“What happened to Nicholas?” the innkeeper asked, dunking a rag in the water basin and laying it across the unconscious boy’s head.
“He was attacked by Mr. Whiting’s dogs,” Char said, panting as he sat down on the hearth.
“Whiting’s dogs? Where was he?” Trudy asked.
“On his way home, almost at the crossroads,” Ven said. “He’s been out for quite a while—we couldn’t get him to wake up.”
“Nor can I, it seems,” said Mrs. Snodgrass. “We’re going to need Clemency—she’s trained in the healing arts. And perhaps you, McLean.” The Singer nodded.
“I’ll get Clem,” Ven volunteered, starting for the back door.
“No—don’t go alone,” Mrs. Snodgrass said quickly.
“I’ll be all right,” Ven said. I hope, he added silently. “I’ll be right back.”
He ran out the back door of the kitchen into the rain, which had begun to pelt like angry pebbles from the sky. When he reached the door of Mouse Lodge, he banged as hard as he could, then put his hands over his head to try to dodge the water coming off the roof.
“Clem! It’s me, Ven!” he shouted.
He saw a light appear in the window as a lantern was unhooded. The door opened a moment later.
“Ven, what are you doing here?” the curate-in-training asked sleepily.
“No time to explain—Nick is hurt,” Ven said, dragging her out the door. “Come on!”
They ran back across the wet field, dodging raindrops, without stopping even to catch a breath until they were back in Mrs. Snodgrass’s warm kitchen, with the door closed and bolted securely behind them.
McLean was singing a healing song when they came into the main lobby of the inn. While Clem set about tending to Nicholas, Ven came over to where Char was explaining about the dogs to Mrs. Snodgrass. Her face was glowing red as her hair with anger and Ven could have sworn he saw steam coming out her ears.
“I’m going to the White Fern right now and haul Maurice Whiting out of his very comfortable bed,” she said furiously, stomping over to where her cloak hung on a peg by the door. “When I’m finished chewing on him, he’ll know how Nicholas felt. And then some.”
“Uh—you can’t go out there now,” said Char.
“And why not?” Mrs. Snodgrass demanded.
“Mama,” Nicholas whispered in front of the fire in his sleep.
Mrs. Snodgrass stopped, her hand frozen in midair. “Oh, the poor thing,” she said, her anger disappearing as she left the cloak hanging there and hurried over to the fire where Clemency was chanting words of comfort over the injured boy. “He must have been so frightened. Poor little blighter.”
Ven turned around slowly and looked at Char, whose eyes were wide as his own.
Nicholas had called out in Gregory’s voice.
“Have to hand it to the ghost—he found a way to keep her from going out when it’s dangerous without letting Mrs. Snodgrass know he is there,” said Ven quietly.
“Just lookin’ out for his mother again, I suppose,” Char said when he could speak.
“Char, could you come help us get him into a room?” Clem called from in front of the hearth. The Spice Folk had apparently gathered around Nicholas and lifted him up as a group; he hovered in the air about three feet off the ground, a multitude of tiny hand-holds dimpling the edges of his clothes.
Char nodded hesitantly, then turned to Ven. “Spice Folk,” he said tartly. “You know how I love the Spice Folk.”
The orange cat that had been sitting on the hearth rose and stretched.
“I’ll go with you,” Murphy said.
“They won’t bother you while Clem’s there,” Ven said. He watched as Char took hold of Nicholas’s sagging head, and he, Mrs. Snodgrass, Clem, and the cat went off into the deeper parts of the inn. Then Ven went over to the hearth.
“Your song made my headache go away,” he said to McLean, who was tuning his instrument. “What was it?
“His name,” McLean said over the twanging of the strings. “There’s no more powerful magic to a person that his own true name. It is a pattern of musical vibrations and tones that makes him what he is—and if he is injured or damaged, singing his name can make him back to the way he is supposed to be sometimes. True names are the key to the science of Singing.”
“That’s amazing,” Ven said. Nicholas had looked better, almost as if he were only asleep. “You not only fixed his wounds with that song, but you made my head feel better as well.”
The Singer did not look at him, but smiled slightly as he continued with his task. “Glad to hear it. Tell me the story of your night.”
So Ven told McLean about the chase of the demon wolves that turned out to be Mr. Whiting’s dogs painted with the same whitewash that gave his inn its white sheen, about hiding in the family cemetery and meeting with the spirit of Gregory Snodgrass, and their terrifying escape through the sea of clutching skeletal hands that sought to hold them captive for whatever was following them.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he said when he finished the tale. “I’d like to believe that I can help, that before I return home I can make things right here. But this is beyond my abilities. Whatever is out there is far more powerful than anyone realizes, I think. And even being a reporter for the king, with all the troops and all the support he might be willing to offer, still isn’t enough to put a stop to what is happening at the crossroads. People will continue to die or disappear, Mrs. Snodgrass will continue to wither away, the captain will sail the sea forever alone, and I can’t do anything about it.”
“’Tis a complicated riddle, that’s for certain,” said McLean. “I don’t blame you for thinking it’s too much for you—but maybe you are overwhelmed by the large number of pieces to it. If you can solve one part, perhaps the rest will fall into place. You might want to sleep on it and look at it again in the morning.”
Ven smiled in spite of his weariness.
“You sound just like the king,” he said. “‘The second rule of good puzzling: Look at the details and the whole picture separately, you will see two different things.’”
“He’s right,” said McLean. He smiled again as Ven rose and turned to go. “Good night, Ven. You were very brave tonight, bless your beard.”
Ven froze where he stood.
“McLean,” he said, “I don’t have a beard.”
25
The Singer’s Secret
FOR A MOMENT THE STORYSINGER FROZE, TOO. THEN HE SMILED slightly.
“A common Nain expression,” he said casually. “I’m sure you’re familiar with it.”
“Yes,” said Ven, walking closer. “Very familiar. And anyone who knows of the expression also knows that it is reserved for older Nain men, those who already have at least a Bramble, and possibly a full Thicket. It’s never said to a hairless chin—that’s considered an insult.”
A quiet chorus of agitated whispers rose from the floor, all but drowned in the crackle of the fire. McLean made a calming gesture at the ground, then turned to Ven and looked at him for the first time that evening. Ven saw a milky sparkle flit through his dark eyes as he turned.
“Sorry, Ven,” he said regretfully. “Didn’t mean it as an insult, to be certain. It was just ignorance. I apologize.”
Ven came slowly over to the blazing hearth and sat down on the chair in front of McLean.
“I think I know your secret, McLean,” he said excitedly.
The Singer smiled and looked back at the floor.
“You’re blind, aren’t you?”
For a moment the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire.
Finally the Singer chuckled. “Well, I prefer ‘sightless.’ ‘Blind’ has a lot of different meanings, and I don’t think all of them apply, but yes, Ven, my eyes do not work, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s why you said you understood what the king wanted, and needed—someone to be his eyes.” Ven glanced around the floor at McLean’s feet, where all
the whispering and fluttering had stilled into silence. “The Spice Folk—they’re your eyes. Aren’t they?”
The Singer ran his fingers over the strings of his instrument. “I have lots of eyes, Ven,” he said as the random music began to form a tune that sounded like the wind. “The Spice Folk do indeed tell me almost all of what goes on in the inn—but they apparently didn’t realize your lack of beard was worth mentioning.” He made a joking angry face at the floor around his feet, and Ven heard shivering and gasping followed by soft laughter.
“Who and what else are your eyes?” he asked.
“Murphy sometimes, and Mrs.
Snodgrass. But most of the time it’s the music that lets me see.”
“How?”
McLean changed the tune and picked out a new melody softly, a song that made Ven think of summer grass and wide open fields.
“All of life is at its very core made up of vibrations, Ven, waves of sound that most people hear or light that they see, or so I’m told. But if you don’t have eyes to behold that light, and the colors it carries, you can use a different sense to see. I feel the vibrations on my skin, and hear the sounds they make. It’s my way of seeing. It can be yours, too, at least for a moment.”
* * *
Then the tune he was playing changed again, and suddenly in my mind I could see standing around him on the hearth several dozen tiny glowing shapes, some as small as my little finger, the largest ones the size of my hand. They were silver and shimmering, with fluttering wings, and they moved with such grace that they appeared to be floating on the air, the way the wind carries a leaf it is playing with.
He introduced them to me then, one by one—Prilla, Puffball, Rosemary, Fern. As he spoke each of their names, I could see them solidly for a second. Each was as different from the other as the members of Hare Warren or Mouse Lodge were, with hair that was sometimes gold, sometimes brown, or even light gray or lavender. They came in all different shapes, and wore clothing made of blossoms and wood bark. Two mischievous boys, Dill and Fennel, appeared together, whispering evilly to each other; I saw them giggle madly before they faded from sight again. The smallest of the Spice Folk he introduced as Flax, a baby barely big enough to sit up, with hair as soft and silky as the seeds Mrs. Snodgrass had given me. The largest one, the clear leader, was Dandelion, a confident girl fairy with a head of yellow hair and freckles, who shooed the others away from McLean and broke up fights between Dill and Fennel.
Then the music stopped, and the pictures in my mind went away.
* * *
“There is much about the world that is unseen to the eye, Ven,” McLean said as the song came to an end, and the Spice Folk faded into invisibility again. “That doesn’t mean it’s not as present as you or I. Remember that.”
Gloom returned in Ven’s mind as he thought about Gregory and what was stalking the crossroads. “Oh, believe me, I know,” he said. “It’s my greatest problem at the moment. Whatever evil is buried at the crossroads cannot be seen in the light, and I don’t want to be there in the dark with it again. I can’t see it. So I can’t find it. If I can’t find it, how can I do anything about it?”
McLean sighed, then smiled his slight smile.
“The Spice Folk act as my eyes,” he said, stretching his arms and moving his hand to work out a finger cramp. “Perhaps you could let them act as yours.” He returned to his song. “But after all, this isn’t really your problem, now, is it? You can always go home.”
“I’m not certain whether I have a home anymore,” Ven said.
“Home is where you decide to stay,” said McLean. “Where you decide to fight for what matters to you. A man can have many homes, but he has to be willing to stand up and call them his own. Then he is never again uncertain whether he has one or not.”
Ven nodded. “May I ask you one thing more?” The Singer nodded. “When you said that Oliver had made good use of me, did you mean to call the Floating Island?”
“Yes,” said McLean. “Finding a Nain in the sea, one that can climb a mast into the wind, has got to be a once-in-a-lifetime, miraculous thing—sort of like you finding your albatross feather on the Floating Island. To not make use of that to do something good would be a terrible waste, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Ven said. “But it doesn’t feel good to be used.”
“Perhaps not. But there is a difference between being ill-used, and being used for a good purpose. Oliver Snodgrass didn’t just use you to call the island for his own purposes; he took you there so that you could send a message home, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Ven said, feeling better.
“And he showed you one of the wonders of the world in the process.” McLean sighed. “How I wish I could go there one day. For a Singer who listens to the wind, there could be no more miraculous place, I imagine.”
“I could call it for you!” Ven said excitedly. “Now that we know how, one day we can go out together aboard the Serelinda, and I can climb the mast and call the island so you can go there. You would love it, McLean.”
“No doubt,” said the Singer, “but I don’t know if that would be right. Just because one can do something doesn’t mean one should. Something that powerful should only be sought out in a matter of life and death, which is why the captain did it. We will see. If I’m meant to visit the island, then perhaps it will come on its own one day.”
Clemency appeared in the hallway. “Ven—Nicholas is awake. Mrs. Snodgrass has made up a bed for you and Char in the room where we took him so you can both get some sleep.”
Ven nodded and rose from the chair in front of the hearth.
“Thank you, McLean,” he said. “I will think about what you said.”
“Good night,” said the Singer. He went back to plucking a tune, and Ven thought he could see the flames of the hearth fire dancing along in time to the melody. Ven watched for a few moments, then made his way down the hall to find the room where Nicholas was.
He walked down a dark hallway with walls of polished wood to the only open door. Light spilled into the hall from inside the room.
At first when he stepped through the doorway, Ven thought he had mistakenly walked outside the inn. The room was filled with the light of soft candles and an oil lantern. There was a bed and a nightstand, and a chair in which Mrs. Snodgrass sat. Nicholas lay back against the pillows, a large bandage on his head. He smiled as Ven looked around the room in amazement.
“Some room, eh, Polypheme?”
Ven could only nod. Four slender trees grew up through the floor to form the bedposts, their branches twisted together into a leafy canopy over the mattress. The floor was a carpet of thick grass, and night-blooming flowers dotted it, their colors glowing softly in the candlelight.
Behind the nightstand a little spring flowed in a waterfall over gray rocks. Clemency was filling a pitcher from the spring to refill the water basin next to the bed. And the chair in which Mrs. Snodgrass sat was a wide flowering bush with a cushion on it.
Mrs. Snodgrass saw his amazement and chuckled. “I often have Lirin guests,” she said. “This is one of the rooms in which they are more comfortable.”
“I can imagine,” said Ven. “Glad you’re better, Nick.”
“Thanks for pulling me out of there,” said Nicholas. “Thought I was a goner.”
Mrs. Snodgrass rose tiredly. She pointed to the three sets of bedding and pillows on the floor.
“You children should stay in here tonight,” she said in a weary voice. “It’s not safe for you to go back to the Lodge and the Warren in the dark. Those killer dogs might still be running loose.”
“We’ll watch Nicholas,” Clemency promised. “Get some sleep, Mrs. Snodgrass. I’ll call you if there is any change.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Snodgrass. She bent and brushed a quick kiss on Nicholas’s head, then left the room, her skirts rustling quietly.
As soon as the door was closed, Clemency turned to Ven and Char.
“Al
l right,” she said severely, “what really happened out there?”
The boys related the tale from the beginning, how Cadwalder had left for work early and locked the door, hearing Nicholas screaming at the crossroads, Whiting’s dogs, the spirit in the cemetery, the warning it gave them, and their escape through the clutching hands that had risen from the ground. Clemency shivered when they were done.
“There is even greater evil here than I imagined,” she said, her eyes gleaming with fear. “I don’t know how to keep anyone safe so close to such a thing.”
“Well, you have more ability than you know,” Ven said. “That blessing you said at the crossroads worked a little, even coming from me.”
“That’s a blessing of peace we use when we are tending to cemeteries and monuments, old battlefields and the like,” Clemency said. “It’s meant to bring forgiveness and rest. It won’t work in a place where the evil is active, and angry. Whatever is out walking the night can’t be contained with a blessing like that.”
“Maybe not,” Char said. “But we gotta find some way to beat it back.”
“If you can find it,” said Nicholas weakly. “I’ve run the crossroads a million times, and I’ve never seen any sign that something has been buried there. It must have been so long ago that the ground has flattened out completely. You can’t dig up a whole roadway.”
“Ven can,” said Clemency. “He’s Nain—they’re natural diggers.”
“I’ve never dug a day in my life,” said Ven.
“Well, it should come naturally,” insisted Clemency.
“We’ll go out and have a look in the morning,” said Char. “Maybe there’ll be some clues in the daylight we could never find at night.”
Clemency stretched out on the floor and pulled the blanket over her.