‘You will have to come back later,’ Gazrak told the assembled animals in a peevish voice that suggested he had said the same thing more than once already. ‘Herness is very busy,’ he added pompously. ‘Very very busy.’

‘We have crossed half the city to speak to the Sett Owl,’ said a drake. A small cluster of ducks about him quacked indignantly in agreement. ‘We came at great risk!’ the drake added firmly.

‘We all come here at risk,’ chittered a red squirrel.

The rat turned his long twitching nose and slitted red eyes to the squirrel and hissed. ‘Gazrak can’t help that. You can’t see Herness until the owl convocation is over.’

‘Well how long is this convocation going to take?’ asked a white cat in a pretty, purring voice. A goose hissed softly to warn her not to get too close, but the cat gave him an amused look. ‘Keep your feathers on, father,’ she told him coolly, and turned her attention back to the rat.

‘The owl convocation will take as long as it takes,’ Gazrak said haughtily, which Little Fur guessed meant he didn’t know.

‘What are we supposed to do then?’ demanded a weasel. The rat glared at it, then turned his eyes shiftily to offerings that rose in a tantalising little mound in front of the drake.

‘You will have to come back. But you can leave your offerings. I will make sure that the Sett Owl gets them and knows who is owed an audience.’

‘Not on your life,’ snapped a stoat. ‘I’d sooner trust a snake than a rat to keep a promise.’

‘Watch who you are inssulting,’ hissed a snake, rising up out of a brown coil to glare at the stoat.

‘No fighting! It is forbidden for supplicants to fight in the grounds of the beaked house. Fighting is sacreligion,’ shrilled the rat.

‘What I would like to know is when this convocation began?’ asked a deep, slow voice from somewhere in the crowd. It sounded a sensible sort of voice and Little Fur guessed it was a badger.

The rat eyed the gathering balefully. ‘Herness sent out the pigeons at dusk yesterday and owls began arriving soon after. The Sett Owl has been interviewing them all night and there are many owls still waiting to see her.’

There was a disgruntled murmur and some of the animals and birds glumly gathered up their offerings and made to depart. Gazrak tried again to convince them to leave what they had brought with him, but his own eagerness was his undoing. He went back into the tunnel in a fury, leaving the animals and birds who remained to argue over what to do.

Little Fur returned to where Ginger sat watching stray feathers drifting down from the tree of owls.

‘The Sett Owl is questioning all of the owls, but no one knows why,’ Little Fur told him.

‘Little Fur could also question owls,’ Ginger said.

Little Fur realised the cat was right. She had only wanted to see the Sett Owl to arrange for her to be able to speak to other owls. It might even be that the mother of the orphaned owl was among these assembled owls. She went to the lowest branch of the tree, which creaked under the weight of a great horned owl, two ghostly-looking barn owls and several smaller owls. They blinked a range of orange and yellow eyes at her.

‘Greetings, Owls,’ Little Fur said very politely, for all owls had a keen sense of ceremony. ‘I am …’

‘Hoo whooo we know who you are, Little Fur,’ said the horned owl. ‘What do you want of us, Healer?’

Little Fur did not know whether to be gratified or unnerved that it knew who she was. She bowed and said, ‘I came to see the Sett Owl …’

‘Whoo! She is busy with owl business,’ said one of the smaller owls. ‘She has called a convocation.’

‘Hush,’ said one of the other owls. ‘The great questioning is owl business.’

‘Too true,’ hooted the smaller owl.

‘My business is also owl business,’ Little Fur assured them.

There was a rustling of feathers all about her, but none of the owls spoke, so after a slight hesitation, she went on. ‘What I wanted to find out was if any of you here has lost a nestling, or know of an owl who lost a nest with young in it during the storm last night.’

The horned owl said loftily, ‘The night was full of falling nests and broken eggs.’ There was a rustle of agreement from the other owls.

‘I am speaking of a particular nest and a particular nestling,’ Little Fur said. ‘Is there an owl mother among you who is grieving for her lost young?’

‘Whoo hoo,’ said the horned owl, woggling its feathery horns at her. ‘Owls do not make the mistake of getting too attached to eggs or nestlings. They are not strongly enough attached to life. It would be …’

‘Foolish,’ completed one of the barn owls.

Little Fur was puzzled. ‘I just meant …’

‘Forgetting the loss of nestlings is natural and also more comfortable than pointless grieving over a broken egg,’ said an owl from one of the other branches.

‘But what if an egg falls and does not break, or breaks only to free its nestling?’ Little Fur asked.

The horned owl said, ‘The chance of life after the fall is minus. Very minus.’

Little Fur was becoming exasperated. Perhaps she had not made herself clear enough. ‘I am talking of a particular nestling which fell but did not die,’ she said.

‘We do not think of what happens after the fall,’ intoned the horned owl. Little Fur felt an urge to pull its tail feathers. Owls were certainly cleverer than other birds, but they had their limitations. She decided to try asking some of the other owls, but as she went about the tree, over and over again, she was given the same answer. Finally she came to an owl who had lost her nest in the storm.

‘Many eggs and nestlings are lost in the lifetime of a bird,’ she told Little Fur calmly. ‘It is not in the nature of owls, who see more deeply and wisely than other birds, to sit on hope and seek to hatch it into the lost nestling. As it falls from the nest, the egg or nestling falls from one’s heart, lest grief take root and grow to crack the spirit apart.’

‘But this owlet …’ Little Fur began, then she stopped, not even certain what she wanted to say.

‘Will live or die,’ the owl mother said remotely. And that seemed to be that.

Exhausted and baffled, Little Fur went back to sit on the step beside Ginger. ‘The owls say that once an egg or owlet falls out of the nest, the mother forgets it. They say that there is no point their caring when so many eggs die. I will have to wait to see the Sett Owl after all. Perhaps she will order the owls who have lost nests to come to the wilderness. I am sure if they could see the baby owl and know it is their own, they would be glad to claim it.’

Ginger held her gaze until she heard what he did not say; the Sett Owl would not order any of the owls to do anything because she did not give orders. She answered questions. Well then, Little Fur would ask the Sett Owl how to get the baby owl back to its mother.

Too restless to sleep or simply sit, Little Fur rose and began to walk around the beaked house again. She was beginning to be curious about this convocation. One of the owls had named it a great questioning. Since the Sett Owl had called the convocation, she must be asking questions of the other owls. But what could an ordinary owl know, that she did not?

Little Fur noticed a fox sitting by the front step of the beaked house. It was a big fox, but she could see its bones clearly curving under its dull red pelt. She sniffed and caught the hot bright stink of pain and the dank odour of infection. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, going over to it.

The fox turned its head to look at her. It was a male, she smelled now, handsome and well formed. Or he would have been if not for his unkempt pelt and his thinness. His deep brown eyes were not clouded with pain though, nor with confusion. They were full of intelligence, but their bleak expression chilled her.

‘What do ye want?’ the fox asked. There was an unfamiliar burr in his soft, flat voice that told her he came from somewhere other than the city.

‘I … I am a healer,’ Little Fur said. ‘I can smell that you are hurt and I thought I could help you.’

‘I do not wish to be helped,’ the fox said.

Little Fur was taken aback. ‘But … you would not be here unless you wanted help …’

‘Are ye so wise as to know my thoughts and intentions better than I do?’ the fox asked coldly. ‘Perhaps I would do better to consult ye than the Sett Owl. However, I did not come here for healing but to learn how to die.’

Little Fur thought she must have misunderstood. ‘You are afraid you are going to die?’

‘I want to die,’ the fox told her in a clear, stony voice. ‘But my will to live is too strong. I heard of the wisdom of the Sett Owl and I have come very far to see if she can tell me how to die. And now that ye have satisfied your curiosity, ye can leave me alone.’

Little Fur withdrew, troubled. She had never before had her healing refused. She went to Ginger, who was sleeping, and laid her cheek against him, seeking the reassuring beat of his heart. She was tired, but the encounter with the fox had unsettled her. He had said that he wished to die, but could not. His instinct to live must be very powerful, for creatures did die by willing it. She had seen it in old animals who had grown weary of life and struggle and pain, or in the remaining member of a life-bonded pair whose spirits were fused; and sometimes in a mother who had lost a child. But the fox was neither mother nor elder, and he had such an absolute air of solitude that she did not think he had lost a mate.

She drifted to sleep and it seemed but a moment before Ginger was turning to lick her cheek with his warm rough tongue.

‘It has finished,’ he said.

Little Fur sat up. The sky was the pure starless blue of very early morning and owls were flying away in all directions. For a moment or two, it was as if there was a snowstorm in the air. Hundreds of pale, soft feathers drifted down to whiten the cobbles beneath the bare, reaching black arms of the tree.

‘You,’ the rat said decisively, pointing his black paw at Little Fur and ignoring the irritable yowl of a white cat and the grumblings of a weasel. ‘And you.’ He pointed to the fox.

Then he selected a vole and a mouse on the fringe of the small cluster of supplicants who had stayed on, both of them recent arrivals. Little Fur guessed the rat was paying out those who had annoyed it earlier but she was too relieved to be able to go in at once to argue for fairness.

She crawled into the tunnel after Ginger, who had announced to the cringing Gazrak that he needed no permission to enter since he sought no answer for himself. As always, the huge chamber that was the interior of the beaked house smelled of polished wood, shining metals and a strange spicy smell mingling with that of dying roses, which humans had brought as offerings. The smooth dark flagstones gave off a reflection of the red glow of human false lights fixed to the walls of the chamber.

Little Fur did not climb out of the tunnel as the others had done, because there was no flow of earth magic within the beaked house. The other animals who had entered were turning and gazing around themselves in awe and apprehension, except for the fox. He merely sniffed at the end of one of the wooden benches where humans sat, a flicker of loathing crossing his features.

The fox looked at her as if he felt her watching him, and Little Fur quickly turned her eyes away, fearing his scorn. She found herself looking at the feet of one of the enormous stone humans that stood all about the chamber, each in their own niche in the wall. Crow always claimed the stones were giants who had tried to attack the beaked house, and had, as a consequence, been transformed into stone by the still magic. But he had never actually seen the stone shapes and Little Fur knew instinctively that the passive pool of magic in the beaked house would not do anything. Its power lay locked up in that stillness. Besides, as far as she knew, there were no giants left in this age of the world.

Gazrak came along the tunnel behind Little Fur and grumbled loudly at finding her blocking the way. Pushing past her, he hurried over to where the other animals had laid down their offerings – a few nuts, some late berries and some crusts were scattered at his feet. Little Fur dug a packet of herbs from her seed pouch and reached out as far as she could to put it beside the other things. The still magic fizzed and quivered against her cheeks as Gazrak inspected the offering with a suspicious expression.

‘What is this?’ he demanded.

‘Herbs to ease the pain of the Sett Owl’s crippled wing,’ Little Fur said with shy dignity, hoping that the Sett Owl would not regard her offering as disrespectful.

‘Pah,’ the rat jeered, but it passed on to the fox. ‘Where is your offering?’

‘I did not know that I needed one,’ the fox said. He was sitting with his brush curved around him and Little Fur was struck again by his air of solitude and completeness. If the last creature of its kind in the world was to sit there, it might look like that, accepting its aloneness.

‘Herness is not interested in excuses,’ Gazrak snarled. ‘You must leave! Come back when you have a properness of offering for Herness.’

‘Wait,’ Little Fur said. ‘I have some fresh mushrooms that I brought for my supper. If those would do for the fox’s offering …’ She took them out and set them alongside the packet of herbs. The rat crept closer, its nose twitching greedily at their rich lovely scent.

‘I cannot allow ye to pay for me,’ the fox said. ‘That would mean I would owe ye a debt and I do not wish to owe anything to any creature.’

‘You don’t have to pay me,’ Little Fur said. ‘The mushrooms can be a gift.’

‘Then ye offer a friendship that I did not seek and do not desire. Take them back.’ He turned to the rat. ‘I will go and return when …’

‘Enough of this foolishness,’ rang out the voice of the Sett Owl from above. ‘Do not be so quick to spurn friendship, Master Fox.’

They all looked up to see her spiralling down from the shadows clustered in the roof where the golden bell hung, and where she roosted. Her damaged wing made the descent uneven and she landed with a staggering awkwardness that caused the scent of pain and stiffness to fill Little Fur’s nostrils. It had been her memory of this smell that had made her decide to bring the healing herbs.

‘He has brought no offering,’ Gazrak whined to his mistress, who had landed on one of the wooden benches. ‘What are we to eat if …’

‘Silence, Rat,’ the Sett Owl commanded. ‘I might starve without offerings but you are fat enough to last for a full cycle of the moon. Now be silent unless you wish to offer yourself as a meal out of reverence to me.’

The rat gave a shriek of terror and scuttled away. The owl turned to the fox who bowed his head in a handsome gesture, and said politely but sternly, ‘I would not be indebted to ye either, Herness.’

‘Whoo! You! Oh, you will pay for your questions, Master Fox. Have no fear.’ The owl’s voice was chalky with humour. She turned her flaring eyes to Little Fur, still crouched uncomfortably at the opening of the tunnel.

‘It is good to see you again, Healer. I am grateful for your offering and you may keep your supper if you will brew the tisane for me. But come out where I can see you properly.’

‘I can’t,’ Little Fur said. ‘I would be cut off from the flow of the earth magic if I come into the beaked house.’

The Sett Owl regarded her without expression for a time, then said. ‘Put one foot out onto the floor.’

Little Fur hesitated then obeyed, lowering her four toes gingerly to the floor. She knew that no harm would come to her as long as the rest of her stayed on the earth floor of the tunnel. To her amazement, she felt earth magic surging against her foot.

‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

‘I have asked the still magic to allow the passage of earth magic. Now enter,’ the owl said. ‘How else will you prepare my tisane?’

Heart beating fast, Little Fur put both feet out onto the flagstones, keeping her bottom firmly on the earth floor of the tunnel. Earth magic flowed to the soles of both feet. Very slowly, she stood up and looked around. Above the tunnel, where she had never been able to see before, was the statue of a winged woman, holding out a slender white hand. She was so fair that she must be an elemental from the last age.

The queer bubbling sensation that was the still magic pressed and nuzzled at her like some invisible and inquisitive animal wanting to smell her better.

‘Have no fear that the earth magic will fail under you,’ the owl said mildly. ‘Still magic and earth magic are not inimical to one another. It is only that both are very strong and are content to be apart.’ The owl turned to greet Ginger courteously, then she spoke to the smaller creatures who had instinctively drawn together in their apprehension and awe. She accepted their offerings and dealt quickly but kindly with their timid questions, dismissing each when they were satisfied, or had at least had an answer. Finally there were only the fox, Little Fur and Ginger.

‘Well now, Healer,’ the Sett Owl said. ‘The storm orphan.’

Little Fur nodded, unsurprised to find that the Sett Owl knew why she had come. If the still magic had not told her, the owls she had spoken to would have done so.

‘You are not content with the answers you have been given by my brethren?’ the Sett Owl enquired.

‘I understand what they are saying but I don’t understand why the owls who have lost nestlings won’t just come and see if the baby is theirs.’

‘For an owl, to fall is to die.’

Little Fur felt a surge of frustration. ‘I do not think the owlet who fell and lived would agree.’

‘You and the fox come on the same errand then,’ observed the Sett Owl. ‘You both seek to thwart nature. That is a very human desire.’

Little Fur was shocked to be likened to humans. But the angry snarl of the fox drowned out her reaction. ‘I have no human desires,’ he said in a voice so raw with hatred that Little Fur thought he would leap at the owl and tear her to pieces.

The Sett Owl gazed at him without fear. ‘The human way is always to set their will against nature.’

‘I do not wish to speak of humans or of nature,’ the fox said in a low, angry voice.

‘Nor do I,’ the owl said with sudden weariness. ‘I have spoken too much of these things already this long night. Well, ask your question, Fox.’

‘Ye know it already,’ the fox said. ‘I wish to die, but my instinct to live chains me to life. I want to know how I can overcome my instinct.’

‘You wish to join the world’s dream?’ the owl asked.

‘It is not known what comes after life, and I think none can know, for none who die return to say what they have seen. For myself, I hope there is no dream.’

‘Some say the world’s dream is no more than a long remembering of all that was and all that will be,’ the owl murmured.

‘I did not come to talk about memories either, Herness,’ the fox said shortly.

‘Very well. An answer to your question. You cannot overcome your instinct to live because its great strength is of your own long making.’

‘Then ye cannot help me.’

‘I cannot help you defeat your will to survive, for you have trained it to be indomitable. But perhaps I can suggest a way for you to find death.’

The fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘How?’

‘You must seek a road to death that does not oppose your will to survive.’

‘Ye speak in riddles,’ the fox said.

Little Fur’s ears prickled to hear the strange word again.

‘Life is a riddle, Fox,’ the Sett Owl told him. ‘One cannot speak simply of mystery. Now listen to me. If you wish to die, then you must give yourself wholly to a deadly quest. You must make it more important than your life. Only then will your instinct permit the sacrificing of life, should it be required by the quest.’

The fox regarded the Sett Owl steadily for a long moment. ‘Ye have such a quest in mind?’

‘I do,’ the owl said composedly. ‘A plot is being hatched in this city against the earth spirit even as we speak; or to be precise, beneath the city in the troll stronghold of Underth. You have heard of it?’

‘I have heard of the troll city, but I understood it to be a myth. What would ye have me do? Set out to kill its king, if he exists?’

‘He exists,’ the owl said softly.

‘What, then?’ the fox asked.

‘All night I have sought information in an attempt to guess what the troll king plots. I have found no answer but this; that an expedition must be mounted to Underth to discover what the troll king plans.’

‘The storm,’ the fox said thoughtfully. ‘There were omens in it …’

‘We must learn the nature of the danger that threatens. Without that knowledge, we cannot hope to defend the earth spirit, and the omens say that if it is not defended, the troll king will succeed in bringing an age of darkness to the earth that will see the end of many things.’

‘If I undertake to travel to Underth to get this knowledge, and if the stories of it and of the trolls that guard it are even partly true, my death is almost certain. That will serve my desire, but how will it serve yours? How will ye discover what I have learned?’ the fox asked.

‘You will have companions,’ the owl said.

‘I travel alone,’ the fox said at once.

‘You will need a guide to lead you from the surface to the troll city. It is not just a matter of finding a way through myriad tunnels and holes. There are the dark confusions of magic brewed by the troll king, which affect any creature not born under his dominion.’

‘Ye spoke of companions,’ the fox broke in.

‘Indeed. You are too big and brightly coloured to gather the information that is needed. That will require spies who can swim in the shadows and slip through small cracks and crannies.’

‘If my companions are to be guides and spies, then why am I needed?’ asked the fox. ‘I dinnae understand.

‘You will be the warrior who guards the expedition. You will swear to protect your fellow expeditioners, even at the cost of your own life. You must be prepared to offer yourself as a decoy and draw danger away from your companions, that they may escape and bring what has been learned to me.’

‘Even if I agree, the chance of anyone escaping will be slim,’ the fox said.

‘In asking you to swear to place their safety above your own, I bestow upon them the protection of your ferocious will to survive. They can have no greater shield.’

There was a long silence. ‘Who will be the spies and the guide?’ the fox asked.

Little Fur had the sudden dreamy certainty that the Sett Owl would name her, but she merely said, ‘Two ferrets have volunteered as spies.’

‘And the guide?’

‘The rat Gazrak, who is my attendant. He knows the way to Underth and, having been born there, he will be immune to the glamours set up to trap intruders,’ the Sett Owl said.

Out of the shadows at the back of the beaked house came a squeal of anguish and dismay.