by T.A. Barron
Her brow creased in worry, Hallia reached up and, with her slender hand, stroked the thick fur of the stag’s neck. Quietly, she said, “Once should be enough, my brother. The favor is exchanged. Do you really need to do more?” She glanced at me, and her expression hardened. “And for the sake of a man? Need I remind you that men stole our parents’ lives? That they cut out our mother’s and father’s shoulders for a meal . . . and left the rest of their bodies to rot?”
Their eyes met. At length, Eremon spoke with a new softness. “Eo-Lahallia, your pain, like all you feel, is great. Yet I fear that instead of stepping through your pain, as you and I have stepped through many a marsh, you have let it cling to you, like the bloodthirsty tick that rides our backs for months on end.”
Hallia blinked back her tears. “This tick will not fall away.” She swallowed. “And . . . there is more. Last night, after we regained our two-legged forms, a dream came to me. A terrible dream! I entered . . . a dark and dangerous place. There was a river, I think, flowing fast. And right before me, the body of a stag. Blood everywhere! He quivered, at the edge of death. The very sight made me weep! Just as I came close enough to look into his eyes, I awoke.”
Eremon kicked anxiously at the grass with his hoof. “Who was this stag?”
“I . . . can’t be sure.” She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “But I don’t want you to die!”
As I listened, my heart filled with anguish. I remembered too well Rhia’s parting embrace at the headwaters, and my longing to be with her again. “Heed her warning,” I urged. “As much as I yearn for your help, Eremon, that would be too high a price. No, whatever I must do, I must do it alone.”
Relief flickered in Hallia’s eyes.
Eremon observed me. “Was it hard for you to part with your sister?”
His guess took me aback, though I managed a nod.
He tilted his rack so that one of the points lightly brushed Hallia’s cheek. “Can a race whose brothers and sisters care so much for each other be entirely evil?”
She said nothing.
The stag lifted his mighty head and addressed me. “My own race, the deer people, have lived too long in fear and rage at yours. I do not know whether helping you will also help to bind us to the race of men and women. Yet I do know this: It is right to help another creature, no matter the shape of his track. And so I shall.”
Hallia sucked in her breath. “Is . . . your path firmly set?”
“It is.”
“Then,” she declared with a shake of her whole torso, “I will join you.”
She raised a hand as Eremon started to protest. “Is your choice to be respected, but not mine?” Sensing his anguish, she stroked his ear softly. “If I must weep, I would rather do so by your side than someplace far away from you.”
Gently, the stag’s moist nose touched hers. “You will do no weeping.” After a pause, he added, “Nor, I hope, will I.”
With that, Hallia stepped back from her brother. She glanced down at her hands, stretching her fingers in the sunlight. At length, she turned toward the open field, the meadowsweet poignant under the midday sun. In a flash she was running, then loping, then bounding through the green spears with the grace of a deer. She turned and pranced over to us, her hooves springing lightly off the turf.
Eremon flicked his ears, then faced me squarely. “Now for you.”
I stepped back in surprise, slipping off the edge of the muddy bank. With a flop, I landed in the stream. Dripping wet, with a trail of mud rolling down my cheek, I clambered back to the grass.
Hallia’s eyes averted me, but I could not miss her snickering. “He may be a wizard, but he could use some more practice walking on two legs before he tries four.”
“He will learn quickly,” predicted Eremon.
“B-but wait,” I stammered, wringing out my sleeves. “I have no magic! And even when I did, the art of Changing was still new to me. I could no sooner change into a deer than into a puff of wind.”
“There is a way. Although the magic will be mine, not yours, you still can share in it.” He lowered his great rack. “Here. Take your sword.”
“No!” cried Hallia, kicking her forelegs. “You can’t do that.”
“Would you rather carry him on our backs the whole way? I barely managed to bring him from the dwarves’ land to this place. The lair of Domnu is much farther.”
Speaking again to me, he commanded, “Cut off one of my points. A clean swipe will do it.”
Gripping the hilt, I pulled the sword free of the scabbard. It rang distantly, like a shrouded bell. Aiming at the point farthest from Eremon’s head, I brought down the blade with all my strength.
There was a sudden flash, and the point snapped off, dropping to the ground. A fresh, spicy smell, like a forest glade, enriched the air. I breathed deeply, remembering the hemlock grove that gave me my staff long ago. Eremon raised a rear hoof and stomped heavily on the point. Over and over again. When, at last, he stopped, a small pile of silver powder remained.
I sheathed my sword and kneeled to look more closely. The tiny crystals glistened in the light.
Eremon’s foreleg nudged my shoulder. “By rubbing the powder into your hands and feet, young hawk, you will gain, for a time, the power of my people. You may change from a man to a deer and back again, simply by willing it.” His voice took on an edge of warning. “Remember, though, that to survive as a deer you must not only look like one, but think like one, too.”
Wondering at his words, I swallowed.
“And,” he continued, “there is a risk you must understand. The power could last three months—or three days. There is no way to predict.”
“And if it wears off while I am in deer form?”
“Then you will remain a deer forever. This gift can never be given to you again, so I cannot help you change back.”
For a moment I gazed into his immense eyes. “I accept the gift. And the risk, as well.” Pulling off my boots, I spread the powder on my palms, and rubbed it thoroughly over both my feet and hands.
The stag’s rack poked my thigh. “Don’t miss a single joint of a single toe.”
Finally, having finished, I stood. “When—if—I change into a deer, what will happen to my satchel? And my sword?”
“The magic will conceal them while you are a deer, and restore them when you are a man.”
“Then I am ready.”
Hallia huffed through her nose. “Not quite! You had better . . . put your boots back on. Otherwise, when you return to man form, you will have bare feet. And, before long, countless blisters.”
As much as her tone irked me, I didn’t reply.
Eremon gave a low, throaty laugh. “Now run, young hawk! Enjoy your own motion. Be as fluid as the stream over there, and as light as the breeze.”
Through the grass I plodded, my wet boots clomping heavily on the ground. Water sloshed under my toes. I did not need to see Hallia to feel her critical gaze.
Faster I raced, and faster. As fluid as the stream. I leaned forward, dangling my arms. As light as the breeze. My knees bent backward. My strides felt surer, stronger. My chin stretched outward. Both hands—no, something else—met the turf. My back lengthened, as did my neck. All at once, I was bounding across the field.
I was a deer.
My sleek shadow flew across the grass. Atop my head rode a small rack with two points on one side and three on the other. This is not so difficult, I told myself. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the handsome stag and doe beside the tumbling stream. Deciding to lope back to them, I whipped around sharply. My left rear hoof struck the inside of my right foreleg. Caught off balance, I twisted and fell.
Barely had I righted myself, knees wobbling, before Eremon and Hallia were at my side. The stag nudged me with concern. My flank less bruised than my pride, I trotted a few steps to show him that I hadn’t injured myself. As for Hallia—well, I really didn’t care what she thought.
“Come,” boomed Eremon,
curling his long lips. “We must leave for the river crossing. With any luck, we can be well into the plains before dark.”
He loped back toward the shining stream, ears cocked forward, and cleared the channel with a single leap. Hallia followed, the picture of grace. I bounded behind, far less smoothly. Although I tried to clear the stream as easily as the others, my hind legs splashed into the cold water, soaking my underside. I scuttled up the bank, doing my best to catch up.
Eremon led us due south for a while, reversing the route over the stairway of meadows that Rhia and I had crossed just the day before. In time, the rhythm of running through the tall grasses and late-blooming lupines began to seep into my muscles and bones. So gradually that I didn’t notice it happening, I started to move less woodenly, less even like a body than like the air itself.
Bounding through the grasses, tinted rust by the onset of autumn, I realized that my sight was good. Very good. No longer relying on my second sight, which in daytime had never measured up to true eyesight, I relished the details, the edges, the textures. Sometimes I even slowed my running just to look more closely. Dewdrops clinging to a spiderweb, tufts of grass bending as gracefully as a rainbow, airborne seeds drifting on the wind. Whether my eyes were still coal black, or brown like my companions’, I could not tell. Yet that mattered not at all, for they were, at last, open windows to the world.
As good as my eyesight had become, my sense of smell had grown even better. Intimate aromas came to me from all around. I smelled, with relief, the diminishing traces of smoke as we moved farther from the dwarves’ lands. And I drank in, unrestrainedly, the subtle aromas of this bright autumn day. A coursing rivulet. An old beehive in the trunk of a birch tree. A fox’s den hidden among roots of gorse.
Yet the newest of all my senses, it seemed, was my hearing. Sounds that I had never known existed washed over me in a constant stream. I heard not only the continual pounding of my own hooves, and the distinctive weight and timing of the hooves of the two deer ahead of me—but also our echoing reverberations through the soil. Even as I ran, I caught whispers of a dragonfly’s wings humming and a field mouse’s legs scurrying.
As the sun drew closer to the western hills, I realized that my ability to hear went even beyond having sensitive ears. Somehow, in a mysterious way, I was listening not just to sounds, but to the land itself. I could hear, not with my ears but with my bones, the tensing and flexing of the earth under my hooves, the changing flow of the wind, the secret connections among all the creatures who shared these meadows—whether they crawled, slithered, flew, or ran. Not only did I hear them; I celebrated them, for we were bound together as securely as a blade of grass is bound to the soil.
15: THE MEANING IN THE TRACKS
The sun had nearly reached the horizon when Eremon turned his great rack toward the corridor of mist that I knew marked the banks of the River Unceasing. As I followed, the rush and splatter of rapids grew louder. Arms of mist encircled me. Slowing my gait, I realized that the stag had brought us to the crossing that I knew well. The same strange longing that I had felt before with Rhia, to see the great boulders at the river’s edge, welled up in me again.
Though I could hear the crashing waters plainly, I could not yet see the river through the knotting mist. Eremon and Hallia, their tan coats shining with sweat, trotted to a patch of dark green reeds. Affectionately, Hallia nudged her brother’s shoulder with her own. Then, lowering their heads, they began browsing on the shoots.
When I approached, the stag lifted his rack and greeted me with an approving nod. “You are learning to run, young hawk.”
“I am learning to listen.”
Hallia, seeming to ignore us, ripped out a tuft of reeds. Her jaws crunched noisily.
I, too, began nibbling at the reeds. Though they tasted almost bitter, I could feel new strength in my limbs almost instantly. Even the velvet covering of my antlers seemed to tingle. I took another, larger bite.
While munching, I nodded approvingly. “What is, crunchunchunch, this reed?”
“Eelgrass,” Eremon replied between bites. “From the days when my clan of deer people lived by the sea. Feel the texture on your tongue? It’s like the dried skin of an eel.”
He tore out some more shafts and chewed pensively for a while. “Although we no longer live by the shore, we have kept the reed’s name—and many uses. It is woven into our baskets, our curtains, and our clothing. Chafed, pounded, and mixed with hazelnut oil, it starts our fires on winter evenings. It greets our young as a blanket at birth, and sends them on the Long Journey as a funeral shawl at death.” His black nose nuzzled another tuft. “Its best use of all, though, is simply as food.”
Suddenly Hallia bellowed in pain. She leaped into the air, shaking her head wildly. Even as she landed, Eremon was at her side, stroking her neck with his nose. She continued to cast her head about, whimpering.
“What is it, my sister?”
“I must have bitten—ohhh, it aches! A stone or something. Broke . . . a tooth, I think.” Quivering, she opened her mouth. Blood covered one of her rear teeth; a trickle ran down her lip. “Ohhh . . . it hurts. Throbs.” She stamped her hoof. “Why now?”
Eremon glanced worriedly at me. “I don’t know how to treat such a wound.”
Hallia, still casting her head, kicked at the reeds. “I will go . . . ehhh! to Miach the Learned. He will—”
“Too far,” interrupted the stag. “Miach’s village is more than a full day from here.”
A shudder coursed through her. “Then maybe it will—oh! heal on its own . . . in time.”
“No, no,” declared Eremon. “You must find help.”
“But where? Do I just go . . . wandering?” She closed her eyes tightly. As she reopened them, tears gathered on her lashes. “I had wanted . . . to stay with you.”
“Wait,” I declared. “I may not have any magic of my own, but I do know a little about healing.”
“No!” shrieked Hallia. “I won’t be healed by . . . him.”
Eremon fixed his gaze on hers. “Let him try.”
“But he might . . .” She shivered. “He’s . . . a man.” Cautiously, she curled her tongue to caress the broken tooth. “Oh, Eremon!” Bobbing her head, she said nothing for a long moment. At last, she asked weakly, “You really . . . trust him?”
“I do.”
“All right, then,” she whispered. “Let him . . . try.”
My hoof stomped hard. “Hands. I need hands. How do I change?”
“Just start walking,” Eremon answered. “And will yourself to change back.”
Though my heart ached at losing my newfound senses, even for a moment, I turned back toward the lands we had bounded across. I strode into the curtains of mist, trying to recall just where I had seen a mass of curled yellow leaves—the plant my mother called hurt man’s blanket. Many times I had seen her use it to deaden pain, though never in a tooth. I could only try . . . and hope.
After a few steps, my hooves started to flatten, my back to arch upward, and my neck to shorten. My motions suddenly felt clipped, disjointed. And my breath—less deep. Soon my boots, still wet from their plunge in the stream, clomped on the grasses.
As the mist thinned somewhat, I started searching for the yellow cluster I had remembered. For several minutes, I looked—without success. Was my vision now too poor to spot it? Had the roving mist swallowed it completely? Finally—there it was. I hurried over and picked one of the curling, hair-covered leaves. Stiffly, I ran back to the others.
“Here,” I panted, holding the leaf in my palm. “I need to wrap this around your tooth.”
Hallia whimpered, her whole body quaking.
“It will help,” I coaxed. “At least . . . it’s supposed to.”
She gave a fearful moan. Then, as Eremon gently nudged her neck, she opened her mouth and lifted her tongue, exposing the bloody tooth. Delicately, very delicately, I ran my fingertip along its surface. Suddenly my finger pricked a tiny pebble wedged int
o a crack. With a tug, I wrenched it free. Though Hallia bellowed again, she continued to hold her mouth open long enough for me to wrap the leaf over her tooth and gum. Just as I finished, she jerked her head away.
“That should do it,” I said, sounding less sure than I would have liked.
Slowly, Hallia’s lips pinched. She shuddered, tilting her head from one side to the other. I felt certain that she was about to spit out the leaf.
But she did not spit. Instead, her brown eyes flitted toward me. “This tastes terrible. Like rotting oak bark, or worse.” She paused, hesitating. “Still . . . it does feel a little . . . better.”
Eremon’s great head bobbed. “We are grateful, young hawk.”
Suddenly feeling as shy as the doe, I turned aside. “Not as grateful as I am, to have been a deer—for a while, at least.”
“You shall walk with hooves again soon. And often, if the magic lasts.” He glanced at his sister, whose tongue was playing lightly over the crumpled leaf. “For now, though, we are glad you have fingers.”
Hallia took a step nearer. “And . . .” she began, taking a slow breath, “knowledge. Real knowledge. I thought men and women had forsaken the language of the land—of the plants, the seasons, the stones—for the language of written words.”
“Not all men and women,” I replied. Tapping the hilt of my sword, I half grinned. “Believe me, I’ve learned a few things from stones.” My thoughts turned to Cairpré, forever finding treasures between the covers of books. “The written word has its own virtues, though.”
She eyed me skeptically.
“It’s true,” I explained. “Reading a passage in a book is like—well, like following tracks. No, no—that’s not it. More like finding the meaning in the tracks. Where they are going, why they are sprinting or limping, how they are different from the day before.”
Hallia said nothing more, though she swiveled her ears as if she were intrigued. At that instant, the wind shifted. A gap opened in the mist around us, allowing a few gleaming shafts of light to burst through. The rays poured over the shoots of eelgrass, making them seem to glow from within.
