CHAPTER IX

THE COUNCIL OF THE ANIMALS

The hill on which they stood dropped sharply away into a plain surrounded by high hills. To the south the river ran under pine bluffs. But what amazed Raphael was the strange city that lay before him. A thousand white skyscrapers towered up from the plain in square masses of marble and concrete, a city of giant cubes one rising above the other. Overhead three aeroplanes droned like black bees sharply outlined against the evening sky.

As the twilight deepened, lights appeared in the windows of the massive buildings. Raphael could hear the roar of swiftly moving machinery like the murmur of a far-off waterfall. Somewhere in a huge skyscraper among those canyons of concrete, Cassandra and the Sorcerer were hidden.

‘How shall I ever find her in that great city?’ thought Raphael, awed.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked Empyrean.

‘First of all we must prevent the Sorcerer from escaping us,’ answered the eagle.

‘But how can we?’

‘Set a guard about the city.’

‘If we called a council of the animals, they would help us,’ suggested Raphael.

The eagle gave the order to his lieutenants, and then turned to Raphael.

‘My boy, to-morrow we shall test the power of this Sorcerer. In the meantime you had better sleep. The animals should arrive at dawn. Good-night.’ And Empyrean flew up into the branches of a tall dead tree.

Raphael hunted for a dry spot to sleep. When he had found an overhanging rock with pine needles at the base, he curled up and lay down.

Overhead the stars were very bright. Raphael was too excited to sleep immediately. Instead he lay and thought about Cassandra. Where was she? What was she doing? Was the Sorcerer kind to her? What was the Sorcerer? Was he so very dangerous that Gæa should be forced to give him power over all the elements? Who was Gæa? All the animals knew her and yet none save Empyrean had ever talked of her. She was a woman. The Mother of all living things. Perhaps she was like Aunt Mary, only more beautiful.

Thinking these things, he drifted into a troubled sleep. He dreamt that he had been running very fast and that suddenly he came to a little house of logs in the woods. Over the door hung an old board on which was burnt in rough letters, _The House of Life_. He walked right in without knocking and looked around. It was a bigger house than he had thought. In one corner stood a woman washing. She was large. Her arms were red, and her hair was quite gray. She wore a faded gray blouse and skirt. ‘Hello,’ said Raphael, ‘I--I didn’t know you were here.’ The woman turned and smiled. She had a pleasant face like the woman who washed clothes for Aunt Mary and gave him cookies from the cooky jar. ‘Who are you?’ asked Raphael in the dream. ‘I am Gæa,’ said the woman and smiled again. Raphael liked her smile and her quiet gray eyes. ‘You will save Cassie, won’t you?’ he asked anxiously. Then Raphael heard a scratching noise, and Gæa went to the door and opened it. In waddled two wolf cubs. They were very young and soft. Gæa picked them up and dipped them carefully in her washtub. Raphael started. The water in the tub was bright red. It was the color of blood. Gæa dried the cubs carefully and then set them down. In a moment there was more scratching at the door, and two ungainly fawns trotted in. In this way cubs and fawns and numberless wild babies arrived and were dipped until the house was filled with them. Gæa gently continued her work of baptism in spite of the frightened protests of the young animals. At last there was no place to stand at all. Raphael was suddenly afraid, afraid of the house, afraid of the animals which filled it. ‘Gæa, Gæa,’ he called desperately and scrambled toward her. ‘Yes, dearie,’ she answered reassuringly and opened her arms. He was just able to reach their shelter and bury his head in her blouse when he woke, his face pressed into the leaves on which he lay. It was gray in the forest about him. It was morning.

Raphael rose and shook himself. He noticed quite suddenly that the woods about him were filled with moving things. He could hear the rustle of leaves and the occasional snap of a twig. Mice scurried through the underbrush. A rabbit hopped in sight and looked curiously about. A deer peered at him from a thicket. He walked thoughtfully to the top of the hill which overlooked the city and sat down upon a rock. Here Empyrean joined him.

The larger beasts arrived slowly--the moose, the elk, the mountain lion and the grizzly bear, the wolves and coyotes. Raphael, as he saw the animals crowding about him, some frightened and impatient, others bold and curious, realized that much more than Cassandra’s liberty was wrapped in the defeat of the Sorcerer. The Earth people had come to help him at the bidding of Gæa, their mother. With the Sorcerer destroyed they would be saved from extermination, perhaps forever.

When the meeting had been called together by Empyrean, Raphael spoke:

‘Brothers,’ he said and pointed down the valley, ‘your home is being destroyed by the same Sorcerer who has stolen my sister. You know what his terrible engines have done to your forests and your rivers and your children. While he lives, you cannot hope to inherit the Earth, for his people multiply and spread all over the world. The time has come for us to attack him, attack to save the places we live in and in which our ancestors lived.’

The animals made assent each in his own tongue and pressed closer, the deer timid and trembling, the moose shoulder to shoulder with the elk, the great bears and the mountain lions, the wolves and the coyotes, brothers in one common purpose.

Then Raphael called for scouts to discover if possible where the Sorcerer lived and where Cassandra was. All the animals volunteered to go with one voice.

‘Let me go,’ said a mouse. ‘I’m small. No one would pay much attention to a mouse.’

‘Of what use would a mouse be?’ hissed a snake scornfully.

The rest of the animals said nothing.

‘I think,’ said Raphael, after a pause, ‘that a mouse might be able to find out more than any of the rest of us. He is small and his eyes are sharp. Go quickly, Mouse, and return to us.’

The little mouse, quite excited over the honor done him, scurried off. Meanwhile the animals lay in a circle about the clearing, the larger ones crowding among the firs at the edge, the smaller ones finding shelter in the grass and bushes. Raphael sat on the council rock and looked out over the city.

In an hour or two the mouse returned, hurried and out of breath. The animals, who were the first to hear him, rose and pressed about Raphael to hear what was said.

‘Master,’ squeaked the mouse, ‘the way was long and I have hurried. I went down through the fields to a desert of stone with high cliffs on all sides. Great boxes on wheels and many silent walking things passed me. And so I came away. Truly what could live in such a place?’

[Illustration: ‘A MOUSE MIGHT BE ABLE TO FIND OUT MORE THAN ANY OF THE REST OF US’]

‘What sort of silent walking things?’ asked Raphael.

‘Creatures like yourself but bigger. They smelt of oil and frightened me.’

‘What else did you discover?’

‘No more, Master. What is there to learn from such a waste of stone, and creatures that do not talk?’

Raphael was bitterly disappointed at this lack of news, and again called for volunteers. This time a crow cawed louder than the others: ‘Let me go, Master. I can fly over the city, and who would suspect a black thief of a crow? Now a proud eagle or a hawk might be killed by our enemy. And,’ he concluded, slyly looking at Empyrean, ‘what is more cunning than a crow?’

So it was decided that he should go.

When the crow returned, he said that he had flown a great way, but that he had little to report. ‘I saw,’ he said, ‘a great city below me with streets many miles in length, and on each side of them huge buildings that took up many acres of ground. In one place only I saw trees and green growing things. By the river there is a tower surrounded by a walled garden.’

‘Do you think Cassandra might be there?’ asked Raphael, excited.

‘Perhaps,’ agreed the crow.

‘There is nothing so cunning as a crow,’ said Empyrean sarcastically, stretching the talons of his foot.

‘I wonder if we could reach the tower by the river,’ Raphael mused aloud.

‘I’m afraid not, Mr. Raphael,’ spoke up a voice. The company parted about the speaker and Raphael saw the sleek body of an otter with his dark snake-like head. ‘I was down in the river among the trout,’ he confessed, ‘and I know the river is dammed in many places so that one cannot pass to and fro.’

‘Thank you,’ said Raphael. ‘In that case the river would be out of the question.’

‘Yes,’ replied the otter. ‘I hunt and see strange things. I have watched the river turn great wheels.’

‘It is those wheels,’ explained Raphael, ‘which make electricity for lights and heaters and for running power motors.’

‘That may well be,’ said the otter. ‘As for me, I do not understand man things. They are best left to men.’

‘I agree with you,’ squeaked the mouse in a flash of spirit. ‘I do not like boxes that run on wheels.’

‘Nor,’ joined in the birds, ‘great insects that fly through the air.’

‘We have been caught in traps and poisoned,’ bayed the wolves.

‘We are shot at with bullets for our horns,’ belled the moose.

All the animals began to cry out in their languages.

‘Peace,’ said Raphael. ‘We must spy out the city of the Sorcerer if we are to destroy him and bring back my sister.’

‘You had better go,’ counseled Empyrean. ‘These creatures are fools. We shall wait here for you.’

‘I’ll go,’ agreed Raphael. ‘Perhaps that will be best. People of the Woods, will you circle the city of the Sorcerer so that he may not slip away from us? I shall spy on him myself.’

‘We will,’ came back the answer. ‘We are of one mind in this.’

‘I may be gone a week. Will you guard faithfully?’

‘If we do this, Mr. Raphael,’ said a hare timidly, ‘who will save us from the wolves and the foxes?’

‘You need not worry,’ said Raphael confidently. ‘We are here for one purpose, the freedom of all from the Sorcerer and his creatures, and so have declared a universal truce.’

‘A truce! A truce!’ shouted the animals. ‘Death to the Sorcerer. Freedom forever.’

The hare looked nervous, but said nothing. Then Raphael called together the leaders of the wolves, the eagles, the bears, the wild cats, the moose, the elk, and all the others, and urged them to keep the peace for seven days. He sent this word by the otter to the trout and salmon in the river. Then he once more cautioned the animals to keep faith, saying that on them rested the success of the expedition. After that Raphael made his way to the city.

[Illustration]