This time, as the damman lighted the candles and lanterns, I didn’t even attempt to peer out the sparkly windows, knowing what it would do to my eyes. Instead, I relaxed on the couch and rubbed Fiz’s feet, her exquisite tiny feet, lust stealing into my loins.
Most of us were there in the great room, worn out, exhausted, catching our breath, except for Marley, who’d gone upstairs lugging his killer bucket, and I could hear sounds of frantic scrubbing drifting down from the bathing room above.
Molly and Dando were having a tearful reunion with Tip and Perry, and Rafferty was smacking his lips over a flagon of ale. Fiz was explaining to everyone how with our Fairy Sight she and I had seen the rug-trapped Demons the very first time we had passed the Rooms of Forbidden Illusions on our way to meet Khassan, and how in the cell I had hatched my very clever plan to deal with a Demon. And all the while she told the tale she beamed adoringly at me.
I don’t think I’ll ever tell her the truth.
When Marley came back down, skin scrubbed raw, bucket in hand, Tynvyr borrowed some flea soap and led Rufous toward the stairs, the fox stopping every now and again to nip at his fur or to scratch. I figured that with a bath it wouldn’t be long ere he would once more begin eyeing me and salivating. Oh well, I would deal with that in its own due time.
I sat reflecting, slowly relaxing. If I’d learned one thing, it was this: anytime anyone ever says, “Well, I’ll be go to Hel,” I can say, “I’ve been there, and believe me, you don’t want to go.”
My musing was interrupted by a faint buzzing. “What’s that rattling?”
Dando jumped up and whirled to face me. “Nothing! No one! No owls, cats, rats, dogs, bats, hawks, weasels, cobras, mongooses or mongeese, or any other thing of the sort. And no rattly snake. No sir. No way. No how. And certainly no mice; they’ve all disappeared.”
Suddenly, with a soft thump, we landed. The windows stopped sparkling. And a harsh dark lavender glare shone in.
Rafferty looked up at the violet blare. “Wellanow, Dando, me bucko. Jist whare d’we be this toime?”
Dando coughed and shrugged. “Well, as to that … um … you see, I’m not exactly sure, what with that skull-faced Giant who was coming at us, and all … anyway, I just didn’t have time to select a destination.”
Just then, from outside came a bellowing roar.
The Halfling House began to shake.
The front door crashed open.
Purple light blasted inward.
Someone screamed … .
Silver or Gold
Emma Bull
Moon Very Thin sat on the raised hearth—the only place in the center room out of the way—with her chin on her knuckles. She would have liked to be doing something more, but the things she thought of were futile, and most were undignified. She watched Alder Owl crisscross the slate floor and pop in and out of the stillroom and the pantry and the laundry. Alder Owl’s hands were full of things on every crossing: clean clothes, a cheese, dried yellow dock and feverfew, a tinderbox, a wool mantle. She was frowning faintly all over her round pink face, and Moon knew that she was reviewing lists in her head.
“You can’t pack all that,” said Moon.
“You couldn’t,” said Alder Owl. “But I’ve had fifty years more practice. Now remember to cure the squash before you bring them in, or there’ll be nothing to eat all winter but onions. And if the squirrels nest in the thatch again, there’s a charm—”
“You told me,” Moon sighed. She shifted a little to let the fire roast a slightly different part of her back. “If I forget it, I can look it up. It’s awfully silly for you to set out now. We could have snow next week.”
“If we did, then I’d walk through it. But we won’t. Not for another month.” Alder Owl wrapped three little stoneware jars in flannel and tucked them in her wicker pack.
Moon opened her mouth, and the thing she’d been busy not saying for three days hopped out. “He’s been missing since before Midsummer. Why do you have to go now? Why do you have to go at all?”
At that, Alder Owl straightened up and regarded her sternly. “I have responsibilities. You ought to know that.”
“But why should they have anything to do with him?”
“He is the prince of the Kingdom of Hark End.”
Moon stood up. She was taller than Alder Owl, but under that fierce gaze she felt rather stubby. She scowled to hide it. “And we live in Hark End. Hundreds—thousands of people do. A lot of them are even witches. They haven’t all gone tramping off like a pack of questing youngest sons.”
Alder Owl had a great many wrinkles, which deepened all over her face when she was about to smile. They deepened now. “First, youngest sons have never been known to quest in packs. Second, all the witches worth their salt and stone have tried to find him, in whatever way suits them best. All of them but me. I held back because I wanted to be sure you could manage without me.”
Moon Very Thin stood still for a moment, taking that in. Then she sat back down with a thump and laced her fingers around her knees. “Oh,” she said, halfway between a gasp and a laugh. “Unfair, unfair. To get at me through my pride!”
“Yes, my weed, and there’s such a lot of it. I have to go, you know. Don’t make it harder for me.”
“I wish I could do something to help,” said Moon after a moment.
“I expect you to do all your work around here, and all of mine besides. Isn’t that enough?” Alder Owl smoothed the flap down over the pack and snugged the drawstring tight.
“You know it’s not. Couldn’t I go with you?”
Alder Owl pulled a stool from under the table with her foot and sat on it, her hands over her knees. “When I travel in my spirit,” she said, “to ask a favor of Grandmother, you can’t go with me.”
“Of course not. Then who’d play the drum, to guide you back?”
Alder Owl beamed. “Clever weed. Open that cupboard over the mantel-shelf and bring me what you find there.”
What Moon found was a drum. It was nothing like the broad, flat, cowhide journey-drum, whose speech echoed in her bones and was like a breathing heartbeat under her fingers, whose voice could be heard in the land where there was no voice. This drum was an upright cylinder no bigger than a quart jar. Its body was made of some white wood, and the skins of its two heads were fine-grained and tufted with soft white hair around the lashings. There was a loop of hide to hold it with, and a drumstick with a leather beater tucked through that.
Moon shook her head. “This wouldn’t be loud enough to bring you home from the pump, let alone from—where are you going?”
“Wherever I have to. Bring it to me.”
Moon brought her the drum, and Alder Owl held it up by the loop of hide and struck it, once. The sound it made was a sharp, ringing tok, like a woodpecker’s blow.
Alder Owl said, “The wood is from an ash tree planted at the hour of my birth. The skins are from a ewe born on the same day. I raised the ewe and watered the tree, and on my sixteenth birthday, I asked them for their lives, and they gave them gladly. No matter how far I go, the drum will reach me. When I cannot hear it, it will cease to sound.
“Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll leave,” Alder Owl continued. “Tomorrow at sunset, as the last rind of the sun burns out behind the line of the Wantnot Hills, and at every sunset after, beat the drum once, as I just did.”
Moon was a little shaken by the solemnity of it all. But she gathered her wits at last and repeated, “At sunset each day. Once. I’ll remember.”