Winterwood, page 42
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“Will you stay here?” I asked her. “Or will they let you go back with your mother?”
“My mother has Leo. They plan to return to Summoner’s Well. I will visit, but for now my father needs me.”
I couldn’t envisage Dantin needing anyone. I think my thoughts must have shown on my face because she smiled. “He’s hot tempered sometimes, but he cares for me, and sometimes I think he needs me to retain his balance.”
“He’s very different from his brother.”
“Larien and he are half-brothers only, but my father’s is a tale for another time, except that you should know that when Martyn the Summoner drew the rowankind from Iaru, my father lost both his rowankind foster mother and his wife. You see why he is the way he is with mortals?”
“Yet he and Rosie were together.”
“He did his duty, and I think he became fond of her in his own way, but he was happy enough to let her go once he had me.”
“Did the Fae think Rosie was the firstborn?”
“They hoped so. If she had been, then the Great Power of summoning would have passed to me. When they realized she wasn’t, Larien took the box to Plymouth, only to find that Margery had a child already.”
“And that she had rejected magic.”
“Indeed. After the destruction of Bullcrest, my mother and Margery believed that because they were twins, their magic was amplified. They were bound together by close magical bonds, and those bonds would always lead them back to each other. It broke their hearts, but in one last working, hurriedly and in fear of their lives, they sundered their bond of kinship in order that each one of them would have a chance to escape alone. I think it may have driven my mother quite mad for a time. Whatever else he did, my father gave her back her sanity and allowed her to heal.”
I reached out my hand and touched the back of hers. “Thank you for telling me that. It makes me want to kill Dantin slightly less.”
She laughed. “He is infuriating at times, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but he loves you.”
“He really does.”
Three days later I was strong enough to stand without wobbling. The first rowankind had already found their way to the Lady’s forests, and some had, out of choice, passed through the barriers into Iaru. One of the first was Annie, from the Twisted Skein in Plymouth.
“I like her a lot, Ross, and she likes me,” David said when he came to see how I fared.
“She’s twelve, David and you’re fourteen.”
“She’s thirteen. And we have no need to rush.”
“You seem very sure of this.”
He grinned at me. “I am, and so is she. We both have a lot to learn. I may have lost the stolen magic, but I still have my own Fae magic to master. Actually, I haven’t lost all my Sumner magic either, though it feels different.” He raised an index finger and produced a small steady flame. “The Sumners always had their own magic. It wasn’t all stolen. I bet you still have some of yours.”
Maybe I did. I wasn’t trying it out yet, though.
“What will you do now, Ross?”
“I need to make one more trip to the ocean, to say my proper good-byes.”
He nodded. “Give the crew of the Heart my good wishes.”
“Has anyone heard how it goes in the cities?” I asked. “Is there blood in the streets? Have the rowankind risen against their former masters?”
David beckoned Annie forward from where she’d been hovering. “Tell Ross what happened in Plymouth.”
She started to bob a curtsey and then stopped herself and glanced sideways at David. He gave her a nod of encouragement.
“I was in the yard at the Skein, my hands in a tub of wash water going from cool to cold. I wished the water could warm itself again, and then I realized it was doing. Warmer and warmer until it was quite heated up and my fingers didn’t hurt nearly as much. Then I realized they didn’t hurt at all, and neither did my back from bending over the tub. I felt new again. Like I was hardly me anymore. And I thought to myself, what am I doing working for poor vittles and a worn blanket to sleep under?”
A little smile played on her lips. “And then cook walked out of the kitchen straight as a lady, screwing up her apron in her hands and dropping it on the floor. The master came into the yard all of a bluster and told us to get back to work, but John Ostler told him that working for nothing was a thing of the past and if he wanted our labor he must pay a fair wage for it. The master said—” She pressed her lips together. “I can’t rightly say exactly what the master said, but it wasn’t polite, so we all walked right out of the yard and didn’t look back. There was a crowd of folks just like us, gathering in the market square, all laughing and talking and standing straighter than they’d ever stood before. I swear I felt as though I’d grown a handspan in just a few minutes.”
She giggled. “The master followed us and threatened to send for the law, but we looked at each other and back at him and wondered what the law could do. There were plainly more of us than there were special constables in the whole town. Someone said the redcoats had been sent for, so John Ostler said we should march to meet them. Someone said we should arm ourselves, but John Ostler said that would be foolish and they listened to him.”
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t know what would happen, but I followed anyway. On Broad Street there was a wall of redcoats with muskets and a troop of Kingsmen with sabers drawn. The officer at their head had his hand on his sword, but he didn’t draw it, and he didn’t tell the redcoats to raise their muskets either, so we stood and looked at them, and they stood and looked at us. By this time there were hundreds of us. Maybe a thousand. I don’t know what a thousand folks look like, but it was a lot. I think there were more of us than there were of them, though we didn’t have muskets, of course. I can add up. Even if the Kingsmen had fired their muskets there would have been hundreds of us all over them before they could reload, and weapons or no, they couldn’t stand against us.
“Anyhow, the captain stepped forward to have words with John Ostler and some of the other leaders, and they ended up shaking hands. The rowankind were allowed to march out of the city, all those who wanted to.”
“Did they all want to?” I wondered about Captain Ezra Pargeter’s wife Minna. There were those tied to humankind by bonds impossible to break by magic.
Annie shook her head. “John Ostler walked with us to the Tavistock Road and then shook my hand and Elsie Cook’s hand and said he was going back to the Twisted Skein to negotiate a fair wage. He said if the master wouldn’t agree to it, he’d try the Queen’s Head over the road because surely every inn in Plymouth would be needing experienced ostlers, but he hoped the master would listen to sense because he liked working with the horses and didn’t want anyone slapdash looking after Bonnie and Major and Grayboy.”
“But you didn’t want to stay?”
“There was nothing for me there, and I felt the pull of the Okewood. I didn’t rightly know what was waiting, but it had to be better than skivvying.”
David reached out and took her hand, and she smiled at him. She’d found something better at last.
We left Iaru, or Iaru left us, David promising that we should meet again soon, and we four mortals—three humans and a shapechanger—began to pick up the pieces of our lives as best we could. With Iaru’s perpetual summer behind us, the autumn chill settled into our bones.
Rosie and Leo returned home to Summoner’s Well with promises to visit exchanged on both sides, while Corwen and I, riding Fae-bred horses, traveled westward into Devon, staying in roadside inns whenever possible until we reached the Okewood on our way to the ocean.
Though our Fae horses could gallop for hours without tiring, we camped for the night on the edge of the Okewood, in a hollow close to a stream, where a woven bower provided some shelter from the breeze that shook the stark branches above our head, dislodging the last coppery leaves. The Lady and her entourage were absent, though the forest was still redolent with her presence.
Corwen gathered wood while I tethered and unsaddled the horses and gave them oats from the supply we carried in saddlebags, which seemed just as full after we’d taken out the day’s supply. Corwen’s dapple gray and my bright bay watched me with liquid brown eyes, following my every move. We had no names for them. I remembered something about it being unlucky to change a horse’s name, but we couldn’t keep calling them Gray and Bay, and Larien hadn’t told us their names when he’d given them to us.
“So what do we call you?” I murmured as I rubbed the bay’s saddle mark.
He stretched his neck and raised his head, opening his mouth and pulling back his lips to show two rows of tombstone-like teeth.
“Are you laughing at me?” I asked him.
He snorted and nodded.
“Coincidence,” I said, and slapped him on the neck.
He shook his head and his mane rippled.
“Not coincidence?”
He shook his head again.
Corwen came back into the clearing with wood for a fire and began to build it.
“Did Larien say anything about these horses?” I asked. “Can they understand us? Communicate with us, even?”
Corwen laughed. “They’re horses.”
“When you’re a wolf you understand human speech.”
“I’m a shapechanger. They’re horses.”
“You don’t suppose they’re . . . ? No, that would be so embarrassing.”
Corwen came to stand beside me. “If they were shapechangers I would know it. Besides, shapechanging isn’t one of the Fae magics.”
“And you know this because?”
“Because I learned my lessons well. When I first came to the Okewood, Hartington was my tutor.”
“How old were you?”
“The first time? Fourteen or so.”
“You came more than once?”
“It’s complicated.” He smiled. “Wolf shapechanger. Respectable Yorkshire family. We didn’t always see eye to eye.”
“Your parents didn’t understand you?”
“On the contrary, they understood me all too well. The neighbors, however, were not fond of wolves.”
“It seems I do have a lot to learn.”
In the meantime both horses were behaving entirely normally, standing head to head in quiet companionship. No matter how many times I glanced in their direction, I couldn’t catch them out in any unusual behavior.
Corwen laughed and pulled me to him, holding me close so that I was enveloped in his warm arms.
I shivered. “I wish this breeze would drop.”
“You could do something about that.”
I hadn’t used my magic since the summoning, and wasn’t sure I could.
“What’s the matter?”
Until I tried and failed, or tried and succeeded, I didn’t know how much of my magic I had lost. All of it, I suspected. And that was why I was afraid to try. I didn’t want to know.
“Magic or no magic, I love you just the same, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know.” Corwen echoed my thoughts and dropped a kiss on top of my head before carrying both saddles into the bower, leaving me to think.
I reached into the air with my imagination and tried to still the breeze, but it remained lively.
I tried again. No change.
I called rain, not really wanting it to rain, but needing affirmation.
Nothing happened.
Wind and water had always been my ready-magic.
Corwen emerged from the bower and could probably tell from my face that I was ready to burst into tears. Any number of times I’d wished for my magic to vanish, and now that it had I felt bereaved.
“What did you try?” Corwen asked.
I told him.
“Hmmm, well the weather-working was probably part of the rowankind magic. It was, after all, what Martyn the Summoner used to defeat the Armada. It had to have come from somewhere. Try light and fire.”
I’d never been able to make fire, but I could make a light and heat it until the wood caught. I concentrated hard and felt a tiny echo of the old familiar tingle, but no witchlight came to my command.
“You’re trying too hard,” Corwen said.
“I don’t think I’m trying hard enough.”
He laughed and pulled me to him. “Don’t worry, it will come.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I have a flint and steel. It’s too cold to camp without a fire.”
He kissed me and ran his hands up my body until his palms rested neatly against my breasts.
“Damn stays again,” he said. “Well, it’s too cold to strip off tonight.” His thumbs massaged my breasts above the line of the stays. I could feel the warmth through the layers of my dress and chemise. “Ah, Ross, if it were warmer I would . . .” And he whispered in my ear, in thorough detail, exactly what he would do if only it were warmer.
Without thinking, I tossed a witchlight into the fire and heated it until, with a little pop, the dry sticks burst into flame.
“You see?” He laughed.
“You did that on purpose, you bastard.”
“Of course.”
“So my magic isn’t all gone.”
“It appears not.”
“So I may still have my summoner magic.”
“Can you tell where the Heart is?”
“She’s off the coast of Bideford.”
“Yes, but you know that. You arranged it with Hookey. I mean can you feel where she is?”
“Yes!” I grinned at him. “I can. She is off the coast of Bideford, just as we agreed.”
He kissed me.
I didn’t reply as the kiss deepened, and I pulled him down into the overhang of the bower, sheltered from the breeze I could no longer control, but warmed by the fire I’d built.
It was a long kiss, full of promises on both sides. Before the next one began I managed a throaty growl. “So now you have to do what you said. I’m not even sure it’s physically possible without pulling a muscle or putting your back out.”
“I always keep my promises.”
Hours later, safe in Corwen’s warm embrace, I used my magic again and called the Heart.
I was still a summoner.
The following afternoon we arrived in Bideford. While Corwen waited with our horses I strolled down by the quay. There was little difference to be seen here for the town’s loss of their rowankind, except that those who toiled loading and unloading the clay boats were wholly human. It wasn’t until I reached what had been the office of the Mysterium that I stopped, my jaw hanging slack. The office had gone, and the old merchant house that had housed it stood a burnt-out wreck. Was this a sign of things changing at last? I hoped so.
Beyond that, the Heart bobbed gently at the quayside, her decks clean, her sails squared away. It seemed she’d been welcomed. I stood at the bottom of the gangplank, so tempted to step on board one last time, but my feet knew what my head didn’t and refused to obey. Never strong on material comfort, this little vessel had been my home for many years, and she still tugged at me in ways I found difficult to comprehend. Maybe I’d never be able to sever all my ties. Just as I’d summoned her, she might still summon me in times of need, but right now we didn’t have need of each other.
Lazy Billy waved from the deck and, when I asked for Captain Garrity, pointed to a street where every other establishment was a tavern. I should have guessed. I found Hookey on the second try in the Golden Pot. The alehouse was run by a pair of comely sisters who seemed to have taken a shine to him, as well they might, for he’d transformed himself. He wore a fitted velvet frock coat, black breeches and polished black boots, a shirt with ruffles, and a smart tricorn hat, all a little old-fashioned, but very dashing. He’d got a new hook of polished steel, but the biggest change of all was that he’d shaved off his beard. It made him look ten years younger and almost handsome.
“Hookey!” I couldn’t help but hug him. Now I wasn’t his captain it was allowed. He hugged me back and I swear his eyes moistened.
“How are you, lass?” He squeezed me tight. “Looking much better than the last time I saw you.” He lifted my hair off my ear with the point of his hook and frowned.
I shrugged. “I reckon I got off lightly. How’s everything on the Heart?”
“We’re doin’ all right, lass.”
“Philip’s dead.”
Hookey sniffed and shrugged as if it didn’t signify. “I know he was your brother, but sometimes blood ain’t thicker than water, not saltwater anyways. Davy’s all right, though, is he?”
“Yes, he’s fine. He sends his good wishes.”
Hookey nodded approvingly. “We’ve applied for our own letters of marque from the king. Mr. Rafiq wrote the words. Will Tremayne’s no more. We reported him dead at sea, along with his wife, so you’re in the clear as long as you leave the Tremayne name behind. Henry Garrity is the legitimate captain of the Heart.” He sounded out every syllable: lee-git-i-mate.
“Well, don’t let it go to your head, Hookey, legitimate cannonballs do as much damage as bastard ones.”
“Aye, lass, I know it.” He raised his hook.
“Where were you when the rowankind were freed?”
“Out at sea taking a very nice French merchantman. We missed it all. I heard tell there was a right ruckus in London. A riot. And some big house or other set aflame. There’s talk that folks is right out of sorts with the Mysterium, though how that will turn out is anyone’s guess.” He jabbed his head in the direction of the burnt-out building. “If you’re going to stay ashore from now on I wouldn’t show your hand, if you know what I mean.”
I nodded.
“That’s if you’re going to stay ashore.” He glanced at me slightly sideways. “You can always come home. And you can bring that fancy silver-haired fellow even if he is a werewolf. Well, what do you say?”
