The Story Peddler

by Lindsay A. Franklin

  “Elle, please!”

  She cast a pained look at Mor, then dropped the pole and ducked down beside me. “Lie flat as you can, Tanwen,” she said.

  Mor and Zel settled into a rhythm. Zel never said a word, but both lads dripped sweat, and I wondered how long they’d hold out like this.

  The mountains loomed all around us, and the guard nipped at our heels.

  Mor grunted. His arms looked ready to fall off from the work. “Can we lose them, Zel?”

  Zel didn’t answer.

  “Zelyth?”

  I looked up to see Zel grimace and nod to his arm. His shirt was stained through with blood. It looked to be spreading to his torso. I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped me.

  Zel glanced at me for half a second, then took to poling again. “Don’t worry, lass. Just grazed me is all.” He winced. “Aye, Mor. If we make it to the lake, maybe we can lose them up ahead.”

  Mor frowned. “Hold on, mate.”

  With his best friend injured and bleeding, Mor seemed to double his strength out of nowhere. An arrow thunked into the back of the boat. I closed my eyes and squeezed Gryfelle tight.

  Made me feel a bit better that she squeezed back just as hard.

  I thought of praying but abandoned that notion. Didn’t really believe in the goddesses, so what was the point?

  An awful minute passed, and I heard shouting—closer than it ought to have been.

  “Stay down, Tanwen!” Mor looked ready to thwack me with his pole.

  I hadn’t realized I’d lifted my head to see what was going on.

  “Are they close?” My voice rattled.

  “Aye, they’re close.”

  For the next moments, Mor and Zel called a series of commands to each other—working their way around obstacles, I supposed, or else figuring how to push upriver as hard as their arms could manage. The boat scraped up against something, and I thought Mor would shout himself hoarse.

  “Easy now! To the left. Left, I said!”

  Zel bellowed back, “I’m trying! Ain’t got a ship’s wheel, you know.”

  But suddenly the water didn’t seem to be pushing so hard, and the boat evened out some. Gryfelle and I stopped sliding back toward Zel. I looked up again and saw Mor’s face light up.

  His lips moved, but his words were lost in the roiling of the river. Even so, there was no mistaking what happened next. A cloud-gray story strand swirled before him. He spoke a final word, and the strands became rocks—a dozen and a half of them. They splashed into the river just behind us as we crested a rise in the water.

  My head popped up in time to see the guardsmen’s boat make a go for the uphill slope—and get batted back down by the grouping of sharp stones. The ones Mor had just made from his story strands. Their boat reeled backward, then nearly tipped over before they righted it again. But by then they were too late. They’d never get up speed enough to top that rise and still maintain enough control to navigate the gauntlet Mor had thrown down.

  The bowman pulled out one last arrow and took aim.

  I hollered at the top of my voice. “Look out!”

  Gryfelle and I hit the bottom of the boat, and Mor dodged as the arrow sailed past his ear. He spared a wink in my direction—which I guessed was a pirate’s way of saying thanks. The lads gave one final push, and the boat evened out completely as we reached the edge of the lake. The guardsmen’s boat remained stalled some distance back. We were out of shooting range within moments.

  Our boat stilled and the lads just about collapsed to the deck.

  Gryfelle took one of the poles to help keep the boat from drifting to shore, and I pulled a skin of water from my bag.

  “Here.” I opened it and handed it to Zel. “Drink some.”

  He took a swig, then passed it to Mor.

  Mor drank, then gave it back to me with a dry smile. “Welcome to our world, Tanwen. To your world.”

  Chapter 13

  Tanwen

  Crossing Lake Lyn was downright tranquil after the fight up the River Abereth. We sailed across in what felt like no time flat, then Gryfelle and the lads guided our boat toward the mouth of the Endrol River.

  Since I was fairly useless at boat work, and since I no longer feared my immediate demise, I gazed around at the mountains. They were beautiful but somehow not what I’d expected. They soared taller than anything I’d ever even thought about. Being under them, winding along down the Endrol, was surely something to experience. Craggy ledges towered into the sky, capped in glistening snow lingering from winter.

  But truly, I thought those mountains would be more exciting. I’d been hearing—and telling—tales of mountainbeasts since I was a wee lass. Why couldn’t I see one for real?

  When I voiced my question aloud, Mor laughed. “Those creatures are taller than Zel by half and wickeder than that peddler who used to slap you around.”

  “Mor!” Gryfelle frowned up at him.

  “Sorry, Tanwen.” His smile just about melted my knees. “Didn’t mean any offense. Just wouldn’t fancy watching you get your pretty face ripped off by one of those things.”

  Gryfelle’s frown deepened. She turned away from Mor and settled on Zel instead. “How is your dressing holding up, Zelyth?”

  He flexed his arm and wiggled his fingers. “Seems sound. I’ll be needing some of Karlith’s care when we get back, I’d wager.”

  “Yes, of course.” Gryfelle dug around in one of the bags she’d pulled from the saddles. “Would you like some creamleaf for the pain? Crushed goddessflower would help fight infection, but I didn’t bring any with me.”

  Zel smiled. “I’m all right. You rest now, lass. You’ve had a day too.”

  Gryfelle brought her hand to her forehead. “Yes, I suppose I should.” She winced like her head throbbed.

  “Gryfelle?” I tried to think of how to ask without prying. But there wasn’t any way around it. “What happened back there? It was like you disappeared for a spell.”

  She smiled thinly. “Later. I’ll explain later. For now, I must rest.” She settled into the bottom of the boat.

  And that was that, I reckoned. For now.

  Gryfelle had barely shut her eyes for two minutes when her breathing evened and the creases on her forehead smoothed out.

  I stared at her sleeping form and lowered my voice. “What’s wrong with Gryfelle?”

  Both lads looked at me, but neither said a thing. I raised my eyebrows, hoping to wiggle a response from someone. But nothing.

  Fine then.

  “Will you never answer any of my questions, the lot of you?”

  Mor looked out as the water slipped past in silence, but Zel smiled a little. “It’s a question for Gryfelle to answer.”

  I glanced down at her. She managed to look regal even lying in the bottom of a tiny, smelly riverboat. An image of those rocks—the ones Mor conjured out of thin air, like he was a wizard—popped into my head. “There’s something wrong with all of us, isn’t there? That’s why the king wants to get rid of us.”

  Mor’s angled jaw tightened. “The only thing wrong with us is that we have the ability to create things—things the king might not be able to control.” He spat into the water. “Gareth doesn’t like things he can’t control.”

  Weariness creased Zel’s face. Suddenly he looked old. Old and tired, like the farmers on tax day. “Sometimes the answers to questions ain’t easy, Tanwen. I don’t know if our gifts are wrong. But sure as fire is hot, they’re dangerous.”

  Mor looked at Zel like Zel had punched him in the gut. “You don’t know if our gifts are wrong? You still wonder? Just because your father doesn’t understand them or the king outlaws them does not make our gifts wrong. When will you realize that?”

  Gryfelle stirred under Mor’s raised tones. Mor stared hard at his friend, then shook his head and looked out along the dark water again. Zel’s expression teetered between defiance and shame.

  I started watching the water too. Like rolling black glass. It look
ed just how I imagined the great empty space inside me would. “Sometimes, when I was telling one of the king’s crowned stories, this feeling would rise up inside. Like something was working to get out of me, and I’d have to squish it back down so I didn’t spew it all over my audience.” I sighed ruefully. “But in the end it poured out anyway, and there wasn’t a blooming thing I could do about it.”

  Both lads stared at me a moment. Then Mor spoke. “Tanwen, promise me you’ll never stifle it again. If Gryfelle were awake, she’d beg you.”

  I tried to read his eyes, but they offered nothing more than a glimpse into two endless blue pools. “But wasn’t it those crazy strands that landed me in this whole mess? If only I could have squished them down like usual, I wouldn’t have the guard on my tail.”

  “Tanwen, trust me on this. Please.”

  The fire of his gaze moved me to agree. I couldn’t refuse, though I barely knew him. “Aye, Mor. I won’t squish it down again.”

  He smirked. “Don’t you mean ‘Aye, Captain’?”

  “Tanwen.”

  I stirred sleepily but didn’t open my eyes. “Hmm?”

  The voice again. Mor’s. “Tanwen, wake up.”

  I cracked one eye open. “Ten more minutes.”

  Zel, manning the pole to steer us, nodded to the north bank. “Bowyd up ahead. Best to keep low for now, but it’s almost time to go ashore.”

  I sat up and peered ahead. True as a tumbleweed, the endless stretch of riverbank was finally interrupted by a few rickety docks jutting out into the current. But otherwise, Bowyd’s shore looked quiet and deserted.

  “Past Bowyd is where we stop,” Mor said. “We’ll hide the boat, then travel into the Codewig.”

  “The Codewig Forest?” Another place I’d dreamed of seeing.

  Mor smiled. “Aye. That’s the one.”

  “Is it true the trees are so thick that people have gotten lost in them and never returned? Because I’ve heard that.”

  “Aye.” Mor’s grin stretched wide as a sail. “Which is why it’s the perfect hiding place for the Corsyth.”

  Trying to get a riverboat out of a river current, onto a riverbank, and hidden in a thick cluster of river bushes isn’t as easy as a person might think.

  Least it wasn’t as easy as I thought it’d be.

  But we finally managed it, even with Gryfelle being half asleep, as anybody would be when she’s slept hard for half a day after not sleeping for goddesses know how long.

  My legs complained and fairly creaked like Riwor’s climbing down from the donkey cart. “Oy. How long have we been sitting in that boat anyway?”

  Zel glanced up at the sky. “A full day and a half now.”

  “My legs aren’t happy about it.”

  “Don’t worry.” Mor patted me on the back as he passed. “You’ll have plenty chance to loosen them up again on our hike to the Corsyth.” He disappeared into the trees.

  “Hike?” Now my legs complained in a different way. “Is it far?”

  Gryfelle shook her head as we followed after the lads. “No. There is a place where a spring bubbles up just a short distance into the forest. That’s where our camp is.”

  “More marshes?” My nose wrinkled at the thought.

  Gryfelle smiled. “They don’t smell half as bad.”

  “Of course there’s marshes,” Mor said over his shoulder. “That’s where the name comes from.”

  Gryfelle must have seen the question on my face. “In the old language, it’s Mae Corsyth yer Gweyth: the Marshes of the Weavers.”

  I scooped up a little pebble and chucked it at Mor’s back. “Hey, just because I can read, it doesn’t mean I speak Old Tirian.”

  Mor glanced back and smiled. “I’m not even sure you speak modern Tirian.”

  Gryfelle rolled her eyes. “Mor, not everyone gets a chance at a formal education. You’ll remember most of your fellow fisherman didn’t. Your father was . . . unique.”

  Ahead, Mor paused. “Aye. He was different. That’s what started the trouble, wasn’t it?” Then he continued walking without looking back.

  After that, heavy silence settled around us again. These people and all their secrets sure could weigh one down. I wondered how they managed to wade through their ghost-filled pasts at all.

  We zigzagged through trees that grew so close together there couldn’t have been a path through had someone wished to make one. Which I’m sure the outlaws didn’t. Still, I noticed Gryfelle covering whatever tracks we left behind us—stirring up the underbrush, shuffling broken twigs about, bending branches on shrubbery in directions we weren’t going. As if a body could track us in a forest so thick anyway.

  I kept expecting the stench to smack me in the face like it had at the Menfor Marshes. But it never did, and I had a fair shock when Mor’s serious face finally eased into a relaxed smile.

  “Just through here.”

  He pulled back a curtain of hanging moss, and I thought I’d stepped into one of my beloved fairy stories.

  Like Gryfelle said, water bubbled up from the ground somehow and made a wide pool in the middle of the forest. Soft moss dripped from every tree, climbed up every trunk, webbed between every branch. I guessed the water mustn’t have been stagnant, because it sparkled clear, even in the dim green light filtering through the tops of the trees.

  Spring flowers bloomed along the drier banks, and wide, waxy water flowers dotted the surface of the pool. Reeds shot up everywhere, which seemed strange to me in the middle of a forest.

  The colors of the place would’ve been strange anywhere, but lovelier than even a story peddler could tell you about.

  Splashes of every color I could imagine, dashed all over the trees, the rocks, the forest floor. Like story strands had turned to paint and streaked onto everything. Then there were balls of crystal hanging from the trees. Crystallized stories, I was sure.

  But then I remembered Mor making rocks from story strands without actually telling a proper story. So maybe not crystallized stories, exactly. But what? Crystallized thoughts? Ideas?

  In any case, they dangled from the trees like lanterns. How enchanted it would all look at night with lights glowing inside!

  “It’s pretty as can be.” I turned to Gryfelle. “But where’s your house?”

  She paused and looked at me.

  “I mean, where do you settle down at night?” I tried again. “Where do you stay?”

  Gryfelle’s gentle lips curved into a smile. “There’s one. And just over there, on that rock. And here’s one.” She nodded to a bunch of moss-covered rocks all around the pool.

  She might’ve finally cracked.

  But then, as if she’d appeared out of nowhere, a woman crawled from one of the nearby rocks. I blinked, because surely I was seeing things. Or else I’d finally cracked.

  But if I ducked my head just right, I could see that the moss wasn’t covering a rock—it covered a raised crate of some sort, like the ones I’d seen full of salted fish that had been shipped to Pembrone from Physgot.

  Except much larger. Large enough for even Zel to sleep in without trouble. And if you weren’t crouching just right to look for them, the moss draped in such a way as to make them invisible. Or at least make them look like moss-covered rocks and nothing more.

  The woman hoisted herself over a boulder, then scrambled up beside us. Her long, gray-streaked blonde hair fell over one shoulder in a curly plait. Her blue-gray eyes were half-lidded, but she wore a wide smile.

  “Yer back safe. Praises to the Creator.”

  Instinctively, I looked around for guardsmen or priests. Wouldn’t get away with saying the Creator’s name so loud anywhere but a marshland hideout, I guessed.

  “Aye, we’re back.” Mor kissed the woman on the cheek.

  Zel followed suit. “Good to see you, Karlith. Didn’t know that we’d make it back this time, to be telling the truth.”

  Gryfelle and Karlith embraced, then the woman held her at arm’s length. “Oh, dearest. W
as it so bad? Did you suffer?”

  A wan smile stretched onto Gryfelle’s lips. “I’m just worn. I’ll rest awhile and be quite well.”

  Karlith didn’t seem satisfied. “I’ll brew some tea.”

  “No, I’ll take bitter-bean brew.”

  “Tea would do ya good.”

  Gryfelle smiled again. “Just the bitter-bean, please.”

  Karlith shook her head. “I blame Mor. He’s the one who’s always talking about the Spice Islands and their bitter beans. Got all you young ones worked up about exotic things that wasn’t even on the map when I was your age.” She shrugged her defeat and then turned her gaze on me. Her smile bloomed in full again. “And this must be our peddler.”

  So . . . I’d been expected?

  “Aye. I’m Tanwen.” I stuck out my hand for her to clasp in greeting, the way I might to any farmer’s wife. Then I paused. Was that proper? Was that the way ladies were supposed to greet each other?

  I tried to remember what Gryfelle had done when we’d first met.

  But Karlith took my hand and gave it a strong squeeze. “Karlith Ma-Lundir.” Love and kindness seemed to travel from her fingertips into mine, then journey up my arm, straight into my heart.

  The feeling of it hitting my empty insides nearly dropped me like I’d taken a punch. Tears sprang and a knot bunched in my throat.

  I fought to clear it. “I’m Tanwen. Did I already say that?”

  Karlith smiled, but Gryfelle glanced up from where she was sitting on a hidden crate, pulling out pewter cups from somewhere I couldn’t see. “Tanwen En-Yestin.”

  This meant something to Karlith—something more than it meant to me. “Aye. Tanwen En-Yestin.” Tears filled her sleepy eyes. “Welcome home, dear one.”

  Irresistible warmth seeped through me, filling up the hollow spaces. And something inside me wondered if this was what it felt like to have a mother.

  Chapter 14

  Braith

  “Would you like more wine, Princess Braith?”

  Braith held up a hand to excuse the royal wine steward. “No, thank you, Gwin.”

  Gwin bowed, then retreated to his place among the other servants lining the hall, his flagon of wine clutched in his hands.