The Urdas were not in evidence on that visit, but Kermadec and his Trolls kept careful watch for them, even after they were anchored and on the ground. Urdas would not enter the ruins, it was said. They would not come into any place they considered sacred. Kermadec was taking no chances, and sent scouts in all directions with instructions to make sure.
Grianne turned to him. «Keep watch for us, Old Bear,” she said with a smile. «This won’t take long.»
He shook his great, impassive face in disagreement. «I wish you would let this wait for a while longer, Mistress. You have been through too much already. If there is a confrontation down there—”
« There will be no confrontation,” she said quickly, putting a reassuring hand on his armored wrist. She glanced over to where Penderrin stood at the bridgehead, looking over at the island. «This isn’t to be an encounter of that sort.»
She took her hand away. «You were the best of them all,” she told him. «No one was more faithful or gave more to me when it was needed. I will never forget that.»
He looked away. «You should go now, so that you can be back before dark.» There was resignation in his eyes. He knew. «Go, Mistress.»
She nodded and turned away, walking over to join the boy. He glanced at her as she came up beside him, but said nothing. «Are you ready?» she asked.
He shook his head. «I don’t know. What if the tanequil won’t let us cross?»
« Why don’t we see?»
She walked out onto the bridge, the boy following, and called up the magic of the wishsong, humming softly to let it build, working on the message she wanted it to convey. She stopped perhaps a quarter of the way across until she had it just right, then released the magic into the afternoon silence and let it drift downward into the ravine. She gave it the whole of what she thought was needed, taking her time, content to be patient if patience was what was required.
It was not. A response came almost immediately, a shifting of heavy roots within the earth, a rustle of leaves and grasses, a whisper of wind. Voices, soft and lilting, that only she could hear. She understood what it meant.
« Come, Pen,” she said.
They crossed untroubled to the other side of the bridge and walked to the trail that had led the boy into the ravine weeks earlier in his search for Cinnaminson. The island forest was deep and still, the air cooler, the light diffuse, and the earth dappled with layered shadows. She watched Pen cast about, eyes shifting left and right, searching. He was looking for the aeriads, but she already knew they would not come. Nothing would come to them now. Everything was waiting.
They found the trailhead and stopped. The path wound downward in a steep descent that gradually faded into a mix of mist and shadows. It was so dark within the ravine that they could not see the bottom. It was the sort of place she had entered many times. It was a mirror of her heart.
She turned to him. «You are to wait here for me, Pen. I will do this best if I am alone. I know what is needed. I will bring Cinnaminson back to you.»
He studied her face carefully, unable to keep the hope from his eyes. «I know you will try, Aunt Grianne.»
She reached out impulsively and hugged the boy. It was something she had seldom done, and it felt awkward, but the boy was quick to hug her back, and that made her feel better about it.
« Be careful,” he whispered.
She broke away, moving slowly down the trail toward the shadows.
« Thank you,” he called after her. «For doing this.»
She gave him a small wave in response, but did not look back.
The afternoon eased toward evening, and the light shifted and began to fade. Pen stood until he grew tired, then sat with his back against an ancient trunk, staring down into the ravine, keeping watch. He listened for sounds he did not care to think of too carefully, but no sounds came. Silence cloaked the ravine and the forest and, for all he knew, the entire world. He watched patterns of light and shadows form and re–form, slow–moving kaleidoscopic images against the earth. He smelled the scents released into air by the forest and the things that lived there. He rubbed the blunted tips of his damaged fingers and remembered how they had gotten that way. He remembered what it had felt like to become joined to the tanequil through the carving of the runes. He remembered night in the island forest and his terrifying encounter with Aphasia Wye.
Mostly, he remembered Cinnaminson. He could picture her face and the way she smiled. He could remember the way she moved. He could hear her voice. She was there, alive and well within his mind, and it made him want to cry for his loss.
But he smiled instead. He knew she was coming back to him. He believed in his aunt Grianne. He had faith in her magic and her skills, in her promise that she would find a way. He loved Cinnaminson, although he had never loved a girl before and had no frame of reference from which to draw a comparison. But love seemed to him to be a state of mind peculiar to each, and there was no set standard by which you could measure its strength. He knew what he felt for Cinnaminson, and if the difference between what he felt when he had her with him and when he did not was an accurate measure, then he could not imagine how love could be any stronger.
Time slipped away, and at last, when no one had appeared and darkness had begun to close about, he found himself wondering what he would do if his aunt failed and Cinnaminson didn’t come back to him.
He dozed then, made sleepy–eyed by the warmth and brightness of the late afternoon sun slanting down through breaks in the branches of the trees. He did not fall deeply asleep, but hovered at the edge of wakefulness, arms about his drawn–up knees, head sunk on his chest.
Eyes closed, he drifted.
Then something stirred him awake—a whisper of sound, a hint of movement, a sense of presence—and he looked up to find Cinnaminson standing before him. She was more ghost than flesh and blood, pale and thin and disheveled in her tattered clothes. He got to his feet slowly and stood looking at her, afraid that he was mistaken, that he might be hallucinating.
« It’s me, Pen,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
He didn’t rush to her, didn’t grasp her and hold her close, although he wanted to do that, to make certain of her. Instead, he walked up to her as if time didn’t matter. He took her hands and held them, studying her face, the spray of freckles and the milky eyes. The musty smell of earth and damp emanated from her body, and tendrils of root ends still clung to her arms.
He reached out and touched her face.
« I’m all right,” she said. She touched his face. «I missed you. Even when I was one of them and thought I couldn’t possibly be happier, I remembered you and missed you. I don’t think that ever would have stopped.»
She put her arms around him and held on to him as if she was afraid she would be taken away again, and he could feel her crying against his shoulder. He started to speak, then gave it up and just hugged her, closing his eyes and losing himself in the warmth of her body.
« Who was it who came down for me?» she asked him finally, her voice muffled. She lifted her head from his shoulder put her mouth close to his ear. «I don’t understand it,” she whispered. «Why did she do it? Why did she trade herself for me?»
Pen thought his heart would stop.
In the air above them, the aeriads hummed and sang and danced on the breeze, invisible and soundless. Heedless of time’s passage, they played in the soft glow of the sunset’s red and gold and the evening’s deep indigo. They were spirits unfettered by the restrictions of the human body and the limitations of the human existence. They were sisters and friends, and the whole of the world was their playground.