The Skeleth

Chapter 29

Tom.

He did not know how far he had wandered, or how long. He had turned, once or twice, to look behind him, but it was no use—there was nothing against which to reckon a course. The trees stood glorious high all about him, each the image of the others, each of them the one lone tree in all the world.

Tom.

Every one of his footfalls rose into the vaulting canopy above, then returned to him in gift, in echo without the faintest ring of discord, in a hushed and reverent presentation. Each dell and rise, each glade and outcropping of mossy old stone was its own wonder, and though he put one foot before the other and walked as though still in the night of his own world, he looked on every tree as though he had never seen one before, and when he looked down, he gaped in awe at the sight of earth, of dead leaves and crawling insects in the filtered moonlight.

Tom.

Autumn receded trunk by trunk as he wandered, backing away through summer to the finest night of spring. The air hung still, but not close; it smelled of leaf, moss and trunk, of cool rock and the pollen of glade flowers.

Tom.

He roamed, lost in rapture, until he stepped without warning into the open. Before him grew a row of white birch that ran off into the darkness left and right, each grown in its own fashion as though they had happened to form a straight line by chance. He turned around. Just behind him was another row of birch running parallel to the first. They marked out a path that bore no signs it had ever been trodden, sheltered above by a very full growth of leaves save for an open stripe of sky along its center. He tried to fix his direction by the stars but did not recognize them. He considered for a moment, then took the path.

Tom.

The rush of a waterfall grew louder with every step along the trail. He emerged high at its flank, above a bowl of white water churning far below. Rocks cut along the sides of the fall, just past trees whose roots poked out here and there into empty space.

Tom.

The cataract fell and fell beside him. Drops of water flew up from the depths to prick at his face at intervals that could never be predicted.

Tom.

Day and night as one. The moon fell crescent, then rose full. It was joy just to breathe—joy at the intake of his breath, and at the output, and at the pause between.

"Tom."

He heard footsteps. He looked back into the forest, down the path along which he had come.

"Tom." She leaned upon her walking stick, gnarled hands gripped to the sheepskin handle. He thought that perhaps he should get up to help her, but then she was beside him and sat down.

He put his hand to the earth, feeling out the edge of land and water. "Where am I?"

The Elder laid the walking stick across her lap. "What do you mean when you ask that question?"

He felt his belly—fear. "Which way is home? Which way is safe?"

"Do you want to go to the safe place?" She was an old woman. "You can, if you like. Just follow the water." She was a little girl with ringlet hair and a dusting of freckles under each of her eyes.

He held out a hand. He let the water touch his fingers. "I feel as though something I wanted to do was not done."

"That will always be so." She was a maiden in the first bloom of youth, the ringlets drawn back along her ears like a crown. "Even if you come with me now, when next you see this place, you will say the very same."

He looked at her. "If I go with you, will it hurt?"

"Yes." She was a mother-to-be, her belly big, her hair bound and veiled. "It will hurt us both."

"Why?"

Wrinkles sprouted from the sides of her eyes. "I waited for you, the whole of my life I waited, but you never came." She was an old woman again. "Not until the very end."

She wrung her hands around the walking stick. "I always knew that you would find me." Broken veins left blotches of red on her cheeks, blotting out the freckles. "But so late, so late."

Tom thought he remembered something, or at least remembered that there was something he should have thought before. It had to do with things given and received, things that stayed within you even when passed on to another.

He touched his hand to hers. "Lead me. I will follow."

She kissed his fingers—once a child, once a mother, once a woman bowed with age and dying by the breath.

Tom put his hand to the earth. He stood and helped her up. He thought he heard barking, somewhere far away.

"There is no safety, if you follow my path." The Elder leaned on her walking stick.

"There is no safety anywhere." Tom followed her out of the glade, even though each step hurt more than the last. They walked hand in hand between the birches, though the birches were not really there.

"Sit him up. Raise him, raise him sitting." The voice sounded different from before—rougher and less musical, with a hard, close echo. Pain chewed on him and swallowed him. He heard an anxious woof.

His eyes slid open. Sunlight cut in a beam through a long, slit window, right across his face.

"Give him space. Let him breathe." Someone held him by the shoulder, forcing him forward almost double. Jumble crouched whining between his feet, bandaged around the middle. He barked at Tom, making ready to leap on him, but a pair of rough hands seized him before he could move.

"It hurts." Tom gagged from it. "It hurts." He felt something digging, moving at his side.

"Quiet. Shhh." Oriel wiped his brow with something damp. "Just a moment longer. Hold to us, hold to this room. You are sitting in bed, in castle Garafraxa. It is morning, it is autumn—Tom, look at me. Hold to me."

"A bed?" Tom's vision cleared. "I'm not allowed to sleep in beds. My master would beat me black and blue."

Jumble barked loud, and then louder. "Now, then, doggy. None of that." An old, square man held a wiggling Jumble tight—the bald-headed man who had shouted orders from the castle gate. "You let him be, now. Time for licking noses later."

The pressure slackened on Tom's back, and the strange digging feeling ceased. Someone moved behind him, letting go.

"Prop some pillows for him. Keep him sitting up." The Elder hobbled off the bed, her mouth red-black in drips down her wrinkled chin. She bent and spat into a jar. "That's all of it."

"Oh, it hurts." Tom retched. His skin felt like it crawled back and forth, ribbons of fire running with every pulse of his heart.

The Elder cupped his chin. "Don't cry to me, you chose to feel pain again." There was a twinkle behind the age-clouds of her eyes.

Oriel let her grip go slack on Tom's arms. He sank backward, but she got a bolster in behind him before he could crash down to the bed.

"We must set watches over him in turns." The Elder grabbed for her hip, then her walking stick.

"I'll be first." The old man dragged a chair beside the bed. "I've a good space of things to think about. Now, then, doggy, will you be good?"

Oriel tucked a linen sheet up to Tom's chest. "Rest now." She smoothed his sweaty bangs from his eyes.

The bald old man let Jumble hop onto the bed. Jumble padded up on the sheets, licked Tom's nose just once, then lay down at his side.

"Help me, girl." The Elder sagged over her stick. "I must rest." Oriel moved to take her arm and led her through the open doorway.

Tom watched them go. He half expected the Elder to look back at him, but instead she staggered out, her breaths coming shallow and hard. He lay back and shut his eyes.

Dream and waking thought ran together.

His eyes snapped wide-open. He knew exactly what he had to do.

He looked over at the bald old man in the chair. He raised a hand. "My name is Tom."

"Isembard's the name. Earl of Quentara." The bald old man nodded to the doorway through which the two women had gone. "I was the Revered Elder's husband, years ago, if you can believe it."

Tom hauled himself up on the bolster—weak and dizzy, but alive, awake. The sun had risen past the arrow-slit window. The pain that had wracked him was gone, leaving only a tightness on his left side, just under the ribs. He touched along it and felt the poultice set over the cut, a wet and heavy bandage filled with something that rankled his nose. He brought up his hand to sniff—he smelled bruisewort and clodderweed, crushed seeds of Gunda's-glory and other things he could not place. Beneath it lay a cut so shallow that it should have been little more than a nuisance.

Jumble slept—his bandaged, fur-fringed belly heaving in and out—but as soon as Tom shifted, he snapped awake and raised his head. His yellow eyes roved, scanning Tom up and down, and only a fool would fail to call the look within them worry.

"It's all right." Tom scratched Jumble between the ears. "I'm in no danger now—and look, I have a bandage to match yours." He swung his feet over the side of the bed and tried to stand.

"Now, now, there!" Lord Isembard caught his arm. "Didn't you hear? You nearly died last night—you're to rest."

"There is no time." Tom heaved himself to his feet. "I know that we have only just met, and it might seem very bold of me, but I must ask of you three favors."

Isembard sat back in his chair, white eyebrows raised into his creased and hairless forehead. "Well, then. Ask away."

Tom looked to Jumble. "The first favor that I ask, my lord, is that you take care of my dog."

"That's no hard asking." Isembard patted Jumble's head. "The second?"

"That you send out word to bring your people into your castles, but do not offer the Skeleth battle, whatever they try to do."

"That's harder asking, but I'll wager you have your reasons. Done. And third?"

"Passage across the lake, and then a loan of the fastest horse you have."