The Silver Gate

by Kristin Bailey

  “I know she’s a chicken.” Elric had to fight to keep from shouting the words in his frustration. Elric picked up a stone and threw it at the bird. The hen fluttered up and landed on Wynn’s bundle of sticks.

  “Just get out of here, you worthless bird!” he shouted at the hen.

  “Leave her alone!” Wynn backed away from him, turning her shoulder so the bundle of sticks and the useless bird were as far from him as possible.

  Everything with his sister became more difficult when she decided to be stubborn. “Mildred shouldn’t be following us,” he insisted.

  “She likes me.” Wynn set off down the trail without him. The chicken’s upright tail pointed skyward like a jaunty flag of victory above the fluffy rump facing him. Wynn didn’t bother to look back. “You are wasting time,” she called, again borrowing his words.

  “Fine, have it your way,” Elric grumbled. The hen fluffed her black feathers and settled down on the swaying bundle of sticks. Once he got Wynn to the cloister, the hen wouldn’t matter. He just hoped the nuns wouldn’t immediately turn Mildred into soup.

  They continued on for hours through small patches of woods and the edges of muddy spring fields. Thankfully they saw no one. The only sound was Mildred softly clucking from her perch on Wynn’s stack of sticks, and Wynn singing the song of the Fairy Queen under her breath.

  “The road begins at my feet,

  And leads me ever on.

  To the land that lies between,

  The first light and the dawn.

  I seek the favor of the queen

  Within that magic land.

  Please grant to me your silver branch,

  And through the gate I’ll find you.”

  The woods thinned and opened to an enormous field. A flock of starlings rose, taking wing like an enormous black cloud that covered the sky for a mile before them.

  “That’s amazing,” Wynn called as she watched the birds defy the earthy bounds and stretch, flow, and ebb, filling the air. “They’re dancing.”

  Elric watched the flock, amazed by the mass of it.

  Wynn laughed, and sang the song of the Fairy Queen louder. The thick murmuration of birds seemed to respond to her. They flowed with the melody of the song, sweeping high and then low. The flock expanded outward until he could see the individual birds, then collapsed into a tight black mass, then spread once more in a different direction as the sun set behind the trees.

  And still Wynn sang,

  “My queen, my queen, I’ll sing with joy,

  And loyalty proclaim.

  Smoke dances to my gift of song,

  And water turns to flame.

  Please grant to me your silver branch,

  And through the gate I’ll find you.”

  Elric watched the birds and was struck by the fact that they did resemble a great cloud of smoke churning through a flaming sky. But he knew it was nothing more than a fantasy. He wished he could believe otherwise.

  Wynn let the notes of the song fade, and the birds settled back down onto the field.

  Elric had seen large murmurations of starlings take flight before. He knew that the birds were responding to light and shifts in the wind, not a changeling girl’s song. That would be impossible. And yet as he listened, he could swear the birds were saying, “This way, this way!” Elric shook his head to try to hear more clearly. The words changed to “Wynn, this way, Wynn, this way.”

  “Look! The river,” Wynn said, pointing west.

  He didn’t have time to wonder about the calls of the birds anymore, so great was his surprise. The river, swollen by the recent rains flooded into the far side of the low-lying fields. The glittering surface reflected the pinks and orange of the sunset, transforming it into a river of fire flowing through the countryside.

  “Come on,” Elric urged.

  Wynn’s hen fluttered down from her shoulder as they ran through the field of chattering starlings. The birds took flight again, but only enough to let them pass, then settled back down to feast on the newly seeded barley, creating an eerily straight path through the flock.

  They reached a grove of trees near the river, and Elric let his sack slide off his shoulder. The distant voices of the starlings sounded like muffled conversations. He tried to parse out their words. “She’ll come. This way. Wynn, this way.”

  Elric dug his finger into his ear as the hen trotted into the grove and pecked at the ground. He was hearing things, that had to be it, nothing but a trick of the mind.

  “We shouldn’t continue in the dark,” Elric said as he inspected the small clearing. There were no signs of flooding here, unlike the areas closer to the riverbanks. Lines of sticks and dead leaves marked the edge of the high water, and they were well above the floodline. Elric and Wynn should be safe for the night. They needed light, but the trees were thin here, and young. He wasn’t sure if they’d find enough dry deadfall to create a strong fire. His heart raced. They’d be more vulnerable in the dark and dusk was descending quickly. They were losing what little light they had. It wouldn’t be enough. “We’ll need to start a—”

  Wynn pulled her sack off her shoulder. It hit the ground with a clatter as the bundle of dried wood she had amassed fell at their feet.

  She crossed her arms.

  “—fire,” Elric finished. He would never live this down.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Elric

  ELRIC PROPPED HIS WET FOOT up near the flames of their fire and leaned back on a fallen log. Wynn sat on the log and rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

  She started singing softly again as the light around them dimmed. The lilting and whimsical verses always fell down to a haunting and sad note at the end. After hearing it over and over the notes wound into his head until they lodged there, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get them out.

  “Enough. You’ve sung that song fifty times today.” He poked at the fire with a long stick to knock down some of the flames. He wanted it hot, but not too bright. They didn’t need to attract any attention from thieves.

  “I like singing,” Wynn said as she slid down the log so she could sit beside him. Mildred hopped into her lap and made a nest in her skirt. “It’s pretty.” Wynn sang louder, off-key as usual. Elric did not say what he was thinking: it was not pretty. But he didn’t like to discourage her. It took her a long time to get good at things. Maybe one day she would be good at this, too. He winced as she sang a particularly loud and discordant note. (Or, maybe she wouldn’t.) To his dismay, Mildred joined in, stretching her neck straight up as she let out a loud, warbling bwaaaaawk! and then clucked happily.

  How did he get himself into this? Elric closed his eyes and sure enough, the song was stuck in his head. He could hear his mother’s voice singing it as she cooked a kettle of roots and herbs over the fire. Her voice sounded clear and sure, not muddled with half the words forgotten. As he heard the tune in his head, he felt warmer, safer, not so far from home.

  Bwaaaaawk! Cluck, cluck, cluck!

  Wynn giggled merrily and stroked the hen.

  “Ugh,” Elric grumbled. “Both of you, stop it. You’re ruining the song.”

  “You sing!” Wynn gave him a bright smile and waited. Even Mildred stared at him with an expectant look on her face.

  “No.” Elric kicked his other foot up and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  “He’s no fun,” Wynn muttered. The chicken gave a sympathetic tuk tuk tuk.

  For a long time the only sounds were the crackling of the fire, the low clucking of the hen, and the soft hush of the river behind them.

  “What will you do where we are going?” Wynn asked, breaking the silence as the shadows around them deepened.

  “What do you mean?” Elric tossed a broken piece of dead wood on the fire. The rain-damp bark hissed. “I’ll make sure you are safe, then go tend the sheep.”

  “They have sheep?” Wynn’s smile brightened.

  Elric hesitated. Wynn thought he was going to stay with th
e nuns. He didn’t know how to explain this to her, and considered lying, but it would be better to face this now, rather than at the cloister gate. She looked at him with adoration as she petted her hen, and suddenly Elric felt very small. “I have to go back home to tend the flock for the villagers.” He leaned his head on the log, the bark scratching his neck.

  Wynn scooped Mildred up and hugged her close to her chest. “You won’t stay?”

  Sometimes he wished she could figure out some of these things on her own.

  “I can’t stay. I’m taking you to a convent. Only women are allowed inside. You will have to do your chores and remember your prayers, but the nuns will keep you safe.”

  Wynn stood, leaves and sticks clinging to her skirts. “I don’t want to go. I will stay with you.”

  “You can’t!” Elric pushed himself up to catch her, afraid she might get up and run back home.

  Tears formed in Wynn’s big blue eyes.

  “Don’t cry.” Elric reached out and pulled Wynn into a hug, but she didn’t wrap her arms around him. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Wynn still didn’t say anything.

  “I’m trying to protect you.” Elric pulled back so he could look her in the face. Her tears rolled over her round cheeks. “It’s what Mother would have wanted.”

  Wynn’s brow furrowed, and the tangled strands of her long hair hung around her face from where they escaped the braid their mother had woven before she died. Wynn couldn’t even keep her hair neat on her own. She pushed the mess out of her eyes wiping her tears as she did. “Mother always kept me near.”

  She had to. That was the problem, she had to. Mother had hidden herself and Wynn away in the woods so well that most in the village assumed she had died during Wynn’s birth, and the baby soon after. If anyone saw them, if anyone knew, Mother could have been accused of witchcraft for keeping a changeling child alive so long. Elric felt a heaviness pulling on his heart, and he didn’t know how to fix it. Wynn turned away and walked to the edge of the shadows, and flopped down in a tangle of roots.

  Elric sat on the log with a sigh. If there were any other way, he would do it. If there were some way he could care for her, he would do it. But he was just a boy, and bound to obey both his father and their lord. He couldn’t disappear into the woods and hide her there. They would starve before winter, and the village needed someone to care for the animals. Eventually he would have to take over his father’s land and continue to toil under his bond to their lord. Living away from the protection of the armies was too risky. They could be attacked by robbers, or raiding armies from other lands.

  Maybe if he were grown, they could find a way to live as hermits in the woods, but he wasn’t a man yet. He couldn’t keep her with him.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss her.

  Under his breath he began to sing a verse of the fairy song. It’s what Mother would have done for her. Wynn hunched her shoulders as she huddled closer to the tree and pulled her cloak more tightly around her neck.

  “My queen, my queen, I seek the path,

  To the land Between.

  With your power great and fair,

  Show me what’s unseen.

  Please grant to me your silver branch,

  And through the gate I’ll find you.”

  He sang louder as he walked toward her, adding a little skip and a hop, a part of a dance she had made up when they were little.

  She still refused to look at him.

  He sat down next to her and placed his arm over her shoulders. “What’s the next verse? I have forgotten it. Something about the moon and stars?”

  Wynn didn’t respond.

  “I don’t want to leave you, either,” he confessed in a soft voice. “I promise I will come to visit when I can,” he said, holding her close to his side.

  She leaned her head against him. “I’ll wait for you.”

  Elric continued to sing through his tight throat. In two more verses, she had fallen fast asleep. Elric watched over her through the deep part of night.

  As dawn broke, Elric heard an ox bellow in the distance and the rumbling of a cart. A curl of smoke rose from their small fire. He shook Wynn awake.

  “Come on. I think there’s a road nearby.” He pushed himself up out of the tangle of tree roots, his limbs aching and tingling. His eyes burned with exhaustion. If they were lucky, they would find the cloister before nightfall.

  Wynn stretched and pushed her hair away from her face. “I’m hungry.”

  Elric picked up her sack and opened it. Then he remembered it was full of ripped-up weeds and an old pot. He let it fall to the ground. It was a waste of energy lifting it at all. “Look in my sack. There’s a bit of bread, but don’t eat it all.”

  Elric took his time smothering the fire before turning back to Wynn. She was holding the crust of the bread down as the hen pecked furiously at it.

  “Wynn!” He ran toward her, shooing the chicken away.

  “She is hungry too.” Wynn stood and brushed the crumbs off her skirt.

  “We can’t waste food,” Elric insisted, snatching the crust away from her and shoving it back in his bag. He hefted it over his shoulder.

  “I don’t like that part.” Wynn picked up her own sack and pulled the strings tight before shouldering her bag full of weeds.

  “Come on,” he said as he followed the river upstream. “And try not to be a bother.”

  Wynn dropped her gaze to her feet and walked sullenly behind him, her hen clucking alongside her.

  They walked in silence most of the morning along the banks of the river until finally they found the road. A steady stream of people followed it toward a rise of hills in the distance. He could see the tops of buildings, a grand town, much larger than their poor village.

  “Stay quiet,” Elric warned as he approached a bent old man leading a small herd of goats. “Ho there,” he called.

  The goatherd looked back and gave Elric a toothless smile. “On your way to market?” he asked.

  “Of course.” Elric said a quick prayer of thanks. With market going on, there would be a lot of strange people in the town. He and Wynn could blend in. “Father sent us to buy a pig.”

  “Buy a pig?” Wynn asked. Elric turned and glared at her, but she just looked at him, confused.

  “What was that?” the old man asked, turning to Wynn. “Hello there.”

  “Hello!” she greeted, her face transforming as she gave him a wide smile. “I like your goats.”

  “I like your chicken,” he said.

  “It’s a gift for the cloister. Do you know where it is?” Elric asked.

  “You said—”

  Elric nudged his sister hard with his elbow. “Not now.”

  “Hmm, yes. Take the north road out of town,” the goatherd said. “Follow it past the woods and through the orchards. You will find the cloister there.”

  “Thank you!” Elric pulled Wynn along until they could walk side by side on the road without anyone else hearing.

  “Why did you do that?” Wynn asked, rubbing her arm where he had jabbed her.

  “Just don’t speak to anyone. Please.”

  “I know,” Wynn replied in a frustrated voice as she rubbed her arm.

  Crowds of people had gathered along the road, all flowing closer to the gates. Music from a man playing a reed pipe drifted over the noise of the crowd. Wynn bumped into a woman because she had turned to watch a juggler throwing small colorful sacks high in the air as he walked.

  “Ooh,” Wynn said, pointing to the juggler. “That’s amazing.”

  The energy of market day got under his skin, and Elric smiled at the look on Wynn’s face. She had never seen anything like this in her lonely little hut in the woods. To be honest, he’d never seen anything like it either, and the excitement was contagious.

  “I can do that; watch,” he said, smiling at her. He picked up three small rocks from the road and tossed them gently in the air, but only managed to catch one as it came b
ack down. One of them hit him on the top of his head. He winced and rubbed the spot where it hit. Wynn laughed so hard she started hiccupping. “Hey, it’s trickier than it looks!”

  She snorted. “Do it again.” She bent and picked up the stones.

  “I don’t think I make a very good jester,” Elric said to her, and she giggled through a hiccup.

  The thatched roofs of buildings peeked over the top of the wooden wall that surrounded the town, as the chatter of people and animals drifted through the air. It wasn’t the only thing that drifted through the air. The smell of filth and putrid meat hung like a cloud around them, and grew worse as they arrived near the gates.

  Elric covered his nose with his sleeve as he trudged forward, but Wynn stopped, looking up over a deep moat of blood from the butchers and animal carcasses rotting in a pit outside the gates. A cloud of flies swarmed over the pit, buzzing near their ears. One landed on Elric’s neck and gave him a stinging bite. Elric slapped it away, but a smear of blood streaked over his palm. They had to get out of there. He tugged on Wynn’s sleeve, but she didn’t move. Instead, she pointed.

  Three tiny iron cages hung over the pit. In the central cage, the deep, empty sockets of a man’s skull stared at them, his teeth bared in a terrible grin. Thankfully the other two were unoccupied, except for bits of rotten cloth clinging to the bottom bars that proved they had not always been empty.

  “What did he do?” Wynn asked, then coughed, and shook her head as another horsefly buzzed between them.

  “I don’t know,” Elric said. “Just stay close to me.”

  Wynn stroked her hen and drew herself near her brother’s side. “Stay close,” she repeated as she slipped her sack off her shoulder and tucked Mildred inside.

  Inside the town, the oppressive smell of death eased, replaced by fires and the scent of livestock and leather. Buildings loomed over them, their second floors hanging above the narrow streets. Elric didn’t like the way they leaned, as if they were about to topple over. At the center of the town, market stalls had been hastily tied together with wooden posts and bits of canvas to shade the wares. The market cross stood high on a stone pillar, where the money-counters gathered holding their scales aloft.