Straw Into Gold

by Gary D. Schmidt

  "Yes," said the miller, "your life upon it."

  The Grip's mouth worked back and forth, and the hand holding the sword hilt grew white-knuckled. Then he exploded. "Do you know what it is to feel the rage of the Great Lords? And what is this boy to you? Nothing. I could take him now and be about my business. We'll be gone and all will be as it was before."

  "No," said the miller's wife.

  "No," said the miller.

  "You've played the fool all your life, and now you play it again. By all that's holy, you never had to send your daughter to Wolverham. The thing was a wisp of the king's fancy, a whim at the end of a hunt. He would have forgotten come morning, and you none the worse for your silly boast."

  "He would not have forgotten the spinning of gold."

  "He would have forgotten. He is the creature of a moment. All that happened, miller, happened at your designing, and you see now the end. Design again and protect this boy, and I will burn this house, and your mill, around your ears. There is no jest here, miller. I will fill my hands with the ashes of your mill."

  "Tousle," said the miller. "You hear the choice. I could send you with the King's Grip, or I could keep you from him." The miller's hand reached out and gripped his wife's shoulder. "We have had this choice before," he said to her, and she nodded. Then he turned to me. "If there is design in this, remember what I choose to do this time. Run, Tousle. Run, Innes. Run and do not look back. And this Grip and I will be about our business."

  I dropped the shirt over my head. The miller's wife looked at us, and she smiled. Tears wet the creases in her cheeks."Go," she breathed, and she said it with a sigh, as if she had been waiting to say it for years. "Go, and God go with you."

  I crossed to Innes and took him by the sleeve. Together we walked backward out the door and into the frosted night.

  But we did not run.

  The Grip's black horse, darker than the shadows, stood tied to a low hemlock. He was bigger by far than the Dapple or the Gray, and his steamy breath snorted up like a dragon's. I held Innes to a stop, then stepped to the horse slowly, one hand reaching out. He pulled at his reins, whinnying and tossing his head. If he hadn't been tied by the halter, he would have reared.

  And suddenly I was back at Da's farm, the morning the Gray had first trotted out of the forest. Big eyed and blood flecked from ferocious spurs, he had galloped back and forth in the clearing, desperate and terrified, while I watched from the window. Then Da had gone out. Little Da, so tiny against the rearing horse. With one hand outstretched, he had walked steadily, clucking softly, until the horse calmed and stood, eyes still big, still watching. Da had stood on his toes and reached up until the horse leaned his head down. When Da first touched him, the Gray's sides flicked out with fear, but he did not move. He whinnied once, but by the time Da had begun to stroke his neck, the Gray had stuck his muzzle in Da's jerkin. I was not at all surprised when he pulled out a block of sugar.

  "Quiet," I told Innes."If I move slowly enough, he'll stay calm and we can ride him. Otherwise he'll bolt."

  Innes nodded his head. "A horse a breath away from me will bolt if I do not stay quiet. And probably he will bolt right over me."

  "Yes."

  "I'll stay quiet."

  "Shh..." I hushed, waving at Innes with my hand, then realizing that that would not be much help. I moved closer to the horse, who watched my outstretched arm suspiciously with big, white eyes. He tried to rear again. Slowly, clucking my tongue, wishing I had a block of sugar, I reached out to stroke him but pulled back when the horse whinnied shrilly. I reached again and saw the sides of the horse's mouth being ripped by the bit. A surge of anger, and I grabbed at the halter, fumbling at the bridle until it gave. A scream from the horse, and I ducked under the head and unbuckled the other side. Then, with a sudden jerk, he pulled his head out of the halter.

  "There!" I cried, triumphant.

  And he galloped off into the night, the sound of his hooves pounding the hardened road.

  I stood holding the empty halter, wondering why I had been so foolish, and knowing why. I threw the halter into the wood. "At least the Grip will have no horse," I said.

  "I told you they were afraid of me."

  "Is the Grip afraid of you too?"

  "Terrified," said Innes.

  Even so, we ran in the cold night, Innes just behind me to follow the sound of my footsteps. We ran wildly until the frosty air burned our lungs. We slowed to a walk, then ran again as fear caught up to us. Through the night darkness we ran, the fear deep in our guts and the darkness thick around us. We ran as the moon hefted herself up into the tree branches, tangled for a bit, and then floated free in the sky, brightening the road to a shadowy white and making the woods along the roadside seem even darker. I kept the road fixed in my eye, wondering if I could ever find the path that led home, wondering if the trees would still stand apart.

  And suddenly I realized that I was smiling, that I was almost laughing. Da would have said I was a lunatic, but it wasn't that at all. The world was suddenly large and thrilling. Thrilling!

  Farther and farther we ran. The moon reached her height and started to sink back down to the trees, and still we ran. The topmost branches caught her and began to drag her in, and still we ran. Only when her light was almost hidden by the trees did I know that I had missed the path home. Or that the path had closed in again and was not to be found.

  I tried to crush down the panic that started to rise. A different thrilling.

  "Tousle," panted Innes, stumbling to a halt. "Tousle, I can run for a while yet, but not a long while. Are we close?"

  "No. I don't know."

  A long pause.

  "Well, then, it will be up to me to find a hiding place. How about if we start—"

  "Innes, I'll find the place. I suppose we are easy to spot here in the middle of the road."

  "Easy enough."

  "So we should get off into the woods."

  "The deeper the better."

  "We might be easy to track in the woods. Here on the road the snow is all trampled."

  "Then we must find a stream," said Innes, beating his sweaty sides against the cold.

  "We cannot swim in freezing water."

  "No," he answered,"but we can walk on ice and leave no tracks."

  So on we ran, stopping now and again to listen for the sound of water, hoping that we would not hear the sound of pursuit.

  Not long before morning we did finally come to a ford, though I might easily have missed it if the moon had not been showing her last light. There was no sound of the water—the river was a glass highway. Just as the stars were showing a little less fiercely to the east, I stepped onto it—and immediately I was on my back, my head rapping against the ice.

  "Slippery?" asked Innes.

  "No. Not at all. Just jump right on out."

  So he did, and landed with his feet sure and his knees bent. He gave a push with his back foot and slid on past me. He twirled once, then again, and took a deep bow.

  "Innes, where did you learn to do that?"

  "A blind boy will learn anything to amuse a crowd and earn a loaf of bread. Anything."

  "Innes," I said, "whatever happens after this, I promise that you will never have to amuse a crowd again." It was too dark to see his face fully. I hoped that he believed me, but I could not tell.

  "You start," he said finally, "by setting the one foot across your body, like this. Keep the other pointed, then push off."

  I got to my knees, then stood gingerly, watching him. "I suppose we should head east. We'll be harder to follow if someone is looking directly into the sun."

  "And is Eynsham to the east?"

  "That we will need to find as we go. Let me hold you." My hand in his, I crossed, pointed, and pushed.

  "Now shove out to the sides," he called, and I followed stiffly, shuffling along the surface of the river, trying to ignore the thin, numbing film of icy water.

  I grew accustomed to the gait, and we bega
n longer shuffles. Usually we skirted the black rocks that thrust up through the ice, and only once we went over the darker ice that started to shatter with our weight. But all told we began to move quickly, though neither of us knew yet where it was we were headed.

  The sky purpled. Holding one hand out for balance, I watched the grand show I had seen so often before, though now I kept looking behind as well for any pursuit. But in the yellowing air I heard only wakening birds, and soon the river bent and bent again, and I saw the world turn itself under and the sun heft over the horizon, startling the river to a white so bright that I had to shield my eyes as we skidded along. The sun rose up directly ahead, so big it might roll down the river toward us.

  "Listen," said Innes suddenly.

  I stopped, crouched down to make myself smaller, and looked behind us. Nothing. I expected to hear galloping horses, or shouts. Nothing but the morning birds.

  "We'd best get off the ice," I said.

  "No. Listen."

  I strained my frosted ears.

  "There. It's ended now."

  "What's ended?"

  Innes held his hands out, as though he were going to explain something to someone who most likely wouldn't understand."The dawn. I've always been able to hear it. It's God's gift that's all my own, that's no one else's."

  "You hear the dawn?"

  "It starts low, almost so quiet that you're not really sure you hear it at all. Then there's a single bell, then another, and then it's all pealing like the bells of heaven are ringing with newness, pealing like no bells you've ever heard, Tousle. God Almighty, the dawn gives reason to hope."

  I stared at Innes's enraptured face. "You must wish you could see it," I said.

  "You must wish you could hear it."

  I did. But I wished something else too. I wished I knew if there was a gift that was all my own.

  Then suddenly I was back in another late-winter dawning, walking back with Da from the barn, a bucket brimming with milk in each straining hand. The dust of sweet hay lay in our noses, and as the sun struck us full on our backs and tossed our shadows toward the house, I smelled breakfast heating by the fire. The smell was so real, so very real, that sudden hunger overwhelmed me, and I wondered where in all this waste we might find food.

  Innes held his face up to the air. "Tousle, are we near a cottage?"

  "No. There's nothing."

  "I smell bread baking."

  "There's no bread baking. There's no fire for..." I paused at the sight of smoke curling over the trees on the far bank.

  "So you smell it too?"

  I did. Impossible as it was, the smell of baking bread wafted into the air. We both felt ourselves drawn toward it. We shuffled to the riverside, scrambled over ice-flecked rounded stones, and pushed through a thick grove of quiet aspens that hid a clearing from the river. The sun had just risen above the trees and was dropping light into the grove in great warm beams, light so warm that it was melting snow off the aspen branches and onto the shingled roof of a small cottage, tidy and perfect.

  I had never seen it, but I knew right away that Da had conjured it. The sharp slant of the roof, the filigreed cornices, the carved wood of the door, the slight twist in the bricks of the chimney, all were smaller twins of the house where we lived—where I had lived. Even the color of the smoke, a sort of blue haze that paled to whiteness in spots, bespoke Da. And the smell of the bread—I had smelled it a hundred, a thousand times of a morning, and I knew it was Da's.

  Dragging Innes with me, I burst open the door and stooped Innes through. The table was set with crockery, and the merriest fire in all the world leapt up suddenly to greet us. Bread stood and waited on warming bricks, guarded by a thick jug of steaming cider whose handle plucked out its cork when we came in. "Da," I called. But there was no answer. I went back to the door and called out in the clearing. Still no answer. But he had been here. He had been here.

  The bread was still warm to the touch and steamed when I broke it open. And the cider! The sweet cider! I felt its heat spread through my chest and down into my guts. We drank and drank again, and ate without talking, without thinking of anything but the heady taste of it all.

  That bread filled me with new hope, like Innes's dawn. If we could find bread and sweet cider by a riverside in late winter, then why should we not find the answer to the riddle and bring it to Wolverham? And perhaps we had the answer already.

  "Innes," I asked, "do you think the miller was right? That the answer to the riddle is another skein of gold?"

  Innes shrugged his shoulders. "It seems too easy an answer. It's such a strange riddle that there must be more to it than simply another skein."

  I nodded slowly, remembering the king's eyes. "Yes," I agreed, "it is too easy."

  Filled and warm, we stretched out, our heads by the fire. I felt Da all around me. I could almost hear him, almost smell him. I checked the bandage that crossed Innes's chest, then followed him into sleep. If the Grip had ridden his horse right into the cottage, I would have slept on still.

  When I woke, Innes was up and sitting by the fire, and I watched him a moment, moving as he did in a world that was always dark. I stretched out, folded my arms behind my head, and yawned.

  "You're awake."

  "Innes," I asked, "do you think about it often, being blind?"

  He shrugged."There are days when I do. It might almost have been better if I had never seen. Then seeing and not seeing would all be one to me. But I do remember seeing." He stretched his hand out. "I remember firelight. I remember the sky, the sun. I remember one stunted little tree I would put my arms around. I remember my own hand."

  "That's not very much."

  "No, not much."

  "Do you remember how..."

  He nodded. "I heard the story often enough afterward. This is not the first time a village has rebelled against Lord Beryn. The last time, he chose my family as the example in the village." Innes paused, his mouth open as if to howl, working back and forth as though the howl could not get out. "They held me to watch what they did to my father, my mother. And then Lord Beryn turned his sword at me. 'This one will be my living memorial to all who would rebel,' he said."

  Innes shook his head. "Do you know, Tousle, every time people in the village saw me, they remembered what Lord Beryn had said. And they pitied me, then hated me for making them remember."

  "So no one took you in."

  "For a time they did. First one family, then another. But it was a poor village. And after all, there is no place in this wide world for a boy with no parents, no eyes. Whom can he apprentice to? What trade can he carry? What learning can he perform? Leave him to tend the horses. And if he cannot do that, send him to another house to feed. He can saw wood. And if he cannot do that, to another house. He can muck out the barn. And if he cannot do that ... if he cannot do even that, then play the fool with him and throw him a crust of bread for the pleasure it brings to you."

  He stilled, and we let the silence speak between us. It spoke of years of loneliness.

  "There wasn't anyone..."

  "Not with these eyes. And if Lord Beryn were to return, who knew what might happen to the ones who took me in. In all that village there were just two girls, younger than me, who cared whether I lived through the night or not. And now they sit in chains back in Wolverham." He paused a long time. "They would bring me potatoes."

  "And, Innes, we'll bring them the answer to the riddle. We'll find the way to Saint Eynsham Abbey. We'll find the queen and hear her answer to the riddle. And we'll bring it back to Wolverham."

  A high, shrill whinny froze the air around us. The house seemed to shudder. The fire died to a glow, the shutters smacked tight against the windows, and the rafters hunched down over us.

  "Perhaps," whispered Innes, "we should not be asking whoever is on that horse the way to Saint Eynsham Abbey."

  "No, but we should be sure about who it is." Out the door, through the trees, and to the river, whose ice still shone bright w
hite in the high sun. I peered past the aspens. There, picking his way carefully along the ice, placing each foot with exquisite care, a black horse came along, the clop of his hooves as they hit the ice unnaturally loud. The rider was hooded, sitting huge and dark in the saddle. "Is it possible that he can track over the ice?" I wondered, but then, with a sudden thought, I looked behind me and saw the blue smoke rising into the air.

  A headlong rush back to the clearing. "Innes, Innes," I shouted in a whisper.

  "Go," he called back. "He's looking for you, not me. Follow the river until you find someplace to hide."

  I grabbed him by the elbow. "Stay close and keep a hand in front of your face," and together we ran from the hut and crashed through the woods, running now in blind panic, not thinking about the trampled snow and broken branches that proclaimed our passing to the world. Before long, twigs had whipped at both our faces and added blood to the trail.

  "We have to stay by the river," Innes called. "That's where we'll find someone who knows of the Abbey."

  "The Grip is tracking us by the river."

  "No, wait," Innes said. I paused, my chest heaving. "He couldn't possibly follow us across the ice. Not even the Grip could do that. He must have guessed which direction we would take."

  I nodded. "We're not the only ones who know that the queen might have the answer to the riddle."

  "And we're not the only ones who know that the queen lives in Saint Eynsham Abbey."

  "So he knew we would go there before we knew it ourselves."

  "He knew," Innes agreed, and at my groan, he reached out for my shoulder."You do have to admire his skills," he said.

  "Let's work our way back to the river," I said, then stopped. Behind us, billows of the blackest smoke rushed into the air, seething and boiling into the cold blue. "Da's cottage," I said half aloud.

  "Burning," Innes said."I can smell it."