The Gantlet Read online

  The small girl on the seat beside him was a strange one, pointing to his ears, like she could see something he couldn’t, maybe a great wad of wax hanging off one. The thought made him chuckle, so at least she was worth something: she’d made him laugh. But that wasn’t enough for her; she kept motioning for him to pull out the bit of fluff as though she owned it, and the ear it was in.

  “What do you want for me? Do you wish me to hear those dreaded calls and maybe turn the cart over with you in it?”

  Tom shook his head at the strange girl, wishing he could talk to her and make her understand the danger of the winds. Of course, it hadn’t hurt her none. She was holding up just fine, except for the caterwauling. He cautiously removed one of the plugs and then the other one, hearing nothing but his and the girl’s breathing, and the oxen in the traces.

  “Well, ’twas a good move, for there’s a change since the early morning crossing when it started chattering. That’s the reason you didn’t suffer—there’s nothing for it. My, me, lass, I’m thinking you may be luck for old Tom.”

  Tom Simpkin believed himself to be a considerate man, for his mother had taught him to do the best he could as long as it didn’t hurt him none. He was thinking up some ways to make signs the young one might understand.

  He pointed to himself and said, “Tom Simpkin,” in his lowest voice to keep from scaring her. She looked at him funny, and he said it again, pointing to his midsection so there would be no mistaking his meaning. “Tom Simpkin,” he said, with the words a little stronger for her benefit. Maybe her ears don’t work; maybe the demon filled up the hearing parts. Would explain a lot.

  “Demons are bad things, get in your head; make you do all manner of vileness. The man with the coins said you had a real corker. I wish you could understand me, child, for I don’t believe you’re as bad as they say.”

  Breanna couldn’t understand Tom’s words, but he seemed concerned about her. She wondered where the bird had left her, how the men transferred her to small wagon, why she was taken. Tears from her human ancestors began clouding her eyes, and unfamiliar sobs filled her throat.

  I want to know about those things, but most of all I want to know what will happen to me. Where are my mam and poppa? The driver wouldn’t know her words if she spoke them aloud!

  Anola’s sweet voice filled her mind, crowding out the fear, and Breanna felt comforted and less miserable. You will understand, child. Hear the words, know them; they are yours now. Listen with your memory.

  The child made Tom feel very uncomfortable. He knew the coins in his pocket came from no good, had known since it was offered. The silver would never make him happy. The young one he stared at was nothing but scared; no demon lurked there in her head. He needed to know some things. Such as why the man who’d laid out the silver and copper coins knew he had found a stupid soul to grab them and not think long on it. Tom was angry he was known as a man with no gumption and dim ways, as his mother used to say. It was fine for her to say, but not right for others to make sport of me.

  “Hush now, child,” the jester said. “Some way you’ll get back to your kin, not now, or the morrow, but you’re young, and your world will be here for a long enough time. For now, we’ll cross this nastiness and find a nice little cottage where you can stay for a while. Old Tom knows just the place.”

  “Why am I here, Tom? I was in my bed, and my mam had put me down with a kiss; next I was riding across the sky on a giant bird. A Phoebus, it told me.”

  “Aye, so you can talk now. What? What was it you said? Say it again, girl,” Tom whispered, searching the sky frantically. “How do you know of a Phoebus?”

  “It spoke to me, but I already knew what it was. I remember my poppa told me about the birds. They’re giant ravens, and they eat what they find, dead or alive. Why didn’t it eat me, Tom?”

  “I don’t want to hear all you’re saying. I wish now ’twas only garble. We’re getting off this barren land as quick as Paddy and Sam can pull us.” Tom shook the leads and urged the oxen to move faster, although he feared at the same time he might send them to their death. The animals were good and true, but old, and not up to a long run. “Hold on to the seat. If you fall, it will be to your death under the wheels.”

  The increased bumping was hard on her backside; there was little padding on her bones, and she weaved from side to side on the slick, worn seat, but her heart was singing, for Tom had said she would find her kinfolk. Suddenly she realized the words he had spoken were clear and the meaning understandable. Thank you, Anola.

  Breanna had misheard his words about home, but Tom knew her chances for ever again seeing the place called Nore Mountain were next to none, and he had never intended to deceive the child. But hope could fill the heart, and give reasons to keep looking forward; it was his purpose for saying what he did. It was to help her live in the world where she had been placed. A hard life ahead, no doubt, but she was alive, which was more than the man with the coin in his outstretched hand had in mind for her.

  Returning to the problem at hand, Tom shook a little, thinking of the giant bird, and urged his oxen forward, away from the open blackness where danger lurked. His mind couldn’t fathom how such a slip of a girl could know the name of the carrion monster of the skies. The tinker was certain the small bit of flesh and bone sitting beside him was more than met the eye. He didn’t understand portents, but sometimes old Tom got a glimpse into the faery-kissed world, and this was one of those times. He was glad he hadn’t given in to the clink of silver coins in his pocket and carried the child on to Thrum. He knew his decision to save her was not only the right one, it was the only one.

  The late evening light dimmed the sight of Weir, a small village Tom often supplied with sundries and gossip after his fearful trips across the desert, but his quarry, the Vale family lived farther away, near the Tribon River, where they farmed and raised sheep. The oxen climbed a slight hill, and Tom’s view opened to two cottages ahead separated by a hundred or so yards of darkness between. One was unlit, but in the other, a lamp shone dimly through open shutters, and he knew a fog bank had crept over the valley on its way from the river. Tom liked that, for what he craved was a place to hide, and time to convince a family to take the girl as their own. He knew he faced a difficult task, for they were poor, with little of their own except love and kindness, but he was determined to do what he could for the waif, since he had brought her far from the circles of men, into another realm.

  He clicked his tongue, making the oxen happy as they stopped their fast gait. Tom had felt it in his bones when he departed the soulless road, a clean feeling once away from bewitched land. The wind had never returned, a mystery, and he yearned for that silence for his journey the next morning. The sky, dark with night, settled into every opening. Far above, the thick fog and mist blanketed the brothers’ and sisters’ weak lights, and the grandfather’s lamp in the east was only a pale orb seen through eerie whiteness. They had arrived just in time, before all the light in their world was covered.

  Tom was a simple man with few possessions, but he had lived a clean life until he took the captive girl into his cart for a few pieces of silver. He was bothered by the deed, bothered so badly he wanted to make it up to her. The man and woman within the small cottage were his friends; at least they had been on the last trip he made to their home. Tom hoped that would buy him favor.

  “Hoy, in the house. It’s Tom Simpkin, come to see the Vales of settlement Weir.” The grace of a tap on the door was never enough to awaken them; each slept hard after a day’s work. “Halloo, the house; your friend Tom Simpkin here,” he said, searching the fog for signs of movement. Thoughts of being a giant bird’s meal had made him wary and afraid.

  The door opened quietly, revealing a large man who yawned loudly as he rubbed his eyes and stared at the visitors. He was Willum Vale, a youngish man whose nightcap sat crooked from sleeping on a thin pillow. Beside him stood Alane, a pretty woman who looked questioningly at the girl beside their
friend.

  “Tom, come inside. It’s late for even you, traveling in the night. Who do you have there? Who is this child? Why, Tom, she’s elven. What are you doing with an elven child?”

  Alane was quick; she seldom missed anything, but Tom wondered why he too hadn’t known the child was elvish-natured. The whispering voices might have had some to do with that, he thought. ’Twas another effect of the Emptiness, all a man believed, or knew to be true could become false in his mind after listening too long.

  “Have you had food?” Alane asked. “Come in and sit; we have plenty from supper. Poor child, she looks starved.”

  Breanna fell asleep at the table, her stomach full for the first time in several days. The hard loaves the men had given her had been barely enough to sustain her, but she’d eaten what was there without asking for more. Her hunger had not been as strong as her Qay pride.

  Alane tucked the girl inside the covers of a small bed already filled by another, younger girl. It was cold in the cottage, and the warm body of the other child brought Breanna comfort. Her last night on Nore Mountain had been warm, but now she was in a cooler clime, far from her home.

  Tom sat at the table with Willum and Alane, his face hanging as he told the tale, how he had come upon the girl, and was taken in by the brightness of the silver and the offer from the well-dressed man.

  “Aye, it’s terrible, and I’m sorely put upon to find the girl a home; I’ll have no part in taking her to Thrum, as the villain ordered. I’ve heard terrible stories of folks left there.”

  “Tom,” Willum began, “we would take her, but we have barely enough to keep us alive. If we take the girl, we’ll all starve. Would we could help, but there’s no way.”

  Alane squirmed in her seat, the idea of the girl with no one to care for her eating a hole in her heart.

  “Willum…” She turned her head away to gaze out the window, into the foggy night.

  “Yes, I know, Alane. I don’t like it myself, but what can we do?”

  Tom had been quiet since he made his entreaty, but now it was there, and he had no choosing but to make the offer.

  “The silver. You can have the silver. ’Twill buy bread for some time; meanwhile, the girl looks strong, and can help the other children in the gardens.”

  “But what about you, Tom? How will you live? You’re a long way from the places you call home,” Alane interjected.

  “I’ll be fine; with me wits I earn me keep. ’Tis safety for the girl I treasure. I don’t like the setup. Some strong evil brought this about.”

  Alane looked toward Willum, her soft brown eyes pleading. “We can manage,” she said.

  “A’right, we’ll do it, but I’ll need a blessing to carry it through,” Willum said. “And split your money, Tom. Give us half. We’ll make it do.”

  “Ah, no, a deal’s a deal and that. You’ll have it all.”

  “Suit yourself, but stay awhile. We like having you,” Willum said. “Now it’s off to bed, for we’re farmers and rise early.”

  About an hour before the rooster crowed, Tom hitched his oxen to the cart, making ready to leave. He looked over the house, feeling in his bones he had done the right thing, but a cold fear ran through him. There was plenty about the child to warrant his concern.

  The sound of a hooting owl, off and away, brought him to his senses, setting the anxious feeling aside. What’s done is done, he thought. I can do no more. He looked back once and mumbled a silent goodbye to his friends, the tremor in his knees uncontrollable as he remembered the stories of his childhood. Fear ran through him like turbulent floodwater and Tom pulled his hat down and hunched his shoulders to make himself appear smaller, all the while repeating prayers his mam had taught him.

  At daybreak, Willum and Alane arose to begin their duties, and found Tom had gone on, leaving all the silver on the table. Alane put it in the teapot where she kept valuables, and they considered what might lie ahead for themselves and the child.

  Breanna finally awoke and looked at her surroundings. She knew she could have been in much worse circumstances. At least the people were a family and were kind, but she was unable to stop her tears for her mam and poppa and all the souls of Nore Mountain. They were her family, and she feared she would never see them again.

  The little girl whose bed she’d shared was sitting at the breakfast table, eating a piece of rye loaf with butter, when Breanna eased her way into the kitchen. The girl was much younger than she, less than half her age, towheaded and thin, her brown eyes soft like the woman from the night before. Two rows of small white teeth chewed the long, crusty roll as the girl reached for the bowl of butter and slathered the rest of the bread. “I’m Elida,” she said in a very grownup-sounding voice. “I’m three years old, almost four.”

  Lowering her eyes to the table, Breanna saw a place set for her, with bread, butter, and jam. The food was familiar, for a similar breakfast would have waited for her at home. She almost cried again, but the sight of the little girl kept her tears inside. Being a visitor in the Vale home carried responsibilities, for her mam had taught her to be courteous and polite when goodness was offered. And it was goodness; they had opened their home to a Qay child who had lost the way back to hers.

  “I am called Breanna. I don’t have any sisters or brothers. This bread looks good.” She spoke fast, in disconnected sentences, trying to say the words without blubbering, and Elida gave her a sad look in return, but said nothing. For being just older than a toddling babe, the little girl knew what, and what not to say.

  After the meal, Alane and the girls went to the gardens to dig weeds from the potato bed and rake dirt away from the onions, while the boy Sean went with his poppa to catch fish. Before the fishermen left, Elida introduced Breanna to her seven-year-old brother, a thin boy whose face colored as his eyes flicked over the stranger. He hitched his short pants up and hung back for a few minutes, the blond cowlick and red scalp proof of his days spent working in the sun. The same brown eyes as his mother and sister looked the stranger over again as she stood waiting to be told what to do. Finally, he nodded and turned, following his poppa.

  Breanna had done garden work since she was younger than Elida, making her assimilation in someone else’s vegetable patch an easy adjustment. She thought about her home constantly, and wondered if her mam’s heart was breaking too. Alane handed her a bonnet to protect her skin from the sun, a gesture her mam would have made, and Breanna quickly looked down at the pea pods on the vines so no one would see her cry.

  From that day forward, each morning was almost the same: first breakfast, then work in the garden, or with the sheep. Next, in the house for the midday meal, rest a moment, then back again to whatever chore the family needed done. Breanna didn’t mind, for all of them worked side by side and it kept her busy. The family’s daily chores made her life bearable without her parents. Yet every day, as the sun lowered in the west, the Qay girl grew restless, and looked toward the security of the small cottage. Alane asked her about her unease, and all Breanna would say was the Orbels came out during the night and her family had to be inside the hollow tree village at Nore Mountain when darkness came.

  “What are Orbels?” Alane asked. “Are they terrible creatures?”

  “Yes, they look like giant pigs, but they walk upright. They hunt us. Sometimes they catch us. When that happens, another family gets to have a baby. You see, my town is very crowded, and there’s no room to build more houses.” The explanation seemed sad and heartbreaking to Alane.

  “Ah, then tonight, I will show you no Orbels live in our land.”

  The five of them gathered together coverlets for the evening air, and set out after supper for the Tribon. The pathway to the wide channel of water was well lit by the wick lamp, but still Breanna kept looking over her shoulder for Orbels. Her parents had always warned her about them, but she had seen them only a few times. Reaching the river bank without incident, Alane set down the lamp she had brought from the house, and lowered the wick un
til only a tiny flame was left flickering lowly. The grandfather’s lamp that the Vales called the moon was high in the sky, shining brightly on the Tribon, making the night seem as bright as day before the nightly fog rolled in.

  Elida giggled and looked at Breanna, “Come,” she said, “let’s catch the fire bugs. Watch and I’ll show you how to do it.”

  The Qay child had never seen fireflies, for the gates of Nore Mountain were locked at sunset to all creatures of the night. The small flying bugs seemed magical to her eyes, and the evening stars and the soft, round lamp in the sky were unbelievably beautiful.

  “I wish my mam could be here and see this. She would like the fire bugs. I wish I could see in the darkness, just like fire bugs,” she said to Alane. “I think I’ll try hard to see in the dark.”

  Alane laughed and sat down on the coverlet, watching her husband as she tickled him in the ribs. Breanna noticed their affection for each other, and compared the silent messages flashing between them to the similar ones she had seen between her mam and poppa.

  The night fog started in, first on the Tribon, then onto the banks, creeping as low and thin as the webs of barn spiders. A memory came to her, haltingly at first, then solid and true of her mother’s friend Mara, whose long white hair had draped over the rounded edge of Breanna’s crib, and filled the babe’s small nose with whiffs of honey and lavender. Mara, one of the seven, had planted a memory within Breanna’s head.

  Breanna, sweet elven girl, so tiny, yet you shall live a thousand years or more. You will have need, dear child, of my eyes when the light has gone, eyes to see beyond the dark and through veils of cloud. For all your long life, keep Mara’s secret, hold it dear until the time you must recall it, or when you are old and pass it to your babe. Hold my secret and don’t misuse it, child, or it may leave you forever.