by Rebecca Rupp
Not slaves! Pull free!
The stone circle now held only a leaping confusion of weasels and the limp fallen forms of savaged Grellers. One of them, Tad saw, still clutched his metal-pointed whip.
Not slaves! Home!
The weasels turned, all together, and streaked like swift black arrows into the enveloping night.
Home! Free!
Tad, suddenly remembering the High Priest, looked down, but there was no sign of Hagguld to be seen.
“What happened to the High Priest?” he asked.
Birdie shook her head. “I didn’t see,” she said. “He must have run off with the others. You did it somehow, didn’t you? The weasels?”
Tad nodded.
“How?” asked Birdie in a small voice. “You were yelling and then you scrunched your eyes up and then the weasels were free. I don’t understand, Tad. How can you be the Sagamore?”
“I don’t know yet,” Tad said. He could still feel the power inside him, damped down now, but ready to grow again.
Not this time, Azabel, he thought into the quivering dark.
“It’s getting lighter,” Birdie said. “It must be nearly morning.” Suddenly she leaned forward and pointed over Tad’s shoulder. “Look, Tad, it’s one of the weasels. It must not have been able to pull itself loose.”
One black weasel still remained. As the children drew nearer, they saw that it was tied by its leather harness to a young sapling. The bark of the tree was rubbed raw where the creature had tried to tear itself free. Now it huddled against the ground, trembling slightly, its head between its paws.
Anger. Fear.
Tad put out a cautionary hand.
“Don’t go too close, Birdie,” he said.
“It doesn’t look dangerous,” Birdie said. “It’s just a young one, Tad. It looks scared.”
She moved toward the weasel, one hand held out.
Comfort. Friend. Tad thought.
The weasel stopped trembling. It lifted its head and looked directly at Birdie. Then it scrambled to its feet. Standing on four paws, it was not all that much taller than the children themselves, though it was much longer. It would make three or four of me, Tad thought, if I were lying down. It still wore its elaborate harness: straps and belts of leather that passed across its chest and over its narrow shoulders, each strap inset with oddly shaped gold nuggets and chunks of blue turquoise.
The weasel stretched out its long snakelike neck until it just reached Birdie. Then it gently nuzzled her shoulder. Birdie stroked its head, and it nuzzled some more. She turned to Tad in delight.
“It likes me!” she said. “It’s tame!”
Birdie was petting the weasel again, rubbing the top of its sleek head and its small rounded ears. The weasel had its eyes closed and looked ecstatic.
“I don’t think anybody was ever nice to it before,” Birdie said. “I’ll bet those Grellers were horrible to it. Look.” She prodded with her toe in the dust. A discarded whip lay there, three knotted leather thongs fastened to a wooden handle. “I don’t see how they ever managed to tame it in the first place.”
“They didn’t,” Tad said. “They didn’t tame any of them. They captured them.”
“And then hit them,” Birdie said bitterly. She seemed to have forgotten all about number two (weasels) of the Four Great Dangers.
She kicked at the whip on the ground, tossing it as far away from the weasel as she could.
“No one will ever hurt you again,” she said to the weasel, scratching the fur under its chin. The weasel butted its head against her and made a sound that was almost a purr.
Birdie was unfastening the straps that tied the weasel to the tree. “We could ride him,” she said. “Let’s, Tad. I’m awfully tired.”
So, Tad realized suddenly, was he. His legs were shaking with exhaustion. He could have lain right down on the ground, limp as a piece of boiled grassroot, and gone to sleep. He looked doubtfully at the weasel, remembering the look of those sharp pointed teeth, but the weasel mind radiated nothing but gratitude and contentment.
“Bend down a little,” Birdie was saying. The weasel crouched lower to the ground. Birdie braced one bare foot against its leather harness and scrambled onto its back, reaching for the dangling reins.
“Hand me Pippit,” Birdie said.
Tad passed up the struggling Pippit — frogs, it seemed, did not like weasels — and then clambered reluctantly onto the weasel’s back himself, while Birdie stroked its neck and murmured soothing words. The weasel’s back was warm and beautifully soft. Its black fur was shiny and smooth, touched with blue in the early morning light. It was just the color of a crow’s feather.
“Which way do we go?” Birdie asked. “To Witherwood’s house?”
Tad pointed silently. He felt worn out.
I could fall asleep right here, he thought. If I could just do it without falling off.
Silent as a shadow the weasel with the three passengers on its back slipped away through the forest.
“I think I’ll call him Blackberry,” Birdie said.
The weasel paused at the edge of a clearing in the forest, and Tad, Birdie, and Pippit slid from its back to the ground. The sun was almost directly above them through the opening in the trees, warm on the tops of their heads. Almost highsun. Half-day eating time, Tad thought wistfully. Meals had been few and far between lately, and he was hungry. He wondered if Witherwood — if they ever managed to find him — would offer them something to eat.
The clearing must have been beautiful in the days before the Drying. Now its thick carpet of velvet grass was brittle and brown, and the bluebells and daisies that edged its borders were limp and withered on their stalks. The only sound was a worried humming of black-and-yellow bees, searching vainly among the drooping flower heads for nectar. The quiet was so heavy that it almost felt solid, like a crystal blanket. No one wanted to disturb it. One exclamation, one loud noise, Tad felt, and the whole clearing might shimmer into nothing and disappear like a burst bubble. The weasel was as still and silent as a black stone, and even Pippit was quiet, goggly eyes shifting back and forth hungrily following the bees.
Finally Birdie spoke. “Is this the right place?” she whispered. “Is this where Witherwood lives?”
“Shh,” Tad whispered back. He tugged her arm gently and pointed toward the far end of the clearing. “Look.” There, almost hidden by the dappled patterns of shade and sunlight, stood a little stone cottage covered with greenbrier vines. A mortared stone chimney poked up through its bark-shingled roof, and wooden shutters were pulled wide, leaving windows open to the warm summer air. The cottage door was open, too, and in the doorway, on a wooden bench in the sun, sat an old man.
Tad and Birdie advanced toward him, moving quietly across the dry grass. Pippit — distracted by hovering bees — hopped reluctantly behind. Birdie led the weasel by the reins. As they drew nearer, they saw that the old man was asleep. One eye was closed. The other was covered by a leaf patch, secured and tied around his forehead with a band of braided grass. His face was deeply lined, and his shoulder-length hair was pure white. He wore a tunic of soft gray feathers. A wooden crutch leaned against the wall by his side. A dreadful puckered scar ran down one side of the old man’s face and slashed across his throat.
“He’s been terribly hurt,” Birdie whispered.
At the sound of her whisper, the old man opened his single eye. Birdie gave a start of alarm. The eye was yellow, as bright and fierce as the eye of a hunting bird.
Tad gasped.
The yellow eye turned and fixed itself on Tad, studying him with sharp interest.
Birdie started to ask a question, but Tad didn’t hear her finish. Again, the world slipped and shifted. He felt as if he were falling, spiraling down and downward, into the yellow depths of that strange eye. Then the old man and the stone cottage vanished, and Tad saw only a great circle, glowing gold. The circle flickered and went dark. Suddenly it became a doorway, a gaping hole in a great dead
tree. The bare twisted branches of the tree were hung with bones — bones in clacking bundles dangling from strings of dried skin, and, here and there, whole skeletons topped with grinning ivory-colored skulls. The bones shivered and chittered in the wind, and cold tendrils of night mist rose and wrapped around them, draping them in ghostly cloaks. Tad stepped forward, and his feet crunched on piled bones, the broken remains of many midnight feasts. He was in an owl’s lair. The hollow stank of fear and blood. Then something huge moved in the darkness. Great moon-round eyes blazed far above his head, and an immense claw — a talon as long as his arm and sharper than the Grellers’ spears — slashed at his face. He cried out and flinched back.
“Who-oo are you?” A deep hollow voice, heavy with menace. “Who-oo are you, who comes to brave the Owl?”
There was a rustle and a scraping sound as something enormous moved toward him.
“Wait . . . I see . . .”
It was an immense snow-white owl. Around its neck it wore a heavy silver chain from which hung a silver medallion as big as Tad’s head, studded with polished moonstones. Its hooked beak and huge gnarled talons looked black in the dim light. It stared, unblinking, at Tad. Tad staggered backward, raising his right hand to make a circle — Great Rune’s sign — in the air before his face.
The Owl laughed.
“His sign will not help you here,” it said. “Those who come to me leave Rune behind. Rune cannot give them what they seek.”
“What do they seek?” Tad whispered.
“They come to me for wisdom,” the Owl answered. “Though wisdom is not always the gift that it appears. Still, those that would have it must pay the price, in blood and sacrifice and pain.”
It took a shuffling step closer.
“What would you give for wisdom, boy?”
Tad took another step backward and found himself against the wall of the lair.
“Who are you?” he rasped.
“You know me,” the Owl said. “All know me. I am the Destroyer. I am Death. I am fear and pain; I am rot and wither and despair. I am winter and midnight; I am the empty black behind the stars, and I am the dark of the moon. You know me, you little fool.”
The talon slashed out again and Tad screamed.
The Owl said, “I am Ohd.”
There was blood in Tad’s mouth, and he was shaking. He had bitten his tongue. Birdie was clinging to his arm, and on his other side, Pippit, croaking in distress, was clinging clammily to his leg.
A bell was ringing. Witherwood had reached over his head and was pulling on a length of greenbrier vine from which hung a hammered-metal bell. It rang with a high chiming sound that echoed through the clearing. Moments later there was a thrashing in the bushes and a tall gangly boy — really a young man — appeared, running. He was dressed in a short belted tunic over silkgrass breeches, and his hair — in a single bright orange braid — hung down the middle of his back. Beneath the flaming hair, the young man’s face was peppered with orange freckles. He looked hot and harassed.
“I regret that I was not here to greet you,” he panted. He pulled a wisp of mullein leaf out of a tunic pocket and mopped his hot forehead with it. “We were not expecting guests.”
He stopped in mid-mop and gaped nervously at Blackberry, the weasel, crouched watchfully behind Birdie on the grass.
“It’s all right,” Birdie said reassuringly. “He’s quite tame.”
“I do hope so,” the young man said in disbelieving tones. “Perhaps . . . if he could just move back a bit and stop staring at me —”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Birdie said firmly. “You’re perfectly safe.” She patted the weasel soothingly on the nose. “He’s a friend, Blackberry. Stop staring at him.”
The weasel and the young man exchanged identically suspicious glances. Finally the young man sighed, shrugged, and stuffed the crumpled scrap of mullein leaf back in his pocket. At the same time, Blackberry stopped staring, nuzzled Birdie’s shoulder, then rolled over onto his side, curled up into a tight furry ball, and fell asleep.
“Weasels,” the young man said unhappily.
“I think he’s cute,” Birdie said. “Look at him, with his paw over his nose.”
“‘Cute,’” the young man repeated. “I’m sure many would agree with you, of course. Briefly. In their last moments.”
He cleared his throat and edged gingerly away from Blackberry. “And how may we help you?” he asked.
“We came —” Tad began.
“Treeglyn sent us —” Birdie said.
They both stopped and started again.
“Treeglyn said —”
“We came —”
The young man flapped his hands helplessly.
“Perhaps one at a time,” he suggested.
“Are you Witherwood?” Birdie asked. “Because we came to see —”
“Oh, no,” the young man said. He gestured toward the old man, who sat silently watching them from his wooden bench in the sun. “That is Witherwood. And I am Witherwood’s Voice.”
Tad and Birdie looked at each other in puzzlement.
“Witherwood’s voice?” Tad repeated. “How can you be Witherwood’s voice?”
The old man moved his hand, gesturing toward the terrible scar across his throat.
“My master cannot speak like other people do,” Voice said. “Instead he uses a language made of signs. He speaks with his hands. Every movement of his hands is a word or a name.” He made a fluid rippling motion with one palm. “That means water. And this” — he put both hands together, raised them high over his head, and let them fall open —“means tree. My master —”
Witherwood’s hands were moving, weaving rapid patterns in the air.
“He wants to know who you are,” the young man said.
“I’m Tad,” Tad answered. “Tadpole of the Fisher Tribe. And this is my sister, Birdie.” He paused, waiting.
“He can hear you,” the young man said patiently. “He understands everything you say. It is only his voice that is lost.”
Witherwood regarded Tad with his single yellow eye, a long measuring look. His hands moved, tracing invisible figures.
“Why have you come to me?” the young man murmured softly.
Tad didn’t take his eyes from Witherwood’s face.
“We need your help,” he said.
Carefully Tad began to tell his tale once more. He told about the pond and the Drying, the trip up the dwindling stream and the meeting with the Hunters, the stone dam, the strange and terrible singing, the loss of Pondleweed. At this last, his voice quavered and broke, and Witherwood reached out and touched his shoulder with one wrinkled hand. At a signal, the young man vanished into the cottage. Soon he reappeared carrying a wooden tray heavily laden with acorn cups of cold mint tea, a towering pile of seed cakes, bowls of pea tomatoes and wild onions, a sliced yellow mallow-cheese.
“My master says you are to eat and drink,” the young man said. “You are hungry, thirsty, and tired.”
Tad and Birdie ate and drank, then ate and drank some more. Food and drink had never tasted so delicious. Blackberry woke up, ate three helpings of seed cakes, and lapped down two brimming bowls of tea. Then he curled up and fell asleep again, purring contentedly, with his paws folded over his nose. Birdie looked at him fondly.
“Do you think I’ll be able to keep him?” she asked wistfully. “I mean, after we get back home again?”
“Certainly,” said Voice, too quickly. “And the sooner you take him there, the better, wherever your home is, of course . . .”
Pippit gave a protesting croak, and Tad almost grinned in spite of himself. Then the grin faded.
“I don’t know, Birdie,” he said unhappily. “I don’t even know when we’re going to get back home. Or how.” Or if, he added silently to himself. And anyway, how can there be a home without Pondleweed?
The red-haired young man had cleared away the empty cups and bowls. Now he returned and settled himself on the ground
beside them. Witherwood’s hands were asking a question.
“Please go on,” Voice said.
Tad resumed his story. He talked on and on into the afternoon. He told about Treeglyn the Dryad and what she had told them of the Nixies, about his mysterious visions and Remembers, about his first hearing of the name Sagamore. At the sound of the name, Witherwood went even stiller than still, and his yellow eye gleamed. But his hands said nothing.
“Go on,” Voice said, as Witherwood closed his eye.
Tad told about the Grellers and their dark stone circle, about the sudden change inside his head, about the mind voices and the weasels. At last — taking a deep breath — he described what had happened when they first arrived at Witherwood’s cottage: the frightening meeting with the Owl in his dead tree hung with bones.
“Oh, Tad!” Birdie cried in a horrified voice. “How awful. How did you get away?”
“I don’t know,” Tad said. “It’s one of the things I don’t understand. I was just back here all of a sudden. It happens that way. It’s like waking up out of a dream, but each time the dream is realer and longer, until I can’t tell which is real and which is just the dream.” His voice wavered uncertainly. “It was a dream, wasn’t it?” he asked Witherwood.
He paused, frightened all over again. It must have been a dream. The Owl had clawed him and nothing had happened; he was still here, unclawed, and all in one piece.
“Who is the Owl?” he whispered. “Witherwood, who is Ohd?”
Witherwood had sat with his single eye closed throughout most of Tad’s recital, leaning against the stone wall, looking as if he were asleep. Now the yellow eye opened, and the old man’s hands began to move.
“Ohd,” Voice said slowly. He made the name sound low and long and eerie, like a hunting owl’s hoot. “Ohd is the other half of Rune.”