The Moorchild (6 page)

A deep-voiced exclamation made them fly open. For an
instant she stared into the face of the man gaping down at her, then she was off the boulder and behind it, peering warily at his astonished scowl, his crook made from a trimmed branch, the long-haired, draggled shapes of the sheep scattered behind him—and the dog tethered to his rope belt by a thong. A shepherd. One she had never seen in the village. Yet somewhere she had seen him. And his dog.

“Pixie?” the man said, squinting.

She stared at him blankly, but her heart had begun to pound. He took a step forward; she took one back.

“I’m Saaski, the smith’s child,” she told him.

“Nay, you’re that pixie,” he said, edging closer. “You’ll not diddle me again, you little varmint. I’m onto you. I . . . I . . . ” He stood still, his scowl fading into a puzzled frown. “This time you’re bigger.”

He’s addled, she thought. A real Tom Noddy. “I’m Yanno’s child,” she repeated. “He’s the blacksmith in the village. Ask him yourself!”

“What village?”

“Torskaal! Down there.” She pointed.

“Ah, Torskaal. I never go there. I’m from over the moor.”

“Well, go there now, if you don’t believe me!” Saaski was backing away, shrilling at him. “Ask my da’, he’ll tell you! Let me be!” She turned and ran as fast as she could go, hoping he wouldn’t loose the dog after her. But when she reached a high outcrop and peered back, he was standing where she had left him, scratching under his rabbit-felt cap and gazing after her. The dog had lost interest and was gnawing at its flank.

She dodged behind the outcrop and climbed on until she was out of his sight. She had never ventured this far before, preferring to keep the village where she could see it, whether she went back before nightfall or not. But she meant to give a wide berth to that rattlehead shepherd. Pixie!

Still, he scared her. She kept thinking she’d seen him before.

But no doubt she
had
seen him before, when she was much smaller, as he’d said—in fact too young to remember much about it—when she’d been forever running away up to the moor.

It was nothing at all to be scared of.

She was on top of the world now, feeling as tall as a giant with far distance all around. The sun had slipped behind thin clouds, and mist drifted around her, touching her with chill fingers. Tightening her cloak strings, she wandered on, stepping warily now, though she did not know why. The ground was stony and rough, covered with coarse long grass like matted hair between the clumps of broom. The grass was—different—here and there, slightly shining. Glimmering streaks of it swerved around rocks and between the broom, back and forth like the rutted paths the sheep made. But these were not sheep paths.

Squinting hard to keep one in sight—the glimmer kept vanishing and reappearing up ahead—and careful not to step on it, Saaski followed a slim trail into a hollow, then started scrambling up the steep bank on the other side. She
was brought up short by a loud “Blaaaat!” so close that she slipped and gave a squeak of fright.

She found herself confronting a large black goat, who had thrust its forequarters over the lip of the hollow to stare down at her enigmatically from its yellow eyes. She stared back. She knew nothing about goats except that they were not like sheep. “Get away, you!” she ventured. It merely began to chew its cud, setting its beard waggling and the little bell around its neck tinkling. It didn’t move.

“Well, then, stay there, I’ll go around,” she muttered, glancing down to be sure not to step on the trail she had been following. It had vanished—or she had lost it. She started up the last steep bit, giving the goat a wide berth, only to see another goat appear against the sky beside it and stare down in its turn. This one was white, and smaller. An instant later a gray one shoved up beside the white.

It was a flock, then. Maybe with a rattlehead goatherd and a dog. She had best turn back.

At that moment the goatherd appeared beside his animals—and it was only a boy not much older than herself, dressed in an odd assortment of rags and tatters. He was dark haired and gangly, with bright blue eyes and a stubby nose. He didn’t look rattleheaded. He looked funny, and friendly, and nice.

“Oh, ’twas you, was it?” he said in an interested tone. “I wondered what they was gawking at. Don’t be afeard—they won’t hurt you. Come on along.”

“Nay, I won’t go through your flock.”

“There’s only the three of them. Hey, you! Divil! Git! Get along, all ’a you, go eat somewheres else.” He bounced his
stick impartially on three bony rumps, and the black goat pushed bossily between the others to lead the way back out of sight. The boy reached his stick down. “Grab hold, I’ll give you a pull!”

Saaski grabbed, all but flew up the slope with the vigor of his pull, and stumbled forward until he caught her.

“Sorry! Y’don’t weigh much, do you? Here, sit down and puff a bit,” he invited.

She had no need to puff, but she dropped down on one of the low boulders scattered about the moor, and he straddled another, tossing aside his stick. They examined each other, he with a curiosity as open and friendly as his face, she without once feeling she must make her hands chubbier and her feet shorter. They exchanged names. His was Tam.

“What are the goats’ names?” she asked him. The big black and his attendant nannies were browsing on some thornbushes a little distance away.

“Divil’s the black one. The little white is Angel, and the gray’s just Sister.”

“Are they yours?”

“They’re Bruman’s. But it’s me as looks after ’em. While Warrior looks after Bruman.”

“A
warrior?
”

“Not a real one—just Bruman’s old dog.”

“Is Bruman your da’?” asked Saaski.

“Nay, me da’s dead. Mumma, too. Bruman’s the tinker. We pass this way every year or so—camp on the moor awhile—move on. Maybe you saw us come through your village about a se’nnight ago? Old two-wheel cart with a raggedy
hood, pony and Warrior in front, me and the goats behind.” The boy grinned again—at himself, it seemed to Saaski. He had good white teeth, with a space between a couple of side ones that lent him a rakish air.

She said, “We need no tinker in Torskaal. My da’ does all the smithing hereabouts.”

“I know that; so does Bruman. No matter. He can make boots, and shoes, and saddles, and harness, and gloves and dagger sheaths and locks and leathern boxes—”

“But who’d hire such skills?” said Saaski, round eyed. The only horse in the village was Guin the miller’s and it already had a saddle. The oxen worked under wooden yokes. Nobody locked anything. And who wore shoes or boots until snow flew? As for gloves and dagger sheaths and leathern boxes, she’d never heard of such fineries. “I doubt he’ll find work in Torskaal,” she warned.

“ ’Twon’t matter to Bruman. He’ll find some way to earn a flagon of muxta or strong cider, then he’ll worry about nothing till it’s empty and he’s full.”

“He’ll be drunken?” said Saaski, eyes rounder than ever.

“Whenever he can be.” Tam shrugged. “Got a lame leg, Bruman has. It pains ’im bad. He won’t talk of it. Mostly just takes it out on me and the pony,” Tam added cheerfully. “Truth to tell, I’d ruther he stayed drunk.”

“But d’you have nothing to eat, when he is?”

“Oh, me and Warrior see to ourselves. The dog’s a good ratter, cotches most of his own meals. In the towns, well, I’m a fair hand at tinkerin’ meself, by now. Had to pick it up, didn’t I, to finish
his
jobs when he’s boozin’! On the road I
can always find a day’s work, and there’s the goats’ milk and hearth bread. Bruman fills a hoggin with barley flour afore we leave each spring, or I don’t budge.”

“Where d’you live in wintertime?”

“The King’s Town. Away by the big river, in the low country.”

Saaaski looked at him with awe, trying to imagine the King’s Town, and the big river—thrice as wide as the creek, no doubt—and country even lower than the village. She had never traveled farther than the other side of Moor Water.

Musing back over their talk, she found a puzzle. “How did you know my da’s the smith?” she demanded.

“Well, they said you was the . . . the”—Tam floundered a moment, went red under his tan—“the young one at the smith’s house. I saw you t’other day, in the village—I was filling my waterbag at the well. They talk about you—the goodwives. Didn’t you know it?”

She shrugged but braced herself, knowing well the dropped voices, the nudges, the narrow glances. “Not sure what they say.”

Tam kicked at a grass tussock, frowning first at it and then toward the goats, which had browsed their way over the next rise, then answered carelessly. “Eh, not much. Only what they say about any young ’un different from
their
Raabs and Annies. They say you’re eldritch. They say you’re freaky-odd.” He turned back to her, smiling, and she waited. She’d heard that much from the Raabs and Annies themselves. “They say the same of me,” he finished blithely.

It was something too bad to tell her.

Eh, what do I care, they can say what they like,
she told herself with the familiar mixture of anger and desolation. The chill mists were swirling around them suddenly, the next thing to rain. She pulled up her hood and rose. “I’ve all my tasks to do yet,” she said. “I’ll be going.”

“But maybe soon be climbing up again?”

“Maybe.” She smiled to show she bore him no ill will for a lie meant kindly, and started down the slope, avoiding the steep-sided hollow and the glimmering trail she could no longer see—that might not even be there. He fell in beside her.

“I’m hereabout most days, with the goats. I could play me pipes for you.” He produced from his ragged tunic a longish shepherd’s pipe made of a reed, and a shorter one whittled from a willow twig. “Or juggle!” He stuffed the pipes away, snatched up a handful of pebbles and set them flying up in front of him, changing their pattern from circle to up-and-down to an arc over his head, while Saaski watched, astonished. Whirling about, he caught the pebbles one-handed behind his back, then strolled toward her with a grin that showed the gap at one side.

“Eh, but that’s wizardly!” she exclaimed, the goodwives and their mutterings forgotten. “How can you do it?”

“My da’ taught me afore he died. And I’ve the long day with the goats to do nothing but practice. If you climb up again tomorrow or so, I’ll show you more.”

“I will.”

She looked back once to wave at him where he still stood outlined against the drifting mist, idly tossing the pebbles as he watched her, then she skipped and danced her way down
from the high moor to the tilted wastelands where the bracken grew thickest. With the little wooden-handled knife Yanno had made for her she cut a pile of the fern fronds and tied them with bindweed into a bundle. Worrying it up somehow onto a boulder, she backed up to it and hitched it onto her shoulders, slanting it across her back and clinging with both hands to the bindings.

Today, with Tam and his goats and his pebbles to think about, she went through the familiar motions without once losing her temper, and with the frond tips jiggling against her ear went on downhill past the Lowfield where a few village men were weeding the long, greening strips of winter grain, and along the crooked trail around the apple orchard.

Just beyond Edildan’s ox stall she came in sight of the village street, with its score or so of stone cottages and sagging sheds scattered higgledy-piggledy along it. Several log ladders leaned against the house walls, for it was the season for pulling the moss off the roofs and repairing thatch. But the men or their sons who should have been on the ladders were instead clustered near the well, their mallets dangling from their hands. With them were a dozen goodwives, white-kerchiefed heads huddled together, forearms tucked under their aprons. A few of the younger children played tag around them, and old man Fiach was hobbling toward them with his dog. Something was up. Their murmuring buzzed like a threatened hive.

Saaski did not see Anwara’s sky-blue shawl among them. But she spotted Ebba and remembered with a disheartened rush the cow, the calf, the morning’s brangle. Now it would all turn out to be her fault—Ebba would make sure of it.

Then she saw that the center of the group was a stranger, a man with his back toward her. He was telling some tale that held the others spell-struck and gaping.

Saaski glanced regretfully at the smithy and cottage, just a few steps along the rutted street; she could not reasonably get close enough to hear the story—though doubtless she would hear it on every side tomorrow. Hitching up her heavy load, she picked her way down onto the street and across it. She was enjoying the feel of the cool grassy mud under her feet when she realized the buzzing of the voices had ceased. Peering around the fringe of her bracken fronds, she saw the group by the well standing silent, every head turned her way. Even old Fiach’s dog was gawking at her.

She halted, her throat closing with alarm. What could it have to do with her? Then she saw the storyteller’s face.

It was the shepherd. The Tom Noddy with his “pixie.” He’d actually done what she said, and come to ask Yanno himself if he had a child. So had he asked Yanno? Or just gathered the village to set them gaping with his tomfool tale?

Either way, Yanno would know how far she’d strayed today.

Whirling away, she stomped on to the cowshed, yanked open the door, flung her heavy bundle to the earth floor and kicked it hard. She stood a moment flexing her hands, which were sore from clinging to the bindweed. Then she grabbed the wooden rake from where it leaned near the doorway, furiously cleared away Moll’s old bedding, and began to spread the new.

Yanno appeared in the shed doorway before she had finished spreading the bracken in Moll’s stall.

“Leave that,” he said. “Come into the room with me.”

He turned away at once. Saaski hesitated, then dropped the ferns she was holding and reluctantly followed him out of the lean-to and into the cottage. From the dooryard she darted a glance toward the storytelling group; it was scattering, as if every listener had suddenly remembered a task. Beyond them up the street she glimpsed Anwara’s blue shawl.