The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  Ruby shook her head. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “What? Kill me? No, I know. You just meant to take something special away from me.”

  It had been wrong. And Avid was right. “I don’t know why I did it, Avid. I—” Was she going to cry? She was not going to cry. Not in front of this one. Ruby clamped down. “I’m sorry.” Ruby looked down at Avid’s fist. “We going to fight now?”

  Avid gave her a look. “Burk told me.”

  “What?”

  “You saved me, too.”

  “So?”

  Avid’s brows furrowed. “I—I do not understand you.”

  Ruby chuckled low and without humor. “There is a club. I believe they are having patches made.”

  Wake kept her eyes on Ruby as she crossed to the trap, as if she were some kind of hunting cat. She went down without a word.

  The moon crept out from behind the bank of clouds: a white disk under a gray blanket.

  Ruby tried to turn herself into a ladder.

  It didn’t work.

  CHAPTER 23

  Make the Wilderness a Garden? Are you mad? The flora and fauna of this land are rich beyond measure. Full of wild, heated life we have not yet seen. Explore it? Absolutely. Live in it, revel in it. But if you try to tame it, you will kill it.

  —Dr. James Sutherland, fellow, Royal Society

  Ash gets in your breeches.

  Cram shook out his leg to try to coax the ash out, but the shaking just drove it all deeper. It was everywhere: in his hair, in his nose, in his armpits, and let us not forget the breeches, including parts that Mam said never to talk about in polite company. Lady Athena and the professor looked like ancient warriors from the homeland Mam had told stories on, covered head to toe, except it weren’t blue dye they were wearing. It was gray-black, like they had taken baths in a charcoal pit.

  And it itched. Oh, Providence, it itched.

  He tore his scarf from his face. “I can’t take it,” he said. “Milady, please.”

  “Cram, I said no.”

  “I beg of you, mistress of mine, I will do for you whatever you desire, I will slay demons, I will carry mountains, I will float you on my back across the River of Hell itself if you only, for goodness’ sake, and for the respect of my childrens and grandchildrens, and because I know you are at heart a goodly person, if you only scratch this little place below my shoulders.” He turned to her, hoping that his pose of helplessness might stir some tiny little fire in her stern and iron heart.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  Athena stopped on the slope and turned around, kicking up a small puff of ash and debris. She pulled down the handkerchief covering her mouth and spat. “Cram, please. If I scratch that place, you will simply itch worse. Henry Collins is your warning. Look there.”

  The professor was bringing up the rear, and he did indeed have his long arm out of its sleeve and was scratching his back as if it were a fiddle at a barn raising. When he noticed them watching, he stopped. “What?”

  “I see your point,” said Cram.

  They forged on. Behind him Henry cursed under his breath in very unscholarlike tones.

  The fire had burned for three days, and when they finally could cut loose from the beaver lodge, they had emerged into a blasted world: grass, trees, bushes, even animals scraped from it like the icing from a cake. Only blackened trunks, the bones of the hills, and ash, ash, ash lay underneath. In an odd way it made the journey easier. The thorn brakes and switchbacks were gone, and their path to the hilltop lay bare in front of them.

  Course, the toad in the pudding was what happened to them others. Winnie Black and the captain had more sand and more sense than most folk Cram’d ever met, but worry tugged at him nevertheless. Had they been burned? Had they been caught? He tried to soothe the little voice inside him that ranted on such things, but it kept telling tales of roastings and battles until he had to pinch himself to stop it even for a moment.

  Two days had passed since they left the lodge. It was a lifeless trek. The animals were the smart ones, and they had skinned out but good. There were still scattered fires everywhere, so they risked a fire one night, and he had tried to make rubaboo, but it tasted more like boiled pitch than Miss Winnie’s magical pemmican stew.

  It was climbing all day long, sometimes knee deep in ash drifts.

  Up ahead Athena topped a slope and stopped for a moment.

  She gave a whoop and disappeared.

  “Professor!” Cram called back to Henry, and started running, and then he started coughing while he was running, but he had to keep going. Fire was in his lungs by the time he got to the top, and he saw what evil had taken his mistress.

  It was a little pond in a meadow full of tall grass and big yellow flowers. Lady Athena stood neck deep in it, shooting up a jet of water out of her mouth like a whale. It lay on the middle of a wide plain where the fire seemed to have finally, blessedly burned itself out. Cram let out his own yawp and then shucked his buckskins as if they were burning, down to his drawers. He lit out down the burned-out slope, across the ashy field, into the green spring grass, then into the air, spinning down into the water. Oh, it was cold. He yelled as he came up for air, and then he had to duck again as Henry Collins, gimpy leg and all, barreled in behind him. They splashed and laughed like wee children. Cram hadn’t laughed like this in a long, long time.

  The flat hilltop loomed above. They had arrived.

  The sun still rode high in the sky, so after they had washed themselves, they scrubbed their leathers within an inch of their leathery lives and hung them up to dry in a big maple tree. The pond was fed by a creek at one end and then drained by a creek at the other, and it stayed clear as Sunday morning.

  Henry Collins lifted Cram off his feet with a huge hug. “You did it, Cram!” He dropped him and turned to Athena. “The finest guide in all the land, Boyle! Double this man’s wages this instant!”

  Lady Athena was chewing on a long blade of grass like some farmer. “Brilliant, Cram.” She clapped him on the shoulder.

  Cram grinned so hard he feared his face would fall off. He had brought them there. He, and no other. Cram had got them to the lake in the fire. Cram had got them in the beaver dam. Something wriggled in his belly, but it wasn’t like when you had too much pemmican for supper. It was warm and strong. For the first time in his life he felt—what was the word for it? Equal. “Thank you, milady, Professor.” On the grass before him their shadows mixed with one another, hanging together, not apart. That made Cram even happier.

  A voice boomed down above. “Shut your yaps, children! This is a peaceful meadow!”

  As one the three of them looked back up the hillside. A dark figure stood there, carrying a staff. All other detail was blocked out by the glare of the setting sun. “When you are finished mawking and chattering, and after you have returned to your clothing, come up to the summit for tea.” The figure turned majestically and perambulated up the path. It was a grand effect, spoiled somewhat when the shape tripped and fell out of sight with a squawk.

  Cram licked his lips. “That weren’t Miss Winnie or the captain.”

  Lady A. drew her sword. “Apparently someone lives here.”

  “Someone clumsy enough to trip over his own feet.” The professor folded his arms. “Is that all you ever do? Draw your sword? Does this strike you as a dangerous moment?”

  “All moments are dangerous if you give them enough time,” she said.

  He blinked. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means that someone needs to protect us.”

  “Oh, really? And why is that?”

  “Because the world is dangerous.”

  Henry looked significantly at her sword. “Have you ever thought, milady, that perhaps the world is dangerous to you because you are preemptively dangerous to it?”

  “Pipe down.” A flock of birds erupted from one of the trees. The head of whoever it was had popped back into view. When they did not continue, it
popped back down again.

  Cram cleared his throat. “I think this may be a parley for another time.”

  “Fine,” Athena said, loud-like, and then, after Cram had jabbed her in the ribs, whispered, “Fine. But we must be on our guard, yes? We have not come through all this to be simply cursed or hexed by some savage shaman.” She sheathed her blade.

  Henry whispered, “I believe curse and hex may be the same thing. And why does it have to be a savage shaman? Have you ever met one of these savages you keep referring to? I’ll have you know that the people of this land that I have met in Philadelphi—”

  “Quiet. Please,” Cram hissed, and thrust his arms down at his side. They both looked at him as if he had grown four more arms. Someone had to make sense, and it would be neither of these two. But they stopped talking, so he turned and marched toward the hill before they could start up again.

  The path trailed across the meadow and then up and around, and just before it reached the summit, a little hollow was cut into the side of the hill. A cave yawned back into the earth, but on a patch of ground in front of it sat the largest rocking chair Cram had ever seen. It was rough-hewn from what appeared to be the trunks of small trees, held together with wire, thick rope, and in one spot a pair of underbreeches. In the rocking chair rocked the strangest of beasts: covered in gray, white, and black hair and vaguely man shaped. Two fangs thrust up from its lower jaw, and inside its marbled brown eyes lurked a strange intelligence. In one massive paw lay a tiny corncob pipe, and a wisp of smoke curled up from it.

  Henry said, “Very well, draw the sword.”

  Lady Athena’s hand flashed toward the hilt.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, laddie,” rumbled the creature. Cram’s brainpan was busy exploding, but he was fair certain that the whatever it was spoke with a deep, burry Scots brogue.

  Athena kept her hands out, palms up. “We come in peace.”

  The creaks of the rocking chair vibrated in Cram’s feet. “Very well, and a fine welcome to all three of you.” The creature stood up, towering over them, eight feet tall at least, and bowed.

  They stared at one another.

  “Em, pardon me for asking, but who are you?” asked Henry.

  Its head-size fist flashed toward them. Cram flinched and closed his eyes. This was the end. The professor soon to be headless, and Cram not far behind. When he opened his eyes, the hand was still there, hanging in front of Henry. “Doctor James Sutherland, pleased to meet you,” it said.

  The professor gingerly placed his hand into the mitt, and they shook. “Henry Collins, a pleasure,” he stuttered out. Cram thought that would be an appropriate time to faint.

  CHAPTER 24

  If you travel from me, still I will give you enough.

  Enough dates and figs for the journey,

  Enough water to reach the next well.

  —Taki, Ottoman poet, 1696

  Athena sat in the moonlight and committed murder. She killed, with great ferocity, a honey and acorn butter sandwich. Cram, Henry, and she were tearing through sandwiches, and there seemed to be an infinite supply. “Doctor Sutherland” puffed on his pipe and did not eat. Occasionally he licked at the back of his hand with a big black tongue.

  “How is your sandwich?” Doctor Sutherland asked.

  “Excellent, thank you,” she said. The claws on the beast could have torn her to ribbons, but he seemed delighted to experience their company.

  Athena shivered.

  “Perhaps you would prefer a fire, my dear?” The beast frowned. “I am so terribly sorry. Ever since, well, I acquired this fur, I have completely forgotten about the chills that take one in the night.”

  “No, thank you,” she said. Both Henry and Cram were looking at her, curiosity burning in their faces. Brashness did have its benefits. “Doctor Sutherland?”

  “Please, call me James.”

  “Very well, um, James.” She searched for the words. “I wish to cause you no offense, but I cannot help noticing that even though you have been incredibly hospitable to us, and even though your speech is that of a gentleman, and a highly educated one at that—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, to put it plainly, your body seems to be that of some kind of furry savage creature.”

  “Not that we are offended in any way,” Henry added.

  “No, indeed, sir!” Cram said through a mouthful of acorn butter. “Thankful and verily unoffended!”

  “The word you are searching for is yeti, my dear.”

  “Yeti?”

  “Indeed. Well, the Algonkin call them stone giants, or Ge no sgwa, but I am more partial to the Himalayan yeti. Rolls off the tongue, don’t you know. Let me explain.” He puffed on his pipe.

  “Well.” He puffed again and let out the smoke in a slow sigh around his massive fangs. “I can say this no other way. This yeti”—he clapped his paw on his chest—“ate Doctor James Sutherland.”

  Athena decided the best response would be to remain very still. “You ate him.”

  “Right up. Chomped straight through his skull and gobbled up his brain.” He tapped a fang. “This mouth is intolerably powerful, you see.”

  With a sheepish smile that revealed the whole of his impressive catalog of fangs, the yeti went on. “Well, Doctor Sutherland . . . or now me, I suppose, was a brilliant man. I blush to say it, but it is important, I think, for the story. A groundbreaking natural philosopher, he had traveled to the colonies from his native Scotland. He set up here in the woods, in this very cave, undertook some cracking research regarding the local flora, and then the yeti discovered him one stormy night and ate him. And somehow, Doctor Sutherland’s, well, self moved along with his more meaty parcels into this body. The yeti—I—changed. I collected acorns. I began to cultivate bees. And tobacco.” He held up his pipe. “I have a little garden plot down the way, you know. This landscape is absolutely rife with strange and exotic plants. It is why I decided to live here in the first place.” He placed a fond paw on the arm of the rocking chair. “I also built this.” The wood popped off with a crunch. “I am still perfecting my handicrafts.”

  Cram piped up. “Forgive me, sir, but . . . you ate him. That seems hardly fair play to me.”

  The great shaggy head nodded slowly. “I have thought on this long and hard, young master. When I ate Doctor Sutherland, I was doing what yetis do. Now, with my faculties and a robust helping of Doctor Sutherland’s particular philosophy, I am mortified and ashamed. Except . . . I am also the yeti, am I not?” He held up his paw, and sharp ebon talons eased out of it, shining in the moonlight. “Because I have these claws, should I therefore roar, beat my chest, slice you into morsels, and wolf you right down, you who are my new friends?”

  “We would prefer you did not.” Henry Collins chewed his lip.

  Athena didn’t answer. In her way she, too, wore a different skin.

  Silence fell. The doctor looked back and forth among the three of them and cleared his throat. “What about the lot of you then? What brings you travelers to this out-of-the-way place?”

  Athena smiled. This territory at least felt familiar. “We are meeting some friends here. Wayland Teach and Winnifred Pleasant Black.”

  He took a long pull on his pipe. “The woodswoman! Winnie is a fine lady. She must have sent you to me. You are welcome to all my hospitality until these friends of yours arrive.”

  They rested for five days on the hilltop. The doctor helped them resupply their food stores with acorn hard bread, flavored with berries and honey. It was a magnificent change after what Athena privately thought of as the Great Pemmican Death March. Sutherland and Cram went on long walks during which he apparently told Cram about mushrooms and edible plants and such. Cram seemed absolutely undisturbed that he was undertaking day trips with a man-eating creature. Sutherland did seem a yeti of his word, however, and made no sudden movements to consume them. Could the three of them have stopped him if they’d wanted to, powerful as he was? The helplessness off
ered Athena a strange kind of comfort. She slept well for the first time since they had left on their trip, and Cram and Henry looked fresher and more alive than they had since StiltTown.

  On the fifth day, two days past when the others were due, Athena went looking for Henry.

  He sprawled in the sun on the bank of the pond down in the meadow. One thing all that arm and leg was good for was sprawling. His boots lay on the grass, and he had shucked his buckskin overshirt in the midday heat, the collar of his cloth shirt open to the breeze. She stood by the trunk of the willow and watched him for a while. He had the journal out, and if a herd of elk had galumphed by, he would not have raised his head. She rolled her shoulders. She had come here for a reason.

  She sat down near him on the bank. After a moment he marked his page with care and sat up. He had a clumsy grace about him, like a yearling, still learning to walk.

  “Henry,” she said.

  “Boyle,” he said.

  “Will you not call me Athen?”

  He chewed his lip. “Very well.”

  Why was this hard? “I kicked you from the stairs.”

  He frowned. “Yes. Yes, you did.”

  She had to tell the truth. “I would do it again.”

  “So you have told me before. Thank you for dropping by to make certain I understood that.”

  “Wait. Henry— That is not—” She pulled some grass out of the ground.

  He opened his book back up, then closed it. “Boyle.”

  “Athen.”

  He made an mmf sound. “We do not need to be friends. We share a common mission, to rescue Ruby. You did what you felt needed to be done.”

  She cut in. “If you were in my position—”

  “I—” He bit back something angry. “Who knows?”

  Just then an animal, covered in ash so thick it was unidentifiable, came out of the waste beyond the creek. It dived into the lake without a moment’s thought of them. It splashed about, spit water, then got out. It shook the water from its coat, along with some more ash, then headed out through the grass.

  “What was that?” Athena asked.