The air was heavy with the sickly cloying smell of fumes and chemicals from a large industrial estate on one side; here also the lights were brighter and there was more noise and activity. The smell stuck in their nostrils and put a strange metallic taste at the back of their mouths; they felt unable to draw their breath properly and they became a little desperate and frightened as every time they breathed they felt this unfamiliar air go through their lungs and make them feel like retching.
They stood at the top of the rise for a while, scared but also fascinated by what seemed like a huge beast breathing fire and smoke and which even at rest was unable to stop the ceaseless turmoil within itself. Nab asked Beth lots of questions and she answered them as best she could because she was not very familiar with town life. As she told him all she knew he became cold with fear for he realized that he would be totally unable to survive in it; to live in the middle, surrounded by that mass of concrete and lights and noise, would be for him a nightmare.
‘We cannot go through it,’ he said to Warrigal, who was standing at his side. ‘I would not be able to feel the Roosdyche and we would lose our bearings. We shall have to go round and hope to pick it up on the other side.’
‘It will take us a long time,’ replied the owl.
‘We have no choice. If we got lost in there it would take us far longer. We should never get out. And we would be certain to be spotted. Beth has said untold numbers of Urkku dwell inside it. No; we must go round.’
They set off on a detour around the town, keeping the same distance away from it all the time. It took them fifteen nights; fifteen nights during which the town was their constant companion. By the end they almost felt as if they had come to know it; to become aware of its changing moods as the week wore on from the desperate gaiety of Saturday through the busy workday clatter of the week to the docile slothful slumber of Sunday, before the pattern began again, to repeat itself over and over, inexorably.
They had to go very slowly because of the multitude of outlying dwellings around the town and the busy main roads down which the cars screeched and thundered but there were no mishaps even though sometimes they were forced to go so close to a house that they could hear voices. When Beth heard the familiar household noises drift out through the night air, the clatter of plates in a kitchen or the whistle of a kettle boiling on a cooker or the thump of a pair of feet going upstairs, she felt very strange. They took her back to her other world, the one of which she had been part for so long and which she had now abandoned, and she was reminded of her parents and her home. At these times waves of nostalgia would sweep over her to vanish quickly in the tension of the moment as they crept behind a wall or through a hedge in a garden.
So, while people watched television or lay asleep in their beds, outside in the cool clear night the little band made their slow and careful way round the town until finally they caught sight of the Scyttel in the distance. It was not long then before Nab detected the earth currents which told him that they were once again on the old way and they set out towards the distant mound with excitement and relief; they felt that they were now well and truly on their way and that it would not be too long before they arrived at the place of the Sea Elves where they would meet the Elflord of the Sea and the first part of their journey would be over.
Soon they reached the mound which they had kept in sight for so long. It was smaller than they had imagined from far off and was simply a large flat-topped hummock with a circle of large standing stones set in the grass. Some of the the first Urkku had, by means of logic, been able to recognize the magic power of these places and had attempted to concentrate and magnify their strength by placing these stones on them for, because magic had been denied to them, they were forced to use logic in order to be able to extract and make use of the power. It was only where the magic force was strongest that they were able to perceive the power of the place so there are myriads of lesser Scyttels totally unknown to them and of whose existence only the elves and the animals are aware, for it is only those who possess magic who can feel intuitively where they are. Thus it was only occasionally on their journey that the animals came across one of these larger and more powerful Scyttels. The day they spent at this one was a wild blustery day in early February when the sky was heavy with enormous dark clouds rolling after each other as the wind howled over the plain. They sat huddled behind one of the stones out of the wind, mesmerized by these armies of cloud passing overhead and letting the strength of the Scyttel flow into them. So aware were they of the energy of the place that they were unable to sleep and in fact they felt no need of it. Stretched out behind them they had a view of the entire plain over which they had travelled while ahead of them was a further small range of foothills to cross and they sensed that beyond those lay the sea.
When night-time came they set off across the small stretch of plain which lay between them and the hills and by midnight they were climbing. Soon the lush green pastures of the lowlands had been left behind and the ground became rocky; the grass poor and short, and instead of cows they saw only sheep picking at the sparse patches of green between the rock and the scrub. The following day the winds brought in snow and they awoke in the late afternoon to find everywhere covered with a thick blanket of white. Fortunately the snow had stopped and the sky had begun to clear so that the moon was shining clearly down on the hills. The going was easier now because the snow was freezing on top of the heather and scrub and they made good progress, particularly as up here there were no Urkku dwellings or any other sign of them.
It took them two more nights to reach the other side of the little range of hills. Eventually they found themselves standing on the top of a steep slope looking down on to a carpet of mist below. It was almost dawn so they rested and slept behind a crag before setting off in the evening down the slope. To their disappointment it had begun to rain again as the weather had grown warmer and soon the exhilaration of the clear crisp nights walking over the snow-covered heather with the moon and stars lighting up their path had evaporated under a pall of dampness.
There was no moon and the rain made it difficult for even Warrigal and Brock to see far ahead. They descended slowly down narrow paths turned slippery by the rain, which had not yet melted the ice but instead had polished them with a layer of water, making them treacherous. Several times Beth slipped and once she went rolling
down a steep bank until she came to a halt at the edge of a little stream. From then on Nab kept hold of her hand for some of the paths took them along the edge of deep drops falling into inky blackness which they guessed went a long way down.
When they reached the lowest of the foothills and were almost at the bottom, the visibility became suddenly much worse as they found themselves in the middle of a thick swirling mist. The rain had now stopped but the cold clammy dampness of the mist soaked them to the skin. They carried on for a while with Nab in the lead for he was able to follow the Roosdyche even more strongly than Warrigal, who was perched on his shoulder peering into the murk ahead and steering him as best he could along what seemed to be raised green footways on either side of which the ground appeared to fall away and become black and broken.
‘We cannot go much further tonight,’ Nab said suddenly. ‘I have lost the Roosdyche. We’ll wait here until dawn when we might be able to see where we are.' Warrigal flew down and perched on an old rotten treestump in front. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw with tiredness and his feathers rough and bedraggled with the wet. Behind them the others gathered in a little group, miserable and silent as the mist blew in wraiths about them.