He let go of her hand. They had reached the dark rumple, which turned out to be a juniper thicket clinging to the ridge under a snowdrift. Lin leaned on her knees to catch her breath while Rufus searched around beneath the prickly branches.
“Ow, this stuff gets into your fur.” Soon he emerged again with a coil of dark blue rope in his mouth. “I found this the last time I was here. Help me get it out.”
He dug his legs in and pulled. Rodents were strong; Lin’s father had taught her. It was mostly their size that had them at a disadvantage from natural enemies such as foxes, owls, and lynxes. So Lin was not surprised when Rufus didn’t need her help at all. In a shower of broken twigs and juniper needles, he pulled it free: the biggest sled Lin had ever seen.
Rufus walked around the sled, whistling between his teeth. “Well, aren’t you a beauty!” And it was. It had a low seat of flawless, burnished wood and cast-iron runners that curled up into extravagant spirals at both ends. The blue rope was fastened to a silvered crossbar at the front of the sled, and there was even a little lantern. Beautiful, yes, but Lin knew at once they would never be able to use it. The left runner was broken, snapped off at the front.
“Too bad,” she said. “We won’t make it down the hill with a runner like that.”
“True.” Rufus opened his backpack. “But I’ve come prepared. I had actually planned on coming back here anyway. I couldn’t bear the thought of this wonderful thing being left to rust just because it’s a little damaged. So I had this crafted.”
He lifted out a piece of metal, curled into a spiral at one end, and hollow at the other end. A spare tip. “Come on, my friend.” Rufus hunched down to wiggle the tip into place. “It’s not as lovely as the original, but take it from an expert: any leg is better than no leg.”
The spare part slid on as if it had been made to measure. Rufus gave a little cry of triumph. But his enthusiasm paled some as they hauled the sled to the edge of the hill.
“It’s a little steep,” he muttered, chewing the tassels on his scarf. “But it took me ages to get down from this hill on foot, and Teodor did say ‘with all possible speed.’ Besides, you’ve done this plenty of times, right?”
Lin peered down into the valley. It was true that she had done a lot of sledding, and that the slopes behind Summerhill were not for the faint of heart. But this was no slope. It was an almost sheer drop that leveled out only as it disappeared under the eaves of the forest far below. Even Niklas wouldn’t be so reckless.
And yet Lin found herself climbing up behind Rufus, locking her arms around his waist, holding on to the reins. Snow creaked like fiddle bows under the runners as they hung over the lip of the cliff, but Lin wasn’t afraid. She even leaned out to see better, because she had this calming notion that they wouldn’t race down the hill at all, but float serenely off toward the suspended shooting star until she woke up from this strange and wonderful dream. And if not, the fall would surely do the job.
Rufus shivered in front of her, but if he was scared, he pretended not to be. “All right,” he said, leaning forward. “Let’s go find Teodor!”
They plunged into a wild, rattling stoop that kicked Lin’s guts up into her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the jolt to shake her awake. But it didn’t. Instead the jolts kept coming. The hillside rushed at them so fast and the sled bucked so violently that it was impossible to know up from down. Spurts of snow whirled into Lin’s face.
She withdrew behind Rufus and opened her eyes. A wide, blurry shadow grew before them. They were going to hit the tree line at full speed.
When the forest swallowed them, branches whipped at their backs and twigs caught in Lin’s hair. Yet the sled lurched between the trunks in a series of miraculous escapes, until they slipped past a great oak tree and into a clearing in the forest.
The sled headed straight for a giant tree stump that stuck up from the snow. No, not a tree stump, but a well of dark stones, with a broken lid that had slid off to one side. There was no bucket, just a frayed rope, which dangled from the tarred crossbeam like a gallows rope. Lin bunched her fists in Rufus’s fur, waiting for the crash, hoping that she wouldn’t break any fingers or legs.
But right before they slammed into the well, the sled must have jumped a ramp of snow, because suddenly they were in the air. Lin lost her grip on the reins and flew off the sled. She landed face-first in a small drift that cushioned her fall. Her head rang with a weird humming, but otherwise she was unhurt.
“Rufus!” she said, getting up on her knees. “Are you all right?”
Rufus didn’t answer. He was already standing upright, mouth slack and whiskers spread, turned toward the cottage in the middle of the clearing. It was no larger than the old woodshed at the bottom of the Summerhill fields, with a sagging turf roof under a white blanket.
“The Winnower,” Rufus said. “But Sylver is protected. It’s safe. It just can’t be true!”
“What?” Lin searched the cottage for signs of danger. The timber logs glittered with rime, and so did the ramshackle porch that jutted out from the left corner. No smoke rose from the chimney, and the crude windows were dark. And yet she felt someone was in there, whispering to them.
A door grated around the corner.
Rufus turned toward her. Thin sickles of white showed at the edges of his eyes, and his voice was a broken squeak.
“Run!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Rufus threw himself down on all fours and bolted for the trees across the clearing. Creaking footsteps sounded on the porch. They were coming closer.
But Lin’s legs wouldn’t move. The joints seemed to have frozen, and her feet were much too cold to lift. Before she could run anywhere, she stumbled and fell. Lying flat out in the snow, she looked over her shoulder and back at the cottage.
On the porch stood a crooked and hooded shape, black against the sparkling snow. It lifted its arm. Deep within the hood there was a high-pitched crowing.
Lin wanted to get up, but all strength had abandoned her. Why couldn’t she just wake up? She lowered her face into the snow.
The cold dunk didn’t wake her, but it brought Lin’s legs back to life. She gathered them under her and tore into a run, making her way across the clearing to Rufus, who waited for her at the edge of the woods. Under the shelter of the trees, the snow was shallower. Soon they were galloping like spooked horses, dodging branches and trunks, racing across cone scatterings and animal tracks until they struck a path.
Only then did Lin realize that one of her feet was bare. At some point during the frantic escape, she had lost a slipper, and now she was bleeding from a cut on the sole. She hobbled over to a tree stump and sat down.
Rufus doubled back to sniff her foot.
“A bad cut,” he said, wrinkling his snout. “We’ll get someone to fix it, but we have to get into town first. I think this is the old path to Tinklegrove. If I remember the maps correctly, the road should be just across this ridge. Can you make it?”
Lin stood up again and put her weight on the injured foot. The cut didn’t smart. Rather, it felt like standing on a lump of ice. “I think so.”
“Come on.” Rufus offered her his arm. “Lean on me.”
They left the path and headed up a rough little hill. It was slow and painful going. The mountains were hidden by a dense latticework of boughs, and only a faint blue light trickled through to twinkle in Rufus’s eyes as he urged her on. Behind them, the woods were silent. No creaking snow, no snapping twigs, and most importantly: no eerie, high-pitched crowing.
“Who was that? Did you see him?” Lin’s voice came out very small.
“I saw him,” Rufus said, bending back a rowan branch. “Or rather, it. I still can’t fathom that it was actually there, though. The Winnower’s Well is a tall tale, a legend they scare freshers with at the Burning Bird when they’re all new and skittish. It’s not sup
posed to be true.”
He lifted Lin over a fallen branch, and as he continued, he lowered his voice.
“The legend of the Winnower’s Well says that a long time ago, before the guard runes were carved and before the hedge had grown tall and dense, a Nightmare from the mountains came creeping through and settled in the Sylver Valley. Nightmares are monsters, vile creatures with bleak and hungry souls. And there are none hungrier than the Winnower, so named because it reaps its victims from unwitting Sylverings who walk the woods.
“Of course I thought it was just a story. But now it strikes me that everything was there, exactly as the legend says. The sagging roof, the creaky porch, the broken well . . . and the hooded Winnower.” Rufus’s voice was a whisper now. “It twists the paths near its cottage so they all lead back to the clearing, no matter which way you try to flee. And when it has caught its victims and eaten them, it throws their bones in the well.”
Lin felt numb. The cold was leaking into her, weighing down her mind as well as her arms and legs. Around her, the forest sighed and whispered, and for a moment, the ground really did feel like it was shifting under her feet. She shook her head to clear it.
“That’s what I thought, too, back in the cozy warmth of the mead house,” Rufus said, mistaking her reaction for disbelief. “It’s just that there aren’t any other wells in Sylver. Why would there be? The ground is always frozen.”
Lin didn’t answer. She didn’t want to think of the well and the hooded figure, but it was as if invisible hooks pulled her thoughts back to the clearing. So she tried not to think at all, concentrating instead on putting one foot in front of the other, past bushes and boulders, until they made it to the other side of the ridge. There the forest gave way to a cleared road that wound along the darkly gleaming river between tall shoulders of snow. Rufus helped Lin climb over the plow bank.
“The Caravan Road,” he said. “We should be safe now.”
Lin’s breath escaped into the evening as wispy clouds. She was quite exhausted. What warmth had come from running through the forest had long since drained into the snow. At the nape of her neck, sweaty curls were freezing into a crackly tangle. She lifted her left foot again to examine it. It was blue, and the cut looked ragged and inky.
Rufus stared at her, whiskers wide.
“You’re a little pale. But Sylveros isn’t far now. A mile or three along the road, and we’re there.” He tried to smile, but his eyes were brimming. “I’ll take you straight to the Burning Bird. Get you some starmead. And you can have my scarf . . .”
“Thank you,” Lin said. “I just need to rest a little bit first.”
She sat down with her back against the snowbank and hugged her knees tight inside the cardigan. Funny. The ground was pleasantly warm all of a sudden. She felt sleepy.
“Lin!” Rufus cried, “You can’t sit down! Get up!”
But Lin’s head was full of churning stars and a sweet chiming.
“I hear bells,” she mumbled. “We’re already there, I think.”
The snow grew black around her.
CHAPTER FIVE
When she came to, the delicious chiming was all around, accompanied by the dull thump of hooves on hard-packed snow. Lin peered out through her lashes. She was lying beneath a pile of blankets and furs in a deep, wooden sleigh, pulled by a little horse whose belled harness sang and creaked as it cantered along the road. Lin’s hands were snug inside a pair of big mittens, and a musty, fur-trimmed hat threatened to fall into her face.
She turned her head and drew a sharp breath. Then it was no dream. Rufus lay next to her, staring up at sky. When he noticed that Lin was awake, he got up on one elbow with mingled shame and worry on his face.
“How are you feeling?” he whispered.
Lin thought about it. She still felt tired, but her limbs tingled, a sign that the cold was letting go. Her injured foot felt weird, though. It itched and buzzed, and waves of heat surged through it. A quick peek under the blankets told her that it was bandaged and smeared with some sort of sharp-smelling ointment that oozed through the gauze.
“He dressed your wound with one of his special salves. It reeks like nine kinds of dung, but if he uses it, you can bet your tail it works.”
Lin followed Rufus’s glance to the sleigh’s driver on the seat in front of them. His head and neck were covered in orange-red fur speckled with gray, and his triangular ears were tall and black. The tail that hung limp through the vent of his tweed coat was tipped in pure white.
“A fox!” she whispered.
“A Wilder. Not any Wilder, either. It’s Teodor,” Rufus whispered back.
Teodor reached behind himself with one skinny arm. He groped around until he found the worn briefcase that lay on the floor between the driver’s seat and the blankets. Gruffly, he tugged the lid and checked the locks on the metal clasps before he withdrew his hand and harrumphed.
“I do not know what you were thinking, Rodent. Dragging a half-naked human through the Winterwoods!”
Rufus winced. “I’m so sorry, Lin. It never occurred to me that you would show up in your pajamas. I should have prepared better, brought a coat or a blanket at the very least, but I left in such a rush. Still, I hoped that if we just kept moving, you’d be fine, but then you turned all blue, and . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to hear a sleigh approaching.”
He took her hand.
“Are you angry with me?”
Lin squeezed his fingers. “No. I’m not even cold anymore.”
She sounded more confident than she felt. No, she wasn’t cold anymore, but her prickling legs and woolen head told her that her temperature had dropped dangerously low. After all those lectures on respect for nature and “I know I can trust you to dress for the part,” she had attempted to trek down a frozen mountainside dressed in slippers, pajamas, and a wet cardigan. Not worthy of a troll hunter at all.
“But it’s not supposed to be like this,” Rufus said. “You’re supposed to have a wonderful time. You’re supposed to love Sylver. Instead you’re hurt and half-frozen.”
He was right, Lin thought. These woods were dangerous. And if neither snow nor shock nor fainting could transport her away from them, she would have to watch herself. But she didn’t say that to Rufus. He was searching her face with such guilt and hope that Lin felt sorry for him.
“I’m fine. I promise.”
“And that’s where you were both exceedingly and undeservedly lucky, Rufocanus,” Teodor said.
“People call you Rufocanus here?” Lin whispered. Rufocanus was the name Harald Rosenquist had come up with that day when they were discovered, after the Latin name for redback vole, and somehow, it had stuck. Lin had never used the whole thing, though. It reminded her too much of her own real name, clever and smug and far too fancy to be of any good to the one who had to wear it. “Only Teodor,” Rufus mouthed with a hard frown at the tweed coat. “But let’s not talk about it now.”
Lin settled back into the furs and blankets. Above, the first stars were coming out. They seemed too close and bright and formed none of the patterns she knew from her father’s lessons. The frozen shooting star shimmered on its field of darkening blue. “The Wanderer,” she whispered.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Teodor still spoke without turning, but his voice had softened. “Some say it is a slice of star, trapped by gravity. Others say it is a giant crystal lens created by mirror magic. But whatever it is, the Wanderer travels the border between this world and yours. It visits our sky every four-and-ninety years, on Wanderer’s Eve.” Teodor lifted his arm in a slow arch. “At twilight, the star enters our sky in the east, and nine minutes past midnight, it dips behind the Sylver Fang, not to return for nearly another century.”
“A century,” Lin whispered. “That’s rare.”
“Yes. There are few now who remember its last coming. They know
it only from stories and songs.”
The little horse shook his mane, causing his bell to chime, and Teodor broke into a dulcet song.
The Margrave wandered in woods winter-wild.
Stole through a gate for the heart of a child.
The boy gave to them his heart to devour.
A Winter Prince lost in the Wanderer’s hour.
Roses will wilt as the eve grows old.
Silenced and caught in the secret cold.
The words were eerie, but the melody melted into Lin’s ears and soothed her. Now that she felt safe, she even found the woods lovely. Tall, snow-laden spruces flowed by. Old tracks crossed in the snow. Winter dusk painted the icy river blue. She leaned closer to Rufus and whispered, “I am glad to be here with you, little one.”
But Rufus had tucked his nose under his tail and fallen asleep. Lin studied her friend for a moment. His dense eyelashes twitched, and his delicate ears were folded tightly against the head. He looked so much like the Rufus who had spent his life in her pocket that it seemed impossible that he had changed into this person who could speak and get into trouble and read maps and worry about her. Yet he had.
Sighing, Lin pulled the blankets up under her chin, enjoying the heat that was spreading through her body. And all the while the sleigh carried her closer to the town of spires and domes.
CHAPTER SIX
She must have drifted off again, because suddenly Rufus’s whiskers scratched at her cheek.
“Lin. Wake up. You have to get down on the floor.”
Lin sat up in alarm. The woods were still quiet, but a muted, golden glow tinted the treetops and Rufus’s eyes, which were serious. “What’s going on?” she asked as she slid down to the cold floor of the sleigh. “Why do I have to hide?”
“Teodor doesn’t want anyone to see you as we enter Sylveros.”
The Twistrose Key Page 3