by Jason Denzel
“She’s just a-down the river,” he said, and this time he spoke from a nearby rock, still eating his banana.
Pomella never quite saw him move. It seemed he shifted during the fraction of a second it took her to blink. Her jaw clenched. She tired of his game. “Then let’s be on our way.” She strode along the riverbank, intending to follow wherever it led. Hector and Ena followed behind her.
“I-I-I wouldn’t a-suggest walking,” Rostrick said. He drew out the first word, making it last several seconds. “Crow Tallin ’tis upon us, yeh know, and the Towerway isn’t a-very safe. The luck’ns n’ axthos be out n’ such.”
Luck’ns? Weren’t those just legends? She decided not to voice this thought, however. She was in Fayün, so nothing should surprise her. “Then how will we go?”
“We’ll a-ride Tuppleton,” Rostrick said. He indicated the giant tortoise with his banana peel. “He’s a-bite faster than yeh may think. More important, his shell’ll protect yeh.”
As if to demonstrate his strength, the massive tortoise lifted one of his forelegs and splashed it down into the water with mighty force. He snorted, and a jet of cool air wafted across Pomella.
Pomella tried to ignore the possibility that a fay tortoise had just puffed snot over her. “What do you think?” she said to her hummingbirds. Ena hovered hesitantly beside her head, but Hector didn’t wait even a moment. He zoomed toward the tortoise’s head and spun around it. Tuppleton tried to follow his movements, but it was like watching a tree trying to chase a rabbit. Hector alighted onto the crown of the creature’s head and waited.
“I guess that settles it then,” Pomella said. “Very well, Rostrick, I will take your offer.”
Rostrick bowed slightly and gestured her forward.
Tuppleton lowered his head for Pomella to climb up, but instead of trying to scramble up his scales, she reached out her hand and held on to Ena, just as she had done when she traveled through Lal’s memories. The hummingbird took her aloft and she floated through the air, like a mote of dust caught in the wind. Ena set her onto Tuppleton’s mostly smooth shell.
Rostrick already stood atop the tortoise. He winked at Pomella. “Tuppleton awaits yer command, Mistress,” he said with a polite bow.
With her hummingbirds swirling around her, and a cloak woven from the water and grass of Fayün, Pomella raised her staff and pointed downriver. “Take us to Lagnaraste,” she said.
The warm wind surged as Tuppleton’s leg lifted and plunged downward, taking the first step down the river. Pomella wavered with the motion but managed to keep her balance. Rostrick sat cross-legged atop the shell with his stick across his lap. He closed his eyes and Pomella saw a faint smile of contentment appear on his face. She didn’t share his ease.
Free of the clearing, and once he found his stride, Tuppleton moved with surprising speed. He walked above the river, following its course like a trail through the forest. The river surged against his feet. An endless world of strange silver trees, shadows, and floating points of light passed them. Curious eyes peered at Pomella from within hidden branches in the treetops. Far below on the ground, small fay critters scattered as Tuppleton stomped past.
Some of the trees were of a kind Pomella had never seen before, and many didn’t even resemble trees at all but rather looked like massive flowers, mushrooms, and even faces. Motes of light drifted everywhere like fireflies, but whenever Pomella tried to look at one up close it faded away.
A thick fog lay up ahead, limiting how far down their path she could see. But everything before that appeared clear, and from what she could see, the river ran fairly straight.
It was difficult for Pomella to tell how much time passed on their journey. The stars overhead were frozen in place, and she could not see the moon. To her surprise, she recognized all the same constellations as the ones in the human realm. Treorel blazed bright, dominating the heavens and casting a pinkish glow across the crystalline-like landscape. If she shifted her mind, Pomella imagined the Fayün landscape was like a wilderness covered in eternal ice and snow.
Hours passed, and Pomella grew hungry. Rostrick had fallen asleep on his back. She watched him as he snored, trying to understand why a human would come to live in Fayün. As she pondered this, she heard a commotion in the treetops. Turning in that direction, she saw a fay creature about the size of a watermelon with long, spindly arms and a prehensile tail swinging beside them, keeping up at a steady pace. At first she thought he was a monkey, but when he turned his face toward her she saw he was far more human, with a wide, squashed nose and scraggly facial hair. When he saw Pomella watching him, he stopped on an outstretched tree branch up ahead and held his arm out toward Pomella, clearly inviting her to touch it when she passed.
Pomella gave him her fingertips, curious to see what he would feel like.
The monkey creature let out a piercing cry. His lips pulled back in a sneer and he yanked Pomella hard, nearly tumbling her off Tuppleton.
Rostrick was there in a hearbeat. He smacked the creature and scolded it with some words Pomella didn’t quite catch or understand. The creature vanished into the trees, throwing one last annoyed expression back at them.
“That’s Raball,” said Rostrick, not showing any sign of having been asleep moments before. His sudden springing to alertness sent chillybumps across Pomella’s skin. “He won’t a-hurt yeh as long as yeh stay on the shell. Careful t’ a-keep yeh hands t’ yehself.”
Pomella rubbed her sore hand as she frowned at the other eyes peering at her from the trees.
Later, as Pomella was trying to estimate how much time had passed—an hour? A day?—they emerged from the fog line and Pomella couldn’t help but gasp. A steep valley opened up below them, shaped like an arrowhead with the farthest tip culminating across from them at the base of an angular mountain. Silver eagles soared in the sky circling the river that bisected the valley. It was like looking over the Mystwood, only one made of glass-like silver.
Overlaid across the valley was a sprinkling of golden trees. Two birds, shining yellow like the sun she was familiar with, fluttered across the treetops as Pomella watched.
Rising over the entire valley, at the very summit of the distant mountain, was a towering monolith. From Pomella’s vantage, a constellation of twenty stars formed a perfect circle around the structure, like a celestial crown. The hair on her arms rose. Memories she barely recognized flooded her mind. It was like suddenly remembering a dream from long ago that she’d forgotten.
“The Tower of Eternal Starlight,” said Rostrick. He was eating an apple now. Pomella wondered where he’d gotten it, as she hadn’t seen it attached to his stick before.
“T’ only appears near Crow Tallin,” he continued. “If it comes a’tall.”
Tuppleton deftly carried them down the hillside, still following the river, which cut a narrow gorge into the valley floor. The gorge fed the river to a wide fissure that stretched as far as Pomella could see in either direction. Several rolling hills stood between them and the slopes of the mountain. They would have to somehow cross the gap, as well as the hills, to reach the tower.
Tuppleton led them to a relatively calm pool that rested safely beside the waterfall. This close to the edge, Pomella could see the river plummeting over the edge in a raging torrent of sound and chaos. She shuddered, not wanting to look over the edge into the fissure’s depths.
“Ye’ll need ta go on yer own now,” Rostrick said. “I’ll wait ’ere for yeh. ’Tis a long walk to the top, though.”
Tuppleton eased himself into the water as if relaxing for a bath. Pomella spun the Myst around her like a vortex and leaped from the tortoise’s back without thought, landing softly on the Fayün soil.
“If yeh see any peaches up a-there,” Rostrick called, “bring ’em back down, m’kay? Tuppleton loves ta eat ’em.”
Pomella looked up the mountain. “How do I cross the fissure?”
“Yeh cross the bridge, a-course.”
Rostrick waved h
is hand, and a thin bridge, no wider than a windowpane, shimmered into existence. The bridge began near the waterfall and arced its way up and across the gap before settling itself on one of the opposite hills.
“Go with-a the Myst,” Rostrick said with a wink.
Pomella approached the base of the mostly translucent bridge. There were no hand rails; it was simply a narrow pathway. She took a steadying breath and stepped out onto it, silently praying it wouldn’t crack beneath her weight.
The bridge held, and she crossed. Warm winds howled from below, billowing her dress and hair. Hector and Ena stayed close, but they, too, struggled against the wind. When Pomella reached the midway point, she couldn’t help but peer downward, into the depths of the fissure. It was hard to discern details, because of the uniform silver and dancing motes of light everywhere, but narrowing her eyes she could see lights pulsing far below, like bellows breathing life into a forge.
Pomella shuddered, then hurried across the rest of the bridge. When she reached the safety of the hills, she located a trail leading upward and followed it. Fay creatures watched her pass, including the strange monkey fay Rostrick had referred to as Raball. He screeched at her from a nearby tree. She ignored him and carried on.
When she reached the crest of the hill, she wiped her brow. Ena hovered in front of her. “OK, let’s try something different,” Pomella said, and merged herself with the Myst and the hummingbird. Her weight dropped away and she felt the familiar tug at her arm as Ena lifted her skyward. She alighted back to her normal self on a rocky ledge a hundred or more steps up the mountain.
“Further,” she said, and ascended again on Ena’s wings. She leaped higher and faster this time before landing. With each leap, more of herself dropped away, until with her last leap she seemed on the verge of becoming little more than vapor. Her feet touched down at the summit of the mountain, and Pomella had to steady herself as weight and mass returned to her. Her hummingbirds hovered beside her as she studied the massive silver monolith rising in front of her.
There was no visible entrance to the Tower of Eternal Starlight except for a single window high up near its top. It dwarfed Kelt Apar’s central tower, yet it resonated with the same energy that Pomella sensed while standing near it. She traced her fingers across the stone and noticed carved writing from an unknown language cut into nearly every inch of the surface. Her spine tingled as the Myst churned around her.
“Lagnaraste!” she called, and the word echoed off the tower walls. “I am Pomella AnDone. I would speak with you.”
At the sound of Lagnaraste’s name, a surge of scuttling noises sounded all around the tower. The ground burst open as snout-faced axthos tunneled out of it. Some wore loincloths of twine and mud and leaves while others were outright naked. Most carried primitive weapons made of what appeared to be bone or stone tied to heavy wooden handles. They screeched and squawked, and a few tried in vain to snatch her hummingbirds, but none dared come closer than just beyond the reach of her Mystic staff.
“I seek your queen,” Pomella stated, letting her impatience temper the iron in her voice.
“I am she,” came a gentle voice from the tower.
Pomella turned and gazed at the monolith. The carved words in the stone shifted and flowed until they formed a distinct shape. Thousands of runes twisted around one another, overlapping and rolling until they collectively illustrated the figure of a woman.
The image resolved to reveal an imposing figure with high cheekbones and other strong features that were accented by shaded eyes and full lips. She was nearly a hand length taller than Pomella, but her hair was cropped short. Her clothes appeared to be a mixture of leather and fur encircled with a wide belt. She wore boots that reached to her knees, covering tight-fitting breeches. The illustration of the woman moved in a life-like manner, perfectly mimicking her expressions and natural gestures.
The woman spoke and words echoed out of the tower wall. “I had not expected it to be you who came to me, but the other one.”
“Who are you?” Pomella asked.
“I have many names,” the woman said. “The few who come to this tower all bring new ones for me. Please, sit, be at ease.”
A handful of axthos stumbled forward, rolling a large rock for Pomella to sit on. Pomella ignored the makeshift seat. “Tell me your name,” she demanded.
“You don’t know me, Pomella AnDone?” the woman said, pacing along the wall like a drawing brought to life. “You sing of me every springrise upon your village green. As a girl you dressed in my cloak and dreamed of having hair o’ flame like mine.” The woman looked directly into Pomella’s eyes, piercing her like an arrow. “They called me the Red Huntress. The First Mystic of Moth. She Who Tamed the Corenach. I am Brigid, Daughter of None but the Woods.”
Pomella’s heart thundered in her chest.
The woman relaxed her posture. “And I, alas, am Lagnaraste.”
A thousands questions tumbled into Pomella’s mind. How was this possible? Nobody denied that Brigid had been a historical figure, but she was mostly legend, perhaps even a combination of centuries’ worth of stories passed down through the villages on Moth. Pomella had prepared herself for the unexpected, but this unhinged her. “How?” was all she managed to say.
“Oh, you know the story, Pomella,” said Brigid. “The tales get a surprising portion of it right. The high points, anyway.”
“Your adventures. Your conquests. Weren’t they all to save your son?” Pomella said, thinking fast. “He was stolen.”
Brigid’s eyes narrowed. “So I believed, and so the legends say. We were colonists from a land you now call the Continent. Our newly crowned shalla sent ships to a newly discovered island off the west coast. It was home only to a small population of lizard-men. My husband had died the previous winter, and so I went seeking a new life with our child, Janid, who was just a boy. The fresh land we discovered sang to us of possibility. The rains that fell from its sky washed the wounds of my heart.”
The eyes of the illustrated Brigid grew distant, becoming lost in a time long past.
“My child wandered to the very same waterfall you came through,” Brigid continued, “although I did not know it at the time. To me, he’d simply vanished. I searched for him for days, refusing to believe he was dead. And then I found one of the fay, a wretched-looking thing not unlike my friends that stir around you now. He told me I had the same eyes as the newcomer to his land. And so I learned of Fayün and began my hunt. For six years I searched. For six years I endured and killed and conquered forces that even the great kings dared not face. My own people rejected me. Only the lagharts offered assistance in my quest. With their help, I came at last to a cave at the top of a great mountain where I met a Nameless Saint. I offered her my Fire Branch, my cloak from the lucklesslings, and even Dauntless, the bow I had won from the hundred-eyed beast living in the deep heart of the mountains. But the Saint ignored it all, and challenged me to revoke my claim to those trinkets and everything else that held me back. She unmade me with a glance, and prepared me for my time with the Zurntas. Eventually, after humbling myself to them, the laghart masters deemed me ready to learn of the Myst—the first human they’d ever taught—and so I became a Mystic.
“During Crow Tallin, nearly a thousand years before you drew your first breath, in the place where your forebears later built the stone tower of Kelt Apar, the Zurntas and I summoned Lagnaraste, the King of the Fay. The last of the dragons, and the force that had split the united world into Fayün and the human realm. The Zurntas sought only peace, and I sought my son. But the king was a hateful beast that mocked my request. He accused the Zurntas of meddling with the world he’d created and burned them alive. He dragged me to this realm and imprisoned me within the same tower where my son had been kept. Same tower, but different rooms. For ages beyond knowing I could hear Janid crying for me. You are not a mother yet, Pomella, but I assure you, there is no greater agony than listening to your child scream your name while you can d
o nothing.”
Brigid’s expression hardened and she looked upward along the very wall her image was rendered upon. “I was locked in the highest chamber, in the only room with a window. I believe he provided that window to give me hope, so that he could better enjoy my torment. I despaired and nearly lost my mind until one day—a single day among the seven lifetimes I existed there—I saw the Mystic Star. Its light empowered me. I tilled the foundations of my heart and mind and at last arrived within the Deep, that place where the true nature of the Myst resides, where every name is revealed. Empowered by the Mystic Star, I confronted Lagnaraste, and we battled through the endless halls of the tower. In the end I freed Janid, who escaped to the human world, and I was left to confront Lagnaraste. I had achieved my goal of freeing my son, and I had risen to a level of power I could not have previously comprehended. I enslaved the dragon’s mind. I claimed his power and incinerated his carcass. But despite my tremendous power, I remained locked in the tower, unable to break the walls that were forged by the First Masters from the iron of the world’s core.”
She paused, breathing deeply, as though she had just lived the experience again.
“Why are you telling me this?” Pomella asked.
“Because I need your help, Pomella. I need to be free. I need to join my son at last.”
Memory of the wivan’s voice rang in Pomella’s mind. “The Reunion,” she breathed.
Brigid’s lips curled into a smile that sent a chill through Pomella. “Yes. The fay have taken a liking to the term. They are as eager for it as I.”
“Does … Janid still live?” Pomella asked.
“Yes,” Brigid said. “After he escaped the tower, I knew I had to wait until the next Crow Tallin, when the worlds temporarily merged again. Only then would I have a chance to return to him. There are two places in the human world where the distance between worlds is exceedingly thin. One is Kelt Apar, in the heart of your Mystwood, which we called simply the Great Forest in my time. The other is on the far side of the world, in mountain country, amid some rolling hills where a large thorn patch once grew. Within the Deep, nothing happens without reason, so it was only a matter of time before a little girl stumbled upon me. She was afraid and nearly broken, so I breathed power into her. I showed her visions of the future, and slowly, by the measure of her time, she came to love me. And so that is why I am surprised you came to me, and not her. The Myst, and the Deep, work in ways none of us can know.”