Magic Three of Solatia (12 page)

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.

T
HEY 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.”

A
S 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.”

“Nay, little friend,
you
have not lost my crown.
I
have lost it. For to effect our escape, it was necessary to throw it to Slysyth. He was more than satisfied with the exchange. But never mind, what has been lost can again be found. And indeed, Slysyth does not know what a prize he has lost. For like the animal he is, he does not see farther than the ground. Before I escaped this isle, no one had known of its existence and we could but guess at what had become of our ships lost at sea. My own father, King L’iss himself, lies imprisoned on that isle in a vermilion shell. And one day soon I shall find a means to rescue him. Till then, let us row, you and I, to my land, which lies not far from here, I think. And then my own sailors shall bring you home again.”

“But I cannot go home as yet,” cried Lann.

“What, so young and yet parted from your so-wise mother by your own choosing?” asked Queen Ail’issa. “In our land it is not ever so.”

And so it was that Lann told her his tale, of his mother and his grandfather, of the overheard spell and the Thrittem pledge. And when he was done, Ail’issa looked quite thoughtful.

“My sailors have seen the seventeen seas and all the lands hereabout. If there is such a pool that from a salt sea springs, they shall know of it or they shall find it. And
I
shall save your grandfather as you have saved me.”

So they set to rowing with their hands and came, after three more days, hungry and thirsty and half dead from the sun, to the coast of the land of Iss.

T
HE LAND OF ISS
was strange and beautiful in Lann’s eyes. For though in Solatia much was owed to the sea, in Iss the sea itself seemed to have invaded the land. Houses were built of green bricks made of seaweed, with mosses lining the cracks. Sea buds and sea blossoms were on every shelf. Fish was served at each meal. And the tall green-skinned women and their tall green-skinned men spent fully half their lives in the sea, swimming or diving for pearls or sailing far off alone or in pairs in their turtleshell boats.

Lann had not been there half a year than he began to worry about his vow, and to grow weary of the endless tales the sea-colored Issians told. For they were a race devoted to long stories, the points of which were most often lost on the lad.

At first Lann had been delighted with the strange new ways of the seafolk and had hoped to find the crystal pool in one of their tales. But now he grew despondent. It was as if a scant two seasons had aged him a hundred years.

By guestrite, Lann had been forced each day to sit the morning by Ail’issa’s side and listen to the returning sailors spin out their yarns over large draughts of brine-flavored wine. The wine was sour to Lann’s taste, and so, at last, were the tales. And if the women sailors were more or less boring than the men, Lann could not tell, for they had become the same to him.

“My Lady Ail’issa,” Lann said at last one morn when another Issian sailor had been about to begin his tale, “I do not mean disrespect to your folk. But I have been here both summer and fall, and still have not begun my search for the crystal pool. I do not see the point of sitting here and telling tales and taking no action at all.”

Ail’issa laughed and clapped her hands then, and the sailor, who had been standing, sat before them, his legs folded under him, waiting for the signal to begin.

“My young friend Lann,” she replied, “if there is one thing my people know, it is the long patience of the sea. The sea rolls in each day and rolls out each night and never wearies of this, its ancient role. Perhaps this is the difference between your people and mine. But I think it is rather the difference between the young and the old. You must learn that to hurry is not necessarily to hasten.”

“But to do nothing at all is neither,” complained Lann. “And now I have less than half a year to save my grandfather.”

“Do you think that what we do here is nothing?” asked Ail’issa. Her voice was not hard or threatening, indeed there was a teasing laugh in it.

Lann nodded miserably. Then he softened his words. “At least, I do not see the use of it.”

“My sailors have been the world over,” Ail’issa said. “Or at least the world where it is touched by the sea. And each man returns with knowledge which, though it may seem unworthy to your mind, serves to enlarge our books. For with such tales, the books of knowledge are made larger and the world is made smaller. And with each new friend found, the world is brought home.”

Lann thought about what she said. Then at last he spoke. “I think you are as wise as my mother,” he said.

“Well, perhaps we are both wise in different ways.” And she signaled for the man to speak.

This sailor was more brown than green, which Lann knew was a sign of age. His sea-green eyes were slightly faded, as when the sea is seen through fog. He was smaller than most Issians Lann had met, but wiry and looked very strong.

“My queen, I am Syss, of the Cyth clan. My trip is of little worth. I sailed many days to the south and east of here in a single boat. There I found a group of islands strung out like broken pearls on a chain. Of the other isles, cruised by fishermen and blasted by the sun, I have nothing to say. But of one, where I stayed a day and a night, I speak.