Magic Three of Solatia (11 page)

The giant creature seemed not to notice him at all, and kept swimming in a northerly direction.

“Perhaps I had best get off while I can,” Lann said to himself. But when he looked for his boat, he could just make it out on the horizon. And before he had time to blink again, the boat was out of sight.

“Well,” he thought, “this monster is speeding faster than I thought. I wonder if I should try to swim?” But there was nothing but sea for miles around.

Lann looked down at the lute. “I wonder if it would float,” he asked himself. He stroked the fine wood, not out of fear or even possessiveness, but with a kind of pity that he would not now have time to make its acquaintance. And then a sudden thought struck him. “There is nothing that happens that does not happen for a reason. Just as the shell pointed me to the boat and the boat brought me here, so perhaps this turtle will take me closer to my heart’s desire. Who knows?”

So he settled himself more comfortably on the peak of the shell and took out his pack. He found he had squashed the cheese and bread by falling upon it, but still it was quite tasty. He ate the last of it. What was worse, though, was that he had lost his berry wine. It must have fallen down the turtle’s back and slid into the sea when he slipped. The sun was now high in the sky, and there was nothing to shade him from it. He was becoming very thirsty, and thinking of thirst made him crave something to drink even more.

“Perhaps if I sing,” he thought, “I shall forget my fears.” So he put down the pack and picked up the lute, thinking to play a song.

But he had no time to begin, for just as he picked the instrument up, the turtle began to slow down. Lann stood up shakily. He put his hand above his eyes to shade them from the glare of the sky. Far ahead, but coming closer with each stroke of the turtle’s powerful legs, was land.

T
HE GIANT TORTOISE SWAM
directly to the land. As they came closer, Lann could see it was a verdant isle with trees of every size and shape and much lush undergrowth. But of houses or boats, of roads or chapels or humankind, there was no sign.

There was a sudden bump as the turtle’s feet touched shore. The giant did not stop, though, and continued directly upon the land, walking with the same rolling gait it had had in the sea.

“Enough for me,” thought Lann. And, clutching his empty pack in one hand, the lute in the other, he slid down the back end of the turtle’s shell and landed none too gracefully upon the shore.

He looked about him in wonder. The island seemed to creep and crawl with every manner of tortoise. There were small turtles with patterned shells and turtles whose backs were seamed and leathery. There were green turtles and brown turtles and yellow turtles and turtles with vermilion designs. There were turtles as small as Lann’s smallest finger and some nearly as big as a horse.

Yet strange to say, for all the movement in the undergrowth as the turtles moved slowly and clumsily onto the well-worn paths of the isle, there was no sound of life but the sound of a hiss.

As Lann watched, the giant tortoise that had carried him to the isle moved up a central pathway to a high peak. And when it reached the peak, where surely it must have been seen by the entire island, it raised its monstrous head to the sky and opened and shut its terrible jaws. The loud snap-snap resounded all over the isle.

As if at a signal, the turtles began to converge on Lann. Slowly, ponderously, but relentlessly, they came from all sides to the beach where he was standing. And before he could think of a plan of escape, he found himself surrounded by hundreds of turtles, their black, beady eyes staring at him, their mouths opening and shutting in imitation of their leader. But the only sound that emerged was that ever-present hiss.

Lann felt cold, yet warm too, as if his body could not catch up to his fears. He could barely move. Was this, then, the end of his quest?

As he pondered his fate, one especially large turtle pushed menacingly toward him and Lann stepped back awkwardly. As he moved, his elbow knocked the lute and set the strings a-quivering. At the strange new sound, the turtles all looked up and then down in a single motion, and stopped all movement as the sound of the humming strings died slowly in the air. When the sound could no longer be heard, the turtles began to move again.

“So that is the way of it,” thought Lann. And he swung the lute in front of him and began to pluck a tune. As each note sang across the island, the turtles began to bob their heads on wrinkled necks up and down as if dancing. And soon Lann’s fears subsided and he began to sing:

The magic of a single song

Is but, in fact, a moment long.

But captured in your reverie,

That moment can forever be.

And so I sing a magic spell,

And hope I sing that moment well,

So my sweet song can catch you fast,

And in your heart forever last.

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.

L
ANN 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.

L
ANN 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.