Willow (5 page)

Squealing wickedly, Bets lunged to her feet and rooted him in the rear end as he struggled to get up.

Kiaya laughed. “Serves you right! You want our land so much, go ahead! Eat it up!”

Spluttering and gagging, Burglekutt heaved himself to his feet. “You’ll pay!” he croaked. “Mark my words!” And he lumbered off to the road.

“You shouldn’t be mean to him,” Willow said when he had gone.

“Oh, I can’t
help
it!” Kiaya stamped her foot again. “The man is such a
toad
!” She leaned over and patted Bets, who was grunting happily. “Good Bets! Good pig!”

Mims and Ranon appeared then at the top of the riverbank. They had managed to drag the little boat all the way up to the edge of the field. “Mama! Come see!”

“What’s that, Willow? What do they have?”

“A baby.”

“A what?”

“A baby, Kiaya. A girl. She came drifting down the river in that little boat, and it landed here. We’re going to send her on. We’re not going to keep her. Kiaya. Kiaya, did you hear what I . . .”

But she was already running across the field toward Ranon and Mims and the small object on the ground between them. Willow hurried after her. “Don’t fall in love with her! Nobody fall in love with her!”

But it was too late. Mims and Ranon were already laughing with the child, and when Kiaya saw her she clasped her hands and gasped. “Oh, poor thing,” she said, bending down and gathering the child to her breast. “Poor little thing! She’s cold and wet, Willow. And hungry, too. But look how
good
she is! Not crying at all!”

“Kiaya, please put her back. Do you know what’ll happen if Burglekutt finds out?”

“Oh poof! Burglekutt!”

“Well he
is
the Prefect. And you know what’s happened whenever Daikinis . . .”

“Babies don’t count.”

“Of course they count!”

“No they don’t! Babies don’t make wars. They don’t have enemies. Come on, children. We’ll feed her and give her a nice bath. Send the boat on, Willow. She won’t be needing it.”

“Come up soon, Dada.” Mims smiled. “You can help, too.”

Willow watched his family head toward the house, the children dancing beside their mother, jumping up to peek at the infant. He carried the little boat back down to the river’s edge and was about to launch it when he noticed a curious thing. None of the strips of cloth binding it together was tied. They looked as if they had been wrapped up in haste, and left loose. But they were not loose now. Willow tugged at one and found it stiff as iron. The same was true of all the other lashings; no knots, yet they could not be freed. Some power that Willow could not see had secured them there. Magic!

Willow glanced around. No one else was on the river or the bank. He rolled up his sleeves. He spit on his hands. If magic had fixed those strips of cloth in place, then magic
—his
magic—could loosen them. He closed his eyes. He spread his hands over the boat. He prepared the only spell he knew for the loosening of things—the spell that might be used to hasten a late spring, or to free a pig’s leg if it got jammed between large stones:
“Yawn tamath efforcut frume!”

It was a dangerous venture, sorcery! Sometimes, if charms didn’t work, they recoiled. Sometimes the reaction was like laying your hands on a hot stove, and sometimes like being struck by lightning. You never knew. Still, if you wanted to be good, you had to take the risk. You had to practice.

“Yawn tamath efforcut frume!”
Willow declared again.

No lightning, no explosion hurled him back against the bank. Had it worked? Cautiously, he opened one eye.

Yes! But not quite as he had intended. The cloth lashings were still firmly in place; it was not they that had been loosened, but the boat itself. The little craft was moving across the mudbank and through the weeds toward the middle of the river where the swift currents flowed.

Delighted not to have been struck by yet another failed charm, Willow laughed and followed it, running along the shore and then up the bank where he could see it better. Gracefully it swept along until it had reached the exact center of Ufgood Reach, the spot where Willow and his family would sometimes come to watch bluebirds play on summer evenings.

There, the boat vanished.

One instant it was sailing on; the next, gone. Perhaps, Willow thought, walking back to Bets, perhaps it had just sunk, sucked down in some freak vortex. Or perhaps his charm had worked belatedly and the bindings had loosened after all, allowing the little craft to fall into its parts—driftwood and reeds—parts too small to be noticed in the swirling currents.

Dumping Burglekutt into the mud seemed to have restored Bets’s good humor. For the rest of that morning the sow contentedly hauled the plow, often uttering explosive little strings of grunts, like laughter, and by noon Willow had plowed and seeded more than half the field. They took a break together, sitting in the shade of a chestnut tree, watching the flowing river. “A long way,” Willow said, nodding.

Bets turned an eye on him, and cocked a pink ear.

“She didn’t come just from the ford at the crossroads. She came from farther than that.” Willow nodded again. “Much farther.”

Bets grunted and turned back to gaze at the current.

“And you know what? I think she must have had a lot of help to make that trip. That’s what I think, Bets. This baby has
friends
.” Willow stared at the current, too, chewing reflectively on a sweet stalk of grass. The river coursed on, seaming and smoothing its surface in an ever-changing enigma.
Think what you like,
it seemed to say.
Then do what you must.

All afternoon Willow thought and worried. What
should
he do? The child certainly did not look evil, but he well knew that Evil had many faces. What if he and Kiaya and the children had been fooled by a disguise? What if they had taken in something that would destroy their little family? Destroy the village? Destroy, perhaps, even all of Nelwyn Valley? Willow shivered. He glanced anxiously at his small house sitting on its rise at the highest point of Ufgood Reach. Whenever his plowing took him close, he could hear laughter there, the laughter of his family and the wonderful, contagious laughter of the child given by the river.

No, no. It was impossible that she could be an instrument of Evil. No disguise could be
that
complete. But—Willow looked behind—what if she were the
target
of Evil? What if she were hunted? What if her pursuers raged into Nelwyn Valley, burning and killing and destroying? Willow shuddered. How awful to be so small, to be so torn by fears and premonitions! How awful to know deep down that you were a sorcerer, yet to be powerless to ward off Evil! Still—Willow smiled—he had loosed the boat with his spell.
He
had done that.

Late that afternoon, when Willow and Bets had finished their plowing and come in from the fields, Willow found his little house full of color and happiness, as usual. No matter how tired he was, or how worried, his heart always lifted as he reached the porch and raised the door latch. Some of the color in the house came from costumes and props—part of his magician’s paraphernalia. Part of it came from Kiaya’s bright rugs and beaded tapestries, but most of it radiated from the wonderful paintings that Mims and Ranon made each day. They gathered and ground their own dyes, smoothed their own wooden panels with river sand, trimmed their own little brushes from dried stalks and, talking quietly as they worked, painted vivid depictions of imaginary worlds and monsters, sometimes funny, sometimes frightening. Sometimes it seemed to Willow that they were peopling another world. Once, when he interrupted her to ask what she was doing, Mims had laughed and answered, “We’re doing
our
magic, Dada.”

“But what’s that?” Willow had asked, indicating a sinuous, two-headed creature near the top of her painting.

“Mmmm . . . a dragon! An Eborsisk dragon!”

“Good heavens! What’s it doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Not for me, I hope!”

The little girl reached for Willow’s hand. “Oh, Dada, I hope not too!”

Every day there were new paintings, new creatures. Every day as he came up the path, Willow would pretend not to see Mims’ small face in the kitchen window or to hear her shouting, “Here he comes!” But he never had to pretend when he opened the door. Always, his surprise and delight were real.

So it was that afternoon. “Surprise! Surprise!” they shouted as the door swung back.

His family had given their whole day to the child. Ranon had fashioned a cradle for her, and Mims had decorated it with strings of beads. Kiaya had knitted a little woolen blanket to lay inside. They had all gathered flowers from the woods and fields and spread them around the child, like tributes. Mims and Kiaya even wore some in their hair.

All of them, even the child in her new cradle, spread their arms wide in greeting. She had been bathed in the stone tub and fed. She had had a good sleep. Now she was wide awake and laughing.

Willow laughed, too, despite his fatigue and worry. She was so beautiful! And his family were so much in love with her already. He bent over and picked her up. “Well, little lady, it looks as if you’ve made yourself at home.”

The child gurgled and reached up for his nose, and Willow saw the Sign inside her elbow. He held her gently, peering close. “Kiaya . . .”

“Shh.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Go get washed,” she said to Mims and Ranon. “Supper in a few minutes.”

“Kiaya,” Willow said when they were alone, “what
is
this?”

“A birthmark.”

“But, have
you
ever seen such a birthmark?”

She shook her head.

“So
strange
. . . Look, it’s as if it were painted with a tiny brush—a fairy brush!”

Kiaya nodded again. She was still holding her husband’s arm, and she was biting her lower lip. “I know. And Willow, there’s something else. It’s her eyes. Look at her eyes, Willow. Look close.”

Willow did. They were not the eyes of an ordinary infant. This child’s eyes were like deep, still pools of time. As he gazed into them, Willow felt that he had begun a long journey, a long, spiraling journey that would end where he began and yet not where he began. “No, please!” he said. “Not me!”

The child laughed.

“You see? Willow, what should we do? Should we take her to the Village Council?”

“Uh-unh.” Willow glanced fearfully at his wife. “No!”

“But Willow, she’s not
ordinary
! You can see that.”

“That’s just it, Kiaya! You know what the Council will think if we take her to them. They’ll see right away that she’s a Daikini, and they’ll take one look at that mark on her arm, and they’ll think that she’s a bad omen, or part of a charm or something. You know how they are, Kiaya. The first sign of a flood or a drought in the valley and they’ll blame me for it. Somebody’ll say, ‘Ufgood did it! Ufgood brought around that Daikini child, that strange one!’ And Burglekutt’ll say, ‘Yaaaz, that’s right, and he’s a sloppy farmer, too! Let’s
get
him!’ And that’ll be the end of the farm.”

“Oh Willow, you fret too much. Calm down. The High Aldwin would never let . . .”

“The High Aldwin! Exactly! Another good reason for not saying anything. Tomorrow the High Aldwin’s going to choose me as his apprentice!”

Kiaya sighed and shook her head. “Don’t get your hopes up about that. The High Aldwin hasn’t chosen an apprentice for six years. And besides . . .”

“Besides what?”

“Well, your magic’s still a little, hmm, off.”

“Off!
My magic? Why, do you know what I did this morning down the river? I cast a spell that . . .”

The child cried out sharply, and what Willow was about to say vanished as abruptly as the little boat had vanished into the river. At the same moment, Mims and Ranon came running back.

“Oh Dada,” Mims said, “she likes you, doesn’t she? She likes you very much.”

And indeed the child was gurgling joyfully, gripping Willow’s collar.

“She looks as if she’s going to lift you right up!”

“We’re not going to let her go, are we, Father?” Ranon asked.

Willow worked the small hand free. “Looks more as if she’s not going to let
us
go!”

“May we take her with us to the fair tomorrow?”

“Certainly not! There’ll be crowds. Animals. Besides, it’s going to be hot. Quite hot.”

“But what will we do? We all want to go. Who’ll stay and look after her if we don’t take her?”

“I will,” Kiaya said, setting supper on the table.

“But Mother, the prize for bread! The prize for weaving!”

“They can wait another year. Come for supper, now.”

“But Mother . . .”

“I’ve decided, Ranon. We won’t talk about it anymore. Come now. Your supper’s getting cold.”

Willow laid the child in the cradle and wrapped around her the beautiful newly knitted blanket. She was looking intently at him, and again Willow was drawn into her gaze. Again he felt himself beginning a long and fearful journey. He stepped back and held up both hands, palms out, and again the child laughed.

She kept gurgling as the Ufgoods ate their supper, until at last she fell asleep.

“Doesn’t she cry?” Willow asked. “Most babies cry.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know how,” Ranon suggested.

Mims shrugged, finishing her cake. “Oh,” she said, “she knows how. She just won’t do it.”

Kiaya smiled. “Why not, Mims?”

“Because she doesn’t need to right now. And besides, it would only be for herself.”

Kiaya and Willow looked at each other. They looked at the sleeping child. They looked long and thoughtfully at their own small daughter.

A light rain began to fall and continued all night, conspiring softly with the river at Ufgood Reach, germinating Willow Ugfood’s freshly sown fields, whispering promises into the thatched roof of the little home.

I I I
NELWYN FAIR