Darkwood

by M. E. Breen

  For superior oatcakes use a very hot pan spread liberally with pork fat. Annie wondered what The Book of Household Virtueswould make of her wet gobs of raw oats, washed down with moss-flavored river water.

  At the highest part of the bank, stacked in a shallow dugout, were dozens of wooden crates. They were all the same, three feet long by two feet deep, with metal fastenings. They were all locked.

  She walked a short ways south to where the river split itself on a grouping of boulders, spreading into a formation called Witch’s Hand before drawing together again between the sheer rock cliffs of Dour Gorge. Gregor’s father had fished Witch’s Hand and made a small living. Then the notices went up.

  WEST RIVER

  SOUTH BORDER DOUR COUNTY TO BAY

  TO BE HEREBY INCORPORATED WITH DOUR GORGE

  AS PERTAINS TO ALL RGHTS AND ACCESSES

  BY ROYAL DECREE

  Annie remembered reading the black lettering over and over with Gregor, uncertain what the words meant, certain they meant something important. With fishing off-limits, Gregor’s father had tried farming, but then the farms had failed, all at once. Uncle Jock had come stamping into the house one afternoon, his hands and boots covered in sticky black dirt.

  “Like poison, Primrose. Like planting in a bed of poison.”

  Aunt Prim had fetched him a whisky and said nothing about the dirt on the floor. The next summer, Gregor’s parents sold him to the Dropmen.

  Annie returned to the dock, stepping from rock to rock so as not to leave footprints. The tunnel connected to the smallest stream in the Witch’s Hand, the pinkie finger. Though now a sluggish trickle, in spring the water would run high and fast.

  “And cold. That whitewater will freeze you quicker than drown you. Keep to the bay, you pair.” Gregor’s father had looked at them sternly, then mussed their hair. Whatever Gibbet wanted to do with those crates and that ringstone, she thought he’d better finish before the river rose.

  And then, just like that, Annie knew what to do. Knowing felt so much better than not knowing that even though her feet had frozen into icy lumps and a much worse lump of uncooked oats had balled in her stomach and she was alone, completely alone in the whole world, she smiled.

  It was early yet for a traveler to be on the roads. That the woman was a giant, at least as big as Hauler and considerably rounder, might have explained her boldness. And the yelling—perhaps the yelling was intended to scare off the kinderstalk?

  “HEY! Lo non-NEY! A lit-tle boy so bon-NEY! Came to me a courtin’, at the sum-mer FAIR!”

  Not yelling, Annie realized. Singing.

  “He WORE a vest of sa-tin green, and britches vel-vet BROWN, a ring upon his finger, and flowers in his HAIR! And flow-ers in his HA-IR!”

  Annie covered her ears on the final note. From her hiding place, she watched the wagon slow as it reached the crossroads. A weathered wooden marker like a leafless tree pointed the four directions: west to the sea, north to the forest, south to the swamp, east to the city. The woman yawned, stretched, flexed her hands, had a drink of water, said something to the horse. Go east, Annie willed her. East, east, east.

  “HEY! Lo non-NEY!”

  East it was. With the road so full of rocks and ruts, the woman didn’t seem to notice the slight lurch as Annie climbed aboard.

  The wagon bed was full of junk: dirty straw, a couple of wilted cabbages, a crate filled with a jumble of metal parts: nails, screws, springs, a coil of delicate copper wire, a sheaf of silver beaten flat as paper. There was also, thankfully, an old blanket wrapped around some eggs. It was flecked with straw and none too clean, but Annie curled up under it, careful not to squash the eggs, and made herself as comfortable as she could.

  The landscape changed as they traveled east. The bare fields of Dour County gave way to fields of wheat, barley, and clover. Frilly curtains showed at the windows of houses. Wild primrose grew along the roadside. After a time they turned south and the houses clustered together into towns. They passed a school where children milled around the front gate. They passed a haberdashery, a print shop, a bakery with yellow cakes cooling on trays by the open window. When they stopped for the night at a public house, Annie lay still as a corpse until the driver had locked horse and wagon into the barn and her heavy footsteps had carried her to the inn. The barn was quiet and warm and full of animal smells. Unable to help herself, Annie ate a couple of eggs. They tasted of nothing but wetness.

  Then she slept, a deep, dreamless sleep, waking only briefly when the barn doors opened at dawn. She slept through miles of road. She slept even after the wagon had jolted to a stop, even after the driver had climbed down and made her way to the back.

  “By my mother’s best silk stockings! Who are you?”

  Annie woke and looked up into a face with cheeks the color of cooked beets. Standing over her was the tallest, broadest, bosomiest person she had ever seen. The woman held an egg in each hand, ready to pelt her if she turned out to be dangerous.

  “I’m sorry,” Annie croaked. “I was going east, and I thought if you were, too … I can pay my way if you like. I have plenty of money.”

  The woman’s face fell out of its astonished expression into a warm, wrinkly smile.

  “Now, now, you can ride in my wagon any time you want, only you’ll have to sit up front and keep me company next time. Poor thing.” She reached to pick a piece of straw from Annie’s hair. Annie flinched, and the woman’s face became wrinklier than ever.

  “Oh, you poor little gal. Come along and meet Bea—that’s my sister—and oh, where are my manners? My name is Serena. Serena Verbena, if you can believe it. Anyhow, we’ll get settled and fry some eggs and then have a snooze. Day after tomorrow I’m on to Magnifica, if you’re going that far, but tonight, thank goodness, I can sleep in my own bed.”

  Dazed, Annie followed the enormous woman through a tiny gate into a tiny yard bordering a tiny cottage. Serena bent over almost double to fit through the door. Inside, the ginger-colored bun on the top of her head was flattened against the ceiling. Everything was painted light blue or cherry red or lemon yellow, from the rafters in the low ceiling to the rungs of the miniature chairs. One of the chairs, a bright red rocker, looked at least three times as big as the others.

  “Beatrice! I have arrived!”

  A woman appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding out her arms and smiling. “Serena, back at last.”

  Beatrice was a perfect replica of her sister; only where Serena was very large, Beatrice was exceptionally small, down to the tiny ginger bun perched on top of her head. Serena stepped forward to embrace her sister and for a moment Annie thought she would take the roof of the cottage with her. There was not the slightest speck of dirt anywhere in the cottage, but in every corner of every rafter was a spiderweb, and in every web, a fat spider. Some of the spiders were gold and brown, some were black and red, others were beige with green and rose bellies.

  “Welcome to our home. I see you’ve noticed the ladies.” Beatrice spoke gently, but Annie blushed, ashamed to have been caught staring.

  “That’s perfectly all right, dear. Most people think it’s a bit odd. I’m a weaver, you see.” She gestured toward a diminutive loom in one corner of the room. “Once or twice a day, I stand up on a chair and have a good close look at one of the webs. Each has her own style, and they aren’t afraid to experiment. Besides, they eat mosquitoes, and if there’s one thing I hate in this world it’s the whine of a mosquito.” She paused and looked at Annie more closely.

  “What on earth am I going on about? This child is dead on her feet. Serena, get the tub. Young lady, sit down. Now what would you like for dinner? We’ve got eggs and cheese and some decent bread—a bit hard, but only at the heel, and that’s all right if you want to make frogs-in-a-hole …” Her voice trailed off. Both sisters looked at Annie expectantly. To her horror, Annie began to cry—not just trickles, but huge sobs, as if she would actually heave her heart out of her chest and onto the floor.

 
; The next thing she knew, she was in Serena’s lap in the rocking chair. By the time Annie’s sobs had subsided to hiccups, the front of Serena’s dress was soaked through. Beatrice had been out and back to tend to the horse, and night had fallen, swift as ever, outside the windows. Annie peeked up at Serena. The woman returned her gaze without a hint of embarrassment. Then she stood, as indifferent to Annie’s weight as if she really were a baby, and gently placed Annie back down in the chair.

  “Bea, we’d better make some tea. There can’t be a drop of water left in this child’s body.”

  The women disappeared into the kitchen. Soon Annie heard the clatter of pots, then the delicious smell of eggs frying. Snatches of their conversation drifted out to her.

  “Who are her people? … Must have jumped in outside Gorgetown … stocking-feet! Did you see …a dark sign … nonsense, Serena.”

  Annie leaned back and let the words pass over her. The cushions on all the chairs were covered with intricate flower designs, petals overlapping petals until they blended together into swirls of color. Annie held one of the pillows in her lap to study it. You wouldn’t notice it the first or even the second time you looked, but in the midst of the flowers Beatrice had sewn a pair of eyes and the pointed, watchful face of a cat. The cat seemed to be hiding somehow behind the pillow, waiting to pounce. Annie couldn’t help turning the pillow over, but of course there was just the plain fabric backing. She traced the stripes on the cat’s face with her finger.

  “Ah, you’ve spotted him.” Beatrice set down the tray she was carrying and came over to Annie. “That’s Sunshine Maxmillian Beaugriffe.”

  “Beaugriffe Maxmillian Sunshine!” Serena hollered from the kitchen.

  Bea rolled her eyes. “There may have been a small dispute during the naming process. Not everyone notices him in there, you know. Only people who love cats.” She frowned. “Or perhaps embroidery. Or I suppose a person could love both cats and embroidery.”

  “Is he still here?” Annie asked, looking around hopefully.

  “Oh no, dear. Sunny lived with us for nineteen years and spent every minute of his life asleep on that chair.”

  “Asleep on that chair or in my foxgloves—or rather, on my foxgloves,” Serena said, and set down an immense wooden tub in the middle of the room.

  “Do you have a pet?” Bea asked politely.

  “I, they weren’t … but I had, I did …” Annie felt ready to cry again.

  “Oh my dear child!” said the sisters in unison. Bea took Annie’s hand in hers. “Tell us. What is your name, and how is it that you are so alone?”

  Annie looked at their faces with their duplicate expressions of concern and felt a sudden urge to tell them everything. She struggled with herself for a moment, then said simply, “My name is Annie. I have a message for the king, and I’m going to the palace to give it to him.”

  The women exchanged a glance. Annie couldn’t blame them. Standing on the riverbank, her plan had made perfect sense: tell the king that Gibbet’s men were stealing from the Drop and the king would arrest the men, close the mine, and rescue Gregor. Spoken aloud, the words sounded worse than ridiculous.

  The twins were conferring in whispers. Bea opened her hand to show two white ringstones. Annie had left them in place of the eggs.

  “Are these yours, dear?”

  Annie shook her head. “They’re yours. My fare, for the trip. Room and board.”

  Serena started to say something, but Annie cut her off. “I have plenty. Look.”

  She reached into her pocket and drew out a fistful of the stones. Bea made a strangled sound and turned away. Serena, pale, her hand trembling, pressed Annie’s fingers closed over the heap of ringstone.

  “I don’t want to see those again in this house. But you stay here with us and have something good to eat, and then I’ll take you east, as far as Magnifica. Bea, give the stones back.”

  “No! They’re for you.”

  “We could not … stones like these are …,” Serena began, but Beatrice frowned at her.

  “Very well. These two we will keep. Now, for pity’s sake, let’s eat.”

  Annie ate and ate and ate. She ate more than Serena, who was trying to reduce, and more than Beatrice, who was trying to plump. When she had finished her eggs, Beatrice fed her bread pudding and milky, sugary tea. Finally, Annie set down her fork. She yawned.

  “A bath, then bed,” Beatrice said decisively.

  While Beatrice brushed the tangles out of Annie’s hair, Serena emptied kettleful after kettleful of steaming water into the tub. She mixed in salts and a powder that smelled of rosemary. The steam from the bath and the soft tugging of the hairbrush made Annie drowsy. She had just nodded off when she heard Beatrice give a little gasp, then try to cover the sound with a cough.

  “What is it?” Annie asked, alarmed.

  “Oh, I’m so silly. It’s only—were you hurt? I’ve heard that white hair will sometimes grow from a wound …” She trailed off, embarrassed.

  Annie turned to face her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Beatrice studied Annie for a moment. Her own face relaxed. “Let me show you.”

  She got up and disappeared into her bedroom. When she returned, she was holding two small silver-backed mirrors. One of them she handed to Annie.

  “You hold this, yes, just like that, and I’ll hold the other. Now, keep still.” She took hold of Annie’s hair with her free hand and wrapped it around her wrist, lifting the mass so that the back of Annie’s neck was bare. There, just at her nape, was a thick streak of white. It wasn’t ugly, exactly, just … strange. Annie peered into the mirror, trying to get a better look.

  “I don’t know where that’s from. I’ve never seen it before, but that’s not a place I usually look.” She giggled a bit at this, and Beatrice giggled too.

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

  The sisters retreated to the kitchen while Annie bathed. Annie was grateful for the privacy, not because she was shy, but because of the mortifying layer of grime that collected on the surface of the water even before she began to scrub. When she was finished, Beatrice brought her one of her own clean nightgowns and combed out her hair a second time.

  At last Beatrice led Annie to a tiny room under the eaves. It reminded Annie of the garret, except this room had a neat little bed and dresser and white curtains drawn tight against the darkness.

  Bea had offered to wash her dress, but Annie refused. Now she found it carefully folded at the foot of the bed. The bed was covered by a quilt woven with a pattern of flying birds. Among the birds Annie placed the lock of blond hair, the white ringstone she had stolen from Uncle Jock, the rock she had meant as a gift for Gregor, and Page’s book. The two handfuls of ringstone from the pit she set slightly apart. They were not as brilliant as the stone Gibbet had given Uncle Jock, and opaque where that stone was almost translucent. What would they buy? A palace? A city? These were her treasures, but there was something awful about each of them. Quickly she hid everything again in her dress.

  That night she dreamt of birds. A crowd of ravens sparring with a hawk. The red bird separated from the rest and flew toward the forest.

  Scritch, scritch.

  A bird was at the window, knocking at the glass with its beak.

  Scritch, scritch.

  Two birds, scratching the glass with their talons.

  Annie realized that she was awake, the birds flocking on the quilt set in motion by the flicker of the candle at her bedside.

  Scritch, scritch, scritch.

  The sound was not angry, or even impatient, just persistent. And—Annie sat up straight—familiar.

  She opened the window, just a crack, and immediately felt pressure on the other side, pushing it wider. And then there he was, his big square head followed by the whole long length of him. Close on Izzy’s heels, so close that their bodies overlapped, orange and brown, brown and orange, came Prudence.

  Chapter 7

  The twins were b
eside themselves over the cats. Serena fed all three of them milk and eggs for breakfast, and Bea offered to comb their fur as she had Annie’s hair. Of course Izzy would have nothing to do with it, but Prudence sat politely for a few strokes. She looked ragged and lean and a little wild. Where had they been?

  The day passed peacefully. Serena locked herself in a room she called “the magic shop” at the back of the house. Occasional clanks and screeches issued from behind the closed door, and twice Annie heard what she could have sworn was a rooster. When Serena emerged for lunch her fingers were coated with silver dust.

  Annie sat on a cushion on the floor, helping Beatrice wind spools of thread.

  “This is the ninth shade of green! How do you remember all the names?”

  “Oh I don’t, dear. I used to try, because it seemed like fun, naming them all.” She held up a spool of dingy white thread. “This might be ‘bone,’ but then what’s this? ‘Bleached bone’? and this? ‘Jaundiced bone’?”

  Annie giggled.

  “Needless to say I got tired of that pretty quick. Now it’s just green-one, green-two, and so on. Serena can tell you how I run around the house calling, ‘Where’s my pink-54? Where’s my yellow-99?’”

  “Will you be coming to Magnifica with us?” Annie asked shyly.

  “I’m afraid not, dear. It’s Serena who likes to go traipsing around the countryside. Can’t stand the thought she might miss something, a market, a festival.” She laughed and waved her hand around the room. “Not much happens here, so who can blame her? But I like it. In any case, it would take a good deal more than Magnifica to get me out of these.” She wiggled her toes in their embroidered slippers. Serena had a similar pair: blue instead of green and twice as large.

  “Don’t you like it there?”

  “Oh, it’s silly I suppose, after all this time, but I can’t help thinking of the miners.”

  Annie’s breath caught in a hiccup. “Miners?”