Homeward Bound and Other Stories.indb

by Bruce Coville

  “Where have you been?” she demanded, anger and relief mixing in her voice.

  “Looking for something.”

  “Looking for what?”

  Trouble clouded his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said sadly, twisting in her arms so he could stare back into the forest. “There’s something my heart needs to find. But I don’t know what it is.”

  Therese carried him back to the cottage, her heart pounding, though she could no more say what she was afraid of than Nils could tell her what he had gone in search of.

  Another time he frightened her by running into the cottage and crying angrily, “The eyes under the bushes won’t come out and play with me!” When she tried to get him to tell her what he meant, all he would do was point at the bushes near the edge of the wood and howl, “There! There! The eyes under the bushes.”

  “What do they look like?” she asked tenderly, her heart breaking with sorrow for his sorrow—and with fear that he was mad.

  “I don’t know,” he whimpered. “All I can see is their eyes.”

  As for Nils’s own eyes, they came to be a matter of some discussion in the village, for as he grew older they turned—so slowly that none could say when it happened, but surely as the changing of the seasons—from blue to silver. Eventually “the boy with silver eyes” was all that some of the villagers would call him, as if they had never known his real name. Of course, these were the same ones who would spit between their fingers and make a sign to ward off evil when he passed. The other boys teased him mercilessly, of course, calling him “witchborn” and “moonchild.”

  Much as some of the villagers feared Nils, once he reached a certain age he found that others—specifically young women—were irresistibly drawn to him. This caused him no small distress. It was not that he did not like having girls follow him around; part of him rather enjoyed it. But they would follow whether he wanted them to or not, and—even worse—whether or not they already had boyfriends.

  For a peace-loving boy, he had an astonishing number of fights.

  When Nils was sixteen he went to his mother and said, “It is time for me to make my way in the world. I must leave you now.”

  And though she wept, she knew that he was right. She offered him gold to help him on his travels, but he would not take it, for it still filled him with horror, though he could not say why.

  The day he left home Nils had not gone far into the forest when he realized that Sylvie, one of the girls from town, had followed him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvie replied, seeming not only confused by the question but startled to find herself alone with him in the wild. “It’s just that—well, I thought you were leaving, Nils, and the idea scared me. Our town will not be the same without you—without your eyes.” Reaching out a trembling hand, she stroked his cheek.

  Before Nils could think of what to say he heard a furious roar. Looking past Sylvie’s shoulder he saw her father, a beefy man with large fists and an even larger temper, racing toward them.

  Feeling no need to prove his valor, Nils turned and fled, running as far and as fast as his feet would carry him. He dashed through the darkening woods, vaulting over fallen logs, splashing through crystal streams, stumbling over rocks and root-rippled ground until at last he flung himself down beneath a vast old oak, where he lay clutching his side and gasping for breath.

  He had been there for some time before the tree began to speak to him.

  “You are different,” it said, in a voice that seemed to come from the earth itself, rising in slow waves that Nils heard not with his ears but with his very skin.

  “I know,” said Nils ruefully.

  “Don’t . . . talk . . . so . . . fast,” replied the tree, speaking so deliberately that it took four hours to finish the sentence. “Just . . . listen.”

  So Nils, who felt as if he had grown roots himself, lay still and listened, slowly and deeply, in a way he never had before. And as he lay there, nestled in the tree’s roots, it murmured to him of the forest secrets, telling him it had waited hundreds of years for a human who could hear it.

  “You have a long road ahead,” said his new friend. “Seeds that are just sprouting will be trees many times your height before your heart will be at peace. You must learn to sing four things: the Songs of the Earth, the Fire, the Water, and the Air. Three to save a life, the last to put your own soul at rest. This I know from the soil on my roots and the sun on my leaves, from the rain and the wind, which carry me news.”

  This took many days and nights to say, of course, and Nils stayed all this time without moving, locked in a sort of trance.

  Finally the tree fell silent, and Nils stretched as if waking from a dream. He looked around.

  The woods were dark, and he had no idea how long he had been here, nor, in truth, where he was.

  “Well, my lad,” he said to himself, “you’ve done it this time. But morning will come soon enough.”

  He was gathering some leaves to make a rough mattress when he noticed an ugly little face peering over one of the thick roots that rumpled the ground around him. He caught his breath and held motionless, afraid of frightening his visitor. He knew those eyes; they were the eyes he had seen from the time he was little. But now, at last, he could see the face that went with them, and he knew it was because the tree had changed him, taught him to see more slowly.

  The eyes blinked and began to back away.

  “Don’t go,” whispered Nils, his voice low but filled with urgency.

  The creature ducked behind one of the thick roots. Nils strained his ears, but could hear not the slightest rustle in the leaves. He counted ten long breaths, then said softly, “Are you still there?”

  “No!”

  Nils laughed. “Good. I was afraid you were going to stay and bother me all night long.”

  “You’re not supposed to be able to see me,” said the voice querulously. “No one can see us these days.”

  “Well, I didn’t used to be able to see you,” confessed Nils. “Just your eyes.”

  “As if that’s not enough! Well, since you’ve already seen me, there’s no point in hiding.” And with that the creature climbed over the root. Not quite two feet high, it stood, hands on hips, staring at Nils defiantly.

  “What are you?” Nils asked in astonishment.

  “You can’t tell?” replied the little man, sounding more irritated than ever. “Look at these ears!”

  And, indeed, his ears were of interest, since they were pointed and at least twice as large as would have seemed normal for the size of his head.

  “Look at these hands!”

  The creature held out his hands, which were corded with veins. The fingers were long, the knuckles thick and knobbly.

  “Look at this nose!” he fairly shrieked, plucking at the oversized sausage that grew between his eyes. “I’m a goblin, you fool. A goblin! And now that you’ve seen me, I’ll have to take you to the land below.”

  “I should probably tell my mother before we go,” said Nils.

  The goblin sighed. “You really are a bit of a simpleton, aren’t you? No one gets to leave a message before taking such a journey!”

  Suddenly Nils heard mutterings and stirrings all about him. A moment later he saw dozens of pairs of eyes—and a moment after that the goblins those eyes belonged to. With a cry, the ugly creatures rushed forward and snatched him off the ground. As Nils thrashed and struggled and cried out for help, they scampered across the forest floor, bearing him on their shoulders. Their little hands were incredibly strong, and fight as he might Nils could not escape.

  What the goblins did not understand was that if they had only asked, Nils would have been perfectly happy to go with them on his own. He was always eager to see a new place, in the hope that he might, at last, find the unknown thing he was still searching for.

  Moonlight lay in silver puddles upon the forest floor. The branches of the trees cast strange and threateni
ng shadows. Nils’s captors followed a stream to a waterfall that hid the mouth of a deep cave; when they scampered behind the falls Nils had passed from the world we know to the strange and secret world of the goblins, which they call Nilbog.

  Down they went, through secret stony passages, deep into the earth. Sometimes they traveled in darkness complete, sometimes on paths lit by torches topped with flickering flames of green, and more than once through caverns where the only light came from thick shelves of fungus that glowed pale blue.

  The goblins came at last to the vast cavern where their king’s castle had been built. They carried Nils across the drawbridge, through the gate, and into the presence of the king, who sat upon a throne carved from stone and clutched a ruby scepter while he scowled at the world.

  “Why have you brought this human here?” demanded the king.

  “He can see us!” cried the goblin to whom Nils had first spoken.

  This so startled the king that he dropped his scepter. “Put him down,” he ordered.

  Immediately, the goblins dropped Nils to the floor.

  The king stepped down from his throne to stare at Nils, who remained sprawled on the floor. “You have strange eyes,” he said at last. “So perhaps it is true. Can you really see us?”

  “I can,” said Nils, trying to keep his voice from quaking.

  “Prove it!” demanded the king.

  So Nils described the king, telling him every detail of how he looked, from the wart at the end of his wobbly nose to the curving claws at the tips of his thick green toes.

  To Nils’s astonishment, the king began to weep. “At last!” he cried. “At last! It’s been so long since anyone could see us that I had begun to fear we no longer existed. For you, my boy, a great boon is in order! Follow me!”

  And so, with goblins capering behind them, the king led Nils to the Treasure Chamber of Nilbog. Throwing wide the great doors he cried, “Take what you wish, lad. Anything you want is yours!”

  Nils gasped. The room was filled with all things strange and wonderful, with goblin gold and massive gems, with swords and spears and kitchen knives, with shields and crowns, and enchanted jewels that whispered their names in the night. But as he looked, one thing only caught his heart, a plain harp made of dark wood that sat at the edge of the chamber. He remembered what the tree had told him, that he must learn to sing. So he plucked the harp from the pile, saying, “I’ll take this.”

  “But it is worth hardly anything,” said the king.

  “It is what I want.”

  “It doesn’t even have all its strings,” protested the king, eager to have Nils take something finer and more precious. “See, the longest one is broken. Take something else.”

  “You have offered a boon,” said Nils stubbornly, “and this is what I would like. May I have it?”

  “I suppose so,” grumbled the king. “But never say the goblins were stingy with you.”

  “You have given me what I wanted,” replied Nils, clutching the harp to his chest. “That is generous enough.”

  “Let us at least teach you our songs,” said the goblin king.

  “Are they the Songs of the Earth?” Nils asked hopefully. “I have been told that is what I must learn.”

  “What else would they be?” asked the king.

  So Nils agreed to stay.

  He spent three years with the goblins, listening to their songs and practicing on the harp. He had hoped the instrument would be magic, and play with beauty the moment his fingers touched its strings. But this was not so, and Nils spent many hours learning to coax sweet music from it, trying not to be vexed by the missing string.

  When he had learned all the Songs of the Earth, and could also play the harp passably well, the goblins placed a magic on the instrument to keep it safe from harm, then pointed him to a path and told him it would take him to the surface.

  What they neglected to tell him was that there was a dragon along the way.

  This was not malice on their part. The dragon, whose name was Gorefang, was the last dragon on Earth. He had been slumbering for so long he had been forgotten by everyone, even the other dragons, who had left for another world long ago. In fact, he himself had almost forgotten he existed. But when Nils came stumbling into his cave Gorefang roused himself. With flames flickering at the edges of his nostrils he grumbled, “What do you want . . . human?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” replied Nils. “But I do not really know, which is why my heart knows no rest.”

  “And why do you have such strange eyes?”

  Though Nils did not care to tell the story of what had happened when he was young, one does not lie to a dragon.

  “A sad tale,” murmured Gorefang at last. “No wonder you are restless.” Shifting one massive claw so that it pointed at the harp Nils carried, he said, “It has been long since I heard music. Play for me.”

  “I know only the Songs of the Earth. I’m not sure they would please a dragon.”

  “They’ll do for a start. When you have sung those until I am tired of them, you can learn more. After all, we have plenty of time.” With that Gorefang shifted one vast, scaly wing so that it blocked the passage out.

  With a sigh, Nils began to strum the harp. His music was better now than when he first picked it up, but still not what he wanted.

  When he had played the songs he knew many times over, Gorefang yawned and said, “Enough. They were fine, but I cannot bear to hear them any more. Why don’t I teach you some new ones?” And for the next three years he did just that, teaching Nils the old songs of dragonkind, the Songs of Fire that could set a heart aflame.

  During those years Nils drank from cold underground streams, and ate little more than mushrooms and blind fish, though the dragon would toast them until they were quite tasty.

  One day Gorefang closed his eyes and said, “I’m tired, and I’ve taught you all the songs I know. It is time for you to go.”

  Nils thanked the dragon seven times, then strapped the harp to his back and continued on his way.

  His skin was pale now from his years underground, and he was more restless than ever, for something still gnawed at his heart, though it was nothing he could name.

  When he had finally made his way to the surface he found himself at the edge of the northern sea. After gazing out at its vast grey surface, he sat upon a rock and began to sing, first the Songs of the Earth, then the Songs of Fire. They were lovely, even though he was hampered by the missing string.

  While he was singing the fourth of the Songs of Fire he heard a splash. Looking down, he saw a mermaid, her gold-green hair floating like a fan over the water, her great fish tail clearly visible beneath the waves. She sang to him. He responded with one of the dragon’s songs. She sang again, and beckoned, and with no thought for life or future Nils clambered down the rocks and into the water. The mermaid gazed into his silver eyes, then twined her arms around his neck and pulled him to the bottom of the sea, where she gave him a shell that let him breathe.

  For three years Nils lived beneath the waves with the mermaid, and was her love, and they taught each other songs. But at the end of that time he grew restless, because his heart was still hungry, though he could not say why. So the mermaid carried him to the surface and let him go, kissing him once for love and biting him once for anger before she sped him on his way.

  So now Nils knew the Songs of the Earth and the Songs of Fire and the Songs of the Water, and he wandered the north, going from village to village, singing for his supper. He had learned to play his harp quite beautifully by this time, and the missing string bothered no one but himself, because he was the only one who knew there were still songs he could not play, and chords beyond those his harp could sound. Still, his appearance troubled people, for they had never seen anyone so pale, much less one with eyes of silver.

  As the decades passed, his hair became silver as well. Even in age he was beautiful, though in a strange and distant way, and everywhere he went at least one
maiden would try to follow when he left. To stop her, he would sing a song so laced with loss and longing that she would sit by the side of the road and weep, unable to move. Then he would go forward alone.

  Finally one maiden, bolder or more sly than others, followed him at a greater distance. He didn’t realize she had done so until late at night, when he woke to find her on the opposite side of his dying campfire, staring at him with more curiosity than love, which he found refreshing.

  “Why do you never stay in one place?” she asked.

  The wind sang gently through the tops of the pine trees. The stars blazed in an ebony sky. And Nils’s heart nearly burst with the question.

  “I’m looking for something,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You would be a dangerous man to love.”

  “You could not pick anyone worse.”

  “My name is Ivy Morris, and I will walk for a while with you.”

  Despite his efforts to turn her away, the girl traveled with Nils for a year and a day. When he sang the song that had stopped the others in their tracks—which he did more than once—she continued walking, tears streaming down her face, murmuring, “I understand, for I am a wanderer, too.”

  Finally Nils wrote a new song, just for her. He called it “Song of the Wanderer,” and it spoke of both their lives:

  Across the gently rolling hills

  Beyond high mountain peaks

  Along the shores of distant seas

  There’s something my heart seeks

  But there’s no peace in wandering

  The road’s not made for rest

  And footsore fools will never know

  What home might suit them best.

  Ivy thanked him for the song.

  The next day she was gone.

  To the south, the world was changing as the age of machines crept on, transforming the earth in more ways than the people who were building and making and inventing could begin to understand. But in the northern forest Nils continued his wandering, spending less and less time in the villages, and more time on the mountainsides, trailing the splashing streams, sitting on high promontories, singing only to the wind and the eagles.