by T.A. Barron
Kate slipped off the blue day pack, unzipped it, and handed the tiny painted drum to Laioni. Immediately, the Halami girl squatted down on the pumice, placed the drum between her legs, and closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them, she looked neither at the drum nor at Kate, but into the mist rising from the lake.
Gently, her fingers began to tap the stretched hide of the drum, seeking their true rhythm just as Kate had seen Aunt Melanie do at the mouth of Kahona Falls. She began slowly to sing, as her hands alternately slid and swished and pounded. Once again, Kate marveled at the likeness of Laioni to her own beloved great-aunt. Although her intellect dismissed the possibility of a real connection between them as ridiculous, as mere fantasy, she remembered what Grandfather used to say: Wait long enough, and fantasy becomes reality.
Laioni continued to chant, just as Kate had heard in another time and another place. This time, however, she understood the lilting words:
Hear me O spirits
My small walking words:
All time in the sunrise
All life in the seed.
Our days may be short
Our reach may be long
We touch both our elders
And children unborn.
My struggles are yours
Your mystery mine.
I ask you for guidance
And know you will say:
Your spirit is one
With the spirits around you.
Your spirit is one
With the spirits around you.
As her last halma-dru melted into the mist, Laioni rose silently to her feet. She handed the drum to Kate, who replaced it in the day pack. Together, they waded into the water and straddled the log, positioning themselves between the stubby ends of broken branches that ran its full length. Monga jumped into the water and started paddling vigorously alongside.
Kate, seated in front, pushed off from the shore. The ground beneath her sneakers fell away swiftly; in no more than a yard from the water’s edge she could no longer touch bottom. She had no way to measure the depth of this lake, but all her instincts told her it was unfathomably deep.
The log sank slightly under their weight, submerging everything below their hips in the warm water. Fog soon enveloped them, and the cliffs around the rim disappeared from view. Ahead and behind, Kate could see nothing but curls of mist spiraling out of the blue water. She leaned slightly forward and began to paddle, while Laioni did the same. Monga, meanwhile, splashed along beside them. Holding her bandaged hand under the water at one point, Kate noted how clear the water seemed, even as it imbued her forearm, fingers, and kerchief with a vibrant blue color. She had never seen water like this before.
But for the sound of their paddling and the constant lapping of little waves against the log, the lake was still. Gradually, however, Kate grew aware of a slight chill in the air, of a shadow in the mist she could not really see.
Suddenly, the island burst from behind a curtain of fog not fifty yards ahead. Blacker than charcoal, the spindly spires and pinnacles rose like the turrets of an abandoned castle. Then Kate saw what she most dreaded to see: the gleaming black surface of the island seemed to be moving, quivering like living skin. Like it was crawling or something, the Forest Service man had said.
At that instant something solid brushed against her foot. She cried out, wrenching up her leg just as Monga started barking furiously. Then the front end of the log rose high out of the water, throwing her backward into Laioni.
With an explosion of spray, the makeshift boat capsized. A great wave lifted and crashed down over the flailing voyagers, drowning their screams in the swell of a powerful whirlpool that dragged them downward.
Soon the eerie stillness returned to the lake. Except for a lone log drifting unattended, nothing but mist moved on the surface.
16
thika the guardian
KATE felt a scratchy tongue licking her face. She sat up with a start.
“Hey, Monga, that’s enough,” she sputtered, pushing the affectionate dog away. In response, he shook his shaggy body vigorously, splattering her with water.
She looked around to see Laioni and Monga, like herself, dripping wet on a dark stone floor. Though her clothes were drenched, she felt uncomfortably warm. Laioni had lost her woven basketry cap; her twin ropes of black hair were draped, glistening, over her shoulders.
Over their heads swept a great transparent dome. At first Kate thought it had been fashioned from glass or quartz, but then she saw it flex and bend with a gentle undulation, moved by some powerful current. She marveled at the clear membrane, arching above them like an enormous half bubble. Outside, the world was entirely blue, but for the thin shafts of light penetrating from far above and some curious white shapes that encircled the dome. Tall and slender, they waved slowly like great windblown branches. The stone floor was unadorned except for a square silver plank in the center, possibly a trapdoor of some kind.
“Where are we?” asked Laioni, scanning the shifting blue light filtering through the dome.
“Beats me. It’s almost like we’re under the lake somehow. Everything is so blue up there, except for those big white things. They look almost like trees.”
Observing the square plank, Kate said, “I wonder if this is the way out.” Crawling nearer, she inspected it closely. Wrought of gleaming silver, with inlaid patterns of interwoven branches, it fit perfectly into the smooth floor. Pulling from her jeans pocket the Swiss army knife she always carried, she tried to pry it open, but with no success. The trapdoor, if indeed it was a trapdoor, would not budge.
“You carry strange tools,” said Laioni, staring in wonder at the knife.
“Still doesn’t do any good,” grumbled Kate. Then she spied something unusual stuck into the slit between the silver door and the floor. Pinching the object between her thumb and forefinger, she pulled it free. “It’s a feather,” she observed, more mystified than ever. “A pure white feather. An owl maybe?”
“Maybe,” answered Laioni in a noncommittal tone.
“But how could an owl get in here? It doesn’t—”
Just then a spindly shadow fell across the silver square. Kate jerked her head upward to see one of the white treelike figures moving closer to the dome. It was tall, perhaps ten times as tall as Kate and twice as high as the dome, covered with knuckle-shaped lumps like a branch of coral. As it bent closer to them, it laid a bony appendage on the surface of the dome itself with a sound like fingers rubbing against an inflated balloon. Now Kate could see that the appendage was not pure white as it had appeared from a distance, but rather ribbed with veins of very light yellow. Then, with shock, she realized that the knuckle-shaped lumps each contained a single round, blue eye. Hundreds and hundreds of them covered the knobby skeleton.
“You, hsh-whshhh, dare to enter the realm of Ho Shh-hantero,” boomed a watery voice that echoed inside the dome. “What is your name, shwshhh, and your purpose?”
Kate clambered to her feet and attempted to address the many-eyed creature. “Kaitlyn Prancer Gordon is my name, and this is Laioni and Monga. We are here to meet with the Chieftain of the Tinnanis.”
“Tell me, shwshhh, why you want to see him,” commanded the watery voice, sounding like liquid sloshing through a pipe. “I am Thika, First Guardian of Ho Shh-hantero, and no one may pass beyond here without my permission. Speak quickly, hshh-swshh, for I have very little time.”
Kate answered cautiously, “We have something urgent to discuss with him.”
Thika’s knobby limb moved slightly on the transparent dome. “How do I know, shhhhwshh, you are telling the truth? You might be, hshh, hshh, really an agent of the Wicked One, or just another Halami, shwshhhh, following some deluded dream.”
At this, Laioni glanced anxiously at Kate. Monga, sensing her distress, paced around her feet.
“Because I carry this,” answered Kate, waving the walking stick.
“That, shhhwsh, is not good enough,” gurgle
d the voice of the Guardian. “I already know you carry a stick of power. Hshhwshhh. That is the only reason I did not banish you immediately, hshhh, through the Tinnanis’ tunnels, shhwsh, as I have done with every other intruder who has dared to approach Ho Shhhantero. By now you would be returned to the forest below, ssswhshh, with no memory at all of our meeting. But you could have stolen the stick, hhshh-whhshh, or won it through treachery. No, if you are to pass by me, shhwsh, you must tell me more of your mission.”
“All right,” Kate said reluctantly. “I need the Chieftain to tell me how to make the stick work, so it can take me back to my own time.”
“Shhhwshh,” sloshed Thika. “You say, hshhh, you are from another time?”
“Yes.”
“Then I, shhhwsh, will let you pass.”
Kate and Laioni exchanged relieved glances.
“After,” continued Thika, “you have said, shhwwwsh, the password.”
“Password?” asked Kate. “But, but—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Any language, hshhh, will do,” declared the coral-like creature, its multiple blue eyes concentrating on Kate. “I am old enough, shhwshh, to remember even the Old Tongue. Now hurry, hurry, hshh-whshh. Choose well your words. For you will have, sshhwsh, only one chance.”
A lump expanded in Kate’s throat, swelling so much that speaking would have been difficult even if she did know the Guardian’s password. She felt a rush of despair, overwhelming her like the waters of the blue lake had overwhelmed her not long before. What could she do now? If she had but one chance as Thika said, then she had already lost it. She would never see the Tinnani Chieftain, never see Aunt Melanie. How could she possibly know some long-forgotten password, as ancient as the Tinnani Old Tongue?
Then, like the subtlest rays of dawn emerging over the horizon, an idea glimmered at the farthest edge of her consciousness. She furrowed her brow in a desperate effort to remember some words she had heard but once, words etched into the shaft of the walking stick, words written in the ancient Old Tongue.
She cleared her throat. Slowly, haltingly, she recited them:
Fire of greed shall destroy;
Fire of love shall create.
With a sudden tearing sound, like the ripping of heavy cloth, the knobby appendage of Thika the Guardian reached through the transparent dome. More supple than it seemed, it wrapped itself around the waists of all three companions, even as they wriggled and kicked to break away.
“Let go!” shouted Kate, fighting in vain to free herself. “You can’t send us away.”
Thika did not relent. As the appendage tightened around Kate’s waist, several of its deep-socketed eyes probed her with curiosity. “You, shhhwhshhh, are an odd creature,” it said disapprovingly.
As the Guardian lifted them up through the dome, Kate saw that the transparent membrane instantly sealed itself, like a bubble that could be punctured but not burst. Still struggling to break free, she barely managed to suck in a last breath of air before she was totally submerged in water.
Upward they swam through the omnipresent blue, higher and higher until Kate finally stopped struggling. Below her she saw the shrinking circle of the dome, the silver square clearly visible in the center of its dark floor. Around it stood more than a dozen treelike creatures, each of them studded with eyes identical to Thika’s. Above, she saw nothing but a dark shadow growing rapidly larger.
Just at the point she could hold her breath no longer, she heard again the same tearing sound. Air suddenly replaced water, and she could breathe again. The grip around her waist relaxed, and she found herself sprawled on another stone floor, gasping. Beside her lay Laioni and Monga, looking as bewildered as they were drenched.
A smoldering torch, fastened to the wall with a lacy metal band, burned unsteadily above their heads, sputtering as it flickered. It appeared to be consuming some sort of incandescent gas. Dark stone surrounded them. The chamber was featureless but for a single stone stairway beneath the torch leading up into darkness. Kate noticed at once that the perfectly carved steps were very small, half the normal size, just like the ones in the tunnel behind Kahona Falls.
Thika’s appendage, rising through a hole in the stone floor that was covered with the same transparent membrane as the dome, studied them with its many round eyes. “Welcome, hhhsh, to Ho Shhhantero,” the now-familiar voice sloshed.
Kate, still grasping the walking stick, leaped to her feet, as did Laioni. “Ho Shantero?” they asked in unison.
“Yessshhwsh,” answered the Guardian, twisting and undulating like a snake as it spoke. “You knew the ancient password, shh-wshh, so I have brought you here as I am commanded. Hshhhh. But at times, shwshh, I doubt the wisdom of the commands. You should feel most privileged, hhhshwsh, for you are the only ones of your kind ever to enter here, sshwsh, unaccompanied by a Tinnani.”
Reflecting on Thika’s words, Kate wondered what humans had ever been admitted here in the company of a Tinnani. And had they ever left? Before she could speak, however, Laioni asked her own version of the same question.
“The boy Toru, one of my people,” she began timidly. “He came to the lake as we did, not long ago. What happened to him?”
“I seem, hhhsshhh, to remember him,” replied the Guardian, whose movements beneath the torch cast coiling shadows upon the stone walls and floor. “He was driven by a dream, shhwshh, a false dream. It was the work, whhshh, of the Wicked One.”
“What did you do with him?” Laioni, water still dripping from her body, stepped a bit closer. “Tell me, please.”
“I sent him away, shhhwshh, through the tunnels, whhhshh, escorted by a Tinnani who made him forget all he had seen. Swshhh. He was left in the forest somewhere quite distant, hhhsh-whshh, but he should have returned to your people by now.”
Laioni’s gaze fell. “He has not.”
“It could be, shhwshh, he was captured by the Wicked One,” said Thika.
“You mean Ga—” began Kate.
“Hhssswshh! Never say that name,” interrupted the sinuous creature, its blue eyes focused squarely on her. “It is forbidden here. If you must speak of him, hhsh-whhsh, you may call him the Wicked One.”
“He’s growing stronger, isn’t he?” asked Kate in a quiet voice.
The blue eyes scanned her with pained intensity. “By the day, shhwshhh. We measure his strength, hshhwsh, by the warmth of the lake. For as it grows warmer, the Guardians grow weaker. Hhhssshh-swhshh. Already some of our very best have died from the heat, sshwshh, a terrible slow death that saps our strength and turns us whiter than skeletons. Soon the rest of us will follow, hwshhhh, unless something changes.”
The many-eyed being made a low gurgling sound, like a dog growling underwater. “But the Wicked One, hwshh, cares not about us, nor about any living thing but himself. He thinks the whole world, shwshh, and everything in it, shwshh, exists solely for his benefit, to be consumed or destroyed as he chooses. The Guardians he knows only because we stand in the way, hwsswss, of his true desire.”
“What is that?”
“To invade Ho Shhhantero and make it his own. Yesshhhwsh! He does not even care if he destroys it in the process, so long as he controls it at last. Whssshhh, for time beyond memory, since the Great Battle long ago, the cool waters of this lake prevented him and his molten warriors from reaching the floating island, hsh-whshh, for they must stay as hot as their realm underground or perish. And none of his servants above the ground—like the Slimnis—have dared to enter the crater either, hswshh, rightfully fearing the wrath of the Guardians. But those days, whhshhh, are numbered. Hssshhhh. The Guardians are nearly no more.”
Kate glanced at Laioni, then addressed Thika. “We saw some of his servants in the crater. The ones you call Slimnis.”
Thika’s limb lifted with a jerk. “Slimnis? In the crater? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” answered Kate. She squeezed the knotted kerchief in her left hand, causing more water to drip onto the floor. “We fought th
em, and we won. But I’m afraid more will follow.”
“Those are terrible tidings indeed,” replied the Guardian. “Hwhssshh. If the Chieftain ever was going to help you, shhwsh-shhwsh, he will not be in the mood now. He has, hhhswshh, greater problems of his own.”
“The waters of the lake are warm in my time, too,” said Kate somberly.
“Then, hshwshh, I pity you,” spoke the watery voice. The creature straightened itself, observing Kate closely one more time. Then it slipped swiftly down the hole in the stone floor. The sound of ripping fiber rent the air, followed by a distinct pop, followed by silence.
Kate pivoted to face the narrow stairway. The light from the flickering torch danced mysteriously upon the carved steps, making them seem more like water than stone. She stepped closer, drew in a deep breath, and started to climb.
17
the black island of ho shantero
LEAVING a trail of water behind her, Kate ascended the darkened stairway, followed by her equally wet companions. She wondered at the skilled hands that had carved these small steps out of the solid rock. Unlike the buff-colored pumice she had seen elsewhere in the crater, this rock was utterly black, perhaps charred in the final fiery gasp of the volcano that created the crater long ago. As in the pumice outside, small holes permeated every surface, lessening the weight of the rock and making it at least conceivable that beings of great intelligence could have somehow caused this island to float. Still, if she had not seen so much to convince her that Ho Shantero did indeed ride upon the waters of the lake, she would never have believed it possible.
The stairway spiraled up, up, and up. At each complete turn of the spiral, another torch flickered, casting its wavering light for several more steps. Beneath each torch, Kate saw the outlines of petroglyphs cut deep into the blackened stone. Faces of all descriptions, winged creatures soaring high above the trees, long-tailed lizards, stick figures that seemed to represent humans, cones and needles, roots and branches, all crowded the dimly lit walls. As she continued to climb, taking the miniature steps three or four at a time, Kate guessed that the petroglyphs told a single connected story. If only the stairway were better lit, its walls would be a continuous mural of Tinnani history, twisting and turning like the cycles of time.