Grayling's Song(5)

She looked one last time down the hill to her valley. There was mist on the treetops, but still she could see their herb garden and, through the trees, a peek at the ruins of their cottage. She blinked to banish her tears, squared her shoulders, and turned away.

The girl with the basket and the goat took the path down. Sunshine caressed the soft hills, their green now marked with autumn’s browns and golds. It would be a good day, Grayling thought, for weaving straw into hats or finding honeycombs or watching her mother brew a rose-petal tonic to calm the belly. It was not at all a good day for being brave, going into a town and singing, and battling powerful, mysterious beings.

The path was dusty and deserted, and her footsteps padded on the soft earth. The goat, snacking on thistles and thorns, followed.

As the day wore on, the sun grew warm, and Grayling, grown drowsy, tripped over a tree root and stubbed her toe. I knew ’twas an unsound, unwise, daft, and doltish decision sending me, she thought. I cannot even walk to town without bumbling. But what if her mother knew that Grayling had some hidden power, unknown to Grayling herself, and that was why Hannah Strong had sent her? What if she could shake her hair, and flowers would appear in her path, or wave her hand, and sausages be brought her, or snap her fingers, and her mother be released? Would that not be splendid? She shook her hair like a pennant, waved her hand, and snapped her fingers, but nothing happened, and Grayling walked on, limping a bit and grumbling.

Around a corner they happened upon a party of children, young enough to be cocky and hotheaded and old enough to make trouble. Grayling froze, and she held tightly to the angelica root in her pocket.

“Hie, girl. Give us your coins!” a boy shouted. He grabbed one arm just as another boy grabbed the other, and they pushed and pulled her back and forth between them. She tripped and stumbled and fell to the ground, and the boys danced around her.

The biggest boy seized her basket. “Have you coins in there? Or food? Give it here.” He pulled her wool cap onto his head with a grin and searched the basket for something valuable. Finding only herbs and broken pots, he cursed and swung the basket away.

“Look, a goat!” a girl shouted as that animal, still munching, drew near. “Supper! Hist, Barnaby! Make the stew pot ready!” She grabbed the goat by the neck. Irritated by her roughness, the creature changed into a cat, spitting and scratching, before becoming a goat once again.

There was a sudden silence before the biggest boy whispered, “How did you that?”

Grayling shook her head. “’Twas not me,” she said. “’Tis just that the mouse ate a potion . . .” The boys were not listening. They pulled Grayling to her feet and closed in on her and the goat.

“Barnaby! Caratacus! Philby!” the biggest boy called. “Magician! We have caught us a magician!”

“And a goat,” the girl added.

A big man with a big grin and very big hands emerged from a grove of trees. “Well done, striplings,” he said in a thick and throaty voice. “It shall be goat for dinner. And a magician, you say? This silvery sprite of a girl? If ’tis true, we shall make good use of her.” He grabbed the goat by a horn and Grayling by an arm and, though they wriggled and wraxled, pulled them into the woods.

A number of folk were camped in the shadows, and Grayling shivered to see them. Their weasel-brown tunics and cropped hair marked them as the edge dwellers Thomas Middleton had spoken of—vagabonds and petty thieves who loitered at the outskirts of towns and like gnats bedeviled travelers to and from. She held tighter to her angelica root and wished fervently that she had a hare’s foot or anything else with stronger magic.

The big man shoved Grayling and the goat toward a frazzle-haired woman sitting before a tattered tent of felted wool. “Tie them up hereabout,” he said.

She grinned a toothless grin and pulled a knife from her belt. “Goat stew! I can make it at once. Fetch a pot and three onions!”

The boy in Grayling’s cap spoke up. “We did see it change into a cat for a moment and back again to goat. Do you think it safe to eat, or be it devil ridden?”

The big man shrugged. “Kimper will know,” he said. “We will wait and ask Kimper when he returns.” And that was that. Grayling and the goat were tied to a tree and left while the edge dwellers sat and shared bread and beer.

Who might this Kimper be? Were he as big and rough as the others, Grayling’s quest was over already. She pulled at her ropes but to no avail.

The goat nudged Grayling’s arm. “Does this mouse get nothing to eat?” he asked. “I am hungry as a . . . a . . . a goat.”

“You ate your way here,” she said, “while my belly aches with emptiness.” In truth, it is more likely fear and vexation. Captured and imprisoned on my first day! Tears began to carve a path through the dust on her face.

The edge folk ate and drank their fill and then, shouting and laughing, in such a mood as in other folk might call for songs and dancing, they retired to a clearing for wrestling, stabbing with sharp sticks, and caving in skulls with cudgels.

Again Grayling struggled against the ropes that bound her to the tree. “See what you have done with your shape shifting, you stupid creature,” she muttered to the goat. “Would that I had never seen you, that the potions you ate had sickened you, that you would go away and trouble me no more.”

“Alas, Gray Eyes, this mouse is bound to you.”