Zypheria's Call (A Tanyth Fairport Adventure)

BOOK: Zypheria's Call (A Tanyth Fairport Adventure)
3.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

This book and any parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any manner except as authorized in writing by the author.

All characters, places, and events in this work are fiction or fictionalized. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

For more information, or to leave a comment about this book, please visit us at:
http://www.lammaswood.com

Copyright © 2011 Nathan Lowell, Greeley, CO

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
Fourth printing: August, 2013

For June Gray
who first showed me that the world of arts existed
and that even a kid from the sticks could appreciate it.

 

Table of Contents

Chapter One:
Dirty Deeds

Tanyth woke with the pale morning light shining around the cracks in her door. Outside the sounds of oxen, carts, and the men who used them drowned out the sounds of morning birds. She growled in the back of her throat. They hadn’t considered that building an inn for the village would mean an end to quiet mornings. She sighed and flung the covers back.

The sudden chill struck her and forced her to scurry to the hearth where the banked coals still offered a bit of warmth. The equinox might have been right around the corner but nights were still cold and she wanted her morning tea. Her footfalls on the woven mats should have warned her. The scritch-scratch of talons on the floor should have prepared her for the black wings that waved to fan the flames, wafting light gray ash from the stones and into the air, into her mouth, coating her throat until she coughed with a hoarse
caw-caw.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to force herself awake. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. She’d wake and all would be well. The horny beak that made her lips would be gone, the wings would be hands again.

She turned back to her cot. Perhaps if she got back into bed, it would end.

A man-sized shape, his gray hair sticking out of the covers, stirred in her bed. Frank mustn’t see her like this. He couldn’t. If he saw her, it might be real.

Frank Crane rolled over and blinked at her several times before smiling.

“G’mornin’. You’re up early,” he said. “Sleep well?”

Unable to catch her breath, Tanyth struggled to make sense of her surroundings. The fine ash had settled on her glossy black wings, mottling them and dulling the sheen. Behind her the warming fire felt too warm, too hot. She peered over her shoulder—her black-feathered shoulder—to see the tip of a long tail feather nearly brushing the coals.

Her scream was a raucous caw.

Frank pushed himself up, alarm on his face, “Tanyth? What is it? Tanyth? What’s the matter?”

Something shoved her, shook her. A hand on her shoulder where nobody stood and suddenly she was in her bed looking up at Frank’s terrified eyes.

“Tanyth? Talk to me, old woman. What is it?” he said.

Tanyth sucked in a breath, feeling the cold air burning through her raw throat.

“Were you dreaming?” he asked.

Tanyth struggled to get her arms free of the tangled covers and Frank shifted his weight to let her bring her fingers up in front of her face—tanned and wrinkled though they might be—they were her fingers.

“Yeah,” she said, testing the word, afraid of the sound that might come from her throat. “Yeah, it was the dream.” She looked up into his face searching for something, but she didn’t know what. “You were there. You saw me.”

He hugged her then, wrapping strong arms around her and holding her close and warm against him. “It was just a dream, Tanyth,” he murmured.

“Why am I havin’ it, Frank?”

“You’re not goin’ mad,” he said, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “If I’d been through what you’ve been through in the last half year, I’d be havin’ nightmares, too.”

She felt like she wanted to cry but the sobs wouldn’t come.

“Besides,” he said, a lilt in his voice. “Every woman I ever met that was goin’ through the change thought she was goin’ mad. Between the mood swings and hot flashes, every one of ’em was ready to bark at the moon at some point. I figger you’re just following in the tradition.”

She let him hold her, taking comfort in his strength, in his warmth. She heard the calls of the drovers with their ox carts outside in the inn’s yard. She knew he had no better answers than she did and all her answers pointed north, pointed to Gertie Pinecrest.

Golden morning light filtered through the treetops, slashing the yard with bands of sun and shade. Tanyth Fairport shrugged her winter coat closer to her body even as golden rays offered the promise of summer. The back of winter may have been broken, but its cold fingers still dug into her old bones. She leaned back against the rough planks of her cottage and lifted her mug of tea to sip, savoring its minty bite as she watched man and beast struggling to sort themselves into order in the sea of mud that used to be the inn’s dooryard.

Frank came out of the inn, down the log steps, and picked his way around the soggy circus. He joined her on the marginally higher ground. “I didn’t think about that when we were plannin’,” he said, nodding at the tangle of man, animal, and cart.

“The mud, you mean?”

He gave a half shrug. “Well, the mud, no. Not that either. We’ll have to get some gravel to fill in there.” He grimaced and rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I was thinkin’ about the number of people.”

“What? You didn’t think people would stop?”

“Not that so much. I thought it would start out kinda slow, ya know?” He looked at her, a rueful smile curving his lips. “A few here, a couple there. It’d give us a chance to get things settled.”

Tanyth chuckled at his expression but nodded her understanding. “It’s been pretty steady since they opened the doors. We prob’ly shoulda figured that would happen.”

“The timing is just about perfect, I guess.” Frank squinted his eyes in thought. “Three days from Mossport to the north and three more down to Fernsvale to the south. I just never figured that there’d be so much traffic willin’ to spend the night on the way.”

“After two or three days on the road, you don’t think folks would be lookin’ for a night with a warm fire and somebody else’s cookin’?” She shot him a pointed glance out of the corner of her eye. “I thought you were a travelin’ man.”

He laughed and wrapped one strong arm around her shoulders. “I never really thought of it that way. I always stop here.” He kissed the top of her head.

“Yeah, but you live here.”

“That’s why we needed you to stop and tell us. I’d have never thought of it on my own and the rest don’t travel enough to think of it.”

The chaos in front of them sorted itself into a semblance of order as the lead drover stood at the front of his team and raised his staff. “Hoy!” he cried.

The other teamsters responded by raising their own sticks—or sometimes just a hand—and an answering shout of, “Yah!”

The team boss used his free hand to count the raised arms. Apparently satisfied, he gave a short nod and nudged his team into motion. “Giddup, there,” he said. His voice carried clearly to where Tanyth and Frank stood watching.

One by one, the teams heaved themselves out of the muck and trundled down the path to the Pike, each making the turn southward. In much less time than Tanyth thought possible, the yard was empty except for Jakey’s old yellow dog snuffling the ground where the oxen had left their droppings.

“How long before you head north?” Tanyth asked without looking at Frank.

“Well,” he said, drawing the word out as he considered. “Didn’t get much clay packed last fall so we gotta make up for that. Another week. Prob’ly two before Jakey and the boys get a load ready.”

A raven cawed loudly and both Tanyth and Frank looked up to the inn’s roof where the raven strutted back and forth along the ridgepole.

“I can’t convince you to stay...” Frank’s voice trailed off at the end, more statement than question.

Tanyth sighed and laid a hand on his arm. “You know I can’t. It’s not you.”

“It’s her,” he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the raven.

“Yeah.”

“That dream scares you that much?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, looking down at the toes of her boots, damp from the morning dew. “After this mornin’, I need to go even more. If I get stuck in a dream, I might never be human again.”

He arched one shaggy eyebrow at her. “You don’t believe that.”

BOOK: Zypheria's Call (A Tanyth Fairport Adventure)
3.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves by Jacqueline Yallop
Line Dancing Can Be Murder by Coverstone, Stacey
A Son Of The Circus by John Irving
Summer at Seaside Cove by Jacquie D'Alessandro
Flesh: Alpha Males and Taboo Tales by Scarlett Skyes et al
Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky