CHAPTER 17
“Guy?” This would not be easy to explain. “You see, I think I’m from a different world entirely.”
Guy raised his head from his hands, grief vying with bewilderment on his face.
“I was just sort of, well, dropped, in the forest—the Wald, I think you call it.” Cat said. “One minute I was in my world, and the next I was here. And then Bibby came, except I didn’t know it was Bibby then, and we went and found you…” (Okay, Cat, you’re babbling again. Get to the point.) She took a deep breath again and brought it out in a rush.
“… and I think it was one of your bowls that did it.”
His head snapped around.
“What?”
“I was in—in a museum, it’s a place where they show stuff—old dishes and things. And there was a bowl, just like these ones,” she pointed at the trap door. “In fact, it was exactly like one of those.”
He sprang to his feet, then had to catch himself on the table again for balance. More cautiously, he moved to the trap door, squatted down, and opened it. He reached into the hole, and brought out the pot-bellied bowl in one hand.
“This one?”
“No. No, the other one, the one that was sitting by itself, not stacked with this one.”
Guy took both the bowls out and set them on the floor beside the open trap door.
Cat looked at the bowls.
“Yes, the one with the rounded top.” She pointed at it.
“Sepp’s. That was Sepp’s bowl, the one he took.” He sounded shocked, bewildered. “So where is it now?”
“I don’t know. You see, I didn’t even touch it. I just looked at it. And it, I don’t know, it pulled me into it, made everything swirl around in circles, and all of a sudden I was here. In the forest.”
He had a puzzled frown on his face.
Suddenly they heard sounds from the cottage.
“Hello!” called a woman’s voice. “Anybody here?”
Guy clambered to his feet and moved around so his body hid the bowls on the floor.
The door between the cottage and workshop creaked open, and Yldra’s head appeared around the door.
“Ah, there you are! I’ve brought Bibby home. It’ll be getting on for dark soon; we thought it might be time to get her to bed. So how’s my favourite cousin? I hear you banged your head and poked a hole in your leg and needed Mother, Father, and our new friend here to patch you up.” She winked at Cat.
“Hmph,” snorted Guy, limping over to the door. “At least they didn’t get your help with it, or I’d still be flat on my back in bed.”
He sidled past her into the cottage, ducking his head out of the way as she took a playful swipe up at him.
“Boy cousins!” said Yldra to Cat, rolling her eyes. “You got any of those? They can be a right pest!”
“No, unfortunately I don’t,” replied Cat, following Guy to the cottage. “Or brothers or sisters, for that matter. I’m an only child.”
“Are you really?” The young woman gave her a searching look that was strongly reminiscent of her mother’s, then went back into her playful tone. “Well, all the better for you; nobody to plague you. Wonder how that will work out for this one.” She laid her hand on her stomach with a small, secret smile.
Guy gave her a surprised look.
“Oho, has it come to that?” he said, teasingly. “Young Randor had better look out; if he gets a baby sister anything like his mother, he’ll have to fight for his rights, like we did.” Cat could tell that he was pleased.
Yldra shook her head at him, indulgently.
“Yes, you had it tough, didn’t you? You and Sepp, both. I was so hard on you, being a full four years younger than you. Bullied and bossed you to within an inch of your lives, you poor defenceless males.
“At any rate, I brought you some more bread and cheese from Mother, and Father thought you were probably well enough now to boil up a kettle for some mintbrew. Poor Catriona probably won’t want to deal with your primitive cooking facilities here; I know I wouldn’t.”
She smiled as she said it, taking the sting out of the words, and went over to ruffle Bibby’s curls. The little girl was sitting on Guy’s good knee on the bench by the table and now pointed at Cat.
“Gah!” she called, happily, and looked back at her father to see if he quite understood how delightful this meeting was.
“Hi sweetie!” said Cat, smiling back.
“Well, I need to get home to my other defenceless males,” said Guy’s cousin. “I’ll leave you to it for now.”
“She’s really nice,” said Cat, as the door closed behind Yldra. “Do you have any other cousins?”
“Oh, yes, about three or four dozen,” Guy replied carelessly. “Half the town is related to us. Eew!” He suddenly put Bibby on the floor. “Wet drawers!” He rubbed at a spot on his breeches.
Cat laughed and took the little girl around to the privy to finish her business.
By the time they came back and had clean, dry clothes on the baby again, Guy was stoking the fire and getting the kettle ready for boiling. A black iron bar, shaped like an upside-down L, was swung out from the side of the fireplace. Several heavy hooks were attached to the horizontal arm, and from one of these a heavy black cast-iron kettle was suspended. Cat was surprised she had not noticed the bar before. (I suppose it was swung in and sort of hidden in the fireplace last time I looked at it, she thought. So that’s how they do their cooking! I can see why Yldra was talking about primitive facilities; she probably has one of those nice stoves like Ouska does.) Guy took a thick cloth, and with it he lifted the kettle from the hook. He looked inside it.
“Hmm, not enough water,” he said, and went out to the pump.
When he came back in, Cat could tell the kettle was heavy—and his limp had become very pronounced.
“I could have done that, you know,” she said. “Your leg looks like it hurts.”
He waved aside her concern.
“It’s all right,” he said, “I can handle it.” He hung the kettle on its hook and used a long poker to swing the crane back into the fireplace so the kettle hung over the flame.
“Guy,” Cat said, a little hesitantly, “your leg, couldn’t you, well, cure it?”
He tipped his head to the side with a questioning frown.
She held out her right hand, opening and closing her fist.
“See, yesterday morning, when you squeezed my hand, you pretty much crushed it.” She laughed lightly. “I suppose it comes from all that clay squishing you do. I thought every bone in my poor hand was broken.”
He winced.
“No, no, that’s not what I mean! It’s okay! See, you made it all well again afterwards!” She waggled her fingers to show just how well. “When you held it, later—what did you do? I mean, you just cured it, totally healed it. It doesn’t hurt at all now; there’s no sign anything ever happened to it, let alone as recently as yesterday. Can’t you do that with your leg?”
He pulled a rueful grimace.
“No, I cannot. Really, that instant cure, that’s only happened twice—your hand was the second time. I’ve tried, when the babe hurt herself, or even when I’ve done something to myself—and that happens a lot, believe me.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, I’m quite clumsy. At least I have been in the last year or so. I’m always tripping, and cutting myself, and dropping things. I have lots of cuts and bruises to show for it, small ones for the most part. This one,” he rubbed his leg just above the injury, “was rather bigger than most. And as with all the others, I’ll just have to wait for it to heal.”
“So what was different about my hand then?”
“I don’t quite know,” he said slowly. “I wonder—well, the other time, the first time it happened, it was Bibby. She’d only just learnt to walk, and I was careless. I was unloading the kiln, had my heavy leather protective gloves on, was handling the pots with tongs, even—I’m too impatient to wait until they’re properly cooled, I
want to see how they come out. The pots were sitting right outside the kiln, some of them were so hot I could barely handle them even with the gloves on. But as I said, I was careless, and I hadn’t closed the shop door properly. She came toddling out when I had my back turned and tried to pick up one of the hot pots.”
Cat drew in a hissing breath. “Oh no!”
“Oh yes. You should have heard her screaming. Or rather, it’s good that you didn’t. I felt absolutely sick. And I suppose that’s what made the difference—you see, it was my fault that she had gotten hurt, that was the worst part.” He shuddered at the memory. “I grabbed her and ran over to the pump for cold water, holding her poor little hands in mine, trying to just somehow make it better—and then she suddenly stopped crying. Just like that. Stopped crying, and smiled at me. I almost dropped her, I was so surprised.” He chuckled weakly. “Her hands were perfectly well, not a blister, not even reddened. And she was acting as if nothing had happened.”
“Wow.” Cat let out her breath, which she hadn’t even realised she had been holding. “Wow, that must have been scary!” She scooped Bibby off the bench where she had been sitting, and planted a kiss on her rosy little cheek to relieve her feelings.
“So, that was her hands, too? Does it only work on hands, then?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully, “I wondered that too. But another time, when she slammed her finger in the lid of the chest, it didn’t work; I had to kiss it better the old-fashioned way.” He quirked up the corner of his mouth. “And as for myself, I’m always getting cuts and burns and bruises on my hands, and they usually have to heal on their own (with a little help from Aunt’s ointments). No, I think it has something to do with how the hurt happened. See,” he locked his turquoise eyes on Cat, “both your hand, and Bibby’s, it was my doing. My fault. Perhaps when it is my fault that someone else is hurt, I can take the hurt away again, too.”
He dropped his gaze and looked down at his hands, turning them upside down and right side up again.
“Of course, I’ve never actually tried it out on purpose,” he said, with an ironic twist to his mouth.
Cat snorted.
“No, I suppose not. I’m not volunteering to be your guinea pig for it, that’s for sure.”
“My what kind of pig?”
“Guinea pig? Oh, maybe you don’t have those here. They’re small, furry animals, kind of like rabbits—do you have those?—without the long ears, and with a shorter head, and a more squat body, and shorter legs, and—”
“—and entirely un-rabbit-like on the whole?” he finished with a lopsided grin.
She nearly swatted at him with her free hand. Good heavens, she was starting to treat him just like Yldra! When she wasn’t bossing him like Ouska, that was. There must be something in the air of this place.
“You didn’t let me finish! They’re small, and furry, and children keep them for pets.”
“They sound like hedge pigs, except soft and furry,” he said.
“Oh, yes, and in all other ways entirely un-hedge-pig-like!” she scoffed, and made him laugh in turn. “But what are hedge pigs?” she asked, pleased with herself for having got him back.
“They’re small, about this big”—he held his hands about six inches apart—“and prickly. And live in hedges. Haven’t you ever seen one?”
“Oh, hedgehogs! Well, no, actually, I’ve only seen pictures.”
The kettle in the fire was starting to make hissing and bubbling noises, and steam was rising from its spout. Guy took the poker and swung the fireplace crane outward with the hook on the end of the tool. One of his squat brown teapots was waiting on the hearth. He threw in a handful of dry crumbly green leaves from a round pottery jar and filled it up with boiling water. Sharp, fragrantly minty steam rose into the air. Cat sniffed.
“Hmm, that smells good.”
She put Bibby down on the bench and unwrapped the cloth bundle Yldra had left on the table. It contained a beautiful crusty brown loaf and a chunk of solid yellow cheese.
“Have you got a knife?” she asked. “Or do you just break it up with your hands?”
“Oh—knife, over there.” He pointed with his chin; both his hands were occupied, with the teapot in one and a bouquet of three mugs held by the handles in the other.
‘Over there’ turned out to be a sort of small cupboard let into the wall beside the fireplace, which held an assortment of carved wooden spoons and forks and two or three vicious-looking metal knives with bone handles. Guy had to come over and open the cupboard door himself; it blended into the wall so well Cat had not been able to find it. This place was showing itself to be quite full of these secret storage places; it was not nearly as basic and primitive as Cat had thought the first night she was there.
Bibby got a mug of milk from the pitcher on the shelf, and the two adults enjoyed their tea. (Mintbrew, Cat mentally corrected herself. Mintbrew, and hedge pig, and—and marriage chain. And wisewoman. She was beginning to speak the language of this place.)
“So,” Guy began, around a mouthful of the chewy bread, “this place you came from, where there’s no hedge pigs, but gunny pigs—”
“Guinea pigs.”
“Yes, that. You were there, and there was one of the bowls, and you just looked at it, and here you were?”
“Yes, it seems that way.”
“Where exactly, here?”
“I told you, in the forest. A ways that-a-way.” She waved her crumbly piece of yellow cheese in the general direction of the workshop. “You were passed out on the ground by this hole—” She shuddered. “That was stressful, you know! I thought you were dead. And I don’t do dead! Anyway, it was a muck hole—your clay pit, I think Ouska said. How come you and Bibby were all clay-covered, anyway? I didn’t even recognise her as human at first; I thought she was some kind of alien. But like I said, I was pretty freaked out right then.”
He frowned, trying to remember.
“I think,” he said slowly, “I had to have some more clay, was going to start getting it ready to be cleaned up and that. And when we got to the pit, Bibby—I don’t quite remember clearly, but I think she fell in while I was filling the bucket. Or did she even jump? I work from the edge, of course, but all of a sudden she was right out in the middle. And landed face down. Like I said, it’s easy to drown in, it’s so sticky. So I jumped in after her and pulled her out—and then I remember carrying her to the edge and stepping into a sink hole with one foot—and I couldn’t catch myself, because she was in my arms, so I went down right on my knees in the clay, and I think something under the surface jabbed me.” He rubbed at his leg again. “I must have thrown her clear, towards the edge of the pit, and somehow fought my way out before I blacked out—or was I still in the pit when you found me?”
“No, you were sort of lying across the path. And your leg was twisted, and you were covered in clay from head to toe. Thank goodness Ouska came running. She says she felt something, knew there was something wrong with Bibby—but apparently it also had something to do with me touching a tree when I first arrived. I got sort of an electric shock from it.”
He looked at her intently.
“What kind of tree was that? Where exactly? Right by the pit?”
“No, a bit further down the path, around the corner. I don’t know what the tree was called. There are oaks around there, those I recognised, and some evergreens. The one I touched, it was kind of smooth, and straight—and sticky; I got pitch on my fingers. And then there were these really gnarly ones, they formed something almost like a hedge, or a screen…”
“The Arbour,” he said quietly, looking stricken. “I might have known.”
“And what’s the Arbour when it’s at home?” asked Cat, getting a little tired of all the mysterious references.
He looked at her seriously.
“It’s a place we always held special, Sepp and I. I don’t know from what time on; we were quite young, I think. Perhaps it was even Father first brought us there; I do
n’t remember.
“The thing is that there is a tree there; it is unusual, different than the others. A different colour, for one. I think it might have been the one you touched, but I can’t be sure. You might not have even seen it; that screen you talked of, it goes almost all the way around the tree, shields it from the space around it. Or the space from the tree, I don’t know.
“See, when I said I don’t know what made the glaze on those bowls turn out the way it did, that wasn’t entirely true. I know what’s different about it from the other glazes I made, but I don’t know why it looks the way it does—or why the bowls… well, do what they do.”
“So what is it that’s different?”
“It’s the ash from a very large branch of that tree that made that glaze. One was torn down, oh, years ago now, in a really heavy storm. I put it aside and then one day burned it down into ash. That’s what made that glaze. That, and the clay from one particular part of the clay pit—as a matter of fact, I think it came right from that sink hole that made me fall.
“After—after what happened to Ashya, I did not want to go back to the Arbour ever again. That tree has something to do with what happened, I know it does. And that you—that this is where you first came here, and it was one of those bowls that brought you—well, it’s proof, isn’t it?”