“What my sister means to say,” Bunch told him, “is that we shall keep you on. Like a deckhand. We’ll feed you and not turn you away from your ship. In return, we expect some assistance around the house. But there will be no rum.”
Bay nodded solemnly. “Indeed. We are also planning a celebration for which you will help us prepare.”
“In the meantime,” Bunch said, “do you play Trickits?”
“Or perhaps,” Bay said, stroking the handle of her cane, “Intrigue?”
The Golden Guardian
The unrelenting rain and clouds turned day to night beneath the eaves of the Green Cloak Forest where a group of sodden travelers rode down the North Road heading south and west on their way to the city of Selium. Hoods were drawn and shoulders slumped against the weather. Estral Andovian, now the Lady Fiori and Golden Guardian of Selium, rode up front with Lieutenant Rennard of the River Unit. Seven of his soldiers followed, one riding the near horse that hauled the field carriage with its somber burden. Spared from duty in the north following the Battle of the Lone Forest, the soldiers formed an honor guard for Estral’s father who’d been slain in the fighting. His rough pine casket borne upon the field carriage was shrouded in an oilskin tarp against the wet.
Estral’s initial shock over her father’s death had waned over the long days of travel and turned into a mire of despair. She barely noticed the passage of time and simply went through the motions of her daily routine. Rennard had tried to engage her in conversation and include her in decisions, but she’d taken little interest and now he mostly left her alone. Left her alone to stew in her own dark thoughts about how she should have tried harder to dissuade her father from joining in the battle, how her own actions caused her best friend to be captured by the enemy and tortured. These things cut through her mind in a relentless agony that she embraced.
“Lieutenant!” one of the men called.
“What is it?” Rennard reined his horse around.
Estral halted Coda.
“I think we picked up a stone,” the soldier said. “I need to stop and take a look.” He dismounted and lifted his horse’s hoof.
Not sure why she did so, Estral squeezed Coda forward instead of waiting.
“Lady Fiori,” Rennard called, “you should not leave the group.”
“Not going far,” she said in a weak, scratchy voice. She was surprised it worked at all when so often she had to resort to using her slate and chalk to “speak.”
He did not stop her for he had turned his attention to examining the horse’s hoof. Truth be told, she’d been hungering to be alone, away from Rennard and his soldiers with their eyes on her all the time; away from the box that held her father, a constant reminder of her failures and guilt.
As Coda plodded along, she did not stop him as she had indicated to Rennard that she would. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the honor guard had already vanished behind a bend in the road. Even knowing they would catch up with her in no time, she felt an easing, as though shackles had fallen from her wrists.
She’d an urge to apply her heels to Coda’s sides and fly to unknown destinations, to run away from responsibility, but she hadn’t the courage. Her path was clear. With her father gone, she was now the Golden Guardian of Selium, an inherited title not unlike that of a lord-governor. The Golden Guardian, however, did not oversee a province, but the history, culture, and arts of Sacoridia, as well as the school at Selium and the city itself. Fortunately, others handled most of the day-to-day management of school and city, but still it weighed on her. She might have filled in for her father when he was off on one of his many journeys, so she was prepared in a practical manner, but now she must bear the full burden of the office, including its politics. She would no longer be the Golden Guardian’s daughter who only wanted to teach music to children, but the Golden Guardian who must weather the storms of decision-making vital to the well-being of Sacoridia’s culture, and to Selium’s students, instructors, and citizens.
The rain fell heavier and a fog thickened in the woods and billowed across the road. It was like a physical manifestation of how she felt inside—gray and clouded. She sank deep into thought, lulled by the rhythm of Coda’s easygoing stride. So submerged was she, her mind going everywhere and nowhere, that when she shook herself back to the present she wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and realized, with surprise, the honor guard had not caught up with her. She reined Coda around thinking she ought to ride back to meet them, but where was the road? How had she gotten off track? She wheeled the gelding around again, but there was no sign of it in any direction.
After a moment of panic, she thought, It has to be nearby. The fog is just hiding it.
She prodded Coda in a widening circle, but when they did not encounter the road, her panic intensified. Then she spotted a brighter patch of fog clear of trees in one direction and decided that had to be it, but when she crossed into the bright patch, she found herself on a narrow path, not the road. The path was well-tended, the gravel of the treadway raked. The forest fell away in a more orderly manner than the usual wildness of the Green Cloak. The underbrush and snags had been cleared away making the woods look neat. Bunchberry flowers grew in profusion close to the ground in a white mat beneath the emerald boughs of the woods.
She might have lost the North Road, but she was relieved to have found some sign of civilization. Chances were there was a house at the end of the path and its inhabitants could direct her back to the road. The fog thinned as she guided Coda along the path, which widened enough for two carriages to pass. Coda’s hooves clip-clopped over a stone bridge that spanned a pleasant burbling stream. She halted him on the other side so she could absorb, in wonder, an open parklike area where the forest gave way to manicured lawns that in the distance faded in a light fog. The gold haze of the sun settled like an enchantment upon the grass and plantings. It was so unexpected here in the—
A man burst out from the shrubbery, screaming and waving some sort of a weapon at her. Coda reared. She tumbled off his back into bushes beside the stream and watched in dismay as her horse, with all her belongings, bolted back toward the fog. She fought herself free of the bushes, bayberry by the scent of the crushed foliage, to confront her assailant.
He shoved his weapon in her face. It was not a sword or a pike, not even a staff, but a rake. One look at the man suggested a scarecrow. He practically swam in too-large clothes and wore a straw hat that shaded his long face. And was that a barnacle on his chin?
“Don’t you move,” he said.
She knew a rake could cause damage. Uprisings had been won with such implements. She did not move though she was anxious to catch Coda. Hoping her voice would work, she cleared her throat and said, “I will not move, but now what?” To her surprise, her voice worked better than it had in weeks. It sounded almost normal.
The man scratched his head beneath his hat. “Uh . . . ”
“Look,” Estral said, “I just wanted to ask directions on how to get back to the North Road and now you’ve scared off my horse.”
He scratched his head again. “Uh . . . ”
“Well? Are you just going to make me stand here all day?”
“Uh, no. I guess I’ll take you to see my mistresses. They can decide what to do with you.”
She hoped these mistresses of his would sort out the whole thing, and that she’d be able to retrieve Coda afterward. When the fog unveiled a large house in the distance, she could hardly believe it. To the man’s consternation, she raced ahead.
The Benevolence of the House
“Wait!” the fellow cried, sprinting after Estral with his rake in hand.
Estral barely heard him as she’d started laughing, and she didn’t stop until she came under the shadow of the ship’s prow that split the covered front porch of the manse in two. She gazed upon it in wonder.
It can’t be, can it?
&
nbsp; The man skidded to a stop. He then approached with mincing footfalls like a cat that has stepped in something disagreeable. The problem appeared to be his boots.
“This isn’t,” she said, “Seven Chimneys, is it? Home of the Berry sisters?”
He puffed his chest out. “And Deckhand Stickles.”
It had been, she supposed, a silly question to ask. After all, how many manor houses were there in the wilds of the Green Cloak with a ship protruding from them? She supposed it was possible there were others, but she’d only heard of one, and that from her friend Karigan. At the time of Karigan’s visit with the Berry sisters some five years ago, however, there had been no ship, or it had been, at least, still contained in its bottle. It was later, from a copy of testimony given by a book thief named Thursgad, that she’d read about the ship part. Those who’d taken the testimony had, she learned, been skeptical. Even as she gazed upon the house and ship, she could hardly believe it herself.
The sensation of someone watching her drew her eyes upward to settle on the figurehead of a mermaid, its curved fish tail of fins and scales carved in detail, the human part of her lovingly crafted, the pale skin, her ruby lips, and wild red hair. She did not cast her gaze down on Estral, but seemed to look infinitely out upon the horizon, which must have been very appropriate at sea, but now all that lay before her was the vastness of the lawn, and beyond that, the forest. The ocean was very far away.
“My mistresses are in the back garden,” Deckhand Stickles said. He gestured vaguely with the rake and held it ready in an offensive position.
“Were you on the ship when it—” She gave a vague wave of her hand toward the bow.
He nodded, a wary look in his eye.
“That is amazing! You must tell me all about it!”
Then, before his surprised gaze, she set off in the direction he’d indicated at an eager pace. She could not wait to meet the Berry sisters.
As they rounded the house, she spotted various outbuildings, including stables and a carriage house. Far down the back lawn, set among a copse of trees behind a pond, was what she guessed to be a garden folly with a spired rooftop poking above the canopy. She turned, and there immediately behind the house stood three figures dwarfed by the stern of the ship. She hurried toward them, barely aware of Stickles and his rake behind her.
She halted at the edge of fresh-turned earth and stared at them, and they stared back. The sisters were just as Karigan had described them, one tall and thin with a sharp countenance—that was Miss Bay—and the other plump and more prone to smiling—Miss Bunch. Both had blueberry-blue eyes set in crinkled elfin faces. The third figure turned out to be a statue of an old woman with birdseed cupped in her hand—Marin the Gardener, Estral surmised, in her crone’s visage. Yellow roses climbed up her torso. The ship’s anchor had been dropped and sat embedded in the ground next to the statue as if it had just missed crushing it. Roses had begun to wrap around it as well. So tickled was Estral to see the Berry sisters that a laugh escaped her throat unbidden.
“Stickles,” Miss Bunch said, “have you brought us a guest?”
“An intruder,” he said. “She is my prisoner.”
“Stickles,” Miss Bay said, “put that rake down immediately. This is not a pirate ship and threatening visitors with rakes is not courteous behavior.”
“But—”
Under Miss Bay’s stern gaze, he relented and dropped the rake head to the ground.
“It is certainly not how we treat the Golden Guardian of Selium,” Miss Bunch said.
“How do you know who I am?” Estral asked.
Miss Bunch smiled as if addressing a particularly dense child. “Your harp badge is one clue.”
Estral’s hand went reflexively to the brooch pinned to her coat. It had been her father’s, the ancient symbol of the minstrels, this one heavier and embellished with script in Old Sacoridian that read, Serve Knowledge. Few would have been able to distinguish it from an average minstrel’s badge, though it had a weight and patina of age about it that suggested it was more.
“It is also difficult to miss your Eletian blood,” Miss Bay added. “There are not likely to be others who are also minstrels.”
Her Eletian blood was not difficult to miss? The only others who had ever recognized it were Eletians.
“We had some tidings,” Miss Bunch said, “of what befell your father. We are truly sorry for your loss.”
“But how—?” It had happened only recently in the far reaches of the north. How could they have heard about it already?
“Now and then we acquire the news of the land,” Miss Bunch replied, “but gracious, Bay, I do not think it is polite to leave our guest gaping here by the garden plot. And Stickles, you must get back to work.”
“My companions,” Estral said, not without some reluctance, “are back on the North Road. I should get back to them.”
“Nonsense,” Miss Bay said. “They will be just fine without you for a little while. We would be remiss to not offer you our hospitality.”
“But they’ll be worried.”
“They will hardly notice your absence.” Miss Bunch patted her arm.
An indefinable feeling told Estral this was true.
“And of course you must join us for the party,” Miss Bunch continued.
“Party?”
“Tonight!” Miss Bay answered. “You are our first guest. Well, second if you count Stickles.”
More than a little flummoxed, Estral could only relent when the sisters each took her by the arm, one to either side of her, and gently guided her around the house. They chattered almost continuously, sometimes nonsensically, as they led Estral to a side door with a trellis cloaked in more climbing roses. There seemed to be an ongoing disagreement about birds.
“They are seagulls,” Miss Bay insisted. “As such, they belong in the sea, not whitewashing our roof.”
“Now, sister, you see gulls everywhere.” Miss Bunch said.
“That is because they are everywhere!”
Estral looked up and did notice some herring gulls on the peak of the roof.
They entered the kitchen.
“Letitia,” Miss Bunch sang out, “please put some tea on. A guest has arrived!”
Estral smiled to herself for Letitia, she knew, was one of the sisters’ invisible servants. According to Karigan, they had all been banished to invisibility and silence by a spell of Professor Berry’s that had gone awry. She realized it had been a long time since she had smiled so much. Too long, but there had been reasons.
Reaching the parlor required passing through the hull of the ship, which was dank and gloomy compared to the non-ship parts of the house with its leaded windows. A wooden walkway with a handrail had been built to traverse the hold, over piles of stone ballast that might otherwise be difficult terrain for two elderly ladies to cross. Estral held her breath against the stench of bilge and mold and long-dead sea creatures. It was a sticky smell, the sort that clung to you like a limpet. On the other side, the parlor itself appeared truncated by the hull, upon which the sisters had hung paintings of flowers in vases and bowls of fruit as if to negate the presence of the ship in their house. The bilge stench followed them into the room. Whether the sisters were in denial about the ship or not, the lingering smell made it pretty hard to forget. Lace curtains tousled in open windows, and the fresh breezes did help to diminish the smell some.
As though Letitia had anticipated the sisters’ desire, a tea service and a plate of pound cake awaited them on a table. They seated themselves and Miss Bunch poured.
“Your arrival is quite auspicious,” she said.
Estral was so busy trying to take it all in—the sisters, the ship, the parlor—that it was a moment before she realized she had been spoken to.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Why, our party, child. We are so h
appy to have you here to join in our celebration commemorating our return to our house. We were gone so long while it mended itself that we must celebrate our homecoming.”
“And our escape from Miss Poppy,” Miss Bay muttered.
“Our cousin down south,” Miss Bunch told Estral, “with whom we stayed while we were unhoused. She is, shall we say, difficult.”
“Disagreeable,” Miss Bay amended.
“Now, sister, we must not be unkind. She put a roof over our heads when we needed it.”
Miss Bay hrrrumphed, then spooned two lumps of sugar into her tea. “We do not get visitors often so we are very glad you stopped by.” It was said as if Estral had intentionally just dropped in for a casual visit. Miss Bay reached for the cream, but Miss Bunch pulled it out of her reach with a look of remonstration. Miss Bay frowned.
“Remember your delicate internal constitution,” Miss Bunch said.
Miss Bay grumbled unintelligibly.
“I am very excited to have found you,” Estral told them. “My friend Karigan told me all about you.”
“That makes us sound famous,” Miss Bunch said, using the cream she’d denied her sister.
“Karigan who?” Miss Bay asked. “What a funny name.”
“Don’t you remember her?” Estral asked. “She visited with you a few years ago.”
“I remember,” Miss Bunch said, “and so do you, sister. She was the Green Rider who was not, who really was.”
Miss Bay bobbed her eyebrows and sipped her tea.
“You gave her the moonstone,” Estral said.
“Oh, that old thing,” said Miss Bunch. “I’d almost forgotten.”
Estral had a sense that neither of the ladies had forgotten a thing.
“Tell us what our Karigan has been up to since we last saw her,” Miss Bunch said, “though we may have some idea.”
She didn’t doubt they had “some idea.” They waited for her to begin with beatific smiles on their faces. As eccentric as they seemed nattering on about seagulls, she could see in their eyes an intensity of regard, a sharp canniness, and it made her shiver a little.
The Dream Gatherer Page 7
