The Bone Flute (14 page)

“So how did
you
get here?”

“I go where I please.”

Miranda slouched back toward the hollow. When they came out from under the trees they found that changed too. It was a grassy bowl as big across as a football field. A single tall tree grew in the center.

Only when they came closer to the tree did they see how tall it was. Camrose looked up and up to where the trunk vanished into a stirring dimness.

“Keeper!” Miranda hissed. “Look what came through the hole you made.”

Camrose turned. Diarmid walked toward them across the grass from the direction of vanished Grant Street. He stopped three strides away and held out his right hand, palm up.

Camrose backed away a step.

“Come, now. You must choose.”

“I'm thinking about it.” She took another step back. Her mind darted after ideas like a squirrel after nuts and found none.

“But you know I'm the one. You know how I loved Rhianna.”

“I don't know any such thing.”

“Well spoken!” came a laughing voice. Terence strolled down the slope from the opposite side of the hollow. His dark clothes twinkled with silver. A black velvet cloak was wrapped around his shoulders and pinned with a golden disc the size of his hand. Behind him limped a tall red hound.

Camrose backed off again and came up against the tree trunk. Mark moved so they were shoulder to shoulder. Something scuttled up the other side and into the branches, and when Camrose looked around, Miranda was gone.

“Gone while the going's good,” she muttered.

But there was no time for bitter thoughts about Miranda. Terence had stopped about three yards away, with the same distance between him and Diarmid.

“Well spoken,” Terence said again. “You've made the right choice, Keeper.”

“If you mean you, you can forget it.”

His smile showed teeth. “It has to be one or the other, Sweetness.”

“Child,” Diarmid murmured, “think!” He took a step forward, held out a hand. “Think of the fate he's promised me.”

“And that promise I'll keep!” Terence snatched the gold pin from his cloak and threw it to the ground, where it bounced and sent up sparks. He whirled the cloak from his shoulder.

A sudden wind tore at Camrose's hair. Diarmid staggered as if hit by a fist. The sunlight dimmed.

Diarmid straightened up. He didn't hit back at Terence. He didn't even look at him. Just lifted his head and began to sing.

Terence laughed. “Lamenting your doom already, bard?”

Diarmid sang in a language Camrose didn't know, with a lot of liquid sounds mixed up with exhalings from deep in the throat. It didn't sound like a lament. More like a threat. It sent shivers up her spine.

The tree swayed.

Terence glanced up, then smiled. “Give it up! You've left your pipes behind. Besides, this is my country. You can work no spells here.”

Diarmid stopped singing. “We're not over the border yet,”

he said. “And I need no pipes.”

The whispering in the branches hadn't stopped. It deepened and spread through the tree and became a wailing on many notes, each chord like the scrape of five fingernails on a chalk–board.

“It's the tree.” Mark winced. “He's turned it into a kind of giant harp.”

Camrose gritted her teeth against the sound. “He's fighting Terence with music— if you can call that music.”

He seemed to be winning too. Terence was kneeling with his hands over his ears. Any minute now he'll break and run, Camrose thought. And then we'll just have Diarmid to deal with.

But Terence didn't break. He lurched to his feet, grabbed his cloak from the ground and whirled it again. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed and the sky went black. A storm wind screamed through the hollow, driving rain sideways into their faces.

Mark grabbed Camrose by the hand. “Next chance we get, run!” he yelled.

Diarmid was singing again. The harping of the tree topped the shriek of the storm. Terence screamed something, and sparks exploded from the tree a few yards over their heads. Smoking leaves and twigs showered down.

Camrose pulled the flute out from under her T-shirt, the better to run. She pulled at Mark's hand. “Now!” They slid around the tree and took three steps away from the battle.

Lightning struck a pine tree at the edge of the hollow. It exploded, and what was left of it burned like a torch. In the sputtering yellow light they saw the red hound limping toward them. Its eyes were fixed on Camrose. She froze.

This was a better view of the beast than she really wanted. Its jaws were wide enough to make one bite of her head. Long yellow eye-teeth curved over its lower lip. Its eyes … No, don't look at its eyes! She remembered hearing that somewhere.

“Okay.” Mark's voice in her ear was unnaturally calm. “Here's what we'll do. I can run faster than you, so I'll get it to chase me, and—”

“No! That won't work. If only we had something to distract it. Something we could throw.” She looked around wildly. The hound limped nearer. “A piece of meat, or a b—”

She stopped and looked at the bone flute. Mark looked at it. Around them, inside the shriek of the storm and the harping tree and the burning and the smoke, a shell of stillness formed.

Then Mark began, “It's not fair—” and right over him Camrose said, “How come those two have the right … ?”

They stopped again. “You first,” Camrose said.

“It's not fair they should claim the flute. I mean, where did it come from in the first place?”

“Just what I was thinking.”

The hound stood two yards away, silent, watching. Camrose made herself look into its eyes. In the fiery light they should have been blazing red, but they weren't. They were green.

Green as the sea, Camrose thought, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

21
The Wyrde

C
amrose took a step forward and held out the flute. “I think this belongs to you.” She tossed it.

The hound leaped and caught the flute in its teeth. Th en it fell to the ground, writhing. At the same moment the rain and wind stopped short. The crackling of the burning tree was the only sound. The wet grass steamed.

In the growing light where the hound had fallen a girl stum-bled to her feet. Hair of the true red-gold
,
Camrose remem-bered. Eyes like the sea. Fairest maid in all the west country.

She wore a torn, dirty, red gown. The left sleeve was empty. In her right hand she held the flute. Red hair with gold sparks in it fell in tangles to her waist. She looked about fourteen.

“It was you all along!” Camrose hit her forehead with both hands. “Why didn't I see it?”

“You did, at last. I owe you a debt, Keeper.” Rhianna looked at Mark, who just then remembered to close his mouth. “And you.”

She looked past them, past the tree. Diarmid and Terence were running toward them. But before they could cross half the distance, a sound rolled over the hollow that was like the ocean breaking on a stony shore. Terence and Diarmid froze in mid-step.

On the slope of the hollow, half-hidden in drifting vapor, stood three figures robed in black. “It is done,” boomed a voice like three voices woven together. “The Keeper has chosen. The flute is restored to its rightful owner.”

Rhianna started. Mark poked Camrose in the side, but she'd already seen. Rhianna's left sleeve was no longer empty.

The triple voice boomed again: “Diarmid the bard, hear your doom.”

“Wait!” Diarmid started forward. “What about Rhianna?”

“What about her?” asked one of the black-robed figures.

“She's my promised wife—”

“Liar!” Terence snarled. “She's mine!”

“Sisters, what do you say?”

“I say let the girl choose,” snapped the second figure. “It would be the first time in her life she's had the chance to decide anything for herself.”

“I agree,” said the third in a voice that made the hair stand up on Camrose's neck. “Look at them, girl, and choose.”

Rhianna folded her hands together at her waist and studied first Diarmid, then Terence. Then she slowly shook her head.

“That's that, then,” said the second sister briskly.

“But I—”

“Diarmid,” the first broke in, “you've learned no common sense over the years. But even you have earned something.”

“Ask what you would,” said the second. “But think well before you condemn yourself out of your own mouth.”

He looked angrily at Rhianna, opened his mouth, then closed it. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed. “I'm so tired. All I really want is to rest.”

“Done.”

Camrose blinked. Diarmid was gone.

“Gwyn, son of Nuadu,” said the second sister, “you've over–stayed your time in the living lands.”

“But—Rhianna?” He reached out a hand. When she looked away, his eyes narrowed. “This is a cheat. The hound was mine!”

The first sister laughed. “Nonsense! This hound was never yours.”

“And you hadn't the eyes to see, not in all these years.”

“Go!”

He vanished, but unlike Diarmid he faded slowly, until only his eyes glimmered in the air. They moved from Camrose to Mark and back again. “Keeper,” said the invisible mouth, “I won't forget. I claim vengeance.” Then he was gone.

Camrose went cold. It took a minute before she realized everything wasn't over. The Wyrde were talking to Rhianna.

“What would you have?” asked the first sister. “What would you do, now that you're free to choose?”

Rhianna took a breath, looked up and said, “I would choose to start over. If it can be managed.”

The three exchanged glances.

“You see, I haven't lived. Not truly. I was only a child when they told me I was to marry Diarmid. And all the years since Gwyn—since the hound—seem a bad dream.” She looked down at her torn dress and her whole left arm.

The Wyrde exchanged looks again. “You cannot go back,”

said the second sister.

“Then, let me go forward!”

“Have you the courage?” asked the first.

She knotted her hands together. “I have.”

“Done,” said all three together.

Sunlight slanted into the hollow. It broke across Rhianna, turned her red hair to a fiery cloud, her body to a golden shim–mer. Camrose closed her eyes against the brightness, and when she looked again Rhianna too was gone.

Camrose and Mark were left alone with three dark shapes that never grew any less misty, though the sunlight grew brighter. Camrose wished she knew what to say.

Mark cleared his throat. “Um, Miranda … Is she free now?”

“Wherever she is,” Camrose began. Then stepped back as a small, gray-brown shape dropped from the tree to the grass beside her. It rolled over, expanding as it rolled. When it unfolded itself and rose from the grass, it was a ragged young woman with a brown triangular face.

“It's over! I'm free!” She danced on the spot in a whirl of tatters. Camrose expected her to vanish like the others, but instead she stopped dancing and stood biting her nails.

“Well, where would you go?” demanded the second sister.

“Don't know. I've grown used to the Keepers over the years.” Miranda darted a glance at Camrose. “Attached, even. Silly crea–tures though they are. I think I'll stay in their world a while.”

“So long as you do no harm,” said the first sister. “That part of the oath still holds.”

“Oh, yes! I'll be good, Great Ones. I promise!” Miranda swept a bow that grazed the grass, winked at Camrose from under her thicket of hair, leaped into the tree and vanished among the twinkling silver leaves.

“And now you, Keeper.” That was the one with the icy voice.

Camrose still couldn't see them clearly, but she knew all their eyes were on her. She shivered.

“Keeper, what would you, now that your burden is laid down?” asked the first sister gently.

Camrose looked at Mark for ideas, but he only shrugged.

“I guess I just want things to be the way they were before. Normal.”

“Did you not hear?” said the second sister.

“You cannot go back,” said the third in her deep voice.

“But then how are we going to get home?”

“Find your own way,” said all three at once.

“But—”

“You were the Keeper. The world will never be the same for you again.” The woven voices boomed through the hollow.

“You will see truths and find paths hidden to others. And sometimes the sight will be a joy to you and sometimes a grief. That is your gift.”

They turned and walked away. In two steps they faded from misty gray to silver. On the third step they were gone.

Camrose stared after them. Then all around the hollow. “Is it really over?” she said. “I can't believe it!”