The Dragons of Noor (6 page)

Hanna’s teeth began to chatter. She had to find a way to travel east and follow Tymm.

“Here.” Taunier pointed to an overhanging rock. “Let’s wait out the worst of it.”

At sixteen, he was no older than Miles, yet he was as tall and strong as a grown man. He’d fished with his grandfather as a young boy, worked as a blacksmith’s apprentice, then later for the wool merchant, all before he’d come last year to herd sheep for Da. Hanna followed him under the sheltering rock. Taunier’s experience fishing with his granda might help if she had to sail east, and it was looking more and more as if that was what she’d have to do. Taunier knew more about boats than she, though she’d fished a few times with her own granda before he had passed away.

Taunier’s smooth brown arms shone with rain as he gathered kindling. He’d inherited his dark coloring from his father, a spice trader from Kanayar. Taunier’s father had died when he was young, and he rarely spoke of him.

Taunier knelt under the overhanging rock, his brow tilting with concentration as he laid the branches for the fire. She needed to ask him if he knew anyone with a small boat. But before she could go into that, she would have to speak of her dreamwalk and tell him why she needed it.

Intent on the fire, Taunier seemed not to notice Hanna’s intense stare. But then why should he pay attention to a girl with one blue eye and one green, a girl some people in town called a witch?

Lightning flashed, shooting silver streamers across the clouds. Hanna wrapped Taunier’s cloak more tightly about her. Feeling suddenly tired, she sat and moved in closer until the flames sent delicious waves of heat across her body. She’d hiked a long way in her dreamwalk last night. Rain sprayed around the rock. A sharp wind dislodged a branch in the fire. Sparks flew up as it tumbled from the burning pile, setting the corner of Taunier’s cloak alight. Startled, she scooted back against the boulder, furiously trying to untie the knot about her neck and free herself from the burning cloak.

Taunier leaped up, put out his hand, and waved it over the flame. The fire moved under his palm from cloak to
branch and joined the central blaze again. Smoke rose from the scorched cloth. Hanna squinted at Taunier and coughed. Had he moved the fire without touching it?

“How did you do that?”

Taunier sat again. “Do what?”

“Herd the fire.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. I saw you. Did you use magic?”

His shoulders stiffened. “What makes you think that?”

“I was just wondering …” She fingered the burned edge of Taunier’s cloak.

“My granda taught me how to tend a fire, and he was an ordinary islander like yourself,” he instisted.

Ordinary?
She’d never been called that before. She laughed, then blushed.

The fire spilled ruby light across Taunier’s face and reddened the tips of his black hair. Why wouldn’t he admit he had a gift? What was he afraid of?

She peered at the storm. With or without Wild Esper, she had to go east across the sea. Beyond their small shelter, rain pounded the fallen pines and firs.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Taunier.

“Of this.” Hanna waved her hand at the dead Waytrees along the hillside. “And of the Wild Wind that took the children.” Tymm’s name caught in her heart; she couldn’t say it aloud.

Taunier cleared his throat and stood up. “This storm won’t end any time soon. We’d best be getting home before your mother goes into a panic. You know how she’s been since Tymm—” He offered his hand to help her up.

“There’s something I have to ask you.” Hanna rose, the low fire burning between them. “It wasn’t all that many years ago when you used to fish with your granda.”

“So?”

“So, do you know anyone down at the harbor who can loan me a small boat?”

Taunier stomped out the fire. “Why?”

“I need to look for Tymm.”

Smoke coiled about his legs. “Hanna,” he said, “you know all the sailors in Brim went out to sea after the children were blown over the water. And you know as well as I do that they didn’t find any of them.”

“They didn’t know where to look.”

“And you do?”

Back on the trail, the slippery mud chilled her feet. Taunier said, “I know you found Miles last year, but this is different, Hanna. Miles was lost here on Mount Shalem. Tymm and the others … they were taken far away from us by some—”

“Magic,” Hanna finished. “Some magic. That’s why I have to go.”

Taunier shook his head and said something under his breath. It sounded like
stubborn girl
.

“What did you say?”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

She should have told him where she’d found Miles last year. Miles was on this mountain, yet he was in Oth, a place invisible to all who didn’t have the magic to enter in. She’d kept last year’s adventure to herself. Only the Falconer, Old Gurty, and Great-Uncle Enoch had known the whole story. It might help to show Taunier the maps of Noor and Oth in
The Way Between Worlds
so he could see how one world mirrored the other. It would be a place to start; yet she’d never shared the Falconer’s magical book with anyone but Miles.

At last they came in sight of the cottage. She could see Da working down at the sheep pen. There was no time
left. She should tell Taunier now. Whether he admitted it or not, he seemed to know something about magic, and if that were so, she could really use his help. She didn’t want to have to sail after Tymm alone. “What do you know of magic?” she asked cautiously.

“Only what I’ve been taught.”

“And what’s that?”

“Trouble. And those who practice magic are troublemakers.”

“You can’t really think that!”

He thrust out his hand. “Come on. You’re to be home, and your da’s waiting for me below.”

She pulled back. “You go on. I won’t be slowing you down anymore.”

“And now you’re mad at me? When I came to fetch you?”

“I could have gotten home on my own!”

“Fine, then. Suit yourself!”

“And here’s your cloak!” She tore it from her back and hurled it at him. It slapped wetly against his front. He glared at her as he put it on, then turned on his heel and marched down to Da.

When Hanna reached the yard, Da said, “Go in now
and comfort your mother. The poor soul thought the wind had stolen you, too!” His voice was cold with anger.

“I dreamwalked, Da. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.”

In the cottage, Mother sat on the bench near the fire.

“I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Mother shook her head, speechless over losing Tymm, and then this morning thinking Hanna, too, had disappeared. Hanna felt her Mother’s confused sorrow all the more in the silence.

“I’ll make us some thool,” she offered. A few minutes later, bringing her mother the steaming cup, she wanted to say she’d caught sight of Tymm, but Mother had been raised to distrust any kind of magic, and she feared Hanna’s dreamwalks.

Hardly able to bear the troubled silence, Hanna found herself wishing her mother would shout at her. Mother had always kept busy, spinning wool when she wasn’t scrubbing the floor, milking the cow, cooking stew, or making candles. Now her hands were empty. She hadn’t even picked up her cup.

“I’ll find him, Mother. Remember how I found Miles last year?” Hanna was desperate to believe it herself. But she’d had more faith in magic when the Falconer was alive
to guide her. The great meer had traveled all over Noor and had crossed into Oth many times before he came to spend the last years of his life on Enness Isle. Hanna missed her old teacher terribly.

“Won’t you drink your thool, Mother, before it gets cold?”

“I don’t want it.”

Hanna sat on the bench. The fire was warm, but the warmth didn’t reach her. With her arm about her mother, she watched the tilting flames.

I
t is not easy for a girl to run away, especially an island girl, but Hanna’s granda had once had a small sailboat. It belonged to his brother, Great-Uncle Enoch, now, though it was little used and in ill repair.

She had to borrow Da’s wheelbarrow to haul the Falconer’s trunk and other supplies down to the harbor, and then she had to steal the boat itself. It shamed her to do it, but she couldn’t stay on the island any longer.

Before dawn, she’d hefted the trunk aboard the boat and stowed it down below. She’d filled it with needed things: the Falconer’s book, which she needed for its pages on magic, herbal healing, and, most of all, for the hand-drawn maps of Noor and Oth. She’d also packed the
Falconer’s healing tinctures, his knife, and Tymm’s grass rope—the very last thing he’d made before he was stolen. Last she packed her own precious lightstone, which had glowed even in the darkest realm of the shadow vale last year when she’d gone into Oth after Miles.

Trunk stowed and water barrel battened down, she slipped her hand in her pocket and felt the cool glass vial. Great-Uncle Enoch had given her the vial last evening when he’d come to the cottage with Old Gurty to treat Mother with mountain herbs that would ease her anxious fears and help her sleep.

Hanna had asked Great-Uncle Enoch to help her draw water from the well, hoping to get a word with him alone. As she’d hauled up the water bucket, he’d said, “After your da came by our cottage to tell us Tymm was stolen, I went to Garth Lake to sit by the old roots and listen.”

The bucket shook in her hand. She hadn’t gone back to the lake herself the week after Tymm was stolen, when the whole forest was toppling down. Nor had she tried to reach Great-Uncle Enoch’s smallholding, with so many trees falling between her cottage and his. She marveled at the old man’s courage. Still, her great-uncle had a
deep understanding of trees. Most folk thought Enoch had lived in Reon for fifty years before coming back to Enness, but Hanna knew the real secret of his past. He’d angered the Sylth Queen long ago, and she’d taken her revenge by imprisoning him in a stunted oak for fifty years.

She’d helped Miles and Gurty free him from the oak after they’d returned from Oth, and she remembered how Enoch had cried with joy when he’d been freed.

Hanna peered into his eyes, light blue even in the moonlight.

“The roots are dying,” he said. “The Waytrees all across Noor, who hold the mysteries of Oth in their roots, are falling. If the last of the Waytrees fall, the way between the worlds will close.”

Hanna’s throat constricted. “I spoke to Wild Esper,” she blurted. “She said the wind blew Tymm and the rest of the children to eastern Oth. If the way between the worlds closes, how am I … how can we get Tymm out of Oth before it’s too late?”

Great-Uncle Enoch shook his head. “The roots did not tell me that. But you went to Oth last year and found Miles.”

“Here on the mountain,” she reminded him. “Tymm was blown east.”

Enoch took the bucket from her to fill a pitcher. “You were in Brim when the first wind came, and later you saw Tymm taken. Tell me what you saw, Hanna.”

“The wind stole only three children out of the crowd: Cilla, Brand, and Darlee. It seemed to pick them out. To
choose
them. If you had been there, you would have seen how it knocked the rest of us down. First it happened in the market square; then Tymm was taken, but I was not.” She’d not said this aloud before. She hadn’t let herself even think it. Her brother had been chosen. She’d been left behind.

Hanna leaned against the cold well stones. She’d crossed over into Oth and knew something about magic. Hadn’t the Falconer entrusted her with his important book before he died? Hadn’t she and Miles helped free Enoch from the oak? Wasn’t she a Dreamwalker whose dreams often foretold the future? Why would the wind steal children too young to know anything of magic? What could the wind possibly want with
them?

She looked up at her great-uncle. “Why take Tymm, Uncle Enoch?” she asked. “He’s so young.”

“So young, aye.” He tipped the dipper this way and that. “The wind is choosing, as you say.”

“But why?”

Enoch could speak the language of the trees. He’d been to Oth, was old enough to know, but he only shook his head, his tangled hair a white nest in the starlight.

“You’ll go after him, just as you went after Miles.”

“Come with me. Can you come?” Her hand was on his threadbare sleeve.

Enoch shook his head. “I’m too old to go as far as that. You know it, Hanna.” He hung the dipper on its hook, then pulled a small, brown bottle from his pocket. “This is for you.”

She cupped the cool glass in her hand. “Is this a healing tincture?”

Enoch smiled. “You might say that, but it’s only a bit of salt water.”

Hanna wanted to say,
What’s the use of that?
But Great-Uncle Enoch touched the corner of his eye. “Tears,” he whispered. “And not sorry ones, but glad ones that came on the day you, Miles, and Gurty freed me from the tree.”

His wrinkled face cracked to a full smile. “Gurty helped me gather them after you left us on the mountain.”

Hanna remembered how he’d come out of the oak tree the Sylth Queen had enspelled him in, waving his arms and weeping happily after fifty years of imprisonment on the high cliff.

“What am I to do with them?” she asked.

“The roots told me the Kanameer will know what to do with them.”

Enoch picked up the pitcher and turned to leave. His soft-spoken words had confused Hanna more than ever. “Wait,” she said. “Who is the Kanameer?”

It was then Da had thrown open the back door, calling, “What’s taking so long with the water, girl? Must I come out myself?”

A gull landed on the dock and folded its wings. Hanna slipped Enoch’s vial back into her pocket and looked out across the bay. It was time to go. She climbed on the deck of the creaking boat. The cloudy sky held the threat of rain, but the rising sun sent arms of light across the sea. As the time for departure drew near, she grew more anxious. Why hadn’t she paid closer attention to Granda’s instructions the last time he’d taken her to sea? Frowning with concentration, she checked beneath the narrow seats, where the extra rope was stored, and
found the stash of candles, the life floaters, and other gear.