The shade beneath the trees and the tears watering his eyes made it hard to see where he was going, but Xan didn’t care. He just kept walking, and walking, and walking. With every step the anger in his heart seethed. Every time his tears spilled out, he wiped them away furiously. His lungs burned from the exertion of walking and trying to suppress the sobs that continued to fight their way to the surface.

He walked until he reached the edge of the pine forest. It abruptly stopped right at a cliff’s edge on the coast. He put a hand on a nearby tree to steady himself. Then he took a moment to catch his breath. He gazed out over the ocean waves beyond the cliffs.

The waves rolled in steadily, rhythmically crashing against the cliffside. A seabird cried out somewhere below. Xan watched the waves until the sorrow and grief overwhelmed him, and he collapsed to his knees in anguish.

Taika’s words had cut him deeply. And what made it worse, it brought up all of the feelings he had been trying to keep down since escaping the island. He felt helpless. He felt useless. He felt guilt, and rage, and grief. And, most poignantly, he felt alone.

Xan pounded his fist against the tree, sending icy flurries floating down to the ground. The sudden motion shifted something in his sleeve. He looked up to the see the crystal pendant dangling from his wrist. His eyes narrowed. Then, in a fit of anger, he grabbed the pendant and yanked on it until the chain broke.

“This is all your fault, you know!” he yelled at the pendant. “If you hadn’t shown up, none of this would have happened!”

The pendant just sat in his hand, the glittering purple crystal catching the light filtering through the trees. He gripped it so tight that it threatening to break his skin. Then he turned and flung it into the trees as hard as he could. It sailed through the air for long while until it collided with a pine tree’s trunk. Then it just sank to the ground and remained inert. Xan turned his back on the pendant, silently cursing that it hadn’t been broken by the impact.

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Suddenly, something solid hit him in the back of the head.

Xan grabbed at his head in pain. He groaned as looked around, trying to see what had hit him. A faint glittering caught his eye, and he looked down to see the pendant lying at his feet.

At first Xan felt confused, then angry. He kicked the pendant away, trying to get it to hit another tree. It flew wide and landed in a patch of pine needles.

Xan sniffed, still rubbing at the back of his head. Then he turned to walk away – only to get hit in the back of the head again. The pendant tumbled to his feet with a soft clinking sound.

This time, Xan whirled around. He expected to see whoever was throwing the pendant at him standing somewhere between the trees. What he didn’t expect to see was the twelve-foot-tall silver tortoise that was staring back at him.

Xan jumped in surprise. Then he backed up against a nearby tree, gaping wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the silver tortoise. It was huge, so huge that it didn’t seem possible for it to be here amongst the trees. Yet here it was, glaring at him with its big, watery eyes.

The tortoise slowly stepped forward, placing each foot deliberately as it went. At first it seemed like the tortoise was going to run into the trees surrounding it, so Xan braced for the impact. But instead of colliding with the tortoise’s shell, the trees simply passed right through with barely a rustled branch.

Xan watched, paralyzed with fear and awe, as the tortoise drew closer to him. Soon it was close enough that he could see the lavender stripes that swirled over the tortoise’s shell and down its limbs. It reminded him of the stripes that Chusho had, if only in a slightly different pattern.

The tortoise continued to approach until it was mere feet away. It stretched out its neck, lowering its head so it could fix its eyes on Xan. Then it opened its maw, and a deep, rumbling voice came out that seemed to vibrate Xan right down to his bones:

“Mmm… little human… just what do you think you are doing in our woods?”