Grayling's Song

by Karen Cushman

  Some time had passed when she heard a sound, the sound of the wind stripping the grain on a wheat field, or a thousand tailors scissoring cloth, or . . . or . . . or an army of mice chewing through hazel branches—chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff!

  She peered through the darkness. Indeed mice beyond counting were at the other side of the cage, tumbling over each other, gnawing and tearing their way through the branches that served as bars. The noise grew louder as their number grew. Chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

  Auld Nancy woke and assessed the scene. “’Tis well done, mouse,” she said, “but let us make some noise to drown out the chewing lest the guard hear.”

  Pansy yawned and said, “Can you not call thunder and lightning?”

  Auld Nancy shook her head. “Nay, nothing that would bring attention to us or illuminate what is happening. Nay.”

  “My mother,” said Grayling, “has a song with chiff chiffs that she sings as she slashes chive blossoms from their stems. We could sing it loudly.”

  The mice chewed on. Chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff!

  “What be that sound?” called the guard. “What are you doing in there?”

  “We,” Grayling said, “are but singing a song with much chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiffing.”

  “Chiff chiff, chiff chiff,” sang Auld Nancy. She knocked Pansy with her elbow, and the girl shouted, “Chiff chiff!”

  “I do like a song,” said the guard. “Sing so I can hear.”

  So Grayling sang:

  Do not go to the field, my girl, today.

  ’Tis August and the men are cutting hay.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff

  Go silvery scythes.

  Harvest is underway

  And I wish you would

  Not go to the field today.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

  The mice went chiff chiff, chiff chiff, Auld Nancy and Pansy sang chiff chiff, chiff chiff, but Grayling was silent a moment as she remembered Hannah Strong singing while she snipped greens in the garden. The sun had lit streaks of bronze in her hair and roses in her cheeks, and her fingers were swift and supple.

  “You witches be fine singers,” their guard called out. “I vow I can hear the sound of the scythes cutting the hay.”

  Grayling sang louder as she continued her song and the mice continued their chiff chiffs.

  Her own true love was in the field that day—

  His hair was gold and eyes were moonlight gray.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff

  With silvery scythe

  He swung but swung astray.

  He cleaved her head

  And laid it in the field of hay.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

  Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

  “Chiff chiff, chiff chiff,” shouted Auld Nancy.

  “And swish. Swish swish,” cried Pansy, her face red with excitement, “and slash slash!”

  The listening soldier was so stirred that he had begun to chiff chiff along. “Finish the song,” he called. “What follows? How fares the girl?”

  “Poorly,” said Grayling, “for she be headless and dead.”

  “Dead? Nay! That be a poor story and not worth the listening,” the guard said, “with a most unacceptable ending.” He crossed his arms and, with a huff and a bah, walked away.

  “Not all endings are happy,” said Grayling. And she sang on.

  There were other sounds in the darkness: shouts and cries, the calls of soldiers striding through the yard, the grim and doomful echo of their boots. Ere long, the night grew quiet but for the chiff chiff of the mice. More songs were needed, but Auld Nancy and Pansy slumbered in a corner.

  “Can you not hurry?” Grayling whispered, but to whom? The cold of midnight settled upon her, and she pulled her cloak tighter. She sang her mother’s healing song and a love chant and a song to cheer, although it did not cheer her.

  She even sang to the grimoire, but there was no answering song. Face spots and flea bites! Had the song lost its magic? Grayling caught her breath but then remembered—a bridge. They had crossed a bridge. Water stood between her and the grimoire. She hoped it was no more than that.

  After a time, the mouse hole had grown large enough for a person to pass through. “’Tis done,” Grayling whispered as she woke Pansy and Auld Nancy. And Pook? Where was Pook? She could not leave without him, but the mice were so many, crawling and climbing over each other. Gray mice, brown mice, fat mice, and thin—how would she ever find one special mouse? “Pook,” she whispered. “Pook, come hither to me,” but there was no response, no Pook with his pink nose and pink ears and more whiskers than any mouse truly needed.

  “We must go,” said Auld Nancy.

  “Not without Pook.”

  “Who?”

  “Pook. The mouse. The raven. The goat.”

  Auld Nancy shook her head. Grayling could not see it in the dark, but she knew from the tsk sound Auld Nancy made. “He is a resourceful bird . . . mouse . . . whatever he is, and likely he will find you.”

  They had to leave. Pook was resourceful indeed. Grayling took some comfort in that fact, but still her heart felt empty and sore.

  She climbed out of the cage behind Pansy and Auld Nancy. Making what haste they could, they fought their way through a hedgerow thick with thorns and thistles that scratched their faces and snagged their hair. “Thistles and thorns! Begone! Begone!” Grayling shouted, as she yanked the skirt of her kirtle from the thorns’ grip, leaving a long gash in the skirt.

  They crashed through bushes and brush to a path heading steeply down. With a sharp cry, Pansy fell, twisting her ankle beneath her. She pulled on Auld Nancy’s skirts and almost toppled her, too. “Clumsy girl!” Auld Nancy hissed. “Can you do nothing right?”

  Pansy felt the sting of Auld Nancy’s bad temper more often than the rest of them, Grayling thought, but then she earned it more often. “Come,” said Grayling to the girl, “lean on me. I am strong enough for the both of us.” Pansy did, and like a two-headed beast, they scuttled away.

  VII

  heavy mist obscured the rising sun and darkened the path. Auld Nancy lifted her broom. “I shall banish the mist and let in the morning light.”

  “Would that not make it easier for us to be followed when our escape is discovered?” asked Grayling. She sighed a sigh that ruffled the hair on Pansy’s head and, all unwilling, offered a solution. “I am accustomed to finding my way in the mist in my valley. I could, I expect, lead, and you follow.” Grumbling, she took Pansy’s arm and Auld Nancy’s hand, and they crept carefully through the mist down the steep and slippery path.

  Grayling knew three kinds of mist—gentle mist that wrapped around her like a fine lady’s veil, mist thick with drops of moisture like peas in a soup, and a dense mist full of secrets and dangers and foreboding. This mist was neither gentle nor soupy, but menacing and somehow sinister.

  After a time she heard the muffled sounds of horses close behind them and then the marching feet of soldiers. She pulled Auld Nancy and Pansy off the path just as a voice she recognized as the metal-nosed warlord’s shouted, “Find them! Do not come back without them lest the disemboweling be yours!”

  Grayling broke off a stout elder branch and gave it to Pansy for a walking stick. Off the path it would be harder to walk and slower going, but safer. The three crouched low and crept away.

  They skittered and stumbled as the terrain descended more sharply. Grayling suddenly lurched sideways and fell to her knees. Or rather one knee, for her other leg was hanging over the edge of a steep drop into the unknown. Her heart was pounding like a rabbit’s. The world was full of dangers, and she was leading others through it. She was watching over them, but who was watching over her? What if she made a mistake? Finally she rose to her feet and, with a brisk shake of her head, continued on down. And the others followed.

  As they circled past the outskirts of a town, there came the noise o
f conflict. Metal sounded on metal, on earth, on wood. “I expect,” said Grayling, “that the soldiers have encountered edge dwellers.” She, Auld Nancy, and Pansy moved farther off the road.

  The ground turned boggy, and Grayling’s shoes squelched a soggy sort of tune: squish squelch, squish squelch. Ahead was a small grove of trees, saplings, not much taller than she. Their trunks were slender and green, supple and strong, but . . . Grayling gulped. Trees, but yet men! Trees to just below their eyes, and men above. Their arms, lifted as if in supplication, were newly leafed out although it was autumn, and their fingertips waved in distress. With soft moans and sighs, the rustling leaves murmured as if calling for help.

  Fear suffused the air like a bad smell. Grayling felt her head spin with panic and revulsion. She turned away and hurried off, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” for she was useless and as helpless as they were. Auld Nancy and Pansy, picking their way over the marshy ground, noticed nothing.

  A slippery bank led down to a rocky, fast-flowing stream. Here was the water that stood between Grayling and the grimoire. They would have to cross it.

  Pansy, limping and stumbling in the rear, sneezed a great, noisy sneeze.

  “Husht!” said Grayling over her shoulder.

  Pansy wheezed.

  “Husht!” said Auld Nancy over her shoulder.

  Pansy gurgled.

  Grayling and Auld Nancy turned to look at her. Fie! Someone was there, someone taller than Pansy and bulkier, someone in an iron helmet, someone with his arm tight across Pansy’s throat and a sword in his hand.

  “You will do as I say, or this wench will find her head separated from her body,” the soldier said. “’Tis an oddsome thing. They all be looking for you, and I, who wanted only to run off, stumble across you. Good fortune for me, as Lord Mandrake has promised a reward.” He pushed Pansy to the ground. She whimpered as she fell on her injured leg, and her eyes and her nose ran. “Sit and be still,” he said to all of them. “We will wait here until those edge-dwelling brutes are routed or destroyed.”

  They sat, Pansy at his side and his sword at the ready. The mist was heavier here near the water, the air dank and rank with the smell of rotting vegetation, and the ground mucky and cold. Grayling wriggled until she was as comfortable as she was likely to get.

  The soldier stretched out his legs. “Make a fire,” he commanded. “This blasted damp creeps into my very bones.” He removed his helmet and scratched his head.

  Auld Nancy pulled a tinderbox from her pocket and removed the flint and the steel striker. She rose and gathered together small twigs and dried leaves, struck the striker against the flint again and again, and blew on the sparks. Soon there was a tiny fire, which Grayling fed with fallen branches, and the two sat again.

  Grayling watched the fire flicker. What could be done to free Pansy? Free all of them? “I have been pondering what to do about this lout,” she muttered softly to Auld Nancy. “Might you call lightning down upon him and toast him to a cinder?”

  “Aye, I might,” Auld Nancy said. “But I might miss and toast you or Pansy, fire a tree or nothing at all. You have seen how imperfect are my skills with lightning. He would be alerted and likely angry.”

  Grayling wiggled her feet as she thought. Could she do something? She knew about straining beer and spinning wool, finding firewood and gathering herbs. Herbs. Certain herbs were known to cause deep sleep. Was there sleepy nightshade or valerian nearby? She looked about her by the light of the fire but saw none. There were mint, watercress, and water parsley, and, climbing into the trees, the thorny white bryony vine. Beware the white bryony, her mother often said. The berries could kill, and just a bit of the root would empty your belly and void your bowels.

  Grayling thought until she had a plan, which she told to Auld Nancy in a hiss and a whisper.

  “What does Lord Mandrake want with you wenches?” the soldier asked. The firelight played on his features, illuminating small, dark eyes in a face marred with wounds old and new.

  Grayling took a deep breath and said, “We are powerful witches. We, of all the witches in the world, possess the secret of invincibility, and he wants it.”

  “Nay,” said the soldier. He picked at a sore on his chin. “You are but an old woman and two girls. Tell me the truth.”

  Grayling caught Auld Nancy’s eye across the fire and nodded. Auld Nancy nodded back. She rocked and murmured, crooned and shook her broom, and a sharp crack of thunder shook the ground.

  The soldier jumped to his feet. “Fie upon it!” he shouted. “You are witches!” He sat and grabbed Pansy again. “Invincibility, you said. What means invincibility?”

  “We have a potion that will make him powerful, immortal, and infinitely wise,” Grayling said.

  The soldier spat. “Nonsense. Then why are you not invincible?”

  Grayling shook her head. “The potion does not work on witches. But one sip of our secret brew—”

  “Make it for me.”

  “Nay. ’Tis too potent and special to give to just anyone.”

  Pansy gurgled again as the soldier’s arm wrapped once more around her neck. “I am not just anyone,” he said. “Do it.”

  “Let her go,” Grayling said. “I would brew a draught for you, but I have no pot.”

  He loosened his hold on Pansy and kicked his iron helmet over to Grayling. “Now you do.”

  Trying not to smile, Grayling stood. She filled the helmet from the stream and placed it in the embers of the fire. She picked the herbs she needed—mint for its flavor and the gray, fleshy root of the white bryony for its power—and added them to the water when it boiled.

  The soldier reached for it. “Nay,” said Grayling, stopping his hand. “It must steep and cool a bit.”

  They sat in silence. Grayling chewed on a fingernail. If this does not work, if his belly is out of sorts and that be all, we might wish we were back in the cage.

  “Now!” said the soldier. He reached for the helmet and sipped slowly. “Feh! ’Tis foul!”

  “Invincibility is not easily won,” Grayling said. “Drink it all. Pansy, come and sit here while the brew does its work.”

  There was quiet again, disturbed only by the sound of fighting some ways off. Auld Nancy, Pansy, and Grayling huddled together while the soldier nodded sleepily. Suddenly he jumped to his feet with a mighty groan. Grayling could hear his innards rumbling like thunder. “You!” he shouted as he lunged at her, but he was interrupted by the noisy spewing forth of the contents of his belly and his bowels.

  “Run!” Grayling shouted.

  The three raced along the stream, which ran stronger and faster as it flowed downhill. Grayling slipped in boggy patches, stumbled over tree roots, and snagged her skirts on thorny bushes. “Tangles and toadstones!” she muttered over and over.

  A rickety bridge, made of reeds strung between lengths of rope, crossed over the stream. The span swayed, although no breeze stirred, and pieces of dried reed were sloughing off into the water. Grayling studied the bridge, the stream, and the terrain and shook her head. “We must cross to the other side to discover the grimoire’s song again and return to the road west,” she said, “but I misdoubt this creaky bridge can hold us.” She threw some rocks onto the bridge to test for sturdiness and poked it with a tree branch. It shed more reeds but held.

  Pansy shoved her aside. “Such dilly-dally! Bands of ruffians could be close after us. Let me by.” She took a careful step onto the bridge, then another. It crackled and swayed but held. Another step, another step. She looked back, grinned, and called, “’Tis sturdy eno—”

  And with that, the bridge crumbled and dumped her in the water.

  “Figs and fennel seeds,” Grayling muttered. “This Pansy be more troublous than a stew pot full of snakes!” Taking Auld Nancy’s broom, she scrambled down the bank to the stream.

  She waded in near up to her knees and stretched the broom out to Pansy, who was floundering in the water, but instead of pulling Pansy out, Graylin
g found herself pulled in. She bounced and tumbled in the fast-running stream, while Auld Nancy scrambled alongside, calling, “Come back! Come back now!”

  I would if I could, you foolish old woman, thought Grayling. After I pushed Pansy to the very bottom! Holding tight to Auld Nancy’s broom, Grayling bumped on rocks, scraped on boulders, and tangled with tree branches as she was swept downstream. Swallowed water spewed from her mouth and her nose. Sodden skirts ensnarled her legs as she was thrown hither and thither through the surging stream.

  A tangle of branches ahead promised a handhold. Gulping and spitting, Grayling stretched to reach it, but the current spun her into a jumble of rocks. She knocked her head on the rocks again and again and felt dizzy with the pain, but finally, stone by stone, she dragged herself toward the bank while the churning water tried to pull her back. Finally she struggled out of the water and lay panting, lungs heaving, still clutching Auld Nancy’s broom.

  She was on the far side of the stream. Across the raging water, Pansy, who had also hauled herself out, stood with Auld Nancy. On the other side. The wrong side.

  A plague on them both! thought Grayling. Let them stay there. I will go elsewhere. Anywhere. She was weary with leading and deciding, with child minding and old-woman tending. She would find some other way to rescue her mother.

  She wrung what water she could from her cloak and her kirtle. Cursing and grumbling, she climbed up the bank toward the woods but slipped on the slippery soil and stumbled into an old oak, its bark pitted and thick and its branches gnarled. She could almost make out a face—its eyes closed and a knurl of bark like an open mouth. ’Twas not a tree but a man, his final screams hardened into bark. And beside him a sapling, a woman, hair fluttering with every breeze, tree up to her terrified eyes, unable to make a sound.

  Filled with pity and horror, shaking with cold and wet and fear, Grayling stood there. The evil force had been here and was gone. Grayling was alone with what had been cunning folks, rooted to the ground, their limbs and hearts and brains trapped inside trees, bark and branches nearly to the tops of their heads. She could feel their terror and confusion. And this was true all through the kingdom—mages and wise women, people with skills and power, now wretched and defenseless. This undertaking, she realized, was not just a matter of freeing Hannah Strong but of freeing them all. And the only rescuers at hand were Auld Nancy, Pansy, and Grayling herself. She shook her head. She would not run. They might not win this fight, but she would not run.