Grayling's Song (16 page)

Auld Nancy shook her head as she lifted her bedraggled broom. “We no longer have the power, my broom and I.”

Showers turned to downpour. Auld Nancy sneezed, and Grayling said, “Oh, drips and drizzles, it's the inn for us.”

The three were soggy and chilled when they reached the inn on the outskirts of the town. Inside, it smelled like wet clothes, stale ale, and—Grayling sniffed—mutton stew, fragrant with garlic and pepper.

Auld Nancy dropped onto a bench at a table near the fire, while Grayling bargained with the innkeeper, a large young man with missing teeth in his broad smile. Returning to the others, Grayling said, “I have secured us bread, beer, and stew. There are no beds to be had, but we are welcome to sleep here by the fire.”

Auld Nancy brightened a little. But where was Pansy? In the dim light of the inn, Grayling saw the girl speaking with two men near the door. “Pansy,” Grayling called, “you complained of hunger, and I can hear your belly rumbling from here. Come and have supper.”

Grayling found that her weariness made even a wooden bench comfortable enough for sleeping. Rain pelted the roof and the wind wailed as she closed her eyes, and it was near dawn when she woke. The innkeeper was feeding great logs to the fire, and he winked at Grayling. “I shall warm some ale for ye, for 'tis a nasty morning indeed out there.”

Grayling nodded her thanks and left the inn to relieve herself. Her hair tangled and her cloak whipped about her as she trudged from the inn and back, cursing the wind. But this wind did not blight her spirits or extinguish her will. Certes, then, it was mere wind. Wasn't it?

Pansy and Auld Nancy were stirring when she returned. “The rain has stopped,” she told them, “although the wind is fierce. We shall not have easy walking today.”

“No matter,” said Pansy, looking pleased with herself. “I sent word last night to the man with the metal nose, Lord Mandrake he is called, that the witches he sought before are here.”

Grayling lurched forward and grabbed Pansy's arm. “What? Pansy, what have you done?”

Pansy shook off Grayling's hold. “I want to do magic, and if Sylvanus will not teach me, I will go to Lord Mandrake.”

Grayling shook her head. “Pansy, he will cage you as he did before.”

“I will gladly trade my freedom for power. With practice, my magic will grow stronger, and folks will cease their
poor Pansy
s and
foolish Pansy
s and be in awe of me!”

“He cannot be trusted.”

“Nor can I. We will make a fine pair.”

“But you have ensnarled
us!
Think on it. I have no magic, and Auld Nancy has exhausted hers. What will happen when your Lord Mandrake finds that out?”

Pansy shrugged. “You will think of something. Sylvanus says you have courage and keen wits.” Her voice was sharp edged, and her eyes hard.

Grayling had endured Pansy long enough. Let her go where she willed, as long as it was far from Grayling. “We must be away without delay, Auld Nancy.” Grayling helped her to her feet. “Before the warlord comes.”

In a voice ragged and weary, Auld Nancy said, “Pansy, you have learned nothing from this misadventure, but are even more foolish and wicked. Do what you will.” She took Grayling's arm, and they moved toward the door.

“Go, then,” said Pansy. “I will be a powerful magician, rich beyond your dreams, and you will come to wish you had stayed. And been kinder to me!”

Grayling and Auld Nancy pushed the door open and stumbled out. The day was cold and sunless, and the air smelled of snow. The wind wolf-howled, and the tall firs swayed like grasses. Broken branches littered the road so that Grayling and Auld Nancy had to leap and skitter to stay afoot.
Fir cones and fiddlesticks, 'tis past time to be home,
Grayling thought as she pushed Auld Nancy faster and faster until darkness fell once more.

n the morning,
Grayling fo und frost on her nose and her eyelashes. The air was filled with the noisy honking of geese, and she studied them as they passed overhead. How easily they moved and how much faster than human folks on foot. Grayling recalled persuading Pook the raven to stay on the ground where it was safer. Watching the geese, their undersides flashing white and gray, Grayling thought she might have been mistaken. How would the world look from up there? What could she see from the sky that she had never seen? Were she a bird, would she choose to stay on the ground or soar, no matter the danger? She knew what she once would have said, but now she was not so certain.

The memory of Pook the raven moved her to take the mouse from her pocket and jiggle him awake. He opened his eyes and snuffled, with bits of acorn still adorning his whiskers. “Mistress Gray Eyes, do you wish the assistance of . . . ” He yawned a great yawn—that is, great for a tiny creature like a mouse. “. . . this Pook?”

Grayling stroked his head gently. “I have been thinking 'tis a long while since you shifted into another shape.”

Pook said in a faint, thin voice, “This mouse will likely not be taken with that again. I believe this Pook is only a mouse now.”

“But a very special mouse,” Grayling whispered. He coughed a tiny cough. “Are you quite well?”

“Aye,” he said, “but weary. Most weary,” and he slipped back into her pocket.

A late autumn market provided biscuits and pears and soft sweet cheese in exchange for the last of Sylvanus's coppers. Bellies full, they walked on, slower and slower as the morning grew later.

The cold sun was high in the sky when they neared the spot where they were to part ways.

“We must each set out for home now, Auld Nancy, or we shall freeze into statues here on the road.” Grayling wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. “'Tis still a goodly walk for us both.”

Auld Nancy dropped to the ground, broom in her lap.

Grayling gasped. “Auld Nancy, are you ill?”

“The fingers of giants are making shadows in the sky,” Auld Nancy said.

Grayling looked up. “What mean you? I see only bare branches against the gray.”

“Of course, tree branches.” Auld Nancy shook her head. “It appears my bones and my wits are both failing me.”

As she helped Auld Nancy struggle to her feet, Grayling felt her heart near pulled in two. She was most eager to be home, but she could not leave Auld Nancy to travel alone. With a sigh that she pulled all the way from her toes, Grayling said, “Come, we have walked all this way together. I will not leave you now. I shall see you home.”

She tried to remember if her mother had a staying-alive song. Such a song was called for now, but if Hannah Strong did, Grayling did not know it. Their footsteps beat out a sort of a tune, and words came into her head, and tune and words came together in a melody. With the old woman leaning heavily on her, Grayling began to walk, singing the song she was inventing as they went:

Be strong, look around you,

Blue asters are blooming, the yarrow is tall.

Apples and sweet pears are yet on the tree.

The wide world calls.

Take my hand, take my hand.

 

Winter will come soon.

Your nose and your cheeks will pink with the cold

When frost paints the walls

And footsteps sing crunch songs

To snowdrops and crocus.

 

In spring you'll be walking

In fields newly white-capped

With marguerite daisies,

As geese winging home honk their calls.

 

Summer will sizzle and warm your old bones,

As you lie in the meadow and look forward to fall.

Stay alive, Auld Nancy, for living is all,

Full of promise and friendship.

Take my hand, take my hand.

“Hannah Strong is indeed a fine one for making songs,” said Auld Nancy. “I vow, I feel stronger.”

“I most sincerely hope so,” said Grayling, “but that is my own song that I just now made and none of my mother's.”

“So you have her song skill as well as her wisdom and her strength.”

Grayling nodded.
I do. It seems I do.

They climbed up and down, through woods chilly and damp, rich with the smell of mushrooms and decaying wood. In places Grayling saw small trees standing on their roots as if on tiptoe. Auld Nancy followed her gaze. “The nurse logs have rotted away,” she said. “The young trees need them no longer and grow on their own.”

On their own.
Grayling nodded in understanding.

The day wore on, and finally they saw the smoke from many hearth fires. There backed against a hill was a village. Auld Nancy sighed, and her face grew calm. “My heart is lifting now I am near to my bed,” she said. She directed Grayling to turn here and there and no, not that path, this path.

They kept to the edge of the village. Those passing by bowed their heads to Auld Nancy, but Grayling could smell an uneasy stew of fear and awe and need. The very trees whispered
weather witch, weather witch.

At the far end of the village was a stone hut with an arched wooden door painted green. Inside, the hut was drafty, cold, and damp, but bearable once Grayling found the tinderbox and started a fire. Smoke found its way around the room and out the smoke hole in the roof.

“Smoke yet frightens me,” Grayling said to Auld Nancy.

“Only the foolish have no fear. There is much in this world to be fearful of, but much to bring pleasure if we have our wits about us.” Auld Nancy groaned as she lay down on a thin pallet near the fire, which Grayling fed with twigs and seed cones dry enough to burn. She turned out the remains of the biscuits and cheese, and Auld Nancy directed her to a crock of cider and two mugs.

Grayling joined Auld Nancy on her pallet, and they supped.

Auld Nancy reached out and gently touched the scar that remained on Grayling's cheek. “You bear here a remembrance of our journey,” she said.

“Auld Nancy,” Grayling asked, “tell me truly: do you think 'tis over? That the wise folk are themselves again and not rooted to the ground, now that the force is vanquished? And will all be well, though Pansy has gone to the warlord with her hurtful magic?”

“I do not know, but I have hope. Hope is an excellent and necessary thing to have in this world. Hope and bread and good friends.” She sighed in satisfaction. “Now I am home, girl, and my belly full, I think I just might live.”

“Indeed I think you might, and ere long, you will have your weather magic back and be again cloud pusher, fog mistress, she who controls the rain.” Grayling paused a moment to frame a question and then asked, “What does magic feel like?”

Auld Nancy stared into the distance. “Using magic is like flying a kite. You think you are in control of it but then the wind catches it—it tugs and then shoots away like an arrow released from a bow.”

As it had done for Pansy, Grayling thought. “Sylvanus says true magic is like a sausage, made of bits and pieces of things we all have.”

“Aye, true. Magic be a paradox, everything and nothing,” said Auld Nancy.

“Pansy has skill and real power. Not everyone has such. I do not.”

“Pansy's is a powerful, greedy, wicked sort of magic. You too have skills.” Auld Nancy yawned and stretched. “But even better, you have good sense and a caring heart, sharp eyes in your head, and the wits to use them. No matter what magic she has or learns, Pansy will never have that.”

Grayling nodded. It was enough.

Pook climbed slowly out of Grayling's pocket and scoured the floor for crumbs and seeds. With a squeak of contentment, he climbed onto the pallet and settled down next to her to groom his whiskers.

The next morning, Grayling prepared to begin her walk home. She wrapped Desdemona Cork's shawl around Auld Nancy's frail shoulders and tied it tight. “I am reluctant to bid farewell to you, for I have grown fond of you and your grumbles.”

Auld Nancy smiled and said, “And I, you. You have cared for me most tenderly.” She took two wrinkled apples from a green bowl, wrapped the last biscuits and large crumbs of the remaining cheese in a cloth, and gave the bundle to Grayling for her journey. Grayling gave the old woman a quick hug.

“Pook,” she said to the mouse, who was cleaning his paws with a tiny pink tongue, “we must be off. 'Tis a long walk to my valley.” Her heart gave a little flutter.

With a squeak and a sigh, the mouse said, “Mistress, this mouse is wearied from the traveling and quite elderly for a mouse.” He coughed once and continued in a weaker voice. “This mouse would stay here.”

Grayling was surprised at the rush of sadness and loss she felt. “Are you certain? What shall I do without you?”

“Ahh, Gray Eyes . . .” His voice grew faint and feathery, and he shuddered.