Grayling's Song(12)

Suddenly murmurs swirled in the air like dandelion fluff. Witch! Weather witch! She who commands the rain! A young woman with a basket full of kittens quickly backed away, but others pushed forward, eager to secure a favor.

“Our hedge witches and hags are gone,” one said, “and we know not where. Will you serve? I wish a warm wind to dry my field.”

“Have you other spells?” asked another. “I would curse my brother-in-law.”

“The miller!”

“My pig-headed horse!”

Auld Nancy said over and over, “We are not that kind of witch,” and Grayling pulled her sleeves from grasping hands and shook her head no no no. If she had the magic they thought she had, she would see these pestering folks bewitched away, Or turned to stone, or frogs, or geese.

“Make way! Make way!” Blue-coated soldiers in tall buckled boots and iron helmets, with war hammers and sharp swords at their waists, marched toward them, followed by a man mounted on a fine black horse. His sun-darkened face was crisscrossed with angry scars, his mouth was hard and tight, and his nose . . . his nose was silvery, stiff, and shiny. Like metal. Nay, it was metal! His nose, lost no doubt in some battle or duel, was now made of metal, fastened to his face with a black leather band. A metal-nosed warlord with a band of bullies. Grayling shuddered and backed away.

He pointed to Auld Nancy, Pansy, and Grayling. “Take these three and chase the rest of the rabble away,” he directed his troops in a voice, thought Grayling, that could freeze fingers and toes on a summer day. “I have need of their magic.”

“We are not that kind of witch,” Auld Nancy said again. The soldiers poked at them with their swords and waved branches of holly and bay to protect against evil in case the three women were indeed that kind of witch. Grayling could sing to the grimoire, Auld Nancy make weather, and Pansy—well, what could Pansy do?—but they could not overpower a troop of men with horses and weapons. And Desdemona Cork was gone.

A soldier prodded Grayling toward a wheeled cage woven of hazel branches and banded with cold iron, hitched to two tired-looking horses. She kicked at him, but he swung at her with a switch of holly sprigs. The toothed leaves caught her beneath her right eye and left a jagged cut. She yelped as she was shoved into the cage, and her basket was lost behind her.

There came a trembling in her pocket. “Not now, Pook,” Grayling whispered. “Anon, but not now.” But indeed the mouse leaped from the pocket, shook himself, and became a goat, eyes bulging and beard a-waggle. With a furious bleat, the goat disappeared, and a raven, cronking, soared into the sky.

The soldiers stared at Grayling a moment and then backed away, waving their holly branches fiercely. Auld Nancy snorted. “We are not that kind of witch,” she repeated.

Grayling held the hem of her skirt to her bleeding cheek. “Auld Nancy, be there nothing you can do to stop this folly?”

“I can stop and start rain, send clouds scudding away. I have at times even called snow, but how might that be helpful?”

“What if you smote the metal-nosed man with lightning? Were he struck, the rest might run.”

“Lightning,” said Auld Nancy with a shudder. “I have never been adept with lightning.” There was a long pause. Grayling felt a niggle of hope. Finally Auld Nancy said, “I will try, although I fear my skills, while dazzling, are imprecise. I once set fire to a lady’s wig, which she cast off, revealing herself bald as an egg.”

“Auld Nancy, please.”

Auld Nancy began to chant in a rumble so low Grayling had to struggle to catch every word.



O spirits of the storm,

Let wind meet clouds

And fire meet earth.

Let a storm spring forth

And shafts of fire come down

To assault our enemy and strike him low.

I call wind and water, earth and fire.

So might it be.





Dark clouds filled the sky, crashing and slamming into each other, and rain poured down. As Auld Nancy chanted on, jagged streaks of lightning split the sky. Great shafts of blinding light struck a cart full of cabbages, two hay wagons, and a signpost, and set them ablaze with tongues of fire. The soldiers’ horses whinnied and scuffled. Thunder crackled, but the rain doused the fires, and the warlord with the metal nose, untouched and unharmed, laughed a laugh that chilled Grayling’s heart.

“Take them,” he shouted, and the soldiers, hiding behind each other, succeeded in pushing Auld Nancy and Pansy into the cage with Grayling. They closed a wooden door, fastened it with a lock of iron, and turned away.

The company started toward the town, the metal-nosed man on the fine horse in the lead, followed by the horse-drawn wheeled cage carrying Grayling and her companions. After a while they turned off the road onto a broad trail that led up and up and up. The wheels thump thumped on the rough and rutted path and clattered over a bridge. Grayling slumped in a corner of the cage as they shook and jounced on the rough road, wondering where they were headed and why.





VI





he company slowed as they passed beneath a towering arch of stone as dark as the start of a nightmare. Night had fallen when they came to a stop. Candles shone from the windows of a great house, but the yard was lit only by the sliver of moon that escaped the clouds.

Grayling stood and pressed her face against the branches that served as the bars of their cage. She could see little in the moonlight, but she could hear the bustle of their arrival. Horses clopped and whinnied and huffed, footsteps rang on stone or squelched in mud, soldiers called back and forth to each other, and no one paid attention to the prisoners.