Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(16)

A bunch of girls. No. There’s more to it than that.”

“Well, Clever Cap, it’s what they say in the town market. And not even that open with it either. He wants to know, but won’t take it on himself. Wants some daft clod to do it for him.”

Yannis, as they fell silent again, willed himself asleep. In the morning, he had to get off fast.

A track ran to the town. On foot and disabled, it took him until noon.

The place was as he had expected, huts and hovel-houses and the only stone buildings crowded round the square with the well, as if they had been herded there for safety. Even so, at his third attempt ? 62 ?

? Tanith Lee ?

he got a day’s work hauling stacks of kindling. He slept that night in a barn behind the priest’s house. At sunrise he heard the priest’s servants gossiping.

“It’s Women’s Magic. That’s why he’s afeared.”

“But he’s a king.”

“Won’t matter. Our Master’ll tell you. Some women still keep to the bad old ways. Worse in the city. They’re clever there. Too clever to be Godly.”

Beyond the town was another track. At last an ill-made and

raddled road.

He knew by then the city was many more miles of walking—

limping. And all the wolfwood round him and, after sundown, as he crouched by his makeshift fire, the wolves sang their moon-drunk songs to the freezing sky.

On the third day, a magical number he had once or twice been told, he met the old woman. She was out gathering twigs that she threw in a sack over her shoulder, and various plants and wildfruits that she put carefully in a basket in her left hand. Sometimes he noted, as he walked towards her along the path, she changed the basket to her right hand and picked with the left. She was a witch, then, perhaps even knew something about healing. There had been a woman he encountered like that, before, who brewed a drink that stopped his leg aching so much. The medicine was long gone and the full ache had come back.

“Good day, Missus,” he therefore politely said, as he drew level.

She had not glanced up at his approach—that confident then, even with some ragged, burly stranger hobbling up—nor did she now. But she answered.

“Yes, then. I’ve been expecting you, young man. Just give me a moment and I’ll have this done.”

He was well over thirty in years, and no longer reckoned young at all. But she, of course, looked near one hundred: to her the average granddad would be a stripling. And she was expecting him, was she?

? 63 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

Oh, that was an old trick. Natural y, nothing could surprise her, given her vast supernatural gifts.

Yannis waited anyway, patiently, only shifting a little now and then to unkink the leg.

Finally she was through, and looked straight up at him.

Her eyes were bright and clear as a girl’s, russet in color like those of a fox.

“This is the bargain,” she said. “Some wood needs chopping, and the hens like a regular feed. You can milk a goat? Yes, I believed you could. These domestic chores you can take off my hands for two or three days. During which time I will teach you two great secrets.”

He stared down at her, quite tickled by her effrontery and her style. She spoke like someone educated, and her voice, like her eyes, was young, younger far than he was. Though her hair was gray and white, there were strands of another color still in it, a faded yellow.

Eighty years ago, when she was a woman of twenty, she might well have been a silken, lovely thing. But time, like life and death, was harsh.

“Two secrets, Missus?” he asked, nearly playful. “I thought it always had to be three.”

“Did you, soldier? Then no doubt three it will be, for you. But the third one you’ll have to discover yourself.”

“Fair enough. Do I get my bed and board as well?”

“Sleep in the shed, eat from the cook-pot. As for your leg—don’t fret. That comes included.”

During that first day she was very busy inside the main hut that was her house, behind a leather curtain; at witch-work he assumed.

Outside he got on with the chores.

All was simple. Even the white goat, despite its wicked goat eyes, had a mild disposition. The shed allotted as his bedchamber was weather-proof and had a rug-bed.

As the sinking sun poured out through the western trees, she called him to eat. He thought, sitting by the hearth fire, if her witchery turned ? 64 ?