The Crimson Skew (21 page)

T
HEIR ROUTE TOOK
them away from the farms surrounding Salt Lick, northwest into the hillier country. Fields of clover, corn, wheat, and oats gave way to uncut fields of wildflowers and sparse forest. The white clouds overhead thickened. Nosh moved at a steady pace, his antlered head nodding gently. For all of the long morning, they saw no one else on the road.

Sophia could not entirely forget her concern for Goldenrod and the other travelers, but she tried to put the worry aside.
Goldenrod has sent me a sign, and they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves,
she told herself.
It is absurd to think that they would
need my help.
Whenever this did not entirely quiet her doubts, she told herself to trust the guidance of Maxine and Ausentinia. The prophetic map had steered her to safety all the way across the ocean; it had shown her the way to save Ausentinia itself; surely it would not lead her in the wrong direction now.

She found traveling with Nosh and Bittersweet surprisingly comfortable, despite the fact that they carried almost nothing. In part this was due to Nosh's knowledge of the route, but it was also due to Bittersweet's close attention. Though he claimed not to read her thoughts, he seemed effortlessly aware of them, sometimes before she was herself. He handed her water and she realized she was thirsty; he asked Nosh to stop and she realized she was tired. “This is the right path,” he said at one point, as they entered a darkened tunnel of overhanging branches. “I've been along it many times.”

“That's good to know,” she said.
Perhaps he felt me recoil,
she thought,
for how else could he know I doubted the path?
She wondered if his ability had something to do with how he listened to Nosh and how, when it spoke, he listened to the Clime. It could be that Bittersweet had an instinct for even the most subtle signs of the beings around him, she reflected.
Perhaps it has to do with being without time,
Sophia realized.

“Goldenrod said that you are a Weatherer,” Sophia said, glancing back at Bittersweet over her shoulder.

“Yes—all my family are.”

“And that means you have no sense of time,” she said.

Bittersweet gave a slight smile. “That isn't how we think of
it, but I suppose it is one way of describing it. We call it ‘weathering' time—that's why among Elodeans we are known as Weatherers. As I see it, I can bend something that for other people remains rigid. Imagine what it would be like to be unable to bend your knees. Difficult to walk, don't you think? Being a Weatherer means you can bend time—much easier to walk through it.”

Sophia, looking ahead, smiled at this description. “So you're saying being a Weatherer is like having extra knees?”

Bittersweet laughed. “Why not?”

“You're right—I never thought of it that way.” She paused. “You see—I have that, too. I grew up thinking of it as having a broken clock. But lately I've come to see it a little differently. Goldenrod told me it's a quality I share with you—the Weatherers.”

“I thought you might,” Bittersweet replied thoughtfully. “I could see from the moment we found you in the station.”

He had anticipated her yet again. “How could you tell?”

“It's hard to explain—I could see in your eyes when you first looked at us that you were moving through many thoughts, many possibilities. You were stretching the time. Datura's fog makes it very difficult to order one's thoughts at all, and if you were able to do this under its influence—well, I suspected you could weather time.”

Sophia pondered for a moment. “Is that how you are able to notice so many things? Are you stretching the time?”

Bittersweet was silent. Sophia glanced over her shoulder to
see his expression and found him pondering, too. “In a way, yes,” he said slowly. “And no. Yes, but there's more to it.” He laughed quietly. “It's funny, I've never had to explain it, because all of us just
know.
But let me try.” Sophia waited. “Stretching the time is the first step. It allows you to have the space you need. The next step is to use that space in a particular way.”

Nosh came to a stop. They had reached a shallow stream, its bed full of mossy rocks. “Nosh wants us to fix this footbridge,” Bittersweet said, dismounting. He held his hand up to Sophia, but she swiveled as he had done and slid down the moose's side. “We can just put these logs back.” Bittersweet pointed to several narrow birches, arranged by some previous traveler, that had slipped into the water. He reached into the cool stream and lifted one out. Sophia stepped forward to help him.

“Imagine,” Bittersweet continued as they worked, “that you have an hour to study someone. All you have to do during that hour is watch them and observe and think about what they are doing. You would learn a great deal, wouldn't you? Even if you were not a terribly observant person.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Or, if you had a year to simply listen to the trees and the wind and the rain—hearing the patterns they make and how the sounds overlap. You would learn a great deal about their workings.”

“I see what you mean.” Sophia placed the last narrow log tightly against the others and straightened up, wiping her hands on her travel-worn skirt.

“So the Weatherer,” Bittersweet said, splashing his face quickly with water from the stream, “makes that space I was describing. You make an hour, and with that hour you watch someone. You learn a great deal about them. Or you make a year to listen and learn about the trees and the wind. But, to others, only a few moments have passed—so it would seem to them that somehow, in an uncanny way, you see and know so much. But really you have been using the time in an ordinary and deliberate way—making the space and then concentrating, inside that stillness, on your observations.”

He held his fingers interlaced for Sophia to climb up again, and she swung herself onto Nosh's back. “There you have your bridge, Nosh,” he said, climbing up behind her. Nosh grunted happily and stepped into the cool water, glancing with satisfaction at the repaired bridge.

“He is incurably altruistic,” Bittersweet muttered to Sophia. “I have fixed more bridges in the last month than I care to think about.”

Sophia smiled and patted Nosh's neck. “You are very kind, Nosh.”

“You mean
I
am kind,” Bittersweet protested. “Nosh never does a thing to help me.” Nosh turned his heavy head and gave Bittersweet a cold stare. Sophia laughed. “But I thought you already knew something of how to do this,” the Eerie went on, “since you were able to read the maps you showed me.”

Sophia shook her head, embarrassed. “It just happened. I fell asleep holding the antler and I saw the memories as I was sleeping. It took no skill.”

“Ah, that explains it,” Bittersweet said. “Nothing to be embarrassed about,” he added, noticing Sophia's reaction, though her face was turned away. “I'll show you how to practice when you're awake.”

“I saw something in one of Nosh's memories,” Sophia said, hesitating. “A grove of trees in a valley. And two people walking toward it. You called them ‘Wailings.'”

Bittersweet fell silent once more. “You've reached the very heart of the matter,” he finally said, his voice grave. “When we stop tonight, may I look at the maps so I know what else they contain?”

“Of course.” A mourning dove cried in the branches overhead, and then a flutter of wings announced its departure. The trees were still and silent in the humid air.

“The grove you saw is the great mystery I have been trying to understand these last two years.” He sighed. “It lies in Turtleback Valley, which I have known since I was small—but the grove did not exist then. I first saw it in May of 1890, and it was smaller then: a cluster of a dozen gigantic trees. They seemed out of place—a species I had never seen but that reminded me of tales told among the Eerie of giant trees near the Pacific. I don't know how much you saw, but Nosh and I have returned many times. Not so much as of late, with our search for Datura, but in the past, we would go often. Almost always, we saw Wailings find their way into the grove, only to go silent and never emerge. But we cannot approach. The old one pushes us away, powerfully, so that neither of us can come any closer than the ledge from which we watch.

“There is something happening there that I do not understand. This summer, as the old one has stopped speaking to me, Turtleback is the only place where I still perceive its sentiments. And I can tell that great fear surrounds this grove.”

Sophia felt her pulse quicken. “Yes—Goldenrod learned from Seneca, the falcon who travels with us, that the Clime was afraid of something. He said that its fear revolved around a place in the north.”

“This is it. But afraid of what? And why?” He made a noise of frustration. “I don't understand it.”

“These Wailings,” Sophia asked. “Are they . . . Lachrima? The people who are faceless?”

“Yes—we call them ‘Wailings' here, but I have also heard them called ‘Lachrima.'”

Sophia caught her breath. Her pulse raced even faster, and she dug a hand into Nosh's solid back. She thought about the long search that had started in Boston: her journey to the Papal States, her passage through the Dark Age to Ausentinia, and her return with the Ausentinian map in hand. All of this was leading her to two people: Bronson and Minna Tims, her parents, who had vanished long ago and transformed into Lachrima. Wailings.

“What is it?” Bittersweet asked gently.

“Goldenrod told me once that Weatherers can heal Lachrima. She said she had seen it done. Is it true?”

“It's true. Assuming they are still more flesh and blood than phantom. They fade with their travels, as you may know. The Wailings are lost in the flood of memories visited upon them
during the moment of disruption. When they have not yet faded, the Weatherer can wade into all those memories, letting the time in which they took place expand, considering each memory in turn until he finds the ones belonging to the Wailing. Then those memories are pulled out of the great mass of others around them, and the Wailing comes into focus. It is like looking at a field of mustard flower: a yellow blur taken all at once, but if a single flower is pulled from the rest, it becomes a particular thing with stem and petals. So, yes—it can be done.”

“Can we go see this grove?” Sophia replied, her voice trembling.

“It is on our way—not far from Oakring. Though I expect things will be as they have been, and we will be unable to approach it.” He put his hand on her arm reassuringly. “You've had a shock. What is it?”

“It is the whole reason I am here,” Sophia told him, her voice barely audible. “Just as you search for your sister, I search for my parents. They were transformed into Lachrima when I was a child, and I have reason to know they traveled toward the Eerie Sea. I think this place, this grove in the valley, might be where I will finally find them.”

• • •

T
HE ASH CAUGHT
up with them in the afternoon. First the sky grew heavy, and then the familiar yellow clouds rolled in. As Sophia watched apprehensively, they grew dense and low, until they seemed to touch the very treetops.

“You see”—Bittersweet signaled unnecessarily—“the debris clouds.”

They rode on in silence. Moments later, the first flakes of ash began to fall: powdery and gray. They disintegrated, almost like snow, in Sophia's hand.

“It's warm,” she said.

“Yes,” Bittersweet replied. “And notice the smell.”

Sophia sniffed at her palm. “It smells like ash from a wood fire.”

“The clouds must carry the ash from distant fires here. But to what purpose, I cannot imagine.”

Nosh plodded on, his antlers dusted with ash, and soon the path before him and the trees on either side were coated with the gray powder. He let out a hoarse noise that Sophia realized was a cough, and then he shook his antlered head.

“There's water up ahead,” Bittersweet said to him reassuringly.

The woods seemed to grow more still with every step, as if the ash were sedimenting into place. Even the thin stream where Nosh drank to clear his throat carried gray ribbons in the swirling water. Nosh gave a low, appreciative bellow, and Bittersweet laughed wryly in reply.