CHAPTER 16

Seeds

Little Fur dreamed that she was walking over hills and valleys of mist. Ginger paced at her side, and Crow flew overhead. Then all at once she was alone and hurrying down the rabbit track winding into the hollow where the Old Ones stood. When she was among them at last, her heart gave a great salmon-leap of gladness. The seven great trees had never looked more lovely to her than in that moment, all silver-sheened in the tender pink light of the sun’s awakening, their leaves quivering in a breeze so faint that Little Fur could not feel it.

Then, to her everlasting delight, the trees began to sing to her.

Little Fur woke to the eye of the sun on her face and stirred at the unmistakable scent of fresh mushrooms.

“See, I told you it would wake her,” Brownie said.

“Sun waking her,” Crow snapped.

Little Fur smiled inwardly at their familiar squabbling and opened her eyes. She was lying in the broken leaf shade at the edge of the shadow cast by the Old Ones, and it was very early in the morning. She sat up and Crow gave a startled scream.

“Are you all right?” Brownie demanded anxiously.

Little Fur touched his velvet muzzle softly. “Oh, Brownie, I am so glad to be back.”

“But how we coming back? That is what Crow is wondering,” Crow said.

Little Fur frowned. “Did I smell mushrooms?”

“Now I know you are all right,” Brownie declared, neighing his laughter. “Eat, and then you must tell us what happened because I should go back to my field very soon.”

Little Fur ate, wondering how to explain what she hardly understood herself. Had there really been a strange tree creature in the chasm that had brewed a green mist of dreams to stop the tree burners? Wasn’t it just a story she had told herself? And how had she returned to the wilderness with Crow?

“Where are Ginger and Sly?” she asked.

“Ginger was here with you and Crow when I came, but not Sly,” Brownie said. “Ginger went to look for her. But what happened? Did you find a great power in the chasm?”

“I . . . I think so, but it is hard to remember.”

“What was the power?” Brownie asked eagerly. “Was it a great elf or a dragon?”

“It was . . . well, it looked like a tree, but it said it was a tree guardian and seemed to think I ought to know what that was. I asked it to help us and it sent a dream to all the humans who were sleeping, showing them who the tree burners were.” Little Fur stopped because what had happened in the chasm seemed all at once too rare and strange to talk about.

“That’s wonderful!” Brownie cried, and he pranced and reared, kicking up his hooves in delight. “My human said the other humans want very badly to catch the tree killers, but they could never figure out who they were. Now they will be able to catch them and stop them.”

“Dream,” Crow said disparagingly. “Will dream be enough to making humans punishing tree burners?”

“The tree guardian’s dreams are not like our dreams, Crow,” Little Fur said. “They are stronger. I think that’s how we got here, you and Ginger and I. The tree guardian told me to dream my heart’s desire and it would dream with me. So I dreamed of us all coming back here. I don’t know why Sly didn’t come. Maybe she didn’t want to.”

There was much to do that day after Brownie had gone, for there were many birds and small creatures waiting for Little Fur to heal them. One poor sparrow had a crushed wing and would never fly again, and there was a baby bat whose paw had been broken. Each creature that she tended had heard of her quest, so that Little Fur found herself delayed by having to answer countless questions. In the end it was Crow who took to telling their story, and Little Fur hid a smile as the tale became more and more fantastical and impossible with each retelling.

When the sun closed its eye at last and the line of patients ended, Little Fur left on the pretext of gathering herbs to replenish her stores. Crow was telling a crowd of small animals how he had battled a fierce mad dog who lived in a web, like a spider. In truth, Little Fur wanted a moment alone. It seemed to her that she had hardly had a chance to take in the strangeness of what had happened, and maybe a part of her would always be wanting quiet moments to wonder at it.

She climbed up past the thicket and sat on the hillside facing the human high houses, thinking of what the Sett Owl had said about the desire of the Troll King to destroy the earth spirit. He would gnash his teeth in fury when he understood that his human servants had been thwarted. But soon his fury would turn cold and deadly, and he would begin to think of other ways to use humans against the earth spirit.

The Sett Owl had said she was supposed to stop the Troll King, and all at once she understood why she did not feel as happy as Brownie: because her quest to save the earth spirit was not over. How could it ever be over while the Troll King lived? She had won an important battle, but a war was unfolding, and it seemed to Little Fur that the war would be played out in the world of humans. They were the battleground and the trolls would never stop trying to claim them.

So someone must work to claim them for the earth spirit. The dream of the tree guardian might have helped some of them to resist their darkness, and perhaps some of them had woken with a longing to be part of the flow of life again. But many of them would wake and forget.

Little Fur had vowed in the moments after waking that morning never to leave the wilderness again, but she realized now that this was a promise she could not keep. She must go out of the wilderness into the human city as often as she could and plant seeds wherever there was earth that could nourish them, for each seed that grew would summon the earth spirit until the flow was strong enough to encompass humans.

She was small, but sometimes small things could do what greater creatures could not.