Welly and Heather, who had been walking the last several miles in a mechanical stupor, mumbled agreement.
They struck off along the ridge, on what had once been a road. It led to a grove of dark pines, in the midst of which nestled a ruined chapel. In one far wall, the delicate stone traceries of an arched window were still etched against the shrouded sky.
“We're going to spend the night here?” Heather asked doubtfully, eyeing the tilted gravestones in the low-walled churchyard.
“It's shelter,” Earl said. Then, noticing the focus of Heather's attention, he added, “I wouldn't worry about ghosts. I doubt that spirits who knew the old world would bother drifting into this one.”
They stepped through the broken archway. The roof over the back was still intact. Under it, they swept pine needles into a nest beside the stone altar and spread their blankets over them. Then, leaving Welly to select provisions, Heather and Earl gathered fallen branches and built a fire in the roofless space where pews had once stood.
As the sun set, the fire blazed up, postponing the dark, which Heather still did not quite trust here. Three split potatoes were stuck into the fire's edge. While these cooked, they nibbled on bread and turnips.
“We're certainly eating a lot better than at school,” Earl observed, “thanks to our resourceful, light-fingered provisioners.”
“We did our best,” Heather said. “I just hope Cook doesn't get into trouble.”
“She won't,” Welly assured her. “It wasn't her fault the kitchen was hit by thieves. No, I imagine once the scandal dies down, the whole place will get along quite well without us.”
“Scandal!” Heather breathed excitedly. “Well, at least I'll have made some impact on those beauty queens. Just think, someday we may be school legends!”
Welly snorted. “Yeah, the three misfits who forsook their inheritances and took to the wilds.”
“Some inheritances,” Heather and Earl said together, and laughed.
The fire was dying down, and they were thinking comfortably of sleep when a noise outside jerked them alert. A sound of shuffling. Two ragged figures stood in the doorway.
“Well, well, look what holed up here,” drawled one. “It beats knocking people off on the highway when they just sit and wait for you.”
The other laughed. “Now, didn't I tell you, Tom, we should bed down here? There ain't no ghosts or Druids, just plump pickings.”
They pushed their way into the firelit chapel, followed by three others as ragged and surly-looking. Heather and Welly shrank back, eyes wide with fear.
“That one's nice and plump, anyway,” one of the newcomers observed.
“Save that sort of thing for your mutie friends,” Tom spat. “We'll go for the clothes and provisions.”
“We can take the girl for the slavers,” one suggested.
Tom grinned. “Or maybe for us.”
Earl stood up, breaking the stunned silence of the intended victims. Something in his bearing halted the bandits' advance. “We have no money and few provisions,” he said calmly. “And we are not for sale. So I advise you to leave and find pickings elsewhere.”
“Oh, indeed?” Tom said. “Well, I'll tell you something else about yourselves. You're three children, and you're unarmed. Come on, boys!”
The five bounded forward. Earl thrust one hand down toward the fire. It leaped from smoldering embers into tall flames. The sudden new light lit the bandits' startled faces. With another gesture, Earl sent the fire hurtling from the ground.
It shot up like a meteor, but in the wrong direction. The three children threw themselves to the flagstones. The fire hurtled over their heads in a shower of sparks, hit the back wall, and ricocheted off. The brigands yelped as the fireball swooped toward them. Suddenly it jerked upward, slammed into a tall pine, and extinguished itself. The concussion snapped off a branch. This crashed down into the chapel, pinning one of the attackers beneath it.
Amid shrieks and yells, the others ran off, pausing briefly to drag their companion free. For several minutes, the three children heard the highwaymen's cries fading into the distance.
Earl sat down, feeding another branch into the remaining embers. “I'll have to work on that fire trick a bit. But at least it wasn't purple.”
That night they set watches. One sat wrapped in a blanket by the fire while the other two slept. The wind wailed forlornly through the darkened trees, and the two younger children kept a particularly attentive watch in the direction of the graveyard. Snow began falling during the second watch, but nothing more disturbed the night except the distant cry of a rare and lonely owl.
DRY SEA'S CROSSING
After breakfasting in the chapel on bread and dried radishes, they repacked their bags and set off. Heather hardly gave the graveyard a parting glance. In the light of morning, the gray markers behind the wall were just stones without the slightest mist of menace about them.
Wind had whipped the night's snow into frothy drifts, which, they noted, would cover their tracks from the mine. As they stepped free of the grove, Earl stopped for a moment, looking south to where the land dropped away below them. “We're almost to the shore,” he said dreamily.
“Shore?” Welly questioned.
“There used to be a great arm of the sea down there, the Bristol Channel. Now you can't even see it from here.
“It's odd,” he continued after a pause. “To Earl Bedwas, that was just another geography lesson. But now I remember the Channel. I sailed across it between Cornwall and Wales. I can close my eyes and see the sparkling water, the white-caps, and blue sky.”
“Well, if we're heading that way,” Welly said, “I'd rather walk than sail. I've only seen enough open water to wash my face in, and I haven't any idea about swimming.”
Heather objected. “Oh, Welly, I can't believe you don't yearn to see the ocean. Why, half the ancient books talk about it! There's always so much adventure there: pirates and smugglers and romantic ladies walking the shore.”
Welly grunted. “Well, our romantic lady will just have to be happy with a dry road, because that's all there is now.”
They walked on through the morning. Unlike the day before, Earl said very little, answering the occasional question in short, distracted replies. At last Heather asked, “Is there something wrong, Earl? If you're worried about last night, don't be. Your fire business was a little indirect, but it got rid of them.”
“No, that's not it. I'm sorry I'm not better company. But seeing that seascape where there wasn't any set me to remembering. This used to be such a beautiful world. So different from now. I can't even describe it to you.”
Head lowered, he continued walking. “If our world had been destroyed by a great flood or by a piece falling from the sun, that would be fate. But to find that we destroyed it ourselves, that hurts.”
He strode along in silence for a moment, then suddenly turned to Welly. “Remember our talk in the library? Something about it kept bothering me, but I couldn't catch it. Now I know. You said you loved strategy for its own sake. But remember, it's only a tool! I think that's one thing that went wrong. People got so involved with their clever tools and strategic thinking, they were blind to everything else. So they nearly destroyed their world.”
The route they were taking was an old one which once ended in the east-west coast road. That thoroughfare could still be seen, but modern tracks ran alongside to avoid its broken pavement. From the intersection, a new road continued south, built over the years more by human feet and carts than by engineers. It stretched before them across the former channel, a gray strip on a white landscape.
Around noon, they passed six merchants on their way north to Wales. The party was armed and traveled with two laden pack ponies. Ignoring the stares of surprise at their own vulnerability, the children warned them of at least one band of brigands ahead. Otherwise, the day was uneventful, and the night was passed among a cluster of large rocks not far off the road.
Earl took the first wa
tch, wrapped in a blanket and leaning back against a boulder. Welly cocooned himself in blankets on the opposite side of the fire, but sleep did not come easily. He lay with his eyes open, watching the thin banner of smoke curl up into the night. Finally he propped himself up on an elbow.
“Earl, I've been trying, but it's hard to imagine what this must be like for you. I mean, it's like every kid's fantasy. I used to think how great it would be to know what I do now and be, say, a toddler again. And now you sort of have that.”
Earl grunted. “Well, yes, I know the fantasy. And sure, I remember my life before. But after two thousand years, memories lose something of their immediacy. Besides, what I remember applies to people and situations in the fifth century. It doesn't help much here.”
A coal popped and leaped from the fire. Earl kicked it back with the edge of a worn boot. “And there's something else. Age affects more than how your body looks; it changes your thoughts and feelings. In most ways, I really am a fourteen-year-old.” He paused, then laughed wryly. “I've been remembering how trying it was being a teenager before. And now I have to go through it all again!”
“Oh, come on,” Heather said from the fire-reddened darkness. “Everyone's always moaning about the dreadful teens. Surely it's not as bad as all that.”
“No, maybe not.” Earl grinned at them. “At least I now know that ‘this, too, shall pass.’ ”
In the morning, a brisk wind had risen in the west, but there was no new snow. Patches of ice were dotted about, rimmed with dry reeds which clattered like bones in the wind. Here and there the ground was blown clear of snow, revealing the coarse curly grass and a new plant—thick, blood-red succulents that grew close to the ground and made wet popping sounds when stepped upon.
Late in the afternoon, a long glimmering line that they'd seen in the distance resolved itself into a river. “The River Severn,” Earl announced. “It just followed the retreating sea, cutting itself a new bed in the silt.”
As they approached it, they saw that only the river's edges were gripped in ice. The central channel still flowed freely. A bridge had been built a century or so earlier by rolling large stones into the water and spanning these with timbers and scraps from old buildings. The whole structure looked rickety and in need of repair. Earl stopped short of crossing it.
“Do you think it's safe?” Heather asked.
“I'm sure it'll hold us. That's not what worries me.”
“What, then?”
“Trolls. Wherever there's a bridge, one has to consider trolls.”
“Oh, come on!” Heather complained. “That's only in stories. It's just a bridge.”
“The stories of one time are based on the truths of another. And quite a few things seem to be cycling back. Still, we have to cross.”
He led the way onto the bridge, but when he reached the first splintered plank, he tromped heavily upon it and chanted, “Troll, troll, under timber and stone, we cross this bridge although it's your own. We cross with your leave and our blessings you'll take; we cross without it and a cursing we'll make.”
The two younger children could barely keep from laughing as they followed Earl onto the creaking, sagging span. But they were only halfway across when a horrible little manikin swung up from under the railing and landed squarely in their path.
The creature was small and hunched, with long arms and bowlegs, the body covered with splotchy yellow fur. His head was bald and wrinkled, with a thin yellow beard that began at the huge splayed ears and ran under a receding chin. He glared at them out of small, close-set eyes.
“You take my cursing instead,” he lisped wetly. “And me grind your bones to make my bread!”
Earl laughed. “You're new at this, aren't you? Now stand aside; we're going over.”
“It's my bridge!”
“Agreed, and we're crossing it.”
The troll gurgled hatred and leaped at Earl, its filthy claws outspread. Earl ducked and grabbed the creature around the waist. The troll wiggled like an insect as Earl lifted it over his head and tossed it into the roiling river.
Turning to the other two, he wiped his hands on his coat. “Didn't have to use magic on that one. Good thing, too, or I'd probably have burned the bridge under us or turned it to pudding.”
As they continued across, Heather looked back over the rail to see a bald head bobbing downstream. Finally a bedraggled yellow creature pulled itself onto the bank they had left. It shook both fists at them, but its words were lost in the water's rushing. Heather was glad that at least it hadn't drowned.
The cloud-smeared sun was already low above the western horizon. As they stepped off the end of the bridge, Earl stopped and surveyed the barren land ahead. “Let's camp here for the night. It's near water, and this road would be too easy to lose in the dark.”
“But what about the troll?” Heather asked.
“I doubt that he'll bother us again.”
They built a fire of grass and bits of driftwood as twilight fell about them. The blaze filled the air with a pungent tang and flushed their faces with heat, forcing them to occasionally turn about, like spitted meat, warming one side and cooling the other.
As they ate supper of bread and hard cheese, Heather asked, “Was that really a troll, Earl, like in stories, or just a mutie?”
Earl thought a moment, feeding knots of grass into the fire. “That's not an easy question. Old-time trolls mutated from something, too. They were creatures of Faerie. And I guess that since the Devastation, some doors between this world and the other have opened wider. That young fellow back there may be part of both. He knew some of the traditional forms, anyway.”
Heather frowned. “Why didn't those merchants warn us there was a troll at the bridge?”
Earl laughed. “He probably didn't show himself to them. They were six grown men, and armed.”
They stacked more fuel near the fire. Then Earl and Heather curled up in two hollows, but Welly, a blanket draped over his shoulders, sat by the fire keeping the first watch. All had passed uneventfully when he woke Earl for the second watch, and after several hours, Earl woke Heather for the last.
With one blanket about her shoulders and the torn half of another wrapping her cold feet, she huddled close to the low fire. To her left, she could hear the steady gurgle of the river. Occasionally over it there were other sounds, ice cracking along the riverbank or the distant cry of some wild animal.
Whenever she heard the latter, she was tempted to drop more fuel into the smoldering fire. But she'd found that a bright fire nearby turned the grayness around her to black. With the glow reduced to a few red coals, she could see farther into the night. She hoped fervently there was nothing out there to see. But in case there was, she wanted to see it at a distance.
Slowly she fed twigs into the embers. The glow spread a soft circle of light just beyond the sleepers.
She looked at them fondly. They were so different. One round and soft-looking, the other all edges and angles. Yet her heart warmed to them both. They were her friends. What did they see, she wondered, looking at her when she slept. Angrily she twisted her braid, dismissing the thought. She knew the answer all too well. But she wished that, lying there asleep in the firelight, she could be beautiful for them.
A rustling noise snapped her back to attention. She stared into the darkness and saw a darker shape, which had not been there before. With flapping and creaking, it moved closer. She was reaching out to wake Earl when the creature spoke.
“It's Troll. Me hungry. You have food?”
“Yes, and it's ours,” she replied with more bravery than she felt.
“It was my bridge, and you crossed it.”
“You didn't build the bridge.”
“You didn't bake the bread.”
She paused a moment. “How do you know?”
“Me clever troll. Also hungry troll. You give bread and me no eat your bones.”
“No. I might give you bread because you have no bones to eat. But you
won't have our bones in any case.”
They watched each other for a minute. The troll's beady eyes stared from a face both sad and grotesque. Keeping her eyes on him, Heather leaned forward and fumbled through a sack for a piece of bread.
The other's thin, spindly body hunched forward hopefully in the cold. Slowly she unwound the old blanket from her feet. Wrapping the bread in its folds, she threw the bundle out to him. A squeak and shuffle, and he was gone.
She saw and heard no more of the creature. Soon the sky began graying in the east. When it was light enough to see the bridge, she woke the other two but said nothing about the night's visitor.
The three washed themselves in the river, or washed as much of themselves as they could stand exposing to the cold. Then they ate a light breakfast by the ashes of the fire.
As they were packing up, Earl heard a reedy whistle behind him. He turned to see the troll squatting on a rock twenty feet away. He was wearing an old torn blanket as a shawl. Earl glanced at Heather but said nothing.
Addressing the troll, Earl said conversationally, “Going to be stopping any more travelers today, do you think?”
“Depends.”
“On how few and weak they are?”
“Well, me a bridge troll! How else do me make a living? ”
“Oh, guarding bridges is fine, if it's your line of work. But there are ways to do these things.”
“Such as?” the troll replied sulkily.
“Well, great big horrendous trolls can threaten to grind people's bones. But little ones have to be cleverer.”
“How?”
“The usual thing is to ask riddles. That way, if they guess the answer, travelers know they've earned a crossing. But if they don't, they feel you've earned a toll. You'll get more food and things that way, even if you don't grind many bones.”
“Hmm. Me like riddles. But don't know many.”
“That will give you something to pass the time between travelers, making up riddles.”
The troll mumbled and hissed in a thoughtful sort of way, then slid off the rock and disappeared.
Tomorrow's Magic Page 10
