The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  Winnifred Pleasant Black crouched on one knee, checking the cinches on the saddle of her enormous black mountain goat, Peaches, a beast that had quickly set out its own boundaries by nearly biting Athena’s hand clean off. The only people it would suffer near it were Winnifred and her cub, who crawled all over it and hung from its horns as if it were a statue in Tinkers Square. The woodswoman had supervised their kit, courtesy of an abandoned dry goods store down in the deserted town. She had loaded up the four of them with a seemingly endless selection of spikes, hammers, flint, steel, tents, snowshoes, and pemmican. So much pemmican. The greasy concoction of fat, dried meat, and acidic berries made Athena’s stomach turn just thinking about it.

  And that was their company.

  But where was Ruby Teach?

  Athena still caught herself, turning to see Ruby’s face when Cram said something ridiculous or Henry said something pompous. Infuriating as she might be, the little rogue could at least be counted on to provide amusing conversation. She had known Ruby for such a short time. Why did it ache so deeply?

  So she put her armor on, to keep the hurt at bay. She donned the impenetrable smile, the one that she had worn since she was six, the one she had worn since her father had told her that if he had no male heir, then she would just have to do.

  They set out across the little field toward a solid wall of trees, stretching to the horizons. Athena gazed back over the river. Somewhere back that way lay Philadelphi. And London. Cobblestones, coffeehouses, libraries. Civilization really. Everything she had ever known. This journey was madness. Would they ever return?

  Winnie Black tapped her on the shoulder. Athena jumped. Where had she come from? Eerily quiet, that one. And perceptive. Four months in close quarters had made it certain that Black knew Athena wasn’t “Athen,” but she kept on as if she had never noticed. That suited Athena just fine.

  Black waggled her eyebrows. “No lords of the manor here.”

  “What do you mean? Isn’t this land claimed by the crown? You mean, we’re passing into French land?”

  Black gave her a long look. “No, young sir. I mean this land is claimed by no one. It is its own thing. Beyond those trees lay more trees. Trees, trees, trees. Mountains, yes. But those mountains are covered in trees. All the way to the cracking huge lakes in the north and the ocean in the south. We shall take old paths, now abandoned by the ones who used to walk them.” She took a huge, smiling breath through her nose. “Smell that?”

  Athena sniffed. “Peaches?”

  “No. Freedom. No law in that forest but instinct, no mercy there but a quick kill.” Athena did not, she absolutely did not like the look of the mad smile that wound its way onto Black’s face. “Home,” the woodswoman said. She clucked at Peaches, and the great goat set out after the others.

  “Brilliant.” Athena did her best to seem excited and then realized that no one was paying her any mind. She kicked a stone into the river and then set out after the others.

  CHAPTER 18

  BUMBLEBUFFLE: What do you mean, “we are betrothed”?

  CATHERINE: It is not an incomprehensible sentence.

  BUMBLEBUFFLE: Oho, then! You must be most pleased to be my fiancé! I am, after all, rich, charming, and intelligent.

  CATHERINE: You have an adventuresome approach to your vocabulary.

  BUMBLEBUFFLE: Which?

  CATHERINE: Oh, well. “Charming.” “Intelligent.” (coughs) “Pleased.”

  —Marion Coatesworth-Hay, A Game of Vials and Vapors, Act III, sc. i

  Down in the valley the sun peeked up over the trees, and that’s when Cram had to sit down. The orange, pink, red, and yellow piled on top of one another like melted sugar candy, and the air was so clear he felt as if he could reach down and touch the treetops and the glittering creek below. Like tinker’s chemystry, but a thousand times better. A little flame of joy lit down in his belly.

  He stoked the fire. The morning chill lingered, and while his body still ached like old roof beams in the morning, change had weaseled its way into his eyes and ears. And his noggin, mayhaps. The first night he had lain down, every crack of a stick was a beast, sidling into camp to make a meal of him. The ground stabbed him with rocks through the night, and everything itched.

  Last night, though, they had staggered into the clearing Miss Winnie had found them, nestled halfway up the side of a hill, and after his chores Cram had fallen to sleep as quickly as he pulled up his blanket. He had dreamed of Peaches, of all things, and riding her across a great plain of tall grass, hurrooing on an old hunting horn, the way they did in the stories.

  He leaned down to sniff a cluster of fine little white flowers, a riot of yellow inside each of them.

  “What are those?” a voice behind him asked.

  “Bloodroot,” Cram answered. “The Algonkin say you can use those to catch the heart of your ladylove.”

  “Can she eat it, your ladylove?”

  “Not if she wants to keep down her breakfast,” he said. “But she could use a paste made from the root to take a wart off her fingers.”

  Winnifred Pleasant Black sat down beside him.

  He offered her a piece of jerky. She took it. They looked at the sunrise awhile.

  “If you had to get back down there, how would you go?” Black pointed down into the valley.

  Cram scanned the hillside. “Little gully over that way, by the big maple.”

  “Looks steep. What about that scree field instead?”

  “Only if you wanted the rocks to deliver you to the bottom with a broken leg or worse. Mam didn’t raise no dimwits.”

  She chuckled. “You’ve a knack for this, boy. One last question.”

  Cram gritted his teeth and prayed to Providence.

  “Which way is Philadelphi?”

  This was the nubbin. Trees? They seemed to line up and call out their names to him. Animals? He had a keen eye for this three-toed paw or that spread of cat scat. But bearings? He stroked his chin, trying to look wise and to buy more time. The sun was coming up there, but moss on that side of the tree, except on the leeward . . . He stuck a shy finger back over her shoulder, pointing, he hoped, to Philadelphi.

  Miss Winnie took his wrist in her hand and moved it exactly the opposite way. She gave him a tight smile. “We’ll keeping working on that. Good?”

  He didn’t answer her. Movement flashed down in the valley. “That smoke?”

  She clucked her tongue. “It is.”

  They woke the rest and gathered them on their bellies, peering over the edge of the hill.

  Lady Athena rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Someone had to light a fire to dry their clothes after crossing the river this morning. There’s smoke down there,” Black said.

  “Smoke?” Henry asked. “Who is it?”

  Black spat. “One way to find out.” She eased up, taking care to keep the big oak between her and the fire.

  “You’re going down there?” Athena asked.

  “Could be something, could be nothing, but my sense is you don’t want someone following you, wherever it is you’re going.”

  “Here.”

  Wayland Teach held out what looked to be a gold monocle, ringed by clear glass filled with a bright green liquid. Cram knew it. Ruby had used it like a spyglass when they had been trying to get off the Thrift. “You can see as far as you want with that, and belay the bickering.”

  Athena took it from him. She snuck her head up over the edge of the hill and put the monocle to her eye. She whistled. “Take a look. Anyone know them?” Neither the captain nor the woodswoman did. When Cram took his turn, he almost fell off the hill. The view swooped and swooshed with the faint sloshing of the chem inside the monocle, and the forest rushed up at him. It took him a few moments, but with Lady A.’s help he focused in on a campsite in a clearing much like theirs, but near the bank of the river. He went cold. There were hard men and women down there, at least ten of them, and they were armed: hunting spears,
swords, clocklock pistols, even a few long guns. He handed the trinket to Henry.

  “That don’t look like a hunting party,” Cram said.

  “Oh, I disagree,” Henry said as he looked through the monocle. “Two girls down there are the ones from the King’s Bum back in StiltTown. The ones who were after the journal.” He handed the monocle back to the captain. “They are a hunting party. They’re hunting us.”

  They loaded the mules quickly and as quietly as they could, and the whispers flew so fast Cram’s head was spinning.

  “But who is it?” Athena tossed a saddlebag over Constance’s flank. “Reeve? Tinkers? Bluestockings? And how did they find us again?”

  The professor grabbed the bag from the other side and helped cinch it down. “Why don’t you go down and ask nicely? Or perhaps they’d like to come up for a cup of tea?”

  Black cut them off. “Fighting ten of them with half that number is not my reckoning of a garden party, no matter how stealthy we are. We split up.”

  “What?” said the others.

  “My aim is to take the mule train, cut another path from the bottom of this hill, and lead them astray.” She nodded at the captain. “Barrel Guts here moves quiet and does what I tell him. I need him and his big feet to make a likely trail.”

  “What about us?” Henry asked.

  “You need to preserve the journal and find my Ruby’s mother,” Teach said. “Ruby is in your hands.”

  “But what if you do not return?” Henry tapped at the journal. “‘The meeting of three rivers,’ it said. Only you know where that is.”

  Black blinked at him. “Well, it is the meeting of three rivers, yes?”

  “Yes,” Henry said.

  She waved her hand vaguely to the west. “Then head that way, until you find yourself a river. After that, follow it until you find two more.”

  “What?” they all said again.

  The woodswoman shrugged. “Easiest thing in the world. If you run into any Algonkin, be especially polite.”

  Henry waved it away. “But right now you are talking about leaving us and then somehow finding us again in this forsaken wilderness!” Crackers, he was truly angry.

  Winnifred cinched the strap on Peaches’s saddle. The goat’s bleat rumbled in Cram’s feet. “I have in mind a certain stratagem.”

  It all was coming to a head now, like the worst of stews or pies gone wrong. Cram could see the figures on the slate even before Winnie Black turned to him.

  “Tell me true, Cram. Can you guide Henry and milord to that ridge?” She pointed over her shoulder to a flat-topped butte on the other side of the forest, barely visible on the horizon.

  “Me?” He wished he hadn’t squeaked just then.

  They were looking at him. He flipped and flopped the question over in his head. He had been learning. It was a solid three or four days to that butte, weather and terrain depending. The professor’s leg had not healed correct and would slow them down, so maybe five days. Six? It stood out on the landscape, though; you could not miss it. But listen to him! Like some puffed-up sheepherd, full of himself and trying to impress the ladies.

  “Cram?” Athena said.

  They all were still looking at him. “Yes?”

  “Can you do it?”

  Cram was no leader. He followed. He was, officially, a follower of Lady Athena. He didn’t mind being a follower. In fact, he rather cottoned to it. Let others make the big choices, the ones that mattered. He would be there for a knock on the noggin with his churn or a clever twist to pull their fat out of the fire.

  “I’ll try.”

  Who had said that? His best guess was that he had. Sounded like him. Came from the general area of his mouth. He put his hand over his lips, so nothing else would come out.

  “You can do it.” Miss Winnie clapped him on the shoulder. “Besides, you must.”

  “What if I had said no?”

  “You would have had to do it no matter. But now you chose it.” Black leaned over and whispered into his ear, “They’ll respect you more for that.” The words barely reached him through all the wind rushing through his ears. Leading. Him.

  Winnifred Pleasant Black surveyed the three of them, hangdog and fearful. She turned to her boy. “Cubbins, when I set you loose in the forest, how many days did it take you to get back to the house?”

  The little boy gnawed intently on a clump of sedge grass. Without looking up, he held up four fingers.

  “That’s right. Four days. And what birthday did we celebrate when you got home?”

  Cubbins shifted the grass in his mouth, a fuzzy green pipe. He held up his hand, five fingers standing tall.

  Black nodded. “Five years old.” She turned back to them. “You are more than twice his age. Stay alive twice the days he did, and we will do our best to get back to you.”

  They divided up the supplies. Most of the gear stayed on the mules, and all of the tents. Black and Teach would be building fires at night and setting up a camp the same size as before. Athena, Cram, and Henry had goodly portions of pemmican in their packs, enough for a week or more. Cram wondered briefly what they would do if the food ran out and they had still not been found. Mam always said, “Give me a rock, some hot water, and a shoe, and here I have some soup,” but he wasn’t sure this was what she had in mind.

  Miss Winnie hauled herself onto Peaches’s back, Cubbins already perched between the goat’s horns. “No fires, neither. We want them to see us, not you. Huddle for warmth under your blankets. You’ll be fine.”

  “Raw pemmican. Capital,” Athena muttered.

  Wayland Teach gave each of them a big bear hug. He saved Athena for last. “You’ll never stop trying to get Ruby back. Promise me,” he said.

  Surprise shadowed her face. “How can I promise that? We don’t know where we are going. We don’t even know what we are looking for. If we do find Ruby’s mother, then we have to find Ruby and—”

  He held up a hand, as if warding off evil. “You must believe you can succeed. It is the only way to fight the fear. Act as if you will get her back until you fail. If you fail, then find another way. If you fail again, find another way. That is the promise I ask.”

  “I promise,” she said so softly Cram could barely hear.

  The captain squeezed her arm and looked deep into her eyes with the faintest of smiles. He moved over to Constance. They had tied the mules in the line, and the white one was the lead.

  “My best guess is seven days’ time, if all goes well,” Black said. “We will see you on that rise after leading them a merry chase, and then we’ll tell tall tales of our travels. I’m certain of it.”

  “And if we don’t see you?” Henry asked.

  “Ten days. If we haven’t made it then, we’re not coming.” She tched at Peaches’s reins, and the goat gave Cram one last mournful nibble before they turned and trotted off down the slope. Teach took them all in for a long moment before raising his hand in farewell and trotting off on Constance, the other mules in line behind.

  A bird dropped something on Cram’s hat.

  Athena raised her eyebrows. “Whither away, O Mighty Hunter?”

  Cram thought of Ruby, and what she might have said, but decided against it. He turned and headed up the slope.

  CHAPTER 19

  Revenge is the ugliest of businesses. Uglier even than lawyering.

  —Aquila Rose, adventurer and ne’er-do-well

  The thirteenth thicket crouched below, waiting to pounce on Henry. The thickets might as well have been conscious. They were sneaky beasts, deceptively quiet and apparently benign, but Henry had learned over the past few days that they hated him with all of their thorny hearts. He eased himself down onto a flat patch at the top of the hill, his leg awkwardly in front of him. The blood in it pulsed with his heartbeat, but the steady ache was a vast relief over the pain that jangled from his ankle up his leg whenever he put his weight upon it. Wintering in Winnifred Black’s cabin had given it time to heal, but the woodswoman
said the bones hadn’t set exactly right. He would limp for a long time, perhaps for his life. Better to think on the wind.

  A cool breeze fluttered at his collar and wrists. The air refused to follow them down into the hollows, and he leaned back, letting it wash over his face. By Science, it was hot. Spring was in full bloom, but the friendly green was as deceptive as the flowers decorating the briars below.

  Cram flopped down with a grunt, his bag clattering beside him. Boyle eyed the ground but leaned against a big sprawling tree instead. Cram could probably have told them what manner of tree it was and even whether you could brew its leaves for tea, but Henry didn’t need a cup of bark right now. Three days of the boy’s leadership had taken them up and down the winding, densely forested hills with very little evidence of rhyme or reason. Occasionally the flat-topped hill would heave into view, neither nearer nor farther as far as Henry could see, and then they would plunge back down into the close, fuggy bottoms. It was hard work, and Henry had stopped counting the scrapes, bruises, and stab wounds when he started counting the thickets instead.

  But that was beside the point.

  He worked his ankle in the stout moccasins, and pain flared up almost to his waist. This was the point. His stomach churned with worry. Could he keep up?

  “Just give me a moment,” Henry said.

  Cram nodded and handed him a waterskin. It was warm and tasted of leather, but when it hit his throat, it was all he could do not to just dump the entire thing on his head.

  “How much farther?” Boyle asked. Cram grimaced and looked across the little valley.

  This was her game. It irked Henry. “I imagine we have eaten up the leagues since the last time you asked,” he said. “A quarter of an hour can make miracles.”

  She pasted on that stuffed-cat grin. “I am merely curious as to our progression across the landscape.”

  Cram stabbed at the dirt with a stick. “I don’t know, milady.” He hunched his shoulders. “What I mean to say is it could be we made another half mile.”