by Patricia Bow
Terence laughed. “Lamenting your doom already, bard?”
Diarmid sang in a language Camrose didn’t know, with a lot of liquid sounds mixed up with exhalings from deep in the throat. It didn’t sound like a lament. More like a threat. It sent shivers up her spine.
The tree swayed.
Terence glanced up, then smiled. “Give it up! You’ve left your pipes behind. Besides, this is my country. You can work no spells here.”
Diarmid stopped singing. “We’re not over the border yet,”
he said. “And I need no pipes.”
The whispering in the branches hadn’t stopped. It deepened and spread through the tree and became a wailing on many notes, each chord like the scrape of five fingernails on a chalk–board.
“It’s the tree.” Mark winced. “He’s turned it into a kind of giant harp.”
Camrose gritted her teeth against the sound. “He’s fighting Terence with music— if you can call that music.”
He seemed to be winning too. Terence was kneeling with his hands over his ears. Any minute now he’ll break and run, Camrose thought. And then we’ll just have Diarmid to deal with.
But Terence didn’t break. He lurched to his feet, grabbed his cloak from the ground and whirled it again. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed and the sky went black. A storm wind screamed through the hollow, driving rain sideways into their faces.
Mark grabbed Camrose by the hand. “Next chance we get, run!” he yelled.
Diarmid was singing again. The harping of the tree topped the shriek of the storm. Terence screamed something, and sparks exploded from the tree a few yards over their heads. Smoking leaves and twigs showered down.
Camrose pulled the flute out from under her T-shirt, the better to run. She pulled at Mark’s hand. “Now!” They slid around the tree and took three steps away from the battle.
Lightning struck a pine tree at the edge of the hollow. It exploded, and what was left of it burned like a torch. In the sputtering yellow light they saw the red hound limping toward them. Its eyes were fixed on Camrose. She froze.
This was a better view of the beast than she really wanted. Its jaws were wide enough to make one bite of her head. Long yellow eye-teeth curved over its lower lip. Its eyes … No, don’t look at its eyes! She remembered hearing that somewhere.
“Okay.” Mark’s voice in her ear was unnaturally calm. “Here’s what we’ll do. I can run faster than you, so I’ll get it to chase me, and—”
“No! That won’t work. If only we had something to distract it. Something we could throw.” She looked around wildly. The hound limped nearer. “A piece of meat, or a b—”
She stopped and looked at the bone flute. Mark looked at it. Around them, inside the shriek of the storm and the harping tree and the burning and the smoke, a shell of stillness formed.
Then Mark began, “It’s not fair—” and right over him Camrose said, “How come those two have the right … ?”
They stopped again. “You first,” Camrose said.
“It’s not fair they should claim the flute. I mean, where did it come from in the first place?”
“Just what I was thinking.”
The hound stood two yards away, silent, watching. Camrose made herself look into its eyes. In the fiery light they should have been blazing red, but they weren’t. They were green.
Green as the sea, Camrose thought, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.
21
The Wyrde
Camrose took a step forward and held out the flute. “I think this belongs to you.” She tossed it.
The hound leaped and caught the flute in its teeth. Th en it fell to the ground, writhing. At the same moment the rain and wind stopped short. The crackling of the burning tree was the only sound. The wet grass steamed.
In the growing light where the hound had fallen a girl stum-bled to her feet. Hair of the true red-gold, Camrose remem-bered. Eyes like the sea. Fairest maid in all the west country.
She wore a torn, dirty, red gown. The left sleeve was empty. In her right hand she held the flute. Red hair with gold sparks in it fell in tangles to her waist. She looked about fourteen.
“It was you all along!” Camrose hit her forehead with both hands. “Why didn’t I see it?”
“You did, at last. I owe you a debt, Keeper.” Rhianna looked at Mark, who just then remembered to close his mouth. “And you.”
She looked past them, past the tree. Diarmid and Terence were running toward them. But before they could cross half the distance, a sound rolled over the hollow that was like the ocean breaking on a stony shore. Terence and Diarmid froze in mid-step.
On the slope of the hollow, half-hidden in drifting vapor, stood three figures robed in black. “It is done,” boomed a voice like three voices woven together. “The Keeper has chosen. The flute is restored to its rightful owner.”
Rhianna started. Mark poked Camrose in the side, but she’d already seen. Rhianna’s left sleeve was no longer empty.
The triple voice boomed again: “Diarmid the bard, hear your doom.”
“Wait!” Diarmid started forward. “What about Rhianna?”
“What about her?” asked one of the black-robed figures.
“She’s my promised wife—”
“Liar!” Terence snarled. “She’s mine!”
“Sisters, what do you say?”
“I say let the girl choose,” snapped the second figure. “It would be the first time in her life she’s had the chance to decide anything for herself.”
“I agree,” said the third in a voice that made the hair stand up on Camrose’s neck. “Look at them, girl, and choose.”
Rhianna folded her hands together at her waist and studied first Diarmid, then Terence. Then she slowly shook her head.
“That’s that, then,” said the second sister briskly.
“But I—”
“Diarmid,” the first broke in, “you’ve learned no common sense over the years. But even you have earned something.”
“Ask what you would,” said the second. “But think well before you condemn yourself out of your own mouth.”
He looked angrily at Rhianna, opened his mouth, then closed it. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed. “I’m so tired. All I really want is to rest.”
“Done.”
Camrose blinked. Diarmid was gone.
“Gwyn, son of Nuadu,” said the second sister, “you’ve over–stayed your time in the living lands.”
“But—Rhianna?” He reached out a hand. When she looked away, his eyes narrowed. “This is a cheat. The hound was mine!”
The first sister laughed. “Nonsense! This hound was never yours.”
“And you hadn’t the eyes to see, not in all these years.”
“Go!”
He vanished, but unlike Diarmid he faded slowly, until only his eyes glimmered in the air. They moved from Camrose to Mark and back again. “Keeper,” said the invisible mouth, “I won’t forget. I claim vengeance.” Then he was gone.
Camrose went cold. It took a minute before she realized everything wasn’t over. The Wyrde were talking to Rhianna.
“What would you have?” asked the first sister. “What would you do, now that you’re free to choose?”
Rhianna took a breath, looked up and said, “I would choose to start over. If it can be managed.”
The three exchanged glances.
“You see, I haven’t lived. Not truly. I was only a child when they told me I was to marry Diarmid. And all the years since Gwyn—since the hound—seem a bad dream.” She looked down at her torn dress and her whole left arm.
The Wyrde exchanged looks again. “You cannot go back,”
said the second sister.
“Then, let me go forward!”
“Have you the courage?” asked the first.
She knotted her hands together. “I have.”
“Done,” said all three together.
Sunlight slanted into the hollow. It
broke across Rhianna, turned her red hair to a fiery cloud, her body to a golden shim–mer. Camrose closed her eyes against the brightness, and when she looked again Rhianna too was gone.
Camrose and Mark were left alone with three dark shapes that never grew any less misty, though the sunlight grew brighter. Camrose wished she knew what to say.
Mark cleared his throat. “Um, Miranda … Is she free now?”
“Wherever she is,” Camrose began. Then stepped back as a small, gray-brown shape dropped from the tree to the grass beside her. It rolled over, expanding as it rolled. When it unfolded itself and rose from the grass, it was a ragged young woman with a brown triangular face.
“It’s over! I’m free!” She danced on the spot in a whirl of tatters. Camrose expected her to vanish like the others, but instead she stopped dancing and stood biting her nails.
“Well, where would you go?” demanded the second sister.
“Don’t know. I’ve grown used to the Keepers over the years.” Miranda darted a glance at Camrose. “Attached, even. Silly crea–tures though they are. I think I’ll stay in their world a while.”
“So long as you do no harm,” said the first sister. “That part of the oath still holds.”
“Oh, yes! I’ll be good, Great Ones. I promise!” Miranda swept a bow that grazed the grass, winked at Camrose from under her thicket of hair, leaped into the tree and vanished among the twinkling silver leaves.
“And now you, Keeper.” That was the one with the icy voice.
Camrose still couldn’t see them clearly, but she knew all their eyes were on her. She shivered.
“Keeper, what would you, now that your burden is laid down?” asked the first sister gently.
Camrose looked at Mark for ideas, but he only shrugged.
“I guess I just want things to be the way they were before. Normal.”
“Did you not hear?” said the second sister.
“You cannot go back,” said the third in her deep voice.
“But then how are we going to get home?”
“Find your own way,” said all three at once.
“But—”
“You were the Keeper. The world will never be the same for you again.” The woven voices boomed through the hollow.
“You will see truths and find paths hidden to others. And sometimes the sight will be a joy to you and sometimes a grief. That is your gift.”
They turned and walked away. In two steps they faded from misty gray to silver. On the third step they were gone.
Camrose stared after them. Then all around the hollow. “Is it really over?” she said. “I can’t believe it!”
“Me neither.” Mark closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“You okay?”
“I don’t feel right. Kind of groggy.”
“Breakfast, that’s what we need. Let’s get out of here!”
They climbed back to the ridge at the edge of the hollow. But nothing had changed. Woods still rippled to the far horizon.
“I guess they want me to use my gift.” Camrose set her hands on her hips. “Hidden paths, right? Where should I start look–ing?”
Mark said nothing. When she looked over her shoulder he wasn’t there.
“Mark? Mark! Where’d you go?”
She ran back down the path to the clearing. “Mark!”
He was all the way across the hollow, and he wasn’t alone. A tall figure walked beside him, its arm wrapped in a friendly way around his shoulders. They walked into the woods together.
When Camrose reached the spot, breathless, half a minute later, there was no sign of them.
22
The river of time
The path through the woods came out into a meadow of chicory and thistles. Alongside that ran a muddy track beaten into the grass, with more meadow and trees on the other side. “Just like Lynx Landing,” Camrose said aloud, not liking the silence of the place. “Only, nothing like it at all.”
Eastward—or in the direction that would be east if this were Lynx Landing—two figures passed over the crest of the road. Camrose started running. When she reached the crest, the road on the other side lay empty.
This was the way they’d gone, so this was the way she’d have to go too. If only she didn’t have such a feeling of being pulled along on a string.
She walked on. Th e muddy track turned to gravel, then asphalt. Buildings appeared, but with never a speck of light at the windows, never a human face. Th e air was cool and wet.
And now the light was draining from the sky. Ten steps more and night fell. Th ere were no stars. Streetlights wore giant halos of mist. Th e streets glistened black.
Camrose walked into Market Square. The worst of it was, it was almost the same as home. The same stores, the same racks and bins out in front, the same fancy brickwork under the eaves.
But it was all different. The words on the signs were worn away, the awnings were torn, the windows broken.
As she passed the war memorial in the center of the square, movement caught her eye. She whipped around. A scrap of white flicked out of sight around the other side of the granite plinth.
White? Mark had on a white T-shirt. Her heart hammering, she ran around to the other side. Nothing there.
“Eyes playing tricks,” she muttered.
She turned around and her heart flipped. There he was, round–ing the corner onto Mill Road, on the river side of the square.
“Mark!”
She raced across the square, burst into a short street with inky water gurgling past the end of it and skidded to a halt on the slick pavement. No Mark.
The river wasn’t right, either. It was supposed to be fifty feet down at the bottom of the cliff, not up here by the street.
She walked back into the square. “None of this is real. Somebody’s jerking me around!”
“Camrose!”
It was the first voice she’d heard in that place besides her own. Mark’s voice.
“Cam, help!”
It was coming from the far side of the square, from Mill Street. It sounded scared. Mark never sounded scared! Must be a trick, like the others.
“Cam! Please!”
But suppose it wasn’t a trick, this time? Suppose it was really Mark?
Camrose burst into the short street beyond the square. The midnight river gleamed a few strides away. This time a boat rode the water beside a stone curb.
Mark huddled in the bow. Terence sat on the middle thwart with both oars poised above the water. No, not Terence: Gwyn, with his Otherworld face and his darkly glittering clothes.
“You should have come sooner, Keeper. You should have come the first time he called. It’s too late now.”
The oars dipped. “No! Stop!” Camrose leaped for the boat. The moment her feet hit the boards, the oars bit into the water. The boat shot forward.
When she looked back, the shore was a gray line fading into the night. Ahead and all around lay the river of time.
At first all she could do was hold on to the side. With no land in sight, and nothing but blackness and moving gleams of light all around, the boat seemed to float in a midnight sky. If she fell out she would fall forever.
She closed her eyes. Hearing Gwyn’s laughter, she opened them again.
“What are you doing with us?”
“You’ll come to no harm, never fear. Not once we’re home.”
“You mean you’re taking us home? Really?”
“Really and truly,” he purred.
Mark lifted his head. “Whose home?”
He only smiled.
“Look, I know you want revenge, payment, something!”
Camrose said. “What will you take to get us back?”
“You stole my Rhianna. What do you have that could repay me for that?”
“But we didn’t steal her! And we don’t have anything you want.”
“Then it will just have to be your own sweet selves, won’t it?”
“What for?” Mark deman
ded. “Camrose was just doing what she was supposed to do.”
“That’s true enough.” He stood up and smiled at them. “But it won’t save you.” He swept an arm into the darkness, cried, “Look!” and on the word he was gone.
Camrose looked. Where he’d swept his arm the darkness was gone. An oar length away lay a shore of ivory sand, and beyond the shore, soft green meadows rolled back to velvet woods and far blue mountains touched with gold.
The river was clear and gold-shot here. A few feet below their keel lay the sandy bottom, spangled with quivering light from the surface. An eddy carried the boat curving in to shore. The keel grated and stuck.
Mark looked like he’d been bashed on the head and hadn’t had time to fall over.
Camrose felt something pulling at her, and realized it was music. She could never have described it, except to say that it made her forget everything else.
Mark was the first to move. He stood up and started to climb over the gunwale. Camrose lurched forward and grabbed him. “No! Don’t do that!”
“But … the music! I need to—”
“Don’t listen to it!”
“Didn’t you hear him? It’s too late. We’ll never get home.”
“Since when do we trust anything he says?”
“It’s what the story said: No mortal flesh may cross that river twice and live. ”
“But so long as we haven’t stepped on shore, we haven’t crossed—not yet!”
“It hurts me not to go.” He set his hands on the gunwale and swung a leg over. Camrose grabbed his shoulders and pulled hard. He sprawled in the bottom of the boat, looking bewil–dered, then struggled up again.
She wasn’t strong enough to hold him. If only she could convince him, make him see.
What had the Wyrde said? You will see truths and find paths hidden to others. Her gift. Well, this was the time to use it.
“Mark, you always say seeing is believing, right?”
“Right.” He gazed at the shore. “Like now.”
“Here, hold my hand. I’ll take you there. I’ll show you.”
Her gaze traveled up the ivory shore. Leaving two bodies crouched in the boat, she and Mark skimmed like ghosts across the meadow, hand in hand. They floated inches above the bent tips of the grasses, above fields of sky-blue flowers that turned on threadlike stalks to watch them go by.