Grayling's Song(36)

Grayling shook her head. “Pansy, he will cage you as he did before.”

“I will gladly trade my freedom for power. With practice, my magic will grow stronger, and folks will cease their poor Pansys and foolish Pansys and be in awe of me!”

“He cannot be trusted.”

“Nor can I. We will make a fine pair.”

“But you have ensnarled us! Think on it. I have no magic, and Auld Nancy has exhausted hers. What will happen when your Lord Mandrake finds that out?”

Pansy shrugged. “You will think of something. Sylvanus says you have courage and keen wits.” Her voice was sharp edged, and her eyes hard.

Grayling had endured Pansy long enough. Let her go where she willed, as long as it was far from Grayling. “We must be away without delay, Auld Nancy.” Grayling helped her to her feet. “Before the warlord comes.”

In a voice ragged and weary, Auld Nancy said, “Pansy, you have learned nothing from this misadventure, but are even more foolish and wicked. Do what you will.” She took Grayling’s arm, and they moved toward the door.

“Go, then,” said Pansy. “I will be a powerful magician, rich beyond your dreams, and you will come to wish you had stayed. And been kinder to me!”

Grayling and Auld Nancy pushed the door open and stumbled out. The day was cold and sunless, and the air smelled of snow. The wind wolf-howled, and the tall firs swayed like grasses. Broken branches littered the road so that Grayling and Auld Nancy had to leap and skitter to stay afoot. Fir cones and fiddlesticks, ’tis past time to be home, Grayling thought as she pushed Auld Nancy faster and faster until darkness fell once more.





XVI





n the morning, Grayling fo und frost on her nose and her eyelashes. The air was filled with the noisy honking of geese, and she studied them as they passed overhead. How easily they moved and how much faster than human folks on foot. Grayling recalled persuading Pook the raven to stay on the ground where it was safer. Watching the geese, their undersides flashing white and gray, Grayling thought she might have been mistaken. How would the world look from up there? What could she see from the sky that she had never seen? Were she a bird, would she choose to stay on the ground or soar, no matter the danger? She knew what she once would have said, but now she was not so certain.

The memory of Pook the raven moved her to take the mouse from her pocket and jiggle him awake. He opened his eyes and snuffled, with bits of acorn still adorning his whiskers. “Mistress Gray Eyes, do you wish the assistance of . . . ” He yawned a great yawn—that is, great for a tiny creature like a mouse. “. . . this Pook?”

Grayling stroked his head gently. “I have been thinking ’tis a long while since you shifted into another shape.”

Pook said in a faint, thin voice, “This mouse will likely not be taken with that again. I believe this Pook is only a mouse now.”

“But a very special mouse,” Grayling whispered. He coughed a tiny cough. “Are you quite well?”

“Aye,” he said, “but weary. Most weary,” and he slipped back into her pocket.

A late autumn market provided biscuits and pears and soft sweet cheese in exchange for the last of Sylvanus’s coppers. Bellies full, they walked on, slower and slower as the morning grew later.

The cold sun was high in the sky when they neared the spot where they were to part ways.

“We must each set out for home now, Auld Nancy, or we shall freeze into statues here on the road.” Grayling wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. “’Tis still a goodly walk for us both.”

Auld Nancy dropped to the ground, broom in her lap.

Grayling gasped. “Auld Nancy, are you ill?”

“The fingers of giants are making shadows in the sky,” Auld Nancy said.

Grayling looked up. “What mean you? I see only bare branches against the gray.”

“Of course, tree branches.” Auld Nancy shook her head. “It appears my bones and my wits are both failing me.”

As she helped Auld Nancy struggle to her feet, Grayling felt her heart near pulled in two. She was most eager to be home, but she could not leave Auld Nancy to travel alone. With a sigh that she pulled all the way from her toes, Grayling said, “Come, we have walked all this way together. I will not leave you now. I shall see you home.”

She tried to remember if her mother had a staying-alive song. Such a song was called for now, but if Hannah Strong did, Grayling did not know it. Their footsteps beat out a sort of a tune, and words came into her head, and tune and words came together in a melody. With the old woman leaning heavily on her, Grayling began to walk, singing the song she was inventing as they went:



Be strong, look around you,

Blue asters are blooming, the yarrow is tall.

Apples and sweet pears are yet on the tree.

The wide world calls.

Take my hand, take my hand.



Winter will come soon.

Your nose and your cheeks will pink with the cold

When frost paints the walls

And footsteps sing crunch songs

To snowdrops and crocus.



In spring you’ll be walking

In fields newly white-capped

With marguerite daisies,

As geese winging home honk their calls.