My Swordhand Is Singing (10 page)

23

Things to Cover Our Dead

Peter stopped, to check the wool. It lay slack.

So. Whoever it was, was back home, and Peter knew that every step he took now was a step nearer the mysterious visitor.

He checked the sky. If only dawn were closer. The promise of light struck at his heart. He longed to see the sun, for what evil can occur by daylight?

Nonetheless, by starlight he could see the village in front of him, and now he could even see the wool stretching away toward the village. His breath quickened. It would be soon.

Picking up the pace once again, he hurried on, letting the wool run freely through his hand.

He came to the first houses and saw that the wool ran away up a small alley that he had never noticed before. He must never have made a delivery there, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know where he was going, he just needed to follow the wool. Once again he praised himself for his quick thinking in the hut, and thought of Agnes. At least she would be safe for the time being. Her assailant was somewhere out there ahead of him, presumably climbing angrily back into bed. Well, he would be angrier still when Peter had finished with him.

He followed the wool up the alley, moving more slowly than before, taking care not to make a sound. He was in luck. The snow that had been falling through the night had been gentle but persistent, and enough had fallen to recarpet the streets with a blanket that hid any noise he might have made.

Something bothered him as he padded through the snow, but he couldn’t place it. A few more steps and he turned around. Behind him he could see his footsteps in the fresh snow. He looked forward again, and there was the wool running in front of him.

So why couldn’t he see any footsteps from the man he was following?

The wool turned a corner into a wider street that he knew well. He’d been convinced that it was going to lead to one of the houses he’d already passed, but the trail showed no sign of ending. Ahead lay the back of the priest’s house, but the wool ran on beyond that, and around another corner.

He hurried up the street, glancing at the tarred windows of Daniel’s house as he did so, then turned the corner.

He stopped dead.

The wool led away. There were no houses left. There was only the church before him, but that was not where the wool was taking him.

In the half-light he could now see the grayish line snake out across the purer whiteness of the snow. The wool caught on a stone here, and on a fence there, but it was unbroken as it led the way, surely and utterly, straight into the graveyard.

Now, moving as if in a nightmare, Peter’s feet stepped unwillingly forward. The wool felt like wire in his hands. Maybe it was just that it had been frozen in the snow, but it seemed to cut into his skin like metal.

He came to the gate of the graveyard. There could be no doubt. The wool ran over the fence next to the gate, as if his quarry had sailed clean over it. Dumbly, he gripped it, as if it were a lifeline leading him to safety, when in reality it was leading him toward death itself.

The wool wound its way between this grave and that, snagging on crosses, trailing on the ground. At last, his eyes wide open in horror, Peter saw its destination.

There, no more than five feet away, was Stefan’s grave. The wool not only went right up to the grave, but disappeared into the soil itself. Then Peter saw that though there was snow all over the graveyard, and on the other graves, Stefan’s was, for some reason, free of it.

An awful self-destructive curiosity pulled Peter closer. Unable to stop himself, he got down on hands and knees and crawled the final few inches toward the grave. As he approached, something else caught his attention. There was a hole in the soil at the head of the grave, near the cross. The hole was about the size of a small fist, and it was perfectly circular, like a rat hole in a riverbank.

Peter leant over it.

He looked in.

There was just enough light to see inside the hole.

At the bottom he saw an eye.

It was open, seemingly lifeless, though looking straight at him.

Then it blinked.

Peter screamed and ran as if the Devil himself were chasing him.

24

The Hut

At first he ran blindly, not thinking where he was going. Not thinking at all. He blundered out of the graveyard to the edge of the village once more, and then he knew where he had to go.

Only once did he stop and look behind, but he couldn’t see anything, and neither could he hear anything. And that was some comfort. But what comfort could there be for what he had seen at the bottom of the dreadful hole? That cold, dead eye.

Was that Stefan in there? Dead? Or, even worse, maybe, alive?

Agnes! He had to get to Agnes and warn her. Get her to leave the hut.

It didn’t take long for him to stumble through the trees, retracing his steps around the edge of the forest and to the hut.

He ran straight to the window.

Silly girl,
he thought, seeing the shutter hanging open. But then a worse thought pushed into his mind.

He jumped up at the window, once again landing uncomfortably halfway over the sill.

“Agnes! Agnes!”

But already he knew she had gone.

“No!” he shouted. “Agnes, where are you?”

He dropped inside the hut, frantic, praying that she lay horror-struck in a corner; but she was not there.

Overwhelmed by fear, and tired, he suddenly felt utterly powerless. He forced himself to stay calm. He had to find her. She had gone. Or maybe she had been taken….

Whatever had happened, he had to find her.

Yet again he made ready to climb from the window of the hut, and then he saw something that froze his blood.

No more than twenty feet from the hut, and heading straight toward it, was the figure of someone he knew to be dead. Radu, the woodcutter. So it was not just Stefan who was out there. How many were there?

Peter gasped, and dropped back into the hut, terrified.

There were noises on the roof. It took him a moment to realize the thumps were footsteps. There was another of them on the roof too!

He looked to the shutter. Getting to his feet, he waded clear of his terror and made it to the window. He saw Radu nearly at the hut. Suddenly a face appeared, upside down, in front of him.

“Help me!”

It was a face he was glad to see. Sofia, the Gypsy.

He put his arms out and pulled her, dragging her through the window. They collapsed in a heap.

“Quick,” Peter shouted, “the shutter!”

“Wait,” Sofia cried, and before Peter could do anything, she snatched something from a bag around her waist and flung it out of the window. Only then did she tug the shutter closed and bolt it tight.

“All right,” she said. “I hope.”

Once again it was dark in the hut, and Peter had no idea what she was talking about, or even what she was doing here.

“I made a circle of it. Right around the hut.”

“Of what?” said Peter, at a loss.

“Millet seed,” said Sofia simply. “We’ll be safe for a while. Just pray the sun gets here soon.”

“It’s at least two hours till sunrise,” Peter said, “and I don’t see that millet will save us from anyone.”

“Really?” Sofia said. “So have a look for yourself.”

Peter didn’t move.

“Go on, have a look!”

Peter crept to the window and peered through a crack in the shutter. Whether it was starlight, or the moon showing at last, he didn’t know, but there was enough of a silver-gray light outside to illuminate a mysterious scene. There, on the snow-covered ground, he could see thousands of millet seeds, forming a circle around the hut, just as she had said.

Sofia talked to him as he peered through the crack.

“One of them’s been in here once already tonight, I think. That’s why I used the seed.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“Looking after you,” Sofia said.

“What?”

“I saw you coming up from the village, and then I saw him.” She nodded toward the window. “I climbed a tree, dropped onto the roof, and got as much of the stuff around the hut as I could before he got here.”

Through his spy hole Peter watched, wide-eyed in horror, as Radu knelt in the snow, picking the seeds up, one by one, placing them in his pockets. Every now and then he glanced up in Peter’s direction, and although Peter knew Radu probably couldn’t see him, the look of malevolence on his pale face terrified Peter even more.

Sofia, in contrast, seemed calm.

“He can’t come in till he’s picked them all up.”

“And what if he does?”

She didn’t reply.

“And what if he does?” Peter cried, turning away from the crack.

Radu was out of sight somewhere, randomly working his way round the hut. It was even more frightening to Peter to know he was out there but not be able to see him, and he could bear it no more.

“He’s dead, Sofia! That man is dead. I went to his funeral!”

“I know,” she said, frankly but gently.

“That’s no answer! I don’t understand. How can he be out there when he’s dead?”

“I don’t know either. But he is. We call people like him ‘hostages.’ He is dead and he is out there. And he is trying to get in here.”

“But it’s not possible.”

“Did you not see him with your own eyes?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then, Peter, you must understand that it is possible.”

Peter turned back to the window, to the crack.

Radu was in sight again, still slowly working his way through the seed. His fingers were swollen and clumsy, and he was making heavy going of it. His skin was blue, in places almost black.

“And if the sun comes up before he finishes, then we’re safe?”

“Yes,” said Sofia, “for the time being.”

Peter wheeled around on his heel like a trapped animal looking for an escape, but there was none.

“And you? What do you mean, you’re looking after me? I don’t understand.”

“Be still, Peter. We must be calm.”

“Calm? How can you be calm?”

Sofia put her arms out wide, a gesture of submission.

“Peter, you think this is easy for me? You think I am not scared enough to drop dead right here? Because I am. I am. But I have something you do not. I have knowledge. I have done this before, many times. But trust me, you will need all your wits about you. You will need to be calm, in order to live. Do you understand me?”

Peter shook his head in disbelief, but he understood.

“But what about Agnes?” he said. “I must find her.”

“I think it is probably too late for your friend.”

“How can you say that?” Peter cried. “What do you know?”

“I know that she has been taken from here. Given what you have seen, you should understand. We can do nothing. For the moment we are trapped. If we can get out, then that is a start. That might be of some help.”

It was almost too much for Peter.

“What do you mean?”

“If we can get out of this, so good. But there is a greater evil at work. There are bigger battles to be fought.”

Something clicked inside Peter.

“You mean the Shadow Queen, don’t you. But I don’t understand.”

“No,” said Sofia. “I know. Your father has spent your whole life stopping you from understanding.”

“What do you know of my father?”

Sofia was silent for a moment.

“More than you do, I suspect.”

25

The Winter King

It was strange. Even as it was happening, Peter knew it was strange. It was like sitting in the center of a hurricane. Outside, a man whom he had seen buried was prowling around, intent on doing them harm, and prevented from doing so only by millet seed. Inside the hut, in relative safety, he sat quietly, though not peacefully, with a girl he barely knew, as she told him the story of his father.

“Have you heard of the Winter King, Peter?” Sofia asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “It’s a story. The king who’ll save us all from every evil. He was supposed to have saved the land from the Turks. Everyone knows that story. But it’s just a story that the peasants tell each other.”

“The peasants? That’s not you talking. That’s your father. It’s more than a story. Your father could tell you that the Winter King is real. Or was. Your father fought with him.”

Peter laughed.

“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “My father fought with King Michael. They fought the Turks.”

“That’s right, Peter. King Michael was the Winter King. That was thirty years ago, no more. But memories are short when lives are short. Already the King has become a legend.

“The Turks were greater in number, but the forest in winter is a treacherous place for the unwary. They were overcome by King Michael’s men. Massacred. Some escaped and slipped away into the depths of the forest, never to be heard of again. The MotherForest dealt with them. When her anger is aroused she takes no prisoners, but it wouldn’t have happened without the Winter King.”

Peter nodded his head. He understood what she meant about the forest, and thought about why he made his little carvings, to give something back. It would never do to betray the forest’s generosity; Peter believed that those who thought the forest was simply a gathering of trees were foolish, unwise, and that there was something else that gathered among those trees.

“The Winter King,” Sofia said, “who will save us from all evil. Now he must save us from the Shadow Queen. His greatest battle ever.”

“But he’s dead. King Michael is dead.”

“Yes. He died and the new king was weak. He let the country crumble into factions, no longer unified. In the chaos that followed many bad things happened. Fighting between men who had been allies. And your father was put in jail.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know because your father fought alongside my father.”

“A Gypsy? Fought with King Michael?”

“A Gypsy, yes, Peter.” Sofia glared at him. “What is so wrong with that? There is more to some of us than there might seem.”

“And your father is here now? He spoke to my father that night when…?” Peter stopped.