Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (45 page)

She didn’t even think; she reacted instinctively, as the magic gave her the remedy, no matter how mad it sounded.
Change!
said that magic.
Change your skin!
And she suddenly knew what this was, another ballad of the “Two Magicians.” She heeded the magic again, pulling the magic into herself and changing
herself
—

If he can do it, I can do it. I’ve been a seal!

She changed, shrinking, falling to the ground as she changed. A heartbeat later, she was the very image of the cottage’s wicked cat, and she pounced on the mouse before it could escape, trapping it among her claws.

The mouse squeaked in alarm, and twisted under her paws and—

A fly buzzed out between two of the talons.

In a flash, she became a raven, and as she had seen Neville do in the warm months, she snapped her huge bill at the fly and caught it inside, unharmed. She must have seen Neville play that game with a single fly for hours, catching without so much as touching a leg, opening his beak, letting it go, catching it again…

But Idwal did not remain a fly for long. She felt her beak being forced open, and though she tried to keep it shut, she couldn’t—and the hare that the fly had become, kicked her violently away, sending her tumbling backward onto the grass, and ran off.

But she became one of Squire’s hunting hounds and raced after him. Behind she could hear the Selch following. She caught him as he was leaping over a stretch of water, stream or small river, she couldn’t tell which; she caught him, and lost him as the eel slipped between her teeth and she splashed ingloriously down into the water—

To become a fierce pike, that scented the eel in the water immediately, and was on it, snapping at its tail though it tried desperately to escape, and in panic, flung itself out of the water—

Where it transformed to a duck, wings beating frantically to get some height away from the snapping jaws of the pike that had leapt after it—

And she became a hawk, in hot pursuit of the duck, talons reaching—

And just as the hawk seized the duck’s tail, it became a fox, turning and snapping at the hawk’s head, the two of them dropping to the ground together in a tangle of teeth and talons and feathers—

And Mari became a great feather comforter, and enveloped the fox until it stopped changing and struggling. She felt it become bird, then squirrel, then cat, and knew he had run out of options and could not escape. He could not even become fire and burn her up, for she would smother fire.

Then she felt the magic surge once more… and it was Idwal she held in her own two arms, he limp and exhausted and too weary to move.

The Selch descended on them in a mob, and despite what she wanted, they took Idwal away and set her on her feet again. They were gentle and kind about it though, and one even whispered “Well done, cousin,” before the crowd parted and she faced Gethin again.

“Bring the stools,” he ordered, glaring at her.

One of the Selch brought a pair of stools and set them down. Gethin took one, and gestured abruptly for her to take the other. She did so, and glad for it, for her legs were trembling with weariness, and if she was not as exhausted by the first trial as Idwal had been, she was not too far off from it.

“The next Trial,” Gethin growled, “will be the Trial of Wisdom. We will just see how you measure. I have a horse in my yard, and I never ride him except by the tail.” He glared at her in triumph.

A riddle! “You have a pipe, and you smoke it,” she answered instantly, now unspeakably grateful for all the riddling games she and her da had played in the long winters, and all the riddles that Nan and Sarah had turned up in all those books of fairy tales.

His eyes widened a moment, then his brows knitted. “And what of the horse I never ride until his back breaks?”

That was one any child knew. “That is your roof, and you ride the rooftree to re-thatch it.”

“And the thing I have that grows more hungry the more I feed it?” He was clearly getting angry; evidently this was one trial he had expected to win.

That was not only a riddle, it was the answer to one of the trials of Thor. “That is your fire, the more wood you feed it, the bigger it gets and the more it needs to keep the flames high.”

He lost his temper, and leaned forward on his stool. “I have a thing that the whole sea cannot fill!” he shouted.

“You have a sieve!” she shouted back, sitting straight up, and matching him glare for glare.

“I have a house without window or door, but someone lives there!” he snarled.

“You have a fertile egg!” she retorted. That was one the old woman that had taught her to read used to tell. How could he possibly think these were clever? But… maybe he really did think she was stupid. Or—not stupid, but maybe he thought people weren’t interested in riddles anymore, so she wouldn’t know them?

“I cut it at both ends and it becomes longer!” He was really angry now, eyes flashing, and he looked as if he was going to lunge up off his stool at any moment and strangle her with his own two hands. He was actually frightening her.
I know the Selch will pull him off, but he could hurt me badly before they do.
…

“You are digging a ditch,” she said, deciding to act indifferent, and see where that got her. Either it would make him so angry he would give up, or it would calm him down. In either case, it would better than this, because she hated the way he was shouting and edging closer to her, and truth to tell—the way he was making the hair on the back of her neck stand up, it was getting hard to think clearly.

Her indifference either calmed him, or made him think he had to be equally indifferent to impress her or the onlookers; he sat back on his stool. “Thirty-two horses on a red hill; now they stamp, now they champ, now they stand still.”

“Your teeth, and you are a lucky man to still have all of them,” she said coolly, and surreptitiously took a deep, deep breath of relief that now he was more or less in control of himself.

He ground those teeth audibly, then hunched down on his stool, made his hands into fists, and the battle really began.

He threw literally everything at her. “Cut off my head, I live, cut off my tail, I die.” “You’re a tree.” “I am a lamp that shines over the whole world.” “You are the moon.” “I am dead and I carry the living.” “You are either a boat or a cart, both are made of dead wood and carry the living.” And it went on for so long that both of them got hungry and thirsty; he called for water and food, and offered her none, but Rhodri brought her water and some samphire and raw oysters fresh from the ocean that he cut open for her with a flint knife as he sat on his heels beside her stool. She could manage those, she had eaten oysters raw many times in the past although her da had teased her, saying such were for men for reasons he didn’t specify. She was grateful for something as familiar as oysters; she could never have done what Gethin was doing, tearing into a raw fish as if he was eating a nice piece of laver-bread. She could have done with a bit of that laver-bread right now.

When he had finished his fish, and she was still chewing on a mouthful of seaweed, he began again. Only now… he had changed his tactic altogether. He must have realized that she knew the all riddles that he knew—and as the Trial was to measure her wisdom, he could ask her anything he cared to.

“So,” he said. “You are a chieftain. Two women come before you, both stubborn, both claiming the same child. What do you do?”

She knew in that instant that to use the Judgment of Solomon would be a deep mistake here. Firstly, the Tylwyth Teg famously valued children, and often stole them, and to even threaten to cut one in half would horrify them. And secondly, she was supposed to be showing her
own
wisdom here and she rather thought even Gethin and his clan knew the story.

“This is a child and not a baby?” she asked first. “Old enough to speak?”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “What do you do?”

“I let the child choose, taking him away from both women so that he can choose freely,” she said, after a moment.

Gethin blinked. He clearly had not thought she would say this. “But why?”

“Because the child will choose the woman that loves him most, and treats him better,” she replied, as the Selch murmured among themselves at this.

“But what if he does not choose his real mother?” Gethin demanded.

“Why should that matter?” she replied. “It is better for a child to be with a mother that loves him and nurtures him than one that is his blood-kin but is indifferent to him. Now, a baby is a different matter. A baby cannot choose for itself. I would have set some other test, had it been a baby.”

The Selch were murmuring, and it sounded as if it was with approval. Well, they might well be following the tradition of the Tylwyth Teg of the land, and stealing the children of careless, neglectful, or downright cruel parents.

Thankfully, Gethin did not ask her what she would do if it was a baby, because she honestly hadn’t an answer except to steal the one King Solomon in the Bible used.

Gethin continued to ply her with hard questions; she answered them honestly, even when the answer wasn’t in her favor—

“Suppose,” he said, leaning back on his stool and looking at her through narrowed eyes. “Suppose you win these Trials. Suppose you take Idwal and the children back to the land. And suppose one day your children come to you and say they wish to come to the sea forever? What would you do?”

“I am a mother, I would weep!” she snapped at him. “But I do not own them; they are not my dogs nor my chattel. If that would be what they want, I would hope my tears would move them, but I would let them go!”

“Then why do you fight to keep them now?” he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at her.

“Because they are babies and cannot choose for themselves, or is that so hard a thing for you to accept?” she snapped back. “If you told me ‘if you keep them, they will die,’ then yes, I would give
them up, but I am their mother and I love them more than my own life, and I do not think the women you got to nurse them could love them half so much!”

Well, the last words of that answer did not get so good a response from the Selch, but she wouldn’t unsay them. They were the truth, and she remembered what Idwal had told her; a magician must speak the truth or remain silent, but he could not lie.

Especially not here.

Finally when the questions had ceased to be tests of her wisdom and had become mere badgering, three of the Selch stepped forward, and the middle one made an abrupt gesture.

“Enough, chieftain,” he said. “You have tested her and she has proved knowledge, wisdom, and her willingness to speak true. You gain nothing more by continuing this. It is time to move on.”

She was so grateful for the intervention she nearly jumped up and kissed them. It was impossible to tell what time it was here, for the stars above her had not changed in the least, but it felt like hours and hours had passed.

“One more question,” Gethin insisted. He turned to her. “Your world becomes closed to us. There is more cold iron about with every day, even the ships, as you pointed out, are made of cold iron. What would you do on the day when your world brings such pain to your man that he is never free of hurt and harm from morning to night?”

“I—would tell him to go,” she said, after a long pause. “How could I claim to love him and demand he suffer for my sake?” She licked her lips. “But if it were possible to go with him, then go I would, and leave everything I know behind to be with him.”

If Gethin and hoped to make her look worse in the eyes of the clan with her answer, he had achieved the very opposite. But he had to abide by the will of the rest; with a growl, he stood up, as did she, though her knees were stiff with sitting. One of the Selch took the stools away.

“The last Trial is Love,” Gethin said with a smirk. “As you claim you love your man and children so very much, would you know them among a thousand?”

“Yes!” she said instantly. And knew at that moment that he had tricked her.

“Come, then.” He stalked out into the mist, and she followed him. The rest of the Selch followed the both of them.

Now what have I gotten myself into?

She discovered soon enough.

T
HE
mist blew away from in front of her, and she found herself facing a seal-beach.

As far as she could see, there were seals, cows, bulls, and pups, all stretched out on the sand. She had never in her life seen so many seals; seals sleeping, seals watching her and Gethin, grooming themselves and each other, seals tending their pups, seals doing anything that seals could do except plunging into the surf and swimming off. All of them stayed on the beach, quite as if she didn’t matter at all.

“So you would know them among a thousand?” Gethin asked. “Find them.”

For a moment she struggled with rage. She wanted to seize a rock and beat the smirk off his face. She wanted to strangle him. How was she going to be able to pick out her babies among all these seal pups? Idwal, she could manage—she had been with him as a seal so many times she knew every detail of him in that shape, something Gethin was probably not aware of. But the babies? They had no birthmarks, and she had no idea what they would look like as seals!