The Wind Through the Keyhole

  "He doesn't," Tim said, but he remembered the wedding reception.

  "Do you say so? I guess the fella my big brother seed rollin out of yonder redeye last night must've been some other orphing-boy's steppa, because Randy said he was as sloshed as a shindybug and heavin up over the hitchin-rail." Having said this, Willem snapped his suspenders, as he always did when he felt he'd gotten off a good one.

  Should have let you walk back to town, you stupid git, Tim thought.

  That night, his mother woke him again. Tim sat bolt upright in bed and swung his feet out onto the floor, then froze. Kells's voice was soft, but the wall between the two rooms was thin.

  "Shut it, woman. If you wake the boy and get him in here, I'll give you double."

  Her crying ceased.

  "It was a slip, is all--a mistake. I went in with Mellon just to have a ginger-beer and hear about his new stake, and someone put a glass of jackaroe in front of me. It was down my throat before I knew what I was drinking, and then I was off. 'Twon't happen again. Ye have my word on it."

  Tim lay back down again, hoping that was true.

  He looked up at a ceiling he could not see, and listened to an owl, and waited for either sleep or the first light of morning. It seemed to him that if the wrong man stepped into the marriage-loop with a woman, it was a noose instead of a ring. He prayed that wasn't the case here. He already knew he couldn't like his mother's new husband, let alone love him, but perhaps his mother could do both. Women were different. They had larger hearts.

  Tim was still thinking these long thoughts as dawn tinted the sky and he finally fell asleep. That day there were bruises on both of his mother's arms. The bedpost in the room she now shared with Big Kells had grown very lively, it seemed.

  Full Earth gave way to Wide Earth, as it always must. Tim and Straw Willem went to work stacking at the sawmill, but only three days a week. The foreman, a decent sai named Rupert Venn, told them they might get more time if that season's snowfall was light and the winter haul was good--meaning the ironwood rounds that cutters such as Kells brought back from the forest.

  Nell's bruises faded and her smile came back. Tim thought it a more cautious smile than before, but it was better than no smile at all. Kells hitched his mules and went down the Ironwood Trail, and although the stakes he and Big Ross had claimed were good ones, he still had no one to partner him. He consequently brought back less haul, but ironwood was ironwood, and ironwood always sold for a good price, one paid in shards of silver rather than scrip.

  Sometimes Tim wondered--usually as he was wheeling boards into one of the sawmill's long covered sheds--if life might be better were his new step-poppa to fall afoul a snake or a wervel. Perhaps even a vurt, those nasty flying things sometimes known as bullet-birds. One such had done for Bern Kells's father, boring a hole right through him with its stony beak.

  Tim pushed these thoughts away with horror, amazed to find that some room in his heart--some black room--could hold such things. His father, Tim was sure, would be ashamed. Perhaps was ashamed, for some said that those in the clearing at the end of the path knew all the secrets the living kept from each other.

  At least he no longer smelled graf on his stepfather's breath, and there were no more stories--from Straw Willem or anyone else--of Big Kells reeling out of the redeye when Old Gitty shut and locked the doors.

  He promised and he's keeping his promise, Tim thought. And the bedpost has stopped moving around in Mama's room, because she doesn't have those bruises. Life's begun to come right. That's the thing to remember.

  When he got home from the sawmill on the days he had work, his mother would have supper on the stove. Big Kells would come in later, first stopping to wash the sawdust from his hands, arms, and neck at the spring between the house and the barn, then gobbling his own supper. He ate prodigious amounts, calling for seconds and thirds that Nell brought promptly. She didn't speak when she did this; if she did, her new husband would only growl a response. Afterward, he would go into the back hall, sit on his trunk, and smoke.

  Sometimes Tim would look up from his slate, where he was working the mathmatica problems the Widow Smack still gave him, and see Kells staring at him through his pipe-smoke. There was something disconcerting about that gaze, and Tim began to take his slate outside, even though it was growing chilly in Tree, and dark came earlier each day.

  Once his mother came out, sat beside him on the porch step, and put her arm around his shoulders. "You'll be back to school with sai Smack next year, Tim. It's a promise. I'll bring him round."

  Tim smiled at her and said thankee, but he knew better. Next year he'd still be at the sawmill, only by then he'd be big enough to carry boards as well as stack them, and there would be less time to do problems, because he'd have work five days a week instead of three. Mayhap even six. The year after that, he'd be planing as well as carrying, then using the swing-saw like a man. In a few more years he'd be a man, coming home too tired to think about reading the Widow Smack's books even if she still wanted to lend them out, the orderly ways of the mathmatica fading in his mind. That grown Tim Ross might want no more than to fall into bed after meat and bread. He would begin to smoke a pipe and perhaps get a taste for graf or beer. He would watch his mother's smile grow pale; he would watch her eyes lose their sparkle.

  And for these things he would have Bern Kells to thank.

  Reaping was gone by; Huntress Moon grew pale, waxed again, and pulled her bow; the first gales of Wide Earth came howling in from the west. And just when it seemed he might not come after all, the Barony Covenanter blew into the village of Tree on one of those cold winds, astride his tall black horse and as thin as Tom Scrawny Death. His heavy black cloak flapped around him like a batwing. Beneath his wide hat (as black as his cloak), the pale lamp of his face turned ceaselessly from side to side, marking a new fence here, a cow or three added to a herd there. The villagers would grumble but pay, and if they couldn't pay, their land would be taken in the name of Gilead. Perhaps even then, in those olden days, some were whispering it wasn't fair, the taxes were too much, that Arthur Eld was long dead (if he had ever existed at all), and the Covenant had been paid a dozen times over, in blood as well as silver. Perhaps some of them were already waiting for a Good Man to appear, and make them strong enough to say No more, enough's enough, the world has moved on.

  Perhaps, but not that year, and not for many and many-a to come.

  Late in the afternoon, while the swag-bellied clouds tumbled across the sky and the yellow cornstalks clattered in Nell's garden-like teeth in a loose jaw, sai Covenanter nudged his tall black horse between gateposts Big Ross had set up himself (with Tim looking on and helping when asked). The horse paced slowly and solemnly up to the front steps. There it halted, nodding and blowing. Big Kells stood on the porch and still had to look up to see the visitor's pallid face. Kells held his hat crushed to his breast. His thinning black hair (now showing the first streaks of gray, for he was nearing forty and would soon be old) flew around his head. Behind him in the doorway stood Nell and Tim. She had an arm around her boy's shoulders and was clutching him tightly, as if afraid (maybe 'twas a mother's intuition) that the Covenant Man might steal him away.

  For a moment there was silence save for the flapping of the unwelcome visitor's cloak, and the wind, which sang an eerie tune beneath the eaves. Then the Barony Covenanter bent forward, regarding Kells with wide dark eyes that did not seem to blink. His lips, Tim saw, were as red as a woman's when she paints them with fresh madder. From somewhere inside his cloak he produced not a book of slates but a roll of real parchment paper, and pulled it down so 'twas long. He studied it, made it short again, and replaced it in whatever inner pocket it had come from. Then he returned his gaze to Big Kells, who flinched and looked at his feet.

  "Kells, isn't it?" He had a rough, husky voice that made Tim's skin pucker into hard points of gooseflesh. He had seen the Covenant Man before, but only from a distance; his da' had made shift to keep Tim away fro
m the house when the barony's tax-man came calling on his annual rounds. Now Tim understood why. He thought he would have bad dreams tonight.

  "Kells, aye." His step-poppa's voice was shakily cheerful. He managed to raise his eyes again. "Welcome, sai. Long days and pleasant--"

  "Yar, all that, all that," the Covenant Man said with a dismissive wave of one hand. His dark eyes were now looking over Kells's shoulder. "And . . . Ross, isn't it? Now two instead of three, they tell me, Big Ross having fallen to unfortunate happenstance." His voice was low, little more than a monotone. Like listening to a deaf man try to sing a lullabye, Tim thought.

  "Just so," Big Kells said. He swallowed hard enough for Tim to hear the gulping sound, then began to babble. "He n me were in the forest, ye ken, in one of our little stakes off the Ironwood Path--we have four or five, all marked proper wi' our names, so they are, and I haven't changed em, because in my mind he's still my partner and always will be--and we got separated a bit. Then I heard a hissin. You know that sound when you hear it, there's no sound on earth like the hiss of a bitch dragon drawrin in breath before she--"

  "Hush," the Covenant Man said. "When I want to hear a story, I like it to begin with 'Once upon a bye.'"

  Kells began to say something else--perhaps only to cry pardon--and thought better of it. The Covenant Man leaned an arm on the horn of his saddle and stared at him. "I understand you sold your house to Rupert Anderson, sai Kells."

  "Yar, and he cozened me, but I--"

  The visitor overrode him. "The tax is nine knuckles of silver or one of rhodite, which I know you don't have in these parts, but I'm bound to tell you, as it's in the original Covenant. One knuck for the transaction, and eight for the house where you now sit your ass at sundown and no doubt hide your tallywhacker after moonrise."

  "Nine?" Big Kells gasped. "Nine? That's--"

  "It's what?" the Covenant Man said in his rough, crooning voice. "Be careful how you answer, Bern Kells, son of Mathias, grandson of Limping Peter. Be ever so careful, because, although your neck is thick, I believe it would stretch thin. Aye, so I do."

  Big Kells turned pale . . . although not as pale as the Barony Covenanter. "It's very fair. That's all I meant to say. I'll get it."

  He went into the house and came back with a deerskin purse. It was Big Ross's moneysack, the one over which Tim's mother had been crying on a day early on in Full Earth. A day when life had seemed fairer, even though Big Ross was dead. Kells handed the sack to Nell and let her count the precious knuckles of silver into his cupped hands.

  All during this, the visitor sat silent on his tall black horse, but when Big Kells made to come down the steps and hand him the tax--almost all they had, even with Tim's little bit of wages added into the common pot--the Covenant Man shook his head.

  "Keep your place. I'd have the boy bring it to me, for he's fair, and in his countenance I see his father's face. Aye, I see it very well."

  Tim took the double handful of knucks--so heavy!--from Big Kells, barely hearing the whisper in his ear: "Have a care and don't drop em, ye gormless boy."

  Tim walked down the porch steps like a boy in a dream. He held up his cupped hands, and before he knew what was happening, the Covenant Man had seized him by the wrists and hauled him up onto his horse. Tim saw that bow and pommel were decorated with a cascade of silver runes: moons and stars and comets and cups pouring cold fire. At the same time, he realized his double handful of knucks was gone. The Covenant Man had taken them, although Tim couldn't remember exactly when it had happened.

  Nell screamed and ran forward.

  "Catch her and hold her!" the Covenant Man thundered, so close by Tim's ear that he was near deafened on that side.

  Kells grabbed his wife by the shoulders and jerked her roughly backwards. She tripped and tumbled to the porch boards, long skirts flying up around her ankles.

  "Mama!" Tim shouted. He tried to jump from the saddle, but the Covenant Man restrained him easily. He smelled of campfire meat and old cold sweat. "Sit easy, young Tim Ross, she's not hurt a mite. See how spry she rises." Then, to Nell--who had indeed regained her feet: "Be not fashed, sai, I'd only have a word with him. Would I harm a future taxpayer of the realm?"

  "If you harm him, I'll kill you, you devil," said she.

  Kells raised a fist to her. "Shut yer stupid mouth, woman!" Nell did not shrink from the fist. She had eyes only for Tim, sitting on the high black horse in front of the Covenant Man, whose arms were banded across her son's chest.

  The Covenant Man smiled down at the two on the porch, one with his fist still upraised to strike, the other with tears coursing down her cheeks. "Nell and Kells!" he proclaimed. "The happy couple!"

  He kneed his mount in a circle and slow-walked it as far as the gate, his arms still firmly around Tim's chest, his rank breath puffing against Tim's cheek. At the gate he squeezed his knees again and the horse halted. In Tim's ear--which was still ringing--he whispered: "How does thee like thy new steppa, young Tim? Speak the truth, but speak it low. This is our palaver, and they have no part in it."

  Tim didn't want to turn, didn't want the Covenant Man's pallid face any closer than it already was, but he had a secret that had been poisoning him. So he did turn, and in the tax-man's ear he whispered, "When he's in drink, he beats my ma."

  "Does he, now? Ah, well, does that surprise me? For did not his da' beat his own ma? And what we learn as children sets as a habit, so it does."

  A gloved hand threw one wing of the heavy black cloak over them like a blanket, and Tim felt the other gloved hand slither something small and hard into his pants pocket. "A gift for you, young Tim. It's a key. Does thee know what makes it special?"

  Tim shook his head.

  "'Tis a magic key. It will open anything, but only a single time. After that, 'tis as useless as dirt, so be careful how you use it!" He laughed as if this were the funniest joke he'd ever heard. His breath made Tim's stomach churn.

  "I . . ." He swallowed. "I have nothing to open. There's no locks in Tree, 'cept at the redeye and the jail."

  "Oh, I think thee knows of another. Does thee not?"

  Tim looked into the Covenant Man's blackly merry eyes and said nothing. That worthy nodded, however, as if he had.

  "What are you telling my son?" Nell screamed from the porch. "Pour not poison in his ears, devil!"

  "Pay her no mind, young Tim, she'll know soon enough. She'll know much but see little." He snickered. His teeth were very large and very white. "A riddle for you! Can you solve it? No? Never mind, the answer will come in time."

  "Sometimes he opens it," Tim said, speaking in the slow voice of one who talks in his sleep. "He takes out his honing bar. For the blade of his ax. But then he locks it again. At night he sits on it to smoke, like it was a chair."

  The Covenant Man didn't ask what it was. "And does he touch it each time he passes by, young Tim? As a man would touch a favorite old dog?"

  He did, of course, but Tim didn't say so. He didn't need to say so. He felt there wasn't a secret he could keep from the mind ticking away behind that long white face. Not one.

  He's playing with me, Tim thought. I'm just a bit of amusement on a dreary day in a dreary town he'll soon leave behind. But he breaks his toys. You only have to look at his smile to know that.

  "I'll camp a wheel or two down the Ironwood Trail the next night or two," the Covenant Man said in his rusty, tuneless voice. "It's been a long ride, and I'm weary of all the quack I have to listen to. There are vurts and wervels and snakes in the forest, but they don't quack."

  You're never weary, Tim thought. Not you.

  "Come and see me if you care to." No snicker this time; this time he tittered like a naughty girl. "And if you dare to, of course. But come at night, for this jilly's son likes to sleep in the day when he gets the chance. Or stay here if you're timid. It's naught to me. Hup!"

  This was to the horse, which paced slowly back to the porch steps, where Nell stood wringing her hands and Big Kells stood glow
ering beside her. The Covenant Man's thin strong fingers closed over Tim's wrists again--like handcuffs--and lifted him. A moment later he was on the ground, staring up at the white face and smiling red lips. The key burned in the depths of his pocket. From above the house came a peal of thunder, and it began to rain.

  "The Barony thanks you," the Covenant Man said, touching one gloved finger to the side of his wide-brimmed hat. Then he wheeled his black horse around and was gone into the rain. The last thing Tim saw was passing odd: when the heavy black cloak belled out, he spied a large metal object tied to the top of the Covenant Man's gunna. It looked like a washbasin.

  Big Kells came striding down the steps, seized Tim by the shoulders, and commenced shaking him. Rain matted Kells's thinning hair to the sides of his face and streamed from his beard. Black when he had slipped into the silk rope with Nell, that beard was now heavily streaked with gray.

  "What did he tell'ee? Was it about me? What lies did'ee speak? Tell!"

  Tim could tell him nothing. His head snapped back and forth hard enough to make his teeth clack together.

  Nell rushed down the steps. "Stop it! Let him alone! You promised you'd never--"

  "Get out of what don't concern you, woman," he said, and struck her with the side of his fist. Tim's mama fell into the mud, where the teeming rain was now filling the tracks left by the Covenant Man's horse.

  "You bastard!" Tim screamed. "You can't hit my mama, you can't ever!"

  He felt no immediate pain when Kells dealt him a similar sidehand blow, but white light sheared across his vision. When it lifted, he found himself lying in the mud next to his mother. He was dazed, his ears were ringing, and still the key burned in his pocket like a live coal.

  "Nis take both of you," Kells said, and strode away into the rain. Beyond the gate he turned right, in the direction of Tree's little length of high street. Headed for Gitty's, Tim had no doubt. He had stayed away from drink all of that Wide Earth--as far as Tim knew, anyway--but he would not stay away from it this night. Tim saw from his mother's sorrowful face--wet with rain, her hair hanging limp against her reddening muck-splattered cheek--that she knew it, too.

  Tim put his arm around her waist, she put hers about his shoulders. They made their way slowly up the steps and into the house.