I seemed to be floating – except that I wasn’t floating in Mother Sea the way I do sometimes when I want to rest and catch my breath. I was floating way up in the air instead, and all sorts of strange things were happening far below. Father Earth seemed to be all on fire, and his mountains were rising and falling the way Mother Sea’s waves do. Rocks were melting and running down the sides of some of Father Earth’s mountains into Mother Sea, and some of his other mountains were spouting liquid fire way up into the sky. Could something like that really happen?’
‘Yes, child,’ Zelana said in a troubled voice, ‘and it happened in exactly the way you just described it. I was there watching while it happened. It was at the very beginning of the world. What happened next?’
‘Well, the fires kept burning for a long, long time, and then the land below me started to break apart, and the pieces floated off in different directions. Then trees began to sprout on the face of Father Earth, and Mother Sea started having children. It was about then that I seemed to know that I wasn’t alone. Others were having the same dream – only maybe for them it wasn’t really a dream.’
Zelana smiled. ‘No, dear, it wasn’t. I was one of those others, and I certainly wasn’t dreaming, and neither were my brothers or my sister.’
‘Then it was your family that was sort of hiding around the edges of my dream?’ Eleria asked. ‘I thought you only had two brothers and one sister. There seemed to be two more brothers and a sister watching with me.’
‘They’re another branch of the family, Eleria,’ Zelana told her. ‘We don’t get together very often. We can talk about them some other time. Why don’t you tell me what happened next in your dream. Dreams fade, I guess, and I’d like to hear your whole dream before you forget.’
‘Well, most of Mother Sea’s children were fish, but some of them weren’t. Those were the ones who crawled up onto the face of Father Earth. They looked like snakes at first, but then they sprouted legs and they grew up to be very big. Some of them ate trees, but some of the others ate the ones who were eating trees. Then a great big rock that was on fire fell down out of the sky, and when it hit Father Earth it made an awful splash, except that it was rock that splashed instead of water, and everything got dark for a long time. It finally started to get light again, but the snakes with legs weren’t there any more.’
‘Did my relatives go away, too?’
‘Some of them went to sleep, but they woke up after a while, and the ones who’d stayed awake went to sleep. There was one that never slept, though. That one’s very ugly, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed it is, child,’ Zelana replied with a shudder. ‘It’s an outcast, and we don’t even like to think about it. What happened next?’
‘There were a lot of things with fur wandering around, and there were birds and bugs, too, but then some things who walked on their hind legs came along. They didn’t look at all the way we do, though. Their skin was scaly, like the skin of large fish – or maybe snakes, and their eyes were huge and stuck way out in front of their faces. That went on for quite a long time, and then everything was all covered with white, and it got very cold. Mother Sea seemed to shrink, and she ran away from her shore. Then the white went away, and Mother Sea came back. That’s when the man-things who look like me arrived. They didn’t look exactly like me, though. They wrapped themselves up in animal skins for some reason, and you and I don’t do that, do we?’
‘It isn’t necessary for us, Eleria. The skins help the man-things stay warm, and they’re ashamed of their bodies.’
‘How peculiar,’ Eleria said, frowning slightly. ‘That was about all there was, Beloved, except that the awful-looking watcher was still way off at the edge of my dream, and I don’t think it likes me very much. I get the feeling that it’s afraid of me for some reason.’
‘If it has anything like good sense, it is,’ Zelana said. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to manage here by yourself for a few days? There are some things I need to attend to. I won’t be gone for long.’
‘Can’t I go with you?’
‘I’m afraid not, Eleria. I have to go by myself this time. Maybe you can come along next time. We’ll see.’
Zelana swam out of her hidden grotto and onto a nearby gravel beach where the waves rolled in and then receded with a mournful sound that seemed filled with regret. Then she raised her face to the sky to search for one of those winds that rushed far overhead in perpetuity, streaming eternally above the clouds and weather. She encountered several, but they were not moving in the proper direction, so she continued her search. Then at last she felt a wind that streamed northward toward the Domain of her elder brother, and she rose up and up through the buffeting of those winds which had not suited her until she reached that wind which rushed northward along the outer edge of the sky, and she bestrode that wind, and it obediently carried her toward the bleak Domain of her brother Dahlaine.
Now Dahlaine dwelt in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the crags and eternal snow of Mount Shrak, which the people of the North believe is the tallest peak in all the world. And Zelana descended from the darkouter edge of the sky to the forbidding mountain that seemed almost to scowl down at her brother’s Domain with a bleak expression of superiority. The mouth of Dahlaine’s cave was a deep indentation in the north side of the mount, and Zelana entered there and followed the twisting passage that led down and down through glittering black rock to the vast chamber far beneath the mountain that was Dahlaine’s home.
Zelana paused at the mouth of the passage. Her burly, grey-bearded brother, stripped to the waist, was standing over a ruddy fire beating on something that glowed and made a sort of ringing sound. A small, glowing orb hovered just over him, bathing him with light.
‘What in the world are you doing, Dahlaine?’ Zelana asked curiously.
Dahlaine turned sharply to look at his sister. ‘Why, Zelana!’ he exclaimed. ‘You startled me. Is something wrong?’
‘Perhaps – or perhaps not. Are you taking up music now? If you are, you’re a little off-key.’
‘Just experimenting, dear sister,’ he replied. ‘Some of the people beyond Mother Sea have discovered something they call “metal.” I wanted to see if I could duplicate it. Is something afoot?’
Zelana looked cautiously around Dahlaine’s cave. ‘Where’s your Dreamer?’ she asked.
‘Ashad? He’s out playing with the bears.’
‘Bears? Surely you don’t allow him to play with bears! They’ll eat him, won’t they?’
‘Of course they won’t, Zelana. They’re his friends – in the same way the pink dolphins are Eleria’s friends. Is something unusual happening?’
‘Perhaps. Eleria had a dream last night, and I think it may have been significant. I thought you should know about it. There’s something else that may be even more significant than the dream itself.’
‘Oh?’
‘It appears that Mother Sea’s taking a hand in this herself.’ Dahlaine stared at her.
‘Eleria
