Zenith

  In Candlewood, no one hears the Earth roar.

  Not those gathering for supper around sundown fires, nor Lily, racing through the trees in the face of the wind. Her hair streams behind her, glinting in the lights of the tree lamps like the tawny tail of a fox.

  Beyond the trees, on the edge of the Lake of Longhope, Wing is perched halfway up Candlewood Spire. The huge rugged spire of rock points straight to the Star of the North. Wing is studying the night with his telescope, a grounded star sailor on a stone mast. When the Earth trembles, the thick down of hair on his skin bristles. His hackles rise as he hears the faraway crack and roar.

  He has heard that voice before. Once, when he was small, on the journey through the glacier gorge when the mountain swallowed Tuck. It’s the voice of the Earth.

  Wing sweeps the telescope over the rock faces of the mountains, but there’s nothing to see. The tremor came through the rocky pass behind him, carrying ice echoes from the glacier gorge that cuts through the mountains in the world beyond the lake. Often, the land slips and slides and deadly spring tides of snow rumble down from the peaks. But what he just heard is something much darker and deeper than that.

  When Lily comes, he’ll tell her. Once the stars wheel around the North Star, their anchor, and the great lake throws morning up into the sky, he and Lily might sneak off into the mountains to track the voice of the Earth.

  He knows Lily. She’ll want to go.

  Just to see.

  The great waterfall has crashed into sudden meltdown. The huge force of it tears at a weakness in the rock. The land cracks and breaks and a vast slice of the mountain hurtles into the glacier gorge.

  The Earth roars as an old ice wound reopens.

  A green wind blows over the mountains, fresh from the trees around the lake. It rushes into the opening and snakes through the dark salty air of the tunnels that worm deep into the mountain and lead to Ilira, and the world beyond.