Grayling's Song(24)

While they ate, the company aired their various worries and concerns, for which none of them had answers. They all spoke at once: “How much farther? Why the wind? Will we find the grimoire? What else is in store for us?”

“You, Graybeard,” Auld Nancy said to Sylvanus. “Help us. Ask your cheese what it knows.”

He shook his head and held the cheeses close to his chest.

“Is that not its purpose?” Auld Nancy asked. “Why we called at the widow’s cottage? Show us how it is done.”

With what might have been a groan or a grumble or a growl, Sylvanus removed the cheeses from around his neck. With his knife he sliced small bits from each round and dropped them into the smaller of his metal cups, which he placed on the embers of the fire while muttering strange mutters and chanting peculiar chants.

The melting cheese gave off the aroma of sour milk and cinnamon, and Grayling, though full of berries and ham, thought they might do better to eat the cheese than do whatever Sylvanus was planning.

“You, girl,” he said finally to Pansy, “fetch water.” He held the larger cup out to her.

Pansy limped and moaned so as she edged closer to him that Grayling snatched the cup herself. She found her way back to the muddy brook and returned with a cup of water.

Sylvanus’s chants grew louder as he took the cup with the cheese from the fire, protecting his hand with the hem of his gown, and poured its contents into the larger cup in a stream, making loops and coils on the surface of the water. There was a sizzle as the hot cheese met the cold water, and then silence.

Sylvanus poured the cooled cheese onto the ground. “The shape the cheese has taken will tell us what we need to know,” he said.

“It looks like a lump of cheese,” Grayling said.

Sylvanus frowned at her. “I must concentrate,” he said, and he studied the cheese from all directions. He broke off small bits, rubbed and smelled them. “Indeed,” he said finally, “a lump of cheese.”

“What means that?” asked Grayling. “Does it tell us who is behind this evil smoke and shadow?”

“It tells us it is a lump of cheese! A lump of cheese!” Sylvanus shouted. “The cheese is useless.”

“Do not fret, Sylvanus,” said Auld Nancy, patting his arm. “Leastwise, now we can eat it.” She used Sylvanus’s knife to cut a large section from the rounds of cheese for each of them. Then, their bellies full and their lips still blue from berries, they lay beneath the trees on beds of fallen leaves and fern fronds. All was silent but for Sylvanus now and then muttering, “Lump of cheese!”

Grayling felt Pook leave her pocket to feast on the seeds and crumbs of cheese on the ground. Satisfied, he groomed his whiskers and, with a sigh, crawled over her skirt and settled in her pocket once more. She smiled. What little time it had taken for her to become attached to him. A mouse! At home she would have chased him from the cottage with a broom and a curse. But here . . . she patted her pocket tenderly before she fell asleep.

In the morning, Grayling sang her way forward, and the others followed. The woods here were different from the woods in Grayling’s valley. The air was damper, the ground wetter. Ancient moss-laden oaks rose from thick carpets of ferns, and willow branches, laden still with mist, trailed nearly to the ground like the long sleeves of a wedding dress. Downed trees supported young sprouts whose roots arched around the logs, seeking the ground. “Nurse logs,” said Sylvanus. “They give life and support to the young trees.”

“In truth?” Grayling asked him.

“In truth.”

“And there truly is such a thing as soothsaying with cheese?”

“Most certainly,” said Sylvanus.

“The world is full of things most peculiar,” she said.

“And things most astounding, young Grayling. Most astounding. Why, in places in this world are snails so big folks can live in their shells.”

“No!”

Sylvanus nodded so heartily that crumbs of cheese flew from his beard. “Aye. And to the west are islands where men have the heads of hounds and go naked in all types of weather. And another where people have horses’ feet. Would you not like to see these places?”

“No, I want only to go home,” Grayling said at once. But men with horses’ feet? That she would like to see.

From time to time the wind blew through, icy and sharp, and then subsided, leaving the air thick and heavy. Grayling found breathing difficult. Her lungs hurt from the effort and her steps grew slower and slower, but she sang on as she walked.

As they ventured farther, there was no path, and Grayling lurched and stumbled as she forced her way through, tearing her bodice and scraping her arms on the thorny bushes. Auld Nancy and Desdemona Cork followed, but Sylvanus and Pansy hung back, jostling to be last in line, snarling at each other like two ill-tempered but cowardly dogs.

They pushed through to a sort of clearing, foreboding and dark with dread. Here the trees were thinner and blackened, the ground scorched as if by fire. Charred wood and ashes crunched beneath their feet. Even Sylvanus’s spotted mule was ill at ease. Eyes round with fear and nose speckled with foam, he began to back away, and Sylvanus had to urge, wheedle, and pull him forward.

Grayling heard the sound of something moving just beyond, something large, moving slowly, smoothly over the ground. The air was dense with the smell of smoke, scorched wood, and something unidentifiable—acrid and sharp and bitter in the nose. Then came a gibbering and groaning, a howling and hissing, from nowhere and everywhere, reverberating. Grayling covered her ears, but the sound was inside her, pounding and echoing.