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XI
Without another word, the elf turned and walked away from us, along a narrow, flowing walkway carved out of more of the same dark wood and leading away towards the tree’s olive-green trunk. I looked at M, who nodded her head after him. I turned to follow.
Suddenly, M’s big hand was grasping my shoulder. I turned abruptly. Her face was contorted into something – hesitant care, I thought.
“Good luck,” she growled. Then she pulled her hand away. “Hurry up,” she said her face lax again.
“You’re not coming?” I said, surprised, and a little upset at the prospect.
M shook her head. She almost spoke, but instead she pursed her lips and looked towards the elf. “Hurry up,” she repeated.
“Bye, then,” I replied, feeling a little hurt at being hurried away so suddenly.
M smiled, and it was almost warm. “Oh, it’s not goodbye, not by any means. Just… good luck.” She gestured impatiently towards the receding elf.
I turned away, towards the elf. His withered ears bobbed as he walked, and despite his hunch, he moved with grace. With a last uncertain glance back at M, I followed him.
Past him, and to either side – indeed, in every direction but down – stretched a crystal-clear darkness, lit with pinpricks of the pure white lamplight – lines of them, strung like lights of winter veil, lamps lining pathways stretching through the wide open space within Teldrassil’s canopy. As I moved, lights winked on or out, passing behind the branches which pierced the space like great, warped skewers. Above were more lights, stretching up until the branches twisted together and blocked my view. Below, there was darkness, and the distant, almost silent hiss of waves.
The elf floated on ahead of me. I looked down at the path which we followed. The dark wood was inlaid with coarse patterns of lighter wood, chipped in places and missing in others. Despite its grace at a distance, up close the path looked old and decayed.
In a few minutes it reached Teldrassil’s trunk, and turned left, running along it. The tree, too, looked unhealthy and diseased, if you looked too close – it was rough and covered in lichens and thorns, and, periodically, an unhealthy-looking pus oozed out from the bark.
The path rose gently as we moved silently along it, splitting occasionally and sending shoots off, away from the trunk, up or down towards bare platforms or simple, ugly box buildings built against the tree’s enormous branches. The dark-wood lamp posts stood at intervals, casting their bright white light on us, on the path, on the wall of lichen-covered, coarse, unhealthy-looking bark that rose to our rights, and off and down to the left, into the great sea-smelling pitch-black chasm below. I swallowed nervously and tried not to think about it.
Before long, the path turned into thick stairs, wide this time and ascending gently. They curved slowly away from the trunk, taking us out over the depthless blackness with no apparent support. More paths broke off now, to either side, studded with their own white lanterns.
Even as gentle as the stairs were, my legs and mind began to drag with fatigue. The staircase twisted upwards in great arcs, resting occasionally on the great twisting branches which pierced the darkness, but more often simply floating in space, held up by nothing but itself. A few stray breaths of cool, sea-spray breeze brushed against my face, but for the most part the air was still. Ahead of me, through the surreal darkness, walked the hunched elf, silent and unwavering.
The elf turned left. The staircase rose on without us, and a new pathway, made of dark inlaid wood like the lower one but more ornate and better-maintained, lay ahead of us. Then it ended, and we were in the foyer of a beautiful open building, arching up from an unwalled, well-lit first floor to a high, gracefully pointed upper level, shrouded in waves of dark green cloth.
My blue-skinned, black-eyed guide turned to me. “This is the home of Tyrande Cloudstalker,” he said airily. “She will teach you what you have come to learn, Ashva. You will find her,” he continued, “at the Drassi’n ‘drassil – the Crown of the Crown. Go back to the main road,” and the elf pointed back the way we’d come, “and go up.”
“Up,” I said.
“Up,” repeated the elf. “All roads lead to Drassi’n.”
I stared. “Alone?” I said.
“Alone,” repeated the elf.
“I’m really tired,” I said. “And hungry. And tired,” I added crossly.
“You will find everything you need when you reach the Crown,” said the elf, with the smallest hint of disdain. Then he turned, and walked to the building’s open stairwell.
“Do you have a name?” I called after him, exasperated.
The elf turned, half way up the stairs, “Of course I do,” he said airily, and then he was gone.
I sighed.
I looked around. The house was sparsely decorated with wooden sculptures – knots and knobs and gnarls of wood in the shape of faces and figures and creatures, but not carved: they looked like they had been gently coaxed into growing into their forms. I looked closer at the furniture – flowing wooden chairs, and thick, knobby tables – and they seemed to have grown the same way. I wondered what manner of power could coax wood.
Tyrande Cloudstalker, I thought. The elf who would teach me everything I had come to learn. I wondered idly if he looked like the withered elf who had led me here. I had yet to see any other night elves than my guide. You could find out, I thought to myself, if you follow directions and head up, towards the giant tree’s giant crown. And look for some elf. I wondered how I’d recognize him.
And with nothing else for it, I turned out of the beautiful house, and back to the graceful road, and up.
The staircase ran on, arching gracefully from dark, twisted branch to dark, twisted branch, for what seemed like miles. I spotted a few dark, hunched figures in the distance, off on brightly-lit side roads, then I was passing them on the stairway itself. All of them were bowed, moving hunched but gracefully, skin a deep regal blue but wrinkled with age or worry. They kept their eyes cast to the ground in front of them, refusing to meet my eyes, although more than a few of them shot glances of shock, or fear, or caustic curiosity up at me as we passed. I’m sorry, I thought at them. I didn’t ask to come here and scare you. As the staircase rose and the number of side-long looks increased, my silent apologies turned more annoyed and less sympathetic.
As I ascended, the branches grew slowly, subtly thinner, and the lights and buildings came at shorter intervals. Soon, I was hiking through a true city, with wide streets and plazas lined with old, graceful shops built – or grown – like Tyrande’s house, intermingled with newer, larger buildings built square and ugly out of planks of wood. Elves bustled in and out of them, some bearing tightly-wrapped brown sacks on their heads, others carrying paper-bags or paper-wrapped bundles under their arms.
My fatigue was beginning to wear on me, and I wondered that the elves were up and, apparently, shopping as the night wore on. They’re night elves, I thought, and then I felt a little silly.
My path split and split, and lost itself in the plazas and found itself again on the other side, but my mysterious guide had been right – there was always a way to go higher.
The hours wore on and my legs ached, but there was nowhere to stop, and a measure of pride kept me from breathing too heavily as night elves cast me their sidelong glances.
Teldrassil’s branches grew ever-thinner, down to the size of normal tree-branches, and they began twisting together to form walls and support beams. Soon it felt as though I was hiking up through great, lofty honeycomb rooms, with all manner of ornate architectures within, but whose distant walls were made of darkened, diseased vines. The vines gave the light an unpleasant green overtone.
And then, suddenly, a cool wind hit me in the face, and the last wide, winding staircase broke out of the last great vine chamber and the night sky, starry and clear, burst forth above me. The white moon, more than half full, hung almost above us in the sky, and the blue moon was half way down towards the western horizon. Ahead of me stretched an ornate, beautifully-lit city with wide, crowded, bark-paved avenues tracing circles and spokes, and beautiful wooden statues and ornate wooden buildings, and broad pools, and fountains and, where the avenue spokes came together at the center, rose a single, beautiful green tree with brightly-lit staircases winding up its trunk. I stared in wonder at the vista, and for a moment I was too entranced to look for Tyrande Cloudstalker, or to even wonder how I would recognize him.
A sharp cry pierced the night above me, and I looked up. A dark shape arced across the stars, circling about and falling towards me, and then, a moment later, a magnificent golden eagle landed on the avenue in front of me, folding its golden wings to its side and peering sharply up at me out of piercing, golden eyes. It cocked its head and opened its curved beak at me. Then, it turned, and flexed its wings over its graceful neck and face, and then, before my eyes, its scaly legs grew, and its wings lengthened and its feathers shrunk until before me stood a lithe night elf woman, standing proud, only a bit of droop in her ears and only a bit of white in her hair and eyebrows. Her golden robes flowed down about her, perhaps hiding a hunched body, but her eyes were the same piercing gold that her eagle had had.
“You are Ashva,” she said, and her voice was beautiful. She bowed.
“Tyrande Cloudstalker?” I said. I need to learn my night-elf name genders, I thought.
“I am,” she said. “Welcome to Drassi’n. You have come to learn.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. She nodded back, gravely. “Good,” she said.
She paused, and peered at me with her piercing eyes. “I am told that there is not much time,” she said after a moment. “So come, and let’s begin.” And without further explanation, she moved past me, away from the bright avenues and towards the tree’s edge and the darkened night.
I followed the elf as she moved gracefully into the darkness. In a few moments, we were off the dignified bark trail and back onto its twisted underlayment. I stepped gingerly: walking on the mat of tangled branches meant that my footing never felt quite secure. The mat began to slope down and the light from the Drassi’n faded behind us. The slope and the darkness made footing even more treacherous, and before long I was digging my hooves in carefully with every step and falling behind Tyrande. She stopped, and turned, her eyes glinting with the distant city, nearly disappeared behind the tree’s shallow horizon.
“Having trouble?” called the elf. I grunted. “Think,” she added.
Trouble climbing a tree, I thought. Ah-ha. I closed my eyes, concentrating, pulling my limbs in, forcing my hands into paws and the bones of my fingers into claws, shrinking my head and pointing my teeth, and – as always – fervently, futilely wishing my horns away. It was good enough: I flexed my spine and dug my claws into the branches. Tyrande turned again into the sloping darkness.
Above and behind us, the light from the Crown’s Crown disappeared entirely, and my guide stopped. She turned again, and motioned me forward. I obeyed, and the ground leveled out and my paws fell suddenly upon soft ground. I bent my head down and sniffed – where the vines had smelled woody and vaguely unhealthy, these smelled moist and alive. I breathed in and pulled myself back together, and, still on all fours, I wiggled my hands in the thick, dew-covered grass. It extended a few feet forward, before dropping off again to where the tree sloped too steeply for even my jungle-cat to walk comfortably. In the center of the green patch was the shadow of a low, thick bush – alive and healthy.
I looked up at Tyrande. “What is this?” I said.
She smiled sadly in the waxing moonlight. “Is it so surprising that there is a small patch of unblemished life on a tree planted by the children of Elune?” I made to answer, but she interrupted me. “It was rhetorical,” she said, an edge in her voice. Her golden eyes stared up at the white moon. “Sit,” she added. I sat.
“This isn’t the tree’s only patch of uncorrupted life,” she continued. “The remaining druids have restored a few spots, through meditation. You saw the green tree growing from the center of the Drassi’n – nurtured by the Archdruid himself. Uncorrupted.”
“How does that work?” I said.
“Nature has the power to heal what greed has corrupted,” she answered quietly.
I looked at her, at her smooth skin and her pointed ears, her glowing eyes. “Is that why you’re not….” I trailed off, and for a moment I wished I hadn’t spoken.
But the elf smiled. “Why I’m not withered and twisted? No,” she said. “I stand straight because I don’t drink from Teldrassil.” Her glowing eyes turned towards me. “I’m not immortal,” she said. Her voice changed as she said it, although I couldn’t tell if it was with pride or regret. “I had the choice,” she said, “to immerse myself, coerce myself with that magic. I chose a good life and eventual death, as few have.” Maybe it was pride and regret both, I thought. I wondered how long it would be before I felt the same.
My mind wandered as we sat in silence. “Why did the night-elves disappear?” I said, impulsively, after a minute. Tyrande sighed, and her glowing eyes glanced at me. I wondered again if I’d spoken too rashly, but again the elf answered.
“At first it was for shame,” she said. “When we first discovered that our new narcotic immortality was coming at the cost of our age-old beauty, and that our age-old bonds to nature and her mother the moon were fraying, we despaired.” Moon-mother, I thought. There’s that again. “Vanity kept us from showing the world our faces,” continued the elf, “but the magic of immortality had been worked and giving it up was a choice that few were willing to make. My mother was one of the few.” The golden glow of her eyes disappeared for a moment as she shut them. “She died,” she said simply.
She paused, then looked back up at me. “As we became corrupted by the corrupt tree, we lost interest in the rest of the world,” she continued. “We were no longer ashamed of what we were – in fact, now the people revel in it, not caring about the world, not caring about what harm may come from their actions. They are carving into our world-tree, grinding it into paper and slashing it into boards!” Her voice despaired. “The old ways of lovingly, painstakingly guiding the tree to grow into what structures we need are no longer fast enough. Now they build with hammers and pegs.
“They drink from corrupted moonwells,” she continued, “nightly, daily, numbed by it. They drink it because they think it makes them happy – but all it does is keep them numb, so they don’t have to wake up to the truth of what they have become.” She sighed. “The truth would be too painful for most of them.”
The elf looked up at the moon, and this time I thought I saw a flicker of resentment passed over her darkened face. “My people have lost all touch with the earth,” she continued, sadly, “and they have been abandoned by Elune. They thoughtlessly trade a lessened life in order to live in easy immortality, in numb painlessness. It is a seductive choice,” she added sadly. “But it is one which has led our people to blindness. We erected the wall of mist,” and she nodded to it, in the distance, “to hide our shame from the world. But now, for most of them,” and she nodded down, into the tree, “that circle of mist is their horizon.”
Wow, I thought, not for the first time. “I’m sorry,” I said.
The elf sighed. “No, I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “We’re short on time to train you, and we certainly don’t have time for me to go off about my people’s fall from grace.” She sighed again.
“Not all of them have fallen,” I said hopefully, trying to make her feel better. “Isn’t the Archdruid still, beautiful or whatever?” I cursed my ineloquence. “What’s his name, Mal-something.”
“Malfurion,” said the elf fondly. “The leader of our people and the holder of the secrets of Elune. Maybe.” I cocked my ear at her last word, added casually, but I didn’t press it.
There was another moment of silence. Then my stomach growled. “I’m really hungry,” I said.
Tyrande narrowed her eyes. “Good,” she said, her voice steadied. She rose gracefully to her feet, raising an arm over her head. I tensed. A subtle green light began flickering about her hands. “Empty your mind as well,” she said quietly, and then, without any warning or ceremony, she thrust her hands together towards me and a green light, like one with which Katy M had once struck me down, lanced across the space between us, tearing through the small bush – without so much as disturbing a leaf. Then it slammed into my body and shrieked through my mind like a wind, like a blinding light, like a great, terrible, crashing wave. It propelled me backwards off my hooves and off the edge of the flat space, onto the sloping treetop. Dazed and with the wind knocked out of me, I tumbled for a moment, before being resurrected to full consciousness by the sudden and terrifying realization that I wasn’t coming to a halt. As I flipped head over hoof towards some distant precipice, I inhaled, then yelled, then forced my body into the shape of a jungle cat. My claws flicked out, a bit slower than instinctually, and as I flipped head over paw I sunk them into the thinning and widening branches.
I jerked painfully to a stop, hissing in pain as my shoulders were wrenched nearly out of their sockets. Behind me, an eagle’s cry pierced the night. I looked over my shoulder up at her as she soared across the moon and back towards the tree above me. I flexed my spine and began hauling myself back upwards.
When I regained the green grass, Tyrande was again sitting on the other side of the bush, her legs folded beneath her, her golden eyes closed and a subtle green light playing across her body. I scrambled up and over the platform and collapsed, a bull again, in front of her.
“What just happened?” she said serenely. The green light winked out.
“You hit me with nature magic and almost knocked me off the top of a gigantic tree,” I said crossly.
She opened her eyes and smiled. “True,” she said. “To put it another way, I channeled the wrath of nature from the dream of pure life into your body and mind, which, ill-attuned as they are to that dream, were ill-prepared to receive it.” She inclined her head towards me. “You felt the result.”
I stared intensely at her for a second. Then I said, “I didn’t understand a single word of that.”
She smiled, and inclined her head again, towards my hooves. “Sit,” she said. I sat.
“Do you know what you are?” she said.
Horse, I thought. Ashva, or whatever they were calling me here. A bull. A member – it was still too new a thought to come without emotion – of the Law. I’m a lot of things, I thought. I shook my head.
“You are a body,” spoke the elf, “made up of parts, all working together, each carrying out its task, not knowing of or caring about the actions of the other parts. Your ears hear, and your eyes see. Your nose sits atop your face and smells, at least until it has an itch – and then your arm, feeling that the time is right, reaches up and scratches your nose, which gratefully accepts the gesture and then goes back to smelling. Your tongue speaks words which strike it as important: it neither knows nor cares what the words mean or where they come from. It cares only that they are spoken correctly. And so the whole of you comes together, from uncaring and unknowing parts acting together in a harmony which they cannot comprehend and about which they could not possibly care less. Your whole,” she said, “is greater than the sum of your parts.” She looked intently at me. I stared back. I don’t feel like a bunch of dumb parts working together, I thought. Then, without quite meaning to, I scratched my nose. In the darkness, the elf smiled.
“So is the world,” she continued. “It is a living, breathing system made up of all of the unknowing creatures, the plants and animals and air and water: all things are connected, and in that connection is the greatest of living systems. Nature is alive,” said the elf, her voice distant but intense. “Nature has a will, as real as yours and far greater.”
I blinked. “The world itself is alive?” I said.
Tyrande blinked. “To put it poorly, yes,” she replied. “She is the child of Elune, and she is alive.”
“Elune?” I said. She’d used the name several times now.
“Goddess have mercy!” cried Tyrande. “Elune brought the world into being. She is its mother, and we, with few exceptions, are her children. She is this world’s guardian goddess, and shame on you and on the world for not knowing of her.”
“The moon-mother,” I said quietly. Long ago, spoke my old mentor Hokato to a young me, Mu'sha the moon-mother birthed the world and reared all of its plants and animals as her children.
“Elune,” nodded Tyrande. “The white moon. You do know of her, then. Forgive me.” She bowed her head. I nodded.
“Elune has abandoned us, though,” continued the elf, almost to herself, looking up at the waning moon. “She left for grief when the blue moon hid its face, and if she is going to come back, then she has not done so yet.”
We sat in silence for a moment longer.
She turned back to me. “The world,” she said, “is indeed alive. She heals herself when she is wounded, and if she is attacked she strikes back. She moves slowly, sometimes – the ills and cancers of our bodies perceive us as glacial behemoths – but she moves undeniably, and inexorably. And like our smallest fingernail or claw, the birds and the beasts and the plants and the oceans are miniscule, unwitting organs in her greater whole.
“The difference, though,” she continued, “is that into nature’s great living web, intelligent organs have been inserted. Some of her parts – we the thinking beings of the world – have the ability, whether learned or earned or granted by some higher power, to understand nature, to feel her being. And being a part of it, we can tap into her power. Where she is angry, we can create pure elemental wrath. Where she is at peace, or when her sad yearning for peace is strongest, we can move her energies through ourselves and heal afflictions, wounds and illnesses, no matter how dire. We can move the winds and the rains, we can call the roots of the trees up out of the ground to do as we bid.” She paused for a moment. “When you learn to feel where you are in nature’s great web, and when you learn to control it, and to let it control you, then the wrath that sent you flying a moment ago won’t hurt you at all. You’ll know its source and its quality, you’ll know your place in its universe and its place in you, and its energy will flow through you.”
The stories of my childhood, Hokato’s religion and its metaphors, had been right, I thought with sudden shame. But this was different: Tyrande did not seem to be speaking in metaphors, and her words rang true in my mind. “Teach me how,” I said, and meant it.
Tyrande smiled. “You already know how to use that energy,” she said. “You tap it every time you turn into a cat. Whoever taught you how to do that taught you more than most students of nature ever learn.”
“How can I use that power if I never knew about it?” I protested. “Or where it comes from?”
“Merely rearranging your bones and sinews is a trifle,” answered the elf, “one which requires no knowledge or mastery of the power into which it taps. Without the merest thought, nature’s power rearranged the minds and bodies of monkeys and made Men – of base ruminant cattle and made Tauren. Channeling her energy in its pure form, though,” she said finalistically, “takes mastery.”
Mastery leads to power, I thought, and power leads to greatness. If I master the power of nature, if I give myself in wholly to the religion which I rejected ten years ago, it will give me what I need to face down Varimathras – the power of nature against the power of evil. “Then teach me mastery,” I pressed.
Tyrande laughed and shook her head. “A student of the ways of the druid spends years perfecting control over his own body before he can control anything beyond its confines. If you want mastery, you first need to learn to lose your horns.”
It was an unfair jab. “I’ve tried,” I cried, with sudden exasperation. “I’ve been trying since I first learned my cat form. I tried every day for a year!” After I ran away from home because of it, I added silently. Anger was suddenly surging through me. “I tried,” I gritted.
Tyrande looked at me silently for a moment, a faint look of surprise on her face. My anger turned to shame at my outburst – it hadn’t been a jab, I thought, and my outburst had been in weakness.
“You have already studied for years,” said the elf serenely. “You can form an imperfect cat – what else can you form?” I made to speak, but she shook her head. “Show me,” she said.
I stood, my back to the distant ocean, facing her seated form over the low bush. I closed my eyes and inhaled, and, limb by limb, by rote memory, I forced my body into the round, thick, muscled form of a bear. My horns, testament to my imperfection, stood out from either side of my bear-head. Katy M’s bear doesn’t have horns, I thought petulantly.
Then I breathed again, and tossed my bear-head like a horse’s. My hooves grew smaller, my legs skinnier. Muscle stretching against bone; the hair on the back of my neck grew into a mane and I could feel my face growing long and slender. I opened my large brown eyes back up, and looked across the diminutive bush at the elf, now a proud, gray stallion. I whinnied and tossed my perfect, hornless head.
I pulled myself back into a bull. Tyrande smiled at me. “You learned well,” she said. “You have natural ability, and you must have had dedication, and a masterful teacher.”
“Just a masterful teacher,” I said, abashed. “I can’t even make my horns go away,” I added. Why the high praise?
“You can,” she replied. “Your horse was magnificent.”
I nodded. “My horse has always been the easiest for me,” I said.
“Your name, Horse, is Common,” she said. “Your name here, Ashva, means the same in our language. Was it in Taurahe when you were born?”
I nodded silently.
“Describe for me,” said the elf, now with the air of a teacher, “the process by which you turn into a bear.”
“Well, I know what a bear looks like,” I said slowly. “It’s got four legs and no arms, and claws in its paws, and it’s really strong, and furry. So I just kind of make my body look like a bear.”
“Describe for me the process by which you turn into a horse,” said the elf.
I paused. “It’s different,” I said. “I just kind of think of myself as a horse, and I can just slide into it. And my horns disappear,” I added.
She nodded. “You don’t think of your body as a body shaped like a horse – instead, you think of yourself as a horse. Your other forms, they are merely a shapes. You push your body into the poor bear-mold which your mind has crafted. In order to become an animal, you must seek to understand the animal, to seek out and inhabit its place in the world.”
Its place in the web, I thought, not just its shape. I nodded.
“Show me,” said the elf.
I stood, and closed my eyes, and breathed. I’m a bear, I thought.
Nothing happened.
I’m a bear, I thought harder. I eat roots and berries and, sometimes, meat. Even though I can beat up all the other animals, my favorite thing in the world is honey. And, I can run really fast even though I have short legs. They’re big thick legs, though, and they can beat up all the other animals. And people. I can kick ass – I can take axe-blows to the side and walk away. I can run into the middle of crowds of people and scatter them. My place – my place is to be strong, to be a good bear, and to bring more bears into the world.
I opened my eyes. I had succeeded. The transformation had been different than previous ones – it had felt natural. I felt more wholly a bear. I inhaled deeply, filling my enormous bear-lungs – before, they had always, somehow, still been bull lungs – with cool night air.
But my horns remained.
I pulled myself back together. Tyrande looked impassively across the darkness at me. “Try again,” she said. I nodded.
I’m a bear, I thought. I love honey, and warm meat, and I’m huge and if something pisses me off I get really, really angry, because I can. Because I’m huge. And for the love of god, I hate horns.
And suddenly, I felt it. I hate horns, I thought, because horns are a weapon. Horns are hard, and sharp, and they poke me when I’m trying to kill things or defend myself. Horns have no place in my world – they’re bad, very, very, very bad. Horns suck.
And just like that, they were gone.
A powerful joy coursed through me, and I opened my eyes and reared up on my back paws, and roared. Then I turned back into a bull, breathless, smiling.
Tyrande stood and bowed. “You bring great honor to your old teacher,” she said, “and great wonder to me. Sajjaneshta said that time would be short when you arrived. I should not have worried.”
“Sajjaneshta?” I said.
“Your name for her is Katy M,” said the elf. “Katy means ‘chosen’ in an ancient dialect of Common, and Sajjaneshta means the same in our language. She has been my friend since I was a child, and that was more than a century ago. She hasn’t aged a day,” she added, smiling fondly and shaking her head. “Four years ago, she came to me, and asked if, at some point in the near future, I would teach a rash young bull by the name of Horse. When the time came, she said, I might only have a few months to train you, and I laughed at her, but I agreed. As I said,” and she bowed, “I should not have worried.”
Wow, I thought. Thanks. “I had a lot of training already,” I said, just a bit embarrassed.
“And you have a lot more to go,” she said, suddenly stern again, tucking her legs back underneath her body. “Bear form!” she cried.
* * *
For long hours she watched me, calling out like a drill instructor as I forced my mind into the mind of a bear, faster, with less and less effort. When I’d finally mastered it, I could lower my head and be a bear, hornless and complete, within the blink of an eye.
Without respite, the elf began calling, “Cat form!” I was starving and exhausted, but I pressed on: I am a cat, I thought. I like chasing things, and then eating them. I like sleeping in the sun. I hate horns.
Then, as the blue moon sank towards the western horizon and the white moon waxed bright again, Tyrande stood, and I pulled my hornless cat back into a bull. I grinned through my exhaustion – the feeling of being so in control of my body was exhilarating, and I said so.
“These forms are easy,” replied Tyrande stonily.
“Easy!” I cried. “I’m about dead!”
“You have come amazingly far for one night’s training, amazingly far. But a bear and a cat and a horse,” she continued, “are much like a bull – they have four limbs, and they eat and they breathe in much the same ways, and they all run on land. You must have full mastery of your body before you can progress in your training – and your three forms have not yet given you that.”
I sighed. “What’s next?” I said, hoping fervently that the answer was, sleep.
“A journey,” she said. “You must learn command and mastery of the water, and for this, you need the help of a magical pendant. You must travel to the western coast of the dead continent of Lordaeron. There,” she continued, speaking by rote, “off the coast of Silverpine Forest, you will find the remains of an ancient shipwreck. Directly to the west of there, where the ocean floor drops into the abysmal deeps and the strongest swimmers begin to fatigue, you will find a small silver box. Within the box is an amulet in the shape of a sea-lion – put it on, and it will give you the knowledge you need to survive in the deep watery places of the world. In your new form, your breath, nearly exhausted, will become sufficient. If you fail…” and she paused, a little overdramatically, I thought. “If you fail, you will likely drown before you can return to the surface.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It is not an easy challenge,” she said. “Mental and physical dexterity will be critical to your success. But when you succeed, you will have taken a great stride towards mastering your body and its variable places in the great world.”
No problem, I thought – just head off to the lightless land, dive to the bottom of the ocean, find a magic necklace and learn how to transform into a sea lion before I drown. “Okay,” I said. Maybe I’ll get to see Rhy again, I thought.
Tyrande smiled mistily. “For now,” she said, standing gracefully and stepping aside, “come sit here.”
I obeyed, settling onto the spot which the elf had occupied for the whole of the night. Beyond the edge of our lonely patch of green lay steeply sloping vines and then wide open space, empty wind for thousands of feet, and then glittering ocean. The great mist wall rose from it in the distance, obscuring the horizon and the lowest ranks of stars.
“This bush,” she said, gesturing to it the diminutive shrub at the center of our little island of green, “is my meditation bush – the conduit through which I reach out to nature from within this cursed place. Sit now and concentrate on it, meditate on its place in the world and your own. Listen for the voice of nature, feel for its will. You will begin your journey when the sun rises. I will see you again once you have completed it.” She stepped back, and for a moment her smile was a grin. “Good job tonight,” she said. Then she bowed, and in a rush of golden feathers she was gone.
I turned to the bush. Normally, I would have felt a little foolish, but I was still flush with the night’s successes. I closed my eyes, and inhaled, and exhaled. I focused on the bush, listening for its voice and its will, and prepared myself to take a first, hesitant step out along the mysterious, willful, living web of life.
Moments later, I was asleep.
XI
(Discuss chapter)
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