Zypheria's Call (A Tanyth Fairport Adventure) (5 page)

They sat like that for several moments before Tanyth wrapped her good arm around his neck and pulled him onto the cot beside her.

The tea turned bitter and cold before they remembered it.

The moon cast its light on the shimmering stream once more. She’d seen it many times before. Each time the moon showed her the same stream, the same clear water and rolling pebbles, always tiny pebbles along the stream bed, along the dark shadow, filling it slowly, slowly. Each dream a little more shadow filled, a little less darkness, but always pebbles in the clear, cool stream. The moon fell below the trees again and Tanyth could hear the clicking of the pebbles in the darkness—always the clicking under the gurgle of the stream.

Chapter Four:
Preparations

Tanyth surveyed the pile of goods arrayed on her small table and shook her head.

“What’s the matter, mum?” Rebecca asked, her hands twisting together in front of her body.

“Is that what you think you need to take?”

Rebecca frowned at the array of clothing and gear. “You said to bring everything I thought I’d need on the road, mum.”

Tanyth smiled and nodded. “Indeed, I did, and it’s prob’ly just as well.” She eyed the clothing in particular. “Ya know you’re gonna have ta carry all this, don’t cha?”

A flash of surprise blinked across the younger woman’s face. “I thought we were ridin’ on the lorry.”

“Only as far as Kleesport.”

“Well, yes, but then we’ll be on a ship for North Haven.”

Tanyth nodded to grant the point. “But after that it’s on our backs or left behind until we find Mother Pinecrest somewhere up in the Lammas Wood.”

“Oh.” Rebecca looked crestfallen. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“You could stay in Kleesport, ya know,” Tanyth said, offering the girl a way out.

Rebecca shook her head. “No, mum. I’ve been in Kleesport and there’s less for me there than here, I think.”

Tanyth grinned. “Well, there are more men there. Single men ya might fancy once you get to know ’em.”

A pink flush crept up Rebecca’s neck and she shook her head. “Well, be that as it may, mum, I want to go find Mother Pinecrest with you.”

“Why?” Tanyth asked.

Rebecca shrugged in the offhand way of youth who don’t want to answer difficult questions. “I’ve never done anything half so excitin’, mum. In all my life, I’ve always ever done what people said I should do. Now...” she paused to shrug again. “Now, it’s different. I wanna do what
I
wanna do. And besides, you need my help, mum.” Rebecca nodded at the cast on Tanyth’s forearm.

Tanyth grimaced inwardly at Rebecca’s unconscious echo of Frank’s comment. “Very well, but you’ll have to cut this pile down to somethin’ you can carry on your back. Where we’re goin’, there may not be much in the way of road and the only pack animal I count on is me.”

“Why’s that, mum?”

“What? The pack animal?”

Rebecca nodded, eyeing the pile of clothing dubiously.

“Have to feed ’em, care for ’em. That takes silver and time that I gen’rally don’t have. If I carry what I need, I don’t have to worry about takin’ care of some poor beast.” Tanyth paused for a moment to consider. “And it’s a lot easier to pass as an old man without the added incentive of havin’ a pack animal that somebody might take it into their heads to steal.”

Rebecca looked up with a frown. “An old man, mum? You?”

Tanyth grinned and thrust her good hand deep in the pocket of her trousers. “You don’t see me wanderin’ around in a dress, do ya?”

Rebecca looked down at her homespun and then over at Tanyth, eyes squinting as if seeing her for the first time. “You don’t look like a man, mum. I hate to tell ya.”

The right side of Tanyth’s mouth curled up in a grin. She crossed to the hook beside the door and, with her back to Rebecca, straightened out her clothes, fumbling to button the top of her shirt one-handed. She slipped into her wide-shouldered, cloth coat, settling the left shoulder gingerly over the sling that held the cast against her chest, and letting the left sleeve hang. She pulled her hat off the peg, tugging the brim down over her eyes. Last she took the staff in her right hand and turned to face the young woman again. She stood with her hips shot to the side and leaned forward on the staff.

Rebecca blinked several times, taking in the transformation. “Somebody who knows ya wouldn’t be fooled, mum.”

Tanyth smiled and tilted her head back to see out from under the hat brim. “I’m not worried about them. It’s the stranger on the road who might think an old woman might be easy to rob or even have a bit of sport with. Those are the ones we need to worry about.”

“That why you keep your hair short, mum?”

“Partly. Partly ’cause it’s just easier to care for on the road.” She felt the length of her hair. “Reminds me, I should clip off a bit of this before we head north.”

Rebecca’s hand went to her own head pulling the heavy, brown braid forward over her shoulder and running it through her hands, a far-away look in her eyes.

Tanyth saw the look on the young woman’s face. “We need to figure out who you’ll be on the road.”

Rebecca’s eyes focused on Tanyth. “Who I’ll be? Can’t I be me?” Her voice held a faint quaver.

Tanyth stood the staff back in its corner and slipped out of hat and coat while she thought. “Per’aps, but think of what we’d look like on the road.”

“You mean after we get to North Haven?”

“Yeah. We’ll be fine as far as Kleesport. We won’t fool anybody aboard ship, but when we leave North Haven, we don’t wanna be lookin’ like an old man and his pretty granddaughter, miles from civilization.”

Rebecca smiled at the compliment but stopped stroking her braid. “I’ve seen lots of boys with long hair,” she said.

Tanyth nodded. “I was just thinkin’ that, but none of the quarrymen do.”

“The clay gets everywhere, mum. They shave regular, too. Same reason.”

Tanyth squinted her eyes, trying to envision how her young charge might disguise herself. After a few moments, she gave up with a shake of her head.

“We can put you in boy’s clothes, rightly enough. Bulky coat and a loose sweater would cover your chest.”

Rebecca looked down at herself. “Yeah. Little enough to cover there.”

Tanyth huffed out a low laugh. “You’d be surprised how little it takes for some men, my dear. Even saggy old biddies like me can get too much attention.”

Rebecca looked up, an expression of horror on her face. “You don’t mean...”

Tanyth shrugged. “Why d’ya think I walk the roads looking like an old man. A poor old man, at that.”

Rebecca cocked her head for a moment. “I never really thought of it.”

“Well, think of it.”

Rebecca cast another look down at her dress and then began bundling up the clothing on the table. “I got an idea, mum. We can take more to Kleesport, can’t we? I mean on the wagon?”

“Sure. With Frank, we don’t have a lot to fear. Not many would cross him without a few boyos at their back.”

Rebecca nodded, her brow furrowed in thought. “Of course, mum. It’s all about the look, i’n’t it?”

“The look? Yeah. I s’pose it is.”

“All right, then.” Rebecca nodded once. “Lemme go see what I can do.”

Rebecca headed for the door, the bundle of clothing wrapped in her arms. Tanyth opened the door with her good hand and held it for the young woman while she clambered up and out into the bright spring afternoon.

Tanyth watched as the young woman strode purposefully across the yard and up the stairs to the inn. She met Frank coming out and he held the door open for her as she bustled into the building.

He saw Tanyth watching from the door of her hut and gave her a big smile.

She waved and closed the door. “That fool man’ll be along lookin’ for his tea shortly,” she muttered. She crossed to the hearth and busied herself with the familiar routine of boiling water, and setting the pot—fumbling the water into the kettle one handed and measuring tea into the pot. She did her best not to think about how much she was going to miss that fool man.

While she waited for the water to boil, she slipped her arm out of its sling, lifting it experimentally, testing the muscles, flexing her hand. The pain was still there, but not as bad as it had been. She tried to stick a finger down the top to scratch the back of her arm, but it wouldn’t fit between her flesh and the cast. She cast around the hearth, looking for something—a piece of stick, anything—that she could use to scratch with.

Outside, somewhere off in the woods, the raven—her raven—cawed loudly three times. Her hoarse squawks carried easily in the still afternoon air.

Tanyth looked to the direction of the squawking. “Yeah. And a good afternoon to you, too,” she said.

The small kettle came to a boil, the burbling sound reminding Tanyth of something that she couldn’t quite recall. She straightened and let her eyes roam around the small hut that had been her home for the past few months. The woven reed mats on the floor looked nearly new. The shelves of medicinals in the back stood ready for most common ailments. Tanyth smiled when she remembered the large pot of honey she’d hidden back there for Amber and Sadie to find after she left. The foodstuffs in the larder and on the pantry shelves would go back to common stores and the herbs drying in the rafters wouldn’t go to waste now that she’d taught what she could to those she’d be leaving behind.

The sense of melancholy nearly overwhelmed her just as the kettle boiled over and started spitting on the hearth.

“Foolish old woman,” she scolded with a sniff. “You know better.”

Still, as she poured the boiling water over the dried leaves in the little china teapot that she’d have to leave behind, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of wonder at how much a clinker-built hut in the middle of nowhere meant to her.

She heard footsteps outside and the quick two-rap knock that was Frank’s nod to propriety. He slipped the latch, folded his lanky frame under the lintel, and stepped into the hut. He stood for a moment, the bright sunlight behind him, and she knew it wasn’t the hut that meant so much to her after all.

He pulled the door closed, blocking the dazzling light and turned to her, a brilliant smile shining against skin so tanned it looked like leather. “Tea ready?”

She nodded, and opened her good arm to him, not trusting her voice to speak. His strong arms wrapped around her and pressed the hard cast against her breastbone. She didn’t mind. At least while he held her, the blasted thing didn’t itch.

Chapter Five:
Equinox

Tanyth stood facing the tree line to the east. The black of star-studded night had faded to a predawn gray already. The villagers had gathered around her in the chill mist of morning A pair of travelers joined them—a tinker and a cloth merchant who’d stopped at the inn overnight.

She leaned on her staff, standing awkwardly with her left arm in the sling. The earth beneath her feet quickened with new life, awakened from a long winter sleep, ready for the flush of growth that longer days would bring. She emptied herself into the morning letting her mind relax and her body feel the faint breeze from the pine-scented forest to the east, waiting for the moment when the first rays of morning sun would creep through the trees and grace them all with its golden light.