you, of all your people, to retain your voice?” asked Lann.
“It was my crown,” replied the queen. “Surely you guessed that.”
Lann had to admit he had not. And to himself he said, “There is still much more to magic than one of thirteen can know.”
“The sea crown saved me my voice, though I could not sing my own words. I could only repeat what else was said. And since before you came there was naught to repeat but a hiss, that was all that I could do.”
Lann smiled then, remembering the curious echo quality in the singing voice that had bothered him. “So when I came and sang, I tamed the beasts. Such my mother had often said was the power of song. I thought it but a tale.”
“She must surely be a wise woman,” said the queen.
“She is the wisest woman I know,” Lann replied, then realizing he was in the company of another woman, he blushed.
Ail’issa laughed. “You have little experience with women, I see. Nor with queens either, I would guess. But do not fear, I am not angry with such a loving statement. Surely not from the lad who has saved my life.”
“I have saved your life, perhaps,” said Lann. “But I have lost you your crown.”