Leona came staggering through the door, looking dazed but happy. “Go,” she said. “I’ve cleared out the room. Everyone’s gone but the Dream-Maker and the guards who came with him, and they’re waiting outside. He wants to talk to you.”
I looked around the kitchen. “I’ll never get this clean,” I said.
“We’ll do it in the morning. Right now I’m going straight upstairs to bed,” she said. “Go visit with your friend.”
I washed my hands, smoothed back my hair, and stepped into the tavern to see Gryffin.
He was sitting at the same table, looking almost as tired as I felt, but he smiled when I pulled up a seat. “I enjoyed that,” he said. “Much more fun than holding a formal audience. Every third person told me they would never be so bold as to go to the palace so they never thought they’d have a chance to meet me. I should come here once a week, at least.”
“Leona would like that,” I said. “The business is struggling. But if you were here from time to time—”
He nodded. “I’ll do that. I’ll go anywhere you are.”
He was watching me very closely, but the expression in his eyes was hard to read. I felt myself gulping, trying to swallow an obstruction in my throat. “It seemed so different,” I said in a small voice. “When I came to the palace to find you. You seemed—it seemed—there was a place there for you.”
“And you didn’t think there was a place there for you just because you’re my friend?”
“I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what might have changed.”
“Nothing’s changed,” he said instantly.
“I was afraid you might not remember me,” I said.
He held his hands out, extending them over the silky wood of the table, and I laid my hands in his. “Kellen,” he said. “You were the first person who ever cared about me. Now everyone cares about me, but it is very hard to separate out who wants to be my friend because I might do them a favor, and who wants to be my friend because they like me for who I am. There are days in Wodenderry I have felt more lost and alone and afraid than the day I crawled to your house in a rainstorm with both my legs broken. The only thing that has helped me remember who I am is remembering who you are.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to remember who you were,” I said, “once you become Dream-Maker.”
His fingers tightened over mine. His hands had always been so strong. “Maybe it’s even more important, once the power comes over you,” he replied.
“I missed you so much,” I said. “I haven’t known how to tell you that.”
“I thought about you every day,” he replied. He hesitated, and I wondered what he was going to say, and then he laughed. “It’s strange to see you dressed as a boy again,” he said.
“I thought you never noticed anything I wore. Whether I wore clothes suited to a boy or a girl.”
“It never mattered to me,” he said. “But I usually noticed.”
I tried to free my hands from his. “I suppose the Dream-Maker shouldn’t be seen holding hands with a young man.”
But Gryffin didn’t let me go. “And why not, if that’s who he feels like holding hands with?” he replied in a quiet voice. His grip tightened again as he pulled me toward him, and I came to my feet and stepped around the edge of the table. I thought Leona was too tired to be watching from the kitchen, and the guards too discreet to be peering through the front window, but if they were, I didn’t care. I leaned down and brushed my mouth, very softly, across Gryffin’s. He smiled, and I kissed him again, still gently.
“I’m so glad you’ve found me again, Gryffin,” I whispered. “I didn’t know how much longer I could go on without you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
After that, Gryffin came to Cottleson’s about one evening a week, varying the day of his arrival so no one knew whether he would be there or not. This meant the tavern was always busy, since customers would drop by looking for him, and more often than not stay long enough to have a beer or two before leaving.
Sometimes they stayed because they had heard a rumor: The Dream-Maker occasionally came to the tavern to relax in private, sitting alone in a designated room and declining the chance to visit with the populace. They all respected his wish for solitude, but they also knew that the very presence of a Dream-Maker was enough to confer magic. They knew he could make dreams come true even when they weren’t spoken aloud. So they came, they looked around hopefully, they speculated that Gryffin was sitting in austere state in an elegant chamber, and they ordered a pitcher of ale.
In fact, there were a few nights Gryffin did come to Cottleson’s and did remain out of sight—but he wasn’t eating a sumptuous meal in a specially reserved room. He was back in the kitchen with me, chopping vegetables and stirring pots and swapping stories. We celebrated my birthday together in Leona’s kitchen, not telling the others what day it was because I was sure no one expected a boy my age to make a fuss about such an event. But Gryffin brought me a book and a painted miniature of the queen, and I was happy.
Most of the time, though, we just talked. We had so much to catch up on! I told him about my mother’s adoption of the abandoned Georgie and how she was so busy with her new child that she rarely had time to write me. I faithfully sent her money, and always asked after my stepbrother, but I could not count on a regular correspondence. When she wrote, she seemed sublimely happy, though pressed for time. I was sad to say I did not miss her at all.
He told me of his first lonely months in Wodenderry, surrounded by gawking strangers, feeling as if he might be devoured by the intense hungers of the people he had come to serve. “And what I told you the other night was true,” he added as he busily wielded his knife on a pile of carrots. “I found it very hard to separate out the friends from the sycophants. For the first few months I was here, the only people I really trusted were the Truth-Tellers. Not always the most pleasant people to be around, but at least I knew they were incapable of pretending to like me if they didn’t.”
During that time we talked about ourselves but only through a filter, telling the stories of our recent lives by speaking of our changing relationships with other people. Neither of us had forgotten those two shy kisses in the middle of Leona’s tavern, but neither of us mentioned them again. I think we did not know the words to say, though if I had tried, I would have said, I am very sure I love you, but I am just turned sixteen. It seems strange to imagine a life alongside you, but I cannot imagine any other life. You are in my heart, and I cannot believe that you will be uprooted, but perhaps we should live awhile longer before we say we are certain.
On Gryffin’s part, I guessed the words would be much the same if he were to speak them, but I thought he might add another sentence: Can you really love a man whose body is broken? I knew the answer, and I hoped he did, but I was fairly certain the question concerned him. Now and then I saw him lean over and rub his twisted calves, then straighten up and glance over at me. His face, at those times, was always sad.
“Do you walk at all anymore?” I asked him one day as we were making soup in the kitchen.
He shook his head. “I can stand, and take a few steps, but it’s painful.”
“Are your legs getting worse?”
“I think so.” He shrugged. “The lot of a Dream-Maker. Suffering and pain. It’s nothing I can’t endure.”
“Do you have someone to massage them for you?”
He laughed. “Yes, the royal physician! Who is a very kind soul. But”—he shook his head—“there is not much improvement. Perhaps as I get older my legs get weaker. I try not to complain. The price seems fair.”
“Buying joy for other people?” I said, a skeptical edge to my voice. “It might seem a little steep to me.”
He laughed again. “Well, it makes me happy to see people like your friend Leona prosper. So I am rewarded in my way.”
Indeed, Leona’s prosperity was a satisfaction to all of us. Business had picked up so significantly that Leona hired Sa
llie’s sister full-time to help me in the kitchen, and Sallie’s brother to wait on tables. We were all exhausted by the extra work, but elated with the extra money, and Leona paid handsome bonuses to Sallie and me that month.
“Business has been so good that I’ve managed to pay off the last loan,” Leona gloated at the end of one very long day. Sallie had gone home for the night, and Leona and I were drinking a last cup of tea before seeking our beds. “Even if Gryffin stops coming here regularly, we can make it now on the kind of money we used to bring in. Kellen, I do believe your friend has made my dream come true.”
I smiled. “That’s his job, and he does it well.”
She turned her head to consider me. “Although sometimes I think Ayler’s the one who really started my run of good fortune, when he brought you here,” she said. “You’re the best worker I’ve ever had, even better than Sallie, though of course Sallie’s a treasure, too. It’s just that you—I don’t know. You make things so easy. We get along so well. I know I’m not really old enough to be your mother, but sometimes I feel like I am. Or your aunt, maybe. I want you to do well, and be happy, and marry a nice young girl, and invite me to the wedding, and buy a house next to mine, and bring over each of the babies for my blessing once they’re born. Doesn’t that sound silly? I guess I’ve always had such a footloose life up till now that I find myself wanting to hold on to the things I value—this tavern, the few friends I’ve made. I don’t want to let go of anyone. I hate the thought of you going back to Thrush Hollow sometime.”
I shook my head, my throat too tight for me to speak at first. “I don’t think I’ll be returning to Thrush Hollow anytime soon,” I said at last. “It certainly won’t be family ties that pull me back. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come to Wodenderry, but I love it here. I love the tavern. I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather work or people I’d rather be with.”
“Well, someday you might want a bigger place to live,” she said practically. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll want to start your own business someday or hire on as an apprentice somewhere. But—just—make sure you stick around. Or, if you leave, don’t go too far.”
“Cottleson’s is like home to me,” I said softly. “I don’t think I’d ever go too far.”
Two days later, Phillip was back at the tavern with a very official-looking document that asserted his claim to part-ownership of the tavern.
“If we settle this now, if you pay me half the value of the property, I’ll be content with that,” Phillip told Leona. “If you fight me on it, I’ll take you to a court of law and sue you for the whole thing. I’ll win, too. That’s what Barney says. Better off for you to sell the place and give me half the money, or you’ll lose everything.”
Sallie and I eavesdropped on their whole conversation, which took place in the kitchen one autumn morning. As soon as he left, we rushed in to commiserate. Leona sat at the table as she had that one night, her head in her hands, her whole body dejected.
“I don’t know what to do,” she wailed, as Sallie bent over to give her a hug and I started a kettle of water for tea. “Should I take out a loan for the money he wants? But then what if business goes soft again and I can’t pay the loan back? But I can’t sell Cottleson’s—I can’t. But if I refuse to sell and I lose everything—”
“To me, Phillip seems like the kind of man who will never be satisfied,” Sallie said, pulling up a chair next to Leona’s stool. “If you take out a loan but you still own the tavern, sooner or later he’ll come back with another scheme. As long as you own this property, he’ll think half of it belongs to him, no matter what you pay him.”
“But then—but then—if I sell the tavern—”
I poured everyone a mug of steaming liquid. “I think you first need to find out if his document is valid,” I said. “Hire a lawyer now that you can afford one.”
Leona halfheartedly sipped her tea. “I suppose. But I don’t even know any lawyers. How can I find one who’s trustworthy?”
I settled across from the two women and blew on my tea. “I wonder if Raymond would take your case,” I said.
Leona and Sallie stared at me. “Raymond Lemkey?” Leona repeated. “The one who argues cases for the queen?”
“Is that what he’s doing now?”
“You know him?” Sallie demanded.
“Well, I used to. When I lived in Thrush Hollow, he—”
“You know, I’m finding it very hard to believe that so much was transpiring in Thrush Hollow during the time you lived there,” Leona interrupted. “I grew up in Tambleham and Lowford and a lot of places that were larger than Thrush Hollow, and nothing exciting ever happened in any of them. Whereas you live in the smallest town in a dull corner of the kingdom, and you meet Safe-Keepers and Dream-Makers and famous attorneys and—and—I don’t know who you might produce next!”
I grinned. “I think that’s it for my impressive connections,” I said. “And I don’t know if Raymond would be interested in the case. But I’ll ask him.”
“Yes, Kellen,” Leona replied in a strangled voice. “Why don’t you do that?”
Raymond, in fact, was delighted to take Leona’s case. I visited him in his law office, where two haughty clerks made me wait for nearly an hour before they took my name in to him. I was gratified at the alacrity with which they hurried back out to tell me the senior partner would see me right away, and how very sorry they were that they had kept me waiting.
“Kellen, my dear!” Raymond greeted me in his expansive way. I had time to notice that his white hair was elegantly styled and his clothes were extremely fine before I realized that he was looking me over with critical attention. “The face I recognize, and of course the name, but I do not recall you dressing in such unconventional clothing during the time I knew you in Thrush Hollow,” he said. “What has changed?”
“I came to Wodenderry alone and unsure of myself, and I thought it might be better to dress as a boy,” I said.
“And has it been?”
“I think life went easier for me when I first arrived. But I think I could assume my true identity now and not suffer for it,” I admitted.
“Then why don’t you?”
I thought of Leona and Sallie, and how astonished they would be. Just the other day Leona had claimed I was like a nephew to her. How would she feel if I suddenly turned into a niece? I thought of Gryffin, and how it might look to everyone if it was known he had singled out some nameless woman for his attention. He was the most-watched man in the kingdom. Would people not pressure him to explain his intentions?
“It still seems easier,” I said. “So don’t betray me.”
He made a broad gesture with his hand. “Betray you! Never. Not even accidentally. I never make such crass mistakes.”
Indeed, he came to Cottleson’s that very night and met with Leona in the kitchen, where, of course, I was preparing the evening meal. He referred to me incessantly as “Kellen, my boy,” and lost no chance to tell Leona what a fine young man I was. It was all I could do to keep from having a fit of the giggles.
But he took the case, which was what really mattered. “Let me see the document that this fine fellow Barney has crafted,” Raymond demanded. “Let me see, let me see…ah. Indeed. Hmm. Well, he has some knowledge of the law, but not enough to circumvent me. This might take a little time, a few weeks, a few months at most, but we shall prevail, my good young woman. Don’t you despair.”
Leona seemed pleased but bemused when he finally left, Barney’s file in hand. “What an odd man,” she said. “He makes me feel as if I have just been blown about by a windstorm. And yet I like him.”
“He’ll help you,” I promised.
She laughed. “Just when I think I really know you, Kellen, you come up with another surprise.”
“Not any more,” I said. “All my surprises are done with.”
Well, of course, I had one more secret that might astonish her, but I did not propose to share that just yet. I was perfectly happy in
my new life, in my assumed role; I had no immediate plans to change.
“You say that,” she replied. “But I have a feeling that I will be even more startled at whoever you produce next.”
After the first three months of Gryffin’s patronage, business slacked off a little at Cottleson’s—not enough to hurt Leona’s finances, but enough to enable us to catch a breath from time to time or enjoy a slow hour once in a while. Gryffin still made semi-regular appearances, both in public and in private; the weeks he could not find time to visit the tavern, I went to the palace to have breakfast with him. He offered to introduce me to Queen Lirabel, or the handsome prince and his charming wife, but I was too shy. And too strange. If I was going to encounter royalty, I wanted to be beautifully dressed in a gown that enabled me to make a formal curtsy. So I would not let him take me to the public areas of the palace, but we often sat in the royal gardens, until the weather started to grow too cold. Then we sat in the conservatory, which was just as green, and happily passed the hours.
Raymond came by the tavern now and then to assure Leona that he was working on her case. “I’ve been retracing your parents’ journey through life,” he told her once. “Visiting all the towns where they once lived, to make sure they did not file any wills that might serve as counterclaims. Quite the nomads they were!”
“Yes,” said Leona. “I think that might be why I am so attached to the tavern. After we built it, we finally stayed in one place for longer than a year. I was so tired of traveling. I wanted a permanent home.”
“Well,” said Raymond, “I’ll make sure you have one.”
It was perhaps six weeks before Wintermoon when another one of my old friends showed up at Cottleson’s, and everything changed again.