The Ale Boy's Feast

  Cal-raven nodded. “When we find Tabor Jan’s company, you will have to hide yourself until I can persuade them to accept you.”

  Ryllion reached up to scratch at the remnants of his mask of bandages. Then he tore them away, and fresh lines of blood ran down his face. “I do not expect them to forgive what they—”

  “Hush.” Cal-raven raised the fiery branch. “Something’s moving.”

  Ryllion’s ears twitched, and his nostrils flared. “I smell torch oil. Someone else is traveling. And not very far away.”

  “I’m going back up to the highwatch,” said Cal-raven. “Perhaps I can—”

  With a calamitous noise, the highwatch crashed down from the treetop.

  “This clearing,” gasped Ryllion, backing toward the fire. “It’s … larger.”

  “The trees,” said Cal-raven. “Ryllion, they’re moving. They’re leaning away from the fire.”

  As Tabor Jan’s company prepared for the last stretch of their venture through Fraughtenwood, Milora woke with the troubling sense that a hooded man had been standing beside her bed and staring intently down at her, wringing his hands. She had not feared him, sensed no sinister intent. He had been the frightened one.

  She did not like feeling that she had the power to frighten anyone, especially while she slept.

  She also disliked the feeling of being seen. She could answer so few questions about herself, she felt unsettled by the thought that someone else might see her first, might guess her story, might have power to reveal an origin, a truth, a purpose.

  She rose quickly and slipped out, finding that once again she could tiptoe past watchmen without being seen.

  Climbing a nearby hill, eager to rise above the trees, she felt like a drowning woman drawn up from the sea just in time. A few steps shy of the large coil tree at the top, she stopped, startled by a leaf of vivid colors that seemed to promise the full flush of autumn.

  A false promise, she thought. This forest is dead.

  She ascended slowly, staring at the leaf as if it were a map of a lost world. Then she turned westward and saw another cluster of hills, one of which bore a barn that looked like a beast propped up on its forelegs and fighting for life.

  Turning north, she eyed the peaks of the Forbidding Wall with unease. She held the colorful leaf up against the dark cloud world that waited beyond the mountains.

  I would set you like a flower in a vase, to let you burn as long as you are able.

  She heard a singsong tone from the coil tree, and her heart pounded. Someone else is sneaking about.

  It was Obrey.

  Milora crossed her arms. “What do you think you’re doing? Nobody’s allowed to leave the camp.”

  “Then what do you think you’re doing?” the girl snapped.

  “I’m a grownup,” said Milora.

  “I wish you weren’t,” said Obrey. “I want somebody to play with.”

  “You’re my responsibility,” said Milora. “Your grandfather says so. And I say you shouldn’t run out into the dangerous woods.”

  “And who do you think taught me how?” the girl replied. “You told me that we’re wildflowers, that we grow best when we’re free. And then you scold me for steppin’ outside the camp just like you do when nobody’s lookin’.”

  Milora sighed, slumping down and gazing out over the dire woods and the webs of dead undergrowth that had sought to spoil their journey. “This world’s finished with wildflowers. I can’t wait to get back to the glass mine. It’s more a home to me than Bel Amica.”

  “I liked Bel Amica,” said Obrey.

  “I would have liked it better without all of those … people.” Milora tousled Obrey’s hair. “But I do love you, Obrey. I love how you find play in everything.”

  “You made beautiful things in Bel Amica. Like the window full of colors. You should have told them it was yours.”

  “If they found out it was mine, they would start asking for things. Things to make them happy. They don’t know why I like to make things.”

  “Why, then?”

  “I just see things, and they seem like pieces of other things, and so I try putting them together to see what happens. To see part of the world I haven’t seen yet. Like when you ask me questions, and more questions, and more questions. I should stop talking now. You’re still a child. You should get to play as long as you can without having to worry about the why.”

  Obrey thought about this, carving eyes next to the knob of a root. “It’s like playing ‘What’s Your Face?’ ”

  “How do you play that?”

  “Well, my mama would hide her face from me behind her hands or a plate or a blanket and make me lean forward. I knew what her face was like. But I wanted to see it again. All of a sudden. Ha! I liked the surprise. And it would be new and familiar at the same time. And we’d laugh. And I’d say, ‘Do it again.’ Then she … then she died. And sometimes I feel like I’m still playing that game. But she doesn’t jump out anymore.”

  “Yes, it’s like that. The things I make are like the blanket that hides the face. Once I’ve woven a veil, I can search for the mystery that it wants to reveal. I hear it whispering through … something new every time.”

  “I understand that,” said Obrey, trying hard to sound like a thoughtful adult. “I’m trying to figure things out too.”

  “And what are you trying to figure out, Obrey?”

  “These things.” She lifted a plain sack of interwoven reeds and spilled a pile of trinkets—small stone figures, some painted, some plain, with intricate costumes of colors so vivid they shone. There were sticks of colored wax. There were brushes and little cups of paint sealed with corks. There was a thing made of leather and feathers like a winged horse with a long tail. And here was a puppet—a plain stocking with buttons for eyes and long silverbrown hair, like a doll waiting to have the details sewn on.

  Milora took the puppet and slowly slipped her hand into it, pulling it up to her elbow. She worked its mouth uncomfortably, for her hand was too large for it. “Obrey, where did you get these things?”

  “Krawg gave ’em to me. He said he found ’em in Bel Amica. They were thrown out in the trash, somewhere in an alley below the marketplace.” Then she stopped and sighed. “I lied,” she said.

  “You lied?”

  “Krawg told me not to tell. But he stole them.”

  “He stole them.”

  “He stole ’em from a bad Bel Amican who was tricking folks into giving ’em up.”

  “I see.” Milora looked at the figures with a strange, prickling feeling of dread, as if they were living things with sharp teeth. But then she reached forward, took two small, crooked figures, and stood them side by side. “These go together,” she said, and then she paused, noticing that they had tiny gemstones for eyes. One figure was missing a gemstone. “Yes,” she said again. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Why?”

  Milora set them by the blue line of tall grass. “And this.” She lifted the animal of leather and feathers and set it in the depression. “It lives here, beneath the lake.”

  “Why?” asked Obrey. She seemed alarmed by Milora’s announcements. Then she took the bag and set it behind her as if she were protecting something.

  A large autumn leaf floated down and settled at Milora’s feet, resembling a bird that fans its feathers to warm its wings in the sunlight.

  “This one here …” Milora took the figure of a man on horseback. “He’s the prince of the realm. He rides to high places so he can see the whole world around him. He’s looking for something.”

  Obrey began to dress the tiny figures, fitting them into capes and costumes. With each attempt she glanced sidelong at Milora, who nodded almost imperceptibly or scowled. “You sound so sure,” Obrey said skeptically. “Why is it that way? And who made it so?”

  “There’s somebody missing,” said Milora in a funny voice, moving the mouth of the sock puppet.

  Obrey sighed. “I think I’d tell a different stor
y.”

  “You probably would,” said Milora.

  “And it would mean different things than yours.”

  “Something’s missing.” Milora reached out to poke Obrey with the puppet. “And I think it’s hiding behind you.” She laughed, but it was a forced laugh. Why was she behaving this way, provoking poor Obrey? Why was she so eager to see the last piece in the bag? “The play cannot begin until all the people are in place.”

  Obrey pushed the puppet away. “There isn’t anybody else. And if there was, it wouldn’t be part of this play. It would be mine. Something special. I’d call her queen of the stars.”

  “No,” said Milora. “Her name’s Auralia.”

  They both sat in silence. Milora was terrified, holding her breath, wishing time would stop and save her from whatever came next.

  “You don’t know that.” Obrey crossed her arms. “You can’t know that. It’s not yours to decide.”

  “I’m not deciding,” Milora whispered. “I’m remembering.”

  Obrey slowly came to her feet, her face reddening. “Why is it that way? And who made it so?”

  The question hung in the air like the chime from a bell.

  “Who’s that?” Obrey’s gaze had shifted, puzzling over something at the base of the hill. “See? That hooded man looks so small from here. He looks like …” She pointed to one of the two figures that Milora had set by the line of blue weeds.

  “Go see what he wants,” said Milora.

  “I think it’s Krawg.” Obrey brushed off her grass-stained leggings and went running in stumbling strides down the slope.

  Milora looked at the cloth bag that lay in the flattened grass where Obrey had been. She slipped the puppet from her hand, took the bag, and turned it inside out. A figure fell into her lap with a small pinging sound.

  She glanced down the hill. Obrey was approaching Krawg, but he was still looking up at the scene beneath the tree as if he were waiting for something to happen.

  Milora scowled and flicked her fingers at the air as if she could snip him away like a fly. Then she turned her back and held the tiny, chiming figure in her lap.

  It was the image of a young woman dressed in a cloak so billowy and flowing that the figure within it looked like someone rising from a rippling pond. Milora turned her over and found the delicate shape of the young body taking shelter within the cloak canopy, a snail within a shell, her legs posed as if she were running. The body shifted within the cloak.

  “You’re a bell.”

  She pinched the figure’s shoulders and shook her lightly, striking a perfect shimmer of sound. As she continued, the sound intensified and the bell began to warm in her hands, flowering into color. She trembled. It was as if the colors flowed from her fingertips, bringing the figurine to life.

  And not just any life. The young woman’s face was bruised, her silverbrown hair flecked with dust and scraps from the forest. Her cloak bloomed with luminescent hues. And those tiny, fragile hands clutched the cloak tightly, raising it slightly in her flight.

  Milora was frightened. Frightened as she always was by what her play revealed, what appeared without her intention, as if she were not making but discovering secrets someone had prepared for her. With such a revelation would come a sense of responsibility to share it. And that would bring more trouble than she could bear.

  On one of the figurine’s fingers, Milora found a fleck of green no larger than a grain of sand.

  She touched her own emerjade ring. The curtain fell, and the light came in. She knew her name.

  The two old Gatherers, their eyes—all three—bright as gemstones, teaching her about the strange and limiting ways of House Abascar.

  Stealing sweet rolls from their kitchens and hurrying off into the woods to prepare feasts of berries and bread.

  The huts. The alarms when beastmen were near.

  Prince Cal-raven on his horse, fierce inquiry in his eyes.

  The injured beastman crawling into the lakeside caves, healing as he rested on her blankets, watching her labor deep into the night to braid all colors together into one bright cloak.

  Deep Lake. Its secrets. Its ripples and disturbances. Its wings.

  The boy who had been knocked from his raft and then crawled up on the shore before her cave. The friend. The questions they had asked each other. The questions they had asked of color and flame.

  The zeal to share glory with people who had closed their curtains, who wanted to be flattered, who wanted what they had seen before. Their fearful king.

  But Cal-raven had come to visit her. Cal-raven had asked her questions. He had been frightened and mystified. He had promised to help her. Auralia, he had whispered. Auralia.

  “Poor Cal-raven,” she said, choking. “This world’s bound to fail us. We’ll never find each other here. I’ve lost my play. You’ve lost your dream. What would it cost to find another chance? Too much.”

  The ground rumbled. The bell toppled and fell from her knee, tumbling into the interlacing roots. More leaves came showering down, their green fading to grey, edges curling.

  The ground around her began to crackle like a shell breaking open.

  She reached for the bell among the roots. It was stuck between them. She dug at it furiously, prying it loose.

  Dissonant tones—like bows drawn across stringed instruments out of tune—surrounded her. She looked down and saw some of the trees below were cowering like old men in great travail.

  Krawg stood there, lifting Obrey up and looking around in dismay.

  Among the trees the green tents were collapsing. The company was packing in haste. A horn—an alarm—sounded from the camp.

  Auralia looked at what remained of Fraughtenwood. The sea of dead and gnarled trees leaned against the mountains like the ocean against a rocky shore. Her gaze rose up the low mountains to the higher mountains to the intimidating, snowbound heights and then to the swirling world of cloud, like a tidal wave waiting for permission to crash.

  She took a step forward, but her other foot was fixed in the grip of a coiling root. She sprawled in the dirt, sobbing as she kicked against its clutches. The root tore free of the base of the tree. Its grip tightened.

  The bell fell from Auralia’s hand, chiming a note of sugar on the air. The root released her, shocked.

  Then the tree turned, an invisible hand twisting it around. The bark split and peeled. And as if they were suddenly too heavy, the boughs groaned, broke loose, and shattered into wriggling twigs.

  Auralia snatched up the bell and pressed it to her breast as she ran down the hill. When she looked back, the roots were following her, having torn themselves loose from the tree, slithering and twitching along like worms.

  18

  THE FIRST FEAST OF NEW ABASCAR

  ilver cave crickets flitted between blades of tall grasses in this whispering marsh tunnel. Puffs of grasswisp seemed to sleepwalk on the breeze, and when they drifted into torches on the travelers’ rafts, they dissolved in bright flares.

  “I wish you could see this, ’Ralia,” murmured the ale boy, for in his exhaustion the details of his environment were illusory and deceptive. Faces blurred, time sped up and slowed down.

  For a moment he remembered that it was not Auralia who cradled his head in her lap. Nella Bye stroked his forehead with her fingertips as if he were her child. And even though she could not see, she replied, “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s difficult,” answered Kar-balter, straining against the oar-stick, his torso running with sweat.

  “It’s getting louder.” Em-emyt, poling on the next raft, cocked his head as a sound like soft drumbeats crescendoed into a cacophony.

  “We’re sinking!” said Kar-balter.

  The rafts dragged on grit and silt, slowing to a stop as the noise faded. Water rushed past as if in a hurry to escape. It disappeared, leaving the tunnel a muddy slick of silt and grass, stranding the raft parade.

  “Since when do rivers just stop flowing?” Kar-balter sta
bbed at the silt as if he could shock the river into starting again. “Wait. What’s this?”

  Slick, silver shapes writhed and flopped in the muck all around them.

  “Ha-ha!” Kar-balter dropped the oar and jumped off the raft, groping for them. He knelt among a tumble of massive golden boulders, closing his hands around an eyeless eel with black-and-white stripes. Then he stood, eyes widening. “Umm …”

  All around him the golden boulders were rising from the muck—smuck, smack, slosh! Sturdy feet lifted their flat undersides from the river’s floor. Kar-balter climbed back on the raft.

  The shapes were all similar—rugged domes, each barbed with a single white horn that angled forward. They were shells, and from breaks in the edges emerged blunt-beaked heads to probe the air.

  “Golden hermits,” said Em-emyt. “Some of the best eatin’ that rivers have ever served up.”

  Kar-balter dropped the eel. “Let’s cook one.”

  “Not yet,” said Irimus. “If the river stopped, it can start again, right?”

  With their sharp horns aimed upriver, the turtles marched together as if to battle.

  “Follow them,” rasped the ale boy, listening intently to the echoes. “There’s more water ahead. And a big open space.”

  “It’s all our dreams come true,” Kar-balter groaned. “Another cave.” He began to cry.

  They towed the rafts through the marsh until they came to a stone barrier and stared at it, astonished. It stood as high as Kar-balter’s shoulders, damming a vast lake from the tunnel.

  “Did this just spring up like a gate?” Kar-balter peered over its edge. “By Cal-marcus’s booze. Not sure what we’ve found … but we’ve found it.”

  Crystal stalactites hung from the ceiling as densely as brush-bristles. Glowing in subtle gradients of peacock blue, peach-skin gold, soft lavender, and the silverblue of Deep Lake’s twilight, they were the earth’s grandest chandelier, their lights mirrored in the lake. The river poured in from the north and flowed out through various shadowy exits where the voices of many streams sang and sighed.