Chapter the Fifteenth,
The Day Before the Last,
In which the key is in the air selfsame.
I. Leading Away
The Dangler pulled his fishing pole out of the riverbed and the boat coasted forward in the swift current, following the fork of the river down which Miney had fled. He stuck his pole into the water again and used it to push off like a ferryman. Over and over he did this; his pole dipped into the water less deeply with each thrust.
When they had traveled a tail from the broken bridge the boat bottomed out. Neither Jai nor Ceder—anxiously sitting in the prow—were prepared for the sudden stop. They lurched forward and flew out of the boat, landing face first in the water.
“Get up, this is no time to rest!” whooped the Dangler as his shadow soared over the children like a cloud passing under the sun—he jammed his pole in the ground between them and used it to vault himself off the boat over their heads. Without looking back he sprinted away, lifting his knees to his chest with each stork-like stride. His purple cape billowed behind him as he ran. “Follow me!”
As Jai rose from his knees, Astray leapt off the boat, bounded off Jai’s back—sending him rudely back down into the riverbed—and into Ceder’s ready arms. She dashed after the fisherman. “Come on, Jai, what are you waiting for?”
Jai looked up from the ground with mud on his face, wondering what else could go wrong for him, then he sprang to his feet and ran to catch up. The lavender songbird zoomed ahead, whistling a high-spirited tune for their chase through the fog.
The fisherman skidded to a stop and looked left and right for Miney. The frog had disappeared. In a fluid motion the Dangler took out the waveglass compass and held it inverted high over his head, then turned sharply to the right of the river and vanished into the foliage, staring at the dial in the air rather than where he was planting his feet.
When Jai and Ceder arrived at the same spot a moment later they found a small brook leading through the undergrowth. They could not see the Dangler through the dense greenery, but a trail of shaking leaves suggested he had gone in the direction of the brook.
“Maybe we shouldn’t follow him in there,” said Jai. “You remember what the Coralute told us.”
“We’re not following him,” said Ceder, stepping between the trees, “we’re following Miney, ultimately.”
“Do you really believe that?” asked Jai, swatting the fog away from his face like a swarm of gnats. “We should have kept that compass, after all, in case we can’t find our way back.”
Pushing aside ferns larger than their bodies, they gradually made their way deeper into the woods with no guide but the trickle of water leading away from the river. “Are we even going the right way?” asked Jai.
Ceder blew the hair out of her face. “Miney must be following this brook.”
“Do you think he’ll lead us to the other two frogs, the ones who took our eggs?”
Ceder shot Jai a look of surprise. “Jai, there’s only one frog—it was the same one each time.”
“It was not.”
“It was too.”
“Was not!”
“Of course it was! Why would there be three different frogs who all look the same, sound the same, and play the same game?”
“I don’t know why,” said Jai. “Probably the same reason there were three dead, green fish in the sea who all looked the same, sounded the same, and toyed around with us the same way each time.”
“There weren’t three fish!” said Ceder, amazed that Jai had not come to the same conclusion. “The Wishfish, the Coralute, and the Oldest Fish in the Sea were all the same one.”
“No, they weren’t.”
“Yes, they were!”
Arguing back and forth as they ran, the children crashed through a last barricade of ferns into a wide, well-lit clearing. The Dangler was standing ahead of them, rubbing his chin between his forefinger and thumb, deep in thought. He was staring at the tower.
II. Safe Inside
There was music in the air. It was not the whistling of the three-holed tree, although the song was the same. It felt as though there were hidden voices all around them, all humming the same dissonant harmony in a round, but when Jai or Ceder turned to look where the closest notes seemed to originate, they found, like an echo in a circular room, that they could not pinpoint the source of the sound.
The tower stood in the middle of the clearing. Made of faded gray stone, it was perfectly cylindrical and had no visible doorways, windows, or stairs.
“Is this where the toad came?” Jai asked the Dangler, although the answer seemed obvious.
A long pause preceded the fisherman’s surprising reply: “Up there.” He pointed to the top of the tower.
Ceder tilted her head back, taking in the entirety of the stone structure. It was a full thirty fins tall. “How did he get up?”
“How else? He jumped,” the fisherman said distastefully, as if the frog had played foul in his last leaping effort to escape.
“What do you think is up there?” asked Jai.
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
“How are we supposed to get up?”
“Not we. Me.” The Dangler backed up to the edge of the clearing. He pulled his fishing pole out and held it level with both hands, pointed directly at the tower. He whistled a descending note, as if letting all the pressure out of his body, then he sprang into motion, sprinting straight ahead with bounding, herky-jerky strides. With his glass chin held high, his cape caught in the wind behind him, his pole held out like a jouster’s lance, the fisherman’s instantaneous speed was breathtaking.
At the last possible moment before dashing his pole against the tower he dipped it down, wedging the tip into the corner where the foundation stones met the earth. The fishing pole bent unnaturally in a huge bow as he was about to rush headlong into the wall. The pole snapped back to its original form so quickly that the Dangler, who arched his own body lithely and kicked his legs up, was vaulted high and straight into the air. It made Jai and Ceder laugh to see his silhouette against the sky, umbrella hat and flapping cape, seeming to trot sideways up the wall, and then, just like that, he was on top of the tower.
He flailed his arms wildly for a fraction of an instant—the stones atop the tower were wet and slippery—before regaining his balance. He gave one look to the children to assure them he was all right, then he turned to the center of the tower.
The tower housed a deep well of water. Only a narrow catwalk lined the inside of the ramparts. The water was the color of tarnished silver. The surface was perfectly still.
Between the ramparts three squat, bald fishermen in green tunics sat staring at the Dangler. All three held glossy black fishing poles but none of them had yet dipped their lines into the water. They were all three panting and struggling to catch their breath, as though they had all just finished running and jumping great distances.
“Fancy meeting you here,” snickered the first fisherman between wheezes.
The Dangler regarded them each in turn, then tipped his hat and said, “Fancy that.”
The second fisherman spat off the side of the tower, aiming for Jai and Ceder. “There ain’t no fish in this hole,” he said to the Dangler.
The Dangler stood his pole upright and ran the watery line between his fingers. “Good. I am not angling for fish,” he said as he reached into his bag of bait and produced a plump worm.
All three of the squat fisherman went red in the face, a mass of jowls quivering with indignation. “There’s only enough room for three up here, stranger,” said the third fisherman, chewing on the final moniker as if the Dangler were anything but.
The Dangler looked him in the eye, then he scanned the otherwise empty top of the tower. He turned back to the third fisherman and raised his brow quizzically.
The fisherman’s eyes bulged at the Dangler’s silent audacity. “What I mean to say,” said the squat fisherman, “is there’s only enough room for three lines up here. The water won’t allow a fourth. You try it, stranger, and see if you don’t get sucked right in.” The other two fishermen chuckled at this; before the Dangler had time to bait his hook, they all cast their lines into the water, grinning smugly.
The Dangler stared at each of them in turn, then he carefully and deliberately poked his hook through the body of the glowworm. A drop of green blood gelled around the hook. He slung the pole over his shoulder, ready to cast it into the fray. “I would hate to get sucked into this most mysterious pool,” he said to the fishermen, “so you will agree with me it is fortunate mine is no ordinary line. I do not think the water will mind if I have a try.”
As the three fisherman gawked disbelievingly at the Dangler, he winked at them and gently cast his pole forward. The hook and worm fell into the dark water without a sound.
The water rippled out from the center. The turbulence was reflected on the faces of the squat fishermen, all three of whose eyes and throats were bulging disproportionately. Their faces streamed with sweat as they leaned over their poles, anxious to be the first to make a catch.
The Dangler checked his line calmly and began to whistle. The three fishermen stared at him hatefully but said nothing.
“Ah, here we are,” said the Dangler several minutes later. He reeled in his line. The bald fishermen all stared, mortified, as the Dangler’s catch broke the surface of the well. The first fisherman—who, perhaps by some trick of the light, was now looking rather more like a frog than a man—screamed in fear as his own fishing line jerked forward. He fell into the churning water and disappeared.
“Eany,” said the Dangler, then he drew his catch up to his hand. The glowworm was gone—in its place the hook was speared through the cracked opening of a luminous blue egg. The Dangler winked to the two remaining fishermen and tucked the enchanted egg into his bag. Without a word he hooked another glowworm onto his line and cast it into the mysterious well.
If they had been angry before at the Dangler’s intrusion, the squat fishermen were livid now. They leaned over their poles with every muscle shaking in tension.
The Dangler, taking great pleasure in his sport, resumed his carefree whistling. It did not take long, by the measure of an angler’s patience, for him to secure another catch. When he felt the gentle tug on his hook he smiled widely and reeled in his line. “Here we are,” he said happily as his prize emerged from the opaque water.
The second squat fisherman, whose skin had taken on a hue that looked more amphibious than human, was ripped forward off the ramparts with a stout pull on his line and he fell into the dark water, croaking fatally.
“Meany,” said the Dangler. He brought his catch in. He took the second enchanted egg off the hook and held the cracked end up to his eye. A faint silver light shone from within the sapphire shell. The Dangler sighed deeply, relieved that the El fish was still safe inside. He tucked the egg into his tackle-bag and fixed his gaze on the last remaining fisherman.
The third fisherman bristled with rage, his cheeks and forehead as red as any apple. “There’s nothing left for you here, stranger! Go away! Be gone!”
The Dangler appeared to consider this option, but at last he shook his head and said, “I think I will stay and keep you company. After all, there is plenty of room up here now.” He held his empty hook between thumb and forefinger, about to bait it with another glowworm, but he paused, thinking better of the idea. Instead, he tipped his black hat up and pulled from underneath it a pink flower petal.
The squat fisherman was apoplectic when he realized the Dangler intended to use a flower petal as bait. “What nerve have you, stranger, to do what it is you do? You’re a trouble-maker, nothing but!”
“And you, sir,” scoffed the Dangler as he hooked the petal and sent it into the water, “are a fraud of a frog of a fisherman! Now close your mouth and pray you do not come to the same end as your brethren.”
“In this forest, there is no end,” said the last of the three frog fishermen.
III. Resolved
The hour stood still as the Dangler and the squat fisherman competed for a final prize, but it was the Dangler’s line time tugged first. It pulled sharply but quickly went slack. Confused, the Dangler reeled his hook in as fast as he could, wondering if his catch had freed itself and swam away.
As the Dangler pulled his watery line out of the well, the third fisherman was jerked forward, but he did not fall in, anchored between ramparts by his bloated posterior. He clung greedily to his black pole, unwilling to let go even as the line continued to pull him closer to his doom.
The Dangler drew his third catch from the water, but what came out of the well was nearly as difficult to fix an eye to as his watery line: stuck on the hook was a swathe of shadow that flapped back and forth in the wind like a tattered flag, as dark as midnight, immaterial as a cold breath.
“Impossible!” cried the final fisherman, scales away from succumbing to his fate.
The Dangler tried to pluck the shadow off his hook, but his fingers passed through the ribbon of darkness like so much smoke. “Have you ever seen such a catch?” he asked breathlessly.
The fat fisherman’s eyes were rabid. He licked his lips, fighting against the force that sought to suck him into the restless well. “You’ll pay for this!” he squealed. “In our forest, everything comes back around! You’ll pay for this, stranger!” And then he popped out of his tight seat and fell into the dark water.
The Dangler turned around and jumped off the tower. When he landed, Jai and Ceder heard a sound like a bottle of water being shaken up and they saw drops of oily liquid fly out of his knees like sparks from flint.
The Dangler stood up uninjured and showed the children the shadow he had caught. It was somehow familiar, straining their eyes, slipping into and out of focus. Before they could examine it more closely Astray let out an undulating roar which blew the shadow free from the Dangler’s hook. It disappeared at once in the bright sunlight.
The Dangler gave Astray a peculiar look. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, then he showed Jai and Ceder that the enchanted eggs had been safely recovered, with both Syn and the El fish hale. “We must return to the boat,” he said to the children, setting off through the ferns. “We have been in this forsaken forest far too long already.”
Jai and Ceder rushed after him. “What was on top of the tower?” asked Ceder.
“Trouble,” the fisherman grunted.
“How did you catch that shadow?” asked Jai.
“Timing,” said the Dangler.
“It was magic, wasn’t it?”
“Who can say?”
“Well, it sure looked like magic,” said Jai.
“What does magic look like?” asked the fisherman. “Can a bat see it in the dark? Can a wool fish smell it in the water? Can a man hold it in his hand?”
“Is this a trick question?” asked Jai.
The Dangler suddenly laughed for the first time that the children had ever heard. It was a hollow, deeply stirred sound, with an echo of joy as fragile as the skin of a bubble. “Magic itself is a trick—how could a question about it be any different?”
After that the children followed him in silence as they ran through the forest. When they got back to the boat the Dangler supervised them in pushing the vessel free of the riverbed all the way back to the woodwind tree, then he used his fishing pole to ferry them down the opposite fork in the river.
An hour later they arrived at a wall. It was thirty fins tall, made of the same gray stone as the tower. The wall ran north and south as far as they could see, curving inward at the horizon, suggesting it ran in a colossal loop around the forest. Did I see a wall before or not? Jai struggled to recall.
The river ran undeterred through a culvert in the base of the wall, but the opening was far too small for a boat or a person to squeeze through. In the center of the wall, at head-height, was an inlaid statue of a fat frog with tightly sealed lips hinting up in a satiated smirk.
“That’s a little creepy,” said Ceder.
“A dead end,” Jai despaired. “We’re done for.”
“Not so,” said the Dangler, studying the wall, but he stood as still as a scarecrow.
“Then where are we?” Jai finally asked.
“We are in a place that time has left behind,” replied the fisherman, “or perhaps a place that has left time behind. Either way, I should like to be leaving now.”
“Can you jump to the top, then lift us all over?” asked Jai.
“Or swim under it?” posited Ceder.
The Dangler took a moment to think. “I have a hunch that cheating our way over or under this particular barrier would set us back far more than it would take us forward.”
Jai looked to Ceder to see if she understood this brand of geometry. She shrugged and gave him a sympathetic look—she was as stumped as he was. But the fisherman had proved adept at solving problems in the past and so they waited patiently to see what solution he would invent for this obstacle.
The only sound in the forest was the whistling of the wind in the trees, far in the distance, and the omnipresent hush of the river. The air grew cold, a shade darker. The stone wall defined the edge of the forest—they could not see the sky to the west over the top of the stones; the comet, more gloriously colored than ever in the fading twilight, passed over the wall out of view. Astray roared desperately and looked to the children. Ceder ran her hand through his fur but the cub shook her away.
Ceder found herself staring at the glowing petals of his necklace. She tried counting them on her fingers. “Jai, have you noticed that Astray doesn’t have nearly as many petals as he did yesterday morning?”
“Well…” Jai replied, trying to come up with a quick excuse for why he had not paid more attention to a flower necklace.
“You haven’t been taking them, have you?”
“Hey!” he said defensively. “Why would I take them?”
“Then where did they all go?” she asked, for Jai and she had, by one coincidence or another, been looking elsewhere almost every time the cub released one of his petals to the wind or the water. They had seen him give three to the Wishfish, one to the Oldest Fish in the Sea, and fasten one to the Dangler’s fishing line when they were spinning around the whirlpool—as well as one for Why before he took his final flight—but they had missed all the rest.
“I don’t know,” Jai said at last, “but I have noticed that the white patch on his back is getting bigger. Maybe that has something to with the missing flowers.”
Ceder gave his proposal a patronizing smile but her eyes were dismissive.
The Dangler, stymied by the impassibility of the stone wall, began to whistle the same tune as he had when they arrived in the forest. The purple songbird, never straying far from the boat, lit down on Jai’s shoulder and happily joined in harmony with the Dangler, but she sang in a mismatched range much higher than the fisherman.
Jai had a sudden idea. He had noticed when they were near the three-holed tree that he could hear three distinct notes to the song that the wind made as it blew into the hollows—one low, one high, one somewhere in between. He pursed his lips and tried to whistle, but his throat was too dry. He scooped a handful of water from beside the boat. He was aware that his mouth was not as painfully parched as it had been the previous day, but he gave it no thought, too excited to put his musical theory to the test. He formed a small circle with his lips and blew as hard as he could. Try as he might he could not produce more than a wheezy hiss.
Ceder watched him with a growing smile. It looked like he was imitating a puckerfish. When his cheeks and forehead flushed like plums with the effort she could not help but laugh out loud. “What in the world are you doing, Jai?”
He was resolved not to tell her. She had unraveled the riddle of the signpost at the wishing well and he wanted to show her that he could be clever, too. He continued to blow through his pursed lips until he nearly passed out from sheer exertion, feeling far less impressive than what he intended.
“Jai, if you’re trying to whistle like that flute-tree, I think you need to squeeze your cheeks in more. Like this,” she said as she reached out and laid her hands on his face, squishing his mouth between her palms.
Jai’s heart raced at the touch of her hands and before he knew it a sustained pitch was escaping from his lips like steam from a kettle. Ceder seemed to have figured out his plan; as Jai maintained his exhalation, Ceder mushed his cheeks in and out, drawing a different key from his lips with each fine adjustment she made, trying to match the third tone of the whistling tree.
When Jai hit the right note they knew it at once. His voice and that of the Dangler and the songbird merged into one. The melody flowed as naturally as running water.
The stone frog in the wall opened its eyes in shock. As if it were fighting every urge to do so, the statue’s grinning mouth creaked open ever so slowly.
Astray roared impatiently.
The mouth of the frog expanded to an impossible size, large enough for the boat to pass through. The Dangler unanchored them and they promptly sailed through the frog’s open throat. The song from the whistling tree faded away as the pink boat passed through the wall, leaving the forest behind.