by Van Reid
Charles made a sound like a chuckle. “You see, you can’t guess or understand.”
For the first time since the struggle, Sundry looked down at the box, which lay at his feet, tied up in thin rope in the manner of a Christmas package and tangled in the net. It looked like a large jewelry chest, but fashioned crudely out of silver with childlike figures of people and animals marked upon its side. That could dent a fellow, thought Sundry, and he looked, almost with sympathy, at Jules, who was sitting in the bow, rubbing his head.
Sundry wondered if there were two (or perhaps three) more dead birds in the box. The self-enclosed logic of such practices was not entirely beyond his experience or imagination. There were people he knew who brushed the forehead of a newborn child with a rabbit’s foot and one old woman who led her chickens with a trail of corn around her house on the first day of spring to bring good luck. And hanging dead crows in the cornfield to frighten other crows was not exactly a practice to be counted among the mystical, but there was something about it reminiscent of totems and amulets.
Sundry imagined that the two women had run away and that they had conjured a spell to keep from being found, but the more he thought of it, the more it failed to answer for the fright and apprehension among these people.
Mrs. Droone watched him—watched him think—Sundry caught her at it when he lifted his gaze from the box at his feet. She did not look away, and she appeared angry rather than frightened. In such circumstances, of course, logic went only so far. Fear and self-involved anger do not follow rational paths but sprawl about, unheeding of anything more than immediate need.
“Move away, move away!” demanded Charles of the crowd on the shore. “We told you before, move away!” Even then the two clans hesitated, and for the first time they seemed to Sundry like one mob. They did divide, however, but not in such definite factions.
“He should get out first,” said Bridey Droone when Sundry’s boat had scraped against the shore.
“Yes, Mr. Moss,” said Charles. “Take up the box, carefully, and carry it in the net up to the stump just north of the summerhouse.” He might have been reading instructions on how to build a kite, for all the pleasant tone in his voice.
“Right on the line,” said Sundry.
“The line?” said Charles.
“Between Droone and Normell.”
“That’s right, Mr. Moss,” said Charles. “Right on the line.”
“I think I am beginning to understand,” said Sundry as he gathered up the net.
“I must admit that you have proven to be very sharp,” said Charles, but he could not suppress a look of cunning.
“You’d like me to think so, wouldn’t you,” said Sundry. “As soon as a fellow thinks he’s figured it out he quits figuring.”
“We only want you to do as we ask. Your understanding is entirely beside the point.”
Sundry hefted the box in the net and thought it weighed about twelve or fifteen pounds. He didn’t think there were any dead birds in it. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he said.
“Indeed,” said Charles.
“And if I do what you ask, you think that you’ll be able to protect yourselves again.”
“Protect ourselves?”
The look of cunning had dropped from Charles’s face, and Sundry would have liked to watch the man some more. Instead, he clambered out of the boat with the net slung carelessly over one shoulder. All eyes, he knew, were on the box. “From the rest of the world,” said Sundry. “And perhaps even from each other. This spell by the two who ran away. Or the three. I had guessed that it was a blockade, so to speak—a way to keep you from finding them. But the reason you’re all so afraid is that this spell keeps you from seeing them, not like a wall that obstructs your view, but by taking away your ability to see at all.”
“What three?” said someone. “Who’s the third?” Normells and Droones began to notice each other again, but with renewed suspicion.
“You may not trust one another,” said Sundry, turning around when he came within a few steps of the summerhouse, “but the real reason you needed me to find this box is that you’ve lost the ability to do it yourselves.” Or believe that you have, he thought. “There must be objects belonging to each of you in here, and each of your abilities are wrapped up in them—locks of hair, pieces of clothing, and jewelry.” He could see what they had intended now, and—in a flash and so clearly that it startled him—see the collection of things in the box he had slung over his shoulder.
“There you have it, Mr. Moss,” said Charles, who stood in the bow of his boat. “Now you understand how anxious we are.”
“Aside from my own natural skepticism, Mr. Normell,” said Sundry, whose natural skepticism was almost overwhelmed by something like a vision of these people lining up by the stump to retrieve each their own precious, humble object, “I can understand the end,” he said, feeling dizzy, “but not justify the means.”
“It is not yours to justify—”
“And I have a particular dislike for bullies, by themselves or as a mob.” Sundry stood above the people on the shore, which seemed to give him a certain eminence beyond the physical—and perhaps it was more than simply where he stood. But Charles Normell was not accustomed to having his motives questioned or to being disobeyed, and the crowd, too, was both fascinated and frightened by Sundry’s defiance.
“If you went suddenly blind,” said Charles, “I daresay you would do most anything to retrieve your sight.”
“I wouldn’t kidnap people or kill songbirds, if that’s what you mean. You’ve imagined yourselves as having some sort of ... power, and that’s hard to let go of, I guess. It helps that everyone else around these parts thinks you have it, too.” Charles was moving his great bulk out of his boat now, and Mrs. Droone was signaling to one of her kinsmen, but Sundry continued to speak. “But among bullies,” he said to the crowd, “power is prerogative, isn’t it? And what you’re not considering is that these two—Charles Normell and Bridey Droone—wielded most of it. Don’t you see, if no one has it anymore, none of you have to be afraid of them anymore.”
Charles was hurrying up the bank, and Sundry was mindful of the beating the man had given to one of his own family. But he also knew that fear is never a place of strength, and he took advantage of this discernment by swinging the box by the net in an arc and slinging it over the approaching man’s head. Sundry was glad to be rid of it.
The shock of the crowd was obvious. The box landed some yards behind Charles, at Jeffrey’s feet, and Sundry was sorry that it didn’t burst open. Horrified, Charles stopped his advance; he looked as if he hardly dared turn around. Someone let out a frightened shout. Several people from both sides closed in on the box, and Bridey Droone ordered everyone to stand away from it. Charles himself hurried his bulk back down the bank, but the tall woman had wrestled a rifle from the man behind her and fired a shot in the air. Sundry walked as calmly as he was able toward the summerhouse.
“Someone had better stop him,” said Bridey Droone with exacting calm, but no one appeared ready to leave the box. “If anything untoward does happen to what is in that box,” shouted the woman, “we had better have him and everyone with him!” Sundry worried that she had lost her steely composure and that a bullet in his back was only a moment of panic away. Then the door to the summerhouse shot open, and Maven Flyce stepped out, his face as wide and astonished as Sundry had ever seen it.
Maven halted on the stoop long enough to shout, “He’s alive! Mr. Ring is back from the dead!” and with his limbs flailing like a thresher, he tripped down the steps and windmilled past Sundry, screaming, “He’s alive! He’s alive!”
Sundry himself was startled by this entrance and people in the mob appeared wary and uncertain; they were people expecting the uncanny after all.
“Don’t be fools! It’s a trick!” shouted Bridey Droone.
Maven Flyce darted about the yard like a frightened animal. Sundry thought it an admirable hysteria. Appreh
ensively, the crowd watched the man run and several people shied from him when he hovered too close. Truthfully, they seemed more worried about Maven than what Maven was worried about. “Run, run!” he was shouting. “He’s alive!”
“Nonsense!” snapped Charles. Bridey Droone raised her rifle, the business end of which wavered as she attempted to train it on the running man.
The door to the summerhouse shot open again, and there stood Burne Ring, like the back side of a hard life. His cheeks were hollow with a day’s growth of beard and his eye sockets seemed to blear to the back of his head. His voice, when he spoke, was terrible with disuse. “What have you done with my child?”
If not for his herald, Burne’s entrance might not have had the same effect upon the Droones and Normells, but Maven had provided the prime for the ailing man’s shocking appearance. The crowd fled, and, with a shout of horror, Maven himself went off, though completely in the wrong direction. Mrs. Droone got a shot off with her rifle—aiming for Burne Ring—but she was struck by someone running by, and the bullet went wide. Burne stalked down the steps of the summerhouse, his arms out to facilitate his balance, his groans lost in the din of the panicked crowd.
Maven darted off alongside the very people he should have been escaping and Sundry realized that to rescue them all, he would have to change tactics.
Charles Normell’s attention was divided between the doomful figure of Burne Ring and the box as he wrestled for it with one of the Droones. Stepping up to this struggle, Bridey managed two or three glancing blows to Charles’s head with the sight end of her rifle before Sundry plowed into her, shoulder first, at a run. The woman, her rifle, and the box made separate splashes in the shallows of the pond. Charles roared angrily. Sundry leaned down, ostensibly to recover the box, and, as the larger man loomed toward him headfirst the young man’s fist came up from the level of his boots and took the Normell chief on the end of the nose.
Charles Normell was more accustomed to meting out punishment than receiving it, and, with a look of Maven-like astonishment, he appeared to hover against gravity before his overbalanced weight carried him down like a rock. In an instant, Sundry had the box and was leaping over the man’s inert form. Then a real rock almost struck Sundry’s head. The crowd had returned, walking dead man or not, and several of them threw stones at the man who was running off with their second sight.
“Where is she?” Burne was moaning. “Where’s my child?” A rock whizzed past his shoulder, and another bounced off a nearby tree and caught Sundry in the leg, then another hit him in the back of the neck and half knocked him down. Burne actually bent over to help Sundry up and Sundry thought, in a red-hazed muddle, that he could hear Maven shouting for help.
The ground seemed to shake with the falling of stones. A new shout went up. The shaking, the thumping, was not from stones striking the ground but from hooves, a furious snort, and angry cries from horse and man and elf child.
54. One Fell Sweep
By the accident of contradictory impulses, Cram performed like one of his heroic ancestors, charging and plunging, snorting angrily and whinnying while Robin Oig pulled up on the reins and Melanie Ring thrashed the horse’s rear quarters with a switch she had snapped from a pine tree on their way down Dutten Lane.
Robin’s oar pitched forward from his shoulder, and he gripped it beneath one arm as they plummeted down the slope toward the pond; wavering in the air, the blade of the oar reached six or eight feet in front of the horse’s head like a lance of old. People in the crowd leaped away, but the sweep knocked down one stone thrower, who knocked down several of his companions. Robin could not know how terrifying he was, coming after days of tension and the last minute spent running away from Burne Ring’s convenient specter. To these people the large man on the large horse was simply more bewitchment, not the least for wielding such a strange weapon or for having a manifestly out-of-place little girl clutching the back of his shirt who shouted happy encouragement while waving a pine branch.
In one last effort to overcome their fears, the crowd came forward, clutching at the horse’s harness and raising their stone-filled fists. With his impressive brawn, Robin Oig was able to pivot the oar out among them so that they were forced to duck their heads and fall back. The horse leaped forward, stamping and snorting. Releasing the reins, Robin took the oar with both hands. Swinging it over Cram’s head, he drove back the mob further still. Without conscious thought or effort, he slipped from the horse’s back, Melanie still clinging to his shoulders as he waded into the fiercest resistance. Cram kicked his forelegs to the other side in an effort to find a way out, which way soon revealed itself in all directions as the Normells and Droones dispersed.
Charles Normell, eyes wild with fear, was the last to attack the sailor. Robin poked the man in his broad stomach. Charles fell back, and Bridey Droone tripped over him in her retreat. Charles rolled down the shore, over rocks and tree roots, till he came to the shallows of the pond, where he scrambled into a boat and rowed himself out of harm’s way.
Sundry Moss sat up, shaking his head from a rock-induced stupor. The box was in his lap and he was experiencing an uncomfortable realization of the fear and hope invested in that object. The crowd of Droones and Normells had disappeared into the surrounding trees, but he was oddly and awkwardly aware of them all. Before he knew what he was doing, he had a knife from his pocket and was cutting the thin ropes around the metal box. When the last of these had sprung away, he looked up at Robin Oig, who was trudging toward him, and was startled to see that the sailor had two heads.
Melanie Ring peered around the large man’s neck—victorious and exultant. “That was some business!” she declared. Then her face grew serious. Her father lay still, against a nearby tree. She slid down Robin’s back and touched the ground running.
Sundry had wanted to open the box, for curiosity and other reasons, but he dropped it and scrambled to the wan and withered figure. He settled Burne more comfortably against the rough trunk of the tree, though he wondered if it made any difference, now. Still breathing hard from his own exertions, he laid an ear against the man’s chest. He opened his mouth wide as he listened. There were cries from people in the woods. Sundry listened carefully for life in Burne Ring and could hear nothing. He pressed his head closer to the smoky clothes and felt nothing. He straightened up to study the man’s gaunt face. He touched Burne’s neck.
Melanie’s shadow fell over them. “Daddy,” she said.
Sundry’s heart went out of him. The little girl had seemed so happy and exultant; she was so pretty and charming with her dress on backward and Tim Spark’s old brogues swallowing up her tiny feet.
“Daddy.”
Robin Oig’s shadow fell over them. Cram, still skitterish, clumped up uncertainly. The little girl stood with her hands at her sides and her shoulders hunched, as if against a cold rain.
Sundry thought the wind in the trees sounded like a faraway voice.
“What was that?” said Robin Oig.
Sundry glanced up, but the trees were not moving.
“Not yet.” Burne’s eyes were open, but barely.
“Daddy,” said Melanie, but her voice was not altered.
“Is that what you had in mind?” Burne asked Sundry. “Them thinking I was dead?”
Sundry wasn’t sure how many more times he could do this. “That was better than anything I had thought of.”
Burne Ring almost smiled.
“How you got such a show out of Maven Flyce, I’ll never understand,” admitted Sundry.
“It wasn’t my doing,” said Burne between breaths. “I was watching you down by the shore ... and was about to come out to put the fear of God into them ... when Maven woke up ... and went to the front door. He stood there a moment before he saw me at the window.”
“I wouldn’t have credited him with a plan,” said Sundry, shaking his head and thinking that he owed Maven an apology.
It was a beautiful June day, and birds sang from the o
ther side of the pond. Cram nudged Melanie’s shoulder, and she stroked his velvet muzzle. “Where is Mr. Flyce?” she asked.
“If he didn’t get caught in the crossfire or the stampede, he’s somewhere over the line,” said Sundry, pointing north. He peered past Robin Oig’s legs in hopes of seeing the fellow come through the trees. Then he turned his attention to the box.
Abijah Cook arrived about half an hour later with the local constable and half a dozen men on horseback. None of them looked very happy to be riding into Dutten, and their uncertainty was not mitigated by the odd group surrounding Burne Ring’s seemingly lifeless body.
“Is he dead?” asked Ab.
“Not yet,” said Sundry.
The sheriff got down from his horse and surveyed the clearing between the summerhouse and the pond. He might never have seen that water from this oudook before. He frowned at the man in the boat, then touched the silver box with the tip of his toe. “What’s the box for?” he asked.
“Nothing, I guess,” said Sundry, who was standing now, rubbing the back of his neck where the rock had stunned him. “It’s empty.”
The sheriff wanted to know what had happened but was taking his time forwarding the pertinent inquiries. He considered Robin, then looked at the device in the sailor’s hand up and down. “What in the world have you got there?” he asked. It was an academic question.
55. The Last Time He Saw Several People
Robin Oig was puzzled when he realized that the little girl had not led him to Fiddler’s Green. He was more puzzled still when Mr. Moss insisted on putting the disparate and mostly mundane objects from the silver box into the haversack, which hung from the back of Cram’s saddle, and insisted that Robin say nothing about them to anyone. The sailor was glad enough to see Abijah Cook and the sheriff with his men but thought they had arrived a little after the fact. They all stood about and peered at the lake. The man in the boat didn’t seem to be fishing.
