The Legend Begins (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Smoke!

Brownie always wanted to talk about Little Fur's father, for he was enchanted by the idea that she was part elf. He liked to make up stories of how her parents had fallen in love and what terrible fate had befallen them to orphan her. In time his stories ceased to discomfit her, and she even came to enjoy them.

For her part, Little Fur loved hearing Brownie talk of the sea. He spoke very poetically of waves and wind. He claimed that the wilderness reminded him of the ocean. This was something Little Fur never quite understood, for how could a great, restless body of water such as he described be like the wilderness that was her home?

“I will take you on my back to a place where you can smell the waves,” Brownie announced one day.

“It is impossible,” Little Fur answered.

“It is too far to go to the sea,” Brownie agreed. “But I can carry you to a stream that goes to the sea, and you will smell the waves in it.”

“I can't ride on your back,” Little Fur said.

Brownie protested that he would never let her fall.

“It's not that, but if I climbed onto your back, I would lose touch with the flow of earth magic.”

“It would only be for a little time,” Brownie said.

“A moment would be too long, for the earth magic would never flow through me again,” Little Fur said.

Brownie gaped at her. “Do you mean that you have to be touching the ground
all the time
?”

“My skin has always been in touch with brown earth where things can grow, or with green or growing things,” she said.

“Always?”

“Always,” Little Fur said.

“How do you know you wouldn't be able to get back in touch with the flow if you went away from it, then? After all, I feel it now, and yet I go away from it when I go into my stable, or when I walk on the black roads.”

“I am part troll,” Little Fur said.

Brownie asked in a low voice, “What would happen if you . . . did lose touch with the flow of earth magic?”

“I should have to leave the wilderness. The Old Ones will abide nothing here that cannot accept the flow of earth magic,” Little Fur said.

Brownie was appalled. “But . . . Little Fur, what if you forget yourself and jump up in the air?”

“Why would I want to?” Little Fur responded simply.

“For joy!” Brownie cried, and pranced and reared and capered to show her what she was missing out on. But Little Fur only laughed and clapped her hands, saying that it made her heart leap and gallop to see
him
prancing and jumping, just as it made her heart fly to see Crow take to his wings.

Crow was Little Fur's other great friend. She had found him at the foot of a tree after a storm, and nursed him until he stopped seeing three of everything. Crow was loud, boastful, conceited and opinionated. Yet, like Brownie, he was occupied, if somewhat giddily, with more than food and mates. He, too, and mates. He, too, dwelt among humans, but he regarded the city as a roost for birds, and saw humans as stupid, dangerously clumsy creatures who were of no consequence except as a source of bread crusts and scraps. But because of Little Fur's interest in humans, Crow had taken to describing their activities to her.

And so it was Crow who brought the first news of the tree burners.

“A pack of humans burning trees?” Little Fur echoed, refusing to react too much. Crow liked to present news in the most dramatic way in order to make sure everyone was listening to him.

“Craaak! They creeping out at night and burning trees up!” Crow screamed.

Beginning to be alarmed, Little Fur questioned the bird closely and learned that he had gotten his information from a possum who lived in the roof of an old human. She had heard the news from the human's talking picture box, which was very loud. Never exactly sure what a picture box was, Little Fur had learned enough to know that this was one of the ways humans communicated news.

“Are you sure the possum heard it right?” she asked. Humans' speech was very difficult to understand, even for those animals who lived with them.

“Maybe not,” Crow said unhelpfully. “Possums being almost as stupid as humans.”

“Did the talking picture box say why the human pack burns trees?” Little Fur asked.

Crow rolled his eyes. “They
liking
to burn! That being reason enough for humans. But Old Ones not letting tree killers coming here.”

Little Fur shook her head. “A pack of humans all thinking about finding trees to burn might be able to see the wilderness even if the Old Ones tried to stop them.”

Crow flapped his wings and began to preen in a nervous way, finally muttering, “Nevermore,” and falling stubbornly mute.

Little Fur waited anxiously for Brownie's next visit, hoping the pony would snort in scorn as he often did when she reported some wild tale of Crow's. Indeed, she counted on his laughing and explaining how Crow had gotten it wrong. But Brownie only said, “I am sure that the other humans will catch the tree burners before long.”

“Catch them?” Little Fur asked, confused.

“The tree burners are rogue humans,” said Brownie. “The other humans are angry at them because every time they light a fire, the wind carries seeds of flame to human houses and they burn down as well as the trees. Last night fire jumped into one of the high houses. If you sniff you will smell the smoke from it still, for the other humans have not managed to put it out yet.”

“Why are the tree burners doing it?” Little Fur wondered.

“No one knows. They wear masks and keep themselves secret,” Brownie said. “Lots of humans are worried about the trees and are sleeping in parks to protect them.”

“
Humans
want to protect trees?” Little Fur asked, wondering if she had heard rightly.

“I told you all humans are not bad.”

“All humans
stupid,
” Crow muttered.

“Even if the tree burners do come this far, the Old Ones won't let them come here,” Brownie assured her.

“If a fire is lit in the pony park, the
flames
will come here.”

There was a grim silence, and then Crow fluttered down. “Crow knowing what to do. Must asking advice of Sett Owl. Many animals asking Herness to thinking for them.”

Little Fur clapped her hands. “Crow, you must fly at once and ask her what we should do.”

Crow ruffled his feathers evasively. “Herness not answering Crow.”

“But you said she is used to being asked for advice by creatures other than owls.”

“Answering all creatures
but
crows,” said Crow. “Sett Owl hating crows because flock attacking her when she being fledgling. Maybe you can asking some other bird to talking her.”

Little Fur shook her head. “Most wild birds can't remember anything for more than a few seconds unless it has to do with nesting or food. If only there was someone else I could ask, but all of the animals here are . . .”

“Too stupid,” Crow concluded.

“Too small. I wonder if I could ask one of the other birds to invite the Sett Owl here,” Little Fur murmured. “One of them might manage that.”

“She not coming,” Crow warned. “She flying bad because of wing injured in attacking long ago. All wanting answers must coming to Herness in beaked house.”

Brownie broke in to announce that he had to go home. Crow fluttered into a tree and tried to look as if he were thinking deeply, but he was bird enough for it to be hard for him to keep his mind on the problem. After all, his wings would lift him above any danger. He preened himself surreptitiously and soon fell asleep.

Little Fur lay wide awake in her favorite sleeping place among the roots of the eldest of the Old Ones. She had seen a fire only once, when lightning had struck at the edge of the wilderness, but rain had put it out before long. But the hot orange tongues of flame had traveled with frightening speed and she vividly remembered the whispered terror of the trees.

When at last she did sleep, it was an uneasy doze in which she seemed to hear the Old One whispering to her that all things came to an end, even seemingly immortal trees, and that fire was as much a force of nature as rain or sunlight or even humans.

Little Fur woke with tears on her cheeks and the knowledge that she must go to the Sett Owl. She climbed to the top of the hill and gazed outward, over the shadowy rooftops of the human dwellings around the wilderness to the mysterious, shining high houses in the distance. Animals said there were few trees and green places around the high houses, but the beaked house was in an older part of the city where roads were sometimes made from round cobblestones that let the earth breathe, and where there were trees and tiny parks and paths of grass. There were even green places where humans did not bother to go. Little Fur felt sure that she could make her way carefully from one of these green places to the next without losing touch with the flow of earth magic. And it could not be very far if, as Crow said, the bells they sometimes heard tolling in the wilderness belonged to the beaked house. She would have to go slowly but she could travel at night, when most humans slept. That meant a greater chance of encountering trolls, but there were not so many in the parts of the city where green things grew, and if she was careful, she could avoid them.