The Seven Songs by T. A. Barron Page A

the pool and stepped over to the driftwood. Peeling off the seaweed, I searched for any sign of a shell. Nothing.
    I was ready to quit when I noticed a tiny shape in a crack in the wood. It was a sand-colored shell, shaped like a little cone. It could have fit easily on my thumbnail. As I lifted the shell toward me, a black, wormlike creature pushed itself partially out of the opening at the base, then quickly shrunk back inside. Hesitant to bring such a thing too close to my ear, I held it some distance away. Although I could not be sure, I thought I heard a faint, watery whisper.
    Cautiously, I brought the object closer. The watery voice came again, like a wave crashing in the tiny shell’s innermost chambers. “You, splashhh, have chosen well, Merlin.”
    I caught my breath. “Did you say my name?”
    “That I did, splishhh, though you know not mine. It is, splashhh, Washamballa, sage among the shells.”
    “Washamballa,” I repeated, cradling the moist little cone against my earlobe. Something about its voice made my hopes rise. “Do you also know why I have come?”
    “That, splashhh, I do.”
    My heart pounded. “Will you—will you help, then? Will you bring her back to Fincayra?”
    The shell said nothing for several seconds. At last its small, gurgling voice spoke again. “I should not help you, Merlin. The risks splishhh, are so great, greater than you know.”
    “But—”
    “I should not,” continued the shell. “Yet I feel something in you . . . something I cannot resist. While you have so much more to learn, sploshhh, this may well be part of it.”
    As Washamballa paused, I listened to its watery breathing. I dared not say anything.
    “We might succeed, splashhh, or we might fail. I do not know, for even success may be a failure in disguise. Do you still, splashhh, wish to try?”
    “Yes,” I declared.
    “Then hold me tight, splashhh, against your heart, and concentrate on the one you long for.”
    Clasping the shell in both hands, I pressed it against my chest. I thought about my mother. Her table of herbs, pungent and spicy. Her blue eyes, so full of feeling. Her kindness, her quiet demeanor. Her stories about Apollo, Athena, and the place called Olympus. Her faith—in her God, and in me. Her love, silent and strong.
    Mist curled about me. Waves licked my boots. Yet nothing more happened.
    “Try harder, splishhh. You must try harder.”
    I felt Elen’s sadness. That she could never return to Fincayra. That she could never see her son grow into manhood—and that he, in all those years in Gwynedd, had refused to call her Mother. A simple word, a powerful bond. I winced, remembering how much pain I had caused her.
    Slowly, her presence grew stronger. I could feel her embrace, how safe I once felt in her arms. How, for brief moments at least, I could forget all the torments that haunted us. I could smell the shavings of cedar bark by her pillow. I could hear her voice calling me across the oceans of water, the oceans of longing.
    Then came the wind. A fierce, howling wind that threw me down on the rocks and soaked me with spray. For several minutes it raged, battering me ceaselessly. Suddenly, I heard a resounding crack, as if something beyond the mist had broken. The billowing clouds before me began to shift, gathering themselves into strange shapes. First I saw a snake, coiling to strike. Before it did, though, its body melted into the misty form of a flower. The flower slowly swelled, changing into a huge, unblinking eye.
    Then, in the middle of the eye, a dark shape appeared. Only a shadow at first, it grew swiftly more solid. Before long, it looked almost like a person groping in the mist. Stumbling to shore.
    It was my mother.

7: H EADLONG AND H APPILY
    She collapsed, sprawling on the dark, wet rocks. Her eyes were closed, and her creamy skin looked pale and lifeless. Long, unbraided hair, as golden as a summer moon, clung in ragged clumps to her deep blue robe. Yet she was breathing.