The Moorchild (21 page)

Saaski gave his arm a yank with her whole strength behind it, and he half fell toward her, protesting as he caught his balance. “Come away, I said!” she shrieked at him. “There’s no swans and fishes there, it’s dock an’ sorrel boiled with turnips or some such—an’ moorberries an’ bog water . . . Come
away,
Tam!”

“But there’s oranges! I’ll just have a taste . . . ”

“Ye’ll taste nothin’, y’
mustn’t!
Not a bite nor a sup—don’t y’remember?” Saaski pled with him—and at last he looked at her and seemed to recollect himself.

“Aye, I mind now—nary a bite nor a sup. Here, let’s get out’n this place—away from them tables!”

“But I dunno where to go . . . ” The frantic need to cope with Tam had at least jarred her momentarily out of her own dreaming, loosed the pull of the old life. She must stay free of it until she’d found the child.
Don’t think how it used to be,
she told herself sternly.
Not yet. Don’t think of nothin’ but Mumma’s child.

“Where’s that Tinkwa?” Tam demanded.

“Got away from me,” she confessed. “Up on the moor by now, for all I know. He’ll come back afore the Prince does—he wants me pipes! Don’t rightly need ’im till then, ’cause I mind now where the Nursery is—if I can work out how to get there.”

She started for the far end of the Gathering, threading her way among the cookfires and the milling Folk, still with a firm grip on Tam’s sleeve. He lagged often, exclaiming over some wonder only he could see, or begging her to stop
a moment to hear a fiddler’s tune. She merely insisted, “I dassn’t! I dassn’t!” and tugged him on. It was hard enough to keep her mind on what she was doing; distractions clutched at her from every direction. A familiar lithe figure with floating hair darted past, stopped abruptly, and turned to stare at her; another slipped up beside her to tweak her apron ties, poke at her bundle; a third and fourth stood whispering together, watching her with tilted lavender eyes, and one of them said, “Moql?”

Then the other crowed with laughter and seized her hand, ripping her away from Tam and into a wildly whirling dance that left her giggling and excited, with no desire to do anything but join the next circle that swept her up—and the next, and the next.

Time slowed and raced bewilderingly; she lost all sense of it until she spun out of the dance and sagged breathless against an earthen doorway, groping after some urgent purpose that eluded her. Frowning about, she found herself on a familiar—yet oddly unfamiliar—threshold. This low, rough arch like the entrance to an animal’s den—could this be the door to Schooling House? Surely that was larger, more welcoming . . .

Welcoming?
Help me!
Her own voice echoed chillingly in her memory. There’d been no welcome the last time she had gone through that door. And no help, either.

This time someone was helping her—she knew someone was—though not where he was . . . But why was it she needed help?

It came back in a rush. Tam.
Tam.
And the child.

She looked around wildly, caught a glimpse of Tam’s dark hair and gangling figure amongst a circle of dancers halfway across the great cave. He was laughing, lurching as they tugged him this way and that in the complex patterns of the dance. She pushed her way toward him, fending off reaching hands, trying not to hear or see or think until she got a firm grasp on his arm. At last she had it, and pulled and shrieked at him until he broke out of the melee and stumbled after her, to the nearest rocky wall.

“I lost you!” he gasped, leaning against the rugged surface.

“We lost each other! And we mustn’t, d’y’hear? We dassn’t! I—I’m still—” She broke off.
I’m still half Folk,
was what she was realizing, with something like fright.
Neither one thing nor yet quite t’other.
The Folk half wanted only to dance and tease and cared for nothing but the Paths and the Band. The other half wanted to pay the Prince out, give Mumma back her child. And which half would win? The Folk half could barely remember the mission. “Lost meself, too, for a while,” she told Tam shakily. “Keep tight holt o’ me! Don’t let me loose.”

His hand closed on hers. “I won’t. I won’t. Eh . . . it was jolly, though, that dance!”

“Don’t think of it. Come along!”

Again she headed for a door she knew was somewhere on the opposite side of the Gathering from the winding stair. This time she stayed close to the uneven stony wall, away from the comings and goings and whirlings in the center. Tam ducked repeatedly to avoid the jutting overhang of rock that easily cleared Folk heads; even Saaski had to
crouch at times, but she kept a sharp eye scanning the shadows nearest the wall, and was finally rewarded with a glimpse of smooth-worn wood.

“There!” she exclaimed. Swiftly she dodged into a narrow cleft blocked by a wooden door. Tam, bent almost double, stumbled after her. A push on the wear-darkened edge of the door’s panel and it turned on its pivot to open a slit at each side.

“Lor! I can’t get through there!” Tam muttered, but he squeezed through after her somehow, and the way opened slightly, zigzagging upward.

The door creaked closed behind them as they rounded an angle of rock and stepped into a corridor patterned with shadows and pierced at intervals with glimmering openings.

At once it was easier to think, to keep her mind clear of confusion, of waves of forgetful excitement. After a moment to get her bearings, Saaski crossed to peer cautiously through the first doorway into an arched, cavelike room. It was lighted dimly but steadily by glowworms clinging to the rocky wall and coldfire torches stuck here and there into the sandy floor. A whiff of cool, earth-scented air came out to meet them, along with a sound of tiny stirrings and snufflings, an occasional muffled peep, that put her in mind of a nest of hatching chicks.

“It’s the Nursery,” she whispered, pointing to the row of little roundish cribs around its edge.

She tiptoed in, alert for the old Moorwomen who should be here, guarding the little ones—oftentimes with the aid of servants enticed or captured from Outside. At first she saw
no one; then across the room she spied a lone aged figure curled up on a pile of bracken, asleep like her charges. Beyond, a dimly glowing archway led into some farther chamber, and a Folk-shaped shadow flitted across it. There was no sign of the child.

“Golden cradles they have!” breathed Tam, who was peeking wide-eyed into the nearest of the tiny beds. “Sleepin’ on eiderdown like little lords!”

It was only thistledown, and his golden cradles were nothing but rough grass baskets lined with leaves. He was off on his marveling again, and it was worrisome—suppose they both forgot what they had come for? But Saaski wasted no time arguing. Instead, she peered around for a pot of the ointment she knew must be here in the Nursery somewhere, for it was used daily on the babies. One touch of it on his eyelids and he would see what the Folk saw, not the
glamourie
conjured up to blind and bedazzle Outsiders.

She spied a squat stone jar on a shelf, darted to it and had just dipped a finger in when something blotted out the light from the archway across the room and one of the ancient caretakers came hobbling toward them scolding shrilly in the old tongue.

Saaski retreated hastily, twittering apologies. “Only me, Nursie! Meant no harm—we’re off now, gone . . . ” She backed out into the corridor, turning to push Tam ahead of her into the shadows clustered next to the wall.

“Here! Did y’see that?” Tam was exclaiming, dropping his voice to a whisper as Saaski shushed him, but twisting to look over his shoulder. “Wearin’ a crown, she was! They got
queens
to look after’em, the little ’uns! What was she sayin’ to you?”

“Tellin’ us to clear off! Hsst! Just stand here quiet . . . ” They were huddled behind a jutting chunk of rock. Saaski waited until she heard the muttering that told her the old nurse had hobbled back into her earthen realm, then turned swiftly to dab her finger’s worth of ointment over Tam’s nearest eyelid. She reached toward the other but before she could touch it he dodged, protesting, and the last of the ointment was lost in his hair.

“Eh, what’ve y’ done!” she gasped, peering down at her finger, which was wiped clean.

“What were
you
doin, pokin’ your finger in me eye?” he asked in bewilderment.

“Only tryin’—to make things easier.” She drew a quivering long breath, hoping she had not made them harder than ever. From now on Tam would see truth with one eye, but diamonds and golden cradles with the other. It seemed no use stopping to explain. “Come on, that next room yonder might be Spinning House . . . ”

But the next faintly glowing breach in the wall opened into the byre for the red-horned cattle; so much was plain to their noses if not to their eyes; the one torch lit only an empty cavern. The cattle, too, were out on the moor tonight. Saaski pulled Tam on to the final doorway. One swift glance into a wide, low room showed her idle looms, a work-scarred table littered with spindles, piles of tattered wool-gleanings and the wads of cobwebs she had always known would be there. Shelves held earth-green homespun
and a bolt or two of paler cloth that shimmered with cobweb iridescence and stirred gently, as if too bubble-light to settle down. It was Spinning House—tonight silent and deserted in the vaguely pulsing glow lights.

Cautiously she stepped in. The doorway was wide, but low enough to make Tam duck, and as he straightened she waited nervously for the first test of his mismatched eyes. For a moment he merely blinked as he glanced around him, muttered, “Lor!” then frowned and rubbed his right eye—it was the one she had touched with the ointment.

“What d’y see?” Saaski whispered.

“Piles ’o gold stuff—are they
fleeces?
And silks an’ . . . Here! It’s that spinning room, a’nt it? Yonder’s looms and suchlike, all silver and jewels—” He rubbed his eye again. “Whatja do to me eye, then? Feels half-blinded!”

“Cover the other one,” Saaski told him.

He did so, and the sudden dismay on his face told her all she needed to know. With both eyes open, plainly the
glamourie
outbedazzled the shabby reality. But he was seeing truth now. Before she could urge him to keep the lying eye covered, he abruptly used both hands to seize her shoulders and draw her back into the shadows. She turned and at once forgot everything else.

From the inner doorway a small figure was crossing the room toward the cluttered table—a little girl with dark, loose-hanging hair, nearly Saaski’s height, though she was chubbier and younger. Despite her greenish Folk garments, she was not Folk; she had neither the long hands and feet nor the alert, darting glance. She was a human child.

But there was nothing childlike about her dull, listless expression, her drifting progress across the room.
Not the one,
Saaski told herself quickly.
Mistake.

Then the child’s head turned, and the greenish torchlight fell full on her face. It was a round, dark-browed face, set with sky-blue eyes that made Saaski catch her breath, for they were Anwara’s own.

There could be no mistake. This was Mumma’s child.

Sasski stepped forward into the light, drawing Tam with her, and the child halted. The blue eyes glanced, unsurprised, at Saaski, but widened at sight of Tam. She shrank back a little and stood staring at him.

“Don’t be afeard. Nobody’s gonna hurt you,” Saaski assured her. She got nothing but a slow, uncomprehending look in reply.

“Is she deef?” Tam muttered.

To Saaski it seemed more as if she were sleepwalking—or entranced.
And that might be,
she thought with a little thrill of fear. She moved cautiously to the table, reached across it and touched the child’s arm. “Can y’understand what I’m sayin’?” she demanded. Then on a sudden thought she repeated the question in the old tongue.

After a moment the child said softly, “I can.”

“She talks Folkish,” Saaski told Tam in relief. “Reckon she’s never heard anything else.” In the old tongue, she asked the child her name.

“Lekka,” was the answer.

It was not even a real name—merely the word for
stolen.
The indifference of it—the Folkishness—made Saaski angry. “Aye, you
were
stolen. It’s so. You don’t belong here. You’re human—like him! See his eyes? Here, look close! Yours’re blue, like that. Your hair’s dark like his. You’ve got a mumma and da’—Outside. We’ll take you back to ’em.”

For a moment she thought she had got through the fog of enchantment to the brain within; a puzzled frown passed across the child’s placid forehead, something stirred in her eyes. Then it was gone; her face was again smooth and passive. “I’m not to go through the Turning Door. I’m to finish these fleeces,” she said. She sat down at the table by a wad of gleanings and began picking the thorny twigs and leaf bits out of it. Her fingertips were already rough and sore-looking from such work.

“Eh, you’re nothin’ but a slavey!” Saaski said indignantly. “You don’t want to stay here, won’t y’ come with us?” She reached for the reddened little hand, but the child evaded her.

“What’s goin’ on?” Tam demanded.

“Can’t get through to ’er! Tried explainin’, tried coaxin’, but they’ve got ’er spellbound or some such, she just—”

“Try plain
tellin’
’er,” Tam said. “She’ll likely mind you—y’look like Folk.” He glanced over his shoulder, into the
corridor, rubbing uneasily at his eye. “We can’t bide here! Night’s passin’—and we’re a long ways from out!”

He was right. Here there was no moon, no changing sky to tell them how far the night had advanced while they were dancing with the revelers, locating the Turning Door—or how soon the Prince would tire of the moor and come back to the Mound, sealing the stairway to all but Folk. Heartened because Tam sounded again like Tam, not the
glamourie
-befuddled stranger the Mound had made of him—and hoping his one anointed eye would keep him so—Saaski turned to the child. This time she simply grasped the chubby hand, removed the twiggy fleece from it, and gave it a firm pull. “Come, Lekka! You’re to go with us,” she commanded.