A tapping on the stairs startled me.

The monkey reappeared, walking on three legs and clutching a small red stone box. He still palmed his rock in the other hand, and he pressed it into the floor as he went.

"Thank you, Blake. Just set it here." The Seer pointed at the table.

The monkey leaped up and set the box next to the scroll, then jumped back to the floor and returned to the shelf where he'd started, setting his rock down next to him.

The Seer grabbed the box and leaned his face in close. His sylphe zipped over as if he knew exactly what they were up to, crouching next to the Seer so they were nearly cheek to cheek, depending on how you see sylphes NDK. I thought maybe he was going to whisper a magical password, but instead they blew on it together, as if trying to get dust out of the crack. Something clicked inside the box, and the Seer pulled open the lid. "Thank you!" he said, and his sylphe floated back to the shelf.

Inside, on a fine gray cloth, rested three white stones. They seemed to be glowing—though I couldn't tell whether that was actual light or just their breath.

Locke squinted. "What are those?"

"Perfect lights," said the Seer, "a combination of fire and stone. And don't touch them. They're very hot." He immediately contradicted his own advice by pinching one stone with five fingertips and lifting it over the scroll as if pouring light. Nothing seemed to change though—the page looked no different, just better illuminated. The Seer said something under his breath. "It appears to be a Boakes curse... He means to murder an entire land with it."

Shilohe moved closer, her eyes scanning the scroll eagerly under the new light.

"Careful not to touch it," whispered the Seer.

"What does it say?" asked Locke.

"It's a covenant, written out on this—indestructible, I think—scroll."

"It is indestructible," said Locke.

Shilohe and the Seer looked at him questioningly.

He'd skipped that part of his story. "I got hit with a spear, when the scroll was under my shirt." He pressed his palm into his chest till he located the pain precisely. "It didn't go through."

Shilohe looked impressed.

The Seer peered at Locke as if divining the whole story; then he nodded. "The scroll spells out the parameters of the curse. It requires..." He began to skim over the text with a hovering finger. "A hero to enter... and lift the Sword of the Eternal... and strike the lucid chains that bind the empyrean." He lifted his hand and waved away the rest.

Shilohe's eyes stayed on the manuscript, moving in a precise pattern, as if gulping the words. Then she gasped. We looked at her, and she looked at the Seer, and when their eyes met they traded a knowing glance. What had she read that the Seer hadn't spoken aloud?

"And the villain will have to give his life too, right?" she said.

"Yes, I believe so. He had to offer his life to balance the... the other requirements. It should have killed him already—just creating it—so something must be keeping him alive. He didn't write this, you know—Stane didn't. A salaminde wrote it. It's simply a contract, an agreement with Saede himself. And Stane has to comply with the terms as well."

"So it can be broken?" asked Locke.

"Oh, yes, of course. Well, the curse can. But the contract can't. It can only be fulfilled. It's simple really. We need three things: the where, the what, and the who. First is the source—you have to know the location of the curse's origin. Second is the sword—you need a weapon powerful enough to equal it. And third is the... uh, I guess you could call the third the who—you need a person willing to do it."

Shilohe nodded her head solemnly, as if the price were very high.

Then something happened which I'd seen a thousand times, yet never quite in this way:

The Seer's sylphe moved toward his ear and began to whisper. The old man's brow furrowed as he listened with powerful intensity. His gaze slowly rose, from the floor, to the wall, to the ceiling, as if pieces of the future were assembling before his very eyes. Some mysterious miracle flowed through the room. I wondered whether he'd formed a harmony with deity—perhaps a dialogue with my mother, Numa. I watched with jealousy, wishing to hear and wanting her to talk to me too.

The sylphe finished and moved a foot away from the Seer's right eye, waiting.

The Seer looked at his sylphe then turned his eyes in a blank stare toward Locke. He remained like that, out of focus, for a long time, reminiscent of the way Locke's father had stared in wonder the night before.

Locke swallowed. He'd felt it too, something... hard to describe. Something he wanted to understand so he could feel it again. "What...?"

"What?" asked the Seer, snapping out of his meditative trance and looking at Locke with his present eyes.

"I was just wondering what... what you're going to do."

"Me or us?" said the Seer.

"Oh. I don't know," said Locke, and, when the Seer eyed him, I felt a little ashamed of our plan to go home after delivering the scroll.

"I see." A laugh escaped the Seer's throat like two small puffs of smoke.

"What will we do exactly?" asked Shilohe.

"I'm going to the Tomb of Naephe, where I hope to find his sword—one of those bathed in the empyrean by the Lukaiim. It should fit the conditions of the contract."

"Will you need help?" she asked.

"Not with that. But I will also send someone to the Well at the World's End."

When the Seer said those words, that unnameable feeling pierced us again, filling us, and especially Locke, with an inconsolable longing. He wanted to see the place even before he knew what it was.

Shilohe asked, "Who will you send?" at the same time that Locke asked, "What's that?" When their words overlapped, they looked at each other and blushed. Maybe she did like him a little.

The Seer smiled. He looked at Locke and began to answer his question first: "There is a well, in a temple built by demigods, from which pours a substance called living water—a combination of rain and fire."

"Rain and fire?" said Locke.

"If it strikes you as unnatural, remember that it is above nature not below it."

Locke nodded, but he actually needed some time for that idea to settle. It did strike him as unnatural. Or unreachable maybe. "And the scroll said this substance will help break the curse?"

"Actually, the scroll didn't mention it. But to break the curse with the sword, we must go to the center of its physical location. And we don't know where that is, so we'll use the living water to find the way."

"And who are you going to send for it?" asked Shilohe.

The Seer's pink bottom lip hung gently beneath his waterfalling beard, and he stared with glassy eyes for a moment as he said, "I was planning to invite our young friend Locke to go."

Locke gasped in surprise. So that was what the sylphe had whispered about. His heart thumped with excitement. He breathed in at such an honor. Then he looked at Shilohe.

Her countenance had fallen. She turned away.

The Seer gave her a sad gaze; then he looked back at Locke. "Well?"

Locke braced himself as the earth pressed in on all sides.

Though he held no reverence for the Seer's unearthly gifts, he held deference for the man himself. Locke was also willing to help if that might in turn help Nicke. NDK

Doubts tumbled down like a landslide, damming his ability to choose. The Seer was asking him to agree to something he knew nothing about, a huge dare, and death was what happened when you dared. He knew that all too well. He glanced to the side, hoping to find courage waiting somewhere nearby, ready to transform him into a bold hero. But it didn't appear, and his fears didn't relent—looming, writhing, gaining hold.

I was a child of Numa: I found comfort in the freedom of air and skies. Choice was the highest gift. And here I was witnessing that gift in action, at a time, I could tell, when the future really did hang in the balance. As the room stood quiet, I looked to Lonae, wondering what a sylphe like her would do. She couldn't help me through the harmony—that required the elphes being involved. But she gave me a nod and an encouraging smile.

More than anything, I wanted my elphe to listen to me. I moved forward to whisper, and words came from somewhere beyond me: "If you say yes, you take a chance: you may become a hero or you may lose your life. Your second option is to heed your fears: stay home and be the still wind that dies."

When I quoted Song of Martigane, his thoughts went to the twins. What would they do? It was obvious. And he wanted so badly to be like them.

But why would the Seer choose me? I'm just a kid. Just a kid.

This thought repeated over and over in our mind, as waves lapping onto the shore.

"Maybe you are just a kid," I whispered. "But if you accept the call, you'll be the sort of kid who says yes."

Shilohe watched him closely.

"I'm just not sure I can," said Locke aloud. That embarrassed me—it was the sort of thing an elphe should only say to his sylphe.

The Seer leaned forward in a way that suggested a complicated dialogue was going on in his head too. "You'll have to give up a comfortable place here. I know the pull of home, believe me. And yet, have you ever felt a homesickness—a longing for something—even when you were already home?"

Wow. The Seer knew about our unnameable thing. And though he'd formed it as a question, the Seer had actually given Locke an answer of sorts. Surely this quest would lead us to the unnameable. Locke wanted that more than anything.

That was when it broke.

The tangle of thoughts and branches fell apart, and his courage roared like a river.

As he was about speak, he saw—really saw—Shilohe's face, and how she looked so eager.

Would she hate him if he spoke up?

And would he hate himself if he didn't?