“And of course you’re welcome to join us,” I put in. “We’ll make up a table for you and your friend. Just don’t be surprised if no one has any attention to spare for you tonight. We’re all in a whirl, as you can see….”
My voice trailed off. It was obvious that neither Ayler nor Wendel was listening to me. Ayler had been watching the celebrants, his usual sweet smile on his face, but Wendel was just staring at Gryffin. As if he had never seen a crippled boy before. As if he had never seen any human being before. As if the whole world had been made over in Gryffin’s image.
The quality of his silence caught Ayler’s attention, and the Safe-Keeper glanced from Wendel’s face to Gryffin’s. I saw his habitual smile deepen. “Ah,” Ayler said, and then he looked at me. “More surprises,” he said.
My throat had constricted; I put a hand to my face. “What?” I whispered.
But Wendel was ignoring all of us. He was still staring at Gryffin. “How can it be?” the Truth-Teller demanded in a harsh voice. “It’s you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Now the entire room fell silent, everyone else apprehending all at once, as sometimes happens in groups of people, that something momentous was occurring nearby. I felt the stares of all our friends, both a weight and a comfort. I heard soft footsteps and sensed people moving closer in one protective circle.
But I did not see them. I was staring at Wendel, who was still watching Gryffin. “What’s me?” Gryffin said.
Ayler answered in his light, unalarming voice. “Last Wintermoon, the Dream-Maker pulled me aside and confided that the power had gone from her hands. She was both sad and pleased to be relieved of this heavy burden. But who had accepted the magic in her place? Who would be the one to endure great suffering while bringing great happiness to so many others?”
“Ayler kept the secret for two months, as she requested,” Wendel said. His voice still grated against my ears. “But when no one stepped forward to claim the title, she sent him out to scour the kingdom, looking to see where the magic had found purchase. I was sent along to authenticate his discovery. But I never thought I would see the power vested in one such as you.”
“Wait.” That was Sarah’s voice. “Wait. You’re saying—Gryffin is the Dream-Maker? Gryffin?”
Wendel shook his head. “I’ve rarely heard of the magic going to a man before, and never to anyone so young. And yet it’s true. You have the power of dreams and wishes in your hands.”
Gryffin opened his mouth as if to speak, but it was clear he was too shocked and unsettled to know what to say. He wrenched his gaze away from Wendel and looked straight at me, confusion and uneasiness in his eyes. I knew that look. It was the expression Gryffin had always worn when he was lost or in pain. Help me, it meant. I stepped forward and took both his hands between my own.
“And no one I’d rather trust my dreams to than you,” I said very quietly, and kissed him on the forehead. “All of us are safe with you.”
Who knows how the rumor spread after that? Did one of Sarah’s brothers slip from the Arms and go racing down the street to tell the girl he’d been courting that the power of the Dream-Maker had shifted into somebody else’s hands? Did she repeat the news to her mother, who ran to her neighbor’s house? Did that woman’s husband head straight for the town center, and duck inside Frederick’s tavern, and slam his hand on the wooden bar to get everyone’s attention?
Something like that. For, not an hour after Ayler arrived and Wendel made his pronouncement, the people of Thrush Hollow began arriving at the Parmer Arms. No one regarded the sign that asked for privacy. Everyone just stepped right in, knocking rose vases off the tables, helping themselves to meat from the wedding platters, crowding between the tables like sand pouring into a jar of stones. When no more could fit inside the dining hall, they began piling up in the yard outside, fifty, a hundred, two hundred. Within two hours, I believe, almost every soul of Thrush Hollow had gathered together to try to get a glimpse of the Dream-Maker.
“I never expected to have a wedding like this,” Emily laughed as she helped Sarah and Betsy and me try to clear out the tables and make more room. “I think I’ll be working through the night, not getting to know my husband.”
Juliet was laboring right alongside the others, carrying dishes from the front hall to the kitchen, rolling up her sleeves, and preparing to wash. Betsy protested, but only once. After that, she accepted the assistance of anyone who was willing to help.
Raymond had taken charge of organization, setting Gryffin up at a table in the middle of the room and insisting all the visitors form an orderly line past him. Josh and his sons guarded the doors and made sure people entered at a reasonable rate and left after they had had their chance to speak to the Dream-Maker. Randal and Bo prowled through the yard outside—which now resembled a Summermoon Festival—to make sure everyone remained patient and no one caused any trouble.
It was dawn the next day before Gryffin had spoken to everyone who wanted to see him.
“Thank goodness that’s over,” Betsy said, as Gryffin slumped in his chair and the rest of us sprawled on whatever piece of furniture appealed to us, and she surveyed the muddy wreck of the front yard.
A soft laugh came from Ayler, who had done a brisk business of his own during the night, hearing secrets too delicate to confide even to the Dream-Maker. “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s just beginning.”
And that proved to be true.
The months that followed were chaotic, exhausting, exhilarating, and full of magic. We doubled our business at the Parmer Arms—tripled it—there was no minute of the day that was not filled with patrons, asking for a room or a meal but really there to get a glimpse of Gryffin. Josh and his sons enlarged the restaurant and added a few more rooms on the second story to accommodate the influx of guests, and Randal took over the running of the auxiliary stables. People came from the entire kingdom to drop their hopes at the feet of the Dream-Maker, so we met people from all regions and all walks of life. They sat at adjoining tables in the restaurant and slept down the hall from each other in the rented rooms. Hearing their stories, learning their ways, was an education for me that would have made even Mr. Shelby proud.
We witnessed no end of miracles in those days, from lost children reunited with their parents to sick men rising up from their beds. But most often, the magic was more subtle and worked, if it worked at all, remotely and over time. Letters often came to the Arms months or weeks after visitors had been there, telling Gryffin how some impossible wish had come true. It was as if he was the epicenter of joy.
Yet Gryffin himself was not particularly joyous during this time. Indeed, in his determination to see everyone, hear every story, he was quickly wearing himself out. He lost weight; his face grew pinched and bony. He rarely complained, but when I asked him he would admit that the hours spent sitting in his chair, leaning forward to listen, made his legs and his back scream with pain. Between my increased duties and his, there was less and less time for me to draw him aside and rub salve into his legs—less and less time for him to practice his daily ritual of walking. I was afraid, and I knew he was, that if he stopped forcing himself to exercise, he would soon lose the ability to walk altogether. So now and then I would whisper to Sarah, and she would close up the restaurant a few hours early, and we would make sure that Gryffin had a little time to spend on himself. He was the Dream-Maker; he could not be allowed to waste away.
He was the Dream-Maker; his suffering would always be more than physical.
It had occurred to me to wonder, more than once, what his vicious uncle thought about Gryffin’s new status. I had been tempted, so tempted, to send Wendel to Frederick’s tavern the night that Gryffin’s power had been discovered. I had wanted Wendel to stand in the middle of that crowded taproom and shout aloud all the abuses that Frederick had heaped on Gryffin and, probably, Dora. I had wanted Frederick to feel the greatest possible remorse for how badly he had treated the person who was, after the queen, the mo
st valued person in the whole country.
I didn’t do it. But someone else did. And three weeks later, the tavern failed to open. The man who delivered milk to the kitchen found Dora stabbed to death on the kitchen floor and Frederick hanging from the rafters.
Bo brought the news to me, and I waited till after dinner to share it with Gryffin. It was one of the nights Sarah closed the restaurant early. Emily made Gryffin practice his walking across the smooth floor of the dining hall, and then he collapsed in utter weariness in his own small room. I went in a few minutes later with a branch of candles in one hand and a jar of salve in the other.
“Roll up your trousers to your knees,” I instructed in a businesslike voice. “You need to be worked on.”
“I don’t know, Kellen,” Gryffin said, leaning back against the pillows. He looked utterly spent. “I might be too tired for a massage.”
“Just a short one,” I coaxed. “You always feel better afterward.”
“You must be tired, too,” he said, cuffing and recuffing the hems of his pants. “It doesn’t seem fair that everything in the entire world revolves around me.”
I laughed and seated myself beside his bed. “The care we lavish on you is an indication of the care we lavish on our own dreams,” I said. “You are the symbol. At least to most people. To me, and Sarah, and everyone else, you’re Gryffin.”
“And you cared about me before I had magic in my hands,” he said. “That matters to me even more.”
“I’ve been wondering,” I said, opening the jar and stirring the contents with my finger. The cream had a light, floral scent and a thick consistency. “Did you know? Before Wendel arrived? Did you feel the power come to you?”
He shrugged against the pillows. “I felt—odd—for a few months. The skin on my palms burned now and then. But I often feel strange. I have pains I can’t identify and bruises I can’t explain. I didn’t think anything of it.”
I smoothed cream over his bruised, misshapen calves, and then I began to gently knead the muscles. “Even when everyone around you started having such good fortune? You didn’t start to wonder, hmm, maybe what I’m feeling in my hands is a kind of magic?”
He laughed, the sound half a sigh. “No. Not really. Not everyone was having such good luck, anyway. Not all of you—the ones I care about the most.”
“What can you possibly mean?” I demanded. “Everyone at the Arms has had a dream come true because of you. Emily and Randal are married, Josh and Betsy run the most lucrative business in town, Jack Parmer is engaged to that lovely girl down the street, Sarah will be getting married soon—”
“You’re not happy,” he said. “I’ve done nothing for you.”
“I’m happy,” I said. “I don’t have any dreams right now, so there’s nothing you could do for me even if you wanted to.”
“You don’t look happy,” he said. “You look sad.”
“I heard bad news today.”
“Oh, Kellen. Did something happen to your mother?”
“No, she’s doing well enough. Has had a full house for a solid week now and is feeling very prosperous. It was news that will upset you.”
He was silent for a moment, thinking it through. “My uncle?”
I shifted in the chair so I could apply pressure to a different part of his legs. “Died by his own hand,” I said. “Taking Dora with him.”
He made no answer for a long time, so I did not speak. I merely continued working on his legs, pressing my palms against his skin, trying, with the strength in my hands, to push the bones back into alignment, untwist the knotted muscles. Finally he released a heavy sigh and settled deeper into the pillows. I looked over to see tears glimmering in his blue eyes.
“What sad lives,” he said in a whisper. “Start to finish.”
“I keep hoping,” I said in a low voice, “that this is not my fault.”
“Yours? How could it possibly be?”
“That one night. When Melinda was here. And I wished for everyone I knew to have a wish come true—except for your uncle. I wanted him to suffer. And maybe if I had wanted him to have happiness instead of pain, he would not have been so cruel. And he would not have died that way, and Dora would still be alive.”
“That’s not how the magic works,” he said. “You can’t wish it for somebody else.”
“I think I can. I did for you.”
“When? Oh, that night I almost died.”
“So maybe you can give up your own wishes on someone else’s behalf, or maybe you can give some of your wishes to someone else, but keep some for yourself, too. And I didn’t do that. And now they’re dead.”
“And maybe he could have chosen to be a kinder person or Dora could have been a stronger person or maybe they could have made their own wishes,” he replied. “Or maybe you can only make dreams come true for a rare few people outside yourself. The people you know the best. The people you care for the most.”
I smiled and patted his legs gently, to indicate I was done. “Because seeing them happy is happiness for you,” I said.
He lifted his hand up, fingers spread, and I laid my sticky palm against his. “That’s why I want to see your dreams come true,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what I would ask for, if I had the power to grant my own wishes. To see you happy.”
“But I am happy,” I replied. “You have that power after all.”
Chapter Sixteen
But the truth was, I held a secret melancholy at the core of my heart. I did not voice it to Gryffin that night; I did not speak of it to Sarah or Betsy or Emily. I was happy now, but I knew there was sadness to come, at least for me.
And when, shortly after Summermoon, Ayler arrived at the Parmer Arms, I knew that sorrow arrived with him.
“Hello, Kellen, any secrets for me today?” he said, offering me his usual greeting.
“You know all my secrets,” I said, pouring him tea. “Do you bring any news you can share aloud?”
He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “Not news so much as an invitation.”
I nodded and looked away. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
He smiled. “I always thought you would have been a splendid Truth-Teller,” he said. “There is never keeping any secrets from you.”
“When will you take him?” I asked. “I assume the queen wants him in Wodenderry as soon as he is willing to travel.”
“All the world comes to Wodenderry,” Ayler said in an apologetic voice. “Thrush Hollow cannot make that claim.”
I laughed shortly. “It can lately.”
“By tradition, the Dream-Maker travels all over the kingdom, bringing the possibility of magic with her everywhere she goes,” Ayler said. “But I imagine it would be too difficult for Gryffin to travel on a regular basis. So we need to set him up someplace where everyone can find him—even people who do not realize they are searching for their dreams.”
“You can’t make him go with you, can you?” I asked. “What kind of Dream-Maker would he be if you tied him up and threw him in the back of your cart?”
Ayler gave a soft laugh. “I wouldn’t even try. But Gryffin has always wanted to go to Wodenderry, if I remember right. And Gryffin wants very much to do his best by his magic. I think he’ll go willingly, if not with a high heart.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think he will.”
Sarah and Betsy cried. Josh stood to one side, frowning, calculating how much the loss of the Dream-Maker would affect business. Gryffin looked terrified and excited and earnest, all at once. Ayler laid out his plan the day he arrived, went away for a week so we could all get used to the idea, and then came back one night in time for dinner.
“Ready to go in the morning?” he asked, and Gryffin nodded.
“Ready.”
Gryffin and I had already said our good-byes—a dozen times, it seemed—but I went to his room again that night to pronounce them one more time. He was in his chair, leaning over a suitcase that lay open on his bed, and his face still w
ore that flurried mix of emotions that he had displayed since Ayler first showed up.
“All ready?” I asked brightly. “Or do you need my help fitting something else in your baggage?”
“I think I have it all,” he said. He shut the case and pulled his chair around to face me. “I don’t want to go,” he said.
I perched on the edge of the bed. “Yes, you do. You just don’t want to leave.”
He laughed. “Maybe if you all came with me…”
“Not really possible, I’m afraid,” I said.
He was silent for a moment. “Not for Sarah and Josh and Betsy,” he said. “But you could come to Wodenderry.”
“I don’t know anybody in Wodenderry,” I said. “I would be lost and afraid.”
“You’d know me.”
“Oh, Gryffin. You’re going to be living at the royal palace. You’re going to be meeting with everyone from farmers to ambassadors. Your days will be so full you won’t have time to miss me.”
“I think my days will be so full of missing you that I won’t have time for any of those other people,” he said.
Now I was the one to stay silent for a moment. “It will be strange,” I said at last. “Since I was eleven years old I have seen you almost every day of my life. I can’t imagine what it will be like to open my eyes every morning and think, Gryffin is gone.”
“And just as strange for me in Wodenderry.”
“But you’ll have Raymond, who lives in Wodenderry. Ayler is there much of the time. And you’ll make new friends.”
“Won’t you come?” he asked in a wheedling voice. For the first time, I entertained the notion that he was serious.
“What does a fifteen-year-old girl do alone in the royal city?” I asked, for I had just celebrated my birthday. “Without a family, without a job? I can’t think my prospects would be very good.”
“You could ask Raymond,” he said quickly. “He would help you find a job and a place to stay.”