Skuld shook her head. “I have another, my child, though not fashioned of gold; hence, you must take this one, else Faery itself might fall, for there is one who will pollute the River of Time even more than the one I now place on my tapestry.”
Camille looked at the loom where the invisible depiction grew. “You now weave someone evil?”
“Aye, a monstrous man yet to be; one who will reach out his arms to take in the masses and clutch them unto his breast; one who will do a little three-step jig dance of victory; one who will start a dreadful holocaust. Regardless, Camille, you must take the carding comb, else one will come and destroy Faery itself by polluting beyond all recovery the very River of Time.”
Camille sighed, yet did as she was bade and took up the golden carding comb. “Again I ask, Lady Skuld, your middle sister, where can I find her?”
With a flick of her eyes, Skuld glanced at the horizon, bright with the oncoming sun. And with her right hand she gestured downstream and intoned:
“As grain is to stones that roll and grind,
Moments are crunched in the weft of time,
Seek the like and my sister you’ll find.”
Again Skuld glanced at the bright horizon, and she said, “And this I will tell you as welclass="underline" leave not the banks of time’s flow, else surely you will lose the stream.”
And in that very moment the limb of the sun edged over the rim of the world, and so vanished Skuld and loom and spinning wheel all, and day came on the land.
And Camille heard Scruff instantly chirping, for he would have millet seed.
29
Present
Camille sighed, for Skuld had vanished with the coming of the sun. She turned toward Scruff. “All right, my wee companion, you’ll have your millet.” She trudged upslope to the camp and rummaged in her knapsack, then scattered a bit of seed on the ground before the sparrow, Scruff having awkwardly fluttered down from the low branch on which he had spent the night. As he pecked at the grain, Camille set about breaking camp. She paused a moment to examine the stave and groaned in dismay, for not only had the crack lengthened, but another split had started as well.
I have not overly used the staff. What is happening here?
Swiftly she counted the blossoms.
Ninety-nine remain.
As she slipped the stave through the loops of the rucksack, she glanced once more at the blossoms and again at the cracks.
I wonder… The first crack started when there were one hundred blossoms left. The second at ninety-nine. Will another crack appear at ninety-eight? Is Lady Sorciere telling me that time grows short?
Camille raised her face to the sky and cried out, “I know, Lady Sorciere! I know!”
Scruff looked up from the millet seeds and cocked his head. Then he began pecking away again.
While waiting for the sparrow to finish, Camille stepped to where she could clearly see the cascade.
Like a spring bubbling up from the ground, where the true source cannot be seen, so too does the fall of time issue from an unknown source, perhaps out of nowhere, right at the brim.
Scruff gave a chirp, as if to say, All done, and Camille stepped to her waterskin and poured the wee bird a drink in a cup she had acquired just for him. “It won’t do, I think, to drink from time’s flow, Scruff. Raseri seemed to believe it would be a terrible thing to fall into the stream, and so I think we’ll completely forgo those silvery waters, except to use them as a guide to Skuld’s middle sister.”
When Scruff had had his fill, and had taken his morning bath, Camille put his cup away and slung her goods and lifted Scruff to her shoulder. Then she looked at the river.
“Which side, Scruff? Which side should we follow? It would not do to walk down the incorrect bank and find ourselves on the wrong side of time. I mean, Raseri also seemed to think no one should swim in the River of Time, hence, if we found ourselves on the opposite shore from Skuld’s sisters, well, then, since we must not swim across, we’d have to come back here and walk ’round the end. Still, the question remains: which side should we take?”
Camille frowned in concentration, remembering. “Ah, Lady Skuld pointed with her right hand, and so we’ll walk along the right-hand side rather than down the sinister.”
Camille crossed the stone streambed above the falls, then made her way down from the linn until she reached the bank below, and then she began to stride forward, following the silvery flow.
Yet as she paced, the sun seemed to rise rather swiftly into the sky, and in less than a quarter candlemark by Camille’s reckoning it had come to the zenith. Camille stopped and, shielding her eyes, frowned up toward the golden orb.
All seemed normal, but she waited.
The sun slowly crept across the sky.
“Hmm…” said Camille. “Let us see, Scruff.”
She started downstream again.
The sun sped forward.
Again Camille stopped, and once more did the sun eke ahead.
“Oh, Scruff, methinks days will be quite odd, here along time’s flow, but there’s nought to do but press on.”
Downstream she paced, and within what she judged to be another quarter candlemark, the sun set and dusk drew across the land.
Scruff chirped in confusion, but nevertheless went to sleep.
Within another quarter candlemark, a waning gibbous moon arose. And another quarter after that, dawn came into the sky.
Scruff awoke, yet he was not hungry, and neither was Camille.
On Camille walked through a second swift day and night, perhaps a candlemark in all, and as day came once again, she paused, and the sun returned to a normal pace. Camille unslung her waterskin for a drink, but as she recorked it and looped it over her shoulder, she took in a sharp breath and pulled the stave from her rucksack. Two more cracks had appeared, and the blossoms numbered but ninety-seven.
Tears welled in Camille’s eyes. “Oh, Scruff, each candlemark we follow time’s stream a blossom will wither and vanish. I must go away from here and-But wait. Lady Skuld said, ‘Leave not the banks of time’s flow, else surely you will lose the stream.’ It must be just the same as when we flew high above, and I looked away, and the river vanished. Oh, Scruff, if we leave these banks, we will lose the very flow. Yet along these shores is where the middle sister lives, and if we do not find her, then I think we’ll not find Alain.”
Dejectedly Camille slumped to the ground. “Ah, me, but what a dilemma. Even if we stay still, a blossom will wither each day. But if we continue, blossoms will vanish each candlemar-” Of a sudden her eyes lighted. “What if after we find the middle sister we go back the way we came? Will the blossoms retur-?” Camille looked hindward. Only forest met her eye. Of time’s flow there was no sign.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and swiftly she looked forward again and sighed in relief, for the river yet streamed from this point onward.
“Only in Faery,” she muttered, and she got to her feet. “We have no choice, Scruff, but to go forward, for the middle sister I must find. Let us hope she is but a few strides ahead.”
Onward she stepped, the sun racing across the sky and setting, only to rise and set again and again, the waning moon rising later and turning crescent and then new and then waxing, blossoms withering and vanishing, splits riving the stave, as Camille and Scruff went on.
Altogether, nearly thirty candlemarks of trekking along the banks of Time’s River had elapsed, days and nights flying by-and some eight more candlemarks had been spent resting, where the passage of time returned to its normal ways; at this very moment, sixty-nine blossoms remained on the stave. But now that Camille continued along the River of Time, the morning sun was on swift rise.
Rounding a bend in the river, Camille saw a mill, its great waterwheel-if it could be called such-turning in time’s flow. She went on, the sun rising with each step, and by midmorn, she reached the building. Old it appeared, quite ancient, yet it seemed sturdy enough, and Camille could hear millstones grinding inside. She stepped past a bench sitting outside the open door and peered in. It seemed no one was there, yet the great bhurstones turned.