“Well, you’re in for a treat,” said Nana May. “Soon you’ll find the hills, and the lakes between them, blue as can be, made from the tears of giants.”
“That’s a story,” said Greatpapa, “that some liar told to you.”
“And what is the truth, Father?” Nana May asked.
He shrugged. “You don’t care. If you did, you’d already know the truth.”
Nana May appeared to accept this, and said nothing, though Horace regarded Greatpapa with some curiosity. The old man stared into the fire with a baleful look, then continued, “Nobody cares. The wizards tell some story and we all believe it. Giants’ tears!” He snorted.
“You don’t like wizards?” Horace asked, though Nana May shook her head at him.
Greatpapa turned from the fire, suspicion sharp in his eyes. “You do?”
“In truth, I don’t think a person can like a wizard, or dislike one, either. They’re not like other people.” Horace shrugged and took another bite of stew. Emil thought suddenly of the rat and looked around the room, searching for Greygirl.
“I don’t know from like or dislike, but it’s easy enough to hate the wizards. ’Specially after what they did in the war.” Greatpapa’s spoon made a bang when he threw it into his bowl, and Emil jumped, his attention back at the table.
Horace was looking at Emil, his hazel eyes so direct that Emil found himself wriggling in his seat. “And you? What do you think?”
His greatpapa bent toward Emil before he could answer, and it took a force of will not to lean away as the old man spoke. “Never fight alongside a wizard, boy, and never trust one, and surely never be one. Sneaks all, they are.”
Horace cleared his throat and put down his own spoon. “You were in the war? Sir, so few survived to tell of it, I feel obliged to ask—”
Greatpapa jerked his head backward to look at the door, though nobody was there. “Who would ask me about that? What kind of person?” His wintry eyes narrowed and he pointed a finger at Horace. “You know what? You remind me of my grandson,” he said, more of an accusation than an observation.
Emil grabbed at the edge of the table, stuck between protest and revelation. His father had been nothing like Horace. Alain possessed great and secret talents, and if only the townsfolk had known the things his father did, they would have loved him instead of hated him. Horace seemed the opposite: the kind of man people always liked, but who didn’t deserve it. And yet.
“Forgive me,” said Horace, more to Nana May than to Greatpapa, “I was rude.”
Nana May gave a sigh of relief, and everyone picked up their spoons.
* * * * *
After dinner, Greatpapa seemed to have calmed enough to doze, his head tilted back as he drew in long, noisy breaths. Emil stretched out upon the rushes, pretending to sleep, but his body was tense, his mind racing. Nana May and Horace talked, their voices low in the darkness, believing themselves alone.
“I was sorry to hear about your son,” said Horace.
Emil opened his eyes to slits and watched Nana May's boot twist against the floor. He had a sickening feeling. Once again the bard was sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. “Thank you,” said Nana May. “I lost both my husbands and then my son. Now it's just me and Emil, but we do all right. It’s just, our crops . . .”
Horace lowered his voice. “Is the boy . . . ?”
“Yes,” murmured Nana May.
She had answered the bard’s question, but not in a way Emil could decipher. He crushed a sage leaf between his fingers and let the scent wash away his anger. Always when his papa was alive there had been whispering, Nana May with concern and the townsfolk with darker looks. That Alain is bad luck, they muttered. Vermin. Then one day papa left to buy the seed and ended up floating in the river. But he hadn’t died, not then. The water had filled his lungs and killed him slow.
Now they whispered about Emil.
His father had gasped for air at the end, and sometimes Emil felt he could not breathe either, caught between one secret and the next.
But Horace saw him watching and winked, then brought out his lute. Emil sat up, relaxing his guard. It wasn't often that he got to hear music now that his parents were gone. Sometimes at the harvest festival a bard would come and sing an epic tale, but there were so many folks there that he could never get close.
The music was sweet and measured, the perfect gift for Nana May. Emil watched seven kinds of delight cross her face before she settled into a pleased blush. It was the face she gave whenever he said her dress was pretty, or the bread particularly fine. In another life Emil would have warmed to the bard now, perhaps given him a smile. Instead he focused his gaze on his boots. After a time the music was finished and a respectful silence settled over the room.
Greatpapa rubbed at his ear. He must have woken up to listen. "Well, I come here to die,” he said, “and this has been a fine welcome. I hope my goodbyes are just as nice.”
* * * * *
“Goodbye? But aren’t you going to live with us, Greatpapa?”
“Not for long.”
Emil looked to Horace, but Horace was looking around the cottage, at the dingy chairs and the spinning wheel and the iron cooking-pot, as if taking inventory. Was he going to stay, then? Emil’s hands closed into fists.
Nana May said, “Horace, you best sleep up in the loft with Emil tonight. I'll settle my papa in bed and wrap myself in a few blankets right here.”
Before Emil could protest, Horace leapt from his seat. “Outrageous! I won't hear of you sleeping on the floor.”
Nana May rubbed her eyes. “I want to be near my papa. And I'm too tired to climb that ladder anyhow.”
Though Emil felt he should have protested more, Horace made a graceful bow. “As you wish, my lady.” He spoke as if he were with a real lady with jewels and everything. The bard fished in his pocket. “And as a host-gift, I'd like to present this.” He drew out a carved wooden sparrow. Its polish gleamed in the light of the dying fire. Emil took a step forward. He knew that the bird was meant for his nana, but nevertheless it held a message for him too.
“Your music was gift enough,” said Nana May, her eyes sparkling as she gazed at the offering.
“I have never had stew so tasty, bread so soft, nor company more enchanting. I must insist.”
Nana May held out one trembling hand and wrapped it around the bird. “My son carved too,” she said in a voice barely more than a whisper.
“What?” said Greatpapa. “I never heard of him doing anything useful.”
“He carved,” repeated Nana May, pointing to the wooden soldiers.
“What . . .” sputtered Greatpapa, backing away, as if he were facing a bear and not a pile of toys. “Why would he carve those?”
* * * * *
“They’re toys, Papa,” said Nana May.
“Toys?” Greatpapa showed all his three teeth and waved his head from side to side. “No!”
Horace stepped closer to the soldiers, eyes lighting with interest, so Emil sprang up to stand in front of them. “Those are mine,” he said.
“I would never take them from you,” said Horace with a laugh. “Only, may I look?”
Their eyes met for two heartbeats. At last Emil stood aside, but he hovered next to Horace all the same. He could hear his greatpapa muttering behind him, too low to hear. Horace reached out and wrapped his long fingers around a wooden archer. He sighed and nodded in relief as if some hope had been confirmed, then smiled at Emil. Emil focused on the musician’s hands. They were just as calloused and strong as his papa’s had been. “Do you know which soldiers these are?” asked Horace.
Emil nodded. “This is the army of the great hero Nehrem on his last campaign into the Mountains of Hosnan.” He opened a drawer. “And this is the Hosnian army. I don't keep them out, usually.” His father had carved these of redwood. Their faces sneered with hatred.
The musician examined these soldiers too. “The detail is perfect. The uniforms, the hats,
and the weapons are exact.”
“Ain't nothing exact when it comes to a war,” grumbled Greatpapa, “or the telling of it.”
Horace ignored him and asked Emil a question instead. “Do you know all about the Hosnians and their powerful sorcerers?”
Emil nodded. Nehrem had saved the land from the terrible magic of the north. Everybody knew that.
* * * * *
“I'll show you something amusing.” Horace cleared a space on the eating table and lined up the armies so that they faced one another. He brought over two candles. They made his eyes shine like beacons, but didn't light up the table very well. Something about the sure way he moved in the darkness felt familiar to Emil. Nana May took a few steps closer, the sparrow still in her hand.
When all the soldiers were in place Horace began to speak, his voice deep and sonorous. “It is well past midnight. The Army of Nehrem have been fighting for a day and half again, and have lost many men. They are trapped in the Valley of Dreams while the Hosnians have the high ground. The Hosnians have a thousand sorcerers while the Durenin wizards number only five. All seems lost.” As he paused, something moved on the table. The rat! thought Emil, his heart skipping a beat, but he blinked, and saw it for what it was.
The wooden figures were beginning to move. Horace could make the soldiers move just as his papa had. Emil remembered sitting on Papa’s lap at the table while he told the great tales. He leaned forward for more, his eyes watering with happiness as the Hosnian army raised their swords and lances and stepped forward.
“No . . .” said Greatpapa, but Emil was too pleased with the story to look up at him and ask why.
“In the moonlight Nehrem raises his arms and his voice and says, ‘People of Durenin, for what do we fight? We do not fight for the Valley of Dreams, or the Mountain before us, or for the glory of one battle. We fight for our people and their Goddess Ruhala. This is the moment when we choose whether to scatter before the enemy and abandon the lands of our goddess to this cruel world, or to soak the ground with our own blood so that our children never need face fear.’” As Horace spoke, the hairs tingled on Emil's arms as if he were listening to Nehrem himself.
The Hosnian army took backward steps, as if Nehrem’s sacrifice put them in awe.
* * * * *
“No,” said Greatpapa again, only louder, and this time Emil did look at him. The old man stood up from his chair, his face twisting but not with anger, not exactly. “Stop this right now! The battle didn’t go that way. The men all died, that’s true, and as they lay there, with nobody to bury ’em, the rats ate ’em—” He took three headlong steps and swept the wooden soldiers from the table, “—because the wizards and sorcerers joined together against us! That’s the peace we bought with our blood, and you know it well!”
“I didn’t,” said Horace, his voice steady. “I don’t. I’ve never met anyone who was there, except you.”
“Lying sneak! You knew. You tricked me, but that’s over. You will not speak to the boy again. You will not look at him.” Greatpapa pounded his cane against the floor, shuddering the planks.
Emil watched Nana May and looked for some hint, some answer. You knew. She did not look his way. He got on his knees and reached for his soldiers, but Greatpapa pinned his hand between the cane and the floor. “Leave ’em,” he commanded, “they're filthy, lying things, just like this here wizard.” He turned to Horace and spoke in a voice so low and certain that Emil thought he must have been an intimidating person to fight against, back when he was a soldier. “Get. Out.”
Emil kept still. The soldiers were all he had left of his father, and he was afraid for them.
“Emil, why don't you go outside,” said Nana May in a shaky voice, “and show Horace where he can sleep in the hayloft?”
“Yes, Nana May.” As the cane released Emil’s hand, he slipped one of the wooden men, an archer from Nehrem’s army, into his right boot. And then, because he saw it on the floor by Nana’s foot, the sparrow. His deeds unnoticed, he scrambled outside and waited in the darkness by the open door.
“You'll have to go,” he heard Nana May say to Horace, all polite. “I'm sorry about this. You are welcome to the barn, but you must be gone by morning.” When she got upset, which wasn't very often, she trembled all over like a leaf in the wind. Emil could imagine her right now, standing by the table, her chin shaking something awful.
* * * * *
“Naturally.” Horace's voice sounded stiff. Angry. Emil felt sorry for Nana May. He knew she liked Horace. “I thank you for the hospitality.” A few heavy footsteps, and now the bard—no, wizard—stood beside Emil on the porch.
“Papa,” said Nana May, her voice thin and quiet.
Horace laid a hand on Emil’s arm, but Emil shook it off, listening.
“Nehrem was a coward who made a coward’s bargain,” said Greatpapa. “Now his sons will sit the throne for as long as the blood is in the soil and the wizards can make use of it.” He drew in his breath. “Our blood . . . The sacrifice, they call it now!”
“Papa . . .”
“The Valley of Dreams, indeed.”
“. . . not all the wizards are bad.” Nana May’s voice was weak, finished, the last autumn breeze chased out by winter. She barely believed it herself, Emil realized, and with that, he felt a deep sadness.
Emil heard the scattering of more wooden soldiers. “It twists them all around, the magic. Your son would have betrayed us just the same.”
Horace tried once again to pull him away, a tight grip over rough wool.
“Please, Papa . . .” Then Nana May made a little gasp of fear, and Emil tried to move forward. He needed to know what was happening. He needed to go in to her, to save her if necessary, but his legs wouldn't move, and in any case Horace held tight to his arm. Emil heard the wood-ax thunk against the floorboards. “I'm going to chop every last one of these worthless toys.”
“Papa! You'll kill yourself.”
“If you knew the things I did in the war, you wouldn't be coming at me when I got an ax in my hand. Now lay off, woman, and let me do my work.” The ax hit again. Crack.
Emil stood and listened for what seemed a long time. Crack. Crack. He felt conscious of the carvings in his boot, pressing against his leg, and the sound of Nana May crying, and the scent of Horace behind him, all pine needles and wax. What he did not feel was his papa. He truly was gone.
The ax, its job finished, fell with a bang upon the eating table.
Emil’s face was wet with tears. He heard someone else weeping too.
Greatpapa.
“If I die tonight, don't let the rats get me. Don't let them eat me.”
Nana May sniffed, not the crying kind from before but more of a Nana May sort of sniff, the kind she used when Emil was slow to his tasks. “There are no rats in here, Papa.”
“Rats are everywhere, May. Even in the mountains. Fed on my brothers. My friends. I tried to stop ’em. But there's a good girl, keep ’em off of me.”
“Yes, Papa, I will.”
* * * * *
Emil felt cut in two. He wiped his tears and turned away. “Come,” he said to Horace, “I’ll show you where to sleep.” As he walked through the darkness, he thought of his papa and the warm feeling that came in the room when he used to carve, how it buzzed and tasted of life, round and sweet. He remembered Nana May saying it ruined the vegetables and brought rot to the apple trees. No more carving, she had said. Emil could feel the garden now, limp and diseased in the night, gnawed and chewed by pests and vermin, even though his papa was long gone. It hadn’t been the carving after all, and that made him angry.
“Why did you have to go and do that?” he asked the bard.
“Do what?”
“Come here, ask questions, make the soldiers move . . . you’ve ruined everything!”
“Have I?”
“Of course you have.” Emil pulled open the barn door. “You can forget about staying here too! I saw you smiling at Nana May, and lookin
g at all our things as if they were yours! Well, you can forget it.”
Horace leaned down, put his face on a level with Emil’s, and looked into his eyes, man to man. “I wasn’t going to stay.”
“Then what were you going to do? Take Nana May away with you?”
Horace laid a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your Nana May I came for,” he said, his eyes so direct, always so direct and honest, that Emil knew it for truth.
And so he ran. He sprinted toward the river where his father had found his end, and from there into the woods, where crickets chirped and roots tangled around his feet. When he thought he had gone far enough that Horace would not find him, he sat with his back against a tree. Only then did he realize he had heard no shouts, no running footsteps. Horace had let him go.
Emil gathered his thoughts. It had to be him who made the garden sick. It had to be him who brought bad luck, just like his father. He sat so long the forest grew quiet all around. His neck ached; his throat was sore.
The night opened in his mind.
When he closed his eyes he could feel Greygirl hunting by the riverside, and the rats who ran from her, their hearts racing. Horace was at the river too, waiting for him in stillness, one hand on his lute. Nana May lay in her blankets, short little breaths showing her ready to wake at any moment, and quieter than all of them, Emil felt the dim light that was Greatpapa, flickering like a candle, but not ready to go out. Not yet. Emil breathed in the fierceness of that tiny flame. It was not anger that drove the old soldier; it was fear, fear so deep that it was part of him, bone and flesh and all. Emil remembered the toys turning in Papa’s hands, the power going into their tiny wooden forms. It had seemed a small trick, but now he knew it for wizardry; and he knew just as well as his greatpapa did that bringing toys to life and laying waste to an entire army was the same thing, only a different size.
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