The Hermit of Lammas Wood

by Nathan Lowell

  She pulled the bedroll up to her chin and curled up on her side. She closed her eyes once more and did her best to ignore the gossipy trees.

  Chapter Twenty-seven:

  Into The Woods

  The smell of smoke woke her and she opened her eyes to see Gertie, her bedding draped over her shoulders, feeding the fire. A watery dawn sky hovered just above the tree tops. “Morning.”

  “Yes, dearie. It is. The trees have been full of news this morning, but nothing about whatever’s going on to the south.”

  Tanyth sat up and pulled her boots on. “I know what’s happening in the south, but if I don’t find a bush right now, I’ll be walkin’ with wet pants all day.”

  Gertie gave a girlish giggle. “I used that one over there.” She nodded her head at a nearby stand of juniper bushes.

  Tanyth didn’t take long and soon rejoined her at the fire. “There’s some kinda dig goin’ on down there. A tunnel under the waterfall, if I’m any judge.”

  Gertie raised her eyebrows. “A dig?”

  “That’s what it looked like.” She pulled the pot away from the fire with a stick and popped the lid open. The oatmeal inside steamed a bit in the chill morning air, wafting the scent of nutty grain to mingle with the wood smoke. “A tunnel or something dug into the cliff face.”

  “You had a dream?”

  Tanyth nodded. “An owl I met on the way out from Northport. She wasn’t happy where there were so many people, so she headed south. Went all the way to the coast, apparently.”

  “What do you mean, so many people?” Gertie asked, accepting a portion of the oatmeal in her travel bowl.

  “We left Northport without the garrison commandant’s permission. A squad of troopers showed up on our trail. The owl saw them and decided she didn’t like ’em.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  Tanyth blinked and tried to count the nights on her fingers. “I’m not sure. Time’s been kinda strange lately. Maybe five or six days. I don’t really know for sure.”

  “They didn’t follow you, though?”

  “After we dropped into Black Rock Canyon, we never saw them again. Penny thought they may have turned south and followed the rim of the canyon on a patrol or somethin’.”

  “Why would they do that?” Gertie asked. “The garrison’s only for local support, not patrollin’ out here in the hinterlands.”

  “No idea, but maybe they was looking for some sign of why a dead guy showed up on the road into town.”

  Gertie snorted. “That’s a pretty common thing, I’m sad to say.”

  “Not when the corpse was supposed to be lost at sea months before.”

  Gertie put her spoon down in her bowl and sat up straight. “Lost at sea?”

  “Yeah. His ship was reported lost at sea with all hands a few days before Rebecca and I got to Kleesport. That was days before the Call. The ship was supposed to be headed east and south, not north. Anyway, weeks later, the same guy shows up as a fresh corpse on the road into Northport.”

  Gertie’s head started bobbing forward and back. “Of course. Lost at sea.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “The trees have been talkin’ about ships lost at sea. I didn’t get it before. They’re not always the sharpest splinters in the woodpile, trees. I think the winds have something to do with keeping them confused and stirred up.”

  Tanyth laughed in spite of herself.

  Gertie grinned back at her. “Yeah. That sounded wrong, didn’t it?”

  “I see why we’ll need to live alone. Anybody hearin’ us talk like this would think we’d gone mad.”

  “True, but what if they’re not lost at sea?”

  “Who?”

  “The ships. What if some of them actually come ashore?”

  “All right.” Tanyth closed her eyes. Something lurked on the edge of her memory. “Insurance.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Yeah. Captain Groves kept talkin’ about the insurance company sinkin’ ships that didn’t have insurance to convince more shippers to buy it.”

  “Well, that explains some of them, but what’s that got to do with a hole in the cliff down south?”

  “I don’t know,” Tanyth said. “But one of the crew also said that some of the ships weren’t actually sunk but beached somewhere and the cargo stolen. Then the insurance companies would sell the stolen goods for a little extra profit.”

  Gertie shook her head. “That makes no sense. What about the crews? The ships?”

  “Well, they assumed the crew got a long walk off a short pier somewhere, with rocks for water wings.” Tanyth stared into the fire. “What if they didn’t?”

  “You think they’re in that hole in the cliff?”

  “It would make sense. They’d have to be somewhere and that bay looked pretty remote.”

  “There’s just straight cliff down to the water,” Gertie said. “I saw it once. Winters ago now, but there’s no place to land. Really. It goes straight down. That’s why that bay never got developed. No way up to the top of the cliffs and no way to land at the foot, even if there was.”

  “You saw it yourself?”

  “Yeah. From the top. I took a trip down one summer to see the waterfall. It’s really only a couple of days from the valley. Maybe three.”

  “What about in winter?”

  “What about in winter?” Gertie asked.

  “I assume it freezes over?”

  “All the other bays do, but what good is that?”

  “Something the garrison commandant said about Rebecca’s father bein’ in town until the very last minute. He had to take a sledge out to the ice dock.”

  Gertie took a spoon full of the oatmeal and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty common in the fall. Stretches the season a bit.”

  “What if they built an ice dock there? At the bay?”

  Gertie frowned. “From the water side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’d be dangerous. You can’t just sail a ship up to the edge of the ice.”

  “No, but you could row a small boat.”

  “Well, sure, but why?”

  “If you had an ice dock floating in the open ocean, put a rope on it and tow it to the edge of the ice with a small boat. Install it on the ice and then you can land whatever you want. Supplies, men, stolen merchandise.”

  Gertie gasped. “Then just use sledges to drag it up the bay.”

  “Yeah. And use the ice as a beach in the winter. Carve a cave out of the rock down there and you’ve got a place to land in the summer. Use the tailings from the dig to build up the landing area.”

  “That’s a lot of work for a little stolen property, isn’t it?” Gertie asked.

  Tanyth frowned. “Yeah, seems like there should be an easier way.”

  Gertie finished the oatmeal in her bowl and washed it down with a swig of cooling tea. “We’ll just have to go take a look, won’t we?”

  Tanyth looked up at the rapidly brightening sky. “Yeah. I guess we will.”

  Gertie rolled up bedding while Tanyth rinsed out their dishes in the pond. By the time the sun began shining through the treetops to the east, they’d put a mile behind them.

  “One thing bothers me a bit,” Tanyth said after a while.

  “What’s that?”

  “What’ll we do when we get there?”

  Gertie smiled at her over a shoulder. “We’ll just have to figger that out when we get there, won’t we?”

  “Yeah. S’pose so.” Tanyth revisited the dream in her mind. The details felt faded and worn, but one thing remained crystal clear. The cave held a lot of men. Whoever ran that operation wouldn’t be thrilled by having two meddling busybodies sticking their noses in.

  They walked in silence for most of the morning. Just before noon they broke out of the spruces and into an enormous stand of oak and maple. After the closed-in spruce trees, the space between the boles and the clear understory made Tanyth’s shoulders itch from the expos
ure.

  A boggy swale at the foot of a blowdown made Gertie stop. “Fiddlehead greens,” she said, pointing at the tightly curled baby ferns. “We should stop on the way back and pick some, don’t ya think?”

  Tanyth huffed a short laugh. “Assumin’ we get to come back this way.”

  Gertie turned her face toward Tanyth, Squeek’s tiny black eyes shining like polished onyx in the dappled light from the canopy. “This is the path. Why wouldn’t we?”

  Tanyth shook her head. “If those people...” She paused and started again. “If they’re willin’ to hijack ships, kidnap crews, and steal the cargoes, then these pirates aren’t gonna quibble over tossin’ a couple of old ladies into the drink to keep ’em quiet.”

  Gertie’s head bobbed up and down every so slowly. “Then if they catch us, we’ll wanna make sure they keep thinkin’ of us as a couple of old ladies, won’t we.”

  Tanyth laughed again and nodded. “Well, old lady, let’s get our poor arthritic bones movin’. It’s almost noon and I need a sit down and a cuppa tea before we go much farther.”

  “I like that idea, myself,” Gertie said and turned her steps south once more. “This time tomorrow we’ll be at the coast.”

  “That’s fast.”

  “It’s not all that far and we’re makin’ good time.”

  “I thought you said two or three days.”

  “Tomorrow would be two days and a bit. It’ll take longer goin’ back because we’ll wanna harvest some of those fiddleheads, and I’ve seen a bushel of purslane as we’ve been walkin’.”

  “Greens?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who brought the subject up.”

  “Sorry. It just struck me funny.”

  “You’re doing good, dearie. I remember my first week up here and I was a wreck. Course, I didn’t have your advantages of travel and all. I just came in from Northport.”

  Tanyth shook her head and kept walking.

  Above her a faint breeze sighed through the spring leaves but the trees offered nothing to dampen Tanyth’s anxiety.

  Chapter Twenty-eight:

  More Lessons

  They made camp that night in the rock and mud-caked roots of a blown-down oak. A narrow brook blubbed and chattered nearby. Even before they got their own fire started, Tanyth smelled the tang of smoke and humans drifting in the breeze.

  “Sure we should be lightin’ a fire this close?” she asked.

  “Dearie, you worry enough for both of us.” Gertie’s voice carried the first hint of exasperation that Tanyth had heard from her during the whole journey.

  “Well, if we can smell their fires...”

  Gertie turned her face up toward Tanyth’s. “We can smell theirs because the wind’s onshore and blowin’ it into our faces. They’re still half, three-quarters of a day south. They’re not gonna smell anythin’ over the stench they’re makin’ themselves.”

  Tanyth accepted the old woman’s assurances, but continued to scan the trees around them until the deepening dusk made moving shadows of solid wood.

  “You gonna make tea?” Gertie asked.

  “What?”

  Gertie pointed a stick at the kettle bubbling away in the fire pit, loose drops hissing and sizzling as they escaped onto the hot coals. “Tea?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Tanyth tossed some leaves into the pot and focused on getting the sticks and twigs out from under her bedroll. She jumped a little when Gertie’s hand reached out of the dimness with a piece of bread wrapped around a hunk of sausage.

  “That’d be better warmed over the fire, but I’m too hungry to wait,” Gertie said, her quiet voice barely louder than the snapping flames in their tiny fire.

  Tanyth took the food and settled herself. “Sorry. I been a bit nerved up.”

  “Trust the All-Mother, dearie. She’s stood by me all this time. And you, too, if you think about it.”

  Tanyth took a bite of the dry, chewy bread and nodded. “Yeah. All true.”

  A gust of evening wind rattled through the branches over their heads and Tanyth cocked an ear, trying to hear.

  “Trees are terrible gossips,” Gertie said.

  “Did they speak to you?”

  “No.” She bite off the words and spit it out. “That’s what make’s ’em terrible. Like I said before, they only speak when you’d just as soon they shut up and seems like they never talk when you need ’em to.” She threw a small stick into the fire. “Where’s your owl? She might have a better view.”

  Tanyth shrugged. “Dunno. Could be anywhere. Including back at Black Rock Canyon.”

  Gertie shook her head and signed. “Not what I meant. See if you can get an image from her. You know. Like you did with the sparrow hawk back at the cottage.”

  “But I knew where the sparrow hawk was.”

  “I’ll grant you that, but just close your eyes and try. Humor an old lady, for pity’s sake.”

  Tanyth sighed and closed her eyes. “You’re gonna play that old lady card once too often,” she muttered.

  Beside her in the dimness, Gertie chuckled softly. “You started it, dearie. Don’t blame me.”

  Tanyth grinned in the dark. She had the right of it. “Hush. I’m tryin’ to concentrate.”

  Gertie tsked once but didn’t speak.

  Tanyth stilled her breathing and tried to focus on the feeling of the owl. She drew the memories of her dreams close and pushed herself out, seeking the feisty bird. After several long moments, she sighed and opened her eyes. “I don’t have the knack of it yet.”

  Gertie patted her knee. “You’ll get there, dearie. Just you wait.”

  Tanyth poured the tea and Gertie shared out another bit of the dried sausage and bread.

  “How much of that did you bring, anyway?” Tanyth asked.

  “Enough sausage for a few days. The bread’ll be gone tomorrow. How much tea we got?”

  Tanyth grinned in the dark. “Enough to go and get back and a couple of weeks besides.”

  “That’s all?” The disappointment was clear in Gertie’s voice.

  “I left some back at the cottage. I thought we’d be traveling light and home again soon.”

  “As we shall, dearie. You wait and see.”

  They sipped tea and nibbled their meal, quiet as the mouse in Gertie’s hair.

  “How’s Squeek holdin’ up?” Tanyth asked.

  “Squeek?”

  “Your eyes. How’s he holding up? Don’t they trade off when you’re at the cottage?”

  “Oh, yeah. They do. This isn’t my Squeek.” She waved a hand toward her head. “She’s a lovely little forest mouse that joined us this morning.”

  “You collectin’ them as we go?”

  Gertie giggled. “I told ya the li’l buggers like me. There’s mice everywhere. Surprising what you can see if you know where to look.”

  “So, why’d you have me lookin’ for my owl if you can look with mice?”

  “Just to see if you could do it yet.”

  “Did the mice see anything?”

  “Nobody within half a mile of us here.” Gertie finished her tea and dug out her canteen. “Little cider for dessert?”

  Tanyth drained her own cup and held it out. “Just a splash. Maybe the trees’ll be more talkative.”

  Gertie’s smile gleamed in the firelight.

  They sat quietly, sipping around the fire as the night wore on. Eventually Gertie rolled into her blanket with a mumbled “G’night.”

  Tanyth watched the moon through the canopy of new leaves. The dappled light seemed to fill the forest around them. In moonlight, Tanyth’s night vision was enough to fill in some of the gaps. A doe and fawn crossed through the forest downwind of them, silently gliding from moonlit patch to moonlit patch. They disappeared into the undergrowth with no more noise than Gertie’s quiet snores.

  Above her the trees sighed in the night wind. Tanyth stiffened as they whispered. Two young women rest comfortably in camp. Several men camp near the coast a
day west of the town. Far away a raven cawed and Tanyth couldn’t tell if it was something she heard or a whisper on the wind.

  She sighed and rolled into her own blankets, pushing the pot of oatmeal closer to the faint coals. At least they’d have a warm breakfast before they faced whatever the new day brought them.

  The cold moonlight splashed across the river and over the field. A faint breeze bobbed last year’s seed heads, casting shadows that made hunting difficult. She dropped from her perch and soared a few feet above the grasses, her ears focused on finding a rustling that feet made. The stench from the humans reached her clearly. In her focus on the hunt, she sailed over the cliff’s edge and saw the gleaming ocean far, far below. A red glow came from the cave and illuminated the falling water.

  A movement on the cliff’s edge made her wheel and soar back over land. Two men huddled in a crude nest at the top of the dropoff. Her eyes picked out a line of them around the end of the bay. No wonder the hunting was so bad.

  One of the men turned to look up at her, his pale skin shining in the moonlight. She flexed her wings and drove herself almost down to the grasses and skimmed them silently until she was able to glide into the forest yards away from where the men waited and watched.

  Tanyth cracked an eyelid and considered the fire. It wasn’t low enough to feed or high enough to be seen. With a sigh she rolled over and pulled her blankets up around her ears. “Damn fool bird,” she muttered.

  Chapter Twenty-nine:

  Intruders

  Morning crackled with cold. Tanyth’s breath blew foggy clouds into the still air. She found a single glowing coal in the bottom of their fire pit and blew a few small flames to life with the help of a twist of dried grass.

  “Yer bones didn’t hurt last night?” she asked.

  Gertie shook her head, blinking her eyes. “They hurt this mornin’. Weather’s comin’.”

  “Weather’s here. What’s comin’ next?”

  “Hang on, dearie. My mousies haven’t caught up with me yet.” Gertie put her arm down and a gray streak zipped out of the leaf litter and around her shoulder. “There we go.” She turned her head back and forth, scanning the area.