“You can walk along the shore over the rocks,” Mikk said.
“I will walk with you,” said Charkky. “We’ll have to take to the sea when we get beyond Jade Beach, or go over the point; the cliff falls away there steep and slick.”
Teb tied the pack to his waist and shouldered the lilies, and they started out, Mikk galumphing ahead of him and the other five diving swiftly seaward deep down, then up and down along the surface, playing in the sea as if they had quite forgotten the hydrus.
“How do they know it won’t come back?” Teb asked.
“They don’t. But you can’t be afraid all the time. Your chin’s bleeding again; press some seaweed to it.”
As they traveled, Teb tried to tell himself one of the songs that had come to him so strangely, yet he found he couldn’t. They were all gone suddenly, not one word would come back, though they had all been there before the hydrus. They were the only real memories he had. And they had seemed to him more than memories, too. They had seemed a powerful link to someone else and to what his future held. They had seemed to him a kind of talisman, a prediction, just as Thakkur’s visions were predictions. Now they were gone, the last thread with himself broken.
He followed Charkky in silence, feeling lost and afraid. He hadn’t very much more to take away. Had the hydrus done this, reached him in the most private, safest place he had? They made their way up the cliff so they could cross the point at Jade Beach rather than going in the water. Just as they reached the cliff top, a wind and darkness swept out of the sky filled with the dusty smell of feathers, and a huge owl came swooping across the top of his head, giant wings beating at him. Teb ducked as the dark bird banked in front of him, staring into his face with fierce yellow eyes; its screaming cry stopped his heart as it hovered over him; an owl as big as an otter and seeming twice that with its wings spread. Its red beak opened cruelly.
Then it laughed. A harsh, guttural laugh. It landed before him and folded its wings, and stared at him fierce as sin.
Charkky stood ready to run, but Teb just stared, because something about an owl made him feel comfortable, even though this owl was far from comforting.
Its stomach feathers were buff, but the rest of it was nearly black, mottled with flecks of rust. Its red beak was sharply curved, and its great ears extended to the sides of its head as if it were wearing a hat. Its voice was gravelly and hissing.
“Have you seen the black monster in the sea? Hydrus! I am searching for the hydrus. Three heads. Faces like men. I have been tracking it for weeks.”
“We’ve seen it,” Charkky said, cross from being frightened. ‘What have you to do with such a thing? Certainly you have no better manners than it has, swooping down on a person.”
The owl grinned and bowed, which only made Charkky scowl harder. “I follow the hydrus to learn its ways. Where it is bound. It moves ahead of the armies of darkness. Quazelzeg is its master. It drowns men by swamping boats, and it loves only darkness.”
“It attacked us,” Charkky said, studying the owl with curiosity. “We wounded it, and it went away deeper into the sea. Back there.” He pointed. “Just off the last point.”
The owl snapped its wings open and crouched to leap skyward.
“Wait,” Charkky cried. “You have something to tell of the hydrus. Thakkur will want to hear it.”
“Can’t wait. I must follow. I will return if I can, but now I must follow. . . .” He leaped then, with one whish of air and then in silence as he rose on the sea wind, and Teb watched him grow smaller as he sped east toward the open sea.
And inside Teb’s head the owl’s words echoed: “. . . it loves only darkness. . . . I must follow.” And it was as if those same words echoed in his own spirit and he, too, must, at some time near, follow the hydrus, follow darkness.
Chapter 13
It was spring before the owl returned. They did not see the hydrus again, though a watch was kept at all times from the high ridge above Thakkur’s cave. Winter settled in early and fierce, cutting the warm autumn away with sheets of blizzard-cold wind, and the seas grew huge and pounding, so all the otters, even Thakkur, moved out of the seaward caves into those overlooking the inner valley.
Teb moved into Charkky and Mikk’s cave, bringing his new gull-feather blanket, to the envy of both otters. On the coldest nights they all three slept under it. He supposed he smelled as fishy now as the otters did, though he was still aware of their fishy breath at night. It was nice sleeping close to their warm, silky smoothness, and they were all three cozy and snug even on the stormiest nights. Both Charkky and Mikk had come to like cooked shellfish, and the three of them made their fires on the little beach below the south cliff where the waves rolled by at an angle. Hardly anyone came there. Twice a day they boiled up a succulent meal in the black iron pot. But it was here that Ekkthurian and Gorkk and Urikk appeared suddenly one evening from around the bend of the cliff, their black eyes flashing with fury and their teeth bared.
“I thought I smelled a stench,” said Ekkthurian. “Fire! It is fire! A vile human habit. And what are you two doing, Charkky and Mikk? One might expect it of a human, but young otters do not play with fire.”
“We are cooking supper,” said Mikk evenly. “Go away.”
Charkky stared at Mikk, amazed. It was not the custom to be rude to your elders. And then, taking heart from Mikk, Charkky showed his teeth to the sour old otter and gave him a low, angry growl.
“Thakkur said we could cook here,” Teb said. “He said I could make a fire.”
Ekkthurian scowled at the three of them and began to kick sand into the fire and the cookpot. Teb watched their meal ruined and did nothing. It was not his place, as an outsider, to defy Ekkthurian. He kept his anger in check with great effort, even when the thin otter turned on him with lips drawn back, his eyes slitted and his ears laid flat to his head. “Not only do you make fire, human boy, you bring other evil as well.”
“What evil?” Teb stood his ground, daring Ekkthurian to bite him.
“You have brought human weapons to Nightpool. Not only knives, but you assist the otters themselves in making a bow. It is against the ways of the animals to have such things.”
All three stared. How did Ekkthurian know? Mikk had found a fine piece of oak washed onto the beach, and they had, indeed, been carving out a bow and fashioning shell tips for arrows, the two otters working carefully at this new skill and very pleased with themselves.
“The bow isn’t hurting you; it might even help you someday,” Mikk said reasonably. “And the fires don’t hurt you, either. Why can’t you leave Teb alone?”
“He does not belong here. No human belongs here. He has turned Thakkur’s mind. Thakkur had no business allowing him in Nightpool.”
Teb stared at Ekkthurian, then turned away and emptied his cookpot onto the fire, drowning the flame and ruining their supper. Then he climbed the cliff beside Charkky and Mikk.
They ate raw food that night. But the next day, at Thakkur’s direction, they built their fire right on the ledge below the cave and cooked their supper there before a ring of curious, arguing otters. And it was then that two factions began to grow, one fanned by Ekkthurian’s fury, the other angered by his interference, until all over the island, otters were arguing.