Rhiannon (30 page)

Sally covered her own eyes with her hands at this pitiful sight and crouched down, crying, “No! Stop!”

Rhia immediately bent to pull apart the flower chains that bound the animal. “Queen Tildy's now free, Sal,” she said quickly. “And Daisy,
hear
me—Granna's best red stocking must
not
be shredded by a rampaging ...”

But Daisy was staring at Sal. “She said new words!” the child whispered.

Rhia's heart raced, for indeed she had! She dropped to crouch knee-to-knee with Sal and took Sal's hands from her face. “Oh, Sally, you spoke a different speech!”

But Sally looked back at her with empty eyes. “Three . . . fish,” she whispered.

Rhiannon kept tight hold of Sal's hands, as over her shoulder she gave quick orders to Daisy. “Take Queen Matilda right this minute and leave her in the large bucket beside the beehives, hear? Elsewise she may meet with mischance at bluff's edge. We'll put Granna's stocking in the seed sack so's not to wake her by returning it to the cottage just now, but hurry with the other, so's we may go on along!”

Daisy did not argue but grabbed her pet and ran quickly, not wanting to miss anything.

“Now, Sally, while we are alone, say it again,” Rhiannon ordered in a fierce whisper. “Say your new saying. ‘No, stop!'
Say
those words for me, Sally, please?
Please?
”

Sally would not. But she now looked at Rhia direct, and drew her brows into a frown.

Rhiannon had never seen Sally frown. She let go Sal's hands and noted that her own hands were suddenly shaking a bit, though Sally was smiling her simple smile again, waiting for Rhiannon to pull her to her feet and lead her where she would.

Rhia stuffed Granna's stocking into the seed sack, then pulled Sally to a stand. At that, Gramp, who'd kept one eye upon them from his roost in the yew tree, opened the other eye as well, stretched from his off-and-on doze, and flew to join them.

“I'm back!” Daisy announced as she thrust herself between Rhia and Sally, taking a hand from each. “Sally's hand is dry and warm,” she sang out as she skipped along. “Rhiannon,
your
hand is damp. Eeeeuw.”

“Well, if you like not holding my hand, go home right now,” Rhia told her peevishly. “As at the bluff's edge you must hold my hand at all times, or if not my hand, then the hem of my skirt. And if not my hem, then the cord at my waist. I must
feel
you at all times, Daisy, and know you are on the clearing side of me, never the bluff side.”

In the air, Gramp may well have rolled his eyes to hear Rhia of all people become instructress regarding safe behavior at bluff's edge.

 
There were few seeds left to gather that late in the day. The birds and the wind had snatched the better part of the night's scatterings. Still, Rhiannon was glad to have some time to think out the snags from morning with female company, and that on the young side, so Rhia herself could be the boss of them. She was boss to very few in this world, and it oft seemed a great many were boss of her.

She quick gave up her order that Daisy hold on to her garment. Daisy and Sal sat upon the ground near the opening from the trail, playing at Daisy's favorite patty-cake game. Sal's hands were palm up where they rested on Sal's lap, and Daisy happily patted them as though Sal patted back. As long as Rhia could hear the gentle pat of Daisy's hands on Sal's and the singsong of Daisy's high voice, she knew where they were and could safely work with her back to them.

Besides, Gramp sat upon his faery rock, watching the girls' every move.

It made a pleasant harmony—the gentle pat of the girls' four hands and the sharp and rhythmic resound of Thaddeus's ax in the distance. For the first time since Sir Jonah had come fully awake, Rhia relaxed. She breathed a deep sigh, having found more air in the world when Thaddeus and Jonah were not nearby to absorb it all. She'd missed voicing her thoughts aloud as she worked, too—letting them progress from her lips all willy-nilly, as she oft did when alone with Gramp, or Sally. With Jonah and Thaddeus, she'd had to consider before she spoke, always on guard lest she offend Thaddeus, or upset Jonah, or sound ridiculous to one or the other or both. That
last
, being ridiculous, had been her great concern, to tell it true. Was it always so when boys were around?

Anyhow, now she eagerly picked up her habit of gabbing without regard.

“Gramp, here's the thing. As you well know, Mam must let me go where I will on Beltane Eve, as that's the custom. Last year I went with some other girls to the bonfire on the green and didn't come back till morn.” She squinted at an unfamiliar seed, then tossed it aside, as it was not seed at all but merely some ragged pod of milkweed. “Some nerve Thaddeus and Jonah have, naysaying a thing even a mother would not dare forbid. Can you
believe
their nerve, saying I may not go to Maddy's party, Gramp?”

“Come, come, lollywaggle, slap, slap, slap,” sang Daisy from a ways behind her. Rhia heard the soft slap of the girls' hands just as the monk's sharp ax bit into oak.

“It
would
be a relief to yield to their nags and stay home, I'll admit it. But what of Jim, then, Gramp? His days of sanctuary wane, and soon he'll face the gallows. The true murderer
must
be flushed out and made to confess. And so I
will
go to Wythicopse, though there
is
a dragon beneath that rocky picture seal, I'm certain of it at this point.”

“Go ye wiggle-woggle, off with thine
cap
!” Rhia waited for the girls' squeals, as here was the point in the game where Daisy reached to ruffle Sal's hair, a thing they considered hilarious, no matter how often they did it. They squealed, right on time.

“Grrrrrahhhhh,” complained Gramp, hard-eyeing them.

“It's just a game, Gramp,” Rhia murmured, intent on separating a few tiny seeds from a large handful of briars. “They only play. Pay them no mind. You must give your attention instead to
my
dilemma. I
should
join that bunch tomorrow eve, wouldn't you think? Or not? Give me a peck upon the rock for yes, two pecks for no.”

But Gramp kept his eyes tight upon the girls, who'd now started over on their game.

“Come, come, here's a woggle, there's a woggle, lilly-lolly
slap
!”

“Grah-
raaaahhh
!” Gramp, very perturbed now, stretched up tall on his birdy toes, lifting his wings so high above his frowsy ear feathers that Rhia feared he'd lose his balance on the holed rock and fall backward into thin air. “Graaaahhhck-ack!”

Rhiannon stopped her work, surprised by his folly. “Gramp, settle yourself, please! Do you not recall how the last time you fell backward from that rock, you nearly collided with the water e'er you got your wings outspread enough to fetch air and get flying? The girls are only
playing
at slapping! Daisy is not hitting Sal, and would never!”

She shook her head, smiling in amusement as she resumed scooping her little piles of seed onto the wide sycamore leaves she'd use as wrappers. When each leaf was neatly folded and stored within her sack, she stood and tightened the string, calling over her shoulder as she turned toward them, “Girls, I've finished and it's time . . .”

By then she'd turned round far enough to see not two but
three
players sitting cross-legged upon the ground! Three girls, but only
two
of them human. The third, close between the other two, had the whitest of knees, the whitest of thin girlish arms, and long white hair that blew across her face in the breeze. She pushed it back with bone-white hands, then smiled with white lips. The eyes in her white face were the lightest of colors. Bluish, they were, but only as milk may be said to be bluish, though it is, truly, white. She wore a thin garment. It was indeed her shroud, for Rhiannon recognized with dread the phantom from the night of the wake, the will-o'-wisp ghost she thought was Primrose!

Rhia advanced slowly, one arm out toward the girls in a semblance of calm, though beneath her skirt her knees were knocking. “Daisy, that is
not
your sister,” she said. Then she took a breath and said more firmly, “Take Sally's arm and let us go home.”

Daisy put out her hands, palms up. “Of
course
she is not my sister, Rhia! Primrose lives in heaven now, remember? Ingrid lives right here, within our woods! She doesn't even
look
like Primrose.”

And then, Daisy began to giggle at Rhia's foolishness, and Sally joined her in it, their knees bobbing upon the ground, their skinny shoulders hunched as though they would laugh forever at such a silly mistake. Only the third abstained, looking down at her lap as though with guilt at being caught among the living.

Rhia turned to Gramp, who turned his head away. If she would not believe
him
when he'd given dire alarm, why should
he
respond to her conundrum now?

But without his counsel, what to do, what to
think
? It was well known that ghostly spirits were tricksters. What better way could Primrose find to lure her sister to an eternal wander in limbo than to change her aspect so's not to frighten DAisy, and then to sit on a spring afternoon and join in her earthly games?

This new child
did
look made of solid flesh, not ghostly mist. But children were
not
white-haired and did
not
possess the snowy skin of doves! Further, this child did not resemble the folk in the woods. She was without color, whilst
their
color was grayish, or ofttimes yellow. She was so smooth she seemed made all of glass, whilst their skin flaked and was oft scaly, except where it flamed red with soreness.

While Rhiannon stood fearful and perplexed, the girl jumped up and took to her heels. At wood's edge she turned to blow a kiss, first to Sally, then to Daisy. Daisy blew a kiss back, then bent across and raised Sally's hand to Sally's lips. The deathly pale stranger pretended to catch Sally's clumsy kiss upon her cheek, then to take it in her fist, then to clasp it gently as a precious treasure between her two white hands.

Rhiannon felt all her dire certainty dissolve in the warmth of that small gesture.

“Ingrid, then,” Rhia whispered, and burned with shame for the poor welcome she'd given the strange woodland child. For it was certain that no trickster spirit would do such a graceful thing simply for the heart's peace of an invalid like Sally.

 
“I
still
don't understand how your new friend came to be in our woods,” Rhia declared as they three walked home under Gramp's circling shadow. “Is her mother there?”

Daisy shrugged. “How should
I
know? Ingrid never speaks of her.”

Rhia frowned. “Does she talk of how she fares in the woods, whether she needs anything? Does she speak of whether she'd like to come from the trees and live inside?”

Daisy shook her head. “She never says.”

“I saw her on horseback, galloping at midnight on Aleron's steed,” Rhiannon mused. “Do you know how she learned to ride so well? Was she born an aristocrat, then?”

Daisy sighed. “Maybe. What
is
one of those?”

Rhia thought. “Well, an aristocrat is . . . hmmm. Put it this way. Most aristocrats speak the language of Francia. Does Ingrid speak the language of Francia?”

“Ingrid speaks no language of anywheres,” Daisy said.

Rhia grew exasperated. “Oh, Daisy, everyone speaks
some
language.”

Sally leaned around Rhia. “Three fish!” she said cheerfully to Daisy, as if to demonstrate Rhia's point. “I'll have three. Three!” Then, in the blink of an eye, Sally stopped walking and pressed her palms to her ears, crying, “No, stop,
stop
!”

She began to tremble head to foot. Rhia and Daisy hastened to put their arms around her—Rhia's around her shoulders, Daisy's around her hips. But still, Sally shuddered.

Something terrible played in her brain, but who might know what it was?

In another moment, as quickly as the sun may slide from behind a roiling thundercloud, Sally took her hands from her ears, seemed confused, and then smiled bright again, looking to Rhia with nothing in her eyes except the reflected late-afternoon sky. The three of them walked on along, though more slowly, Daisy and Rhiannon holding fast to Sally's arms from either side. Though Sally now seemed recovered from her fit, it had left small Daisy shaken, and Rhia well nigh in tears. No one spoke until the cottages were in sight, then Daisy said quietly, “Rhiannon? Ingrid does not talk.”

Rhiannon frowned, her thoughts still with Sally. “What do you speak of, Daisy?”

“Ingrid, my new friend! She does not talk is why she speaks no language!”

With this mysterious saying, Daisy hugged Sally good-bye and ran toward Granna, who kneaded bread on the stump beside the hives with the bucketed tortoise near her feet.

“Rhiannon!”

Rhia recognized the pilgrim's voice and turned quick toward it. Sir Jonah stood alone back beside the nether cot, giving her a wide-armed wave with the ax in his hand. Nearby was a goodly pile of oakwood. A log was balanced upon the splitting stump.

She noted that Sal, too, saw Jonah but had no especial reaction. She did not fear him, though the fright she'd had at his hands might still live somewhere within her.

“I see you have come home from your forest sojourn!” she called to him. “I'm sure Brother Thaddeus is gladdened to have
some
relief from the chore you left him!”

She'd meant to sound witty, but instead had sounded gruff, she knew.

He drew his arm across his face so that his orange hair, newly gilded with sweat, seemed like an ornate, ragged mane. His eyes blazed, even from this long distance.