Sword Mountain

by Nancy Yi Fan

  “What, my prince, what are you doing?” demanded the chef. “This is a serious job, the feeding of a whole castle of dignitaries!” However, soon he laughed and joined in, banging a soup cauldron; the undercooks, too, rattled forks and spoons together.

  “I bet you can’t make music from this!” Pudding challenged Fleydur, grabbing a carrot from a basket.

  Fleydur examined the carrot carefully, then, borrowing a knife from the chef, hollowed it out and carved holes along its length. He lifted the carrot to his beak and blew a silly tune.

  Everybird laughed as Pudding squealed in astonishment. When Fleydur handed the carrot to him, he huffed and puffed and could only make sputtering sounds. Shrugging, Pudding crunched the carrot in his beak and ate it instead.

  “Did you see that? The prince even crusades against table manners,” a member of the Iron Nest observed to another.

  Fleydur picked up two lids and clapped them together like cymbals before he led his class toward the audience chamber. Castle staff trailed after the troop of delighted eaglets, gawking at the sight of the Iron Nest shuffling along involuntarily in the parade.

  The bronze statue with the scales stood alone in the chamber. Playfully Fleydur struck the scales, and in the sonorous note that followed, the bronze eagle swayed side to side as if in appreciation.

  Dandelion felt relieved. She’d been preparing to defend Fleydur from the court children. Was it because she didn’t understand these eaglets, or because the music had made them act differently? She wanted to experience more of the music to find out. “What song are you humming?” asked Dandelion. “Can you teach it to us?”

  Fleydur laughed and said, “Only if you sing along with me as we go!”

  The eaglets obliged. As Fleydur lead them farther into the castle, toward the treasury, they were soon singing:

  What is joy?

  Flying kites together, sprinkles on a cake

  Spiraling up high to meet the first snowflake

  Tag around a tree, stories on the hearth

  Dancing after school, laughter full of mirth

  Soaring in the sky, up where you belong

  Eating lots of pies, singing lots of songs.

  The best joy is certain: being on Sword Mountain.

  They were stopped, however, at the treasury, by four birds in uniform armed with lances.

  “Stop, Prince! You cannot sing here!” shouted one of the treasury guards.

  “But King Morgan has allowed music, hasn’t he?” said Fleydur, surprised. Their singing trailed off.

  The treasury guard acknowledged it with a nod but was firm. “There is one exception, explicitly written. You cannot sing within ten paces of the treasury.”

  Fleydur was surprised, but he did not step back. “All right, I shall enter without singing,” he said.

  Yet at his first step forward, the guards blocked his path with their lances. “I’m sorry. Recently the queen told us that nobird can enter the treasury without her or the king’s permission.”

  “I do not want to take anything out; I just want to show my students one thing,” said Fleydur.

  All four guards frowned. “And we were given orders by the queen to be especially cautious about that one thing.”

  Seeing that it was impossible to go past, Fleydur turned around and led his students back out of the castle to the base of Sword Cliff, tearing off leaves and making whistles from them along the way.

  As they settled on their boulders again, Pouldington, more familiar with the treasury than any other eaglet, asked, “What one thing, Fleydur? I mean, the gold coins made nice clinking sounds, but what is so special that you kept it for last on our music tour?”

  Fleydur paused for a moment. “Have you heard of the Leasorn gemstone?”

  Some of the older and higher-ranked eaglets gasped, but most had no clue.

  “My father says it’s a beautiful purple stone that gives off light!” said Pudding.

  “So it is, but it is much more,” said Fleydur. “All of the six Leasorn gems can glow, but each has a unique property; for instance, the green Leasorn of the parrots can heal. And ours? Ours is a singing gemstone.” He paused. “A singing gemstone in a place devoid of song,” Fleydur whispered.

  “What makes it sing?” asked Dandelion.

  “It would only sing when you approach it with a strong emotion that cannot be adequately expressed in words,” said Fleydur. “When you say to the Leasorn, ‘Sing my heart,’ it transforms your emotion into melody. Back when it wasn’t guarded so closely, I listened to its tunes. But when Queen Sigrid discovered its secret, she locked it deep in the treasury for safekeeping, within soundproof walls. Few really know of its power.”

  “But why?” Pudding asked.

  “I suppose emotions can seem … dangerous. Sometimes we don’t understand them, and ignore them. Yet they are an important part of who we are. They give us insight and make us reflect and think.”

  Perhaps the queen is afraid of what birds might hear, Dandelion thought. Or how they might be changed by the music.

  Fleydur sighed, remembering. “And the song of joy that we sang together was the first song the Leasorn sang to me.”

  “Will we ever hear its music?” asked Olga.

  “I will try to find a way to show it to you,” said Fleydur. “Somehow.”

  When class was over, Dandelion found herself flying beside Olga back to the castle. She looked over at Olga, wanting to say something, but Olga seemed absorbed in something else. Abruptly, Olga turned to her.

  “What?”

  They were at the staircase where they had collided not long ago. This time, Dandelion recalled Olga’s sweet voice.

  “I like your singing.”

  Olga blinked, then grew embarrassed. “Thanks,” she said.

  You can rarely get what you really want; you can easily get what you don’t want.

  —FROM THE BOOK OF HERESY

  15

  OWL PHILOSOPHIES

  Tranglarhad placed the black cap of the tutor upon his round head and felt empowered. Though the inch of office space he’d been given was windowless and cold and, he deduced from the mothball smell, once a closet, he was elated to find that he already claimed a bit of space, no matter how small, on the mountaintop. He took off his sunglasses. No candle or lamp had been provided, but he was quite at ease in the dark.

  “First lesson,” the owl intoned, rocking back and forth on his toes. Gathering his instruments of instruction, he crossed the hall to the classroom.

  As evening grew late, eaglets began to fill the room, some grumbling, others wide-eyed at the sight of the owl. Tranglarhad noticed a princess among the students.

  “Your name?” he said to her as she went by.

  “I’m Dandelion,” she said.

  “Should we sit in the order of our status?” one eaglet asked hopefully, interrupting Tranglarhad’s train of thought.

  “Sit wherever you like,” said Tranglarhad, turning back to the class. “You cannot hide from me.”

  There was a general shifting as birds crisscrossed the room. Dandelion had been sitting in the front row, a few spaces from Cloud-wing, and she stayed put so she could have a good look at the tutor. But Olga rushed forward and claimed the seat next to Dandelion. She smoothed her feathers, a permanent smile on her face, as she continually flicked her eyes toward Cloud-wing.

  On the blackboard, the teacher had scrawled:

  Mr. Δ

  “My name is Mr. Tranglarhad,” he said. “I am your new tutor, and I have a viewpoint different from all teachers who have set talon in this castle. I do not see you in terms of rank, status, class, or gender. I see you all equal—” Tranglarhad pronounced grandly at the hopeful faces. Dandelion couldn’t believe her ears at first; Olga’s claw drifted to her half acorn.

  “Equally stupid!” He allowed an adequate pause for the effect to sink in. “Now, as to whether this is true or not, it is up to you to show me. There shall be challenging opportunities, I
’m sure.”

  Cloud-wing glanced at Dandelion and Olga. His expression seemed to say, “What do you think of him?” Olga blinked, bewildered, but Dandelion gave a defiant shrug.

  The door flew open. Pudding huffed and puffed, leaning against the door frame, his eyes bulging in terror as he caught sight of the owl, swiveling his head a hundred and eighty degrees to glare at him.

  “You know what it means to be tardy?” said Tranglarhad. Silence fell across the classroom.

  “Tarty?” said Pudding. “Eating too many tarts, becoming bloated, and oversleeping?” Nervous laughter came from the eaglets; they’d never seen Pudding frightened before. He touched his four acorn pins to reassure himself of his rank. He hazarded a step toward a perch among the eaglets, but Tranglarhad cried, “Stop! Pouldington, is it? Stand here and listen. What did Simplicio do to a bird who was ten minutes late?” Tranglarhad’s gaze swept over Dandelion to Olga.

  Olga’s frilly capped head was trembling. “One whack with a rod, but he hardly ever hit Pudding, sir!”

  The owl faced the treasurer’s son again. “Oh, privileges, have you? You all heard me: I believe in fairness.”

  Pudding’s beak burst open. Even Dandelion felt awful for him as he blubbered and stumbled. High up on his podium, Tranglarhad watched placidly.

  “Perhaps you are in luck,” the owl said finally. “My rule number one: There shall be no traditional caning in my class.” Cheers erupted from the eaglets, and Pudding breathed a sigh of relief.

  Tranglarhad waved an airy set of talons. “I deem it backward, primitive, and particularly useless as it inspires—ah, shall we say?—not enough fear. No, the fear that I want to see is one that will brand your minds: true, cold fear that comes when you are not sure exactly what will befall you but know that it will be hideous.”

  Stunned silence.

  “My punishments must therefore be singular.” Tranglarhad gave another of his dramatic pauses. “But we’re wasting time. Pouldington, take your seat. I will inform you of your punishment by and by.”

  Dandelion saw that Tranglarhad was intent on torturing Pudding as the lessons began with mathematics.

  “I have a butchering knife the shape of a right triangle,” said Tranglarhad. “The knife is four inches lengthwise—perfect for disciplinary uses—and three inches wide at the base. How long is the diagonal edge of the blade?”

  Everybird’s wing was raised. Everybird’s except Pudding’s. “Pouldington? Answer the question, please.”

  “I … I …”

  “Can you or can’t you? Yes or no?”

  “No. I don’t understand, sir.”

  “But this is straightforward geometry. You have, as an aid, eight claws on your talons, and quite enough feathers on your wings to do multiplication. Give me the first step, at least. What is four squared? Think, what’s four times four?”

  Silence.

  “This will not do,” said the owl. “Unless you give a plausible reason for this shameful deficiency, Pouldington, I’m afraid this will add on to the punishment for your tardiness.”

  “Please, sir! My father—”

  “What has your father got to do with this?”

  “He’s the treasurer of Sword Mountain.”

  “Treasurer?” Tranglarhad’s eyes grew rounder. “Holy hoot, that’s a thousand times worse. If that’s what he is, why in the world can you not do mathematics?”

  “No, yes, I mean …” Pudding swallowed hard. “What I meant to say is, he isn’t good at math, either!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My dad says, ‘Mathematics, it adds to my temper, it subtracts from my appetite, it divides my attention, and it multiplies my workload!’” He paused as half the class laughed and the other half remained uneasily silent. “So I figured, if it was a good enough reason for him, it’s good enough for me,” Pudding said in a small voice, cowering.

  “Oh, really,” said Tranglarhad. He stared at Pouldington. “All right then. Enough math for today.” He had planned to do a philosophy lesson from the Book of Heresy, but the information Pouldington had provided called for a change of action.

  Thinking quickly, he brightened and said, “Now, an exercise in the language arts.” He paced up and down the rows. “Many before me have told you, but today I demonstrate for you yet again: ‘Show, don’t tell.’ To do so, it’s helpful to have a mastery of descriptive language.” Tranglarhad grabbed a stick of chalk and wrote on the blackboard:

  There is a stone in the room.

  He whipped his head around to scan the faces of his students.

  “Elaborate upon this sentence. What stone? Of what value? Where? In what room?”

  All of the eaglets opened their beaks and called out their versions of the sentence. But Tranglarhad’s ear tufts caught a snippet of words that were almost too good to be true: “There is a pretty stone, in a box, in a room, in the castle....” His attention centered upon the fat treasurer’s son.

  “Pouldington, share with the class your sentence.” Tranglarhad’s eyes gleamed with intense interest.

  Pudding looked as if he’d been caught raiding the pantry. He gulped and repeated what he’d said.

  “Go on,” breathed Tranglarhad. “Use precise words, to create a picture in the listeners’ minds. What color is the stone?”

  “Um … purple?” Pudding cringed, uncomfortable and still thinking of his upcoming punishment.

  “Very good! And?”

  Pudding scrunched up his eyes in concentration. “There is a pretty purple precious stone in a hidden locked iron box in a storage compartment in the fully guarded treasury underneath the tall tower of the king.” He cracked open an eye.

  Tranglarhad was positively beaming. “Excellent! Vivid indeed.”

  Pouldington looked astounded that he had gained the praise of the tutor. He relaxed.

  “Ah, Pouldington?” said the owl. “Stay after class. I have just stumbled upon a fitting punishment.”

  Never mind that all the parents of his students wielded greater power than he did. He would break precedent and request the first parent-teacher conference of Sword Mountain.

  “What is it, sir?” The treasurer’s broad face was all annoyance. Never before had a tutor dared to summon him, definitely not so late at night!

  “Your son,” began the owl.

  “Yes, yes, he’s quite an amazing, intelligent, polite young lad and all that.”

  “Actually,” the owl said, “he is not doing too well.” He paused. “He is doing poorly.” He paused again, twirling the bristles around his beak. “In fact, he is flunking math.”

  The treasurer laid a heavy set of claws upon the desk.

  “Now, sir,” he said in a conspiring whisper. “The duties of a treasurer are numerous, and many are not related to mathematics; even so, if the son of a treasurer fails in math … imagine! That would reflect badly on me!”

  Tranglarhad nodded and kept nodding for some time. Finally he spoke up again. “And, oh, there is another, completely separate thing, just an academic interest … geology, stone samples and such …”

  “Why, yes. You want to look at one of the odd stones we have?” The treasurer gushed eagerly, relieved. “No problem! I have the keys to the treasury.”

  “Indeed! Among those special stones, is there a purple gemstone?”

  The treasurer froze. “No,” he whimpered. “Not that. I can show you anything else....”

  “Just a glimpse.” Tranglarhad pressed on.

  “I have orders, strict orders; there’s an unmentionable penalty, I can’t risk that!”

  Tranglarhad had to tread lightly to avoid suspicion, he knew. And retreat fast. “A pity,” he said. “I thought to teach students about rocks, minerals, and where they are to be found. I am an expert in that field. Do you know, sir, for instance, that the old mine in the base of Sword Mountain has iron ore of a unique grade? It’s a pity that it also contains a poisonous gas that makes it impossible to retrieve that
fine ore.”

  “Wait a second. The mine we’re opening up?” said the treasurer. “You mean that stench is gas?”

  “Of course,” said the owl. “Mr. Treasurer, have you not calculated the profits against the danger?” He paused to gauge the effect his words had on the treasurer. Good, Tranglarhad thought. He won’t bother my mine anymore. “But in any event, sir, your son …”

  “Yes?” said the treasurer weakly.

  “Your son, he’s a fine boy.”

  “Do you really think so?” Tears of gratitude welled into the treasurer’s eyes. “Oh? Thank you. Thank you for telling me that.”

  The next morning, the details of the parent conference had become gossip among the eaglets, and Pudding himself recounted what he knew. Dandelion, puzzled by Tranglarhad’s eccentricity, went outside and waited for Fleydur’s lesson to begin. She breathed the crisp air deeply. Now that she could fly, she wanted to explore the areas around the peak. She stumbled upon a slope still straggly with the last of the fall vegetation. Along its edge were dandelions, their fluffy white heads balancing in the wind.

  “How do you like being a princess?” asked Cloud-wing, coming up behind her.

  “The acorns are so heavy,” she said. “They strain my neck! No wonder the adults all look so stiff-necked and gloomy; they had to suffer all through eaglethood.”

  Cloud-wing laughed. “Princess, there is always a price to pay.” And he made an extravagant bow.

  Dandelion grinned. “Enough of those awful bows.” She waved a wing. “Really, don’t call me princess. We’re friends here. I’m still Dandelion.”

  Cloud-wing persisted. “Have you perused your daily section of the handbook?”

  “Stop!” She laughed along with him. “Being a princess really feels like an act,” Dandelion admitted at last. “So many formalities.” She remembered Sigrid’s silence when Fleydur had announced the adoption. She’d received the circlet and acorns from the king, a hug from Fleydur, and a battered copy of the Handbook of the Feathered Aristocrat from the queen.