The lake was still quite shallow, and both brownies, Rool in the
stern and Franjean in the bow, were gazing down through the limpid water
at strange markings on the bottom. So preoccupied were they, and so busy
was Willow struggling with the oversized oars, that none of them noticed
a young boy appear suddenly out of the lake.
"What are you doing?" the boy asked.
Both brownies vanished in a flash, under the seats. Willow
dropped the oars and reached for Elora. The boy was smiling radiantly.
He was fair, and tanned, and blue-eyed. He stood waist-deep in the lake,
his palms brushing its surface.
"We're just borrowing this boat," Willow said. "To row out to the
island. We'll return it. THere was no one home. We thought . . ."
"That island's cursed, didn't you know?" The boy kept smiling,
blue eyes fixed on Willow. He brushed little ripples toward them.
"Cursed?" Franjean's head appeared above the gunwale. "The
legend says nothing about a curse."
The boy laughed innocently. "Oh yes. All this lake is cursed.
Queen Bavmorda's powers control all the elements here. Venture on it at
your peril!"
"Fin Raziel . . ." Willow began, but the boy was gone. Only a
little whirlpool remained where he had been, sucking the ripples into its
vortex.
They stared at this whirlpool. They stared at the island.
Except for the very tops of its trees it was still dark and misty,
although the rest of the lake was bathed in sun.
"Odd," Franjean said. "Odd boy."
"I don't think Elora should go out there," Willow said.
"I don't think we should go out there," said Rool.
"Aha! Idea!" Franjean held up a finger. "Of course you should
go, Peck."
"Of course," Rool agreed.
"That's your mission, after all, to deliver Cherlindrea's wand to
Fin Raziel. But you're right about the child. Crossing the lake might
be, uh, rough."
"Winds," Rool said, nodding.
"Waves. So leaver her with Rool and me. Back there. On shore.
In one of those huts."
"You'll guard her?"
"With our lives! Right, Rool?"
"Right!"
* * * * *
With all his might, the little Nelwyn strained toward shore. "Oh
Mims," he whimpered. "Ranon. Oh, Kiaya!" If he had had a free hand he
would have taken his wife's braid from his pocket and pressed it to his
lips, for he was certain he was doomed. Never, never would he cross that
lashing strait and reach the mainland safely. Never again would he see
his beloved family.
"Kill him!" Fin Raziel shrieked suddenly. "Kill him!"
"What?" They were in the middle of the lake, driven toward the
falls by winds and towering waves. The mainland was invisible, the
island had vanished.
"Kill him!" Fin Raziel screamed again, pointing at the prow of
the little boat.
Willow turned.
The boy he had seen earlier, in the shallow water at the village,
was climbing over the gunwale. He was as radiant and as innocent-looking
as ever, his face creased in a broad smile, his flaxen hair windblown.
"What? But he's a child!"
"No, no!" Raziel shrieked. "He's no child! Look!"
The boy now had one foot in the boat, but it was not a foot. It
was a webbed fin. And although he was still smiling, the smile revealed
sharklike teeth. His innocent eyes had reddened with the lust for blood.
Willow swung an oar and jabbed it as hard as he could into the
middle of this creature. Laughing, it flipped into the churning lake,
bobbed porpoiselike, and vanished.
"Too late!" Fin raziel wailed, her voice tiny in the roar of the
wind.
Back the creature came! He was huge, now. His furry back foamed
through the troughs of the waves. His eyes glowed red out of the depths
of the lake. His jaws with their rows of glittering teeth, yawning open
to enguld the boat, loosed a gagging stench of death and decay. Willow
choked, tumbling back, seeing the front half of the boat vanish into the
creature's maw. He had time only for one solid crack with the oar on the
thing's snout, and then he was overboard and sinking, his legs tangled in
the old fishnet rope that bound him to the monster. So fast was the
creature's downward rush that Willow's lungs were bursting before he
found his knife and slashed himself free of the beast.
He bobbed through the surface like a cork, sputtering and gasping.
Huge waves rolled him over. Clinging to the wreckage of the boat, Fin
Raziel shrieked unintelligible warnings, but Willow was too far gone to
hear her properly. In fact, he heard nothing. All had gone silent for
him. In silence the great breakers rolled over him. In silence the maw
of the returning monster yawned open to gulp him down. And in silence,
with the last of his meager strength, Willow groped into his pocket,
fumbled out one of the magic acorns, and threw it.
No force lay behind that throw. Had the monster not been rushing
forward, the acorn would have fallen short. As is was, it looped up and
dropped straight down his gullet.
Sheer momentum carried the beast over Willow and a few feet
farther. But the horrible hairy scales that brushed against the Nelwyn
were soft now, but rock-hard. The dreadful red eye was fixed forever in
gemlike brilliance, and the jaws with their quartzite teeth would yawn
through eternity. The acorn had done its work.
Bavmorda's monstrous guardian had been turned to solid stone.
And like a stone he sank.
"Willow!" Fin Raziel was crying. "Hold on!" He heard her voice
like a glimmer of light in darkness. Reflexes kept him alive, kept him
afloat, kept him paddling while breakers foamed over him. Reflexes
opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, and drove him forward with his
last energy to clutch the end of the oar shoved out from the ruined boat.
Clinging to that oar and to the sound of Raziel's voice, Willow lost
consciousness.
He was not aware when the wind fell, when the waves subsided and
the sky cleared. He was not aware when the hulk of the little boat to
which he and Fin Raziel clung was drawn away from the precipice of the
falls and borne on friendly currents to the beach, or when Franjean and
Rool hurried anxiously down to drag him up on shore.
Drew, Wayland. *Willow.* New York: Del Rey, 1988. 167-174.
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