For a long time he said not a word. I began to fear I had made him angry. Perhaps he thought it could have been him trapped in the quartz under the dead tree canyon. Then he began to glow, his crystals shining. Warmth spilled out of him. It was real and magical. The creakiness in my joints and the fog in my head vanished. I felt as if I could take Mount Grace apart stone by stone.
Delightful, Evumeimei, Luvo told me. Most splendid. To divert them with the quartz bed is ingenious. They have not known crystal before. Whole, they would have destroyed it. In small pieces, they will be able to enjoy its facets, its resistance to heat. They can learn that it is the firstborn mineral of lava. They may even see that quartz crystals are the children of one of their kind. As such, they will want to get to know all of that bed of crystals.
"Too bad the bed isn't larger." I could hardly breathe. "I wish it ran the length of the island and back. My biggest worry is that they might reach the end of the crystals somehow and break out."
Luvo got up and paced for a moment. The glow flowed after him like a scarf that connected us, still wrapping me in his approval. "I have an idea." He said it out loud, instead of in our magic. "It will take me a time, however. If you will remain to watch over me? I vexed the boys enough that I know they would consider tossing me in the water."
"Let them try," I assured him.
Luvo sat. His approving glow vanished, but I still felt all that wonderful warmth. I hugged it to me. Did Luvo's mountain feel like this when he lived inside it? He said the mountain was happy when he was gone, but I couldn't believe it really was.
I heard someone approach. It was one of Nory's boys. "Please tell 'im"—the boy pointed at Luvo, who had curled into a purple and green lump—"that we packed all our things and put 'em in the cart, and then we helped Nory and the little ones, and we carried what Nory told us to, all to the cart. If'n he asks. If'n he don't ask, don't tell him we're even alive. If he forgets us, that's fine. But we done like he bid. And Nory says if you want soup you ought to come, 'cause we're leavin' at sun high." He turned to go, then looked back at me. "He ever done you like that? With the noise, and the house shakin'?"
I nodded and tried not to giggle. "Several times."
"And you still be with 'im? You mages is god-touched. I aims to get as far from him as the sea'll put me!" He trotted back to the house.
I watched Luvo, thinking about those times in Yanjing that he had used his mountain voice on Briar and me. We had been awed and curious, not terrified. Well, maybe we had been a little terrified, the first few times. Or just deeply impressed. It's hard to tell the difference between so much awe and fear.
Luvo uncurled. "I have done a thing." He wobbled as he sat up. I felt pulses like earth shocks travel through me. They didn't pass through the ground, though they somehow moved in the stones in the ground. A long, groaning shock dragged at me. Another shock followed. It dumped Luvo and me on our sides. Another dragging shock came next, and a last bump that threw me and Luvo in the air. We landed with a thump.
The strange part was, we were the only two things that moved. Nothing else did. Not one piece of grit or stick.
What did you do? I cried in our magic as I grabbed on to a nearby tree and stared at Luvo. Aloud I said, "That was like an earthquake, but in the magic! And it bounced you, too!"
"Sooner or later Flare and Carnelian would have found the end of the quartz bed," he told me. "You said it yourself. So… I arranged for them never to find it."
I just stared at him. "How can you arrange that?"
Luvo stood on all fours and shook himself. His crystals jumped and settled inside his clear stone skin. It was enough to make a person ill. "I took one end of the bed and pulled it toward the other. Before I