by C. Greenwood
Luckily, just when it seemed all was lost, we stumbled to the edge of an incline and fell over the side. We rolled a short distance to the bottom and landed in a heap on the grassy ground. As if confused by our sudden disappearance, the wind didn’t immediately follow. But I knew we wouldn’t escape its notice for long.
“Come on!” I shouted to Basil, scrambling to my feet and running.
I could hear the thud of his boots behind me as he followed.
I didn’t know the island or have any idea where I was going. I ran without any plan, just trying to put distance between us and the hungry, howling wind. We headed deeper into the island, dodging through trees and under curtains of overhanging vines.
The ground grew wet, and we began to pass great pools of clear water. Little streams fed into the pools, flowing in from the sea. This was a lower part of the isle, more submerged than the higher ground we had left behind. We tried to stick to the dry land. Where we couldn’t, we splashed through streams to get to the other side. Up ahead I spied a crumbling pile of stones that might once have been the side of a building. It was another ancient ruin. As we hurried on, other, similar structures from the past began to appear around us, wrapped in an overgrowth of wild flowers and vines.
Behind us, the roar of the wind grew louder. It was catching up.
After so much running, my legs ached with weariness. My lungs were burning and my breath was coming in quick gasps. I couldn’t continue much longer.
“Down here!” Basil’s voice called out suddenly.
I stumbled to a halt and looked back. My friend had discovered something, an opening in the ground, ringed by chunks of stone. It might once have been a tunnel or cellar beneath a house. But whatever structure it had belonged to was long gone, eroded by time. All that was left was a set of moss-covered steps leading down into this dark pit.
“We can’t run any longer,” Basil said. “But we can hide.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t have any other ideas, and I certainly lacked the strength to run on indefinitely. I circled back to the dark opening, and together Basil and I descended the steep steps.
In the shadowy depths, we found ourselves inside a small cramped space that must have been used for storage long ago. Now it was empty and smelled of mold and moist earth.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was whether the wind would find us down here. If it did, we would be trapped with no hope of escape.
Trying to quiet our panting breaths, we waited in the darkness, staring up at the circle of light that was the entrance at the top of the steps. We could hear the wind coming. It whispered along the ground and then grew louder, moaning through the treetops. It whistled through holes in the rocks and reached its cold, searching fingers down into the mouth of our shelter. Outside the entrance, boughs tossed wildly and snapped beneath the force of the gale. We saw rocks, small branches, and other debris fly past, carried by the powerful wind.
Swallowing and trying to still the pounding of my heart against my ribcage, I waited for the wind to find us, to come whipping all the way down the stone steps and discover us helpless in the darkness.
But it didn’t. It shrieked and hurled stones and rained loose leaves, like a child throwing a tantrum. Finally it grew weaker, dying down to a gentle breeze and swirling away. It could be heard scurrying weakly through the treetops and fading into the distance. And then it was gone. We had escaped its wrath.
* * *
When we knew it was safe, we came up out of the shadowed cellar and took in the damage done by the storm. Broken branches and small bits of debris lay strewn across the ground. But the ancient stones of the surrounding ruins stood untouched. They had weathered the winds of many years, and it would take more than this ghostly gale to topple them.
We decided it was past time we returned to the beach. Now that we had satisfied ourselves that the island was deserted, there was no advantage to lingering inland—certainly not now that we were being hunted. Even Basil was suddenly eager to repair the leaky dinghy we had left back on the water’s edge so we could brave the open seas again. Next to the unnatural dangers of this island, the risk of drowning or being stranded adrift on the ocean no longer looked so terrible.
We took a different route back this time. We had not gotten far when we came upon an old stone wall. This was different from the crumbling walls we had passed before. This one was made of finer, smoother marble, and it stood tall, higher than many of the surrounding trees. It hadn’t been touched as heavily by the passage of time as the other ruins. Much of it still stood intact.
As we walked in the shadow of the high structure, we came to a part that was engraved with a massive image. It was a likeness of a beautiful woman’s face. Through the overgrowth of ivy partially covering the engraving, we could see that the woman had horns much like my own spiraling from her head. There was also a light pattern of scaling across her cheeks. She was dragonkind.
The woman’s eyes were closed, her hair loose around her. It must have taken skilled workmen a long time to create such a large carving. Impressive as the work of art was, we had no time to stop and admire it. We prepared to continue on.
“You do well to hurry, but it is only further danger you rush toward.”
I started at the sudden voice coming out of nowhere. Basil and I both whirled around, but there was no other person in sight. My first thought was that the wind had caught up to us again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
But this voice was different than the voices on the wind. For one thing, it was a single voice, not a chorus. And although grave, the tone hadn’t been angry.
“What is this?” Basil demanded anxiously. “More of the dark magic of this island?”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
“I think it’s the wall that spoke,” I told Basil, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
I was right. Even as I watched, the wall moved before my eyes. Or rather, the face on the wall shifted, the woman’s carved lips opening.
From her mouth came the voice again. “This island is not evil,” she said. “It is only that it has been cursed by the wrath of an ancient being.”
Basil started at the unexpected sight of the talking wall. I couldn’t blame him. It was all I could do to keep from backing away, even though the woman in the wall showed no sign of meaning us harm. I couldn’t help flinching as her giant teeth and tongue appeared when she spoke. She had a mouth large enough to swallow us whole.
I summoned my courage and stepped closer. “Who are you?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Who is it? More like what is it?” said Basil.
I frowned at him.
But the woman in the wall didn’t seem offended. “My name, if ever I had one, is long forgotten,” she said. “Once I was an oracle to the island’s former inhabitants. From my creation at the hands of the stone workers those many centuries ago, I have been trapped within cold marble. They gave me no eyes to look on the outward world. But I have inner eyes that witness all that passes on this island, all that has been and all that will be in the history of this place.”
I was intrigued. “How is this magic accomplished? Is the power in the stone?”
For an instant I had visions of myself finding a new Sheltering Stone with magical properties right here on this island.
But my hopes were quickly disappointed. “The power is not in the stone but in the hands of the ancient artists who crafted me,” the woman in the wall said.
I should have known. If this island had possessed its own version of our Sheltering Stone, it would not have sunk all those years ago and would not now be in its semisubmerged state.
That brought me to another thought. “If you have seen all the history of this place, then you know how the Nine Isles came to sink,” I said. “You know the cause of our doom.”
It was a subject the historians of Corthium had debated for generations. Maybe at last I would know the answer.
But
the wall’s response was cryptic. “I can show you what the inhabitants of this isle believed to be the cause,” she said.
What did that mean? That she didn’t know the truth or only that she refused to tell it? But Basil cut in before I could ask the question.
“Show us?” he said. “How can you show it?”
The woman in the wall didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled back somehow, slowly sinking away into the marble.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Basil demanded. “You can’t leave yet. You haven’t helped us at all.”
“Be quite,” I told him. “If you talk to her like that, she’ll never come back.”
But it was too late. The woman was already gone, leaving the wall as smooth as if she had never been.
I went to the wall and put my magic hand against the cool marble as if it could somehow call her back. Incredibly, I felt the wall shift beneath my palm, an in-out motion, like breathing. Then a ripple spread across the stone surface, rolling like an ocean wave.
When the motion ceased, a picture had formed.
It was an image of an island, possibly this one in a more peaceful time. Winged people and dragons flew together in a cloudless sky over a beautiful ancient city.
I stared at the image, transfixed. It reminded me of one of the mapmaker’s living maps. The scene moved, the waves surrounding the island dancing, the wings of the dragons flapping up and down.
The woman inside the wall, though invisible now, narrated the scene: “This is Chythus the Fifth Isle, in happier days.”
Chythus. I had heard the name before but knew little of the “lost” isle, other than that it had supposedly sunk with the others long ago.
The scene on the wall shifted, replaced by other moving images, as the woman continued her tale. She told of a time when Chythus, the smallest of the Nine Isles, had been the home of several thriving happy cities where the people of the dragon lived in peace. Dragons had not yet gone from the world, and all was well. But then things changed. The dragons began to die off. The dragonkind ceased to soar through the sky, and their wings became weak and merely ornamental.
In that long-ago time, an ancient and powerful being called Zoltar, one of the keepers of the old world, grew jealous of the dragon people for their bond with dragons. He caused an underwater earthquake to break the foundations of eight isles of the dragonkind, one by one.
The horrified inhabitants of this place could only watch as the beacons of their neighboring islands went out, extinguished as the isles sank into the sea. Then it was Chythus’s turn. There were sudden floods and landslides, and finally this island, like the others before it, slid into the sea. In a single day, all the people of Chythus were drowned. But the sea did not hold on to Chythus forever. Over time, undersurface volcanic activity pushed this island upward again, thrusting its highest points above the water once more. The people were gone, but the island itself survived in a semisubmerged state. Precariously situated and frequently flooded, the low-sitting isle was no longer suitable for habitation and sat alone in the sea, a monument to a people who were long extinguished.
Or were they?
Here, the voice of the woman in the wall paused and I thought the story was done. But then the scene shifted to another place, a different island. I recognized it by the distinctive shape of the watchtower on the northern bluff. My heart beat faster even though it was only an image in a cold stone wall. Viewing my old home again brought tears to my eyes. It seemed an eternity that I had been away.
The woman in the wall resumed her tale. She told of how one isle, Corthium, the largest and most magnificent jewel of all the Nine Isles, had been spared the disaster that befell her sister islands. The Ninth Isle survived only because of the mercy of Hesperia, another ancient keeper. Hesperia had a special affection for the dragon people, because of their beautiful wings that had once carried them through the skies. To protect them from the evil Zoltar, she brought them a magic rock, a Sheltering Stone that kept their island standing when all others collapsed.
As for Zoltar, the good Hesperia had punished him by transforming him into a black mountain of rock isolated in the middle of the sea. There he sat locked in his prison of stone, unable to vent his wrath on the world, except on the ships of sailors who ventured too close and wrecked upon his shoals.
Here the scene on the wall shifted to show a mountain shadowed by dark, angry clouds and surrounded by great rocks jutting up from a foaming sea. Waves dashed upon its shoals.
“Zoltar cannot break free,” the woman in the wall finished. “But evil lives on in many forms. Even from within his stone prison, Zoltar does not forget his wrath against the dragonkind. And given the chance, he will thwart you in your quest to restore the Ninth Isle.”
“Restore the Ninth Isle?” I asked. “How did you know that is what I plan on doing?”
The scenes faded away from the marble surface, and the face of the woman reappeared on the wall. This time her eyes were open, looking directly at us.
“I know who you are and where you’ve been. I see what others cannot,” she said mysteriously. “And so does Zoltar. Beware the evil keeper in the dark mountain.”
I shivered. I knew most of this tale was only a myth, probably invented by the inhabitants of Chythus to explain the otherwise inexplicable horrors that were occurring to the islands around them. Still, there was enough truth woven into the story to fill me with apprehension.
While we spoke with the wall, a little yellow butterfly had come to light atop a leaf of ivy attached to the stone surface. The sprig of ivy swayed slightly, brushed by the breeze. As the ivy began tossing harder, the butterfly struggled to keep its perch, then was ripped away, carried off by the growing strength of the wind.
The wind. It crept in subtly as a little breeze swirling around our ankles. Then it was tugging at my hair and blowing leaves and twigs along the ground. It seemed to whisper in a faint hiss, whistling over the wall, slipping through cracks and crevices in the structure. Fear rose within me as I realized the evil had caught up to us again.
The wall had ceased speaking, as if it too took note of the wind.
“What is this foul gale that chases us?” I asked the woman in the wall.
“The wind carries the voices of the dragonkind who died here during the sinking,” she answered. “Their bodies lost to the sea, the ghosts continue to defend the island against all trespassers. You are not welcome in this place.”
“You’re telling me,” Basil retorted, clapping a hand down on his hat as the wind tried to tug it away. “How do we escape?”
“There is nowhere on the island where the wind will not find you and dash you to pieces,” she said. “You must flee these shores. Sail toward the hunter’s arrow and you will find your mapmaker again.”
“Hunter’s arrow?” I asked. I had to shout now to be heard over the howling gale.
Basil caught on before I did. “She means the star constellation,” he yelled to me. “Sailors use the stars to get their bearings.”
I wanted to ask how we were to sail anywhere when we hadn’t yet repaired our boat. But there was no more opportunity for questions. The trees nearest us were bowing beneath the growing force of the gale. We were running out of time.
“Let’s go!” Basil cried, his voice mingling with the rising chorus on the wind.
The voices of the dead were getting louder and angrier.
I hated to leave the wall. I had so many questions left to ask. But Basil grabbed my arm and began towing me along.
“Beware Zoltar,” the woman in the wall called after us as we scrambled away. “His barren mountain guards the route you must follow. If he can, he will prevent your passage and vent all his fury upon you.”
I cast a final glance over my shoulder at her stony face gleaming beneath the pale marble. Then she disappeared from view as we rounded a stand of trees and left the ruins behind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
With the wind at our backs and the ghostly voices ho
wling after us, Basil and I raced across the island, clambering over boulders and dodging trees as we made for the edge of the water. I didn’t know what we would do when we arrived there. It seemed we would have no choice but to drag the leaky dinghy into the water and take our chances sailing in the damaged vessel. It was a terrifying thought but not as bad as the more immediate danger that chased at our heels.
The beach finally came into sight, and we ran along the sand, looking for the spot where we had left our boat. When we arrived at the place, we made a terrible discovery. The dinghy was gone. In its place splintered boards were scattered along the shore. I saw a single oar bobbing in the nearby surf.
“The wind has got here before us,” I realized. “It has trapped us here.”
Basil and I looked at one another. In that moment both of us knew what we had to do. We had been left with no choice.
We took to our heels again and abandoned the open beach, making for the rocky area where we had been earlier in the morning. It was a long distance, and we had already been running for what felt like an eternity. My legs trembled as I raced beneath the overhanging trees. My pulse seemed to pound in time with my feet hitting the ground. Basil showed signs he was undergoing a similar struggle. I didn’t think we could continue much longer.
But always behind us there came the rushing and the chanting of the wind, never far away. Stopping to catch our breath was not an option.
As we reached our destination and struggled on shaky legs over the rocks in our path, the cavern entrance came into view. Basil was the first to reach it, and he brushed aside the curtain of green vines hanging down over the mouth of the cave.
We ducked through the entrance and were enveloped in shadow. I fully expected the gale to follow us inside, where we would be trapped with no hope of escape. But outside, the wind seemed to hold off, as though hesitating. Maybe it had lost our trail. Or maybe it was for some reason reluctant to pursue us into this place.
