The Keldares themselves share stories about a very old, very dark magic, pockets of which still exist in the world. Some believe this bitter magic is the origin of the Dark Creatures….
The page darkened, and she looked up to see a cluster of trees looming ominously over the road. It wasn’t the ancient, tangled forest of Equane, but even sparse woods made her uneasy. The sun was setting, casting long red shadows.
At that moment, the wagon suddenly lurched to the left.
Hard.
Emeline fell forward and grabbed hold of Dada’s shirt. The boys yelled, the horses whinnied, and Fish swore.
“Bless water!” he shouted. “What was that?”
Dada jumped out of the lopsided wagon, landing with a thump. “It’s a hole! The front wheel’s sunk in.”
Emeline straightened up and leaned over the side while Fish climbed out and joined Dada. It looked to her like the wheel was half-hidden in the ground.
“A couple spokes cracked,” Fish said, crouching down. “I can bind them up in no time and then we can push it out of there. Just let me get my tools.”
“Why’d we have to break a wheel here?” Dale muttered nervously. He and Aladane stared up at the trees in the fading light.
“Fish will fix it fast,” she said, more confidently than she felt. “Let’s eat some supper, Dale. Get our food bundle.” He climbed over the seat and into the back.
“I just don’t see how this hole came about naturally,” Dada was saying as Fish worked on the wheel next to him. “It looks like it was covered up with all this loose dirt.”
Suddenly, Fish stood up straight, his arm pointed across the road. It took Emeline a second to realize that his spring-gun was in his hand.
Emerging like shadows from between the trees were two men, watching them. A chill crept over her. Aladane dropped the sandwich he’d just unwrapped, spilling sliced onions and dandelion greens onto the wagon floor.
“Now, don’t get all jumpy,” one of the men said. He was as pale as his companion was dark, both of them bone-thin and wearing dirty, ragged tunics. It was hard to see their faces as the sun dropped farther behind the trees.
“We just want to help,” the other one said.
“You dug a hole and laid a trap,” Dada said evenly. Fish had not moved an inch.
“Now, that isn’t kind. We’re just poor folk, scrapping it out in the woods,” the second man said with a trace of sarcasm.
“If you think this little grove is a wood, then you don’t know much,” Fish huffed.
“We know you got food and money,” the first man snapped back.
“Not one step closer,” Fish said quietly.
Emeline held her breath. Dale was pale and serious; Aladane’s mouth hung open.
“Look at that sweet thing in the wagon,” the first man said with a short laugh. “Give us some food, heart?” Emeline turned to stare at him, not quite sure that he was addressing her. He gave her a leer that confirmed it.
Dada bristled, but Fish put his free hand on his arm. “Don’t talk to her!” he growled.
“Look at that gold on her arm,” the second man told his companion. They turned slightly toward each other, conspiring. “Keldare gold? Might be worth something.”
Emeline gasped and glared at them.
“I’ll hold them,” Fish told Dada. “You try to push the wagon out.”
“ ‘Hold us’? You sure we’re alone?” one of the men asked mockingly.
“There’s another one!” Dale exclaimed.
Emeline jerked around to see a third man standing on the other side of the road, his spring-gun pointed straight at the wagon. Aladane made a strangled noise.
This man wore a black coat, his hat flat and low over his face. There was a long, tense silence; Emeline could hear a distant bird chirping, and her heart pounding in her ears. Before this moment, she’d never really thought about the fact that spring-guns could kill.
The man finally spoke, and his tone was lazy, almost unconcerned. “Well now, it seems like someone’s gonna get shot, doesn’t it?”
Then Mister Fish shot him.
Emeline shrieked. Dada yelled, “Down! Get down!”
She threw her arm around the boys and dragged them with her onto the wagon floor. Another shot whistled through the air. There was a shout; someone cursing; the noise of feet pounding. Her muscles clenched, listening, and as the sound of running faded, she realized how loudly the boys were breathing against her.
After a moment, a low, relieved whistle broke the stillness. “He was the only one that had a spring-gun,” Fish said, sounding shaken.
Emeline popped her head up, relief flooding her at the sound of his voice. Fish and Dada stood there unhurt, shoulders slumped, facing toward the trees. She didn’t see the thieves anywhere.
“How did you know the others didn’t have one?” Dada asked, incredulous.
Fish shook his head. “Not a lot of places to hide one in those rags they were wearing. One had a knife in his belt, but nothing else. Boots neither.”
“Look! Mister Fish killed him!” Aladane yelled.
He and Dale had popped up next to Emeline and scrambled to that side of the wagon to look. The third man was sprawled in the grass, his hat lying nearby. The other two, unarmed, must have run away. They hadn’t expected Fish to actually shoot anyone, and neither had she.
“Don’t look!” she told the boys, but they ignored her, fascinated.
“He got him in the eye!” her brother called out.
“Fish is a crack shot!” Aladane cried admiringly.
Emeline looked—she couldn’t help herself—but she wished she hadn’t. The man’s legs were splayed out, his long dirty feet bare. Why, she wondered, did people use spring-guns to hurt each other? Why had this man been willing to shoot them? Her stomach curdled. She never wanted to see a spring-gun again.
“You took a huge risk!” Dada was standing with his hands balled into fists, glaring. “What if you’d been wrong and those two had started firing? What would’ve happened to my children, Fish?”
“Now, calm down, Bird,” Fish said, irritated. He tucked his spring-gun back in his belt and turned away. “Don’t lecture me, I’ve got children too. But I wasn’t wrong and we’re all safe.”
“You killed a man! We had nothing to take but food! Would it not have been better to let them have it?”
Fish rounded on him, defiant. “You think they would’ve left us alone if we had? Don’t be naïve, Bird. You heard what he said. If I hadn’t shot him, he would’ve shot one of us, or worse.” Emeline and the boys watched apprehensively.
Dada said nothing, but his jaw was clenched. Finally, he turned away and glared instead at the broken wagon wheel. “Let’s fix this wheel and leave this place behind,” he said.
“What about the dead man?” Dale asked. Fish frowned and looked down at the man he’d shot, his expression softening. He shook his head.
“Well, I’m not hanging around to bury him,” he said. “He’ll have to stay right where he is.”
* * *
Night fell, and the five of them ate their suppers in the dark, a lantern swinging from the front of the wagon. Its glow made Emeline think of a giant firefly floating along with them.
Had a man really died today? Crickets sang peacefully all around.
Dada was silent and seemed to be brooding, but Fish was whistling, almost as if he shot thieves every day. Dale and Aladane plagued him with spring-gun questions. Emeline suspected that he was only pretending to be so cavalier.
“If you use poison darts, but you hit someone in the foot, will it still kill them?” Dale wanted to know.
“That depends on how much poison is in it,” Fish answered.
“I heard certain kinds’ll kill you if they get you in the finger!” Aladane said with his mouth full. Eme
line frowned at him. “It’s true!”
“Maybe it is, but you don’t have to sound so excited about it. I guess we should keep our armbands covered, Dale,” she told her brother. He nodded and slid his hand over one of his protectively.
“Maybe we should keep you covered,” Aladane told her with a grin. “You’re the ‘sweet thing in the wagon.’ ” Emeline’s fist shot out before she knew it and punched him in the arm. “Ow!”
“Aladane, be quiet!” Dada thundered.
“That wasn’t very sweet,” Aladane grumbled. Dale laughed at him, his own mouth full.
“Emeline will be just fine, Bird,” Fish said quietly. He patted Dada on the back.
“Of course I will,” Emeline said, more confidently than she felt.
“I’ve got my eye on her for one of my boys anyway!” the big farmer declared, turning back to give her a smile. Emeline flushed and grimaced, remembering the wink his son had given her at the meeting.
“Eww,” Dale said.
“Over my dead body,” Dada told Fish.
“I know, I know.” Fish grinned and went back to whistling.
Emeline turned her red face up to the relief of the stars above them, patchy and swirly in the dark clouds. She had not really thought before that grown men might stare at her. Where was Sessa now, to tell her she was ugly? She would’ve welcomed that over the leers of strangers on the road. And she didn’t even want to think about marrying one of Fish’s sons.
They rode on long into the night, and the brilliant globe of the moon rose above them, casting silvery light onto the road and the dark hills around. The boys climbed into the back of the wagon and lay there whispering for a while before Dale started up his snoring. Emeline yawned and wrapped her cloak around herself tighter.
It was so odd to be out under the stars late at night. No roof, no walls, just the wagon wheels rolling underneath them. It gave her a thrill to think that, from a distance, they were just a tiny moving light in the darkness—like a real firefly.
“What do you think old Olvinde will say?” Fish was asking her father. Dada was smoking his pipe, blowing out the smoke into the darkness.
“I don’t think he’ll tell us if he plans to do anything about it,” he replied. “He’ll probably just thank us and send us home.”
“But what about the village?” Fish lowered his voice and added, “We’re not safe if there are creatures in the woods. He’s got to send us someone to investigate. Or better, men with arms! Knights, even.”
“Only if he believes us,” Dada said, puffing on his pipe.
“Well, we have proof, don’t we? As much as I hate to believe it myself, the Theurgists are right!”
Emeline watched Dada tap his pipe and shake his head. “Do we really have proof? We have the testimony of two children, and the Sapients are likely to say they imagined it. They don’t know that Em’s no flighty child.”
That’s not all they don’t know, Emeline thought, nervously staring down at her hands.
Fish turned to look at Dada in the dim lantern glow. “And what about that smell, Bird? We’ve got testimony too.”
“I don’t know what they’ll make of that.”
“Well, I’ll convince them,” Fish declared. “I won’t be laughed at by some feuding council, just for telling the truth.”
Dada didn’t say anything for a moment. “So you believe in magic then?” he asked him. Emeline held her breath, listening.
“I don’t know if I believe in all kinds of magic. I like to stick to things I can see with my own eyes, or things I can dig up out of the ground. But what we smelled in the woods that day…that was like nothing I ever smelled.” Fish shuddered. “There is something unnatural in there, and that is a fact. So, if the Theurgists say it’s the Ithin, then I’ll throw my hat in.”
“That’s about where I am too,” Dada said. “Airlinna used to get quiet whenever I brought up things like this, like she knew some things she didn’t want to say.” Emeline’s ears pricked at the mention of her mother.
“Like what?” Fish asked. “Keldare stories?”
“Maybe. I know she believed the Sapients were too narrow-minded, at least.”
“Well, her kind have all sorts of stories the Sapients would throw out. I still remember when she and her mama showed up at the village gates,” Fish said with a grin. “All bone-white and black-haired and carrying everything they owned on their backs.” Dada laughed suddenly and Emeline’s heart warmed at the sound.
“I don’t think anyone expected them to settle in so easily. But they wanted to stop traveling. You know, Airlinna never would tell me all the places they’d been to. I think there were some adventures she didn’t want to share,” Dada said wistfully.
Dale snored suddenly and Dada turned back to see Emeline listening. She reached behind herself and pushed at Dale until he rolled over.
Her father went quiet, smoke drifting past him. She wanted to hear more about when he and Mama first met, but she was afraid to ask. She had never asked, because she hated to see the sorrow in his eyes.
She sighed, yawned, and, after a moment, squeezed down in between Dale and the side of the wagon. Then all she could see was the vast black sky floating above. She wondered if Mama’s blue eyes—vast and deep in their own way—looked down on her from up there. And what Mama would tell her, if she could, about magic.
think that’s Hollolen,” someone was saying. “Or Blyne, they’re both right around here.” It was Dale’s voice. Emeline’s eyes opened; she was lying on her side in the back of the wagon.
The sun was so bright that she winced and shaded her eyes.
Mister Fish was stretched out asleep next to her, his hat covering his face, and Dada was driving. She had a hazy memory of the wagon stopping in the night, and Fish brushing down the horses, but nothing else.
“Wait, I brought a spyglass,” Aladane said, excited. He climbed over Emeline and she sat up with a start. “Sorry, sorry.”
Stiffly, she rinsed out her mouth with water from a canteen and spat it over the side of the wagon, then tried half-heartedly to smooth her curly hair. The boys were both wild-haired and wrinkled, but they didn’t seem to mind at all.
Aladane was climbing back onto the seat with Dale, clutching the short tube of a simple spyglass. He held it to his eye and peered at the smoking chimneys of the houses to the west. Emeline joined them, tearing into a piece of rough, dry bread. The cloudless sky was intensely blue.
She could see buildings in the distance, the smoke from their rooftops drifting lazily into the sky. It was a strange sight after riding through so much emptiness, and she craned for a better look. Past them were the beginnings of what looked like woods.
“Why are the cottages smoking?” Aladane asked.
“They do their cooking inside,” Dada said from the front seat. “In fireplaces.”
“Sounds dangerous.” Aladane turned north, still glued to his spyglass.
“Don’t I get to look?” Dale asked.
“It’s Blyne up ahead for sure! It’s big! I see a lot more houses.” Aladane passed Dale the spyglass. “It’s a real town, Dale, look!”
“Let me see after you,” Emeline said, watching her brother. He nodded, squinting, as Aladane flipped through their maps again.
“I’ve got to remember all these names, so I can talk about them when we get back,” he said happily.
“You mean once you’re allowed to leave the house again?” Emeline asked, grinning. He sighed.
Dale handed Emeline the spyglass, grinning too. She held it to her eye.
The world leapt forward and warped itself into a bubble shape. She saw the reddish brown bricks of a building first, then shifted the glass half an inch to a small field of grass where geese were waddling. She turned her head and a blur of colors flashed by. There were the bricks of another large building
, and two men standing nearby, gesturing in conversation. Behind them was a steam-carriage.
Emeline gasped. It was much smaller than the king’s had been, and it was plain and mud-splashed, but it was still a steam-carriage. She stared at the tall wheels and the handled door in the side.
“All right, give it back now,” Aladane was saying. She hesitated, sweeping the lens over more buildings, some horses, and a large well.
“The cottages are so close together,” she said, pulling her eye from it at last. “The houses, I mean.” She gave the spyglass back and took another bite of bread.
“That’s what happens when you have so many people in one spot,” Dada told her.
“They must have a moat, with the woods so close,” she ventured.
“Look, Em, they do. The Hawking River isn’t far, either,” Dale said, showing her the map. The sight of the curving blue line on the cloth was a relief.
She thought of Equane with a sudden ache in her heart. It was so small, and nestled so close to the forest—true, deep forest—where something terrifying lurked. She just hoped the moat would keep it at bay.
But if children could get across…
It was late afternoon when Fish woke up and mumbled about being stiff all over. He dragged himself up and swung his long legs over the bench seat, crowding the boys, then settled onto the front seat next to Dada. Emeline handed him some food.
“We’ll have to see if they make a cure for snoring in the capital,” he announced, giving Dale a frown. Dada chuckled.
“Now you know what I hear every night,” Emeline told him.
“It’s not my fault!” Dale insisted.
“Nothing can wake me up. My mama says I sleep like the dead,” Aladane said cheerfully.
“If something happens at night, then, we’ll just leave you,” Dale told him. Aladane scowled.
* * *
The sun was setting as the wagon rolled into Blyne. They passed under a large wooden archway, the brick buildings crowding close on either side. The houses here were tall and square, not smoothly rounded like Equanian cottages, and there were bright lanterns shining through the windows. Some had wide porches, and a few had painted signs above their doors. Emeline squinted to read the lettering in the twilight: BUTCHER, SADDLER, FARRIER, TAILOR.
Between the Water and the Woods Page 5