Magic Three of Solatia by Jane Yolen Page B

began to sing:
    The magic of a single song
    Is but, in fact, a moment long.
    But captured in your reverie,
    That moment can forever be.
    And so I sing a magic spell,
    And hope I sing that moment well,
    So my sweet song can catch you fast,
    And in your heart forever last.
    As the final notes hung in the air, sweet and simple and achingly pure, the turtles began to move. But not again in a menacing manner or toward Lann. Rather, many turned off and went toward the farther end of the isle. Lann heard an enormous splash and guessed that the giant tortoise had dived back into the sea. At that moment, a vermilion-colored turtle, about the size of a small dog, came slowly, majestically toward Lann, and laid its head on his boot. He bent down and scratched the creature’s underjaw.
    “I see,” said Lann, with more than a little relief in his voice, “that we are now all friends.”
    Before long, the turtles were hurrying to the young minstrel with offerings, gifts of food, familiar-looking berries that he ate greedily and strange-looking plants he dared not try. One turtle even brought a broken eggshell. The halves were hard and leathery, and Lann soon discovered he could use them as a cup and bowl.
    So Lann spent the rest of the day and the night at Turtle Isle, as he called it. He roamed over the isle and found one small muddy salt-free pool from which he could drink. It was as close as he came to finding a crystal pool. “But,” he thought to himself, “not nearly close enough.”
    The turtles remained friendly enough, except for the monster, which Lann could occasionally see swimming far offshore and snapping its beak as if it were guarding the island. But after awhile, Lann grew bored. The turtles could not talk or sing. All they could manage was a hiss. He would have to find a way off the isle in order to fulfill his pledge.
    But he had no tools. Without tools, he could not make a boat. Without a boat, how could he escape the isle? The more he thought, the more hopeless he felt. And suddenly, all at once, Lann was overcome with grief. He remembered how brave and strong he had felt when he made his vow at the Thrittem, and that served to make him unhappier still. And when he thought of his mother saying “There comes a time when a boy and his mother must part,” he put his head in his hands and began to weep loudly. It had been only two days ago. It seemed like years.
    “Oh Mother, oh Grandfather, oh friend Chando,” he cried out in a shaky voice, “that I were with you now.” Then he reached inside his shirt and brought out the Magic Three and looked at it thoughtfully.
    Just as he did, from far off on the other side of the isle he heard a clear, crystalline voice singing.

7. The Singer
    L ANN LEAPED UP. “ANOTHER voice,” he said aloud. The familiar words of the song bore down on him. It was the tune he had sung the day before, “The Magic Song.” It was so good hearing a human voice again instead of that infernal hissing! He quickly tucked the Magic Three back into his shirt and vowed to find the owner of that voice. On such a small isle, it should not be so difficult a task.
    Lann slung the lute upon his back and started up. The voice was singing still, the same song over and over. He followed it around the isle. The isle was not much larger than the village where Lann had lived, and in a single day he had gotten to know it well. It was shaped somewhat like a turtle, which had not surprised him. It was high in the middle, with four spits of sandy beach that jutted, like legs, into the sea. Where the head should have been was a cliff with an undersea grotto, as though the turtle isle had brought its head back into its shell. Lann had swum into the grotto, guided by his turtle companions, the day before. There was no tail to the island at all.
    It was toward the place where the tail should have been that Lann set off, for from there he was sure the voice was coming.
    Just as he rounded the curve in the isle