Stone soup, p.11
Stone Soup, page 11
For hours, she slipped and slopped along, stubbing her toes on submerged objects with nearly every step. Several times, she flinched when something swam past her. Once, she spotted a huge, five-foot lizard with a bumpy tail slithering away through the muck. She was only able to stave off outright panic by repeatedly returning her mind to her goal: to find her sister. She would save her from torment or die trying.
She was batting away doubts and buzzing insects, when she again lost her footing. She grabbed hold of a low-hanging branch just in time to prevent the pack from becoming completely submerged, cutting her arm on a blade of saw grass. She sucked in a gasp and watched as blood trickled down her waterlogged skin.
She checked the pack and breathed a sigh of relief to feel that it was still dry. Feet pruned and sore, clothes drenched in mud, and with nightfall not far off, she gazed at the vine-draped trees and rotten logs all around her. What was she doing in this soggy pit? And where were the crows to help her?
After a few more steps, the chorus of chirping insects fell off. The mist in front of her began to thicken and churn, and she heard a splash behind her. She whipped around to see ripples spreading out across the water. When she turned back, she noticed the surface swirling in an unnatural way. She watched as the whirlpool sped up and the center grew still to reveal her mother’s scowling face.
Staggering backward as the illusion faded, she glanced up to see the mist darkening and moving closer. Some vines floating on the water nearby began to slither toward her. She plunged away in a frantic bid to escape, but it was too late. They’d encircled her wrists, and she felt the invisible hand on her throat.
“Green Eyes! Return home at once!” Her mother’s voice drifted through the fog. She tore free of the vines, wrenched down the scarf, and gasped for air. Spying a tall tree with thick branches not far off, she sloshed toward it. Frantically clambering onto the tree’s exposed root, she spun around, drew the sword, and blindly slashed through the air. But the mist was gone. For a long time, she sat crouched against the tree, panting and ready to strike.
Trembling with exhaustion, she slid the sword back into its sheath. She glanced down to see a leech on top of her foot and another on the back of her calf. With a yelp, she plucked them off and flung them back in the water, then watched as blood oozed from her flesh. She brushed off the bits of moss and bark clinging to her skin, then took out her stockings. She wriggled them on, wincing when her flesh caught on the rough wool, and slipped on her boots.
Deciding the tree would be a good place to spend the night, she shrugged on her pack and pulled herself up to the lowest branch, then up to the next one. About halfway up, she stopped to test her weight on one of the branches. When it seemed sturdy, she hooked her pack on a smaller branch nearby and sat back against the trunk.
She surveyed the swamp, spotting an island off in the distance. Rising a few feet above the water, it had only a single tree on it, but it looked dry. She resolved to head toward it in the morning. She wrapped herself up in her cloak and blanket and hunkered down against the searing pain in her feet, the dull ache in her stomach, and the bitter cold in her bones. Though her stomach had gone quiet, having long since abandoned its pleas for food, she found it impossible to ignore the burning feeling there.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her knees. Her mother wasn’t done with her—of that much she was sure—and she wondered if she’d be any safer up here in the tree. Though she’d never felt so tired, every time sleep drew near, a wave of shivering would drag her back to consciousness. For the rest of the night, she hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, shivering and peering out at the darkness.
-28-
Drenched in mud and slime and weak from hunger and exhaustion, Green Eyes huddled against the tree. The fog rolled through the trees in slow, damp waves, sending the temperature down to numbing lows. Throughout the endless night, her body had maintained a near-constant quiver, but it was beginning to falter at the task.
Dawn crept languidly over the swamp. She blinked past the tip of the branch, then turned to gaze at the island she’d spotted the previous day, relieved to see that it hadn’t been a hallucination. Though not much larger than the monument hill back home, it gave her hope that perhaps her long, wet slog was nearing an end.
By imperceptible degrees, the sky grew lighter, evolving from dusty orange to blazing magenta. She shivered and quaked, watching as the first fiery inchworm of sun wriggled up onto the horizon. As it writhed and grew at the edge of the earth, she felt the trembling ease ever so slightly. Slowly, one by one, gossamer beams fanned out into the sky.
She was staring intently at the burning crescent of light, willing it to speed up in its course, when she noticed something hovering at the tip of the branch. At first, she thought it was a reflection off her own eyelashes or a trick of the dawning light. But when the air began to buzz, her heart beat a little faster. It was the crows! She squinted at the slowly coalescing illusion and was able to make out the faint outline of two beaks, a pair of eyes hovering above each.
“Green Eyes,” said Arduon, his voice undulating toward her as if from a great distance.
“Arduon, is that you?”
“Aye. We are here.”
“Where? I can barely see you,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“You are in a very low place right now. It is difficult for us to reach you at this depth. We cannot stay long.”
“Green Eyes,” said Paduon, his voice strangely hollow as if traveling down a long tube, “you must continue your journey. You still have far to go.” She buried her face in her knees, doubtful she could take much more.
“You must climb out of this place. You must reach higher ground. Then you will understand,” said Arduon.
“Understand what?” she asked, her lips purple.
“Who you are. Look inside. It is there you will find what you seek.” She blinked at the light filtering through their bodies. “You must recover the deadened parts of yourself, the parts you have cut off,” he said, pointing a transparent wing toward her stump. “You must bring them into the light. You must feel them.”
“You mean my hand?” she asked.
“Aye. What do you feel there?” he asked.
“Nothing. Although, sometimes… sometimes it feels like it’s still there.” She stared at her stump. “Sometimes it even hurts.”
“Aye. You have carried your pain with you too long, unawares. Pain that has been denied or forgotten is like unripened fruit: It is invisible. But it’s still there, weighing you down. Allow it to move through you, and you will clear a space for knowing,” Paduon said, his voice rippling toward her. When Green Eyes shivered in response, he continued, his voice beginning to garble and fade. “Heed your instincts, for they are messages sent to guide you. Get up. Continue your journey. You are on the right path.”
She stared down the branch at them, and their translucent eyes gazed back. Suddenly, a ray of sunlight shot up over the horizon to pierce the swamp. Before she could utter another word, it had dissolved the crows in its brilliance.
-29-
Once the sun had cleared the horizon, Green Eyes got up to pack her things. On her way down the tree, she noticed that the bark was shredded and torn in a way it hadn’t been on her way up. She dropped down onto the exposed root, then turned to gaze up at the huge claw marks scaling the trunk. They stopped at the branch where she’d spent the night. She shuddered to think how close she must have come to being devoured by whatever creature had left them and wondered why she hadn’t seen it. She shed her boots and stockings, tucked them into her pack, and stepped into the putrid water.
She limped off in the direction of the island, the weakened flesh of her feet splitting and tearing with nearly every step. The crows’ words were still bouncing around inside her head, when she heard a cry billowing through the mist. It sounded at once near and far away.
“Help me, sister! They are going to take my claws!” She glanced around and, for the first time, thought she could feel her sister’s presence.
“‘Hoy?” she called out, but there was no one there. When a frog croaked a few yards away, she sighed and continued on.
Clothes plastered to her skin, she shivered and wobbled through the murky water. She’d just stepped over a moss-covered log, when she noticed the swamp bed rising beneath her feet. Rounding a dense tangle of vines and branches toward the island, she staggered up onto the relatively clear piece of land.
The entire island appeared to be held together by the single large tree at its center. She dropped the pack, stomach groaning, and sat down. She knew there was nothing left to eat in it, but she searched it anyway. She pulled out the pot, the flint, and the fire steel and took a sip from the wineskin.
After arranging some rocks into a ring, she circled the island in search of something she could burn. Except for the tree and a couple of green bushes, though, it was barren. Shivering and hugging her elbows to her, she returned to the pack. She spied the spell book poking out of it and pulled it out, a lopsided grin on her face. Tearing out a page at random, she balled it up and tucked it inside the circle. She did the same with several more, then struck the flint and fire steel together until a spark caught. Before she could lean in to blow on them, the pages exploded into flames.
“Zounds!” she cried, recoiling. The fire leaped up and quickly died down. She tore out another page, thick with grease from her mother’s fingers, and crumpled it up. She tossed it onto the fire, and it, too, exploded, crackling and spitting flames into the air.
She stood there as the pages curled into ash and wondered what effect ridding herself of her mother’s diabolical designs would have on her. Would things be easier for her now? Or would her mother sense this rebellion and redouble her efforts to reclaim her? She basked in the heat and allowed herself—just for a moment—to hate the woman who’d enslaved her. As she watched the pages disappear before her eyes, she felt layer upon layer of guilt and fear burn away to expose the naked anger underneath. Bitterness surged through her as she picked up the book and tossed it onto the fire. The blaze roared up into the sky.
She was staring into the flames, when a bird flew over her head and landed in the tree behind her. It raised its tail to peer down at her, and she held her breath, hoping it might speak. Instead, it hopped a little way along the branch and began to peck at something. Craning her neck, she spotted some small green fruit hidden among the leaves. She gasped, and the bird flew away. Stepping closer, she saw that the fruit were oblong in shape and almost the same color as the leaves.
“Unripened fruit is invisible,” she said, rushing toward the trunk and stopping when she noticed it was covered in fat, fleshy scales with inch-long thorns pointing upward. She reached out to touch one; it was sharper than any dagger point the blacksmith could have made.
She grabbed her pack, positioned it beneath the lowest branch, and unsheathed the sword. Climbing up onto the pack, she raised the sword and began to whack at the branch with the flat edge, hoping to dislodge some of the fruit. But though the effort nearly knocked her off the pack, the branch barely moved, and none of the fruit fell. She swayed, dizzy with hunger, a handful of leaves fluttering to the ground.
Realizing she’d need to cut down the branch to get to the fruit, she angled the blade and chopped at it with the sharp edge. Again, the branch trembled, but the blade had dug in, an inch’s worth disappearing into the woody pulp. She grabbed the sword with both hands, lifted her feet off the pack, and let her weight draw the blade through the branch. She toppled to the ground, dropping the sword, and turned to grin up at the gouge she’d left in the branch.
She picked up the sword, climbed back onto the pack, and hacked away until the branch cracked and bent toward the ground. With a relieved grunt, she dropped the sword and dove onto it, twisting and pulling a piece of fruit until it came loose. Shoving what looked like a misshapen apple into her mouth, she bit down. Her face immediately cinched up. She spat it out and held the fruit out at arm’s length with a look of surprise. It was nowhere near ripe, but the void inside her stomach convinced her to take another bite.
She chewed quickly, choked a little, and swallowed. Turning it over, she closed her eyes and bit down, chewing and swallowing as much as she could before gagging. She let the core tumble from her hand and swallowed the last few gulps from the wineskin, then set her jaw and forced herself to eat another one.
Halfway through the second apple, she noticed the dizziness subsiding a little. She picked the branch clean, stuffed the apples into her pack, and kicked dirt onto the smoldering embers. She packed up her things, rinsed the sword in the water, and asked it to point the way. It tilted toward a thicket on the far side of the island. As she slid the sword back into its sheath, she wondered how many more times this piece of metal was going to save her life.
She plunged into the water and waded around the thicket, ripping away vines and slipping on submerged rocks. When she again felt the swamp bed rising, she glanced up to see a stretch of reeds and beyond that, dry land.
With a sigh, she swished up out of the water, then sat down to dry her puckered, bleeding feet. She slipped on her hand and gloves and pulled on her stockings and boots. She took out an apple, hitched up the pack, and bit down. Shrugging off a wince, she clomped away across the firm, dry earth.
-30-
Now out of the swamp, Green Eyes had a clear view of the way ahead. Dotted by the occasional tree, the flat plain stretched out as far as she could see. She marched forward, ignoring the pain in her feet, and was struck by how hard the ground was.
After some time, the swamp’s moss-strewn trees had receded behind her, and the air around her began to turn cold. When she realized she could see her breath in the air, she stopped to gaze up in search of the sun, but the dull gray sky had swallowed it up. She pulled her cloak from her pack, clasped it around her neck, and covered her head with the blanket, just as she’d done in the desert.
The occasional icy blast became a sustained wind, and the ground grew ever harder. When it began to crunch beneath her feet, she glanced down to see what looked like dirty ice. She kicked it, and her suspicion was confirmed: The ground was frozen. She peered out at the mist snaking across the frozen tundra, then glanced up, silently begging the sun to pierce the featureless sky. In response, it darkened.
Racked by shivers, she stumbled across the infernal landscape. With each agonizing step, she felt she was drawing closer to the inevitable: She was going to freeze to death. Images began to flash through her mind: Navi plodding through the desert, the blacksmith agreeing to make her hand. Had it all been for nothing? She forged on, the ground tugging at her, and it took everything she had not to lie down and go to sleep.
When the cold made her lose all feeling in her feet, she stopped to rub the tops of her boots in a futile attempt to warm them. As she was standing up, she noticed that the way ahead looked strange, as if the frozen ground and swirling mist had fused together to form a single, solid object. The confusing sight made her feel unsteady, as if she were tumbling through space. She staggered forward and peered up through frost-covered eyelashes as the obstacle came into focus. It was a towering wall of ice. She lifted the blanket and stood before the frozen mountainside.
She stepped forward and reached up to brush away a thin layer of frost, revealing the hard, white rock underneath. The tiny cracks running through it reminded her of the crystals her mother kept beside her bed. She scanned the face in search of a fissure or anything else she might grab onto, but there was nothing but sheer, flat rock. She dropped her head, slumped to her knees, and began to cry, the wind whipping mercilessly around her.
The tears were slow at first, her tear ducts being blocked by ice, but as she gave in to despair, they began to flow freely, trickling down her cheeks where they immediately froze. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, the edges of her blanket rippling and snapping. Short, steamy whirlwinds spun in circles around her.
“God, if you’re up there, prithee, help me,” she whispered into her frozen gloves. “Help me.” She turned to sit with her back against the mountain, bowed her head, and wept, her cries lost in the howling wind.
“Get up!” Arduon’s voice was so sharp, she sucked in a gasp. She glanced up just in time to see a transparent eye and part of a beak zipping away into the fog.
“Arduon?” she said, getting to her feet. She was blinking after him, when something in the distance caught her eye. She swiped at her frozen eyelashes and squinted at the skulking shape moving slowly through the haze. When it raised its head, she realized that it was a giant silver cat—the cat of her dreams.
Gripped by dread, she backed up against the mountain. The cat padded toward her, its head swaying from side to side, and stopped a short distance away. She stood there, frozen with disbelief. For a moment, the wind died down, and she thought she could hear the mysterious, low rumble of its purr. Shot through with fear and excitement, she watched as it sat back on its haunches and stared at her through pale, otherworldly eyes. When she met its gaze, she somehow knew it meant her no harm.
A moment later, the wind picked up again. The cat glanced up at the mountain, then back at her. It blinked a few times, then lowered its head and ran at the wall of ice, leaping onto it with a wide swish of its tail. Green Eyes stepped back, bracing herself for the creature’s fall, the fall she’d endured so many times in her dream. But instead of sliding down, the cat had no trouble holding on. Steam seeped out from beneath its massive paws, which appeared to melt into the rock. It glanced down at her, then began to climb, its paws searing into the mountain with every step.
