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and leaned against it, looking across the room into Crispin’s eyes.
    “Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Crispin. “But let’s hear from all of you. Brother Fir?”

CHAPTER FOUR
    T THE SHORE, THE YOUNGER ANIMALS still hung about the ship, waiting to see if the moles would find anything exciting. They passed the time by playing with pebbles, skimming stones, jumping off the jetty, or playing coronation and taking turns to be Crispin. Occasionally there would be chants of “Find the king, find the queen, find the Heir of Mistmantle,” which was an old Mistmantle game in which three animals were sent away to hide while the others covered their faces and repeated the chant ten times before running off to find them. As the animals being looked for had great fun distracting attention from each other, and the squirrels climbed up anything that didn’t run away, there was a lot of chasing and shrieking. Needle was holding the paw of her little brother, Scufflen, as he paddled in the waves with little squeals of excitement. Sepia the squirrel, whose beautiful singing voice had captivated the whole island at the Spring Festival, hung back a little, sometimes watching them, sometimes gazing past them.
    In these past months, life had astonished Sepia. She had grown up in a birchwood, the youngest member of a family that was always very busy and very organized: always gathering nuts and storing them neatly, making cordials and medicines, running messages—her brother Longpaw was one of the fastest messengers on the island, and carried messages for the king. Sepia had always felt she was the smallest and least important member of her own family and the colony. She wasn’t all that good at any of the things that mattered, like gathering and storing, and she could never quite keep up with the other squirrels. Everyone else had such a lot to talk about, that Sepia, who had a quiet spirit to begin with, became used to the fact that nobody listened to her very much. So she had made a world of her own, making up songs in her head, dancing when nobody was looking, and, when she could be alone, running down to the caves behind the waterfall. She had a favorite place there, where the damp walls gleamed and her voice echoed and sang back to her, and there was nobody there to tell her to stop singing and do something useful.
    Then, on a spring day, she had been visited by Arran the otter. Sepia was used to otters—there were always a few of them near the waterfall—but she had never before met Arran, who was a member of the Circle and a very important otter. Arran had brought her a message from an even more important otter, Captain Padra. The captain had heard her singing, and wanted her to sing for King Brushen at the Spring Festival.
    At the Spring Festival, she had been so nervous that, by the time she had to sing, her mouth was dry, and if her legs hadn’t trembled so much she might have run away. But when it was time for her to step forward, Arran had whispered to her, “It’s all right. Just sing the way you sing in your cave,” and Captain Padra himself had given her such a kind smile of reassurance that she had fixed her eyes on him and sung just for him, because he gave her confidence. Later she had become caught up in the battle for Mistmantle, and had helped to save Padra, Arran, and the whole island. Suddenly, she mattered.
    Suddenly, too, she had new friends. Fingal, Crackle the squirrel, and Needle the hedgehog were all her friends. Urchin, too, though she was a little in awe of Urchin, who had crossed the sea and brought Crispin home. But the animals who had shared in that vital day stayed together. Never mind that Fingal never took anything seriously; that Crackle was so afraid of being unpopular she’d be friends with anyone; that Needle could be bossy. They were her friends. If she wanted to escape into a dream world, or be very quiet by herself for a while, none of them minded. But now that she was at the tower