Never Kiss A Stranger

by Heather Grothaus

  Alys felt her eyes well with tears and she could do little more than nod hesitantly. “I am. Layla will not bite you, mistress. She is a gentle animal, you have my vow. Piers took her by surprise the night he was bitten, and she was merely frightened. She shan’t harm you.”

  “I see. That is often the way with animals. Well, then.” The woman drew her arm around Alys’s waist, steering her gently toward the heart of the village. “I’m Ella. You—and Layla—may stay with me and my family tonight, rest, and then someone will speak to Ira for you in the morning.”

  “No,” Alys said, shaking her head. No one would take her responsibilities from her again. “I would speak for myself.”

  Ella paused. “Alright. But will you come with me? Take some food and drink and lie down?”

  “Thank you very much,” Alys said in acceptance. “I’m Alys, by the way.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Lady Alys,” Ella said with a smile.

  “No. No lady here,” Alys said wryly. “Just Alys.”

  Ella’s smile grew wider with knowing. “Come along then, Just Alys. I’ll help you into the tree.”

  Alys balked to a stop.

  “Tree?”

  Chapter 15

  Alys awoke with a start, her breath huffing in white rushes from her mouth. In an instant, the nightmare that had roused her was gone, like the clouds of her own steamy breath. She blew out a relieved sigh and leaned back fully onto the sagging rope cot that was her bed. It felt like the most luxurious ticking, even after a long night of hard sleeping. She looked down to check on Layla, but the monkey was not there.

  Alys bolted upright in the bed, her hands reaching out to grasp the rope sides and steady the swinging her motion had set off. She’d had quite her fill of swinging from a rope the previous evening. Ella’s family’s hut circled a large tree, its platform perhaps eight feet wide, trunk to outer edge. She could hear the sounds of the forest beyond the skins that covered the sidewalls like a tent, and the interior was largely dark thanks to the skins and the pine boughs laid over a crisscrossing frame of skinny limbs which formed the roof. Alys guessed that the hut was used mostly as sleeping quarters, as the interior contained little else save several more of the swinging cots and clothing hanging from pegs hammered into the tree trunk.

  “Layla?” Alys called softly, not wishing to call attention to any of the villagers yet—she needed time to collect her thoughts and work up a plan of action for approaching Ira. But she was concerned that the monkey was gone from her side. Although Ella’s hospitality was a kindness Alys had not expected, she was still unsure about the nature of these people who chose to eke out such a rugged existence as outlaws that they had been relegated to legend. Alys herself could still scarcely believe any of it was real.

  “Layla?” she whispered a bit more insistently.

  “Not to worry, Lady Alys—I’ve your lovely pet right here.”

  Alys looked over her left shoulder and saw the murky outline of a person—a girl from the sound of the voice, or perhaps a very young boy. Whoever it was clearly had Layla on their lap, and was feeding her something from a bowl.

  “Oh. Hello,” Alys said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was unused to having a stranger present when she awoke. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Tiny,” the shadow replied. “I—and most everyone else—was asleep when you arrived last night. Good morn to you. I fancy your monkey, milady. Reminds me of me baby brother.”

  Alys huffed a laugh. “Thank you. She is very pretty, but also very troublesome at times.” Alys didn’t want to seem stingy, but she was uncomfortable with the entire situation. She patted her thigh. “Come here, Layla, and bid me good morn.”

  Layla’s shadow seemed to turn toward her as if debating, and then Tiny spoke up again in a giggling voice.

  “I don’t think she wishes to leave her breakfast just yet, milady.” The shadow held forth a bowl. “Fresh turnip? I sliced it meself.”

  “Perhaps in a bit,” Alys hedged. “Tiny, are you one of Ella’s”—daughters? Sons?—“children?”

  “Aye, milady. Her oldest girl, am I. Nearly thirteen,” Tiny said proudly. “‘Tis why Mam allowed me to sit with you.”

  “Oh.” Alys was deciding on the best method for disembarking from her cot. She shifted one leg as if to throw it over the side, but the whole thing swayed wildly, prompting Alys to bring her legs together quickly and grip the side ropes. Her experience with Ira’s snare was still too fresh in her mind.

  “It’s best to just roll out at once and catch your feet under you,” Tiny advised sagely. “Else you’ll come upon your nose.” She set the bowl on the hut floor and then stood, and Alys saw Layla hop onto the girl’s shoulder easily. Tiny took a step toward the bed and held out her palm. “Take my hand, milady—I’ll steady you for your first time.”

  “Thank you,” Alys mumbled and was surprised at the delicate feel of Tiny’s small hand—the child had been named suitably. Holding her breath, Alys rolled, and was grateful when she was able to catch her feet under herself with a huff of breath. She stood fully upright. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “Well done, Lady Alys,” Tiny praised in her little girl voice. Standing next to the child, Alys was shocked to see that she—no giant herself—was likely a full foot taller than Tiny. Layla looked like a mighty griffin perched on the girl’s slender shoulder. “We can go to ground now, if you wish—I’m certain Mam’s put back some porridge for you if you’d prefer it to turnips.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Alys began following Tiny around the perimeter of the platform, to the other side of the tree.

  “I hope you don’t mind using the lift,” the girl called back over her shoulder. “I’m disallowed from using the ladders ‘cause of me being spindly—Papa fears I’ll slip and break me very back. He’s likely right. The lads, they simply swing down from ropes more oft than the ladders, but not me and Mam.” She paused. “But I reckon you could go on down the ladder yourself.” The girl seemed reluctant to offer this courtesy.

  “I must confess that I was not fond of the ladder last night.” In fact, Alys had been scared for her life, feeling that the rope conveyance would buck out from beneath her feet at any moment and spill her to the ground. Spindly or not, it would not have been a comfortable landing.

  “You’ll fancy the lift then,” Tiny said. “And since we’re together, we can lower ourselves and not have to wait for one of the lads.”

  Alys frowned to herself as Tiny and Layla ducked through a fold in the skin-wall. Then a triangle of forest appeared as Tiny pulled the covering aside. It looked as though Alys was about to step into the thin, cold air between the gray branches.

  “Don’t fear, milady,” Tiny encouraged. “We carry Mam and all the littlest ones up it in a go—it will for certain hold three wee girls such as us.”

  Alys stepped onto a square wooden platform butted up to the hut floor, and her breath caught in her throat at the view around her. They were truly in the trees, the ground at least twenty feet below. The breeze stirred her hair, scented with wood smoke and winter and the perfume of the trees themselves. Under their feet, villagers crossed to and fro attending to their chores, several carried bundles of long branches strapped to their backs, two men suspended a large buck on a spit, a woman herded bright red chickens with a switch. Children ran among the busied in play, fires crackled under tripod and bubbling cauldron. All around them in the surrounding trees, other huts had their skin walls pulled aside, and long ropes strung from branch to branch supported laundry and several woven rugs.

  Alys’s attention was torn from the fantastical view by Tiny’s polite instructions. “Just undo that rope there on your side, milady—take it from the peg, that’s it—but hold on tightly lest we spill sideways!” The girl seemed to find the idea of this amusing—Alys did not. And so she gripped the rough rope in her palms until her fingertips tingled.

  “Now just let us down easy. One hand, then the other. Hold tight to me, little Layla!
” Tiny began to release the rope into the carved pulley over her head, and Alys did the same, her eyes flicking to the girl periodically and also over her own shoulder at the ground that was inching up to meet them.

  The ride was smooth and slow, and by the time the platform came to rest on the forest floor, Alys had decided she much preferred the lift to the twisting rope ladder. She watched as Tiny tied off first her own rope and then Alys’s—presumably to keep the machine out of use to younger hands—and then followed the miniature girl off the conveyance and toward the nearest fire.

  Ella was nowhere to be seen, and Tiny went without hesitation to a small black iron pot set near the side of the fire. She lifted off the lid with a hooked instrument and peered inside. In those brief seconds, Alys took the opportunity to study the girl in full daylight. Her hair was straw colored, much like Alys’s own, and she immediately recalled the village woman in Pilings’s mention of Ella and her daughter. The Pilings woman had alluded to the fact that there was something wrong with Ella’s girl, but all that Alys could tell was that she was of unusually small size for her age—more along the lines of an eight-year-old.

  Tiny turned her face toward Alys with a smile, and Alys was fascinated by the girl’s impossibly light colored, gray-green eyes. In the forest light, with Layla on her shoulder, she indeed looked to be a figure from folklore, a fairy, an elf. She was enchanting.

  “I was right—here’s some porridge if you’d be wantin’ it, milady.”

  “I would love some,” Alys said.

  Tiny went to the base of the tree, where one of the small, rounded huts crouched and walked straight in, whereas any other person her age would have needed to duck. She emerged a moment later with a wooden bowl and a spoon, as well as a clay jug. The earthen vessel seemed a burden, and so Alys approached her with her hands out.

  “Let me help you—”

  “Not at all, milady,” Tiny said cheerfully and swerved around her toward the fire. “‘Tis unwieldy more than heavy. And I don’t need as much help as you would reckon.” She set the jug by the fire and Layla hopped to the ground, at last coming to greet Alys. Tiny removed the lid of the pot once more and began scooping its contents into the bowl.

  Not knowing what else to do, Alys sat on the ground. Obviously it was the right choice, for Tiny brought the bowl and jug to her, without directing her to any proper seating. Alys took the offered meal with a smile of thanks.

  Tiny stood above her, beaming down, her hands folded at her waist. Alys was not used to being watched so closely whilst having a meal, but she knew not what else to do, and so she saluted Tiny with the spoon and tucked into the bowl of warm grain.

  It was bland, with perhaps a hint of some sort of sweet syrup, but it was hearty and heavy in her stomach, and Alys thoroughly enjoyed the first hot breakfast she’d had since leaving Fallstowe.

  “Did Ira really throw you down the comin’-up?” The question burst from the girl, as if it had been growing and growing inside of her and she could simply no longer contain it. “And did you really get caught in his snare?”

  Alys forced the mouthful of porridge down her throat when it threatened to stick somewhere halfway. “The comin’up?”

  “The hill on the edge of the village. When someone approaches, they have to climb it, and they always call out—”

  “Coming up,” Alys finished with a wry smile. “Clever. And yes, he did, and yes, I did. Is that how he usually behaves toward visitors? String them up and then throw them out?”

  “Mercy, yes,” Tiny giggled. “Although most don’t make it past the snare. We haven’t had a proper visitor in ages, and never a true lady.” There was a hint of awe in the last word. “Were you a lad, Ira’d most likely had the brothers hand you a sound pummelin’ and then taken anything you were carrying.”

  “I see,” Alys said, her hopes for any sort of amicable relationship with the old man being whisked away into the treetops with Tiny’s words.

  “He’s simply protecting us, you see,” Tiny rushed to assure her. “Ira’s not cruel. He knows that for us to keep on living here like we are, intruders must be dealt with.”

  “Well, he’s not been exactly welcoming,” Alys mumbled.

  “It’s your title, milady. Forgive me, for sayin’.” Tiny stepped toward Alys and then sank into a cross-legged seat across from her. Layla immediately went to the girl, who produced nuts from her apron pocket as if she’d put them there earlier for that exact purpose. “Ira doesn’t fancy anyone of noble birth.”

  “Neither I nor my family has ever wronged Ira, that I’m aware of.”

  “Of course not,” Tiny said mildly. “But the village where Ira is from was ruled by terrible people. We’ve all come from such places. Ira simply wants us all to be able to live here in peace. He’s a good leader.”

  Alys was quiet for several moments, trying to comprehend Tiny’s explanation. “So all of you here—the wood people—are from villages that turned you out for one reason or another?”

  Tiny nodded. “Turned out or they left for fear of punishment. Some couldn’t pay their dues, others were accused of crimes—it’s different for us all.”

  “What of your family?”

  Tiny smiled impishly. “Guess.”

  “I couldn’t,” Alys said, shaking her head. “Your mother has been so kind to me, and you are a darling.”

  Tiny laughed. “It’s me, though. We lived in a place called Pilings when I was born. I was very, very small—never grew much after. The folk were feared of me for a curse. The pigs took ill, and they blamed me.”

  “Blamed you? When you were a baby?”

  Tiny nodded and held out her arms. “Don’t I look like a changeling?”

  “No!”

  The girl shrugged and looked away into the forest. “Mam and Papa wouldn’t have the talk. Papa had heard of Ira and his little village, and they welcomed us. It’s been a good home. All I’ve ever known.”

  The truth of this little knot of people in the wood became stranger and stranger the more Alys learned.

  “So you owe fealty to no overlord?”

  “Oh, I’m certain we owe it, we just don’t pay it.” Tiny stood, and Layla hopped up on her shoulder. “Ira says we own these woods, and I believe him. Come, milady, and I’ll take you to your man. I’m certain you’re wanting to see him, and Linny’s just come down from her tree.”

  Piers felt as if every muscle in his body had been stretched beyond its limit and then snapped back. His head pounded and his left hand felt as though it was smoldering. He opened his eyes and saw thatch above him, rolled his head to the left to look at his hand and saw that it was contained in a sort of package that looked like wide, flat leaves, glistening wet and heavy. His arm was angled up on a crude bolster.

  He couldn’t feel his first two fingers at all.

  He didn’t know where he was—in some sort of a hut, obviously. He vaguely remembered Alys coming back for him, with strange men, but he did not recall walking to a village, or having his wounds tended to. Where was she now? Where was he, and what had his caregiver done to him? Why couldn’t he feel his fingers? Had the bite Layla’d given him festered? His heart pounded. He couldn’t tend a dairy properly with one hand, couldn’t milk.

  Piers heard his own whimper as he tried to bring his right hand across his body, frantic to remove the organic bandages.

  “Still there, me friend,” a rough voice said, startling Piers. “Although for how long, I know not.”

  The old man sat on a stool not two paces from where Piers lay on the floor of the hut. Piers had not noticed him, blending into the dark skins that made up the walls as if he too were comprised of old, tanned leather. The man worried a small object in one palm.

  “Where am I?” Piers asked hoarsely.

  “My village. Linny’s tending you best she can, but the bites were old, sealed over, trapping the poison inside.” His deep set eyes seemed to bore into Piers’s. “The monkey?”

  Piers nodded. “W
here’s Alys? The woman who was with me?”

  The old man shrugged. “You mean Lady Alys, do you not?”

  “Where is she?”

  “What are you doing with the likes of her, friend? She told me you were a dairy farmer, and though I was not obliged to believe her, your hands tell a clearer truth than any of her kind would recognize—the calluses, the scars. It was me own life’s work, many years ago. Does she have aught to accuse you of? What is your worth to her?”

  “I don’t owe you any explanation. Where is she?”

  “I beg to disagree, friend. Were it not for my Linny, you’d likely be dead right now. I am showing you a great deal more hospitality than most would a stranger, so aye, you do owe me a bit, and I’d collect. Why are the pair of you together in the thickness of my wood?”

  “We’re only passing through. On our way to London,” was all Piers would say. He didn’t care what this Linny had done for him, he wanted Alys, and he wanted her now.

  The old man whistled a high note. “London, eh? What business would the likes of a poor farmer such as yourself have that would call him to London?” When Piers only glared at him, the old man pushed. “I can see that you’re not the sort of man who takes easily to being questioned, but I have me own interests to protect. You ken?”

  “I don’t make bargains, old man. Tell me where she is.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed and he looked sideways at Piers. “Even under threat of your own life?”

  Piers stared at him. “Don’t bluff. Kill me or tell me where she is. I’m tired of talking to you, either way.”

  The old man looked at Piers a long while, a faint smile on his thin lips. “I know not where her highness is at this moment. I threw her out on her titled arse last night, her filthy animal with her. No need to thank me.”

  Piers tried to sit up, his hand throbbing in time to his pounding heart. Alys alone in the wood? He would kill the old man himself if he could just get up.

  “Don’t get yourself in a lather,” the old man admonished gruffly, and half rose to push Piers gently but firmly back onto his makeshift bed with one wrinkled and stingy palm. “A kindhearted woman of the village took pity on her, and I’m certain her ladyship is but a stone’s throw from us. If she cares aught for your welfare, ‘tis likely her voice will abuse both our ears before long.”