The Farwalker's Quest Page 20

  “Now what do I do?” She hurried to Scarl with the bundle.

  “Find its neck and snap it.”

  Ariel shuddered. “Will you do it?”

  He hesitated. “No. If you want to eat it, you’d better learn how to kill it. But I’ll make it easier, for the bird’s sake.” Reaching into the jumping bundle, he pulled the bird out and trapped its flailing wings under his arm. “Come beside me, grab its neck—watch that beak—and snap it as hard as you can. Hurry, now. Mercy.”

  The sensations of being snatched from her bed and stuffed into a bag returned to Ariel in a rush. She wanted to let the poor creature go, but its panic and Scarl’s urging left no room to back out. Squeezing her eyes nearly shut, she did as he’d told her. Bones crunched. The bird went limp.

  “I don’t want to do that ever again,” she moaned, scrubbing her palm on her leg.

  Scarl dropped a hand on her shoulder. “That’s why ground-melons and berries and wild carrots are nice. But they’re not always there to be found.”

  Ariel only felt awful until the first bite. Even roast lizard didn’t taste too bad if she didn’t look closely. The gingerbird was delicious. They sucked up every scrap of the first bird. Scarl made them save most of the second.

  “How long have you been wearing that splint, Zeke?” he asked.

  Zeke ticked off fingers, calculating. “A little over three weeks.”

  “What?” Ariel felt as though months had passed since Zeke had fallen out of the maple.

  “I think,” he added. “I hope I haven’t missed my birthday already.”

  In the end, they decided Zeke’s count must be right. Since Scarl felt the splint should stay on a bit longer, he removed the bandage on his own arm instead. He rinsed it in the creek before rolling the meat in ashes from the fire.

  “Yuck,” Ariel said, watching.

  “The ashes will wash off,” Scarl said, wrapping the ashcoated meat in the cloth. “And they’re fairly clean, compared to flies and dried blood and lint from my pocket and anything else that would otherwise get on the meat.”

  She sighed. He had an answer for everything. “The cut on your arm is healing, anyway,” she said. The scar was pink and still swollen, but it had knit together reasonably well.

  “It wasn’t nearly as deep as yours.” He glanced up. “While we’re inspecting everyone’s damage, we should probably remove some of your stitches.”

  “Hooray. They itch bad.”

  Zeke began snoring long before that task was done. Scarl cut the knots with his knife and carefully pulled out each bit of horsehair, tickling Ariel’s sensitive skin. He was so intent on his work that she had a chance to study his face. He’d had no opportunity to shave it for days, and the stubble there made him look rougher than usual.

  Ariel wondered if everyone in his village would resemble gangly crows. An odd thought struck her. “Scarl, do you have any kids?”

  He paused to look squarely at her. “No. What made you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. Just wondered.” It wasn’t so hard to picture him tossing balls or giving piggyback rides. She’d had some of the latter, after all. She couldn’t imagine a wife for him, though. He wasn’t too ugly—just too hard and, at the moment, too ragged.

  He bent back to her arm. Watching, she decided that the big knife so often in his hand didn’t fit very well with sweethearts and babies, either. Still, a Finder might be able to find himself a wife if he tried.

  “Would you want any?”

  His dark eyes flicked up to hers and back to her stitches.

  Ariel’s throat crimped tight where it passed into her chest. Perhaps she’d asked the wrong question. But his refusal to answer put a cool silence between them just when she’d begun warming.

  She was still feeling pinched the next day, despite a change in the landscape as healing as the first burst of spring. An army of pine trees had marched up to displace the desert’s water-starved weeds. Mint and cinnamon smells rose from the sunbaked wood, and bearberries dangled from vines. The red kernels, although hard and not really ripe, caused tart explosions in Ariel’s mouth. She tried not to let them sour her thoughts, but the strange forest seemed too eerily still. She missed the secretive rustling of ferns and the sunlight winking through a confetti of leaves.

  As she gazed around the unfamiliar wood, she caught a dreamy half smile on Scarl’s face.

  “It’s good to be near home,” he explained.

  She looked away quickly, stung by those words.

  “Forgive me. I should have thought before I said that.”

  It was easier to be angry with him. They walked on, the silence broken only by their footsteps and the trilling of unseen birds.

  “Do you have a song, Zeke, that you can sing for those of us who aren’t stones?” Scarl asked.

  Zeke looked startled. “Not really. What I sing to the stones isn’t words, just … whatever sounds come into my head that I think they might like.” He bit his lip. “I don’t want to sing any tree songs. If that’s okay.”

  “I understand.”

  Brown pine needles crunched under their feet until Ariel’s defiance pushed her to speak. “I have a song,” she announced. “Part of one, anyway.”

  “Do you?” Surprise spiked in Scarl’s voice.

  Inwardly Ariel smiled.

  “Shall we hear it, then?” he added.

  Ariel sang, sudden embarrassment squeezing her voice. Zeke and Scarl had to veer closer to hear. She’d started the song a fortnight ago, making up her own words for a tune of Elbert’s to block out his rude lyrics. The verses had changed with her fortunes. The first time she’d sung it under her breath, she’d sung this:

  They drag me ever on and on,

  I’m all unwilling,

  Tied to a ragged crow

  Too far from home.

  Too far from anything,

  My feet are burning

  Walking so endlessly

  Lost from my home.

  She’d added on to it since, so now she also sang:

  Walking ever on and on,

  Blood always spilling.

  Finders are awful men.

  Walk to the sun.

  Walk to the sun and back,

  My feet are burning.

  Zeke’s here to help me now,

  Walk with the wind.

  Ariel’s voice halted. She’d played with more lines, but those weren’t done yet. Acutely aware that her song mentioned both of the people alongside her, she kept her eyes on the ground. She couldn’t remember why she had offered to sing it.

  “That’s pretty good,” Zeke said. Ariel stole a peek at his face. Respect rode there.

  When Scarl touched her opposite shoulder blade, she flinched.

  “Yes.” Scarl nodded. “A Farwalker’s song.”

  She flushed and looked hastily forward again. It was infuriating, really. Every time she decided to dislike him, every time he pushed her and she meant to push back, she instead managed to make them both proud. Her own skills seemed to conspire against her. Maybe that reassured him, but it left Ariel uneasy about what surprise might come next.

  CHAPTER

  29

  They marched long into the evening, dodging trees in the gloom, and began early again the next morning. As they climbed into foothills, Ariel began to dread another freezing mountain pass, this time with no blankets. Her worry so consumed her that small signs of human passage went unnoticed until the pines abruptly gave way to a cluster of little brown houses. She stopped in shock.

  “They’re all made of wood!” Zeke exclaimed, disapproving.

  “We haven’t so many stones here,” Scarl said. “But old trees sometimes wish to leave the world and return as new saplings again. Our Tree-Singer usually can find one when we need.”

  “This is Hartwater?” asked Ariel.

  “At long last. Come on.”

  He led them to the second house in the cluster. He didn’t knock. He just opened the door.

&nb
sp; A pale woman with loose, dark hair glanced up, startled. She shrieked Scarl’s name. With two long strides, he scooped her out of her seat and into his arms. His face was soon covered with kisses.

  Stunned, Ariel stared at the woman’s vacated seat. She could only assume it was a bike. The seat of a wooden chair was affixed between two wheels larger than those on barrows back home. Ariel couldn’t see any handles, but clearly the contraption could be wheeled about. When the woman’s gaze finally shifted to Scarl’s companions, he set her gently back into the seat.

  “You look dreadful and I can tell that something is hurting you,” she told him. “But I’ll scold you later for that. Who are your friends?”

  “Ariel, Zeke,” Scarl said. “Meet Mirayna Allcraft.”

  Ariel dragged her attention from the bike to its owner. At home, she’d known only men who repaired roofs, mended boats, or built tables and chairs. But this Allcraft was neither male nor well. Mirayna might have been pretty, but hollows dragged at her cheeks and dark circles hung beneath her pale eyes. Even her hands looked as if the skin clung too close to the bone.

  “Your wife?” Ariel asked, fumbling for a foothold.

  “You might say so,” Scarl said.

  “No, you might not,” countered Mirayna. The adults swapped an impatient look.

  “Never mind that,” Mirayna added. The wide smile she turned on Ariel and Zeke almost dispelled the haunted look in her face. “Please sit and rest.”

  While they perched on a bench near the fire, she asked, “Why has he brought you here? Where are you from?”

  “The less you know,” Scarl said, “the safer you’ll be.”

  “I’m not interested in safe,” she replied. “Tell me.”

  Scarl’s jaw tensed. “They’re hungry and tired, Mir. So am I. Can you argue with me after we take care of that?”

  Her face softening, she reached to squeeze his hand. “I’m just glad you’re back. You were gone for so long this time, I started to worry that … Well, let me put on the kettle.” Placing her hands on the wheels alongside her, she pushed. Her chair turned and rolled to a pantry box.

  Ariel could contain her amazement no longer. “You have a bike!”

  Mirayna and Scarl both shot her startled glances. Then Scarl chuckled. Removing his coat, he sank into a chair by the window.

  “Not a bike,” he said. “A wheeling chair.”

  “My legs don’t work anymore,” the woman explained. “But your friend and I make a good team. He knew stories and could find things to use, so I was able to craft it.”

  “And that is one of my reasons.” Scarl drilled Ariel with his eyes. “Wheeling chairs. Along with food keepers and better ways to stay warm, so winters don’t mean somebody else we know freezes or starves. Plus devices to call for help in the night and cures that work better than crossed fingers and hope. That is the kind of thing we’re Forgetting.”

  Ariel looked back at the wheeling chair. She’d thought of marvels from the past only as enticing, not important. But she could imagine what a difference this chair made for Mirayna. She longed to try it herself, even if it wasn’t a bike. She knew she could never ask.

  Fidgeting with his splint, Zeke asked Mirayna, “Did your legs break and not heal right?”

  Ariel nudged him too late. Mirayna’s smile barely slipped. But Scarl shoved his weight back out of his chair and crossed to the pantry box himself. He squatted and yanked it open much harder than needed. Mirayna touched his shoulder to soothe him.

  “Not exactly,” she told Zeke. “I have a sickness that stopped them working some time ago. But I get along all right.” Her fingers tapped Scarl as her gaze returned to his back. “I see, however, where you’re hurt. If it looks as bad under that filthy shirt as it does from out here, we’d better get the Healtouch for you.”

  “It’ll keep,” Scarl growled. He pulled out a half loaf of bread and a small dish of brown paste, banging both down atop the box. He paused as if he couldn’t remember why he had taken them out. Twisting, he took Mirayna’s hand from his shoulder and pressed it to his lips, his eyes closed. She laid her other hand on his cheek. Ariel could see that Scarl loved this woman terribly, ill or not, and Mirayna returned it. The knowledge wove a new thread through her understanding of him.

  Squirming, Zeke kicked her ankle. To the relief of both, Scarl pulled himself from Mirayna to bring over the food, along with a spoon.

  “Nut butter,” he explained, setting the bowl on the bench next to Zeke.

  “Come let me see what you’ve done to yourself,” Mirayna told Scarl. She rolled herself toward the back room. With a glance at his charges, he followed.

  Zeke swiped his finger through the unappealing brown paste and poked it into his mouth. When Ariel saw his blissful expression, she used the spoon. Within moments, they’d devoured the bread and licked up the last of the sweet treat.

  “We should have left some for them,” Ariel whispered.

  “Anyone who can make a moving chair must be able to trade for more food than they need,” Zeke replied. “She’s lucky.”

  Ariel shushed him, hoping those murmuring in the next room had not overheard. She didn’t know what illness troubled Mirayna, but there was nothing lucky about being so sick. She could guess now why Scarl hadn’t answered her question about children.

  When the adults returned and saw the empty nut butter dish, Mirayna laughed and set about preparing more food. Stirring the fire, she sized up Ariel and Zeke.

  “I think I can find a few things that won’t fit them too badly,” she told Scarl, who’d reappeared in a clean, unripped shirt. Fresh clothes sounded more pleasant than Ariel would once have believed. But when Mirayna suggested that Scarl “show them the basin,” she wondered how all three of them would share just one washbowl.

  To her surprise, Scarl waved them outside and down a well-used path. Ariel braced herself for a cold bath in the creek and thought longingly of Tree-Singer Abbey.

  They ducked under the sweeping boughs of a cedar to a mossy cleft in the hill where water spilled down a rock wall. Zeke stripped off his shirt, ready to stand in its shower.

  “You can do that, Zeke,” Scarl said, “but you might like this better.” He led them up a stair in the hillside. At the top, water pooled before it found its way over the falls. An unpleasant smell of eggs rose from the pond.

  “It stinks.” Ariel wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s worth it.” Scarl pulled off his boots and socks to plunk his feet in the water. “Ahh.”

  Gingerly, Zeke followed suit. He grinned and waded in to his knees, then turned to splash Ariel.

  “It’s warm!”

  Soon the two of them sat chest deep in the basin, fully dressed, ducking their heads. One corner of the pool was too hot, but as the water flowed toward the falls, it cooled to a comfortable warmth.

  While Scarl bathed more properly, Zeke ran back and forth between the basin and the chilly waterfall. Too lazy for that, Ariel lay back to float. Once she got used to the smell, soaking felt better than a cozy fire and a soft bed combined. Closing her eyes, she let the water leach away sorrows and pain—not to mention bug bites and grit.

  A lone Hartwater resident appeared, perhaps drawn by Zeke’s hoots each time he plunged into the falls. Scarl rose to speak with the man in low tones.

  “What did you tell him?” Ariel asked, after the man had retreated down the path.

  “I begged a few favors,” Scarl said. “First, to give us some peace, and second, to keep a sharp watch for strangers, in case those we left in the Drymere have followed and are foolish enough to approach. I’d rather the whole village didn’t know you are here, but I need them alert. Everyone will be safer that way.”

  When the dripping trio arrived back at the house, plates had been set on the table. Mirayna handed Zeke garments and asked Ariel to join her in the back room. The air there smelled of wood shavings and oils. Mirayna’s crafting table and unfinished goods crowded her bed.

  “I t
hink we can tie this skirt under your arms for a dress,” she told Ariel, pulling a soft brown wool from a beautiful chest. “With a sweater overtop to keep your arms warm.”

  She took the wet clothes as Ariel peeled them off. Ariel realized that the fingers of Mirayna’s right hand never uncurled. She used it like a boat hook, not a hand, but so gracefully that Ariel hadn’t noticed before.

  “You’re the Farwalker, aren’t you?” Mirayna asked quietly. At Ariel’s guilty expression, she nodded and smiled. “I can tell by the way he looks at you. I’m a bit jealous.”

  She seemed so kind, and Ariel so yearned for a female friend, that she didn’t try to stop her tongue. “Do you love him?”

  Mirayna smoothed Ariel’s wet clothes and set them aside before she answered. “Yes.”

  Pondering, Ariel wrapped the thick skirt around under her armpits. The woman reached to tie the drawstrings. Ariel felt connected to her in some uncertain way.

  She murmured, “You know he’s killed people?” Such a brash remark would have earned more than a scolding from her mother. But in the dim room, under the gentle touch, Ariel could ignore the rules that divided her from an adult and a stranger. Besides, she was starting to feel like an adult and a stranger herself.

  Mirayna tugged and adjusted Ariel’s makeshift dress. “He told me. It’s dreadful. But I think I understand why he felt that he must.”

  “Why don’t you want to be his wife, then?”

  Mirayna’s pale eyes lit on Ariel’s face. “You see too much for your age.” She stroked Ariel’s shoulders. “The way here must have been hard.”

  Ariel gave a lopsided shrug. Her self-pity had been left far behind.

  “Perhaps you can understand this, then,” Mirayna said. “I don’t want to make him a widower.” Her wan skin and haunted eyes weighted the words so their meaning sank heavily into Ariel’s heart.

  “My legs were only the first things to stop working,” Mirayna added softly. “Before long, perhaps, my illness will reach my lungs or my heart.” She draped a sweater over Ariel’s shoulders and summoned a weak smile. “If we have not been married, it will be easier for him to find some other wife.”