Straw Into Gold (2 page)

Down in the kitchen the buckets of water were just hovering beside the cooking pot. At Da's wave they tipped their water in and then stacked themselves by the side door, the top one lying slanted for a moment until Da's frown eased it right. He took a pipe from his vest pocket and tapped it with his thumbnail until the smoke started to rise.

"It's the day," I said."Da, it's the day."

"It is, it is," he said. "Though he will have a cold ride, no doubt. Maybe snow by noon, or worse." He took a long pull from the pipe, then puffed out a billowed cloud, and another, and another, until it seemed about to blizzard in the kitchen.

"It's the brightest day we've had all winter long."

Da waved his arms in the air and the clouds shredded into nothing. "But then he'll be disappointed by the town, thinking it is all as grand as can be and finding it is nothing like."

"It will be grand enough for someone who has never seen it."

"And then the king will have a cold in his nose and be unable to march in the procession."

"He'll process. He has a victory to celebrate. There will be trumpets, and horsemen, and Lord Beryn's Guard, and the king himself."

At this, Da's face darkened.

"Well," he said,"he'll have to hope it will be a brave new day after all. Now, if he tends to the milking and to the Dapple and the Gray, breakfast will be ready when he gets back in. And the dinner to take. And he should tend the one sore on the Dapple's foreleg. He'll need that balm." He turned back to the fire and twisted his palm to ignite the kindling. The logs eased close in to the flames.

The clearing was bright with light, as it always was, every morning. The air was cold enough to startle me to wakefulness, and the larks—the larks who sang all year round—they were enough to startle my soul. Their songs trilled the air. But though I stood each morning to fill myself with the delight of it all, I had lately begun to notice not so much the open clearing as the trees that bounded it.

It had begun to seem a very small clearing. And the world beyond it to be very large.

I had begun to wonder how large the world was.

I had begun to wonder how large I was.

In the barn I stripped the milk faster than it pleased the Milcher, then set the bucket outside in the cold while I tended to the horses. They knew the world was different this day, and I could hardly comb them for their nuzzling. And the Dapple would not stand still for me to spread the balm until I poured a double handful of grain into his trough.

Wolverham. For days I had thought of nothing else. The lessons that Da taught—the geography of lands yet to be discovered, the mathematics of travel through the air, the texts of books by authors still waiting to be born—they flew past me like night phantoms. To see a king,
the
king—what could be grander? Slogging the milk bucket across the clearing, I wished the horizon would hold the sun in the curve of its scythe to keep the day from racing on too quickly. Once more I looked at the boundary trees.

Da had breakfast ready: thickened oatmeal spread with cinnamon and honey, and juice from a yellow fruit that never grew in this kingdom. I set the bucket down, and as the pitcher filled itself from it, I fetched the brown bread that waited patiently in the brick oven.

"Perhaps Tousle will be disappointed in the king if he is not all he expects? After all, he is a man like other men."

"But a king, Da. A king. With armies at his every command, and courtiers bowing beneath his scepter, and kingdoms quaking at his name." I stood on the bench and waved my arms. "Conquer this realm. Build that castle. Do as I command."

"And what is his lordship's command?" asked Da, bowing low.

"A vision of the king, my servant."

And suddenly in the air there was the king riding in procession, his hand on his hip, his armor brighter than armor could ever be. He plucked his golden sword from its golden scabbard and swung it in circles over his head, cutting through the air. He looked as if he could stride across the world and conquer the globe. There were no trees bounding his clearing.

"And the queen," I called out. "Your lord commands a vision of the queen."

"And his lordship's commands are to be obeyed," answered Da, and bowed again.

The king passed out of the air, and behind him came a lady who seemed to move in quietness. She wore a thin diadem whose silver circle faded in and out of the gray streaks that marked her brown hair tucked beneath. She held the reins loosely and rode with the roll of one who knew how. If she had looked up, she might have shown eyes that were as knowing as her hands. If she had spoken, her soft voice would have stilled the heart. But she did neither.

"Da," I said.

"The queen."

"But she looks..."

"Like someone who has lost something," he finished.

Then the queen rode out of the edge of the procession into a blurred mist and was gone.

And suddenly I was quiet. I felt something stirring deep down that had never stirred before. It was as mysterious as a dream where I was all alone, searching for something I could not name, could not even imagine, but would know once I found. "Bring her back," I asked, "just for a moment."

"Is Lord Tousle commanding?"

"Tousle is asking."

"Well, majesty is never diminished by grace. But he will see her soon enough. Now Lord Da commands that Tousle come off the bench and eat his breakfast. The oatmeal has cooled, and here is the brown bread asking to go back to the brick oven already."

"Have I seen her before? It seems that I have seen her before."

"Does he remember ever having left the clearing?"

"No."

"Then he may remember that visions may or may not be true."

"But it is true that today we'll be in Wolverham. And it is true that today I will see the king."

"So Lord Tousle should have something fitting to wear." Da took from his pocket a square-linked golden chain and held it in a shaft of morning sun, gleaming dully. I jumped from the bench and helped him clamber up, and standing behind me, he fastened it around my neck."He shall wear it until he knows when to give it away," he said, his voice quiet, a little saddened.

"I could never give away something you have given me."

"He will give it away when there is need," Da answered.

He had never before given me anything like it. A new jerkin, a knife, a plow, yes. The tethered ball we struck together, the bright paper frame we lofted to the wind like a rainbow in the sky, certainly. But never something like this chain. The weight of it surprised me. It lay cold and sharp against my chest, and somehow its giving turned the morning solemn.

"So," Da said, and leapt down. "Shall Tousle and Da go or stay? There is still the splitting to do, and then there's the spinning all to begin." He pulled up his beard and fingered the tip of it. "And there's the noontime blizzard to mind."

"Da, we're to Wolverham."

He considered. "Yes, I suppose. The splitting will keep. As for the spinning..." He snapped the fingers of his left hand, and the wheel sprung around, hesitated once, then whirled into a smooth circle."Four skeins, maybe five before the snow begins," he instructed.

"There will be no snow!"

I hurried Da through breakfast, and while the bowls doused and dried themselves, I fetched the horses. By the time I led them saddled and eager from the barn, Da had finished with the hamper we were to take. I hustled him out of the house and hefted him onto the Gray, adjusting the girth beneath him and loosening it again when the buckle snagged his beard.

"Tousle and Da will be there"—I led his left foot into the stirrup—"when they will be there," he fussed. I ignored him, guided the right foot into the other stirrup, tied the hamper behind his saddle, then leapt up onto the Dapple.

"Da, which way?" I called, the Dapple pulling at the bit and tossing his head back and forth. He could never forget that he had once been a colt.

"A moment, a moment. He's in such a blessed hurry. Wolverham will wait through the day."

"Da, the procession..."

"No doubt the king himself will wait for Tousle's arrival." And turning around, he blinked his eyes at the house. The door closed and fastened itself, and the shutters banged together across the windows. "Now," he said, "to Wolverham."

Da glided his hand across the clearing and toward the dark woods. I held my breath—and held it, and held it. And then the trees shoved themselves aside, wallowing with their deep roots in earth, their boughs waving gracefully to scent the air. A pine-needle path stretched slowly like a yawning cat between the trees, stretching and stretching until it fell down a small hill and was lost to sight. Neither the Dapple nor the Gray needed any urging.

The clearing was unbound.

It was cold and soft under the trees, the last of winter's snow as powdery as flour. It blew off the pine needles as we approached, so that we moved without a sound except for the steamy snorting of the Dapple, who was glad to be out and eager to show it. I let him have his head, and we trotted, the trees just ahead of us backing away as we approached, then clasping their boughs together and closing behind us.

Suddenly the trunks shoved back more quickly, and with a rush the Gray galloped by, Da leaning close to his neck and laughing for all the world. "And Tousle so anxious to get to Wolverham," he hollered over his shoulder. I spurred the Dapple, but the trees rushed in close and narrow behind Da, and there was no room to pass.

"Hardly fair," I yelled, but Da pretended he had not heard.

We rollicked down the hillsides, the air so fiercely cold I could hardly breathe. It seared my lungs, but still I hollered and laughed and hollered again, all the while hearing Da's hooting and hooting, and the Gray's hooves flinging snow and dirt in my face so I was always spitting it out and pulling back. I pressed the Dapple, but the trees never opened enough for me to pass until we reached the lowland, and the woods threaded themselves out to fields and meadows. Da waited for me to catch up with him, his face red and glowing, his beard flung back over his shoulder. "There's a balance, he should know, between letting a horse have his way and guiding him. It takes experience to find such a balance. He'll never win a race unless he finds it." Da grinned.

"When you set the trees to keep me from a pass..."

"Well, if he must find an excuse, there is that." He laughed.

"And you've been this way before. You must have, since you know the path."

"To Wolverham and back."

"I suppose you've been to the castle itself, Da."

"On occasion."

"Perhaps you've seen the king and queen. The doors opened before you and the guards bowed you into their august presence. You knelt to them, and they promised you great rewards if you would perform a great service."

"Something close to that."

I laughed a cloud into the cold air. "Da, you've never been to the castle, much less seen the king and queen. Never in your life."

Da winked over at me. "Tousle might try to imagine for a moment—I know that this is difficult, but he might try to imagine anyway—that there is something in this wide, wide world that he does not know."

"The Gray will sprout wings before I believe you've been to the castle."

"Then he will be plucking horsehair from the clouds before long."

The Gray and the Dapple ambled along companionably. It was warmer down in the lowland, and though spring was still a time away, the fields were turning their dark selves to soak up the sunlight. Some of the fields were already furrowed, and we passed a cart laden with the winter's manure moving up and down the rows, drawn by thick horses. I pulled back on the Dapple to watch: I had never seen such fields, and the work of them, the sheer hard work of them, thrilled me.

"Come fall, the gold wheat of these fields will be brighter than a winter sun," Da whispered. "Tousle will see." The farmer seemed to hear us and waved cheerfully.

The first building we passed that morning was a low mossy inn, where coachmen waited patiently for travelers sleeping late. They too waved to us, and I waved back, awkward, realizing with a start that I had never before waved to anyone other than Da. "The fresh morning of the world," they called, and I smiled and waved again, not sure how to answer them.

Now farmhouses started to scatter themselves in the fields, blue smoke rising straight and quick in the cold, still air, their stuccoed sides covered with vines that would soon leaf out. As we rode on, they settled themselves closer and closer together, until I could have called from the window of one and been heard over at the other. In one yard ducks and geese waddled and cackled in the bright light, gathering around a farm girl spreading feed from out her apron—a real farm girl, not just one of Da's pictures in the air. I waved to her, but she did not see me.

"The fresh morning of the world," I hollered.

She turned to look, smiled shyly, and then went back to her sowing.

I watched her until the road bent us away.

We passed a low cottage whose walls leaned in to hold each other up. No waddling and cackling here. It was a yard full of puddles and yellow mud. The stone walls of the mill beside it were still covered with white ice, and the mill wheel groaned at its turning as if it could barely make its way through the river water. It looked to be a frozen, hard world that these people lived in, and when a woman stooped out from the cottage, carting a yoke with buckets over her shoulders, she did not look up as I called to her.

"Da," I said,"must she carry those herself?"

"She must."

"And us sitting here watching her."

Da said nothing, and I slipped off the Dapple and ran through stained puddles to her."Mother, let me carry those for you on this fresh morning of the world."

She turned her face up to me from underneath the yoke, and I was startled by the washed-out gray of her eyes, and by the sharpness of the cheekbones that looked ready to knife through the skin. I reached over and took the buckets from her, wondering how long it had been since someone had done a kindness for this old woman. She pointed to the open water, and I took the buckets, one in each hand, and knelt down to the river. Here the turning of the wheel was so loud I could not speak to her, the spray of it freezing on my face as I dragged the black water up.