Chapter Ten
It was a busy year for us after the first few, inactive months. A month into autumn another warden disappeared, spreading a nasty taste of fear through the forest. It occurred to me for the first time that Kendra’s disappearance hadn’t been an isolated incident, and that if other wardens could disappear, then Akiva could, too. The disturbances alone weren’t what made the year busy, however. Some way into winter, Akiva began receiving midnight guests: mysterious figures that were crabbed and oddly shaped beneath their winter furs. Sometimes I was allowed out of my room to fetch and carry or be stared and prodded at, but other nights Akiva shut and locked my door; at times with a word of explanation, more often without. It seemed as if the days were too short to hold all the necessary tasks, and it was often late into the night by the time I was tucked in bed, reading the little red book I had discovered in the library. Since I could by now raise a reasonably proficient witchlight, this was not the eye-straining task it would once have been, and the only thing that really troubled me was the lack of sleep. I didn’t dare to read the book at any other time: I had learnt by now that it was not a very nice little book, and I very much doubted that Akiva would be happy to find me reading it. The author seemed to enjoy his subject with a macabre blood lust that reminded me of Cassandra, and there were many pages that I skipped over with a grimace of disgust and a hope never to meet the author in the dark of deep forest. It appalled me to learn that a simple curse was one of the easiest forms of magic to perform, easier even than my pitiful little witchlight. The curses in the book ranged from the simplest spoken curses to more elaborate, webbed constructs that required several speaking parts, each at its own time. The methods for breaking each curse were different, and it was borne in on me that I might not be able to help Bastian until I knew which kind of curse had been pronounced on him. The thing that worried me the most was the fact that curses were not meant to be broken. The author of the book expended much time and much relish explaining this, and it occurred to me for the first time that I had been uncommonly fortunate to have broken the first part of Bastian’s curse at all.
All in all I found myself sickened with the little red book, and one night halfway through winter I threw it down on my bed with a grimace of distaste.
Akiva had been relentless that day, sending me into the forest for fresh supplies of hardy winter herbs that I’d picked only the day before, and with my other duties unabated I was too tired to have the patience to sift through the bad in the book just to find the good.
Yet for all my weariness I didn’t seem to be able to sleep: so instead, I crawled out of bed and went to the window, wrapping myself in a warm shawl as I went. Ever since the dragon fever I hadn’t needed shoes even in the dead of winter, but the cold still seemed to seep into my back and neck. My witchlight hung above me, glinting a reflection in the window, below which I could see my face, pale and more serious than usual. Through the bedroom door I heard the faint clink of Akiva’s tea mug being set down on the little table beside her chair, so I quit the window seat and padded out into the fire-warmed room, glad to know I wasn’t alone in my insomnia.
When I wandered into the warm circle of orange light there was a cup of tea waiting for me. Akiva smirked at me and said: “Can’t sleep either, eh? You can help me shuck these toktok pods.”
I settled down beside her chair and reached a hand into the bowl for one of the brown, hairy pods. Only Akiva would think of turning a few sleepless hours into work, but I was too pleasantly warm to really object. The toktok pods were tough and wiry, and the task of shucking them involved cracking them open slightly, flicking the kernel out with one finger, and then snatching the finger away to avoid being nipped when the pod sprang shut again. Sometimes it was hard to tell if a pod had been harvested yet. It was a task that required some concentration to avoid bruised fingers, and with my mind fuddled by the warmth of the fire and the hotness of tea in my belly, I began to find myself more often with nipped fingers than toktok kernels.
I wasn’t aware that I’d fallen asleep until I woke up, curled around the half-shucked bowl of toktok pods. A murmur of voices rose and fell in the background, and I opened my eyes sleepily, aware that though one of the voices was Akiva’s, the other voices were unknown and strange. Bright colours danced blurrily in the kitchen beside Akiva’s grey form, and I blinked again to clear the clouds of sleep from my eyes. Voices spoke, quick and foreign, and my vision cleared enough to see what the midnight visitors looked like. They were small, quick and colourful; little brown men with long, fat, oddly stiff rolls of hair protruding from bright, baggy caps that were sprinkled with snow. Two of them had threaded beads and pebbles into their round, matted tresses, and tied the bunch in a huge, stiff knot beneath their caps, but the third wore his loose and threaded with feathers. They all smelled rather peculiar, just like Bastian had at first: evidently they hadn’t bathed in some time. They were crowded around the kitchen table as Akiva cut a small portion of something that looked like cheese. Their small brown faces were sharp and acquisitive, and one even went so far as to lick his full brown lips longingly. The one with feathers in his hair had his fingers curled around the edge of the tabletop, his nose twitching and sniffing just above table level, and his fingers flexed in a way that suggested, had it been anyone but Akiva, he would have snatched up the hunk of cheese and made off with it.
I watched them through my lashes, and a small smile curled my lips. My recent reading told me that they were gnomes, little folk who spent their days in perpetual summer forest, barefoot and chasing leaves. I had longed to meet them since I first learned of their existence, but I didn’t dare move for fear that Akiva would send me away if she knew I’d woken. I watched through my lashes until business was concluded and the visitors gone, then allowed Akiva to shake me properly awake and shoo me off to bed.
A peremptory rap on my door woke me early the next morning. I tumbled out of bed, bright-eyed and bubbling with leftover excitement, and opened the door to a grim-faced Akiva.
“David’s missing,” she said shortly, and flung her hood around my shoulders. I looked up at her familiar, worn face hungrily, suddenly afraid that one day she might not come home either. David was the fourth warden to inexplicably disappear, and the third this year.
“You should have your hood,” I said, my chin mulish.
Akiva slapped my hands away from the strings when I tried to untie them, and my chin was no match for her.
“Don’t be silly, Rose. I have more than one way of slipping through wardships.”
Though her voice was harsh, she patted my head briefly, and it occurred to me that Akiva – Akiva! – was worried. She took herself off, her front apron pocket bulging slightly with bits and pieces of miscellany from around the house, and I watch her go with a chin tilted higher when I realised that my eyes were suspiciously wet.
The paths remained for only a few moments after Akiva left. Then they silently melted into the snow, and the cold forest closed in on me, bringing an air of deep silence to the cottage. I went about my chores in that silence, followed by the two green deer, who had gone very wide-eyed and were inclined to follow me even into the house, scattering icicles from their thick winter coats. The snow hadn’t bothered them at all, but they seemed to be able to taste the unease in the air. They would crowd close at my heels, treading on each other’s delicate hoofs, and then leap away in fright whenever their hides touched. It irritated me but I bore with it: it would have been cruel to shout at them when they were so frightened. Even the salamander stayed close, curled about my neck with its natural heat toned down to a more tolerable warmth. The closeness made me realise how much I missed Bastian: the instinctive feeling of certainty when he stood by my side, and the warmth of his furry body when I leaned into his flank.
I ran around the boundaries as fast as I could that night, feeling the wind cold at my back and the vastness of the forest in its pathlessness. Now that I was used to deep forest the lack of paths di
dn’t confuse me, but their absence was a constant nagging loss in the back of my mind. They were like old, familiar signposts that had become so much a part of the scenery that they were not noticed until they fell down and left a hole in the familiarity of the road.
When I returned at last to the safety of home, Akiva was at her workbench, looking very busy and irritable. Her workbench was overflowing with mixed leafy and dry ingredients, some of which were familiar, but most of which were not, spilling out between the peach branches. She was frowning and crushing something in her biggest mortar, jabbing short and sharp with the pestle, but when she saw me her face brightened.
“There you are! Quick, child: find a feather – blue if possible – and get me a small pebble.”
A tingle of excitement sparkled in my stomach. “Did you find David?”
“Yes. But I need an ingredient, and I need bargaining chips for some little friends of mine.”
“Is it the gnomes?”
Akiva looked exasperated. “I might have known! Feather, rock, and then explanations!”
I ran off in great glee. A weight seemed to have lifted from my shoulders knowing that David was safe, and I had wanted badly to meet the gnomes for myself.
There was a deeply blue-black feather on my windowsill that I had been saving to make a pen of. I snatched it up without a pang and darted out into the garden to find a pebble. The salamander followed me out, mischievously charring the doorframe as it went, and since I knew that it was very capable of walking through the house without burning chunks out of the floor, I concluded that this was the salamander’s way of protesting my neglect of it over the last month or two. Perhaps I shouldn’t have encouraged it to hang about my neck this morning. I had been so busy learning, and Akiva teaching, that we had had little time to spare for petting or talking to it. It had become more and more sullen as the days passed.
Akiva glared at it and the singing smell stopped, but when we were out of her sight the door mat burst into tiny, exuberant flames. Its humour much improved, it sidled off sideways into the blackberry bushes. I let it go and gazed about me with my hands on my hips.
To my left the salamander gave off a faint, pearly glow that made the bush around it luminesce. I could see faintly around me, but I didn’t have to see to know that there were hundreds of pebbles in the garden. Speckled and plain pebbles, black brown and white pebbles. None that I could picture in the eager grasp of that colourful little man, while he cooed over it in pleasure. It had to be something special for a gnome.
I opened up my sight to the full glowing glory of the forest lines. The salamander’s bush was a node of pulsing energy and there was a misty patch of green where the two deer were sleeping. The rest of the garden looked just as it had always looked: lively, with its patches of colour and variety, but without anything to interest a gnome. I searched again, this time following each thread until it met with another. Then I saw it, almost hidden within the glowing pearl that was the salamander: a smaller, more moonlike luminescence. It was the very thing I was looking for: smooth, oval, and milky white, glowing with moonshine.
“Aha!” I said aloud, and gleefully burrowed into the blackberry patch in search of the salamander. Some minutes later; hot, dusty and rather badly scratched, I realised that Akiva’s garden beds, like everything else in the forest, were bigger inside than out. I scowled into the depths of the berry patch, and gathered the forest lines in both hands, pulling the section of blackberry determinedly toward myself. Dark branches rushed toward me, and I flinched but went on pulling. In a moment the salamander winked into sight, looking startled and slightly offended. For an instant we stared at each other, then the salamander uncurled and took itself off further into the bushes, leaving the pebble to me. In the waning of the salamander’s white heat the luminescence of the pebble faded and it became a simple white stone. I held it for some time, unsure, but when I closed my eyes I could still see the moonlight in it amidst the glitter of forest lines. I tucked it into my apron pocket where it made a small, oddly heavy bulge, and backed out of the bushes.
“Show me,” Akiva demanded, as soon as I stepped into the house. I held out the feather and rock for her inspection, and she nodded briefly with what seemed to be relief. “Very good. Now listen carefully, child. There’s an old, banded tree stump in deep forest not far from the creek: you’ll know it when you see it. Take the feather and the pebble, and find it.”
I nodded, biting my lips to stop the questions that were bubbling on the tip of my tongue. I had a feeling that if I spoke out of turn again, Akiva would box my ears.
“Put the calling cards on the top of the stump and turn once, clockwise,” she said. “Touch one thread for each pole of the compass, and call out the name of the gnome you want at each one. Call for Hari, or Marj if Hari doesn’t come. Repeat that back to me.”
I did so, at high speed and in one breath, prancing on the balls of my feet. Akiva gave me a Look.
“I need a distilment of fine-graded blueroot: do not under any circumstances allow the gnome to take the pebble or feather until you’ve seen that it’s true blueroot. They are very polite and very sly, and if they can take the payment without giving the items, they will do so. True blueroot will be unmistakable: there’s no blue like it. Don’t bring me back anything else.”
The tree stump wasn’t where it ought to have been. I knew the spot well enough: it was a wide, grassy glade just past the rock where I washed the clothes, clear and sunny in the daylight but now cool and mysterious by moonlight. The glade was still there, white and pure in winter, but the stump was not. I glared at the empty space that should have been filled with tree stump. Akiva needed the blueroot now, and I didn’t appreciate the forest playing its little tricks off on me. So I drew in the power of the wardship, figuratively stepping on Akiva’s toes a little, and pulled the stump to myself just as I had done to the bushes in the garden. It came reluctantly, and I had the feeling that the forest had wanted to play. I ignored its injured consciousness and drew the stump back to the glade firmly, the forest sulky but willing enough to help once it understood that I wouldn’t put up with the nonsense tonight. I put the things out on the stump just as Akiva had told me to do, sweeping the snow away first, and called Hari to me.
Dizzy from the spinning, I didn’t at first notice the small brown hand with its creeping fingers. When I did, I slapped one hand over the feather and stone, nipping his questing fingers along with them.
“Ah, pretty leddy, pretty leddy; you is too quick fo’ me!” said a little lopsided voice, disarmingly. It was my favourite gnome from the night before, the one with feathers threaded through his dreadlocks. Insensibly, my fingers lost their tight grip on the feather and stone, and I realised in mingled fascination and indignation that I could be very easily beguiled into giving Hari the items out of hand. I put out my chin and stared at him, searching for the enchantment that he had spun, cobweb-like, around himself. It took only a moment to find it: it was bound up in his voice.
“Cleva, cleva leddy,” he crooned, and even knowing about the enchantment, I still felt the pull of his voice.
“You stop that!” I told him, but he only grinned up at me and held up a gold coin between thumb and forefinger.
“For the beautiful leddy I have gold.”
“No gold,” I said firmly, feeling the added bargaining edge to his colourful voice. “I want blueroot, and only blueroot.”
“Ah, blueroot. Verra, verra valu-able,” Hari said, his voice weaving up and down, and his eyes crafty. “Not for these few, liddle tings.”
I shrugged, and held the moonstone up to the moonlight as he had done with the coin, between thumb and forefinger. A shaft of moonlight beamed palely down and the stone was transformed into the glowing pearly orb that I had first seen, its glow reflecting smoothly on Hari’s face and the small white teeth that showed through parted lips. In the shadow it cast, the feather seemed to be a pinion; dark, midnight blue and strong.
Hari’s
fingers twitched involuntarily. He swallowed, and pulled a vial from inside his shapeless, striped shirt, his eyes still on the moonstone.
I examined the deep blue liquid through clear glass, my hand still firmly curled around the items.
I scowled at him. “That isn’t blueroot.”
He grinned, unoffended. “How did the pretty leddy know?”
“I want real blueroot,” I said, pulling my hand out of reach of his clinging fingers. I had been fairly certain that Hari’s first offer would be a false one, and I wanted to make sure that this time he would give me the real thing for fear of my pretended knowledge.
Hari tossed another vial to me, this one crystal instead of glass, and I found that I was holding true blueroot, with no uncertainty about it. Akiva was right, there wasn’t any blue like it. Not sea, nor sky: not even sapphire.
I passed my two items to Hari, who said cheerfully: “We do business again, yes,” and disappeared with his treasure clutched to his chest. I ran home to Akiva, breathless with triumph and excitement, and presented my bottle. She didn’t thank me, but her nod was approving and that was satisfaction enough.
We walked out by the main path.
When I asked Akiva about it, she said softly: “The less we travel in deep forest for the time being, the better. The attacker has shown an alarming knowledge of deep forest, and I can only assume he or she is watching us all. I believe David will remain safer if people think he’s dead. When we’re in the forest speak softly or not at all about our business.”
I nodded soberly and kept my mouth closed for the rest of the journey. Somehow I wasn’t really surprised when Akiva turned in at my mother’s gate and opened the door without preamble. Mother was the sensible choice if Akiva wanted to be discreet.
Mother was washing indoors, a thing I had never seen her do before, but when I saw the bloodied water and the watered-down stains on her apron, I understood it.
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