Questing for Adventure

“Come on, Quinn!” Neil bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, nerves jittering with excitement. He looked down the slope of the high hill to where Quinn was struggling to climb up. She pulled herself up the slope using protruding branches. Her feet slipped over moss-covered rocks and wet grass, but she finally, finally, made it to where he was, breathing hard through her snub nose and brushing the dirt off the front of her clothes. Her red hair was coming out of its tight braid.

“How much further is it?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Neil told her. “That's why it's an adventure!” He turned and continued walking, this time down the other side of the hill. It was grassy but steep, so Neil had to walk almost sideways to keep himself steady. It was the third hill they'd climbed today. The further they got from Dormer, the fewer people they saw and the more trees they found. Soon there might not be any sign of people at all.. They would really and truly be somewhere magical, then.

“So an adventure is just wandering until we find something?” Quinn asked. He could hear her close behind him, but she'd fall behind him eventually. She always did.

“No, an adventure is exploring. We know what we're looking for. The Nowhere Lands,” they said together. “And when we find them, there's all sorts of adventures we can have there!”

 “But what if the Nowhere Lands are just a story?” Quinn asked, as she always did. “What then?”

“But what if they're not?” Neil said, as he always did. “I don't want to miss out on that if they are. Besides,” he added, skipping down the hill, “where did the stories come from?” Quinn had nothing to say to that.

The landscape rolled on around them, endlessly green and lush. The Taltale mountains loomed behind them, dark and distant, their tops white with snow, their bases covered in trees and fog. Here and there little mushrooms grew, cream or red. Beneath a spreading oak tree Neil found a ring of mushrooms growing in a perfect circle. He pointed it out to Quinn. “A fairy ring,” he said. “A good sign.”

“Fairies almost never leave Nowhere.” Neil knew that despite the doubts she constantly voiced, Quinn knew the stories by heart. They all did. Everyone in Dormer and probably everyone in Yoreland grew up hearing the Nowhere Land stories. Maybe everyone in the world did. Nowhere was where magic came from. “What are they doing out here?”

Neil put his hand into the middle of the ring. It just fit. His palms came away damp, clumps of black soil sticking to his pale skin. “Whenever they leave,” Neil said, “they're on a mission. From the Autumn Elk, usually.”

“Or they just want to cause trouble.”

“But that still means they were here. And that's something.” The two of them moved on. The terrain became even wilder. Trees were taller, branches larger so that the sun was almost blocked out. They walked until they were hungry, and then they ate the apples and scones that they had stuffed in their pockets.

“Maybe we should head back soon,” Quinn said. “I don't want to be lost out here in the dark.”

“We won't be lost.”

“Oh really?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in such a fierce imitation of Neil's Ma that he found himself recoiling from her, but her eyes were sparkling with amusement. “Where are we now?”

Neil opened his mouth to answer before realizing that he wasn't quite sure. “Yoreland,” he said.

Quinn sighed. “So we're already lost.”

“No! We're not!”

“Let's go back. Neil, this is stupid...”

“Just a little further, Quinn, please!” This always happened, with him begging her to go on a little more, and then a little more, and more. “I know we'll find something soon! We already found the fairy ring. And faith is the key to finding Nowhere.”

He could see her considering it, frowning and crossing her arms, fidgeting. He knew she would agree to it, but she had to say it...

And at last she said, “Fine. A little longer.” A little longer brought them to a stream that babbled and glugged its way down the hill. Neil followed close to its winding course with Quinn right behind him. “This has to go somewhere,” Quinn said. “A lake, maybe. Lake Locks, I bet.”

That might be good. There was one story about a powerful mage from the Nowhere that had crossed into Yoreland through a lake. The mage, whose particular powers had let him walk through water without having to breath, had climbed down to the bottom of a lake in Nowhere and emerged in a Yorish lake.

The ground turned down once again. The stream grew thinner until it was just a just a trickle of water running down a stony staircase. Moss grew over the slippery rocks, and the low-hanging trees made a green tunnel. Halfway down the steep slope Neil slipped, the wet rocks flying from under him. He landed hard on his backside, and pain flashed across his back. “Aaargh.”

From further up the hill, Quinn gasped, then called down to him. “Neil, let's go back. We can try again tomorrow.”

He stood up, brushing the dirt and water from his trousers. His backside smarted, and there was a cut on his hand that he hadn't felt. He wiped the cut off, but it just stung more. “Look.” He pointed downhill. “We'll go to that bridge and then we can turn back.” Or he could convince her to go further. There was a tiny part of him that was sure, or mostly sure, perhaps, that any sort of quest for the Nowhere Lands would end in failure. If they were real, and they could be found, why had no one done it before? He'd discussed this with Ma and Pop and Quinn many times before. It took someone pure of heart or powerful in magic to find the Nowhere. Sometimes both. There must have been others before who met those requirements, but maybe, just maybe, he and Quinn were the first who really were the right ones...

The bridge was old, perhaps a hundred years old by Neil's guess. It was made of stone, an arc that ran over the stream. It must have been a cow path in older times. Perhaps it was still used. “Just under there...” His voice echoed under the dark stone bridge. For one moment his world was cool darkness, the echoing sounds of boots splashing through water, and the growing light at the other end. Then he was through, the green-tinted sunlight brushing his face and sounds returned to normal. Quinn came splashing behind him moments later.

“See anything?” she asked.

Neil frowned at the landscape around him. “No,” he admitted, heart sinking. Had he really expected to find anything? How foolish.

A sudden gust of cold wind at his back made Neil shiver. He wrapped his arms around himself as Quinn did the same. “Let's go back,” she said. They turned around to head back under the bridge.

The problem was, that was no longer possible.

The stone arc of the bridge was lined with golden light. A cold wind came whistling through bridge, and instead of seeing the other end of the stream, there was a winter landscape, all snow and bare trees. The cold wind stirred Neil's hair. Snowflakes drifted out, landed and then melted on Neil's skin.

“Oh my gosh,” Quinn whispered.

“This is it.” Neil stepped forward to the bridge. He hesitated for a moment and, ignoring Quinn's gasp, stuck his arm under the bridge and into the winter. His hand and lower arm became cold, but he could still feel the warmth of the late summer day beating down on the rest of him. It was a very strange feeling. “Should we go in?” he asked in an undertone. Before Quinn could answer something shuffled its way through the snow to the bridge. It was a man, or something man-sized, dressed in a long cloak and hood, head bowed against the wind on his side of the bridge. Quinn held onto Neil's shoulder, holding him back. The thing raised its head towards them, and with slow hands lowered its hood. Neil felt himself tense.

It was a man. An ordinary-looking man with long black hair, so dark it seemed to drink the light around him, and a tired but kind expression and golden eyes.

“A mage,” Quinn breathed.

“A fairy king,” said Neil.

“Children,” the man or the mage or the fairy said. He smiled. “How do you fair?”

“Well,” said Neil, speaking for both of them. What should he do? What should they do?

“What are your names?” he asked.

“Neil,” said Neil.

“Quinnalus,” said Quinn. “Who...what are you?”

The man smiled again. “Call me Lorcen.” A fairy name. “What I am is a man on a quest.”

Neil nudged Quinn in the side, as if to say I told you so! What he said was, “What are you looking for?”

Lorcen stepped closer. He kept his hands folded into the wide sleeves of his robes. His hair blew around his face in the icy wind. His black hair and golden eyes made him look majestic. Though his hair covered his ears Neil swore that they had a pointed shape. This has to be someone magical. “Tell me,” he said, “have you heard of the Shrouded Isles?”

“Of course.” The Isles lay just north of Yoreland, but no one and nothing lived there but the hardiest or loneliest of men. Neil felt something tingling in his chest. He knew where this was going.

“What I seek is on the northernmost of the Isles, on the Edge of the World. It is something that I have great need of.”

Behind Neil, Quinn made a little “Oh,” sound.

“On the very end of the island, where nothing lies to the north but sea and ice, there is something that I need. An egg.”

“The Monster of the Islands' egg?” Quinn said, her voice quiet. “But that's just a legend...”

The man spread his hands and smiled at them, his teeth white as the snow behind him. “And you question that after seeing this? It is real, or it must be. Either way, it can be found.”

“Take us into the Nowhere,” Neil said. “Take us in and we'll accept your quest.”

“I cannot,” Lorcen said.

A sudden abandon seized Neil. He pushed Quinn's hand off his shoulder and stepped forward, his strides long. The wind from beneath the bridge howled and beat him back. Lorcen extended his hand, palm outward, and Neil had the impression that he was pressing his hand against a glass wall dividing the wintery Nowhere from the late summer in Yoreland. He reached out, grasping, trying to touch the edge of the divide, to get even one finger into that magical land. He felt his skin tingle, but he could come no closer.

“You cannot come in. It is impossible. Not until you do this thing for me.”

“Why can't you do it?” Quinn asked.

“I cannot leave,” Lorcen said. “I can only make requests of those pure of heart.” He inclined his head in a bow. “Such as you two.”

Neil stood still, heartbeats away from the opening. “Why do you need it?” he asked.

“To save the Nowhere lands. When I hatch what is inside the egg, my lands will be saved.”

The Nowhere Lands in danger...Neil could think of no more noble a quest. “Then we'll do it.”

Lorcen bowed again. “My eternal thanks. When you have it, return it here.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Farewell, and fortune light your way.” The scene began to fade, but Lorcen's golden eyes remained on them as he stepped backwards from the bridge. The golden light lining the bridge's arc shrinking as if some invisible hand were crumpling the winter scene up before their eyes until nothing was left but the empty underside of the bridge. The winds that kissed Neil carried a leaf-scented warmth. For a moment he said nothing, just brushed the droplets of melted snow out of his hair. Then, without turning to Quinn, he said, “So.”

“Are we going to do this?” Quinn asked him.

She'd said 'we'.

He turned to her. “Is that even a question? We can't turn down something like this! When will we ever get a chance like this again?”

“Never,” Quinn admitted. “But we need to get to the Shrouded Isles somehow. And what will our parents think when we tell them?”

That Neil hadn't considered. Clearly, Ma would never let him travel to the Shrouded Isles. She'd never believe that a fairy king from the Nowhere Lands had spoken to him either. She'd call him a liar and give him chores to do and that would be that. “We won't tell them. We'll go. Now.”

“Neil...”

“We won't be gone long! We can write them so they won't get worried. You know it's the only way, Quinn. Please.”

Quinn frowned down at her shoes, scuffing the heel of one with the toe of the other, but somehow she said, after Neil wasn't sure how long, “Alright.” She looked up at him. “I don't think you'd get far without me anyway.”

They walked back under the dark stone arc of the bridge and back up the hill, Neil's heart hammering in his chest, imagination alight with possibilities, as they made their way to adventure.

“How long do you think it'll take us to get to the Isles?” Neil wondered aloud as they crested the top of the hill again. “A day? No, a couple of days.”

“It might be close to a week,” Quinn said. She sat down with a thump and exhaled. “We need to get to the north end of Yoreland and find a ship or mage or something that will give us passage to the Shrouded Isles. And then we have to find the egg...”

“One step at a time. We'll get to the Isles first.”

“Right.”

Neil realized that his feet were sore and his legs felt stretched thin. He and Quinn had been walking for most of the day. He plopped down next to her. More rolling hills and emerald forests rose before them, receding far off into the distance. Somewhere out there were the Shrouded Isles and the egg that they sought.

“You ready for this?” Neil asked his friend.

“Aye. I am.”

It would be a long journey.