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he path narrowed, and wild blackberry bushes on either side reached out to snag Grayling’s hair and her skirt. Soon it curved to reveal a clearing and Widow Bagley’s home. The dwelling was more hut than cottage, and the thatched roof was quickly becoming unthatched. In the yard sheep, goats, and a red cow grazed while tubs and tuns and a big vat bubbled unattended. The cottage door was open—or missing—and from inside came the odor of sour milk and herbs.

An old woman appeared and beckoned them in. By pig and pie, thought Grayling, she is even older than Auld Nancy, if that be possible. Desdemona Cork waved the invitation away, Pansy turned away, and Auld Nancy nodded on the mule’s back, but Grayling, curious, followed Sylvanus.

The cottage was dark and damp, and its sharp, musty smell made her nose burn. Dripping bundles of drying cheese hung from the roof over the table, making puddles that a yellow cat was lapping. Wax-covered orbs of finished cheese were hung in the rafters to smoke and in dark corners to age. The room looked to Grayling like a magical forest where cheese grew instead of flowers.

Sylvanus approached the cheeses. He rolled his eyes and twitched his nose, sniffing and poking and tasting slices of the creamy rounds. “This,” he said finally to Widow Bagley. “This cheese I will have, and I will give you two coppers for two rounds.”

Widow Bagley snorted. “Six coppers,” she said.

Sylvanus shook his head. “Six? Nonsense. ’Tis thievery and greediness. I will give three.”

“Eight coppers,” said the widow.

“Eight? Nay. ’Tis not done that way. When I increase my offer, you lower your price until we meet in the middle. Four, and that be my last offer.”

“Twelve,” said the widow.

Sylvanus sputtered. “You do not understand bargaining. I increase, and you decrease. Now I offer six, and ’tis absolutely as high as I will go. What say you?”

“Done!” said the widow, and she spit on her hand and offered it to Sylvanus.

Sylvanus cheerfully paid the amount she had demanded in the first place and left the cottage with two cheeses tied together and hung around his neck. The others hurried behind him. He is obviously no shrewd bargainer, Grayling thought, and he believes in magic cheese. Was he but a muddle-headed dolt and no help to them at all?

They turned again to the west, Pansy shuffling in the rear. Amidst the trees, the remains of a cottage still smoked. And there, as if standing guard, was a tall tree, not human anymore but not quite tree. Grayling poked Sylvanus with her elbow and bade him look. His face, what she could see of it beyond the beard, paled. Why had he not seen such before? Where had he been?

A fierce and menacing wind blew against them, buffeting them as they struggled against it, heads down. The wind bit at Grayling’s chin, clutched at her ankles, and crawled up the sleeves of her gown. Her heart grew cold, and she felt dark despair settling over her spirits again as she trudged on. Suddenly, with a last swirl of dust, the wind was gone.

Nor was this a natural wind, Grayling sensed. Something was happening, something ominous and bleak, something they could not understand or control. Would it only strengthen as they drew closer to the grimoires? How could they fight it? She looked at her ragtag band of companions, muttering and grumbling and limping, and she succumbed for the moment to the despair.

“How much longer must we trudge this road?” asked Desdemona Cork. “I wish to be quit of the journey.”

Grayling sang a snatch of song and cocked her head to listen. “The grimoire is near,” she said. “Mayhap we will reach it next day or the next.”

Auld Nancy scowled. “I fear this be too easily done—”

“Easy? You think this easy?” Grayling’s cheeks blazed. “I have left my mother rooted to the ground, trekked through woods and swamps, been threatened and menaced and imprisoned, suffered blisters, frights, and empty belly. I do not in any way think this easy!”

“Hist, girl. I did not mean ’twas not difficult, for all of us, but I wonder why some power would take the grimoires and then let us find them.”

“Easy?” Grayling muttered as she plowed on. “She says ‘easy’?”

The day was darkening when they stopped again, feet sore and bellies empty. Pansy huddled beneath a tree, her face gray with weariness, and Auld Nancy dropped down beside her.

Trees stood black against the sky, and all was silent but for the hoots of owls and shrieks of birds for which Grayling had no name. The very air seemed dark and heavy. Though reluctant to be alone among the trees, Grayling went to gather wood for a fire.

A bit of a brook, muddy and stagnant, seeped from ground rutted and tunneled by moles and voles. She glimpsed foxes and furry creatures she hoped were not wolves darting between the trees. Every rustle of leaf or crack of twig underfoot made her jump. Branches reached for her like fingers groping, poking, scratching. Had some of these trees been folks, were perhaps still folks deep in their woody hearts? At last, her arms full of branches and twigs, she hurried back to the others.

Sylvanus was sitting with his back against the rough bark of a sweet chestnut tree, his eyes closed, his shoulders festooned with autumn leaves. Pansy was whispering to Auld Nancy and Desdemona Cork, and they looked up at Grayling.

Pansy motioned to her. Grayling dropped the wood and joined the others. “We are wondering over Sylvanus,” Pansy said.

“Why has he not turned tree,” asked Auld Nancy, “or even seen the damage? He heard rumors, he said. What has he been busy doing?”

“Was it something with smoke and shadow?” Desdemona Cork asked in a whisper.

Pansy cleared her throat and said, “I have a worrisome uneasiness about what he carries in his saddlebags. Belike we should examine them.”

The four turned and studied Sylvanus. His eyes were still closed, and he whistled, puffed, and snorted, every breath ruffling his beard. He did not look so very sly or treacherous to Grayling, but then she had little knowledge of treachery.

“Sylvanus,” said Auld Nancy, kicking his foot. “Wake, Sylvanus. We would speak with you.”

Sylvanus stretched and shook his head. “I was not asleep but merely thinking about the problems of the universe. Very difficult work it is, thinking deep thoughts, and ‘the mind cannot grapple when the body is weary.’’’

Auld Nancy kicked his foot again. “Fie, you old braggart. Stop your thinking for a moment. We would see what you carry in those saddlebags.”

“Ah, woe, what is it that causes you to distrust me? I have always done my best.” He snuffled. “But ’tis true, ‘no man is a hero to those who wash his socks,’ as the eminent professor Isidore Muchnick once told me.”

“Enough!” cried Auld Nancy. “Enough! You ever grizzle and yawl! I swear someone has put a babbling spell on you. Pansy, fetch the bags. We shall see for ourselves if he has been about mischief.”

Pansy lifted the saddlebags and shook them. Out fell a blue velvet cap and cape, copper coins, a clean shirt, two metal cups with strange engravings, bottles of various green and slimy things, brown bread, two onions, and a ham.

“Ham!” Auld Nancy shouted. “Ham! You did not tell us you had food! Let us forget this discord for a moment and eat.”

Pansy grinned a sly, satisfied grin. She had known about the ham in Sylvanus’s bags, Grayling was certain of it. But how?

Sylvanus stood. “Are you convinced I carry nothing suspicious in my bags? Leave me now to soothe my stomach and my nerves and put my bodily humors back in balance.” He grabbed his velvet cap from Pansy. “And cease pawing my things, you great, useless lump of a girl!”

Pansy’s grin faded, replaced by her usual sullen pout.

After Sylvanus stowed his things back in his saddlebags, Auld Nancy said, “I will slice ham. Sylvanus, start us a fire.”

Grayling watched him with interest. The man was a magician. Would he snap his fingers to start the fire? Or gesture? Point? Clap his hands?

Sylvanus pulled a tinderbox from a pocket of his dust-colored gown. He saw Grayling’s disappointed face and shrugged.

“What would suit that ham, Sylvanus,” said Desdemona Cork, and the scent of almond blossoms filled the air, “is a bit of that cheese hanging around your neck.”

Sylvanus threw an arm protectively across his chest and shook his head. “’Tis not cheese for eating. It has a purpose.”

“Beyond filling our bellies, I take it,” said Auld Nancy.

A nearby shrub offered late sweet whortleberries, and with the ham and an onion from Sylvanus’s saddlebags, they had a fine supper even without the cheese. Grayling dropped a bit of berry into her pocket for Pook, but the mouse said, “Nay, I fear my belly still suffers from the toad’s dinners.” With a burp, he snuggled deeper.

While they ate, the company aired their various worries and concerns, for which none of them had answers. They all spoke at once: “How much farther? Why the wind? Will we find the grimoire? What else is in store for us?”

“You, Graybeard,” Auld Nancy said to Sylvanus. “Help us. Ask your cheese what it knows.”

He shook his head and held the cheeses close to his chest.

“Is that not its purpose?” Auld Nancy asked. “Why we called at the widow’s cottage? Show us how it is done.”

With what might have been a groan or a grumble or a growl, Sylvanus removed the cheeses from around his neck. With his knife he sliced small bits from each round and dropped them into the smaller of his metal cups, which he placed on the embers of the fire while muttering strange mutters and chanting peculiar chants.

The melting cheese gave off the aroma of sour milk and cinnamon, and Grayling, though full of berries and ham, thought they might do better to eat the cheese than do whatever Sylvanus was planning.

“You, girl,” he said finally to Pansy, “fetch water.” He held the larger cup out to her.

Pansy limped and moaned so as she edged closer to him that Grayling snatched the cup herself. She found her way back to the muddy brook and returned with a cup of water.

Sylvanus’s chants grew louder as he took the cup with the cheese from the fire, protecting his hand with the hem of his gown, and poured its contents into the larger cup in a stream, making loops and coils on the surface of the water. There was a sizzle as the hot cheese met the cold water, and then silence.

Sylvanus poured the cooled cheese onto the ground. “The shape the cheese has taken will tell us what we need to know,” he said.

“It looks like a lump of cheese,” Grayling said.

Sylvanus frowned at her. “I must concentrate,” he said, and he studied the cheese from all directions. He broke off small bits, rubbed and smelled them. “Indeed,” he said finally, “a lump of cheese.”

“What means that?” asked Grayling. “Does it tell us who is behind this evil smoke and shadow?”

“It tells us it is a lump of cheese! A lump of cheese!” Sylvanus shouted. “The cheese is useless.”

“Do not fret, Sylvanus,” said Auld Nancy, patting his arm. “Leastwise, now we can eat it.” She used Sylvanus’s knife to cut a large section from the rounds of cheese for each of them. Then, their bellies full and their lips still blue from berries, they lay beneath the trees on beds of fallen leaves and fern fronds. All was silent but for Sylvanus now and then muttering, “Lump of cheese!”

Grayling felt Pook leave her pocket to feast on the seeds and crumbs of cheese on the ground. Satisfied, he groomed his whiskers and, with a sigh, crawled over her skirt and settled in her pocket once more. She smiled. What little time it had taken for her to become attached to him. A mouse! At home she would have chased him from the cottage with a broom and a curse. But here . . . she patted her pocket tenderly before she fell asleep.

In the morning, Grayling sang her way forward, and the others followed. The woods here were different from the woods in Grayling’s valley. The air was damper, the ground wetter. Ancient moss-laden oaks rose from thick carpets of ferns, and willow branches, laden still with mist, trailed nearly to the ground like the long sleeves of a wedding dress. Downed trees supported young sprouts whose roots arched around the logs, seeking the ground. “Nurse logs,” said Sylvanus. “They give life and support to the young trees.”

“In truth?” Grayling asked him.

“In truth.”

“And there truly is such a thing as soothsaying with cheese?”

“Most certainly,” said Sylvanus.

“The world is full of things most peculiar,” she said.

“And things most astounding, young Grayling. Most astounding. Why, in places in this world are snails so big folks can live in their shells.”

“No!”

Sylvanus nodded so heartily that crumbs of cheese flew from his beard. “Aye. And to the west are islands where men have the heads of hounds and go naked in all types of weather. And another where people have horses’ feet. Would you not like to see these places?”

“No, I want only to go home,” Grayling said at once. But men with horses’ feet? That she would like to see.

From time to time the wind blew through, icy and sharp, and then subsided, leaving the air thick and heavy. Grayling found breathing difficult. Her lungs hurt from the effort and her steps grew slower and slower, but she sang on as she walked.

As they ventured farther, there was no path, and Grayling lurched and stumbled as she forced her way through, tearing her bodice and scraping her arms on the thorny bushes. Auld Nancy and Desdemona Cork followed, but Sylvanus and Pansy hung back, jostling to be last in line, snarling at each other like two ill-tempered but cowardly dogs.

They pushed through to a sort of clearing, foreboding and dark with dread. Here the trees were thinner and blackened, the ground scorched as if by fire. Charred wood and ashes crunched beneath their feet. Even Sylvanus’s spotted mule was ill at ease. Eyes round with fear and nose speckled with foam, he began to back away, and Sylvanus had to urge, wheedle, and pull him forward.

Grayling heard the sound of something moving just beyond, something large, moving slowly, smoothly over the ground. The air was dense with the smell of smoke, scorched wood, and something unidentifiable—acrid and sharp and bitter in the nose. Then came a gibbering and groaning, a howling and hissing, from nowhere and everywhere, reverberating. Grayling covered her ears, but the sound was inside her, pounding and echoing.

She grabbed Auld Nancy’s hand and stood as if frozen, and her companions lurched into her. Gliding toward them was a horrid creature, all scales and flames and teeth.