The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  We went on. We camped that night with no fuel for a fire, no way to cook the few fish we had caught. Dair ate his raw, but my stomach would not let me since I was no longer utterly starving. Maeve just sat. Since we were no longer totally exhausted, either, we found that we could not sleep on the rocky beach. We sat against the smoother stone of the cliff, quite silent. There was no way we could talk unless I were to hold forth in a monologue, and Dair evidently was not in the mood to sing. It was a lonely night. There was nothing to see, even though the moon was up, nothing except faintly silvershining water that reminded me of my own folly, of Shamarra.

  We went on in much the same way the next day, and the next. I lived on shellfish and waterweed and grew tired enough to sleep a little between the watches of the night. I was numb with hardship and with the grief I had kept to myself—oh, so noble of me, to so bravely face my father’s death—and with a sort of fatigue of the soul. Still, I was always aware of the splendor of the place, the sheer, stark grandeur of it, white stone that changed in changing light, changing sky and freshwater sea. Lovely—and I sensed yet greater loveliness to come, if only we could find the way.

  Chapter Two

  It came to me in a dream, how it would be. The sun in my dream was a great golden swan with wings outspread, flared and fanned into a semicircular shape so that the swan was an orb resting on the horizon; it was a sunrise swan. I had never dreamed such a thing before. Everyone in Vale knew that the sun was the great god Aftalun, he who comprised both life and death, rising up and going down. Still, the swan is the true form of the immortal—that might have been Aftalun in swan form.

  Be that as it may, I awoke from the dream quite unreasonably certain where the entrance would be. It would lie due east—of course; where else? Just at the opposite extreme of the way we had come. All instinct told me I was right. Had we not been following the sunrise since the day we set out on this quest? We would follow it awhile longer. I said as much to Dair and Maeve.

  “So there is no need to be slicing our feet on these rocks any longer,” I told them. “We will take to the water. Otherwise we are not likely to find strength to reach the other side.”

  I was expecting argument—mute resistance, that is to say. But there was none. They followed me without question, and for some several days after that we waded along the shoreline, well away from the rocks. The water must have been very pure, might have had some curative power, even, for our feet healed rapidly. We could never have managed the circuit if we had tried to keep to shore.

  Finally came the day when the light of the rising sun shone full and square on the rock face behind our resting backs. We nodded at each other and kept to shore by turns that day to see what we could find.

  The discovery went to Maeve, as was only just. She waved us eagerly in to shore, and there it was—just the roughest kind of stairway hewn out of the stone, nothing more than footholds, really. It went up and up, not spiraling around the mountain pillar—for we would have seen it before if it had done that—but weaving back and forth, above and above itself. It was very steep.

  We waited out the rest of that day, catching ourselves fish and shelfish, eating nervously, drinking as much as we were able—for we had no flasks anymore, nothing at all really except the few tattered pieces of clothing on our bodies. We spent the night restlessly, and once again I had a strange dream. There were two swans this time, the golden one and another that was white, or argent, silver, both of them in a vast starless sky of midnight blue, and they flew toward each other and embraced, their wings intertwined, turning, turning in air—and they made one sphere; how could that be? Then I saw the moon nestled into the arms of the sun.…

  I awoke, looking for the sun, then dozed again. At the first hint of dawn we were all up. And as soon as it was light enough to see we started.

  Maeve went first. It was only fair that she should go first. I came behind her, then Dair behind me—to help me if I should falter, I sensed. Insulted pride stirred sluggishly in me, then subsided. Who was I to be proud?

  We climbed. All day we climbed. I wondered at first what primal folk it was who had made these steps, time out of mind, the Beginning time thousands of years before. Maeve might have been able to tell me if she could speak—I stopped wondering as we climbed higher. When my good arm was toward the mountainside, the sheer stone, I was all right; even the most illusory of fingerholds gave me confidence. But when the way doubled back and my crippled arm lay toward the wall, I sweated and trembled and could not look down. I did not dare look up, not ever. I could not bear to think how far we had to go.

  Dear goddess, all gods, all powers, mighty One, please let us not be caught by nightfall.…

  If the climb went all the way to the top we would be, surely, even though we had started at dawn. I tried not to think of clinging to the rock all night or feeling my way up it in the dark.… The mountain seemed to push against us from above, threatening to topple us out into the void. We were all far too preoccupied to notice hunger and thirst. Our mouths were dry from more than thirst. I could hear Maeve wheezing ahead of me, and on the turns I caught glimpses of her face, strained and white. I knew mine looked no better. I felt half sick, afraid I would disgrace myself and vomit or cry, and then too frightened to worry about disgrace. We were more than halfway, surely we had to be, but we climbed in deepening shadow, dusk had started to fall.

  And then there was a sort of slot instead of the everlasting steps. We had to crawl along it, quite level but still ever so close to the edge—and then there was a waterfall, just as we had known there must be. A veil of rushing water stood between us and the clutching air—we were behind the cascade. It offered no substantial protection, I knew, but it looked so solid that I felt immensely comforted. And then the cave, behind the waterfall, just as I had pictured it in my mind, wide and high and blissfully solid underfoot. Shakily I stood up, Maeve and Dair stood up on either side of me, we all smiled crazily at each other, absurdly happy. We were alive! We did not care what happened next, if we starved in that place or were killed or what. We grinned at each other, stretched and sat down to rest.

  “What is that?” I muttered, peering and squinting in the uncertain light.

  Farther back in the cave, a glint like that of old gold, muted in the gloom, unmoving. As our eyes grew accustomed to the dimness we saw that it was a griffin, sitting and looking at us. We were too spent to react to it much; we merely sat. I had never seen a griffin before, but Fabron had crafted them many times on silver or gold cups or cauldrons or clasps, so I knew a live griffin when I saw one. It had no wings. It sat on its furred haunches and fixed its eagle eyes on us with no hint of threat or anger; the great downcurved beak and the long leonine tail remained still. It waited and watched and never moved.

  “The guardian,” I said. Of course there had to be a guardian, and the griffin made an ideal one, honorable, faithful, courageous, and vengeful if need be. Dair heard me and nodded.

  I got up and walked forward a few paces. The griffin clacked its beak and hissed, a gentle but unmistakable warning, and the tufted tip of its tail moved as if it had a life of its own. I went back to the others.

  “Can we get past it when it sleeps, do you think?” I asked them.

  Maeve shook her head, giving no reason. Well, of course she could give no reason. I looked at her.

  “Maeve, do you have any idea what we ought to do?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, what? Can you make shift to tell us?”

  She felt around until she found a loose shard of rock and then started scratching industriously at the cave floor. I squinted to see what she was doing. Paler yet in the pale stone, lines appeared in the forms of strange runic letters. I could read a little in my native tongue—I was no scholar, I was too ungoverned as a boy—but I could not read that. I shook my head. She pointed to Dair.

  “Dair, read that?” I knew better. Maeve made the hand signal which is usually taken to indicate an overly talkative mo
uth.

  “Dair is supposed to say that?”

  She nodded.

  “But what is it?” I glanced at Dair, and he looked back at me with no particular enlightenment in those odd purple eyes of his. Maeve lifted a hand as if in greeting, though to be sure we had all met before. Dair grinned toothily and got to his feet, growled something and ambled over to meet the griffin.

  It was the greeting, of course, the old elfin greeting, the Laifrita thae, though I knew nothing of it at the time. All that was necessary was for the griffin to be spoken to as a friend in that ancient tongue. Dair was a man speaking in the way of wolves, but it was all the same; that language knew no barriers.… I did not understand at the time. I stood and watched as Dair and the griffin conversed. Dair gestured toward us, his companions. The griffin bowed its eagle head gravely to hear him, shifted its great talons on the stone. Then quite courteously it rose and moved aside to let us pass.

  Us, I thought, full of unreasoning certainty that I was intended to enter. But to the griffin the welcomed ones were really only Dair and Maeve. She could not speak for herself, but she was one of the special few; the griffin knew that simply because Dair had told him so. Dair could not possibly have lied about her, any more than he could lie about me—

  Dair saluted and passed, then Maeve with a nod and a smile. I followed her—and the griffin sprang up with a roar, its talons raised and its tail lashing wildly. I stood frozen, afraid to advance, unwilling to flee. But in three long strides Dair came before me, my shield, and Maeve grabbed me and pulled me impatiently after her. Dair confronted the griffin a moment longer and then backed away, unscathed. It could not harm him, or not wittingly, having once given him its safe-conduct. But it let out a great bellow of wrath and frustration. And its tail, switching back and forth in a frenzy, struck him and left a little cut on his arm.

  Chapter Three

  The passage curved up and up. We felt our way along it, at first standing and later on hands and knees because of the steep ascent, all in raven blackness. But at least we no longer were afraid of falling; we were enclosed, secure. We came out at last onto a level surface that was soft, springy and faintly familiar of scent—I felt I should know that scent but I could not identify it. Nor could I comprehend the rustling darkness all around us. I was confused, but too weary to care. We all lay down where we were, a little distance from the entry, and slept.

  Hunger and riotous birdsong awakened us a few hours later, at dawn. The darkness had been nothing more than night, and the soft surface beneath us was moss. We sat up, blinking, bathed in hushed, filtered light. Great monoliths rose all around us. Only after several stunned moments was I able to identify them as trees. They were immense, twice the size of any trees I had ever seen. Even the trees of the Wyrdwood back in Isle were saplings compared to these. Streams of muted, hazy sunlight trickled down through the pinpoint foliage far above. Butterflies swam in the light; from where we sat, at the bottom of it all, they looked tiny, mere jewel flecks. The birds which we heard so clearly could not be seen. They were hidden somewhere amid the great canopy overhead.

  We got up and blundered off, staring up and in every direction, scarcely noticing where we were going. All around us there stirred a constant chirp and ripple of life, a quick movement here, a flash of color there—honeybees in the air, and lacewings. Big flowers growing right out of the trunk of a tree, perhaps thirty feet above my head. Vines looped into a love knot. Great clumps of mistletoe forming their own shiny balls amid the foliage. The chuckle of some strange bird, and the chuckle of water, just ahead—

  Each of us broke into a faltering run and stumbled into the stream, sank down and drank. I knew right then that I had reached the paradise of my dreams. The water was more than water; it was substance, essence of life itself. I tasted strength in it, and it was lovely, it ran around me like liquid silk. And what lay under my hand?

  Jewels. The streambed was full of gems, all colors, washed round, turning the rippling water into rainbow. We let them lie, for we saw something more valuable—food. Sitting right in the shimmering water, we feasted. Eating was only a matter of reaching up and grasping the nearest fruit, for the smaller shrubs and berry bushes, which could not live in the shadows of the giants, crowded around the waterbed where the sunlight came down suffused by cloud. Pomegranate, loveapple, may, meddlar, sorb, quince, wild currant, fig, woodberry, goldenberry by the fistful, red and yellow fruits I did not know the names of—there was plenty, enough and more than enough, even for the birds. We ate.

  There was a sense of coming home, home to the primal home, of release of care, of rocking in the arms of the All-Mother. As if we were at last allowed to be tired, we went off again and slept. Then near evening we ate again. Giant fireflies, the brightest I had ever seen, lit up the dusk like the missing stars. We slept through the night without a thought of quest or danger. My dreams were full of magic and bright colors, but I do not remember them well. Then we woke and ate.

  There were ferns everywhere, giant six-foot ferns along the streams, ferns growing right from the bights of the trees, ferns underfoot amid the moss, ferns hanging down from the tangled and hanging vines, feeding on air.

  “How are we to know which fern bears the magical flower?” I asked Maeve.

  She shook her head in that stolid way of hers. The goddess was to tell her somehow, I supposed. The very thought of the goddess annoyed me. I smothered the feeling.

  “You say it blooms only at midnight of Midsummer’s Eve?”

  She nodded. I felt my stomach knot.

  “But—when is Midsummer’s Eve?” I had kept no track of time, amid all our exertions, and I didn’t see how she could have, either.

  She had not. She shrugged. I turned away, flinging up my one good hand in despair. Dair grinned at me. His grin was most aggravating, though perhaps he did not intend it that way.

  “Come on,” I ordered, and stomped off.

  We went exploring. We went to the edge first, where the stream cut its way through the surrounding rock and became waterfall, giving itself to the void. We looked out through the gap into nothing more than mist, a soft, luminous veil of cloud and spray. Cloud nourished the great forest, bedewed the leaves, let light in only gently, here so close to the scorching sun. Mountain cradled us and cloud was the coverlet.

  We walked along the edge for a while, studying the great alabaster rocks that bounded the mountaintop cloud forest. Ferns grew on them, too, and columbine, and snails the size of my fist crawled amid the flowers, their shells as ornate as Fabron’s finest smithwork. We walked for a day and passed two more waterfalls, two more streams, they came out from—somewhere—like spokes of a giant wheel. There were gems in each streambed, and again we let them lie. They seemed no more precious to us than the other marvels of this place. We walked amid wonder. Then we slept and turned toward the unknown center, the Very Source.

  There was a kind of bird, a round, comical-looking bird about the size of a dove, pied green and tan and gold like a harlequin. It was very tame. It lived near the streams and grinned at us from shrubs as we went by. It had a wide beak that ended in a smirk, so wide that when it opened its mouth it seemed to split its head in half. The sound that came out of it was like a hooting laugh. I called it the hootoo bird, or sometimes, to insult it. I called it froggyface. Maeve smiled and called it nothing at all. What Dair called it I do not know. We followed the stream back to the Source, and the hootoos smirked at us all the way.

  It took two days. I felt the tug all the time, like a throbbing ache in my heart, not at all unpleasant, the ache of love. It was sometime during that walk that I noticed the sore on Dair’s arm. The cut the griffin had given him was not healing—it was open and festering. Odd, that in this place where everything was so clean and fresh, dew-bathed, such a thing could happen. I made Dair bathe it in stream water, puzzled; he had been in and out of streams often enough since we had come to this place and he was far cleaner than was his wont. And there was a balm in
the water, too; I could feel it. Why had it not helped him?

  Either he or Maeve might have known the truth about the spine hidden in the tuft of hair at the end of the griffin’s leonine tail, about the poison. But of course they could not tell me. Perhaps they would not have told me anyway. They were always protecting me.

  Dair was as strong as a bear, stronger than any man I had ever met, stronger even than Tirell, I told myself. He would soon be better, I thought.

  We were getting very near. I could tell. The tug—it moved me to tears I could not understand, tears I had to suppress. Memories of times—long before I was born? How could that be? How could this place I had never seen be the home of my heart? But I felt that, and I could tell that Maeve felt something of the sort as well. She looked up, taut, expectant. The canopy of forest giants was coming to an end. Tree ferns nodded over us, uncurling spiral heads. We stepped through and saw—

  “Oh, Mother Adalis,” I breathed.

  Maeve said nothing at all, her eyes shining. Dair made a sound, and I knew without question that he invoked something, too—the god of wolves? It was deity, and it was the Tree of all trees.

  It towered above the great moss-bearded oaks behind us as they towered over us. Its trunk was the breadth of a castle and its crown disappeared in cloud; acres of ground lay beneath its spreading boughs. It was a world, a dwelling, a home and a marvel unto itself; it supported forests on its branches; trees grew there, feeding on the rich mold of its upper bark; they looked small, but they were as large as any normal tree in Vale or Isle. A house could have been built on any one of those boughs. And the water—it was the gift of the Tree, it flowed from the seams of the trunk itself, cascading down and forming its several streams and flowing away in every direction of the ringing horizon.

  “Mother Adalis,” I whispered again. “That must send its taproot down to the very fundament of earth, to the flood beneath.”