“What does it say? What does it say?”
“‘One must journey to the bottom of the sea, to Sedna’s lair. She is heavily guarded, and there are many obstacles. If one survives the trip and is granted an audience, allow her to request a favor, in hopes that she will forgive you.’”
“How does she decide whether to grant you an audience?”
Egbert skimmed the text again. “It’s not specific,” he said. “It just says, ‘If one is deemed worthy of the spirit journey.’”
Lockley seemed discouraged by this. “Egbert, you’ve seen what happens when I try to play the hero. Besides, how am I supposed to dive all the way to the bottom of the sea? How would any bird do that?”
“Uh-oh,” said Egbert, reading more.
“It gets worse?”
“We need biteweed,” said Egbert. “It’s a plant. You must eat it before undertaking the journey.”
“Why is that bad?”
“Because although my knowledge of botany is limited, I’m quite sure biteweed is exceedingly rare. At the very least, I’m certain it doesn’t grow at Ocean’s End.” He looked at Barold, who shook his head.
Lockley was ashamed of how relieved he felt hearing this. The Great Auk would certainly be proud of me, he thought, absently fingering his clamshell necklace. And then, it hit him. “Egbert!” he said, digging into his breast feathers to grab the clamshell and hold it up for the walruses to see.
“I’m not hungry,” said Egbert.
“I could have one clam,” said Barold, reaching for it.
“No!” said Lockley. “The Great Auk gave me this and said, ‘Open it when you need to.’”
He pulled open the clamshell, and inside was a sprig of thorny green plant. He showed it to Egbert, who gently poked it with his fin. “Ouch!”
“Egbert, do you think…have you ever seen biteweed before?”
“No,” said Egbert, “but those thorns would certainly bite back if you tried to eat it. And I can’t imagine the Great Auk giving you such a thing without a good reason.”
Lockley stared at the sprig a bit longer. “Egbert, I’m afraid.”
“Just think of it as spiny sea urchin,” said Egbert.
“I don’t eat sea urchin!” Lockley retorted. “Besides, that’s not what I meant.”
Egbert took the stalk of biteweed and snapped it in two. “We’re in this together, my dear. We’ll find an ice hole, and we’ll eat this at the same time and see what happens.”
Lockley took his half. “Thank you, Egbert. You are a true friend.”
And so they thanked Barold and sneaked out of the library, returning to the void of the endless ice. Egbert looked wistfully over his shoulder as they set out, as if regretting his decision all those years ago to defy the Scholars and deprive himself of this magnificent temple of learning—a place where he really could belong.
Lockley noticed this too, and he felt, even more than the bitter cold, the burden of responsibility for having exposed his proud friend to ridicule and danger—after endangering Ruby’s life as well. To say nothing of what Lucy must be going through back on Neversink. How could a goddess think him anywhere close to worthy of a favor?
Before long they reached a pair of openings in the ice. “They look like seal holes,” said Egbert. “Might be a tight fit for me.”
They wished each other good luck, and then each placed his piece of biteweed in his mouth and carefully chewed and swallowed, grimacing at the spiky texture and bitter taste. Egbert gestured toward the hole. “After you, my dear.”
THE ODDEST SEA
It was as if Lockley had pierced a membrane separating one reality from another. He could scarcely see, but he flapped his wings and flew away as fast as he could from the surface, toward the ocean’s twilight zone. He came alongside a colossal sperm whale, also diving straight down with deliberate speed.
“Is someone after you, too?” said the whale.
“I beg your pardon?” said Lockley. But the whale didn’t bother to answer. He pumped his massive flukes and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Lockley alone. Lockley stopped flying and just bobbed there, suspended in the void like a lonely planet, wondering what on earth was happening to him.
He grabbed a passing flashlight fish and squeezed its tail so that it lit up like a wand. The eerie illumination showed Lockley that he was anything but alone. The surrounding waters teemed with catfish, dogfish, and sea horses—but these versions looked just like their namesakes on land, except with fins in place of legs. Lockley was knocked sideways as a skittering zebra fish swam by, pursued by an enormous sea lion.
Lockley regained his balance, and it occurred to him that Egbert wasn’t with him. Or at least, not that he could see. He captured another flashlight fish and gave it a squeeze. He was rewarded with a frightful sight—a pair of bulging eyes. “Ah! Who’s there?”
“Hello!” said the silvery fish. “The Salmon of Knowledge here, at your service. One taste of my flesh, and all that is necessary shall be known to you….”
“Yoo-hoo! Over here!”
Lockley turned and saw a red herring beckoning to him.
“Follow me!” said the red herring, and Lockley, without so much as a good day to the salmon, took off after the strangely alluring red fish. The herring shot out of sight, over a ridge and into a crevasse, flashing into view on occasion to keep Lockley on his tail.
As soon as Lockley entered the crevasse, he knew he’d made a mistake. From the nooks and crannies of the walls emerged every gruesome form of night hunter: The snapping jaws of a moray eel nipped his heels. A gauntlet of octopus arms barely missed snaring him. Anemones and sea wasps cracked their whiplike stingers at him. Lockley escaped them all and shot out of the crevasse onto a plateau of sea bottom, where he found himself in a forest.
But what was a forest doing buried in the ocean? Lockley wondered, looking at the trees laden with monstrous red fruits. Only they weren’t fruits. Upon closer inspection, Lockley saw they were hams. Hams growing on trees.
“The salt water cures them!” said a fish swimming among the dangling hocks.
“But why is there ham growing at the bottom of the sea?” said Lockley.
“For the carnivores, of course,” the fish answered.
“Carnivores?” Then Lockley noticed the piles of clean-picked bones littering the ocean bottom. Suddenly, a very toothy tiger shark—a strange beast with the head of a tiger and the body of a shark—ambushed him from behind a tree, closing his fanged mouth inches away from Lockley’s throat. The attack sent Lockley tumbling head over heels through the water, and when he righted himself, he flew as fast as he could through the forest without looking back, though he could feel the predator bearing down on him. This should have been the puffin’s domain. His little torpedo of a body squirted through the water with ease. But the shark stayed right on his tail.
Lockley flew as hard as he could, dodging the ham hocks, drumsticks, pork chops, beef tenderloins, legs of lamb, and briskets that dangled from the tendon-like branches of the grotesque trees. Barely avoiding a side of beef, he dove through the entrance of a sea cave, hoping against hope that it led somewhere besides an early grave. The tunnel narrowed, and continued to narrow, until Lockley spied his only escape route: a small hole that looked too small for a sparrow, much less a puffin. There was no other choice, though, and so he tucked his wings and hoped for the best.
Lockley felt the sides of the hole rake his body, but he just squeezed through. Moments after he did, there was a muffled squatch as the tiger shark swam into the opening and stuck like a cork. The beast’s menacing look was replaced by helpless surprise followed rather quickly by extreme rage. Lockley resisted the urge to taunt him and instead turned to swim far away as fast as possible. When he did, he was once again face-to-face with a bulging pair of eyes. “Ah!”
“Hello! Salmon of Knowledge again. Bet you wish you’d paid closer attention the last time.”
“Yes, well,” stammered Lockley,
“be that as it may…”
“As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me—and I suggest you let me finish this time—one taste of my flesh—”
Before he could finish, Lockley swallowed him whole and let out an enormously satisfying belch. “What an insufferable know-it-all he was.”
Lockley suddenly began to feel quite ill. It felt like the salmon was trying to swim back up his gullet. He made a mental note never to combine biteweed and talking fish. The ocean began to glow as if the sun were rising from some distant undersea ridge, until the light was so bright Lockley couldn’t see at all. His blindness was temporary, however, and when he regained his sight, he could see…everything.
Lockley was looking up at a tree of indescribable size that seemed to grow from the bottom of the world to the top of the sky. From three colossal roots the tree branched out into the past, the present, and the future. Lockley watched the seasons change as the red bird of fall, the white bird of winter, the blue bird of spring, and the green bird of summer migrated from one part of the tree to another. Thought and Memory flitted among the branches, as did Reason and Knowledge. In the past, an owl, an auk, a raven, and a merlin perched in the tree. In the present, only the owl, the raven, and the merlin remained. And in the future, the apes of the ground were climbing among the branches with the birds. Encircling the full girth of the tree was a serpent, gnawing at the roots, even as a great eagle launched attacks on it, clawing at the serpent’s eyes. Lockley was terrified, for he did not understand what he saw.
Gluttony begets suffering, came a voice, unseen but not unkind. Will you never learn?
Sand blew up from the sea bottom, clouding the waters. When they cleared again, Lockley saw no tree, but instead a forest of kelp, great fanning stalks swayed by the currents. Lockley entered the forest, and the ocean floor fell away from him, plunging him into the abyss. Lockley felt himself carried down as if by a surging river into a sunless sea.
Come to me.
Lockley was in the presence of an alien form with the body of a seal and the head of a bird. But the bird face was immobile and strangely lifeless. What happened to the tree? he tried to say. But his sodden words fell voiceless from his mouth.
The World Tree was, is, and shall be, came the answer, in the voice of a she. Only your knowledge of it differs. Her words, from the unmoving mouth, seemed invisible, inaudible. As if she was simply putting thoughts into Lockley’s head. She came before him; her shadow devoured him. Lockley could see now that the head was indeed lifeless. It wasn’t real—it was a wooden mask. And the body was not the body of a seal, but was covered in sealskins.
What happened next horrified Lockley. Sedna pulled off her mask and skins and showed Lockley her true goddess form. As the mask came off, her bundled-up hair scrolled into the water, impossibly long and black. And tangled in the forever-flowing strands was all the filth and refuse of the sea: bones, teeth, and eyes of half-devoured fish; pieces of skin and scales; decayed plant matter; barnacles, limpets, and other parasites; dismembered starfish arms; and other horrid dead and half-dead things, so that she was transformed into a hideous monster.
Lockley could not hide his disgust, and Sedna, ashamed, pushed back her filthy tresses. Then, like the frightful squid she resembled, she bolted from him into darkness.
“No—I have to save Neversink!” Lockley called after her, but his cries felt mute.
What can I offer that hasn’t already been rejected? came the answer from the void.
Lockley made no reply. Instead he closed his mouth and opened his mind and heart, hoping Sedna would see the truth of what had happened, and understand. And he submitted himself to whatever she required of him.
There was a stillness, and then Lockley felt himself in her presence again. Her grotesque, naked face was near his, and she extended one of her long, hairless arms toward his bill. “Such beautiful colors,” she said wistfully. “They remind me of my seashell combs. My hair was once the envy of the gods. I can no longer use them.” And she held up her two fingerless hands for Lockley to see.
Lockley understood. Cautiously approaching her, he waded through the black rivers of hair, using his bill to comb out the bones and eyes and half-devoured parts that were knotted in the strands. With sadness he pulled forth whole fish, sand eels and char among them, that he knew must be from Neversink, the waste of his reckless protest. It seemed to take hours, but when he was finally done, Lockley was stunned by the transformation. There was now an alluring beauty to this strange figure as her dark locks extended themselves in the currents like the branches of a sea fan. She then instructed him how to plait the hair into two long braids, so that it would not catch as much of the ocean’s filth. Though not as wildly beautiful, the braids made her seem more serene, and—if Lockley had known the term—girlish, like the innocent who had been wooed by the petrel and had vowed never to be tricked again.
Sedna pulled out a large half shell of a giant clam which, to Lockley’s wonder, was filled with water that was not the water of the sea. And he saw that when she bent over the dish, an imperfect image of herself appeared in the other water. She looked upon herself and then, neither smiling nor frowning, put the dish away and turned back to Lockley.
“Return to Neversink,” she said. “The suffering caused by me shall end.” Before sending Lockley away, she cautioned, “The suffering caused by your ruler is beyond my control.”
Lockley continued to watch her, transfixed.
“But know this,” said the goddess, now swimming gracefully about and occasionally pulling on her new braids. “No false ruler may perch in the World Tree.” She smiled, clearly pleased by her generosity.
“Thank you,” said Lockley, hiding rather well the fact that he had no idea what she meant him to do with this information. The next thing he knew, a storm blew up from the bottom of the sea, and Lockley was lost in a cloud of dust and freezing water. The darkness closed around him in an icy grip. He began to swim up as fast as he could, fearing that he had angered the goddess and silently wishing that if there was a puffin heaven, it included fish smidgens and cranberry scones. Up and up he went, feeling a lightness under his wings and rising at an incredible rate. And just as the murkiness of the ocean’s depths fell away and the waters brightened where the sea touched the sky, Lockley blacked out.
Lockley awoke on the ice, lying near the hole he had dived through. Egbert was there too, sort of. Apparently he had tried to enter his seal-hole tail-first, and he was stuck half in and half out of the water. It looked as if someone had used Egbert to plug a leak. Somehow he had managed to fall asleep in this position.
“Egbert, wake up, old boy.”
Lockley finally roused him, and then used his bill to chip away at the hole until Egbert could wriggle free. “Oh dear, Lockley. I don’t know what happened.”
“I take it you didn’t make a spirit journey?”
“Not that I’m aware,” said Egbert. “Although I did have the strangest dream. I was walking along a beach with a carpenter, and dozens and dozens of happy oysters followed us, and then we ate them all.”
“We don’t need Sigmund Freud to analyze that one,” said Lockley.
Egbert just looked at him. “You’ve been spending far too much time with Ruby.”
But as Lockley prepared to tell Egbert about his journey, he wondered…did he have a dream as well? It had seemed real when it was happening, but it seemed less real now. Egbert was eager to hear about it, though. “Egbert, I’m not sure…what if I was just dreaming too?”
Egbert stroked his whiskers thoughtfully, as he was wont to do. “It is called a spirit journey. Perhaps it’s not meant to seem real?”
Lockley took little comfort in this. The only thing to do was return home and see if things were different. But they were now quite far from the ocean, and after what they had been through, it seemed to take twice as long to slog back across the ice. The wind’s claws seemed sharper, too, and Lockley’s empty stomach ached. He and Egbe
rt would both need a solid meal to make it back to Neversink.
If you’ve ever been alone with the wind, you know this elemental force is responsible for more frightful sounds than any other natural phenomenon. Lockley knew this too, but as they skirted a snowbank, something stopped Lockley in his tracks. To their left the snow ran in ripples, as if the incoming sea had frozen in waves. “Egbert, did you hear that?”
Egbert paused, and both stood listening. Almost like a whisper, there was a rustling of snow. The bright white ground began to tremble. Slowly, dozens of pairs of white wings emerged, shaking off their white powder, followed by dozens of long white necks.
“Swans!” said Egbert as Lockley grabbed his fin.
The lamentation of swans exploded from the ground and took to the air, graceful and powerful in flight in a way Lockley knew he could never achieve. He watched with admiration and envy. “I guess we scared them.”
“That’s rather odd,” said Egbert. “I wouldn’t think they would be spooked by us. Normally swans would only roust themselves like that because of danger.”
“Maybe they were afraid you would sit on them,” said Lockley.
“Hardy-har.”
The wind picked up again, twisting the curtain of falling snow left in the swans’ wake. Lockley froze again. “Egbert, do you hear that?”
They both stood listening in the snow, staring at the nothing that was there. And then out of nothing it came forth, as if the white storm had suddenly rematerialized in a terrifying framework of white fur and black eyes.
Egbert said calmly, “Fly, Lockley. Fly.”
“No! I can’t leave you.”
But there was no time for a quarrel. The white bear’s nose twitched furiously, parsing their scent. He had patches of fur missing and a broken claw. A warrior, thought Lockley, and then he noticed one of the bear’s wounds—a long scar over his right shoulder. A tusk wound. This one had been hunting walruses.
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