The Crimson Skew (25 page)

Pip's eyes lit with understanding. “Oh, ho,
ho
!” he said,
slapping his knee. “Wilkie Graves. Wilkie Graves!” he said again.

“You know him?”

“Pip knows everyone,” Smokey said, looking at him thoughtfully.

“I do indeed, I do indeed,” Pip declared. “And it doesn't surprise me at all, now, to find he is at the root of this disastrous war. Not at all. He has a very violent past. Did you know him as a slave trader?”

Sophia caught her breath. “A slave trader?”

“I did,” Theo assented, his tone guarded.

“Well, I knew him from even before that, and his earlier past is even more colorful, shall we say. And now we find him at the head of government and leading an army.” He shook his head and rose to his feet. “My friends, I know you have much to discuss and much to do here. But I have work of my own to take care of, and this very helpful bit of information will speed me along.” He looked at Theo meaningly. “I may not return for longer than usual,” he told Smokey. “So I'll send word to you somehow—I hope before August twentieth, our day of reckoning.”

The group rose to bid good-bye to Entwhistle, who shook hands all around, pulled on his canvas hat, and lifted the leather pack that sat beside him. He waved as he walked off down the hill toward Oakring, his boots squelching in the mud.

Sophia watched him go, but the moment he was out of sight she turned her attention back to the map. “What are we
going to do?” she asked, looking in turn at Bittersweet, Casanova, Smokey, and Theo. “We have to stop them marching into Turtleback Valley.” She was grateful that none of them tried to argue that it was impossible or unnecessary. Their faces told her how seriously they considered the question of what to do.

“A distraction somewhere else?” suggested Theo.

“What kind of distraction?” asked Casanova. “It would have to be dramatic.”

“A weirwind would be distracting. A weirwind as long as the valley.”

“The old one isn't even listening to me these days,” Bittersweet said, shaking his head. “Persuading it to make a weirwind is out of the question.”

“Perhaps they could be led in the wrong direction somehow,” Sophia offered tentatively.

As she spoke, Nosh ambled up to them and rested his head lightly on Bittersweet's shoulder. He exhaled noisily. “That's a nice idea, Nosh, but it's impossible,” said Bittersweet.

“What?” Sophia asked.

“He said we could show them the valley from the old one's perspective, and then they would not want to harm it.” He rubbed the moose's chin. “Nosh is such an idealist.”

Sophia frowned. “But wait a moment. It's not such a bad idea . . .” she said. As she considered Nosh's suggestion, she spoke her thoughts aloud. “If you put it that way, then yes, it sounds unlikely. But if they somehow saw—really
saw
the Clime for what it was . . .” She trailed off pensively. “
The old one remembers
more than anyone
, is what my map from Ausentinia says. I wonder. When I arrived at the edge of Ausentinia, I saw the Clime's past—its memories of how it had been. I was—” She shook her head. “They were overwhelming. What if we could somehow make that visible to others? Yes,” she said eagerly, the notion taking shape in her mind. “Through a memory map. A map that shows the memories of the Clime. Wouldn't that have the power to change someone's mind, to show them something they cannot ignore?” She looked around at the others.

“It could work,” Smokey said slowly. “From the little I've seen of Elodean memory maps, they do have incredible power. To be immersed in the Clime's memories . . . If we gave it to someone in the right position, General Griggs or General June, it might just be impressive enough to make one of them pause.”

“But how would you make such a map?” Casanova asked.

Smokey clearly did not like having to give the answer. “I only know one person who has made such a map—a memory map of an old one.” She looked meaningly at Bittersweet.

Bittersweet looked back at her. “It is much too dangerous, Sarah.”

“If there were any time to court danger, this would be it,” she replied.

“We could not go, you and I. It would have to be the three of them, and they are ill-equipped to reckon with her.” Bittersweet pressed his lips together. “But perhaps you are right. Perhaps this is the time.”

“Who are you talking about?” Theo asked.

Bittersweet addressed Smokey. “You tell them.”

“Borage,” Smokey said solemnly. “She lives north of here, in the Eerie Sea, in an Age of her own making. Only two other people live with her. Sage and Ash. They are the three sisters—cast out by the Elodeans and banished from Oakring.”

“W
HAT DOES THAT
mean?” Sophia asked, in disbelief. “An Age of her own making?”

Nosh shuddered and turned away, as if avoiding her question. Bittersweet and Smokey stared at the cold ashes of the fire. “You said Goldenrod told you that one of the Elodeans had tried to practice the Ars, did she not?” Bittersweet asked.

“Yes, but she didn't say what that meant,” Sophia pressed.

Smokey cleared her throat. “Well, let us be frank,” she said. “Neither one of us has been there, so much of what we know is secondhand. What we know is this: Borage, Ash, and Sage were—are—Weatherers like Bittersweet. Wildly talented, so that even to the Elodeans their feats sometimes seemed like magic.”

“I never knew them,” Bittersweet put in, “but my mother is full of stories. Some are good stories.” He smiled. “Once, my mother said, the three sisters helped lead a pair of lost children out of the wood by sending them a cloud of fireflies.”

“Not everything they did was so charming,” Smokey continued. “Borage, in particular, the most talented of the three, grew vengeful as she grew older. She hated the way people of the Territories treated the old one, and once, in her fury, she brought a weirwind that left more than a dozen settlers dead. The Elodeans cast her out for it, and she came here. For a time, we accepted her. There were some who called her a murderer and would not look her in the face, but we pride ourselves on taking in outcasts here, and most tried to countenance the three sisters. Until Borage revealed her plan for Oakring.” Smokey shook her head. “She decided that it was not enough to speak with the old one and influence its actions. She wanted more. She wanted to
be
an old one herself.”

Sophia caught her breath.

“But what would that even look like?” Theo asked skeptically.

“That is the part we do not know, for we forbade it. Borage wanted to claim Oakring and the land all around it, making it
her own. We banished her. She went north, with her sisters, to the Eerie Sea, and it is there that she attempted to create and inhabit an Age of her own.”

“What we hear,” Bittersweet said, “is that every tree and rock and blade of grass there is an animated expression of her consciousness. Even the animals—and there are also creatures of her own making. But it is hard to say, for few have ventured there. Ash and Sage spend all their energies attempting to contain her.”

Although Sophia found the portrait Bittersweet and Smokey had painted unsettling, she could imagine worse. She thought about other ways the armies of New Occident might be stopped, and all of them seemed more outlandish and more dangerous: surrounding the grove to protect it; provoking the army to march elsewhere; persuading the commanding officers on the strength of her conviction alone. Traveling into the Eerie Sea still seemed the better option.

“It sounds strange but not dangerous,” Casanova said, voicing Sophia's own conclusion. “I will go.”

“The three of us can go,” Theo said. “Her grudge is against the Eerie and all of you from Oakring, right? So we should be fine.”

“You, Theo, are not ready to travel,” Casanova objected.

“He may not be,” Bittersweet said, “but Theo is likely the only way you will find them. It is quite difficult to find the shores of the Eerie Sea. We have no maps, and none of you is Eerie.”

“What do you mean, I'm the only way?” Theo asked.

Bittersweet and Smokey exchanged a glance. “You have the Mark of Iron, do you not?” asked Bittersweet.

Theo held up his hand. “Yes.”

“Well, what did you think it was for?”

“For?” Theo echoed.

Nosh let out a breath that sounded uncannily like a laugh. “That's unkind, Nosh,” Bittersweet remarked, but he was trying to control his smile. “Many people in the Baldlands don't know its meaning.”

“What did he say?” Theo asked indignantly.

Bittersweet hesitated. “He finds it amusing that you don't use the Mark,” he said, clearly editing Nosh's comment.

“The Mark is a compass, Theo,” Smokey said, reaching out to press his scarred right hand. “People in Oakring with the Mark of Iron use it for way-finding. That's what it's for.”

• • •

T
HEO
WAS INCREDULOUS,
then furious, and finally, after a time, elated. Though it seemed a disgraceful waste to have lived almost seventeen years without knowledge of the Mark's power, he decided that the most important thing was to waste not a minute more. The lethargy brought on by the strain of recovery vanished. Insisting that time was short, he persuaded Smokey to take him into Oakring.

True to the story Lichen had told them, there were both people with the Mark of Iron and people with the Mark of the Vine in Oakring. Sarah Smoke Longfellow, as the town's
medic, knew them all. She decided that they would ask a man named Everett, a renowned tracker, to teach Theo how to use his hand. Theo could hardly contain his excitement. As he headed off with Smokey and Casanova, leaving Bittersweet and Sophia behind, he seemed to have forgotten his injured shoulder entirely.

“You and I have our own work to do,” Bittersweet said as he joined Sophia at Smokey's kitchen table. “Do you have the tree ring?”

Sophia took it from her satchel and put it on the table. “Here it is.”

“Have you been able to read it yet while waking?”

“Not yet.”

“Try again. You may find a new purpose in doing so.” He touched the wheel of wood. “When I looked at it the other night, I saw something interesting. This tree has memories of the three sisters.”

Sophia's eyes widened. “It does?”

“It would be an advantage to you, I think, to see them in this way before you venture north into the Eerie Sea.”

Sophia regarded him. “What will you do while we head north? Will you stay here with Smokey?”

Bittersweet shook his head. “Thanks to your uncle's map, I have a fair idea of where Datura will be next. I aim to get there ahead of her this time.” He stood up. “I will leave later today, and I have plans to make with Nosh. Good luck with the reading,” he said with a smile. “I'll be back to say good-bye.”

Sophia turned her attention to the disc of pinewood before
her. Every time she had tried to read the map while awake, it had remained silent.
Maybe now it will be different,
she said to herself, trying not to struggle against a sense of frustration.
Maybe
now that I have seen the grove and understood what it means to perceive rather than see.

She rested her fingertips on the wooden surface. Closing her eyes, she focused on the texture of the pine. It felt the way it always did. She willed herself to lose track of time, so that the moment expanded loosely, making a protective room all around her. Her arm felt heavy, then surprisingly light. The pine was smooth and slightly warm, but the warmth did not register as temperature; the warmth was something else.

Sophia paused in her observations, realizing that something important had happened. Warmth was not warmth; wood was not wood. Her fingertips no longer seemed to rest against a solid surface. In a way that Sophia did not understand, in a way she urgently, deliberately did not question, her fingertips were touching memories. She could feel them brushing up against her skin like filaments of fine thread. It was the memories that made the heat.

The memories lay before her. She could see them just as she would in a memory map made by human hands: snowfall, spring mornings, summer storms, autumn evenings, another snowfall. People came and went. A girl climbed the trunk and clambered up the branches, laughing. An old man rested against the exposed roots, tired and aching, catching his breath. A furtive boy dug and dug in the ground, making a deep hole and dropping a sack into it before covering it again
with dirt. The wind howled; the moon waxed and waned.

Then three women of middle age sat on the ground side by side, looking out over a town, which Sophia now recognized as Oakring. She could see only their backs. They were laughing. The bright colors of sunset were spread across the horizon, and the air smelled of clover. One of them reached out to cup a firefly, and the action sparked Sophia's memory.
The three sisters,
she thought. “Don't let it go to your head, Borage,” one said to the woman holding the firefly.

“And why not?” came the light reply. Her voice was low and rich, with a pleasing musicality. “It's true. We can see thoughts as they take shape. We can call on the wind and the rain. The old ones love us. Through our guiding hand, they shape the future. It's not just that we seem like the Fates. We
are
the three Fates, sisters.”