She was here at last. Now she must work quickly to finish the making. Afterward there was another hurdle to cross, but she would not consider that yet. Nessa glanced at the sun. It was already sinking toward the west. If she made this tonight and traveled tomorrow, would she be there in time? How long could Eyvind hold out? He had been a prisoner since dawn: nearly a whole day. He might already be dead. Her fingers reached to untie the wolfskin and spread it out on the floor of the small cave. It was indeed a wondrous and powerful thing, whose magic could be sensed in every strand of its glossy surface. Wait for me, Nessa whispered. Don’t go on without me.

The task could not be completed without help. She knew that; it was the purpose of her journey here. Nessa unfastened the bag and emptied its burden out. With a faint, clinking music, the bones tumbled moon-white onto the silver-gray wolf pelt. A tangle of dark hair wrapped itself around them. She stared down at the jumble of shapes, biting her lip. It was only an old tale, after all: voice of truth in harp of bone. She believed it, of course she did; the only thing was, the stories never gave step-by-step advice as to how one might go about constructing the mysterious objects of which they told. Practically speaking, it was impossible. The frame could not be locked together; what might one use in place of pegs of wood or whalebone? How might one shape the curves with only a small knife and so little time? And what about the strings? A man’s hair could not provide the tension required to sound notes in a melody. It would snap the moment the pegs were tightened. Still, she had no choice. Such doubts must be set aside. Truth was the most powerful voice of all; truth would make itself heard against impossible odds. And for such a work of magic, Nessa must seek help from those who understood the deepest secrets of the heart and of the blood: those whose existence was part of the ebb and flow of the tide itself.

She settled herself on the flat stones above the dark water. She cast her mind back a long time, to a day when small Nessa had been watching the seals on the shore and thinking about the lonely fisherman who had built the tower in the earth.

“Rona,” she’d asked, “how could you call the Seal Tribe? If you wanted to talk to them, how could you make them hear you?”

“That depends,” Rona had replied guardedly. “Such folk don’t just come when you want them. They’re not at the beck and call of the human kind, and they never will be.”

“So you’ve never—?”