Eanrin, before his reason could catch up with his reflexes, took on his man form and caught her. Her hands gripped his sleeves as though they were her final lifeline, and her face pressed into the front of his doublet. An almost inaudible moan escaped her lips, cutting him to the quick.
“Steady, Imraldera,” he murmured, gently setting her back upright. “Steady.”
The girl shook herself and stepped back from him. She signed something he did not understand but which he guessed from her face to mean, “I’m fine on my own!” A bold-faced lie, but at least the creature had spirit.
“We’re nearly to the falls,” Eanrin told her. He rubbed a hand uncomfortably down the back of his neck. Why did he still feel the warmth of her hands gripping his arms? A strange sensation, not altogether unpleasant, but utterly terrifying. “When we get to the River, be sure to stay close beside me. Not too close, mind! Don’t get in my way. But . . . well, do not touch the water. Understand?”
She nodded. Her gaze met his, eye for eye. She seemed to be daring him to try something. What, he could not guess. To coddle her? To treat her like a helpless kitten? Well, was it his fault if that’s just what she was?
“Keep up,” he said in almost a growl.
The voice of the River was unmistakable now. Give her back to me! it roared, and Eanrin guessed they must be near indeed to the falls. Weeping willows grew thickly here, at the water’s edge. He parted a curtain of trailing leaves, gazed out, and nearly turned back then and there.
He had not realized that Cozamaloti Gate, the only entrance to Etalpalli, was on the very brink of a waterfall.
Imraldera, curious to see why the poet, even in his man’s shape, bristled from head to toe, pressed up behind him and, standing on tiptoe, peered over his shoulder. She gasped at the sight that met her eyes. She had seen waterfalls in the Land before, places where the rivers met and rushed white over steep drops, and she had thought them beautiful. But nothing in the Land compared to this. A vision of absolute power. The beauty of it, the awfulness made her tremble. For a moment, she was thankful—she would change nothing from her previous life and risk losing the chance to gaze upon something as marvelous as Cozamaloti.
“Well,” said Eanrin through dry lips, “that’s certainly more than I expected. Is that a bridge?”
Suspended across the brink of the falls, attached by ropes to tree trunks on either side of the River, was a rope bridge of a sort. Its fibers were frayed, and many of the planks along the walk were rotted and broken. It swung above that mist-shrouded chasm, stirred by even the slightest breeze.
And just beyond the brink, just where the water took its final gasp before making that plunge, was the invisible Faerie gate.
Eanrin drew a long breath. That was an awful lot of water. He did not care for water.
“Mighty deeds await,” he told himself. “Fair Gleamdren must be rescued . . . and besides, no one ever called a cat a coward!”
Imraldera gave the poet a look. When he started his descent to the bridge, she caught his sleeve. “What are you doing?” she signed when he looked back.
“Come along, sweet princess. We must reclaim my true love, which means taking the dive.” Eanrin continued down, calling over his shoulder as he went, “My one comfort is that Glomar could not possibly have gone before me! I cannot imagine the faithful badger working up the nerve to jump off the bridge, for all his noble intentions. We’ve got the advantage, Imraldera, my girl, I feel it in my whiskers!”
Imraldera’s jaw dropped. Jump off the . . . No!
She latched onto the branches of a weeping willow, bracing herself as though afraid that, by sheer force of will, Eanrin would draw her after himself. There was no chance she was going anywhere near that bridge.
Eanrin stepped onto the rotting boards and fraying ropes, the River roaring beneath him, its words drowned out by its own noise. Taking cat form for better balance, the poet slinked out to the middle and, his ears flat, crept to the edge.
“Oh, Great Lights preserve us!” he gasped and drew back his pink nose, pressing his orange body flat.
The River laughed at him.
Yet Eanrin was no coward. He was simply bracing for the proper spring. Any moment now, his muscles would flex, his paws would gracefully clear the ropes, his body arching elegantly as he soared over that death drop and landed on his feet (as a cat must) in the demesne of Hri Sora. He could see it all in his mind, a leap worthy of epics!
He was simply preparing himself. That was all.
He realized suddenly that Imraldera was not beside him. His whiskers quivering (along with the rest of his body), he looked back up to the bank. There she stood, staring after him with those wide eyes. Coward indeed! At least he’d had the nerve to venture this far! That little mortal, living forever in fear of her own imminent death, hadn’t made a single step down. Serve her right if he left her there, leapt into Etalpalli, and continued his quest alone. And that’s just what he would do.
As soon as he was ready.
Maybe a quick groom was in order? After all, one doesn’t want to step into a foreign demesne looking shabby, especially not when on a mission of rescue.