Eanrin searched each village with great care. Imraldera, once more scratching signs in the dirt, had been able to give him only a vague idea of what he sought. Through all the disjointed scribbling and a long guessing game, he had learned that he must find the king’s village (though Imraldera had insisted there was no king, merely her father). To reach this village, he would have to cross four gorges and four rivers. He must look for the soil that was red and the house upon a hill. In that house lived a child and a . . . something. A cow? No. A lizard? No, no. A walrus? No!
“Not a . . . Iubdan’s beard, not a dog!”
Yes, a child and a dog. Another dog. As though there weren’t already dogs enough bound up in this adventure! The cat sighed as he padded his sleek way across the landscape. But Imraldera had been firm in this. He must find the house on a hill where a child and her dog lived. After a little guessing, Eanrin discovered that this was her sister and that Imraldera, above all, wanted to know that the girl was all right.
“But what about the Faerie Beast?” Eanrin had asked. “Are we not here for him? Gleamdren said Hri Sora sent you to find him. He will be aware that someone has breached his borders and may even now be looking for us. We must be wary!”
But Imraldera shook her head. The child and the dog . . . they were of first importance. The child must be safe. The Beast would come second.
Nevertheless, Eanrin insisted she remain behind and allow him to venture into the Hidden Land alone. “I won’t be long,” he told her. “There are Faerie Paths throughout this kingdom, and not all of them are controlled by the Beast. I’ll use those and be back before you know it.
“But,” he added with an earnest clasp of her hand, “if you see any sign of the Beast, promise me you will run. Don’t wait for me. Just run. As fast as you can. Get out of this place and never return.”
Imraldera gave him a long look. Her face held an expression he could not read. If only he knew her language of hands and faces!
Then she nodded and patted his head as though he were in his cat form. When he started on his way, she stood at the Place of the Teeth and watched him, looking small and vulnerable but as brave as he had ever seen her.
What a creature this mortal maid was. What a spirit, bigger than life itself!
There had been no sign of the Beast as Eanrin made his way into the low country. He wondered if perhaps the Path of the Lumil Eliasul that Imraldera followed was imperceptible to the master of this demesne. That would be a bit of luck! If such were the case, Eanrin could take all the time he needed to search for that child and that dragon-bitten dog.
Crossing the rivers was the worst part. When he came to those, he was obliged to take his man’s shape and, under cover of night, climb down into the gorge. There were forests in these gorges through which the rivers ran. To his surprise, when he inspected them, he discovered they were part of the Wood Between. How strange that the mortal realm would be so close to the Between and yet remain so hidden and separate from all other worlds.
But then he sniffed the rivers and realized: They were barriers. They were enchanted waters set in place long ago to serve as protection. While those within the Land could pass into the Wood and become lost, creatures of the Wood could not come out. Not so long as these rivers were in place.
He wondered how the Beast had gotten in. The rivers should have prevented his crossing into the world. But from the smell of the earth, the Beast had been here for centuries. Perhaps he had come before these waters flowed. Who could say?
Eanrin found canoes tethered to the shores of these rivers and, though he was no waterman, managed to cross through calmer waters and climb the gorges to the tablelands above. In this way he crossed all four rivers and came to the place where the soil was red.
So it was that an orange cat with a plumy tail strolled into Redclay at noon one day, head high like a reigning monarch surveying new territory. Other mangy toms gave him dirty looks, and one or two offered to fight. But he was much larger than any of these and soon sent them running. Queen cats hissed and hid from him. He didn’t smell quite right. They were no fools; they knew a true cat when they smelled one. This one was certainly a cat, but he was so much more, and this they did not like.
But the people of the village ignored him. To them, he was just another cat. So he passed as though unseen through their midst, searching for a child with a dog.
The difficulty was, there were many ragged little urchins living in Redclay, and more than a few of them had great watchdogs standing guard while their mothers worked. How could one particular girl be picked out of all of these? The cat sat awhile in the village center, pondering this question.
Then he realized: None of the girl children, mute as frightened rabbits, had dogs. Only the boys.
That should narrow his search, he decided. Imraldera had been quite clear on the subject. The girl he sought had a dog. Also, that girl lived up a hill.
Eanrin turned to gaze up at the house on the hill overlooking the village. It was impossible to think of it as the house of a king or princess. It was little more than a glorified hut as far as he was concerned, larger than the rest of the huts making up the village to be sure, but a hut no less. He trotted up the hill to investigate more closely.