Edith Pattou - Fire Arrow

Brie looked into Lom's face and knew he spoke the truth—his truth, at any rate. For herself, it was not so clear, but some of the pain had seeped away with the words she had spoken. Soon she slept.

***

Dawn was just breaking when Ferg, who was on watch, let out a cry. The tone of his voice jerked Brie awake and to her feet. The boy was pointing at the water. Brie left Lom, who stirred but remained deep in slumber, and went to the side of the Storm Petrel. She peered down.

There was a dark shadow passing under the boat. It spread out over the sea a good distance.

As Brie stared, her eye caught a movement. Something detached itself from the dark mass and came closer to the surface. Brie got a glimpse of the long undulating form and protruding round eyes rimmed with a line of shining orange. "Sumog!" she cried out. Fara, at Brie's legs, let out a hiss. Then the creature dipped down into the thick swathe of darkness.

Lom had awakened, as had Henle and Stulw, and they joined Brie at the side.

"Did you see?" Brie said, her voice urgent. The fishermen said they had not. Jacan had seen only the darkness from his place at the helm.

They watched the dark band until it was far out to sea and they could no longer see it. Brie's throat was dry. To make up that wide band of darkness there would have had to have been hundreds and hundreds of sumog.

"Are you sure it was sumog?", asked Lom.

"Yes. And look." Floating on the surface were fish bones, tails, fins, and bits of flesh. The Storm Petrel sailed over the grisly trail as they made their way back to Ardara.

Too tired to hike up to Farmer Garmon's barn, Brie stayed the night in a small shed behind Jacan's house, as she had done a handful of times before.

Brie dreamed of Collun again. It began as a peaceful scene, Collun bent over his mother's garden, staking some white cosmos that had grown as tall as his shoulders. Then a light snow began to fall. Collun looked up, puzzled, then afraid. Brie woke.

She remembered as if from long ago a day at Cuillean's dun when she had come across Collun sitting silently beside an overgrown patch of weeds. He had been very still, with a blank look on his face. She had knelt beside him.

"Cosmos and briar roses," he had said, a tangle of winding roots and stems clutched in his hand. "They were Emer's favorites. This was her garden." Brie could see unshed tears in Collun's eyes.

"Can we help it to grow again?" she had asked softly.

"Yes." And they had spent the rest of the day weeding, watering, and staking the neglected plants. When they were done, the blank look in Collun's eyes was gone.

But in her dream he had been afraid.

Still exhausted from the deep-sea fishing, Brie could have easily slept through the rest of the day, even into the night. But she quickly got to her feet and dressed. She must go to Collun. She had postponed it too long. Pulling on her boots, Brie flinched as she remembered her bitter parting words to him.

She checked on the fire arrow. It hummed against her skin, but not with warmth. It seemed faintly displeased.

As she stepped outside, Brie breathed in the morning air. Something was different, she thought. There was a tang, a chill that had not been there yesterday. Sharply she turned her face toward the mountains. Snow. And clouds heavy with darkness hovered over the highest peaks.

It was too late. She sank to the stone steps in front of the hut. Everyone had told her that once the snows came to the Blue Stacks, no one dared travel through. "Think of the storm you met, Biri," Hanna had said, "and imagine ice and snow mixed in with the wind. Not to mention drifts of snow as high as your shoulders."

She could try anyway. Or perhaps ... perhaps she could go by sea. It was possible, she thought, her face lighting for a moment. She could borrow a cross-stave and a table of the airts; she had Crann's map, which clearly marked Dungal's coastline. Yet she had no boat.

She would go to Sago. Perhaps he knew of a boat.

But when she got to Sago's mote, he was just setting out with a canvas satchel slung over his chest. "Sago's amhantar," he said with a looping smile, pointing at the satchel. "For treasures," he added in a dramatic whisper, finger to his lips. And he wandered down to the shoreline peering closely at the sand. Occasionally he stooped to pick up a shell or a tuft of seaweed. Brie watched him, frustrated. Then she followed after.

"Sago," Brie called. "I must return to Eirren."

"Too late, too late," he chirped. Brie frowned and he began to sing,

" I wish I were

where I could not be

and that where I could be

I was not at all."

Sago finished his doggerel with a cheerful smile, then dived upon a bright purple starfish that was missing a leg. He placed it in his amhantar.

"I was thinking I might go by sea...," said Brie, reining in her temper.

"The sea, the salty old sea. And shall old Sago teach you the cerdd-moru, the songs of the sea? 'Sing hey ho, the life of the sea,' " he trilled.

"I must go," Brie almost shouted.

Sago turned to face her, still grinning, but his words were spoken softly. "Perhaps, but not to Eirren. And not yet."

Brie searched his face for meaning. Then he chuckled again and, wagging his forefinger at her, recited,

" One little fish bone

went to see the queen;

when the bone came back

nothing had it seen."

After that she could get nothing of sense from the sorcerer, who skipped down the beach, occasionally crouching low to inspect something in the sand. Brie sank to her knees, numb with disappointment.

Finally she rose to leave. Sago suddenly doubled back, ran to her, taking hold of her wrist.

"Have you ever seen a ghost anemone?" he asked.

"No," replied Brie.

Sago led her across the sand, then onto a large rocky outcrop. He stopped in front of a sheltered basin of water within the rocks and pointed down. Brie moved forward, stepping on a bronze-colored plant that let out a wet, popping noise. Sago told her the plant was a bladder wrack.

"But here, look," said Sago.

Brie peered down into the still pool of water and saw a slender column from which emanated dozens of delicate, swaying tentacles of a whitish, translucent color.

"It's beautiful," said Brie.

Sago nodded. "But when it is disturbed, the ghost anemone releases white stinging threads that paralyze. It uses its ghostly little arms to pull anything edible down to its mouth. You see the mouth? In the center there."

Brie gazed at the oval lips, which undulated with small sucking movements.

"There are two kinds of predators: those who set forth to hunt and kill, and those who sit still and wait," the Sea Dyak sorcerer said matter-of-factly.

Sago stirred the water in the basin with a long piece of driftwood. The tentacles of the ghost anemone contracted slightly, and Brie saw several threads of white shoot out and coil around the stick; then they drifted slowly away.

"You saw the sumog on the sea?" Sago asked unexpectedly.

"Yes."

"Come," said the sorcerer, dropping the driftwood and moving away from the tide pool. He bent down and picked up a shell. "Moon shell," he said with a smile. It was fan-shaped with whorls and ridges corrugating the opalescent, milky white surface. Brie gazed on it with pleasure, then she suddenly noticed Sago's thumbnail. It was long and thin /and it hooked under, curving in toward his thumb at a sharp angle. Sago smiled and held up his other thumb for Brie to see. It was the same.

"It is the mark of a Sea Dyak sorcerer. They are said to be fishing hooks that catch the souls of the departed so they won't be washed out to sea."

Brie stared stupidly at the hooked thumbnails.