The Wealding Word (11 page)

Though she couldn’t yet see it, Nell could feel the life of the young tree radiating through the land. They must be nearing Peter’s hovel. It made her heart beat fast to think of the golden tree.

The hermit rubbed his gray-stubbled chin. “I suspect you can’t talk to animals anymore because you didn’t practice. Magic, like
anything else, does not happen by itself. You must learn the shape and sound of letters before you can read, yes? If a long time goes by, you’ll forget them, and then you have to start again. Magic is the same, except the process of forgetting happens faster, and relearning is much harder.” He frowned at the prospect.
“That woman…
er, Lady Zel,” he corrected, trying to salvage some shred of politeness in front of his young companion, “she should know this better than anyone.”

They finally reached his hovel, and there beside it shone the golden tree. Its bloom filled Nell with a nameless, kinetic hope: like spring, and summer, and candlemas all rolled into one. “It’s so tall,” she exclaimed. The highest branches were now level with the top of the house, though it was less than a year old.

“Yes, it kept growing all winter,” said the hermit. He sounded dour again. “And now I’m beginning to understand why. Long ago I lost the knack of the Wealding Word. Haven’t been able to call upon it in years. Still, I tried once more when I planted the acorn. It was a silly thing to do, really. But when it sprouted right up… I thought perhaps some of the power still remained in me.” He glanced at Nell, crestfallen. “That’s not how it works though. It was you who made it grow after all, not me.”

“Me?” Nell wondered. She followed him through the dim doorway and settled onto a pile of books.

The ragged old man fixed a meal that might have come directly from the bag Nell had left at the well. He placed before her a thin tuber soup with brown lumps floating in it. Famished as she was, she didn’t mind the unseemly look of it. They sat slurping broth in the light of a drowning candle. While they ate, Peter felt obliged to explain what, in his opinion, Lady Zel had neglected. “As I said, the Wealding Word enables a deep listening, especially to the natural world. It is harmless magic really, usually given early on to apprentices as a primer – before they progress on to more complicated powers.” He stopped to sop
soup with a crust, carefully avoiding the tender spots in his mouth while he chewed. “On rare occasion though, the Wealding Word holds a greater gift, called greenspeech. It’s not speech really, but rather the power to reach out to plants, to enliven and some might even say befriend them. The occurrence of greenspeech, however rare, is probably why it’s called the
Weald
ing Word rather than…” he struggled to find a more appropriate term, “…the
Receiving
Word or some such. No one knows why greenspeech comes to some and not others, but I’d say you’ve got it.”

Nell only half-listened to Peter. She wasn’t that interested in plants, they just stayed where they were – except when they fell through your roof – and weren’t nearly as much fun as dogs or horses. “But what about talking with animals?” Nell complained. “I want to speak with Rawley again like I used to.” Lying at their feet, the dog looked from Peter to Nell and then back again, as if anxious to hear the hermit’s reply.

The old man said, “These types of things happen to apprentices. You may never be able to speak to your pets as you once did, though with practice you may understand them in a different way. As you change, the magic will too. Over time, certain powers may disappear, only to be replaced by something unexpected. Just keep yourself open to what’s around you, that’s crucial with Wealding magic.”

“Well, I’m… not… an apprentice,” Nell mumbled, her eyes drifting shut.

Fearing she would fall off the wobbly pile of books, Peter showed her to a small pallet in the corner. He then busied himself cleaning up the spoons and bowls, grumbling about Lady Zel as the girl slept.

Flames and smoke stifled Nell in her dreams. She saw Tomkin running through a dismal wood, his faced scratched and bleeding. He fell into a hole, and the earth closed up over him like a toothy trapdoor. A unicorn staggered toward Nell, stuck through with three black arrows. Before the girl’s eyes, the unicorn’s white coat
turned to soot. Its single horn split and grew into huge, shadowy antlers.

Now in the form of the gray beast, the creature nosed at a shape on the ground. Nell saw it was the satchel she had left by the well. The beast rooted into the bag, pulling forth a stringy bit of cloth with its teeth: Lexi’s apron. Flames suddenly rose up, veiling the creature from view. Nell’s vision turned toward an oak towering against the angry red sky. Sparks caught in its leaves, and soon fire leapt among the branches. The tree looked at Nell – fifty eyes pouring with sap. He was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear him over the inferno. Then from out of the smoke lunged a black, twisted figure. “
Greenspeaker!
” it hissed. With a grip that crushed Nell’s wrist, it dragged her toward the burning oak.
“Speak, speak for her!”

Nell tried to scream out but the fumes filled her throat. A mounting pillar of fire had replaced the oak, wound now with a manacled chain. Just as the fiend was about to shackle her to the column, Nell awoke to Peter shaking her by the shoulders.

“Nell, are you all right? You were shouting in your sleep.” The hermit knelt beside the pallet, a small book by his knee.

Nell was out of breath, sweating where she lay. For a moment she couldn’t imagine where she was, and looked fearfully about the hovel. Then she recognized Peter’s face and remembered. “I saw a great fire. Tomkin was running and the old tree was burning. It seemed real,” Nell said, rubbing eyes which still stung from the imagined smoke. She felt more tired now than she had when she fell asleep.

Peter considered her words, thinking hard and wondering at the fear in Nell’s face. Suddenly he rose and darted out of the hovel.

Nell’s knees were those of a newborn foal’s. She wobbled to the door and found the hermit squinting toward the horizon, his hand at his forehead. All she could see was the expanse of reedy marsh around them, bordered in the distance by a line of red-budding trees.
A brace of ducks darted overhead, wings squeaking. Dragonflies zoomed and insects chattered all around.

“There,” he pointed. How the nearsighted old man could see anything beyond arm’s reach, Nell didn’t know. Yet he seemed confident that something was out there. “I thought I would be taking you home today, but there’s no time for that now. You’ll have to stay with me a little while longer.” Not waiting for a response, Peter hurried inside for his coat and bag.

Nell could see nothing where he indicated, except a bit of haze against the crystal sky. Then she noticed something too: a small smudge climbing over the far trees. Somehow she knew at that moment her dream was real: the forest was burning.

C
HAPTER
12

R
IDERS

Nell had to run behind Peter as he trudged through the swamp. Beside Tomkin, few knew the marsh as well as the old hermit. He stopped only once to pluck several bloated, blue-striped mushrooms from a tree. It was an odd thing to do given their haste, but Nell didn’t question it. She was lost in thought, remembering the day of the hail storm when she met the oak. She knew that to get to that part of the forest from where they stood would take hours. Then an idea came to her, escaping her lips almost as it entered her head: “When I visited Lady Zel, she turned me into a bird and I flew back home. Can you change us into birds so we can fly to the forest?”

“No,” he grouched, and it didn’t take long before Peter was grumbling again about “that thoughtless woman.”

Nell kept quiet for a long time after that, sensing the old man’s irritability. Instead, she tried to listen on the inside as Peter had instructed. If any power from the Wealding Word still remained in her, she intended not to lose it. It didn’t take long for her to hear the urgency in the bird chatter. When they neared the borders, Nell saw several small herds of deer sprinting out of the forest for the safety of the water. She steadied Rawley with her hand, making sure he stayed close rather than bounding after them. “It’s not time for playing,” she told him. The haze in the distance had turned the sky a sickly sepia color. Hawks, falcons, osprey, and hundreds of smaller birds soon
filled the air, all fleeing the ochre clouds. Nell didn’t need sorcery to know the animals were spooked.

The thought of magic brought Lady Zel to mind once again, and she tried to remember her conversation with Peter earlier in the day. After some time, Nell ventured, “Were you her student?” It wasn’t necessary to say who she was talking about. The hermit looked much older than the sorceress, though he said she had taught him magic when he was younger. He simply nodded in response, saving his breath for the hike. “But you’re old,” Nell blurted. “So then how old is Lady Zel?”

Except to pick a few mushrooms, they hadn’t stopped since they left Peter’s house, and already they were within the outer edge of the woods. The old man suddenly slumped down to rest beneath a stand of hazelnut, drawing air in quick, ragged gasps. “Yes… she tried to teach me… long ago,” he panted. “Fifty years… when I was a young man. She’s older than she looks, much older, but you know that already.” He counted names on his fingers, “Rhys, Rikuth, Reginald, Ryan. That would make her well over one hundred.”

“Ryan? Do you mean Prince Ryan?” Nell asked, forgetting her other question.

“Hum? Yes,” Peter mused. “He’s her great-grandson – no, probably her great-
great
grandson.” Nell wondered at the news as the old man went on remembering. “Rhys was acting as king when I was Rapunzel’s understudy. In those days, other things about her interested me more than her magic words though.” He cleared his throat. “Her library was vast. Science, math, languages… these could be looked at and studied properly. Not so with
sorcery.”
The word hung in the air like a curse. The hermit scoffed. “You can study science and continue being yourself. But magic… it changes you. You have to make room for it on the inside, and that means getting rid of a lot of things that you love: the things that make you who you are. I liked myself just the way I was back then – and still do!” He
picked up a cluster of hazelnuts bound by a pointy green husk. “No, Lady Zel’s
words
were not for me. Hsst.” Peter shushed, even though he was doing all the talking. “Get down.”

Nell did as she was told, with Rawley crouching at her feet. Just then she heard twigs snapping close by. A fishy sea smell filled the air moments before a creature burst through the trees. It stopped not far from Nell and Peter, its chest and green-scaled shoulders heaving from a frenzied run. Nell recognized it instantly – the wide-set eel-eyes, glistening skin, and webbed claws. “Grumlin!” The words escaped her lips before she knew she was speaking. And there was no time to hide!

“Just stay still,” whispered Peter.

The creature had a wooden shield fastened to one arm, and a knife in its webbed hand. Although it crouched only a few paces away, the circular eyes on either side of its head didn’t seem to work very well. It looked past Nell and Peter several times, but it knew something was amiss. Blindly it cut the air with its blade, casting about beneath the trees. In another moment, the creature caught the scent of turnip stew. Protective lids slid over its eyes, turning them a bright coral red as it crept toward Nell. It was tired of running, and ready to kill.

“Oh dear, it has our smell,” Peter whispered. He grabbed a stick among the leaves and raised it against the grumlin, but the wood was rotten and broke in two with a wet snap.
“Oh dear!”

Without warning, the creature sprang at Nell, its knife flashing in lightning arcs. Desperately she threw herself backward and lost a lock of hair, so close did its blade slash by her face. Landing on her back, Nell stared directly up the murderous blade – when Rawley shot forward, knocking the beast away.

They faced off, Rawley giving his fiercest snarl, but the grumlin was hardly intimidated. It came at the dog with practiced ease, knife stabbing low. Nell winced to hear her pet yelp in pain. Rawley found
the creature’s leg though, grinding his teeth into fishy flesh. The grumlin made an angry gurgle, lurching to free itself, but Rawley held on. The notched blade was raised high to finish the job when Peter’s voice rang out from the trees, “Og! Go-mlash to-klee!”

The creature hesitated, checking its stroke and allowing Rawley an instant to stumble back to Nell’s side. Wide, saucer eyes darted about, trying to take in Peter more clearly. Why was this old human using its language?

“Er, pardon,” the hermit stammered. “Need to check something.” He stooped to shuffle through a pile of worn volumes in his bag. In horror Nell realized that, rather than food, supplies, or weapons, the whole sack was crammed with nothing more than books.

As the grumlin stared at the old man, Rawley mustered his strength for another attack. “Stay Rawley, stay!” Nell pleaded, but her friend slowly edged toward the creature, leaking blood with every step. The grumlin waved its knife, flicking its red eyes between the border collie and Peter.

Rawley knew well enough to keep out of reach this time. They came to an odd impasse while the hermit tossed more books onto the leaves. Rawley could not get past the blade, and the grumlin seemed genuinely puzzled, waiting to hear Peter say something else. After a few tense moments, its patience ran out. It suddenly uttered a series of grisly syllables that might have amounted to a question. The sound of the grumlin’s speech was like the wet crack of crab shells. It filled Nell’s mind with the desolation of the sea.