VI

he company slowed as they passed beneath a towering arch of stone as dark as the start of a nightmare. Night had fallen when they came to a stop. Candles shone from the windows of a great house, but the yard was lit only by the sliver of moon that escaped the clouds.

Grayling stood and pressed her face against the branches that served as the bars of their cage. She could see little in the moonlight, but she could hear the bustle of their arrival. Horses clopped and whinnied and huffed, footsteps rang on stone or squelched in mud, soldiers called back and forth to each other, and no one paid attention to the prisoners.

Thus ends the first day of our trek together, thought Grayling, captured and caged like dancing bears. If only Desdemona Cork had not left them! She could have enchanted the soldiers—perhaps even the man with the metal nose, if such could be enchanted. The captives would likely be in a fine house right now, supping on partridge and elderberry wine, instead of in a cage in the cold with their bellies woefully empty.

Then there was silence, until a man’s voice said, “You stay here and guard them.”

“Why me? Be you afeared of them witches?” another voice asked.

Scuffle, scuffle, Grayling heard, and then there was quiet again except for the snuffling and spitting of the man who had lost the scuffle.

Auld Nancy moved to Grayling’s side. “I found a bit of spider web for your cheek,” she whispered. She clucked in concern as she gently applied the web to Graylings’s cut with her warm hand.

“You,” said a voice both cold and stony. “You witches, I have use for your magic.”

“We,” said Auld Nancy with an impatient sigh, “are not that kind of witch.”

The voice came closer, and so did the speaker, the warlord with the nose of metal. He thrust his face against the branches of their cage and shouted, “I need witch magic, and but for you three, I find no witch, no magician, no wizard abroad in the land!”

“Aye, we know,” said Auld Nancy. “’Twas an evil force took them, and we think we can set it to rights if you would but free us.”

“Free you? Nay! I need gold, and I need more armed men. You will use your spells, your curses, your powers, whatever you possess, to see that I get them.” A tiny ray of moonlight shimmered off the tip of his nose, and Grayling shuddered. “I need the Earl of Whetstone’s soldiers to turn and run. And the earl himself I wish gone—whether he dies or leaves the kingdom or just, whoosh, disappears, it is up to you, but I want him gone.” He slowly paced the breadth of the cage and back, his steps echoing through the courtyard like funeral drums. “I want a cloak of invisibility, a binding spell, and an assortment of poisons that act quickly and surely.”

Auld Nancy stamped her foot. “You do not listen. We do not have such powers and cannot—”

The man slammed his hand against the branches of their prison. “You will do as I tell you, or you will remain caged like monkeys until the flesh falls off your bones.” He stalked off, shouting over his shoulder, “You will have no food nor drink until I get what I want. And if you remain stubborn, I will have you disemboweled, one by one.”

There was a short silence, and then, “I’m frightened,” Pansy said with a snuffle, “and terribly hungry. What do we now?”

“At the moment, there is nothing to do,” said Auld Nancy. “We are at that man’s mercy, may maggots build nests in his hair!”

Grayling considered their situation. Likely her mother would know what to do or rather what to tell Grayling to do, but her mother was partway to being a tree. Roots and rutabagas! Grayling herself would have to think of something. In frustration she shook the sides of the cage.

“Gray Eyes,” said a voice from above. A raven had landed on the roof of the cage. “Gray Eyes,” it repeated, “this Pook is with you. Is there aught he can do?” With a cronk and a shaking of his feathers, the raven became a mouse again. He fell through the bars of the cage and landed with a tiny ooof! at Auld Nancy’s feet.

Auld Nancy studied him. “Can you not change into something useful—a strong knife, mayhap, or a torch?”

“Or a joint of beef?” asked Pansy.

Ignoring them both, Pook asked again, “Gray Eyes, is there aught that this Pook can do for you?”

“Certes,” said Grayling, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I wish to be gone from here! How will you make that happen?”

After a moment of silence, the mouse said, “There are two things this Pook might do. One, turn himself into a mad bull and tear down this cage. Two, this mouse can remain a mouse and chew through it.”

“Oh, Pook, you can help me! Which will you do?”

More silence. “This mouse is compelled to tell the truth. He does not in fact know how to change into a mad bull, so he shall immediately commence chewing. A hole large enough for you to climb through should take”—the moon reflected in the mouse’s tiny eyes as they shifted this way and that around the cage—“a month or so.”

“A month? Oh, mousie, a month? ’Twill not do. We will be long dead ere a month has passed.” Grayling slumped against the cage.

“Nay, mistress, do not despond,” said the mouse. “Trust this mouse and wait here.” And he skittered away. Grayling smiled through her tears. Wait here? Where else?

The three sat together on one side of the cage. Grayling huddled against the warmth that was Auld Nancy, comforted by the familiar aroma of sweat and smoke and sausages. The others dozed, but Grayling, plagued with visions of disemboweling, could not rest.

Some time had passed when she heard a sound, the sound of the wind stripping the grain on a wheat field, or a thousand tailors scissoring cloth, or . . . or . . . or an army of mice chewing through hazel branches—chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff!

She peered through the darkness. Indeed mice beyond counting were at the other side of the cage, tumbling over each other, gnawing and tearing their way through the branches that served as bars. The noise grew louder as their number grew. Chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

Auld Nancy woke and assessed the scene. “’Tis well done, mouse,” she said, “but let us make some noise to drown out the chewing lest the guard hear.”

Pansy yawned and said, “Can you not call thunder and lightning?”

Auld Nancy shook her head. “Nay, nothing that would bring attention to us or illuminate what is happening. Nay.”

“My mother,” said Grayling, “has a song with chiff chiffs that she sings as she slashes chive blossoms from their stems. We could sing it loudly.”

The mice chewed on. Chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiff!

“What be that sound?” called the guard. “What are you doing in there?”

“We,” Grayling said, “are but singing a song with much chiff chiff, chiff chiff, chiff chiffing.”

“Chiff chiff, chiff chiff,” sang Auld Nancy. She knocked Pansy with her elbow, and the girl shouted, “Chiff chiff!”

“I do like a song,” said the guard. “Sing so I can hear.”

So Grayling sang:

 

Do not go to the field, my girl, today.

’Tis August and the men are cutting hay.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff

Go silvery scythes.

Harvest is underway

And I wish you would

Not go to the field today.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

 

The mice went chiff chiff, chiff chiff, Auld Nancy and Pansy sang chiff chiff, chiff chiff, but Grayling was silent a moment as she remembered Hannah Strong singing while she snipped greens in the garden. The sun had lit streaks of bronze in her hair and roses in her cheeks, and her fingers were swift and supple.

“You witches be fine singers,” their guard called out. “I vow I can hear the sound of the scythes cutting the hay.”

Grayling sang louder as she continued her song and the mice continued their chiff chiffs.

 

Her own true love was in the field that day—

His hair was gold and eyes were moonlight gray.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff

With silvery scythe

He swung but swung astray.

He cleaved her head

And laid it in the field of hay.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.

 

“Chiff chiff, chiff chiff,” shouted Auld Nancy.

“And swish. Swish swish,” cried Pansy, her face red with excitement, “and slash slash!”

The listening soldier was so stirred that he had begun to chiff chiff along. “Finish the song,” he called. “What follows? How fares the girl?”

“Poorly,” said Grayling, “for she be headless and dead.”

“Dead? Nay! That be a poor story and not worth the listening,” the guard said, “with a most unacceptable ending.” He crossed his arms and, with a huff and a bah, walked away.

“Not all endings are happy,” said Grayling. And she sang on.

There were other sounds in the darkness: shouts and cries, the calls of soldiers striding through the yard, the grim and doomful echo of their boots. Ere long, the night grew quiet but for the chiff chiff of the mice. More songs were needed, but Auld Nancy and Pansy slumbered in a corner.

“Can you not hurry?” Grayling whispered, but to whom? The cold of midnight settled upon her, and she pulled her cloak tighter. She sang her mother’s healing song and a love chant and a song to cheer, although it did not cheer her.

She even sang to the grimoire, but there was no answering song. Face spots and flea bites! Had the song lost its magic? Grayling caught her breath but then remembered—a bridge. They had crossed a bridge. Water stood between her and the grimoire. She hoped it was no more than that.

After a time, the mouse hole had grown large enough for a person to pass through. “’Tis done,” Grayling whispered as she woke Pansy and Auld Nancy. And Pook? Where was Pook? She could not leave without him, but the mice were so many, crawling and climbing over each other. Gray mice, brown mice, fat mice, and thin—how would she ever find one special mouse? “Pook,” she whispered. “Pook, come hither to me,” but there was no response, no Pook with his pink nose and pink ears and more whiskers than any mouse truly needed.

“We must go,” said Auld Nancy.

“Not without Pook.”

“Who?”

“Pook. The mouse. The raven. The goat.”

Auld Nancy shook her head. Grayling could not see it in the dark, but she knew from the tsk sound Auld Nancy made. “He is a resourceful bird . . . mouse . . . whatever he is, and likely he will find you.”

They had to leave. Pook was resourceful indeed. Grayling took some comfort in that fact, but still her heart felt empty and sore.

She climbed out of the cage behind Pansy and Auld Nancy. Making what haste they could, they fought their way through a hedgerow thick with thorns and thistles that scratched their faces and snagged their hair. “Thistles and thorns! Begone! Begone!” Grayling shouted, as she yanked the skirt of her kirtle from the thorns’ grip, leaving a long gash in the skirt.

They crashed through bushes and brush to a path heading steeply down. With a sharp cry, Pansy fell, twisting her ankle beneath her. She pulled on Auld Nancy’s skirts and almost toppled her, too. “Clumsy girl!” Auld Nancy hissed. “Can you do nothing right?”

Pansy felt the sting of Auld Nancy’s bad temper more often than the rest of them, Grayling thought, but then she earned it more often. “Come,” said Grayling to the girl, “lean on me. I am strong enough for the both of us.” Pansy did, and like a two-headed beast, they scuttled away.