Grayling's Song(17)

A tangle of branches ahead promised a handhold. Gulping and spitting, Grayling stretched to reach it, but the current spun her into a jumble of rocks. She knocked her head on the rocks again and again and felt dizzy with the pain, but finally, stone by stone, she dragged herself toward the bank while the churning water tried to pull her back. Finally she struggled out of the water and lay panting, lungs heaving, still clutching Auld Nancy’s broom.

She was on the far side of the stream. Across the raging water, Pansy, who had also hauled herself out, stood with Auld Nancy. On the other side. The wrong side.

A plague on them both! thought Grayling. Let them stay there. I will go elsewhere. Anywhere. She was weary with leading and deciding, with child minding and old-woman tending. She would find some other way to rescue her mother.

She wrung what water she could from her cloak and her kirtle. Cursing and grumbling, she climbed up the bank toward the woods but slipped on the slippery soil and stumbled into an old oak, its bark pitted and thick and its branches gnarled. She could almost make out a face—its eyes closed and a knurl of bark like an open mouth. ’Twas not a tree but a man, his final screams hardened into bark. And beside him a sapling, a woman, hair fluttering with every breeze, tree up to her terrified eyes, unable to make a sound.

Filled with pity and horror, shaking with cold and wet and fear, Grayling stood there. The evil force had been here and was gone. Grayling was alone with what had been cunning folks, rooted to the ground, their limbs and hearts and brains trapped inside trees, bark and branches nearly to the tops of their heads. She could feel their terror and confusion. And this was true all through the kingdom—mages and wise women, people with skills and power, now wretched and defenseless. This undertaking, she realized, was not just a matter of freeing Hannah Strong but of freeing them all. And the only rescuers at hand were Auld Nancy, Pansy, and Grayling herself. She shook her head. She would not run. They might not win this fight, but she would not run.

She pushed her wet hair out of her face. Her first task was to sing to the grimoire and pray that, now she was on this side of the stream, it would hear her and sing back. And indeed it did. Her heart leaped. She slid back down the bank and waved to Auld Nancy.

“Come back, Grayling,” Auld Nancy called.

“Nay! You must cross to this side of the water.”

Shouting back and forth across the stream, they walked along the banks on both sides until they found a spot where the water ran less deep. A fallen tree lay halfway across.

“Hold on to the tree and cross,” said Grayling. “Pansy, you help Auld Nancy.”

Pansy shook her head, and her wet hair flew about her. “I will not go back into the water.”

“Watch me,” said Auld Nancy. “’Twill be easy.” She waded into the water and grabbed for the tree. Hand over hand, she pulled herself along, her skirts swirling about her. Finally she was near enough so that Grayling could wade out and take her hand. The water came to their knees, and the strong current pulled them about. Auld Nancy fell and her hand was torn from Grayling’s. For a moment Grayling thought the old woman would be swept downstream. She grabbed Auld Nancy by her skirt and held on. Together they staggered from the water and onto the bank, where they lay, breathing heavily and coughing up water.

“What about me?” Pansy called.

“Do as I did,” Auld Nancy called back. “All but the falling.”

“I cannot. I am afeared.”

Muttering “Fie! Fie! Fie!” Grayling took her wet cloak off. She forced herself back into the water and paddled and pulled Pansy, mewling and whining, across.

Grayling wrung her skirt and her hair and emptied out her sodden shoes while Pansy wiped mud from her face with the hem of her kirtle. “You pigheaded, beef-witted noddypoop!” Grayling said. “This was all your doing. I should have just left you in the water at the beginning!”

“Do not waste breath, Grayling,” said Auld Nancy. “Her mother did say Pansy was foolish.” The old woman picked up her soggy broom. “Though it would be better for all of us, Pansy, if you were less so.” Pansy thrust out her chin and narrowed her eyes but did not argue with Auld Nancy.

The old woman removed her wet cloak and shook it. Out fell a fish, which lay flapping on the ground. “Oooh!” Pansy said. “Make a fire, and we shall eat.”

“No fire,” said Grayling. She took the fish by the tail and tossed it back into the water. “We are still pursued by half the ruffians in the kingdom. Let us move on.”

Damp and dripping, the three turned away from the stream and followed a path up to where it met the road. Grayling could hear no sounds of fighting. She hoped the edge dwellers had been driven off, with the soldiers giving chase.

A sudden wind rose with a bite and a howl. It drove away the remains of the mist and swirled around the three travelers, clawing at their faces and tangling their skirts. Grayling’s hair danced, and her eyes watered. Wet and clammy though she was, she shivered less from cold than from sudden feelings of dread, foreboding, and a terrible hopelessness. Then as abruptly as it had appeared, the wind subsided, the darkness lightened, and Grayling’s spirits rose.

She grimaced. What kind of wind brings such darkling and despair? Shaking her head to clear it, she took Auld Nancy by the arm and continued on, Pansy panting and lagging behind.

“Where might Desdemona Cork be?” Grayling asked Auld Nancy after a time. “Will she find us again, or has she left us to continue without her?”