Neversink

by Barry Wolverton

  Egbert lowered his enormous head and put his face as close to Lucy as he could. “Lockley is the scrappiest puffin I’ve ever met,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind he’s just fine. You won’t be alone for long.”

  To Egbert’s surprise, Lucy grabbed his whiskers with her wing tips and gently rubbed her bill against his rough cheek. The gesture almost made Egbert burst into tears, which probably would have drowned poor Lucy. But he regained his composure and straightened back up. Then Egbert took up his things and paddled into the surf, slowly disappearing from view as the waves closed over him.

  VOYAGE OF THE SHUNNED

  Lockley sank so fast once he hit the water that he scraped bottom. It was sheer luck, he knew, that he didn’t shatter himself on some submerged rock. He quickly righted himself underwater and began flying in earnest through the current. His goal was to use the Crab-Backs for cover, but when he finally resurfaced, he realized to his horror that a riptide had pulled him into open water.

  In a matter of moments, a formidable shadow rippled through the waves. Lockley just had time to catch his breath and dive again as Feathertop struck at the sea. Lockley felt the spear-like talons on his back as the eagle tried to fish him out of the water, but the grip was weak, and he wriggled free. The effort kept Lockley from diving far, though, and as he bobbed to the surface again, he saw Feathertop circling back for another attack.

  Lockley turned toward the Crab-Backs, determined to make it there on his next dive. He glanced again at Feathertop, who was now picking up frightening speed. As soon as the eagle tucked his wings to dive, Lockley dove away from the surface, praying to Sedna that his timing was true. Feathertop crashed into the waves, losing his balance when he grabbed nothing but water, and Lockley seized the advantage. He tunneled his way through the currents, leaving the surface and Feathertop’s fearful weapons far behind. After a long descent, he veered away from Murre Mountain and aimed again for the small islands, hoping to resurface and take cover somewhere in the outer ring.

  Most of the Crab-Backs are hardly more than oversized stepping stones, as if the gods had laid themselves a footpath from the tip of Tytonia to the Arctic Circle. A few, though, are of considerable size, and so honeycombed through the ages by wind and ocean waves that they offer an ideal place of refuge. It was inside one of these dank, dark caves that Lockley finally found sanctuary, squirting out of the sea into the mouth of a large igneous rock and collapsing from exhaustion.

  The next morning, Lockley’s injured wing was aflame with pain again, and poking his head out of the cave, he thought he saw Feathertop’s silhouette against the sun. There’s no way he could search every rock, thought Lockley, but there was a reason eagles were such good hunters, and Lockley was afraid of making the slightest movement out in the open as long as Feathertop was still looking for him. That made fishing out of the question, and Lockley had already been without solid food for days. Hungry and weakened, he lay down to rest his sore wing, and as the sun again approached the horizon, he began to despair.

  During his fitful half sleep, Lockley thought he saw the Great Auk, still caged, swinging above him, looking down on him with pity. Later in the night, an even more disturbing image floated before him: Lucy, feather-bare, serving Rozbell a tray of smidgens with her own egg as the centerpiece. He came awake, shivering. The cold spray of the Northern Sea was splashing through the mouth of the cave, and Lockley was drenched.

  Struggling to his feet, Lockley decided then and there he would not end up as food for scavengers on some nameless rock. He couldn’t fly yet, but he could try to find something to eat. He searched the cave walls and found what looked like wet snot—slimy green splotches of algae—and began licking it for nourishment. It tasted like wet snot, too, but the nutrient-rich plant did give him some strength back. The only problem was, he began to hallucinate. In addition to the phantom images of the Great Auk and Lucy that had visited his sleep, he swore that he was now hearing the ghostly cries of Egbert, calling to him across the waves.

  Oh, woe is me! came the wailing walrus voice. Woe, woe is me….

  That’s just like Egbert, thought a delusional Lockley, to call attention to himself even as a figment of my imagination.

  Lockley went to the opening, convinced that being in the cave’s dark cavity was causing him to lose his mind. When he saw no sign of Feathertop, he sat down at the water’s edge to drink in the fresh air. He watched the waves lap the rocks, over and over, and he thought again of the Great Auk. Lockley grasped the clamshell necklace he had been given, feathering it gently, trying not to imagine what Rozbell had done to him. And then, Lockley thought he heard something—something between a sigh and a sob, echoing among the Crab-Backs. It was hard to tell where it was coming from exactly, until the mournful creature finally exclaimed, “Oh, woe is me!”

  It can’t be, thought Lockley. That was not his imagination. He plunged into the water and swam in the direction of the voice, and when he squirted back out of the sea onto a large open rock, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Egbert!”

  “Lockley!”

  Lockley had never been so happy to see his large friend. He would have given him a hug, except that it is physically impossible for a puffin and a walrus to embrace. As for Egbert, when he actually set eyes on his clown-colored little mate, his emotions got the best of him. Great tears rolled off his face like a waterfall. Were it not for his webbed feet, Lockley would have been swept off the rock in a river of joy.

  “Did you come looking for me, Egbert?”

  Egbert patted his eyes dry with his fins. “Not exactly. Oh, my dear Lockley, it’s terrible…just terrible….”

  “There, there, old boy,” said Lockley. “Take your time.”

  “Poor Lucy,” blubbered Egbert. The mention of her name made Lockley’s heart spasm, but Egbert choked up before he could finish.

  “What about Lucy? Egbert, she’s all right, isn’t she?”

  You can forgive Lockley, after all he had been through, for expecting a short, straight answer out of a walrus, especially to such an important question. Egbert proceeded to tell him, with great drama, all that had happened since Lockley’s kidnapping, leaving out very little detail. A frantic Lockley finally learned that Lucy was alive and well when Egbert left, and then Egbert admitted that he had been banished from Neversink, and he told Lockley why. “Can you imagine?” said Egbert, still indignant. “Me, in cahoots with owls?”

  For his part, Lockley was moved almost to tears that Egbert had put himself at such risk to protect Lucy. He felt ashamed, too, wondering if despite the promises he had made to himself, he had done as much as Egbert to protect her. “You’re a brave soul,” said Lockley, patting Egbert’s leathery hide. “But Egbert, what are you doing on the Crab-Backs? You said you didn’t come looking for me, so why did you travel south instead of returning to your clan at Ocean’s End?”

  Egbert reddened a bit. “Lockley…there’s something I’ve never told you.”

  “Really?” said Lockley. The idea of Egbert keeping quiet about anything was astonishing. “Come on, Egbert, you can tell me.”

  Egbert looked him straight in the eye. “I was Shunned.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “I didn’t leave Ocean’s End of my own accord. I was a Scholars’ apprentice, but the Scholars objected to my ideas about spreading the written word to, um, lesser creatures.”

  “I see,” Lockley replied stiffly. He wasn’t sure why he was so offended, since he had never expressed any desire to let Egbert teach him to read or write.

  “They thought my ideas were dangerous,” Egbert continued. “So they administered the Shunning.”

  “I’m guessing that’s bad?”

  “Lockley, nothing is worse than being Shunned! It means I can never return to my clan again!”

  Lockley realized for the first time that Egbert had not come to Neversink as an ambassador for the written word. He had just been looking for a new home.


  “Lockley, there’s something else I haven’t told you.” Screwing up his courage, Egbert then explained Rozbell’s ghastly new plan for feeding himself. Lockley was so horror-struck that Egbert was afraid to reveal the one other important detail he had left out. But he knew he must, and so he gave Lockley the bittersweet news: Lucy had laid her egg. An egg that was now in mortal danger.

  Lockley had to sit down again. Egbert joined him at the edge of the rock. “Well, that’s that, then, isn’t it?” Lockley said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lockley didn’t explain at first, still turning things over in his mind. “I wasn’t on my way back to Neversink, Egbert. I was headed to Ocean’s End. The Great Auk…it’s hard to explain, but I was going to try to make the spirit journey, to see Sedna. I sent Ruby back to help you watch over Lucy.”

  “Well, you can’t worry about that now,” said Egbert. “Lucy needs you. Even assuming Ruby made it back, the only thing standing between Lucy and those burrowing owls would be a hummingbird! A very aggressive, aggravating hummingbird, I grant you. But still!”

  Lockley fell silent again. He had never felt so conflicted.

  “Lockley, what is it?” said Egbert.

  “I…I can’t go back to Neversink, Egbert. Not yet.”

  “But, Lockley—Lucy’s egg! Your egg!”

  Lockley just shook his head. “Even if I could protect my own egg from the owls, where would that leave us? Still starving. The Great Auk told me how to save the colony, and it’s up to me to do it. Me,” said Lockley, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

  Egbert was stunned. He loved Lockley, but he never would have expected him to attempt a journey of this sort. “Are you sure about this, my dear?”

  Lockley nodded firmly. “I am.”

  “Then I think I can help.” When Lockley looked at him hopefully, Egbert said, “There’s a chance the story of Sedna is written somewhere in the library of the Scholars, at Ocean’s End.”

  “The walrus scholars, of course!” said Lockley. “You think they might know ‘The Tricking of Sedna’? And how we might be able to find her?”

  “Some version, anyway,” said Egbert. “At least, a written version.”

  “But Egbert, how would we get in? You just told me you were shunned, and I hardly think they’d let a puffin in, even if I could read.”

  Egbert stroked his whiskers and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked straight at Lockley. “Well, my dear, we’ll just have to find a way, won’t we? This is too important not to try.” Even as he said this, he could see doubt in Lockley’s face. “Lucy has twice the backbone of your average auk,” Egbert assured him. “She can take care of herself. You’re doing exactly what the Great Auk would do. And what’s more, I’m going to help you do it.”

  Lockley smiled and grabbed Egbert’s whiskers.

  “Why does everyone want to do that?” said Egbert, grooming them back into place.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, old boy,” said Lockley. “You and me, an unstoppable force, right?” And so with good spirits but great trepidation, they set off for the north, to Ocean’s End.

  Lockley was so tired from the flight that his feathers felt like lead, and he crashed onto the Arctic ice with even less grace than usual. Moments later Egbert’s head popped out of the slushy water. He plopped his fins facedown on the edge of the ice shelf, like a child peering onto a table, and then speared the ice with his tusks to help haul himself out of the sea. (If you remember that Rozbell derisively referred to walruses as tooth-walkers, now you know why.)

  After a brief rest, they plunged back into the water to feed, for they were both famished after their long trip. For Egbert especially, it was a relief to be back in food-rich waters. Lockley was relieved at how much better his wing felt—perhaps the icy water had some healing effect—but he returned sooner than he had planned after hearing some loud, strange sounds below.

  “Did you hear it, Egbert?” he whispered. “Like a thumping, or a pounding, following by a ringing!” In fact, if you were to hear it yourself, you might say it sounded like a carpenter hammering a nail into a board until a kitchen timer went off.

  “Of course I heard it—those are walruses.” He could see the puzzled look on Lockley’s face. “You know, I thought auks sounded funny the first time I heard them too.” And he proceeded to do his best impression of a growling murre or a hissing guillemot.

  “Sorry,” said Lockley, gesturing toward the sound, “but I’ve never heard you sound quite like that.”

  “That’s because those are males and females communicating,” Egbert explained. “It’s breeding season here, too. You might say those are love poems.”

  “I don’t think I’d like poetry,” said Lockley.

  To Lockley’s surprise, Egbert did not promptly launch into a defense of poetry, or a sermon on the joys of reading or the importance of literature. He had other things on his mind. After all, Egbert’s memories of Ocean’s End were hardly joyous, even from before he was Shunned. And the fact that breeding season was in full swing made his timing especially bad. Males were jealously guarding their harems and were in no mood for intruders.

  They hadn’t traveled far before they came upon the clan they had heard beneath the ice. Lockley was horrified by what he saw. It was as if they had stumbled onto a battlefield. Pairs of walrus bulls were fighting each other, their huge bodies colliding with sudden violence, their tusks clashing like swords.

  “Don’t worry,” said Egbert, seeing Lockley shudder. “They’re just play-fighting. Practicing their skills. The best warriors get the best cows at the beginning of the mating season. If they were fighting for real, they would fight to the death—or surrender.”

  Lockley was still horrified. “It’s so brutal! You’re the only walrus I know….”

  “As I said, I was a Scholars’ apprentice. The Scholars consider themselves above warring and breeding. But this is just life in a walrus clan, Lockley. It’s not all that different from most species.”

  Lockley couldn’t imagine anyone less willing to battle to the death than Egbert, unless it was in a war of words. Looking out at the clan, he was also struck by something else: “I can’t believe there are walruses bigger than you.”

  “I told you I wasn’t fat for a walrus. Now let’s get this over with.”

  Egbert lurched across the ice in the direction of his old clan, Lockley trailing behind. As soon as they spotted him, a group of bulls moved aggressively to cut Egbert off.

  “Stop where you are!” commanded one. “The cows here are spoken for.”

  A more mature bull came toward them. “Yes, Egbert,” he said, clearly displeased by Egbert’s reappearance.

  One of the younger bulls said, “This is Egbert?” and began to laugh. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t find a seal to mate with?”

  The laughter spread, and Lockley stepped forward to defend his friend.

  “See here,” he said. “That’s no way to talk to one of your own. Besides, Egbert is not here to find a mate.”

  “Who’s talking?” said one of the bulls, and they all looked around until they noticed, apparently for the first time, that Egbert wasn’t alone.

  “For the love of fish—he’s mated with a penguin!” said one.

  Lockley didn’t know which made him more angry—the fact that even a group of walruses thought he was a penguin, or that they thought he might actually be Egbert’s mate. He was so flummoxed he failed to correct either mistake.

  “I am not here to find a mate, nor am I returning to the clan,” said Egbert. “I need to speak to the Scholars.”

  “The Scholars?” said the mature bull. “Have you forgotten you were Shunned?”

  “The Shunning!” whispered another, which multiplied into dramatic murmuring.

  Egbert turned to Lockley and said, “Let’s be on our way.” But when they tried to leave, another pair of young bulls came and blocked them. Both proudly bore many scars e
arned in battle. They looked Egbert over with contempt. “How does a walrus have such a smooth hide?” said one.

  “Yes,” said the other, slithering around Egbert and rubbing his side with a fin. “Do the laws of nature not apply where you live? Or are you just afraid to fight?”

  “Actually,” said Lockley, stepping into view again, “on Neversink we settle disputes in a civilized way, through the mediation of a law-speaker. Unless of course it’s something that affects both Tytonia and Neversink, in which case the Parliament of Owls is involved. You see, we are an independent colony, but still technically a colony of Tytonia in territory-wide affairs.”

  Usually it was Egbert rendering the auks speechless as he explained the ways of the world. This time Lockley had managed to silence the entire walrus clan, who just looked at him, puzzled.

  “It’s not as complicated as it sounds,” Lockley added, tapping his wings together.

  “Never-what?” said one of the bulls who had challenged Egbert.

  “Sink,” said Lockley.

  The other bull spoke up: “Are you going to fight or not, Egbert?”

  Egbert’s body language told the story, and like school-yard bullies, the young males seemed eager to pick a fight they knew they couldn’t lose. But an older cow came forward and took pity on him. “Just let him go,” she said. “I’m sure the Scholars would like a chance to humiliate him themselves.”

  Reluctantly the bulls parted, ushering Egbert toward the wastelands, jeering as he left.

  LUCY’S LAST STAND

  Summer is normally a glorious time for the birds of Neversink. A time of fellowship on Auk’s Landing, a time to nest and breed in the everlasting light of those endless days, before the perpetual dark of winter sets in and they spend most of their time at sea, chasing scarcer food supplies and training their young to swim and fish. A bird like Algard Guillemot might never admit it, but Egbert and Ruby had become a part of this fellowship.