by Joni Sensel
A thin man waved from near the edge of the platform.
Ariel tossed him a packet. “Medicines from Tara Healtouch of Conkor,” she said. “I can tell you later what each is good for. She would be grateful if you can trade anything to help coughing or the cramping disease.”
“Well, bite off my nose and spit in my brainbox! I believe perhaps I can.”
Ariel blinked past his unusual exclamation. “Um… okay. Also, there’s a village called Esme that very much needs a Healtouch, if you have an older apprentice who’s willing to go.”
“Tell them we’ll trade a Healtouch or just about anything else for some good-looking husbands for our daughters,” called a woman. The crowd laughed.
“Do they have to be good-looking?” Ariel asked.
“Oh, they’re joking,” Lamala told her.
“No, we’re not,” said the woman who’d spoken. “If she’s a Farwalker, she can carry that message.”
“I will.” Ariel nodded. She pulled a small, white puff from her pack and displayed it. “Is there anyone here, an Allcraft or a Kincaller maybe, who knows how to make fabric from butterfly cocoons?”
Only puzzled looks answered.
“I know, it sounds weird,” she added. “But I met someone who swears her great-grandmother did, and she’d like to learn how. The sample she showed me was pretty amazing.”
She tucked the cocoon back into her pack and riffled its contents. “Let’s see… you don’t have someone named Camity Allcraft here, do you?”
An older woman swapped uneasy glances with her neighbors. “I’m Camity,” she said.
“Truly?” Ariel had asked the question before without ever getting a positive answer. “Did you have a sister named Annabelle Windmaster?”
“Why, yes! But I haven’t seen her since we were young,” Camity said. “The wind loved her so much that one day it plucked her right into the sky.”
Ariel slipped a bit of lace from her pack. “It must have dropped her eventually, in a place called Integra. I don’t know if you’ll recognize this, but it was the best memento her husband could give me.” The lace passed through the crowd toward Camity, along with Ariel’s sad smile. “Annabelle left the world last year, but she never forgot you. If you’ll come see me later, I’ll tell you more.”
Wonder lit Camity’s face. Sorrow slowly dimmed it, but she reached eagerly for the lace.
Her nervousness forgotten, Ariel went on for several more minutes, handing out crop seeds, small gifts, and messages. Her work grew with every village. Pleas from places in need of a Healtouch or Storian crowded her memory. Nobody had responded yet, except to extend sympathy, but Ariel looked forward to a day when some brave apprentice would step up to say, “I’ll go. Take me.”
The people of Skunk offered Ariel plenty of other reactions, of course, mostly gaping mouths, questions, and good-natured jokes. But their eyes never left her. Only Sienna didn’t pay much attention. Instead the young woman’s gaze rested mostly on Scarl. Too busy to wonder, Ariel finished her deliveries by passing a pinecone to Skunk’s Tree-Singer.
“Pine seeds from Tree-Singer Abbey,” she said. Once she’d convinced the listeners that the abbey was no myth, she added, “That brings me to even bigger news. The Vault has been found. At the abbey.” She’d learned that people believed her sooner if she didn’t mention that she’d found it herself.
Voices erupted. Over the hubbub, Ariel explained that what had been found was not jewels or gold but lost knowledge. She handed out several rectangles of linen with symbols and drawings on them, including a copy of the primer that had introduced her to reading. Skunk did not have a Storian, or at least none who went by that name, but Lamala and several elders took the sheets eagerly and promised to begin learning and teaching the rest.
With her routine duties done, Ariel gnawed her lower lip, debating what to say next. “And now I hope to learn something from you,” she told the crowd. “I’m looking for someone or something that sent me a telling dart. Do you know what that is?” She wished she could show them. Her original dart had been stolen, but Storians at the abbey had been studying the dart she’d found later. In her rush to leave, she hadn’t thought to retrieve it.
It didn’t matter. Most of the adults had heard of the device, even though they’d never seen one.
“There were a lot of darts, actually,” Ariel explained. “Someone mysterious sent them last spring. I’ve been hoping to find that sender.”
Though the villagers exchanged hopeful looks and deferred to the elders, it quickly became clear that no one could offer much help. Ariel’s heart sank. This wouldn’t be as easy as she might have hoped.
“So the sender’s not here?” she said, mostly to herself.
Scarl spoke up. “Do you have anything remaining from old times? Perhaps even something so odd or confusing that no one can say what it is?”
After a few more blank stares, a voice in the crowd said, “Well, there’s Tattler, ain’t there?”
CHAPTER 8
Moonless Day
A few people laughed. A little girl squealed, “Don’t let Tattler get you!” and pressed herself into her mother’s ribs. Others clucked to soothe her, shaking their heads.
“Don’t go off on that twaddle,” Lamala said scornfully. “The girl didn’t tramp all this way for Tattler.”
“She golly well might have,” the Healtouch replied. “If she’s after old junk from back-when times. That’s all we’ve got from them days, anyhow.”
“It’s not even here,” Lamala said. “It’s not ours.”
“What’s Tattler?” Ariel asked, both alarmed and intrigued.
Nobody answered. Villagers avoided her glance. At last Lamala told her, “It’s a hoodoo far away on the edge of our swamp.”
“T’ain’t a hoodoo,” muttered the person who had first spoken. “It’s a beast.”
“Hoodoo?” Ariel repeated. Every village had its own favorite words, but Skunk’s were beginning to feel like another language.
“A strange rock formation,” Scarl told her, glancing at Lamala for confirmation. “Spooky, sometimes. The blowing wind shapes them and howls through them as if they were haunted.”
“Spooky is right.” Lamala cast a sympathetic look toward the cowering girl and then glared at certain adults. “Fools use it to frighten young children. Not that any of us have ever seen it, mind you—”
“ ’Cause it ain’t so close as the edge of our swamp,” declared someone else. “My grandpappy went a-hunting it once. He used to say it stood nigh on the edge of the world.”
“Just as well,” said Lamala. “We don’t need it closer. But it creeps into stories told on long winter nights.”
“What are the stories?” asked Scarl.
The Judge tilted her head toward the smaller children. “Later, perhaps. They’re the kind that give nightmares. I’m not sure why you’d want to go see it.” She smiled. “But then, I’m not sure why you’d want to come to Skunk, either.”
“Kind hospitality,” Scarl replied.
“And new friends,” Ariel added with a shy nod to Sienna. She tried to ignore the real reasons, the questions clamoring in her mind. With her curiosity burning about Tattler, however, she couldn’t resist one last attempt. She drew her map from her pocket and showed it. “Tattler’s not on this drawing, is it?”
“They say Tattler looks like a giant bug,” said Sienna. “Legs everywhere, antennas, teeth. Your drawing looks more like a game of marbles to me.”
“Do you recognize anything on here?” Ariel pivoted so the whole crowd could see. “A landmark, a pattern you know … something that represents Skunk? Because I think it’s a map.”
Bemused heads shook all around.
“Well.” She sighed. “If you think of anything, please let me—”
She happened to glance toward Lamala. Their hostess had bowed her face toward her lap, but the dread in her expression stopped Ariel’s tongue.
Scarl also had noticed.
A tiny shake of his head warned Ariel not to pursue it just now.
“Let me know,” Ariel finished. Despite a spike of concern, she stuffed the linen back into her pocket and grinned. “I’ll stop talking now, before your ears fall asleep. Anyone who might want to answer the trade requests I told you about, or give me a message to carry, or help with the work at the abbey, please come and see me about it.”
“Allcrafts especially, for the abbey,” Scarl said. “We need someone who can start trying to make the tools drawn on the stones.”
“I could take you there, of course,” Ariel added. “I guide people, too.”
She heard those habitual words and hurried to amend them. “I mean… I can’t take you right now, but I could come back for you later. If you’re not too much trouble.” At the group’s laugh, she smirked along with them, but she meant what she’d said. Two of the Storians she’d led to the abbey had whined and complained so much that Ariel had threatened to leave them. Scarl always preached patience, but they’d both become more careful. They did their best to scare off people who didn’t seem hardy enough for the trip.
Amid a chorus of thanks, Ariel bowed like a performing Fool and plopped down to a seat.
Lamala’s voice broke through the babble. “We’ll try to repay you for all that you’ve brought us.” Her face shone, free of the qualms there moments before. “I’m sure we can offer gifts for you to take elsewhere. But is there anything you need for yourself?”
Ariel most wanted to hear about Tattler, but she understood why she had to wait.
“We can always use food that will keep,” Scarl said.
“And a few more dry socks,” Ariel added.
Lamala turned to her neighbors. “You hear that? Let’s show them there’s more here than swamp gas and bugs. So the next village will hear more of Skunk’s generosity than its scent.”
Ariel laughed. “I wouldn’t—”
“Don’t waste your breath, girl,” said Lamala. “We make up for it, that’s all. The swamp does have advantages, though they might not be apparent.”
The villagers agreed. With much chatter and smiling, they began to mill and disperse.
Ariel eyed Lamala and exchanged a meaningful look with Scarl. She reached for the map in her pocket.
With a quick gesture, he stopped her. “Later,” he murmured. “Alone. You have admirers first.” He tipped his head toward the people edging forward to meet her.
So Ariel allowed new friends to touch her, share their names, and thrust sweet treats into her hands. When Skunk’s Tree-Singer asked to hear more of the abbey, Ariel took the chance for a trade. She described Zeke and promised to tell the Tree-Singer everything she wanted to hear in exchange for any news the trees could relay about Zeke. Other villagers clamored for details about wolf eels or the place she came from. For a while, the attention was pleasant. But soon the press of bodies and voices made Ariel feel hemmed in. She still didn’t know why she’d been drawn here, and the frustration made her jittery. Her eyes roamed between villagers and over their shoulders, longing to escape, if just for a moment.
Her restless gaze struck a boy standing near the top of the ladder as if he’d just arrived. Dark hair fell around his fine features and onto his shoulders. Circlets of feathers set off the lean lines of his bare arms and calves. Her age or a bit older, he was so bronzed by the sun that he could have been carved from wood. Ariel was certain he’d never been part of the picnic, but he watched the commotion now hungrily.
Their eyes met. Startled, he backed up a step—and promptly fell off the platform.
Ariel exclaimed, afraid he’d be hurt. Before she could move through the crowd toward him to check, his head poked back up over the edge. Water dripped from his hair, the drops glinting—not unlike his pale green eyes, which were startling against his dark skin.
He smiled wryly, twitched his eyebrows at her, and again disappeared below.
Sienna caught Ariel’s arm. “You said you had glass you wanted worked?”
Ariel glanced back toward the boy, but it was too late to ask why he alone didn’t come say hello like everyone else. She shook off her curiosity.
“Let me see it,” Sienna continued. “Shards or sea glass?”
Ariel hesitated. The moon couldn’t possibly have prodded her to Skunk merely for this, but she might as well trade with a Flame-Mage while she could.
“You’re still an apprentice, aren’t you?” she asked.
Sienna looked down her nose. “I’m eighteen, and glass was the first thing I made my master teach me. Candles and hearth coals are boring. I’ll show you my work, if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you.” Ariel turned quickly to her pack. She knew what it was like to have her trade questioned.
Sienna studied Ariel’s shards of glass. “What do you want of it?” she asked.
“Can you make me a bracelet—not beads, but a band?”
“I can, but it will be too thin,” said Sienna. “It’ll break the first time you bang it on a tree or a ladder. Beads will be stronger.”
Ariel slumped. “I wanted something more special than beads.”
“Here’s another idea, then.” Sienna held the glass against Ariel’s dark locks. “Yes. Let me make clips for your hair. I can get two out of this. The glass catches the light and reflects your pretty eyes. And they won’t break—unless you bang your head often.” She winked. “Come, let me show you in my looking glass.”
Ariel needed only a glance to know that the Flame-Mage was right. She admired the bright glints on her hair and tried not to see the old scar below, on her left cheek.
“Can you do it right now?” Ariel asked.
“Tomorrow. It will take a while to make the pit hot enough.”
“What can I trade you?” Ariel scanned the platform that belonged to Sienna’s family. It overflowed with clothing, bedding, and goods.
“Your necklace.”
“No!” Ariel’s fingers flew to her neck. “That’s not a fair trade.”
“Just teasing.” Sienna flashed a smile. On coarser lips, it might have looked cruel.
“Scarl is a really good Finder,” Ariel said. “He’ll find for you, if you don’t have a message you want me to carry.”
Sienna gazed thoughtfully into the trees. “Let me think about it,” she said finally, tucking the broken glass into Ariel’s hand. “We can talk in the morning.”
Ariel could tell by the look on her face that the Flame-Mage knew exactly what she wanted in trade. She just wasn’t ready yet to declare it.
CHAPTER 9
Moonless Judging
Ariel returned to the common platform to find it empty, apart from Lamala fussing over where the guests should sleep for the night.
“We’ll be comfortable here, if we won’t be in somebody’s way,” Scarl assured her.
“You must have something to cushion the floor,” Lamala insisted. She called to several children who stood below, petting the horse. “Go collect hare’s ear,” she told them. “Enough for two beds. Hurry, now!”
“Not from rabbits, I hope,” Ariel said.
Lamala laughed. “Tender heart, are you? Don’t fret. It’s a weed.”
Scarl caught Ariel’s eye. They were alone with Lamala for a moment. Ariel took a deep breath and braced herself for the loss of Lamala’s smile.
“Lamala?” She licked her lips. “Um… I was wondering…” She looked to Scarl for help.
His voice low, he said, “We’re looking forward to hearing stories once the young ones are abed. But there is another thing, if I’m not mistaken, that you could provide us in trade. Would you handle the drawing that Ariel showed earlier? Tell us what you make of it as a Judge.”
The woman drew back, misgivings creasing her brow. “Oh… isn’t there something else I could do for you or have done? I’m not sure I want to do that.”
“Why not?” Ariel asked.
Lamala squirmed. “I know your intentions are honorable, but …” She la
id her hand along Ariel’s cheek. “I mean no insult, dearling, and I’m grateful you’ve come. When I greeted you, though, I was taken aback. If you had not been breathing and warm, I would have said I’d touched a corpse.”
She hurried past Ariel’s wince and a choked sound from Scarl. “I’ve not met a Farwalker, ever, and I assumed it was simply your trade—back from the dead, as it were—that carried such clamminess with it. Then I saw your eel skull and thought perhaps I’d felt that death through you. But when you pulled out that cloth …” She shuddered and exhaled heavily. “It’s like a stench on it.”
Ariel unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “My map leads to … death?” Was she too late already, and the sender had gone from the world? What would that mean for the Vault, or for Zeke? A shiver raced over her skin, defying the sticky heat.
“No, no. I cannot say that,” Lamala said. “I don’t understand it at all.”
“It’s a copy of something quite old,” Scarl said. “Are you sure—”
“I know, I know.” Lamala groaned. “I wish I could say that explained it. It won’t. Old Tattler feels like a nighty-night story next to this.”
“Do you think they’re related?” he pressed.
“I certainly hope not. I’d be much more afraid of our own heeber-jeeber in that case.”
They stood together in silence. Lamala looked from Scarl to Ariel and sympathy softened her face. She sank to her knees and held out her hand. “Give it over, then, Ariel. If you can carry it, I ought to be able to judge it for you. Perhaps I’ll be reassured, after all.”
They joined her on the floor. Ariel gave her the crumpled linen. Lamala smoothed it between her palms and tipped her head, her eyes distant.
“I would not have called it a map, if you had not,” she said. “To me it feels more like… an open hole.” She cast Ariel an apologetic look. “I almost said a grave, but that isn’t quite right. It has the same shadow of loss, but also a promise of filling up. Fixing. Planting… yes. Sowing. Which should be a good thing.” She shook her head. “And even death leads to new starts, so I cannot fathom why this disturbs me so much. I’m quite sure I’m not judging it clearly. I don’t know why. It’s almost as if it’s not really here. Just a shadow.”
