The Wind Through the Keyhole

  With a quiet more shocking than the noisiest splash, a giant claw rose up, the talons half-clenched. Sai Helmsman laid the bloody chunk of boar into that demanding palm as gently as a mother lays her sleeping babe into its crib. The talons closed around the meat, squeezing out droplets of blood that pattered into the water. Then, as quietly as it had come, the claw disappeared, bearing its tribute.

  Now you know how to appease a dragon, Tim thought. It occurred to him that he was amassing a wonderful store of tales, ones that would hold not just Old Splint but the whole village of Tree in thrall. He wondered if he would ever live to tell them.

  The scow bumped the tussock. The oarsmen bent their heads and fisted their brows. Helmsman did the same. When he gestured to Tim from the boat, indicating that he should board, long strands of green and brown swung back and forth from his scrawny arm. More of this growth hung on his cheeks and straggled from his chin. Even his nostrils seemed plugged with vegetable matter, so that he had to breathe through his mouth.

  Not mudmen at all, Tim thought as he climbed into the boat. They're plantmen. Muties who are becoming a part of the swamp they live in.

  "I say thankee," Tim told Helmsman, and touched the side of his fist to his own forehead.

  "Hile!" Helmsman replied. His lips spread in a grin. The few teeth thus revealed were green, but the grin was no less charming for that.

  "We are well-met," Tim said.

  "Hile," Helmsman repeated, and then they all took it up, making the swamp ring: Hile! Hile! Hile!

  Onshore (if ground that trembled and oozed at every step could be called shore), the tribe gathered around Tim. Their smell was earthy and enormous. Tim kept the four-shot in his hand, not because he intended to shoot or even threaten them with it, but because they so clearly wanted to see it. If any had reached out to actually touch it, he would have put it back in the bag, but none did. They grunted, they gestured, they made those chittering bird cries, but none of them spoke a word other than hile that Tim could understand. Yet when Tim spoke to them, he had no doubt that he was understood.

  He counted at least sixteen, all men and all muties. As well as plant life, most were supporting fungoid growths that looked like the shelf mushrooms Tim sometimes saw growing on the blossiewood he'd hauled at the sawmill. They were also afflicted with boils and festering sores. A near-certainty grew in Tim: somewhere there might be women--a few--but there would be no children. This was a dying tribe. Soon the Fagonard would take them just as the bitch dragon had taken her sacrificial chunk of boar. In the meantime, though, they were looking at him in a way he also recognized from his days in the sawmill. It was the way he and the rest of the boys looked at the foreman when the last job had been done and the next not yet assigned.

  The Fagonard tribe thought he was a gunslinger--ridiculous, he was only a kid, but there it was--and they were, at least for the time being, his to command. Easy enough for them, but Tim had never been a boss nor dreamed of being one. What did he want? If he asked them to take him back to the south end of the swamp, they would; he was sure of it. From there he believed he could find his way to the Ironwood Trail, which would in turn take him back to Tree Village.

  Back home.

  That was the reasonable thing, and Tim knew it. But when he got back, his mother would still be blind. Even Big Kells's capture would not change that. He, Tim Ross, would have dared much to no gain. Even worse, the Covenant Man might use his silver basin to watch him slink south, beaten. He'd laugh. Probably with his wretched pixie sitting on his shoulder, laughing right along with him.

  As he considered this, he minded something the Widow Smack used to say in happier days, when he was just a schoolboy whose biggest concern was to finish his chores before his da' came back from the woods: The only stupid question, my cullies, is the one you don't ask.

  Speaking slowly (and without much hope), Tim said: "I'm on a quest to find Maerlyn, who is a great magician. I was told he has a house in the Endless Forest, but the man who told me so was . . ." Was a bastard. Was a liar. Was a cruel trickster who passed the time cozening children. ". . . was untrustworthy," he finished. "Have you of the Fagonard ever heard of this Maerlyn? He may wear a tall cap the color of the sun."

  He expected headshakes or incomprehension. Instead, the members of the tribe moved away from him and formed a tight, jabbering circle. This went on for at least ten minutes, and on several occasions the discussion grew quite warm. At last they returned to where Tim waited. Crooked hands with sore-raddled fingers pushed the erstwhile helmsman forward. This worthy was broad-shouldered and sturdily built. Had he not grown up in the waterlogged poison-bowl that was the Fagonard, he might have been considered handsome. His eyes were bright with intelligence. On his chest, above his right nipple, an enormous infected sore bulged and trembled.

  He raised a finger in a way Tim recognized: it was the Widow Smack's attend me gesture. Tim nodded and pointed the first two fingers of his right hand--the one not holding the gun--at his eyes, as the Widow had taught them.

  Helmsman--the tribe's best play-actor, Tim surmised--nodded back, then stroked the air below the straggly growth of intermixed stubble and weed on his chin.

  Tim felt a stab of excitement. "A beard? Yes, he has a beard!"

  Helmsman next stroked the air above his head, closing his fist as he did so, indicating not just a tall cap but a tall conical cap.

  "That's him!" Tim actually laughed.

  Helmsman smiled, but Tim thought it a troubled smile. Several of the others jabbered and twittered. Helmsman motioned them quiet, then turned back to Tim. Before he could continue his dumbshow, however, the sore above his nipple burst open in a spray of pus and blood. From it crawled a spider the size of a robin's egg. Helmsman grabbed it, crushed it, and tossed it aside. Then, as Tim watched with horrified fascination, he used one hand to push the wound wide. When the sides gaped like lips, he used his other hand to reach in and scoop out a slick mass of faintly throbbing eggs. He slatted these casually aside, ridding himself of them as a man might rid himself of a palmful of snot he has blown out of his nose on a cold morning. None of the others paid this any particular attention. They were waiting for the show to continue.

  With his sore attended to, Helmsman dropped to his hands and knees and began to make a series of predatory lunges this way and that, growling as he did so. He stopped and looked up at Tim, who shook his head. He was also struggling with his stomach. These people had just saved his life, and he reckoned it would be very impolite to puke in front of them.

  "I don't understand that one, sai. Say sorry."

  Helmsman shrugged and got to his feet. The matted weeds growing from his chest were now beaded with blood. Again he made the beard and the tall conical cap. Again he dropped to the ground, snarling and making lunges. This time all the others joined him. The tribe briefly became a pack of dangerous animals, their laughter and obvious good cheer somewhat spoiling the illusion.

  Tim once more shook his head, feeling quite stupid.

  Helmsman did not look cheerful; he looked worried. He stood for a moment, hands on hips, thinking, then beckoned one of his fellow tribesmen forward. This one was tall, bald, and toothless. The two of them palavered at length. Then the tall man ran off, making great speed even though his legs were so severely bent that he rocked from side to side like a skiff in a swell. Helmsman beckoned two others forward and spoke to them. They also ran off.

  Helmsman then dropped to his hands and knees and recommenced his fierce-animal imitation. When he was done, he looked up at Tim with an expression that was close to pleading.

  "Is it a dog?" Tim ventured.

  At this, the remaining tribesmen laughed heartily.

  Helmsman got up and patted Tim on the shoulder with a six-fingered hand, as if to tell him not to take it to heart.

  "Just tell me one thing," Tim said. "Maerlyn . . . sai, is he real?"

  Helmsman considered this, then flung his arms skyward in an exaggerated delah gesture. It
was body language any Tree villager would have recognized: Who knows?

  The two tribesmen who had run off together came back carrying a basket of woven reeds and a hemp shoulder strap to carry it with. They deposited it at Helmsman's feet, turned to Tim, saluted him, then stood back, grinning. Helmsman hunkered and motioned for Tim to do the same.

  The boy knew what the basket held even before Helmsman opened it. He could smell fresh-cooked meat and had to wipe his mouth on his sleeve to keep from drooling. The two men (or perhaps their women) had packed the Fagonard equivalent of a woodsman's lunch. Sliced pork had been layered with rounds of some orange vegetable that looked like squash. These were wrapped in thin green leaves to make breadless popkins. There were also strawberries and blueberries, fruits long gone by for the season in Tree.

  "Thankee-sai!" Tim tapped his throat three times. This made them all laugh and tap their own throats.

  The tall tribesman returned. From one shoulder hung a waterskin. In his hand he carried a small purse of the finest, smoothest leather Tim had ever seen. The purse he gave to Helmsman. The waterskin he held out to the boy.

  Tim wasn't aware of how thirsty he was until he felt the skin's weight and pressed his palms against its plump, gently yielding sides. He pulled the plug with his teeth, raised it on his elbow as did the men of his village, and drank deep. He expected it to be brackish (and perhaps buggy), but it was as cool and sweet as that which came from their own spring between the house and the barn.

  The tribesmen laughed and applauded. Tim saw a sore on the shoulder of Tallman getting ready to give birth, and was relieved when Helmsman tapped him on the shoulder, wanting him to look at something.

  It was the purse. There was some sort of metal seam running across the middle of it. When Helmsman pulled a tab attached to this seam, the purse opened like magic.

  Inside was a brushed metal disc the size of a small plate. There was writing on the top side that Tim couldn't read. Below the writing were three buttons. Helmsman pushed one of these, and a short stick emerged from the plate with a low whining sound. The tribesmen, who had gathered round in a loose semicircle, laughed and applauded some more. They were clearly having a wonderful time. Tim, with his thirst slaked and his feet on solid (semisolid, at least) ground, decided he was having a pretty good time himself.

  "Is that from the Old People, sai?"

  Helmsman nodded.

  "Such things are held to be dangerous where I come from."

  Helmsman at first didn't seem to understand this, and from their puzzled expressions, none of the other plant-fellas did, either. Then he laughed and made a sweeping gesture that took in everything: the sky, the water, the oozing land upon which they stood. As if to say everything was dangerous.

  And in this place, Tim thought, everything probably is.

  Helmsman poked Tim's chest, then gave an apologetic little shrug: Sorry, but you must pay attention.

  "All right," Tim said. "I'm watching." And forked two fingers at his eyes, which made them all chuckle and elbow each other, as if he had gotten off an especially good one.

  Helmsman pushed a second button. The disc beeped, which made the watchers murmur appreciatively. A red light came on below the buttons. Helmsman began to turn in a slow circle, holding the metal device out before him like an offering. Three quarters of the way around the circle, the device beeped again and the red light turned green. Helmsman pointed one overgrown finger in the direction the device was now pointing. As well as Tim could ken from the mostly hidden sun, this was north. Helmsman looked to see if Tim understood. Tim thought he did, but there was a problem.

  "There's water that way. I can swim, but . . ." He bared his teeth and chomped them together, pointing toward the tussock where he had almost become some scaly thing's breakfast. They all laughed hard at this, none harder than Helmsman, who actually had to bend and grip his mossy knees to keep from falling over.

  Yar, Tim thought, very funny, I almost got eaten alive.

  When his throe had passed and Helmsman was able to stand up straight again, he pointed at the rickety boat.

  "Oh," Tim said. "I forgot about that."

  He was thinking that he made a very stupid gunslinger.

  Helmsman saw Tim onboard, then took his accustomed place beneath the pole where the decaying boar's head had been. The crew took theirs. The food and water were handed in; the little leather case with the compass (if that was what it was) Tim had stowed in the Widow's cotton sack. The four-shot went into his belt on his left hip, where it made a rough balance for the hand-ax on his right side.

  There was a good deal of hile-ing back and forth, then Tallman--who Tim believed was probably Headman, although Helmsman had done most of the communicating--approached. He stood on the bank and looked solemnly at Tim in the boat. He forked two fingers at his eyes: Attend me.

  "I see you very well." And he did, although his eyes were growing heavy. He couldn't remember when he had last slept. Not last night, certainly.

  Headman shook his head, made the forked-finger gesture again--with more emphasis this time--and deep in the recesses of Tim's mind (perhaps even in his soul, that tiny shining splinter of ka), he seemed to hear a whisper. For the first time it occurred to him that it might not be his words that these swampfolk understood.

  "Watch?"

  Headman nodded; the others muttered agreement. There was no laughter or merriment in their faces now; they looked sorrowful and strangely childlike.

  "Watch for what?"

  Headman got down on his hands and knees and began turning in rapid circles. This time instead of growls, he made a series of doglike yipping sounds. Every now and then he stopped and raised his head in the northerly direction the device had pointed out, flaring his green-crusted nostrils, as if scenting the air. At last he rose and looked at Tim questioningly.

  "All right," Tim said. He didn't know what Headman was trying to convey--or why all of them now looked so downcast--but he would remember. And he would know what Headman was trying so hard to show him, if he saw it. If he saw it, he might understand it.

  "Sai, do you hear my thoughts?"

  Headman nodded. They all nodded.

  "Then thee knows I am no gunslinger. I was but trying to spark my courage."

  Headman shook his head and smiled, as if this were of no account. He made the attend me gesture again, then clapped his arms around his sore-ridden torso and began an exaggerated shivering. The others--even the seated crewmembers on the boat--copied him. After a little of this, Headman fell over on the ground (which squelched under his weight). The others copied this, too. Tim stared at this litter of bodies, astonished. At last, Headman stood up. Looked into Tim's eyes. The look asked if Tim understood, and Tim was terribly afraid he did.

  "Are you saying--"

  He found he couldn't finish, at least not aloud. It was too terrible.

  (Are you saying you're all going to die)

  Slowly, while looking gravely into his eyes--yet smiling a little, just the same--Headman nodded. Then Tim proved conclusively that he was no gunslinger. He began to cry.

  Helmsman pushed off with a long stick. The oarsmen on the left side turned the boat, and when it had reached open water, Helmsman gestured with both hands for them to row. Tim sat in the back and opened the food hamper. He ate a little because his belly was still hungry, but only a little, because the rest of him now wasn't. When he offered to pass the basket around, the oarsmen grinned their thanks but declined. The water was smooth, the steady rhythm of the oars lulling, and Tim's eyes soon closed. He dreamed that his mother was shaking him and telling him it was morning, that if he stayed slugabed, he'd be too late to help his da' saddle the mollies.

  Is he alive, then? Tim asked, and the question was so absurd that Nell laughed.

  He was shaken awake, that much did happen, but not by his mother. It was Helmsman who was bending over him when he opened his eyes, the man smelling so powerfully of sweat and decaying vegetable matter that Tim had
to stifle a sneeze. Nor was it morning. Quite the opposite: the sun had crossed the sky and shone redly through stands of strange, gnarled trees that grew right out of the water. Those trees Tim could not have named, but he knew the ones growing on the slope beyond the place where the swamp boat had come to ground. They were ironwoods, and real giants. Deep drifts of orange and gold flowers grew around their bases. Tim thought his mother would swoon at their beauty, then remembered she would no longer be able to see them.

  They had come to the end of the Fagonard. Ahead were the true forest deeps.

  Helmsman helped Tim over the side of the boat, and two of the oarsmen handed out the basket of food and the waterskin. When his gunna was at Tim's feet--this time on ground that didn't ooze or quake--Helmsman motioned for Tim to open the Widow's cotton sack. When Tim did, Helmsman made a beeping sound that brought an appreciative chuckle from his crew.

  Tim took out the leather case that held the metal disc and tried to hand it over. Helmsman shook his head and pointed at Tim. The meaning was clear enough. Tim pulled the tab that opened the seam and took out the device. It was surprisingly heavy for something so thin, and eerily smooth.

  Mustn't drop it, he told himself. I'll come back this way and return it as I'd return any borrowed dish or tool, back in the village. Which is to say, as it was when it was given to me. If I do that, I'll find them alive and well.

  They were watching to see if he remembered how to use it. Tim pushed the button that brought up the short stick, then the one that made the beep and the red light. There was no laughter or hooting this time; now it was serious business, perhaps even a matter of life and death. Tim began to turn slowly, and when he was facing a rising lane in the trees--what might once have been a path--the red light changed to green and there was a second beep.

  "Still north," Tim said. "It shows the way even after sundown, does it? And if the trees are too thick to see Old Star and Old Mother?"

  Helmsman nodded, patted Tim on the shoulder . . . then bent and kissed him swiftly and gently on the cheek. He stepped back, looking alarmed at his own temerity.