by Sharon Lee
"I will keep my hands close," he assured her, "and my wits about me." A twisted smile accompanied that last.
Becca nodded. "I will—it may be that my brother will be angry, at first. If he says anything that—please remember that he is largely ignorant of the Vaitura, and has . . . much cause . . . to be displeased with me."
Meripen inclined his head. "I will be meekness itself," he assured her.
The latch worked and the door came open, quietly. A glance at the hinges showed them in better repair than the front gate, but there! Cook would never have tolerated anything slovenly about her kitchen.
The kitchen . . . that was dark, the fire cold, without so much as a string of onions hanging from the rafters. Cook's worktable was littered with dirty dishes—the house crest, Becca saw, that was brought out only on grand occasions.
Becca stood by the table, feeling ill and not a little puzzled.
"Mrs. Janies?" she called softly. "Cook?"
No one answered her.
Surely, she thought, they would not have just gone out with the kitchen in such a state? She tried to imagine the scope of the disaster that would permit dirty dishes to remain on Cook's worktable for more minutes than five—and failed utterly.
"Well," she said, for Meripen's benefit. "I suppose we had best look in the library, then."
She was uncertain now, and growing more deeply distressed with every dead and dusty room they entered. Meri followed her closely, trying to ignore the taint of iron in the air, and to keep his wits about him, as he had promised.
Certainly, it was a melancholy enough place that they wandered, but free—thus far—of active dangers. He hoped, for the ease of Becca's heart, that she found her kinsman soon, but that event was becoming to seem less likely with each door she threw open.
"The ladies' parlor." Her murmur was surely for herself. He followed, mindful to step lightly on the scarred wooden floor, and was only two steps behind her shoulder when she turned the knob gaily painted with honeycups and pulled the door wide.
Unlike the other rooms they had opened, this one was bright with sunlight, and overfull with furniture, books, and a bewildering array of objects. A man sat behind a table piled high with textile, his aura an unfortunate glare of orange and grey—the whole flashing into crimson as he leapt to his feet.
"Thieves! Enter at your peril!"
Meri's hand dropped to the hilt of his knife. Becca stood where she was, alert, but to his eye unalarmed, so he did not draw, but waited, his wits very much about him.
"I am Miss Rebecca Beauvelley, the Earl of Barimuir's eldest daughter," she said, with a haughtiness very nearly approaching that of a High Fey. "Pray let my brother Richard know that I am here and desire to speak with him."
"Richard." The Newman standing behind the table at the center of the cluttered room tipped his head to one side. "That would be Richard Beauvelley?"
"It would," Becca said coldly.
The Newman laughed. "You gypsies have no end of gall! I am Richard Beauvelley, madam! What d'you make of that?"
"Only that you are obviously in your cups, sir, and therefore of no use to me. Pray call for someone who is less disadvantaged. I would like to speak to my brother today."
Another laugh, some grey edging the scarlet. Meri shifted, his fingers tightening on the comforting hilt of his knife. In his judgment, this Newman traced his kin-lines more closely to Michael and his lord than Elizabeth Moore or Jack Wood.
"Certainly, Your Highness," the Newman sneered. He brought his hand up from behind the table, and pointed a cylindrical object at Becca. "Go, now, or I will kill you."
Becca lifted her chin, her aura showing significant flares of anger amid the swirls of confusion.
"Tell me what has happened here," she said. "I have been away for some . . . little . . . time. Some calamity has befallen the land and I would learn what it is. Are the whole of the Midlands afflicted?"
"You must have gone away from the world," the Newman commented, and if his hand did not waver, yet he made no more threatening movements.
"I have been far enough away that news of the Midlands did not reach me," Becca repeated.
"The Governors have said the Black Wind blew across the entire world—the Corlands were least afflicted, there being so little there in the first wise. So . . ." He made an indistinct motion with the object he held. ". . . should I happen to allow you and your buck to leave here alive, Your Highness, you'd best be from the Corlands at the next house you attempt."
"I will remember, thank you," Becca said, her voice soft and soothing, as if, Meri thought, she spoke to one bent under a burden of pain or grief. "In the meantime—what is the Black Wind?"
"It blew across the the world, and sucked the virtue out of the land," the Newman said, singsong, like a student saying back a particularly tedious lesson. "The soil dried, the trees fell, the crops withered in the fields. My grandfather, for whom, as Your Highness doubtless recalls, I am named, saw half his fields go to sand before he died. My father saw the last trees fall in the park before he hanged himself in the wild garden." He laughed then, and the hackles rose on the back of Meri's neck.
"Wild garden," the Newman repeated, sounding eerily like the Brethren. "He hanged himself from the elitch, the last living tree on our land." He inclined his head. "Is there anything else your humble servant may tell you?"
"What has caused this affliction?"
"Why, no one knows! It might be a bobble in the rotation of the planet, or a condition at the solar center. Might as well say it was magic, Your Highness. Someone pulled the cork from the bottom of the world and all the life ran out." He shrugged, and fingered the thing in his hand worrisomely. "The Governors sent to New London—that was before Grandfather died. New London does not answer."
He paused, an arrested look in his pale, mad eyes. "Grandfather had a sister named Rebecca. She eloped with a Fey. That was the start of all our troubles."
He took a step, coming 'round the table, the object held before him with new purpose. "Did you come from out of the world, Your Highness?" he said softly. "Now, are you the bastard daughter of my great-aunt and her Fey? Not the woman herself, I think, for she was by family report a cripple and hideous to see."
The Newman took another step, surprisingly firm, and Meri saw his fingers tighten on the object, while Becca stood as if rooted, her aura such a blare of distress that he thought it likely she did not recognize her danger.
Meri swept the knife from his belt, leapt forward, snatched Becca's arm, and pulled her back. The knife he loosed as a distraction; it struck the Newman's shoulder hilt-first. His arm jerked, there was a sound like thunder, punishing the ears, but Meri was already running, and Becca, too, back the way they had come, with the mad Newman bumbling after.
"Thief, whore, bastard! Fey!"
They reached the kitchen with its multitude of horrors, the stink of iron so thick he could scarcely breathe, and there was the latch, smoldering balefully. He took a breath to brace himself for the agony, put out his hand—and hers darted beneath, slapping the latch down, and they were out, into free air tasting of sand and death.
Another thunderclap, and more shouted insults, fading. They sped past the iron gate so quickly Meri barely felt its burn inside his long-healed wounds.
Down the field they ran, and there—there was the tunnel, the route back to the Vaitura, to his trees and to—
Becca.
Two steps from the mouth of the tunnel, Meri spun and looked about him.
Becca the Gardener stood by the wilting and kest-less plants, her own kest rising in a spiral of golden motes, rising, until she seemed a woman on fire. Rising, pouring from her fingertips . . .
. . . and into the needy ground.
She was full of power, but the soil had been denied for too long. Her kest drained away like a spring shower, running uselessly into the sand.
Her aura faded from sun-gold to dust-tan. She wavered and went to her knees, swaying, even as he stripped her pack do
wn and off, and caught her up in his arms.
"No," she whispered, as he raced for the tunnel, past his own abandoned pack. "I can heal it . . ."
"You cannot heal it," he answered, ducking into the darkness. "That is for the Fey to do."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She weighed less than his pack had, her kest guttering but not yet gone. Meri threw himself along the dark tunnel, his own aura a green-and-gold smear, barely discernible through his tears.
He should have known . . . he should have watched, he should have understood that she would try. He knew she had less wit than a sprout, and a hero's sense of her own service.
There was light ahead of him, and he gasped in relief, though he knew that what he would come out into would be the blasted landscape of the badlands. Still, it would be the Vaitura. There would be some virtue in the land at least, and he might breathe a mite of kest into her until they could come under the care of trees.
Briefly, he considered stopping here, inside the tunnel, for the kesting, but rejected the notion. He did not know the virtues that made up this strange construct, and he could not take the chance that they would be inimical to kest.
The light ahead grew brighter, tinged with green, as if filtered through leaves. For a moment, he allowed himself a fantasy, that they would emerge not in the badlands, but under the branches of his own beloved trees. A sprout's imagining, but warming for a moment, as he ran onward, the Gardener dying in his arms.
She moaned, her kest blowing and thin; and there—there was the end of the tunnel—he leapt, hit the ground on his shoulder, and rolled, Becca's limp body cradled to his chest, and the benediction of trees overhead. He put his hand on her breast—she was cold; the last brave flame extinguished—and his kest rose in blare of power, pouring forth, until she was limned in green fires, and still he gave more, until the two of them blazed like fallen stars against the grass, and a stern voice directed—
Enough!
His kest fell, and he did, strengthless, to the ground beside her, staring up into a ralif, and feeling the very air caress him.
Welcome, Meripen Vanglelauf, the ralif told him. You have been too long away.
Meri took a breath, and smiled. However it had happened, they had arrived in Vanglewood. He would question and puzzle later, he thought, his eyes drifting shut. For now, he and Becca were safe.
They were home.
There were voices murmuring just beyond her ability to hear. It seemed rather a number; the overall tone one of curiosity, and yet—should there be voices?
Becca stirred, groping after memories. Had the lunatic with the pistol apprehended her, after all? She remembered . . . she remembered pouring kest into the needy land, much as another gardener might pour water on a dry kitchen patch.
She remembered feeling weak, and a numbness in her extremities. She remembered wondering if she had been struck by a bullet.
She remembered hoping that Meripen Vanglelauf had escaped. She had seen him . . . seen him well on his way. Surely someone so fleet would have—
Welcome, child. You have wandered long.
The murmurs fell away into silence, respectful of this new speaker, her voice warm and mature. A grandmother, Becca thought, and sighed, soothed and comforted.
I have wandered far, a new voice, as brilliant and bracing as a draught of spring water, made answer. Now that I am home again, I wish nothing more than to remain.
And yet you know, as we do, that this is not possible, the grandmother said sadly. There was a small pause. Good sun to you, Gardener. Be at peace beneath within this wood.
Becca stirred, and opened her eyes to a leafy canopy so lush, the sunlight that filtered through the leaves was tinged with green. It was, she thought drowsily, like resting underwater.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"Vanglewood," Meripen's light, cool voice answered her.
She turned her head, unsurprised—pleased!—to find him seated cross-legged on the grass by her right hand. He appeared unscathed; more, he appeared rested, and . . . younger than he had been.
"Vanglewood," she repeated. "Meripen Vanglelauf. This is your home, then?"
"My own wood, yes." He smiled, a tender expression such as she had never before seen from him.
"Thank you," she said slowly, "for bringing me here, but, tell me—what happened? I remember him—Dickon's grandson? how could he be? Dickon is only thirty!—chasing us, and I remember the land . . . I was going to heal the land . . ."
"The cure for what ails that land is not so simple as pouring the kest of one woman upon it," he told her soberly. "All the Wood Wise of the Vaitura could cross over and give up their kest to the land, and still it would not be healed."
"But—" Becca stared at him. "What is wrong with it?"
"The keleigh," he said, with a momentary return to grimness. "Just as it is the keleigh that ails the Vaitura. This is something for the Queen and her Constant, and nothing that can be parsed by a Ranger and a Gardener, no matter how well traveled."
He leaned forward then, and took her hand in his. Becca felt her stomach tighten in equal parts anticipation and fear, while her kest—but, what was this? The power coiled in waiting was green more than gold; cool and perhaps a little cautious. She looked up into Meripen's face. He sighed.
"You had given all but the last flickers of your kest to that—to the land beyond the hedge," he said gently, as if he wished to soften a blow.
"So you did—what I had done for you." She frowned. "I understand, and I—I thank you for your care of me. It could not have been an easy thing for you."
He laughed slightly, and looked down at their joined hands before meeting her eyes again.
"Truth told, I scarcely thought, save that it must be done." One more glance at their hands before he withdrew his and rose. "Now that I am home at last, I must pay my respects, and give my excuses. Will you come with me?"
Becca rose, nearly as lightly as he had done, and paused. She could hear the trees murmuring to each other, and feel the land as a living thing beneath her feet. The breeze was laden with a thousand scents, and was as heady to the senses as brandy.
"Is it always like this," she asked, closing her eyes and drinking down the air. "For you?"
There was a small silence, while she stretched high on her toes and raised her arms, allowing the breeze to sway her poor branches.
"I had almost forgotten," Meripen Vanglelauf said, very softly, indeed.
She dropped down from her toes, and opened her eyes to look at him.
"Is it—rich—for you now?" she asked, carefully. "Again."
He smiled slightly. "That it is," he answered and raised his hand to point out their direction.
"Where do we go?" Becca asked, moving swift and light at his side.
"To the heart of Vanglewood."
It was a blessed thing to walk again among his own trees, and to hear their beloved voices once more. He ought never to have ventured out from this safe canopy, he thought, his heart full near to bursting, and his face turned up toward the leaf-laced sky, basking in their welcomes.
Alas, he had been sent forth from the trees, to his mother at Sea Hold, and from there to Xandurana, for the polish befitting a prince. Thence back again to Sea Hold, and the learning of shiplore and the ways of the wave, and to pay the three voyages he had sworn to the sea. And at the end of the third voyage, he made his choice and returned at last to Vanglewood—only to find that his life beyond its trees had marked him. He was not, if ever he had been, a simple Wood Wise, content inside the forest of his birth; bewildered and a little foolish beyond them. No, Meripen Longeye must wander, so he took up service as a Ranger, returning to his home trees infrequently. There was no taint upon a Ranger's service, after all, and much honor to gain. But, in the end, Meripen Vanglelauf had wandered too far.
He glanced at Becca the Gardener, fair dancing with joy beside him as she took in the benediction of Vanglewood's affection, and scarcely knew whether to la
ugh or weep.
He had forgotten. He had been so depleted and ill that he had refused the aid of those who regarded him, and he had forgotten what it was like, to fully walk among one's own dear trees.
The air was beginning to brighten, and Meri felt his steps quicken. Perhaps he danced, too, in counterpoint to Becca, and if he did, who might blame him, returned from his journeys, cured of his ills, home, home, and almost—
The trees brightened ahead of them. Becca hesitated and extended a tentative hand, precisely as he had done, the first time his father had brought him here.
And, as his father had done for him, he took that hesitant hand in his own, and led her into that sacred place.
