R. Anderson - Wayfarer

“Fine,” she said shortly, and they set off across the street toward the station.

As the coach rumbled along the coastal highway half an hour later, Timothy caught glimpses of Cardigan Bay in the distance: lead-colored waves, rocky cliff sides, and here and there a wavering line of wet sand. Over the ocean the clouds hung so low that they looked like islands, and it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

Doubt stabbed into him, sharper than the pain in his side. He hugged the backpack on his lap-there was nowhere else to put it, the bus was so full-and wondered if they really had any hope of finding the Children of Rhys. What if the legend he’d read about the faery islands and the herbs that made them visible was no more than some storyteller’s wild imagination? How did Rob or any of them know that the Children existed at all, let alone that they had this magical naming stone?

And what if he never got to make that phone call to his parents and tell them the truth about why he’d gotten himself suspended from Greenhill, because the Blackwings caught up with him first?

He took the key out of his pocket and clutched it, but the cold iron gave him no comfort. All at once he wanted very badly to talk to someone-no, not just anyone, he wanted to talk to Linden, and tell her he was sorry. But with a stout woman sitting in the seat right next to him, he could hardly start whispering to his backpack. All he could do was wait.

And wait some more, because the stop at Cardigan was on a busy street, and he only had a few minutes to catch the coach to their next destination. Which turned out to be almost as crowded as the last one, so again he was forced to remain silent, knowing Linden was only a few inches away and yet she might as well have been in Uganda for all the good it did either of them….

The inside of Timothy’s pack smelled unpleasantly of damp, not to mention the dirty socks he’d stuffed into it that morning, and it galled Linden that she couldn’t see a thing that was going on. This journey felt ten times longer to her than yesterday’s had been. Still, at least she was warm and dry, with a full stomach-and after last night, she would never take any of those things for granted again.

She had lost all sense of time or direction and was half asleep from sheer boredom when she felt a soft bump and the mouth of the pack opened, letting in a gust of cool, deliciously fresh air. Timothy was gazing down at her, his mouth crooked in a rueful smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “About everything.”

She’d been savoring her resentment all morning, but now it evaporated in the sheer relief of knowing they’d reached their destination at last. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Wait a minute,” Timothy cautioned in an undertone. “Just until these people walk past us…All right, they’re gone. You can come out.”

It was easy for Linden to change size now; the hard thing was remembering that it had ever been difficult in the first place. “Oh!” she said as her head rose to the height of Timothy’s shoulder. “I forgot to tell you! Last night I was so tired that I went to sleep at this size instead of remembering to make myself small, and I was still big when I woke up in the morning! Isn’t that-” But then she saw what lay ahead of them and broke off, her lips parted in wonder.

They stood at the top of a cobbled street, beside a wall of uneven dove-gray stones. The lane ended in a soaring gateway flanked by square towers, and looking through it, Linden could see the spires of St. David’s Cathedral.

It was old, older than the Oak by far, she could tell. To think that human hands had built this enormous church and preserved it over the long centuries amazed her, but even more exciting was the hope of what they might find within its grounds-the magical herbs that would lead them to the Children of Rhys.

As they passed beneath the gate and into the churchyard, Timothy let out a low, disheartened whistle. “This place is huge,” he said. “We could be here until the Blackwings catch up with us.”

“Then we had better start looking, hadn’t we?” Linden shielded her eyes with her hand as she surveyed the distant horizon. “But shouldn’t we be able to see the ocean from here? It all looks like sky to me.”

“It’s too cloudy,” said Timothy. “Or maybe the legend was wrong. I don’t know.” He seemed defeated already, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped beneath the backpack’s weight.

Linden looked behind her and saw a low-walled garden with a stone cottage behind it. Perhaps it hadn’t been part of the original churchyard, but it might give her a better view…and she climbed up onto the tiny lawn, treading carefully to avoid the shoots of young daffodils that were just beginning to nudge through the grass.

At first she saw nothing beyond the cathedral but a haze of leafless trees and the rocky shoulder of a faraway hill. She stood on tiptoe, straining with all her senses…and gradually the island appeared to her, shining out from the mists.

It seemed almost to float, independent of the sea, and the grass that velveted its slopes was not the uncertain yellow-green of early spring but the deep emerald of midsummer. A little wood grew on one side of the island, and its leaves too were green, as though winter had never touched them.

“Timothy!” she shouted down to him. “I see it!”

He scrambled up to join her, one hand pressed to his injured side. “Where?”

“Right there,” she said eagerly, pointing ahead. “A minute ago there was nothing, and then…”

Timothy squinted into the distance. “I don’t see anything. Here, move over and let me stand where you are.”

Linden stepped to one side and he took her place, but his frown remained. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “Are you sure it wasn’t just the clouds?”

“I’m certain,” she said. “I can still see it now.”

Timothy let his hand drop back to his side. “Of course you can,” he said, sounding disgusted. “You’re a faery yourself, and you knew what you were looking for-their glamour couldn’t fool you. You could probably have spotted that island from the window of the coach, if only I’d given you the chance.” He kicked the turf, stomped a few paces-and stopped.

“Did you say an island?” he said. He sounded dazed, almost dreamy, and he was looking off at a different angle, beyond the cathedral tower.

Linden followed the line of his gaze, and let out a slow exhalation of surprise. He was right: There were two islands. But if he could see them as well…

She bent to examine the turf at Timothy’s feet. What she’d taken for daffodil shoots were actually a smooth-leaved plant she’d never seen before. When she broke off one of the leaves, the juice that welled out had a sweet, fruity scent, but it left no stickiness upon her fingers.

“I think we’ve found Gruffydd’s magic herbs,” she said, smiling up at him.

With the iron key in his pocket, a clump of strange plants in his backpack, and his injured side clumsily patched together with bandages and gauze, Timothy felt like he’d just come back from a visit to the witch doctor-but he couldn’t deny that the magical herbs seemed to do exactly as the legend claimed. Eyes fixed on the distant islands, he and Linden made their careful way down the slope of the churchyard, past the ruins of the Bishop’s palace, and out beyond the stone walls of the cathedral yard. Within minutes they had found a footpath that would lead them toward the sea.

“How are we going to get out to the island?” Linden panted as they hurried along. It was past noon, the sun high above them, but the air was still cold enough to make Timothy’s lungs ache. He had to catch his own breath before he could reply: “We’ll have to hire a boat, I guess.”