by Susan Dexter
He ate all the berries he could find, but when the first bees started visiting the grassland, Tristan abruptly set off. The furry insects reminded him that he’d failed even the bees. He hadn’t taken them to the home he’d promised them. They had surely found some dwelling place, but it wouldn’t be the paradise of flowers he’d put into their hearts. He’d have no hen, and Mistress Dalzell would have no honey. All his fault, every bit of it. No question about any of it.
Failure nagged like a pebble in his boot as Tristan walked. It was impossible to ignore the truth of it. There was a greater stone where his stomach ought to have been. The berries lay uneasily around it. As the day warmed, sweat made his clusters of insect bites itch like fire. Tristan frowned with displeasure at his shadow. It was a spindly thing, of no account, and it would not leave off trailing after him.
His shadow shrank to a puddle under his boots. Persistent, it reappeared in front of him and grew again. It stretched impossibly before it faded into the twilight, but it was never the shadow of a great wizard. It never would be. It was only the shadow of an apprentice who kept growing out of his patched clothes. A pity he could not likewise grow into his master’s teachings, Tristan thought gloomily.
Eventually the moon lit his way. Tristan flinched from the silver light. He wished for clouds with all his heart. Finally he crept into the darkness under a holly bush and dozed fitfully until the moon set. That meant he had to walk in the dark, but Tristan didn’t care.
* * * *
He arrived home with the sun. Blue smoke was curling out of the cottage chimney. Blais was home.
Tristan hardly cared. After all his other failures, his inability to slip back home unnoticed did not much surprise him. He ought to have expected Blais to come back early from Master Sedwick’s.
As Tristan was crossing the yard, the cottage door opened. His master came out through it. Blais was carrying his scrying bowl.
Tristan didn’t see what his master held, any more than he noticed Blais’ relieved expression. He wasn’t looking for either. Tristan kept his attention on the scuffed toes of his boots. They weren’t dry yet.
“I have to tell you about the chickens,” he began, to have it out and not look as if he was avoiding the disaster. “There was an eclipse of the moon, and I forgot to adjust the wards for it. A fox got in while I was at the shore gathering stones on the tideline.”
“Yes, I saw the coop,” Blais said mildly.
Tristan had cleaned the coop. But of course the bloodstains had soaked into the wood, and they would be perfectly visible—especially to a curious wizard trying to discover where his chickens and his apprentice had gotten to.
Blais set the scrying bowl down on the bench beside the door. “I thought you’d gone away for good, boy.”
“Mistress Dalzell said she would give me a laying hen if I could bring her a swarm of bees. I thought I’d be back before you got home, sir.”
Blais sighed. He scratched the back of his neck.
Tristan supposed it must be obvious that he had no hen with him, nor any bees either. He wondered whether Blais had been about to use the scrying bowl to locate him—or whether he’d already used it. Tristan forged ahead with his confession.
“I found wild bees that were ready to swarm,” he said. “But I had to let them go. I couldn’t get out of the bog except by following the swarm.”
“The bogland is dangerous country.” Blais frowned, his expression going distant. “You were fortunate to escape it.”
Stupid to go into it, his master probably meant. Blais was just too polite to say so. “I know,” Tristan admitted. “Even the moon got trapped there.” He told Blais about the unicorn. How he’d seen it shining, how he’d released it and led it out of the bog—and how he’d let it go.
He heard Blais sigh again. He wouldn’t be told he’d been dreaming, Tristan thought. He wouldn’t be beaten for telling lies. There were advantages to being apprenticed to a wizard rather than the butcher. Not many, true—but nothing was so strange that Blais would doubt his account of it.
“You did the right thing, Tristan,” his master said. “I would miss the moon, and not only for the spell-books I could no longer read. You did right.”
“When I touched the unicorn, my spells worked,” Tristan said bitterly.
“And they will work again.” Blais put an arm around Tristan’s shoulders and squeezed once. “Your magic must grow, as your body has. You’re growing yet—though I do hope that stops while you can still get through the doorways. Stooping is bad for the back.” He sat down on the bench and held the bowl in his lap.
Tristan’s expression refused to lighten. Blais tried again. “You certainly won’t remember it, but you couldn’t walk, the first time you tried,” the wizard said. “You could stand—but one single step and down you went! And then you yelled, loud enough to wake the dead! You kept at it. Presently, you learned. You learned so well that you don’t think about walking at all, now. You just walk, when you choose to.” Blais nodded to himself. “Your magic will be like that. It may seem longer coming, but you’re older now. You notice time passing. You grow impatient. Now come here, apprentice. There’s something I need to show you.” Blais arose from the bench, scooping up the bowl.
As they entered the cottage, Tristan heard birdsong. He stopped. He stared at a wicker cage hanging beside the window. Inside it, a blue and white canary was singing, his throat swelling like a frog’s. The bird’s whole body shook with melody. Finally the canary could not keep even so still—he bounced from one perch to another, trilling all the while. He repeated one piercing note three times, fell silent for a moment, then hopped close to the wicker bars. He cocked his dark-capped head toward Tristan and chirped inquiringly.
“Who’s this?” Tristan asked in just the same tone.
“Ah. That is Minstrel,” Blais said. “A gift from Master Sedwick. No new potatoes this time, I fear, but his songbirds have been efficient parents. They hatched out six chicks and have nested again.”
“He’s ours?” Tristan leaned closer to the cage, put one finger out. Minstrel hopped from perch to perch, scattering seed husks and a tiny feather or two. He eyed the finger.
Thomas had trailed Tristan through the cottage door. The cat’s attention was fixed on the songbird—eyes, ears, quivering whiskers. Tristan tried to shove the cat back out the door with a look. He wasn’t quite willing to use his boot, however gently. Thomas ignored him, sat, and licked the tip of his nose thoughtfully.
“You’ll find his cage easier to clean than the chicken coop, but I’ll want it done more often,” Blais said. “And he wasn’t what I wanted you to see, Tristan.”
Tristan obediently turned his back on the birdcage. Blais was drawing himself up very straight, as if angry about something. Though what misdeed might actually be worse than letting the chickens be massacred, Tristan could not imagine. Well, he’d obviously failed to get rid of the cat—but was that so horrible? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t still take Thomas to Dunehollow. He braced for whatever was coming, trying not to be obvious about it.
“Tristan, one of your duties is to keep this house clean,” Blais began climbing the ladder, beckoning Tristan to follow. “Now, I know that this is your bed, but it is in my house.” Blais waved an arm, making his sleeve flap. “When was the last time you aired these blankets—or even straightened them?”
Blankets?
His master forgave him the dead chickens and fussed over unaired blankets? Tristan frowned and tried to answer the question. It was difficult—he hadn’t been near the cottage, much less his bed, for the past several days. So much had happened. The night of the eclipse, he’d scarcely slept at all, and before that there’d been a string of hot, close nights. The loft had been airless. He’d slept in the orchard, studying constellations until his eyelids were too heavy to keep open.
“It’s certainly a month,” Blais reckoned sternly.
Tristan supposed it might be, one way and another. And Blais w
as right—the blankets ought to be aired. One had to go all winter without being able to do that properly, but in summer bedding could be spread on the clean grass, in the sun. Sunlight was a great freshener.
Still, he’d have expected his master to show more concern over his own bed. It’s not as if I have fleas, Tristan thought, feeling misjudged. Mostly, though, he was just confused.
“You know, it takes a hen three weeks to hatch out her eggs,” Blais said. “And most of a week to lay a nestful in the first place. Obviously, this one felt her eggs were less apt to be disturbed in your unmade bed than in the henhouse. As it happens, she was correct.”
Tristan looked past Blais, into the narrow, slant-ceilinged loft. There, in a tangle of bedding, sat their red hen. Her yellow eyes glowered.
She looked odd. What was she sitting on, besides the heap of blankets? All at once, Tristan noticed a bit of eggshell, and some dark fluff under the hen shifted. A tiny head poked out from the red feathers. A tinier beak opened. The chick cheeped softly. A brother or a sister answered it, further beneath the hen’s sheltering wings.
Chicks! They had their flock back again, in miniature and in time! Hens and surely a rooster or two as well—
Blais’ shoulders were shaking. He was, Tristan realized, laughing.
“She must have grown weary of losing her eggs to you, day after day,” the wizard chuckled. “So she made a hidden nest. In the last place she felt you’d look. I fear she’s a most contemptuous bird.”
“No,” Tristan contradicted exuberantly. “I love her! She’s the finest hen in all Calandra! If she’s smarter than I am, I don’t mind a bit! I wouldn’t care if she laid cockatrice eggs!”
Blais pursed his lips. “I don’t know if I’d go quite that far. But as you see, our lack of hens is remedied, or will be. These little one won’t lay for months yet, but the red hen will still give us the odd egg or two—assuming you can outwit her and get hold of them.”
The red hen rose to her feet, shaking her feathers to settle them. She clucked to her chicks, and they tumbled into raggedy line behind her. Tristan had to carry the chicks down the ladder, but then the little parade marched across the cottage and out into the yard.
Something About A Hero
“I’m afraid the cat still must go.”
Tristan glanced automatically at Thomas. The cat sat frozen and fascinated beneath the canary cage. Minstrel appeared unconcerned—but the canary was young and inexperienced. He didn’t know danger when he saw it. He thought his cage kept him safe. “I know,” Tristan agreed in a low voice.
“I’m sorry, Tristan.” Blais sounded as if he truly was sorry.
“Thomas went with me, you know. As if we were two heroes on a quest. I didn’t know a cat would do that.”
Blais looked away. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, always a sign that he didn’t wish to answer a question. Even a question that wasn’t asked.
“And I think he kept me out of trouble, a time or two,” Tristan went on. “He reminded me about setting wards—he made me set them, so the bog-haunts couldn’t play tricks on me. I didn’t want to. I was tired. I suppose the bog-haunts were already touching me, but I didn’t know it. Thomas scratched me till he got my attention.”
“Tristan.” Blais rubbed his nose again.
“I know.” He hadn’t intended to stall, or beg. He was just reporting what he remembered. He hadn’t paid it enough heed, at the time. “Thomas, go outside.”
After one wistful glance at the birdcage, Thomas got up and went.
“Master Sedwick trains his birds to carry messages,” Blais said. “They sing, of course, but they’re quite intelligent and very responsive. I thought you’d enjoy having Minstrel here.”
“Oh, I will.” Tristan put a finger into the cage, between the wicker bars. Minstrel hopped close, cocking his head to one side, then the other, till he’d had a good look. He gave Tristan’s finger a quick nibble, nothing at all like a hen’s sharp pecks. Tristan saw his tiny tongue, dark red and sword-pointed. He felt it flick his finger before Minstrel hopped back away. Tristan supposed a bird might like to be stroked, much as a cat did. He could find out.
“I do like him,” he assured Blais. “And I know it isn’t fair to keep a cat in here with him. I’ll walk Thomas back to Dunehollow before dark. I’ll make him understand he has to stay there.”
“Perhaps Mistress Dalzell would like a cat,” Blais suggested.
“She wanted honey,” Tristan said.
“You may take her some,” Blais told him. “’Twould be only neighborly. And our bees will swarm one day, next year if not this. If Mistress Dalzell still needs bees, she may have them.”
“I’ll tell her when I bring the cow home.”
“Ah!” Blais looked relieved. “That’s where the cow is. I didn’t think a fox could take a cow, but the cow was not here, and the fence was still whole.”
“I didn’t want to leave her with no one to do the milking,” Tristan explained. “I never did get any butter churned.” He hung his head as he realized that. Looking down, he noticed chicken scratches in the dirt.
He’d just sent Thomas outside. The hen and her train of chicks were in the yard, scratching for bugs. New-hatched chicks were probably much easier to catch than frogs.
Tristan went out the door very quickly.
The dooryard was quiet, empty. No sign of the red hen. Not so much as a feather. No sign of Thomas, either.
Tristan went round the cottage, heading for the henhouse. He hadn’t taken three steps before he heard flapping and furious squawking. Tristan broke into a sprint, his heart pounding.
Chicks ran in all directions, scattering at their mother’s urgent command. A streak of rust-red flashed out from beneath the henhouse. Jaws snapped at a pale yellow chick.
The fox! Its den must be under the coop! And now its luncheon had strolled right up to its waiting mouth. Tristan yelled, but even if he’d had a spell ready to throw, he couldn’t be fast enough. And his hands were empty, useless. The chick was doomed!
Then Thomas sprang. He’d waited unseen in the shadow of the coop. The cat landed smack on the fox’s red back. He latched on with every claw. He yowled like something that would be right at home in any haunted bog.
The startled fox sprang straight up into the air. It snapped its narrow jaws back over its shoulder, but Thomas was just out of reach. Safe himself, he could easily nip at the fox’s pointed ears—and he did.
Tristan snatched up the wooden pitchfork and ran to help. The hen led her children to safety, under cover of the confusion. Footsteps slapped as Blais came running.
A little help here! Thomas suggested. Just don’t let him go back under there when I jump clear. Keep him running!
“He came from under the coop!” Tristan shouted to Blais, as his master arrived.
The wizard understood. Stooping, Blais found a pebble. He flung it into the shadow beneath the coop. As it rolled into the fox’s tunnel, Blais gestured sharply, shouting a word of command.
The single pebble instantly became a thousand. The fox’s den was packed full of gravel in a heartbeat. The fox spun into the entrance as it finally shook Thomas loose. The stones clogging the den turned it back. Deflected, it met Thomas once more. The cat’s back was arched. His every hair stood on end. Thomas’ mouth was open wide, displaying his weaponry.
The fox swerved hard, then raced for open country and his life. Tristan ran a few yards after him, just to be sure the clever beast kept going and tried no further tricks.
When he returned, Blais was still standing in the yard. A frown creased the wizard’s forehead, narrowed his eyes.
“He didn’t get any of the chicks, did he?” Tristan asked breathlessly.
“I don’t think so—I didn’t count them, but the hen seems to have settled. She must have accounted for them all.”
He didn’t get a one, Thomas answered, fanning his whiskers in satisfaction. Stupid dwarf dog.
“Under the coop itse
lf?” Blais mused. “Why didn’t we see the burrow?”
You didn’t see the one under the back of the cottage either, Thomas said, washing a paw.
“Under the cottage?” Tristan asked, shocked.
You wouldn’t look there, Thomas said offhandedly. You only checked to see whether he’d been near the chickens. He was right under your nose all the time. Which, considering your nose, was easy enough. Plenty of room there.
Half a minute of following his long nose around the edge of the cottage led Tristan to the fox’s burrow. The entrance was behind the rain barrel and very well hidden.
“I’ll get dirt and rocks to stop it up,” Tristan said.
Blais snorted. “I think I can manage one more spell today.” He used a handful of dirt and pebbles. The hole vanished entirely as Blais spoke the spell. “Every time we set wards, the fox was already inside them, so they were useless,” the wizard said. “Clever beast. But how did you know where his den was?”
“Thomas told me.”
Blais stared at him. It must look, Tristan thought, like another pathetic plea to let the cat stay. He met his master’s gaze uncertainly. Finally, Tristan cleared his throat.
“I ought to take him back to Dunehollow now. Come on, Thomas.”
“Tristan. Wait.” Blais was looking from the cat to the sealed den. “How do you mean, he told you?”
“He…told me. Under my nose, he said.” Tristan’s mouth twisted. “I expect he thinks a cow could hide under my nose, but I let it pass. He did save the chicks, after all.”
Thomas licked a paw, pretending not to know he was being discussed.
“You didn’t just see him go to the den, or something like that?” Blais persisted.
“No.” What was Blais getting at? “He just told me it was under the cottage. Master, what’s the matter?”
“You don’t mean he speaks?” Blais’ expression was odder by the moment.
“Well, not out loud.” Tristan had never given the issue much thought. “It’s more in my head.”
“How long has he been talking in your head?” Blais’ expression was intent.
