CHAPTER VIIION TO MECHANA
Raphaelsettled back between the eagle’s wings. He felt tired and very hungry.
‘Here,’ shouted the eagle, ‘lean down.’
Raphael leaned down, and Empyrean handed him something cold and slimy.
‘Thought you might be hungry,’ screamed the bird.
Raphael held the thing up in the moonlight. It was a fish.
I am an eagle. I must do as the eagles do, reasoned the boy. At least this will keep me from starving.
But the limp fish in his hand did not bring him any desire to eat.
I wonder, he thought, whether this was one of my friends under the ocean. Meanwhile he held the fish almost at arm’s length.
In a few moments, however, hunger overcame distaste, and he began to eat. Raw fish hadits advantages. It was filling. Cats like raw fish.
When he had finished, Raphael wiped his hands carefully upon his feather suit and looked about, lulled by the rise and fall of the great wings. The moon, pale and remote, hung like a silver plate in the sky.
The boy wondered how the eagle knew where he was going. He remembered dimly that mariners guide their ships over the sea at night by the aid of stars. A meteor fell in a slow blaze of sparks across the sky. Once he had been on a boat at night....
When Raphael woke, it was early morning. In the east the sun was rising, to the west, land rimmed the horizon. Near at hand flew another eagle.
‘Have they found the Sorcerer?’ called Raphael, wide awake.
Empyrean nodded.
‘Where?’
‘Ahead of us.’
Other eagles joined them, sweeping down outof the sky in slow circles. Raphael could see the white line of surf breaking over the bleak shore back of which rose low hills covered with dark firs.
They flew on rapidly and came in a few moments to the head of a little bay where a sluggish river emptied into the sea. At the mouth of the river was a stone landing from which led a straight white road.
‘Look! Look!’ yelled Raphael.
Alongside the jetty lay a huge silver submarine with a gangplank leading from the conning tower to the jetty. Deserted, it slept like an ocean monster, gently rubbing against the pier head, while little waves creamed against its shimmering sides. There was no movement, no sign of life anywhere. Only the sun glistening on silver steel decks.
Without lighting they flew inland, following the river and the road which led away from the coast. After a time mountains appeared on the horizon, the river disappeared in low hills, and only the slender road wound westward.
They rose slowly higher and higher as themountains pushed up into the sky. It was like flying, Raphael thought, over a rumpled comforter on a gigantic bed. Clouds gathered about them, masses of cold, moist vapor shutting out the earth below, smothering the mountains in their soft folds, shutting them off into another world with the sun and the blue sky.
At signal from Empyrean, all the eagles dove through the clouds and, swooping in a great circle, lit on top of a mountain which overhung a broad valley that stretched westward as far as Raphael could see. Through the center of this valley flowed a broad river.
All the eagles gathered about Empyrean.
‘Does the Sorcerer live down there?’ asked Raphael, pointing.
The eagle nodded: ‘To the west, there is a great city called Mechana.’
The boy said nothing for a moment. He could make out distant lakes like pools of melted lead. Almost at his feet the road they had been following wormed through the mountain range and disappeared into the forest. It was cold on themountain. In spite of his feather suit, Raphael shivered.
‘Does that road lead to Mechana?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ answered the bird.
Raphael felt a sudden desire to run, to feel the earth under his feet, to smell the clean forest smell. Flying was fun, but....
‘Empyrean, would it be all right if I ran along the road a little way to get warm?’ begged the boy. ‘I’m frozen.’
The eagle nodded. ‘Follow the road,’ he ordered curtly, ‘and when you reach the outskirts of the city, wait for me. I shall join you there.’
Raphael scrambled eagerly down the mountain to the road. Then, because the sun was warm and the air crisp, he called upon the powers of the antelope, and leapt forward in easy, tireless strides.
The road led from the cedar-dotted uplands into a valley of spruce. Logs covered with green moss and moulding yellow leaves lay tangled in the undergrowth. In the trees chickadees fluted and chirped, and a hen partridge scuttled across the road with her tiny yellow brood. Raphael politely said ‘Good-morning,’ but they only fluttered and stared at him out of brown, curious eyes.
DOES THAT ROAD LEAD TO MECHANA?‘DOES THAT ROAD LEAD TO MECHANA?’
‘DOES THAT ROAD LEAD TO MECHANA?’
‘DOES THAT ROAD LEAD TO MECHANA?’
Raphael ran on. Half an hour later, as he turned a sharp corner in the road, he nearly stumbled over a large black bear and her cub. The bear rose on her hind legs, her ears laid flat and the lips of her tan muzzle drawn back showing large white teeth.
Raphael stopped.
‘Good-morning,’ he said as pleasantly as he could, though his voice shook.
The bear dropped back to the road with a soft thud.
‘Who are you?’ she grunted.
‘I am Raphael,’ he replied, ‘Commander of the Elements under Gæa, the Earth Mother.’
By this time the cub had ambled forward to inspect this strange creature dressed in black feathers who smelt so queerly.
‘You are welcome then,’ growled the bear surlily, and she sat back on her furry rump showingthe leather soles of her hind feet. ‘It will be a hot day.’
Raphael seated himself on a dry log at the side of the road.
‘It is going to be a hot day,’ he repeated. ‘How far is it to Mechana, the city of the Sorcerer?’
‘What Sorcerer?’
Then he told the bear about Mechanus, and how he had stolen his sister Cassandra. Meanwhile the cub snuffled about Raphael’s feet until, becoming bored, he ambled off to root in a rotten tree for grubs.
When Raphael stopped talking, the she bear said: ‘I have heard of this Sorcerer. It is said that he is like a man, and that there is a city a long way to the west. But life is hard in the woods. I find it difficult enough to feed my children, and so I do not bother about what does not concern me.’
‘But that’s just it,’ argued Raphael. ‘It does concern you. To-day you have a forest to live in and pools to drink from. But to-morrow the Sorcerer may cut down this forest, the pools will dry, the berries will disappear; you will find nothing to feed on, and then how will your children live?’
RAPHAEL SEATED HIMSELF ON A DRY LOGRAPHAEL SEATED HIMSELF ON A DRY LOG
RAPHAEL SEATED HIMSELF ON A DRY LOG
RAPHAEL SEATED HIMSELF ON A DRY LOG
The bear looked at him out of cunning little eyes. ‘When that time comes, I shall move elsewhere to other forests.’ And she wrinkled her long nose in a yawn.
‘I am sorry for your sister,’ she added. ‘I know how I should feel if a cub of mine were stolen. But, after all, life in the forest is one danger following another. We must eat. We must find food, and that is difficult enough. Meanwhile the Earth Mother who has always cared for us will look after her people. There is no use in worrying about to-morrow. For many years men have hunted us, and yet we live.’
Raphael muttered, ‘The Sorcerer will be more terrible than man.’
The bear stirred restlessly. ‘Well, perhaps as you say, some day we may go. It is quite true that life is growing harder for us. But then we do not expect to live forever.’
Here the little cub broke in with a whimper,‘Mamma, I’m hungry. You promised me a log with fat slugs in it.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ the bear said to Raphael, ‘but a mother’s life is a hard one. Yes, Lawrence, I’ll be right with you.’
Raphael watched them out of sight, and then ran on down the road. Down through the valley it wound until it reached the river, where it followed the river-bank. Having been granted the powers of an antelope, Raphael stopped every now and then to nibble at the green buds and tender shoots of late spring. In this way the day passed.
Toward evening he came suddenly upon a clearing hewn out of the forest. In the evening light the white-topped stumps of freshly cut trees looked like the gravestones of a bleak cemetery. Raphael moved forward very slowly. The road left the river and climbed a steep hill, and, as the boy reached the top, he saw the city itself below him.
‘There you are,’ said a familiar voice as a shadow passed over his head, and Empyrean liton the ground beside him. ‘I have been following you for the last hour. What do you think of it?’
Raphael stood and said nothing.
Raphael in the shadow