The Heir of Mistmantle

by M. I. McAllister

“Then don’t go alone,” said Urchin. “Get someone to go with you, Fingal or someone.”

  “There isn’t time,” said Juniper.

  Urchin wanted to promise to come after him later, or to send someone else—but how could he promise that? He didn’t know what the king and queen would ask of him. It had hurt him to drag Juniper away from his warm turret, and it hurt even more to see him running into the storm alone. Feeling the tug at his heart, he turned his steps to the Throne Room where he found Crispin, Cedar, Needle, and Sepia in great excitement, talking about a rose petal, one of the dried rose petals from Catkin’s naming ceremony, and a new search.

  Juniper huddled his cloak around him, running against battering wind and rain to the waterfall. He had grown up here. He knew every track and cave, even without the otter raising a storm-buffeted lantern.

  “Is that Brother Juniper?” the otter called. “She’s still asking for you. Mistress Apple’s with her.”

  So she was still alive. Apple mustn’t catch it, thought Juniper, ducking under a tree root. If his own foster mother was dangerously ill, he didn’t want Urchin’s to catch fouldrought, too. He wriggled between twisted old roots, knotted a muslin mask around his face, and saw Apple, leaning in candlelight over the shrunken figure propped up in the nest.

  “Here’s your Juniper, Mistress Damson, you’re all right now, your Juniper’s here,” said Apple. She rose stiffly and waddled to Juniper’s side, lowering her voice to a murmur. “It’s not at all good, my dear, I’m sorry for you with all my heart, but it’s not good.”

  “Thank you for staying with her, Apple,” he whispered back through the muslin. “You’d better go. We don’t want anything to…”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about me, I never catch anything,” she said, patting his paw. “I reckon it’s my cordial, I drink it every day, if we all drank it there’d not be a cough or a sneeze anywhere on the island. I’ll stay awhile, if that’s all right with you, I’ll keep out of your way, you being like a son to her and nearly a priest and a healer and all. And I’ll make up the fire.”

  Juniper took off his wet cloak, knelt at Damson’s side, and saw the signs he had dreaded. It wasn’t just the labored breathing, or the swollen wrist and rash on her paw as he lifted it. It was something in her face, as if she knew that the struggle was over and had given in, that laid a cloud over his heart. He uncorked a bottle of Spring Gate water, poured it onto a pawful of moss, and held it to her lips.

  “That’s good,” she said, and turned her head, narrowing her eyes. “That’s not you, is it, Apple?”

  So her sight was failing, too. “No, it’s Juniper,” he said. He leaned closer to her as Apple brought the candle closer, and they looked clearly into each other’s faces.

  “My Juniper!” Damson cried, and reached out her arms to him. Juniper held her tightly, feeling how thin her shoulders were and how coarse her fur had become. Then he laid her gently back in the nest and held her paw.

  “Don’t you get ill,” she whispered.

  “I won’t,” he said. “Are you in pain?”

  “No, no pain nor anything,” she said, and sighed. “I’ve got you. That’s all. But for a priest, I need the priest.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me,” he said. Damson frowned.

  “I need Brother Fir,” she insisted. “Will he come?”

  “He’s not well,” said Juniper.

  Her eyes widened, anxious and afraid. “Is he…?”

  “It’s not disease,” he said.

  “But will he come?”

  Juniper didn’t want to disappoint her, but he mustn’t give her false hope.

  “We’ll see,” he said. As Apple nursed the fire into life and the warmth spread, Damson seemed to drift into a light sleep; but when Juniper moved to make himself more comfortable, she opened her eyes and smiled weakly at him.

  “You’re still here,” she whispered.

  “I won’t leave you, Mum,” he said, and she smiled again with contentment.

  “You’ve always been like a real son to me,” she said. “Never had none of my own, but you were my son from the night I found you. Can’t bear to think how lonely I’d have been without you. Brightest thing in my life, all these years.”

  He held tightly to her paw. That settled it, then. This could have been the last chance to find out anything she knew about who he really was. But he couldn’t ask her after this. And, for the first time, he felt he didn’t need to know. She had been all the mother he needed. Holding her paw in his as she lay dying, he wanted them both to forget that he was adopted, and simply be mother and son.

  “And you’ve been my real mum,” he said, and gave her the moss so she could drink again.

  She drank the water, talked a little, muttered something about having sewing to finish, and slept again. Juniper tucked the blanket round her, held her paw, and waited. It would be a long night.

  Apple brought him a warm drink and wrapped a cloak round his shoulders, and as the night cooled, he was glad of it. Damson’s paw still rested in his. Now and again Apple would prod the fire and add more wood, and the crackling of stirring flame and sticks spoke out clearly in the surrounding silence.

  Still unable to concentrate on his prophecy, he thought of what Brother Fir had said just before he became ill. The island would face its greatest enemy, setting paw against paw, mind against mind, heart against the Heart.

  Was this the real enemy behind Catkin’s kidnapping? Was Linty being controlled by some evil power, and if so, what terrible things could happen to Catkin? Was everything, Catkin’s disappearance and disease too, really the work of Lord Husk, or of his ghost? Husk had murdered the last Heir of Mistmantle. Had he come for the next?

  His imagination wandered into dark and confused places, searching for what the worst might be. Was there a curse on the Heir of Mistmantle, or even on all of them? Would fouldrought claim them all?

  Behind him, something was moving. He could hear it scuffle. It was coming nearer. The terror of seeing it made him rigid with fear. Sweat ran down his neck. He must not move. Whatever—whoever—was in the cave must not notice him. But the greater terror of not seeing it made him turn, stiffly, cautiously, to look.

  From the gloom in the back of the cave, something darted forward. Juniper flinched, bit his lip to stifle a gasp, and froze. Then with sheer relief, he laughed.

  A tiny frog crouched on the floor, looking up at him with wary, bulging eyes. It looked much more afraid than he was. It stayed, its throat pulsing, then sprang for safety into a cleft into the wall. Damson, disturbed by the movement, turned and muttered in her sleep.

  Juniper felt the tension fall away from him. He had imagined a grim specter and found a small frog. He felt sorry for it. The reality was this quietness, the fire, Damson’s paw in his, and the patient love surrounding her death. And this death was not something to dread. It was gentle. Then Juniper understood, and he realized why Fir had told them they must understand for themselves what the island’s worst enemy was. It wasn’t disease, death, or even Husk, living or dead.

  Juniper understood now.

  CHAPTER TEN

  APTAIN LUGG AND A TEAM OF MOLES marched up the muddy hillside, bending their heads against the storm. Already, cloaked squirrels and hedgehogs stood about with lanterns, while others scrabbled and sniffed. Urchin and Needle, Cedar and Crispin, knelt around the spot where Needle had found the petal.

  “But we searched here before,” said Urchin. “I’m sure it wasn’t there then, or we would have seen it. It must have been dropped since then.”

  “And there were lots of those petals,” Needle pointed out. “They were falling into hats and everything. This one might not be anything to do with Catkin.”

  “I think we’re onto something, Your Majesty,” shouted a mole. A small squirrel, one of the dancers, was squeezing her way through a gap in a tree root. Her voice, muffled in the earth, called back to them as they crouched on the soaked ground and strained
to hear her.

  “The roots have been blocked up,” she was saying. “But the moles think it’s not all the same thickness. There might be a way through, where it’s thinnest. We need a mole to hear vibrations and things.”

  “It’ll have to be a littl’ ’un,” said Lugg. “Go on then, young Ninn.” A small dark female mole slipped deftly into a tunnel as Lugg and Cedar pressed their ears to the wet moss, trying to hear every creak and every pawstep through the pounding of rain. There was more scrabbling and muttering from the animals underground as Lugg listened intently—then he sprang up with a spray of rain from his cloak.

  “Over there!” he cried. “That patch of heather! Get scrabbling!” he yelled. The animals dashed through the scratching heather and fell to their knees, clawing furiously at the earth.

  “Goes a long way down,” said Lugg. “Need a couple more good small moles in through the nearest tunnel—you and you, in you get.” Moles dived underground as Cedar tore wildly at the heather.

  “There’s a space!” she gasped. Urchin narrowed his eyes to look and saw only tightly packed earth, but there were no roots twisted through it. It was not a natural thing. Somebody had made it like that.

  More scrabbling came from beneath them, then with a soft falling of earth, Cedar had slipped down through the gap with Crispin after her. Urchin, holding the lantern, followed them down.

  He found himself in a tunnel so tight and twisting that he was sure he or the lantern would get stuck, but within seconds he had wriggled his way through and joined Cedar and Crispin in an arched chamber, pulling the lantern after him. He had already caught his paw on a sharp stone and cut it by then, but at least the lantern had stayed alight. The chamber appeared clean, dry, and perfectly empty except for some shreds of turf and candle ends on the floor. Sandy soil irritated his eyes, and he rubbed them with his free paw.

  “They were here,” she whispered. “They were here, and we’re too late.” She sat on the ground and hugged her knees.

  Urchin called back up the tunnel.

  “They’ve gone,” he shouted, then sat down beside the queen with his paw across her shoulders. He remembered how she had cared for him when he had been a prisoner. He desperately wanted to find Catkin for her.

  “They must have been all right when they left here,” he said. “That must be when the petal fell, in the last day or two.”

  “There are dozens of tunnels,” said Crispin, “some of them blocked, none of them used recently as far as I can tell. They must have gone over ground, but I don’t see how they managed that without being seen.”

  Cedar raised her head. “There won’t be a trail,” she said wretchedly. “All this rain will have washed it away.”

  “She can’t have stayed aboveground for long,” said Urchin, trying to think one step ahead. “Too dangerous. There must be another of these places somewhere.”

  “It could be anywhere,” said Cedar. With her voice on the edge of tears, she rubbed her paw across her eyes. “What do we do now? Start all over again? I’m sorry to whine, but I don’t know how much more disappointment I can bear.”

  “You’re not whining,” said Crispin, coming to sit beside her. “You have the strongest spirit I’ve ever known.”

  Urchin thought hard. “You led the resistance on Whitewings,” he said. “You had to keep secrets. You kept Larch and Flame alive and let everyone think they were dead. If you were Linty, what would you do?”

  Cedar stared ahead of her with deep concentration on her face. At last, slowly and thoughtfully, she said, “We missed this place for so long because it’s ingeniously well-hidden and a long way down, and seemed impossible. Impossible to make, let alone to get to. She’s gone somewhere else impossible. So we have to look in impossible places. And if I were doing what Linty’s doing,” she said slowly, thinking aloud, “I think—I think—I’d try to get down to the shore, in case I needed to take Catkin off the island!”

  She sprang up, then stopped as if she had been frozen to the spot. Her eyes were on something on the floor. Urchin had never seen such horror on her face before. He and Crispin both followed her gaze to a small, dark patch on the floor.

  “Blood!” she whispered.

  “That’s me,” said Urchin. “I cut my paw on a stone.”

  The queen knelt and examined the stain. Then she raised her eyes to him.

  “This isn’t fresh blood,” she said. “It can’t be yours. It’s dried.”

  Crispin took her paw. “It’s only a little,” he said. “It could be anything. Linty might have cut herself. Don’t lose hope.”

  “It’s all I have,” she said. “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Please, Your Majesty, I wish you could sleep,” said Urchin. “The rest of us can keep searching.”

  She raised her eyes to him. “If you knew my nightmares,” she whispered, “you wouldn’t say that.”

  All the long night and the next day, in driving rain, the search for Catkin went on. In the Mole Palace the little ones squealed and chased each other, played at having picnics, ate porridge while listening wide-eyed to Moth and Mother Huggen telling them stories, and slept cuddled together in warm nests. Twigg made toys out of scraps of timber and polished them with vinegar before sending them to the little ones. Shadows lengthened, the streams ran clear, and Catkin was not found.

  Sepia arrived at Damson’s tree root, and Apple went home. As it grew late, Damson turned her head restlessly. From the way she grasped about for his paw, Juniper understood that her sight had failed completely, and she struggled to raise her head when he spoke to her, as if she found it hard to hear his voice.

  She muttered, whimpered, and whispered, and though Juniper laid his ear as close as he could to her lips, he could not understand a word. He straightened up, rubbing his eyes and wondering when he had last slept properly, when a sudden sob and a gasp from Damson startled him bolt upright.

  “I need a priest!” she wailed. “Bring me the priest!”

  “I’m here,” said Juniper. He stroked the top of her head and took her paw. “I’m a novice priest now.”

  “I mean the proper priest!” cried Damson. “Brother Fir!”

  “Sh,” said Juniper gently. “Sleep now.” It was no good trying to tell her that Brother Fir could not come. She drifted into sleep, but each time she woke, her cries were more pleading and urgent. “Where’s the priest? When is Brother Fir coming! I need Brother Fir! Tell him I’m dying! Please! Please! Before I die!”

  She became calmer at last and lay with her head in Juniper’s lap. Perhaps she would slip away quietly now, like this. That would be best. There was a quietness that came with dying. He had learned about that over these last few days, and he recognized it now. All he could do was wait with her while she died, however long it took. She opened her eyes at last, wept silently, and pressed his paw.

  “That’s the priest, isn’t it?” she whispered calmly. “I so wanted you before I died. I knew you’d come. I was afraid you’d be too late. Sepia, is that the priest?”

  Juniper looked across at Sepia, and she came to sit beside them. If Damson had said, “Is that Brother Fir?” it would have been much more difficult. But she had said, “That’s the priest, isn’t it?”

  He was nearly a priest, and only a priest could comfort her now. So he made the decision that would change his life.

  “Yes,” he said. “The priest’s here.” He felt the soft letting-go as Damson relaxed in his lap. There was a quiet sigh.

  “Then I can tell the truth,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPIA STOOD UP AND TOOK A STEP BACK. She was looking intently down at Juniper, who met her gaze. She gave a tiny shake of her head, but Juniper still looked back at her without flinching.

  Sepia spoke so softly that she barely said the words at all, only framed them.

  “You’re not meant to hear this.”

  “It’s too late,” Juniper whispered back. “She has to say it. She won’t die in pe
ace if she doesn’t.”

  Damson had to believe he was Brother Fir. It wasn’t only because he wanted to hear what she had to say. She had to believe she had spoken to Brother Fir, or she would die in distress. He held the moss to her lips. She managed her words slowly, stopping now and again to gather her strength.

  “I never told it before,” she said. “Long ago, I was living higher up than here, up on the north side, near where the ridge stands up, with the larch trees, and far below it there’s that little bay. Animals keep themselves to themselves there. My husband had died in the last bad storms. We’d had no little ones of our own, and that was our great sorrow. There was a young squirrel lass there, a pretty, dark-furred young thing, sweet-natured. Always had time for a chat. Helpful. Her people had died in the storm, too.”

  She paused for breath, then went on, her voice low as she struggled with the words. “Too trusting. Too willing. Called Spindrift.”

  There was another long pause and a wheezy breath. “Told me lots of things, but not what mattered most. Never told me she was with young. I noticed it, but she said nothing till her baby was in her arms. He was a beautiful baby, very like his mother. She said she’d been wed, and it was a secret, and her husband was coming to take her somewhere special. I wasn’t to speak of the baby. He was secret, too. I doubted all that, Brother Fir. I reckoned it was somebody from the ships, and he might never come back for her.”

  Juniper gave her a drink, and presently she dozed while he watched over her, stroking her head. His legs grew stiff and painful, but he stayed still, not wanting to disturb her. The fire was burning low. Sepia fed it with more branches, then brought him a cloak to warm him, wrapping it around his shoulders so he would not have to move. She placed the candle nearer to him. In her sleep, Damson murmured phrases of song, and Juniper thought he recognized the Mistmantle lullaby. There was nothing to do but to wait until she woke again. When her eyes did open she looked about her, seeing nothing.

  “It’s dark in here,” she said. “You still there?”