‘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.