Dragonswood

by Janet Lee Carey

  Garth was silent. I could not read his expression in the dark. The pine swayed in the damp wind. We held our branches, riding the gusts. He seems as much at home as I am up here, I thought. I liked him well for it.

  “If you’re such good friends with Prince Bion, why aren’t you with him searching for the missing treasure now?”

  Garth rode another gust before answering. “He asked me to guard that part of Dragonswood.”

  “Why that part?”

  “Bion fears the sanctuary walls there might be breached. The sheriff in Oxhaven is a powerful man and one who would like to see the boundary walls come down. He’d use the excuse of hunting for the missing treasure for a start.”

  “Then it’s dangerous for you to leave and ride south with me.”

  He shook his head. “I have allies, Tess, and they guard that part of Dragonswood while I’m away.”

  “And what’s Prince Bion doing while you and your friends guard the wood?”

  The wind had quieted. I felt the night wrap around me as I waited for his answer. “Other than combing the isle for the treasure?” he said with some rigidity. “If you want to know, Prince Bion has to keep an eye on the king’s regent, Sackmoore, a crooked man if there ever was one.”

  Crooked? I considered the man who had funded Lady Adela’s hunts. Garth was watching his tongue in my company. There were baser words to describe the demon.

  The gusts had swept the sky clean of clouds. Garth clutched the branch, straightened his arms, and leaned back to spy the stars through the greenery. The moon was like a half-gone pie.

  “Nice up here. How often do you scale trees?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  “Will not.”

  “Often then,” he guessed. “You surprise me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He laughed outright. “Are you ready to come down?”

  “I might like to taste your stew.”

  “So hunger wins,” he said.

  I slid my knife in my belt and climbed down after him. When I jumped from the lowest branch, he caught me, and held me a moment. The touch sent a clean wind through me, sweet and strong. If I could have stayed there all through the passing night, I would have. But he let me go and we trailed back to the boulder and the warm rabbit stew.

  UNBUCKLING GOODFELLOW’S SADDLEBAG, Garth pulled out two wooden bowls. Wolves howled somewhere in the distance. Our eyes locked. “We’ll keep the fire going throughout the night,” Garth said. “And if they come closer we can always climb yon tree,” he added with a teasing smile.

  The howling continued. How could he jest about such a thing? But behind the light talk, I saw caution. Scrambling up the tree would keep us from the wolves’ jaws. I thanked God we’d seen no bear scat in the woods. Bears are veteran climbers.

  “How clearly did you see the dragon who rescued the girl from the fire?”

  “It was night, but I saw he was very large.”

  “An old one then,” Garth said, filling my bowl.

  “An old one,” I agreed. “And one I’d seen before.”

  “When?” He did not try to hide his curiosity, but had stopped mid-pour, holding the bowl up between us and looking at me through the rising steam.

  I’d told him about my witch trial back at the lodge the night he’d showed me the pearl. But I’d not detailed my escape from Harrowton. He handed me my bowl. I was about to tell him how the old dragon rescued me, dropping a turtle in Miller’s Pond, when I felt as if a cold hand encircled my throat. Don’t speak of it.

  I glanced down and blew on the hot stew. I already told him the dragon rescued the burning girl, why not mention my rescue? The invisible hand seemed to tighten. I fought against it, sipped the stew to bring warmth back to my throat. Was this my own caution or something else preventing me? Tell him about the other time. “I saw the same old dragon one night when I’d climbed a tree.”

  “In Dragonswood?”

  I nodded.

  “So you were also a lawbreaker, Tess.”

  “I never hunted in the wood,” I said. “I just went there to be alone and think.”

  “And recover from your father’s blows?” he guessed. His look was kind.

  Again I nodded. “I saw the old dragon the night before we buried Adam.”

  Garth’s look asked Who was Adam? but he waited for me to say more.

  The cold hand was no longer at my throat. I could eat from my bowl; still, I was finding it difficult to speak. “Adam was my baby brother,” I whispered. “I’d gone to Dragonswood to cry. Seeing the dragon… helped. He breathed a stream of fire over the Harrow River. It was beautiful,” I added.

  Garth nodded. “Dragons can be wiser than men, though they’re wilder.” He tasted his stew, and ate some more.

  “Did you meet dragons on Dragon’s Keep?” He’d only just told me of his boyhood travels. I was trying not to be jealous. “Have you ever spoken with one?” I added eagerly before he could even answer my first question.

  He nodded. “I have, and I can tell you this. The dragons wonder that we, the weaker race, should have taken over the world, driving them from their wilderness in the last few thousand years.”

  I knew the dragons died without vast hunting ranges. I also knew the jealousies the sanctuary provoked. “Men like my father want the dragons and the fey booted out. He often talked of tearing down the walls so he could hunt and fish and harvest the timber there for his forge.”

  “A common sentiment,” Garth said. “Men high and low want the wood back, the lords no less than commoners. The king’s regent knows it too. In fact he counts on it. Sackmoore would destroy the sanctuary if he had the power.”

  “Then Prince Arden best hurry home,” I said.

  “Amen to that,” he whispered. Garth sat cross-legged on the ground in his mud-stained jerkin. A proud man and strong, he was concerned for his section of Dragonswood, I could see that, yet he’d taken us in. Now we were on a mercy mission for Meg. “Why have you been so kind to us?”

  He shrugged. “I knew from the first you weren’t witches.” He sloshed more stew into his bowl. “I could not leave you out there to die, could I?”

  “Some might have.” I studied his face, half in light and half in shadow, the fire and night taking what they may. “Was it because… did it have to do with what Lady Adela did to your grandmother?” I asked cautiously, knowing it might upset him.

  “The witch hunter didn’t harm my grandmother.”

  “But you said your grandmother was tried for witchcraft.”

  “She was. I would not lie to you about that, Tess, but it was years and years ago.”

  “Was she…” I fought the bile coming up my throat. “Did they burn her at the stake?” I pictured Garth as a small boy, seeing his grandmother taken, perhaps witnessing her death. Some people took their youngsters to witch burnings. My father brought me when I was just seven.

  “No, Tess. She was lucky. She lived.”

  He would not tell me more of her, though I asked not only from my heart, but because I wanted to know how she’d gotten away. I’d heard of no other women aside from myself and the one the dragon rescued who escaped after their witch trial.

  Garth finished his meal and left the fire. I did not follow him. I could tell the man needed to be alone. The stewpot sat cooling near my feet. The fire’s heat silvered the air above. I watched Garth brushing Goodfellow’s mane as if through glass. The burningstone greened the fire; flames moved like living dragon scales. The green man I’d first seen in the fire-sight long ago continued to surprise me. I sat very still, my body at rest, my heart full.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE LAST NIGHT before reaching Harrowton, we camped again in Dragonswood. Garth fried three trout for dinner and when the meal was done, he whittled a woodblock he’d loosed from the edge of the fire. Scraping all the charred black wood from the surface till it was clean and white, he’d cut grooves in the sides, trimming
the wood into a roughly human shape.

  “What do you make?”

  “A doll for the child.” His cinnamon eyes were fixed on the poppet. I studied his face, so stern with concentration as he worked the blade. Such fine articulated attention almost made me jealous of the woodblock. I dismissed my absurd feelings as I watched him shape the doll’s head and peel curling layers thin as parchment to form her small chin. Hands blackened with char, he paused to rub the bridge of his nose and left a black smudge behind. Not once did he look up.

  I stood.

  “Don’t go in too far,” Garth said. “I spied bear scat earlier.”

  “I won’t go far.” Give me a man who does not mind that she slips into Dragonswood. Stepping a little way into the forest, I tramped under the night sky. The stars appeared like snowflakes caught and never falling, held by God’s hand, I supposed, or suspended by his breath. It was easy to gather moss hanging from the oak branches. The doll’s hair would be thick and curly as my own.

  Night wind blew against my face as I tugged away the moss. A hissing sound came to my left ear, Tessss

  I spun round, peering into the dark. Tess, you are going the wrong way.

  I drew my knife. “Show yourselves. Who are you?”

  Come north.

  “Leave me be. I am going south with Garth.”

  Wind swirled a maelstrom of leaves torn from the trees. Bright specks of light twirled in the distance—will-o’-the-wisps flitting through the forest? It couldn’t be anything else. I’d seen the tiny fairies only once before. Each was the size of my little finger with translucent wings, and all were lit up golden white from the inside. Dipping in and out of the branches ahead, they split apart, swirled in dizzying patterns, then came together in one bright orb as if the moon were bobbing through the forest.

  I was filled with longing. I ran toward the dancing light, my arms stretched out wide. I raced through the bracken until my lungs were winded, and nearly reached the fairies.

  They vanished.

  In the gloom, I hunched over, panting, the knife loose in my sweating hand, the moss I’d gathered for the doll, gone. I’d wanted to catch up to them so much, wanted desperately to go with them. I sobbed, suddenly overcome with feeling as if I’d lost something precious. I wiped my nose and tried to steady my breath. The ache in my heart would not leave. What had come over me? Why so desperate? At last I stood up in the chill forest.

  Don’t be such a clodpole! It could be some kind of trick. I turned full circle. The woods were coal black. Trees grew so thick here, I could not see the sky. Worse, I couldn’t see Garth’s campfire. Had I run only for a few minutes, or was it hours, years? Fairies liked to toy with a person’s sense of time. My heart thumped. Spying a single moonbeam ahead, I raced for it, then leaped back, gasping at the illumined man-shaped tree. The Treegrim’s arms were stretched out, twiggy fingers splayed. Hulking like an oversized scarecrow, a bird’s nest crammed in its hollow belly: The look of horror in its black eye pits and craggy face was caught forever in wood.

  I screamed into my hands, swirled round, and shouted, “Garth!”

  “Tess? I’m over here.”

  I scrambled toward the distant call. It seemed to take forever in the dark, but at last I caught the scent of smoke. Garth ran toward me with his sword drawn. “Did you see a bear?”

  “No bear.” I tried to laugh, nearly choked. Had he missed me? Was I gone very long?

  “I… was a little lost.”

  He sheathed his sword. Standing close he was shadow dark, yet with all in shadow there was firmness in his stance, protection.

  The moss I’d picked was gone. I pulled more from the branches as we went back to the fire. Seated again, I handed him the moss, then tugged a little sticky sap off the nearest pine.

  He stared at it, wondering.

  “Hair,” I said, giving him the pitch to glue it on.

  “Green hair?” He cracked a smile and picked up the carven doll. “She will be a woodland girl, like yourself,” he noted.

  He did not catch my expression. I loved the trees. I never wanted to become one.

  I added another log to the fire and watched the sparks fly up. Why will-o’-the-wisps tonight? Were they the ones who’d called to me all along? Why would tiny fairies bother to say “You are going the wrong way”? Did they want to keep me out of Harrowton? Had they led me to the Treegrim to show what the fey could do to me if I disobeyed their summons?

  I watched Garth carve the doll’s legs. I knew it was foolhardy to enter Harrowton, where I was known for a witch, even if we did plan to sneak in at night, even if I was disguised as a cloth merchant’s wife.

  “You’re very quiet.” He’d stopped his work to look across the fire.

  “I was just thinking about tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be in and out of town fast, Tess. I’ll protect you,” he added.

  “I know.” And I did know it. My body warmed. Garth would do all in his power to protect me when we went after Alice.

  “If you’d rather wait outside of town while I go in—”

  “No. We’ve talked of this already. Old Weaver and his wife won’t give up their grandchild to just anyone. They know me. More importantly, Alice knows me.” The child would likely scream loud enough to raise the dead if Garth tried to take her away all by himself, and I wouldn’t blame her. “The only chance we have is if I assure Old Weaver and his wife that their son is safe, that he and Meg asked me to bring their daughter to them.”

  “All right, but if you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.”

  The doll was ugly and might frighten the child, but Garth wasn’t finished with it yet. “Tell me more about Princess Augusta.”

  He slid the blade down the doll’s side, the “woodland girl” growing thinner by this. “Think, Tess,” he said. “Who are the monsters? Dragons do not think men are comely. To them we appear thin-skinned, wingless, hairless—”

  “We have hair,” I argued.

  “Not fur like the animals have,” he said. “Besides that, we are tailless, clawless, flat-toothed, flat-footed—”

  “Enough,” I said, laughing. “Are we so plain?”

  “To them we are.” He adjusted his seat on the thick branch and scratched his arm. “The dragons think our royal Pendragon family handsome, at least the part of them that’s scaled.”

  “Did you ever see Prince Arden’s or Bion’s scales?” I asked.

  “I have.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Like dragon scales, only much smaller. About the size of your fingertips.”

  I wiggled my fingers, studying them in the soft firelight. “I would like to see that.”

  “Would you? The dream you had frightened you more than a little.” He tugged a pine needle out of his hair. “You said Princess Augusta was hideous. But I tell you this: The dragons think she is the most beautiful human in the world.”

  AT NIGHTFALL WE reached the outskirts of Har-rowton. Hail pelted the rooftops and danced along the cobbles. We’d left the horses tied up just outside of town and crept in quietly on foot. I hunched on the porch as Garth pounded the weaver’s door. Old Timothy Weaver opened the door a crack, and started when he saw me.

  “Tess,” he hissed. “Because of you the witch hunter took our Tom away!”

  “I know, Master Weaver, but your son is safe now. He and Meg are safe.”

  “Who’s there?” came his wife’s voice. “Who’s come at this hour?”

  “Let us in, good man,” pleaded Garth. “We come to help you in your need.”

  “How do I know it’s not a trap?”

  Muffled steps inside. “I asked you, Timothy, who comes to our door?’

  “Blacksmith’s daughter, Tess, and some other man.”

  “Lock it!” she cried.

  I jammed my foot in the doorsill. “Mistress Dulcy!” I spoke in a low tone. The street was abandoned so long after curfew; still, there were other shops and houses down the
lane. I had no wish to alert anyone to our presence. “We have good news about your Tom, if only you would let us in.”

  At this the old woman flung the door open. We entered the cold room, the fire having long since been doused, for Old Weaver and his wife had gone to bed. Weaver held a guttering candle; in its inconstant glow we four huddled in the entryway, barking words, our breath white with the cold, till Dulcy led us into her kitchen and lit the fire.

  I spied Alice sleeping in the corner on the kitchen settle. She looked cozy under her thick blankets and did not waken when the fire was lit nor when we argued at the table. Garth said Tom and Meg were safe, though he did not say where they hid. This was for the old couple’s safety as much as our own. The weaver looked relieved, but his wife went fitful when we said what we’d come for.

  “You mun not take the child,” Dulcy cried, standing between us and the settle and spreading out her arms.

  I stepped closer, my feet stirring the rushes on the floor. “Alice belongs with Meg, Mistress Dulcy. You know she needs her mother.”

  “And what do we say when folk ask where Alice has gone?” asked Old Weaver. The man had a brain.

  I laid a hand on his table. “You know the abbey south of us in Brigidshire? Say she’s gone to live with the nuns there at Saint Brigid’s Abbey.”

  Weaver’s wife grabbed the poker. “Out!” she screamed. “Now!”

  The noise woke Alice. Sitting up, she pulled the coverlet to her chin and peeked out like a frightened little mouse. “Gamma?” she moaned to the old woman, fat tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Hush, now, Alice,” “Gamma” warned, waving her poker at us.

  “Hear us,” I insisted. “We have a good plan that will be safe for all. You are caring grandparents, I don’t doubt it, but Alice must miss her mother. I know Meg and Tom miss her desperately. Let us take her to her parents. For your part, you can’t say she simply went away, or Lady Adela could send the law to track her down and find Tom. Think on it,” I urged. Then in a whisper so as not to fright the child, I said, “Say you took her to Saint Brigid’s. You know the law could not touch her there.” The abbey was famous for having schooled Queen Rosalind’s mother; still, for all its fame, it was a safe place set aside for God’s work and cloistered from the world.