A Facet for the Gem (7 page)

“Overwhelmed?” finished Matufinn, laughing under his breath. “Dazed by the thousands who knew not whether to fear or accept me?

“Like you would drown under the way they looked at you every day?”

“Ha!” Matufinn laughed aloud this time. “I had a special spot picked out to escape them, where I’d often go just to remember which feelings were my own.”

“Till it became more difficult each time.”

“Much more. That is, until I let in someone different than the rest, someone who wanted nothing from me except what I wished to freely give.”

Morlen’s interest rose, this time unable to share from his own experience. “What was it you gave this person?”

Matufinn’s steps scuffed more against the ground as his expression became nostalgic. “Everything,” he answered.

“And they took it from you? And left you worse off?”

“She? No. She made me better for it, far better. But, when she died, a great deal left me as well.”

Beginning to uncover how deep Matufinn’s wound was, and how it had kept him here unhealed for so long, Morlen realized they were equally alone. “And you’ve been here ever since? With no desire to venture out again?”

Matufinn’s expression remained pleasant, though it seemed to require too much effort. “The desire arose at times,” he replied. “Some nights I told myself I would again. But when tomorrow became the day after, and months soon turned to years, I knew the part of me that had so readily left these borders was gone.”

Morlen recalled the countless times he’d wanted to shut himself in rather than struggle to improve his daily life. He could understand someone else’s submission to that fear, when his own resistance had never gained him much. “But what about your people’s tradition?” he asked. “Going out there when oppression is at its worst? I thought you meant to carry on their legacy.”

Matufinn nodded. “That’s where you come in.”

Morlen scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m sure my ability to enter this place can be explained,” he began. “But I doubt it has any connection to some warrior who’s lived for over nine hundred years. If my father was alive all along, where was he when I spent most days getting beaten into the ground? If I have the same qualities he does, why couldn’t I ever keep myself from harm? If he’s powerful, why am I weak?”

“Maybe he wanted you to have a life different than his own,” said Matufinn. “To be born outside the confines that held him too long. For comfort and shelter to be so scarce that you would develop strengths he never possessed.”

“How can you be so convinced?” Morlen asked. “You said yourself that anyone invited to the Isle can freely pass. I would never have thought to come here if I hadn’t been told.”

“Nottleforf merely suggested the path. You are the one who found it.”

The familiarity in Matufinn’s reference to the wizard confirmed what Morlen had begun to suspect. “You knew him too,” he realized aloud.

Matufinn answered halfheartedly, “Knowing Nottleforf is like knowing the weather. Hope for what it’s going to bring, and be devastated. Or open yourself to the unexpected, and be uplifted. Either way, there’s no telling what’s in store for you.”

At this talk of Nottleforf, Morlen felt a pang of worry. Could he still have had power left to reach safety after helping him escape the shriekers? Or could he be languishing now at Korindelf, held captive by Felkoth in a putrid dungeon? Or worse?

No, he told himself. Nottleforf was strong, cleverer than anyone. Somehow, he felt certain they would meet again. And despite the distance the wizard had made a point of keeping from him in recent years, he was comforted by that thought.

“He never told me anything,” said Morlen. “Nothing about my father. Nothing about what it was that made me seem so out of place to everyone, even though he saw me suffer because of it. He could have just sent me here all along, years before now.”

“So you could be brought up hiding from the world, like the rest of us?” Matufinn asked. “For generations we were born into pleasure and safety, never having to earn it, never having to do without it so long that we could appreciate its value. All the treasures to unearth out there were too far beyond our reach, when all we knew was abundance… permanence.

“But you,” he continued, “unspoiled, gaining nothing without hardship, have been immersed in everything our people feared, conditioned by it as we were not. You could be the best of us. The best of both worlds.”

“What about the woman in Korindelf?” asked Morlen. “Did losing her make you wish you’d never found her in the first place?”

Matufinn turned solemn, and he was silent for a long moment as they walked beside each other. “I begged Nottleforf to save her,” he finally replied. “To keep her as I had known her, not to let her slip away while still in the young bloom of life. He told me we cannot halt death, only be gladdened by the life it leaves behind. So I returned to the life I’d left in here, where the creep of death is slow, and no beauty ever wilts.”

Morlen asked no more after this, thinking it wise to leave the subject alone. He began to notice that the same force pulling him from afar the day before was stronger now, and felt they’d reached its source when the river led to a wide open meadow, flowing into a lake at the opposite end.

“The lake.” Its energy was too bright to fully grasp, as if it were the Isle’s pulsing heart. “There’s something inside it. Something powerful.” Morlen squinted at the surface.

“Yes,” Matufinn replied. “The lake holds a doorway.”

“To what?” asked Morlen.

Matufinn looked out with a slightly furrowed brow. “The lake is fed by the eternal river, but its waters do not flow out,” he said. “Instead, it deepens to where the physical world no longer exists, where space itself can be bent and torn. And rising from within this distorted plane are pockets, like windows through which one can crawl to other locations.”

Morlen’s eyes sharpened with interest at this.

“But,” Matufinn added, “it is only an aid for those who wish to venture outside.”

“You mean,” Morlen pressed, “it can take us anywhere we wish to go, if we ever want to leave?”

Matufinn gave half a smile, led him toward a small boat that sat at the lake’s edge, and pushed it down the pebbled bank until it became adrift in the shallows. “Don’t be concerned with that just yet,” he said, stepping inside the vessel with a gesture for Morlen to follow. “Leave those weapons for the moment. Right now it’s time you see what you have thus far turned away from.”

Morlen hesitated at first, unsure what Matufinn could possibly mean for him to find out in the water. But, reluctantly casting any misgivings aside, he removed his bow and quiver, setting them on the ground. Then he sloshed forward clumsily, and his boots sank through the mud before he wrenched them free with two loud slurps, hoisting himself aboard.

Oars in hand, Matufinn pushed into the smooth, open calm, and Morlen felt like they were floating on liquid light as they rowed farther. Eventually they approached a large rock not far from the opposite shore, its tip protruding from the water like an iceberg, and Matufinn turned the boat to glide against it with a gentle thud.

Nodding toward the rock, he said, “Up you go.”

“For what?” Morlen protested, brows raised suspiciously.

Face hardening, Matufinn said, “An important lesson.”

Morlen stared, arms crossed in skepticism, until Matufinn’s expression turned stern enough to make all hesitation flee. Careful to balance his weight, he rose and stepped out upon the uneven island, wide enough for only one person to stand. Matufinn then swung the boat around and rowed away with great strokes, stopping about twenty yards off to face back again.

“Are you ready to meet what you’ve locked away for so long?” called Matufinn.

Morlen furtively glanced over both shoulders, making sure the question was not posed to someone else. With as much seriousness as he could muster, he nodded.

“Good,” replied Matufinn. “Now run to the boat.”

“Do what?”

“Run to the boat,” Matufinn repeated, with stronger authority this time.

Morlen looked around again in all directions.

“The one in which I sit, Morlen. Run to it, now.”

He let his adjusting vision take in the space between himself and Matufinn’s skiff, feeling absurd for even trying to gauge the distance. Slowly he bent to look down at the water, seeing a helplessly lost boy staring back at him. Aiming for his face, he lifted one foot and stepped out only to fall forward with a pitiful splash.

Half amused, he swam beneath the crystalline water for a few seconds, tempted to summon one of the lake’s distorted pockets to see if it could take him directly to Matufinn’s side. But, thinking such a trick would not be well received, his better judgment took hold.

“Are you ready to learn or not?” Matufinn’s voice bubbled through his ears as he resurfaced. “This time put your heart into the task.”

Aware how foolish he looked climbing up to attempt the feat a second time, Morlen shook the water from his hair and set himself firmly again, fighting to muster a shred of the confidence Matufinn demanded. There was no way that this could be achieved by any man or creature.

“Have you done this yourself?” he yelled out in frustration.

“You have bigger worries than what I’ve done. What have
you
done?”

Morlen hid his enjoyment of the man’s wit and leapt out, feet scurrying as though their speed would carry him across, only to sink once more. Could this be some kind of mental test, to teach him that one must sometimes accept failure? If so, he was learning quickly.

Nevertheless, he persisted in the most creative ways he could devise: hitting the water on all fours in an effort to run like an animal, flapping his arms as though to fly. An hour whittled away, minute by minute, while he tried in vain again and again, until finally, one plunge sent an encouraging flash of gold through his mind. At this, he urgently clutched his inner chest pocket, relieved to feel the flat metallic object he’d almost forgotten, safely concealed.

Rising soaked again upon the rock, he faced down the open blue that chided him as it remained untrodden. He was simply not fast enough, not strong enough. But… he could be. His strength and speed could be unsurpassed, as the Talking Tree had promised. He merely had to take out the treasure in his possession, and ask it to make him the way he’d always wanted to be.

“Have you given up already?” Matufinn asked. “Do not think about what you know. You can hold firm to it for the rest of your life, but there you will be stranded. So, step out, and leave it behind.” Then he seemed to whisper something else under his breath.

Don’t think…
don’t think
. Morlen could not help but disobey the command, springing off once more with his hand cradling the Goldshard to prevent it slipping out, and made another miserable splash. He partly expected to be scolded as he came up for air, hearing instead the same rapid whispering that could only be Matufinn’s way of venting frustration.

Clinging to the rock while still half-immersed, he questioned whether he could climb one more time, let alone give this fruitless exercise another attempt. But, Matufinn expected him to carry on, and the thought of letting him down was strangely dispiriting.

Despite the soggy chill that numbed his fingers, he dug hard to pull himself up again. He crouched with hands upon his knees, deliriously trying to form a new approach to this obstacle, but none remained. Every strategy had resulted in the same failure. There must be some obvious solution Matufinn wanted him to see.

As he searched for the answer, a curious dark cloud gathered above the lake’s bordering trees and descended toward the water. Then it scattered, revealing hundreds of ravens that screeched in unison while they swarmed the boat to attack Matufinn. Before long he disappeared from sight, and Morlen could only listen to his frightful screams.

“Aghhhh, get away! GET AWAY!” Matufinn yelled painfully. “AGHHHHH!” he wailed. “STOP! AGHHHHHH, MORLEN! MORLEN, HELP ME!”

Morlen lunged out, leaving all deliberation behind, neither watching the water that barely rippled beneath his feet nor looking back at the rock that was now a speck. He saw only the black cloud that swelled and tightened as he drew nearer. Leaping with all his might, he dove straight through their swarm and arched into the water, and they noisily dispersed back to their perches in the forest.

He shot up to the surface and found, to his slight irritation, that Matufinn stood inside the boat completely unscathed, beaming at him while kneeling down to offer his hand.

“We can walk on water,” said Matufinn, “if we just forget how to walk.”

Morlen sputtered, clasping his forearm, which pulled him up over the side of the vessel. “You tricked me! You made the birds attack you? And what is that supposed to mean, ‘forget how to walk’?”

“I called the ravens, yes,” Matufinn replied. “But they did not actually harm me, as you can see.” He lifted a large brown blanket from behind his legs and wrapped it around Morlen’s shivering back. “When you thought about the step, you fell; when you thought about the water, you sank. But when you forgot about them both, and walked, what else did you forget?”

It had all happened so quickly, he hadn’t had time to think like in the previous attempts. Each of those had taken fierce concentration, and resulted in disappointment. “I forgot that I couldn’t,” he answered finally.

They shared a comfortable silence after this, one that held understanding, and needed no distraction. Then Matufinn rowed back the way they had come. And though Morlen was soaked, he drank in the evening breeze, open to whatever lessons the day still held.

After making their way back to shore, they pushed the boat to rest upon the lake’s gravelly bank. Seeing Morlen’s bow on the ground nearby, Matufinn picked it up and gave it a long look of appraisal. “A fine weapon,” he said, drawing back hard on its string while the pliant arc bent without a creak. “So light and lean that you could fire off two shots before your targets knew what was coming. I’m sure it’s served you well,” he added, handing it over.