Grayling's Song(4)

“But do not sing to the grimoire until you find the others,” Hannah Strong said. “You will need their assistance and support.”

The sun was setting behind the trees, shafts of golden light piercing through the greenery, before the teaching was finished. Grayling took the basket of herbs, bottles, and pots and added the hawthorn stick against evil, a wool winter cap with earflaps, and half a loaf of bread toasted but not consumed by the fire. She slipped a piece of angelica root into her pocket for protection. Her mother, not one for hugging, patted her on her back.

“Mayhap,” Grayling said in a small, thin voice, “I should wait until morning and start fresh on the road.”

Hannah Strong said, in a voice as soft but strong as silk thread, “You are the wise woman’s daughter. ’Tis up to you to set this right. Go.”

Grayling pulled her cloak tight about her. She left her mother there in the valley and ventured forth on her own, reluctant and frightened, up the rise.





II





hen twilight turned to dark and clouds scudded across the moon, Grayling fell asleep in the hollow of an old oak, cushioned by fallen leaves and moss. The songs of sparrows and thrushes and soft-voiced doves woke her shortly after dawn, and she shivered, both from the early morning chill and from the memory of what had happened. The smell of the fire was yet in her nose and her hair and her clothes, the terrible image of her mother rooted to the ground in her mind and her heart. How was she to go on? She didn’t even know where she was.

Grayling sat up, rubbed dewdrops from her face with the hem of her skirt, and looked about for something familiar. She knew every inch of the valley, every path that twisted and turned through the forest, every tree, every clearing, every stream. But here, up the rise? Here she knew nothing.

She had sometimes been to a town but never by herself. She had merely followed her mother as she shopped, visited, and tended. Which was the road to the nearest town? Grayling wondered. What would she find there? And how did her mother fare? Mayhap she should go back and see . . .

A scritching in the grass startled her, but it was only a mouse, sitting near her basket, cleaning its paws with a tiny pink tongue. Her basket! Grayling let forth a squeal and held her hand over her heart. The basket had been overturned, and the pots were cracked and broken. And empty. The pots were empty. Her only defense against the evil that came as smoke and shadow was gone.

“Who has done this?” Grayling cried, her heart pounding as she looked wildly about her. She saw no one. “You, mouseling, are the only witness,” she told it. “How I wish you could talk and tell me how this happened.”

The mouse ceased its preening and twitched its bounteous whiskers. “This mouse must declare, girl with gray eyes . . .” It hiccoughed. “This mouse must declare, it spilled the jars and ate what they contained.”

Grayling squealed again. “You are talking? Or do I still sleep? I must still sleep and dream.”

“This mouse is most astonished, mistress, but it is talking indeed. It was an ordinary mouse one moment, and you wished it could talk, and now it can.”

Grayling understood. “The wishing potion!” she said. “You ate the wishing potion!”

“’Tis likely. This mouse ate a great many things.” The mouse burped a tiny burp and looked up at Grayling. “Ah, Gray Eyes, be kind. This mouse is yours and pledges to stay by you and serve you always.”

“And the binding potion also!”

The mouse clambered onto her lap. “Tell this mouse what you would have it do for you.”

Grayling stood. The mouse tumbled to the ground, where it shook and shivered and became a frog. “And the shape-shifting tonic! You foolish creature, you have left me defenseless.”

The mouse appeared again for a moment and then the frog was back. “Shape shifting? This mouse finds it strange and a little frightening but quite stirring,” it said. “Mistress Gray Eyes, this mouse loves you and will never leave you.” And the frog became a goat with two horns and a beard that waggled as he chewed.

Grayling’s head swam in anger and confusion. Even so, she could not help but find it funny. A shape-shifting mouse. Whoever could have imagined such a thing? “You silly thief! The jar held enough shape-shifting potion for a giant of a man, and ’twas eaten by one small, ridiculous mouse. Or goat. Or whatever you be. Likely you can expect much adventure to come.”

She plopped herself back down on the ground, her legs curled beneath her. A girl and a shape-shifting mouse against the fury that could fire a cottage and curse Hannah Strong? Grayling was certain her efforts would come to nothing, but she could not go back to watch her mother become a tree. The other wise folk—the hedge witches and charmers and cunning women—certes they would know what to do. If she could find them.

Towns, Hannah Strong had said. Many towns. “Know you the way to a town?” Grayling asked the goat.

The goat shook its shaggy head. “This mouse may look like a goat, but within, it is still a mouse,” the goat said in a voice still distinctly mouselike. “This mouse knows only what mice know: eat, sleep, mate, and run away.”

It was up to her. “Well, then, I say we go this way,” she said, pointing. “This path leads down, which is easier than going up. My legs still pain me after yesterday’s climb.” Grayling ate her bread, then considered her basket. But for her winter cap, it now held only wilting herbs and a few empty and broken pots and jars. Should she trouble herself to carry it with her? It spoke to her of home, so she grasped it tightly and got to her feet.