Grayling's Song(22)

No matter the why. Pansy was here and walking next to Grayling. “When did you come to Auld Nancy?” Grayling asked.

“’Twas shortly after Lammas Day. My mother sent me to make something of myself.”

“Were you not something already?”

“Not something my mother approves. For the most part, she looks at me and sighs.”

“I know that sigh,” said Grayling, shaking her head. “Feeble Wits, my mother calls me, and Pigeon Liver. Are you now becoming something?” she asked Pansy. “Has your time with Auld Nancy changed you? Are you—”

Pansy interrupted. “I hope we will be eating soon.”

Seemingly not, then, Grayling thought.

“We turn here,” Sylvanus called, and he led the mule onto a rutted path that headed due south.

“Nay,” Grayling said. She gestured to the west. “The grimoire is this way.”

“We must first call on the widow Bagley, whose cottage is through here. She has a cinnamon and garlic cheese I must sample. Certes, the struggle between the two strong essences will provoke especially powerful visions.”

While Grayling stuttered “but . . . but . . . but . . .” and pointed west, Desdemona Cork, stumbling over a tree root on the rough and rugged path, asked, “Cheese? We are doing this for cheese?”

“Aye. As you know, I am an adept of divination with cheese.”

“I thought that was a silly jest,” said Grayling as she joined the others on the path to the cheese woman’s cottage.

Sylvanus scowled at her. “Many things,” he said, “have the power to foretell the future or discover what is hidden. Not only cheese but dust, flour, roosters, and ice, if you know how to use them.”

“Nay,” said Grayling.

“Aye,” said Sylvanus. “Also spiders, pig bladders, and shoes.”

“Truly?” asked Grayling.

“Truly,” said Sylvanus.

Grayling shook her head. The world outside her valley was full of wondrous things, but was the wonder worth the trouble?





X





he path narrowed, and wild blackberry bushes on either side reached out to snag Grayling’s hair and her skirt. Soon it curved to reveal a clearing and Widow Bagley’s home. The dwelling was more hut than cottage, and the thatched roof was quickly becoming unthatched. In the yard sheep, goats, and a red cow grazed while tubs and tuns and a big vat bubbled unattended. The cottage door was open—or missing—and from inside came the odor of sour milk and herbs.

An old woman appeared and beckoned them in. By pig and pie, thought Grayling, she is even older than Auld Nancy, if that be possible. Desdemona Cork waved the invitation away, Pansy turned away, and Auld Nancy nodded on the mule’s back, but Grayling, curious, followed Sylvanus.

The cottage was dark and damp, and its sharp, musty smell made her nose burn. Dripping bundles of drying cheese hung from the roof over the table, making puddles that a yellow cat was lapping. Wax-covered orbs of finished cheese were hung in the rafters to smoke and in dark corners to age. The room looked to Grayling like a magical forest where cheese grew instead of flowers.

Sylvanus approached the cheeses. He rolled his eyes and twitched his nose, sniffing and poking and tasting slices of the creamy rounds. “This,” he said finally to Widow Bagley. “This cheese I will have, and I will give you two coppers for two rounds.”

Widow Bagley snorted. “Six coppers,” she said.

Sylvanus shook his head. “Six? Nonsense. ’Tis thievery and greediness. I will give three.”

“Eight coppers,” said the widow.

“Eight? Nay. ’Tis not done that way. When I increase my offer, you lower your price until we meet in the middle. Four, and that be my last offer.”

“Twelve,” said the widow.

Sylvanus sputtered. “You do not understand bargaining. I increase, and you decrease. Now I offer six, and ’tis absolutely as high as I will go. What say you?”

“Done!” said the widow, and she spit on her hand and offered it to Sylvanus.

Sylvanus cheerfully paid the amount she had demanded in the first place and left the cottage with two cheeses tied together and hung around his neck. The others hurried behind him. He is obviously no shrewd bargainer, Grayling thought, and he believes in magic cheese. Was he but a muddle-headed dolt and no help to them at all?

They turned again to the west, Pansy shuffling in the rear. Amidst the trees, the remains of a cottage still smoked. And there, as if standing guard, was a tall tree, not human anymore but not quite tree. Grayling poked Sylvanus with her elbow and bade him look. His face, what she could see of it beyond the beard, paled. Why had he not seen such before? Where had he been?

A fierce and menacing wind blew against them, buffeting them as they struggled against it, heads down. The wind bit at Grayling’s chin, clutched at her ankles, and crawled up the sleeves of her gown. Her heart grew cold, and she felt dark despair settling over her spirits again as she trudged on. Suddenly, with a last swirl of dust, the wind was gone.

Nor was this a natural wind, Grayling sensed. Something was happening, something ominous and bleak, something they could not understand or control. Would it only strengthen as they drew closer to the grimoires? How could they fight it? She looked at her ragtag band of companions, muttering and grumbling and limping, and she succumbed for the moment to the despair.