XVI

n the morning, Grayling fo und frost on her nose and her eyelashes. The air was filled with the noisy honking of geese, and she studied them as they passed overhead. How easily they moved and how much faster than human folks on foot. Grayling recalled persuading Pook the raven to stay on the ground where it was safer. Watching the geese, their undersides flashing white and gray, Grayling thought she might have been mistaken. How would the world look from up there? What could she see from the sky that she had never seen? Were she a bird, would she choose to stay on the ground or soar, no matter the danger? She knew what she once would have said, but now she was not so certain.

The memory of Pook the raven moved her to take the mouse from her pocket and jiggle him awake. He opened his eyes and snuffled, with bits of acorn still adorning his whiskers. “Mistress Gray Eyes, do you wish the assistance of . . . ” He yawned a great yawn—that is, great for a tiny creature like a mouse. “. . . this Pook?”

Grayling stroked his head gently. “I have been thinking ’tis a long while since you shifted into another shape.”

Pook said in a faint, thin voice, “This mouse will likely not be taken with that again. I believe this Pook is only a mouse now.”

“But a very special mouse,” Grayling whispered. He coughed a tiny cough. “Are you quite well?”

“Aye,” he said, “but weary. Most weary,” and he slipped back into her pocket.

A late autumn market provided biscuits and pears and soft sweet cheese in exchange for the last of Sylvanus’s coppers. Bellies full, they walked on, slower and slower as the morning grew later.

The cold sun was high in the sky when they neared the spot where they were to part ways.

“We must each set out for home now, Auld Nancy, or we shall freeze into statues here on the road.” Grayling wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. “’Tis still a goodly walk for us both.”

Auld Nancy dropped to the ground, broom in her lap.

Grayling gasped. “Auld Nancy, are you ill?”

“The fingers of giants are making shadows in the sky,” Auld Nancy said.

Grayling looked up. “What mean you? I see only bare branches against the gray.”

“Of course, tree branches.” Auld Nancy shook her head. “It appears my bones and my wits are both failing me.”

As she helped Auld Nancy struggle to her feet, Grayling felt her heart near pulled in two. She was most eager to be home, but she could not leave Auld Nancy to travel alone. With a sigh that she pulled all the way from her toes, Grayling said, “Come, we have walked all this way together. I will not leave you now. I shall see you home.”

She tried to remember if her mother had a staying-alive song. Such a song was called for now, but if Hannah Strong did, Grayling did not know it. Their footsteps beat out a sort of a tune, and words came into her head, and tune and words came together in a melody. With the old woman leaning heavily on her, Grayling began to walk, singing the song she was inventing as they went:

 

Be strong, look around you,

Blue asters are blooming, the yarrow is tall.

Apples and sweet pears are yet on the tree.

The wide world calls.

Take my hand, take my hand.

 

Winter will come soon.

Your nose and your cheeks will pink with the cold

When frost paints the walls

And footsteps sing crunch songs

To snowdrops and crocus.

 

In spring you’ll be walking

In fields newly white-capped

With marguerite daisies,

As geese winging home honk their calls.

 

Summer will sizzle and warm your old bones,

As you lie in the meadow and look forward to fall.

Stay alive, Auld Nancy, for living is all,

Full of promise and friendship.

Take my hand, take my hand.

 

“Hannah Strong is indeed a fine one for making songs,” said Auld Nancy. “I vow, I feel stronger.”

“I most sincerely hope so,” said Grayling, “but that is my own song that I just now made and none of my mother’s.”

“So you have her song skill as well as her wisdom and her strength.”

Grayling nodded. I do. It seems I do.

They climbed up and down, through woods chilly and damp, rich with the smell of mushrooms and decaying wood. In places Grayling saw small trees standing on their roots as if on tiptoe. Auld Nancy followed her gaze. “The nurse logs have rotted away,” she said. “The young trees need them no longer and grow on their own.”

On their own. Grayling nodded in understanding.

The day wore on, and finally they saw the smoke from many hearth fires. There backed against a hill was a village. Auld Nancy sighed, and her face grew calm. “My heart is lifting now I am near to my bed,” she said. She directed Grayling to turn here and there and no, not that path, this path.

They kept to the edge of the village. Those passing by bowed their heads to Auld Nancy, but Grayling could smell an uneasy stew of fear and awe and need. The very trees whispered weather witch, weather witch.

At the far end of the village was a stone hut with an arched wooden door painted green. Inside, the hut was drafty, cold, and damp, but bearable once Grayling found the tinderbox and started a fire. Smoke found its way around the room and out the smoke hole in the roof.

“Smoke yet frightens me,” Grayling said to Auld Nancy.

“Only the foolish have no fear. There is much in this world to be fearful of, but much to bring pleasure if we have our wits about us.” Auld Nancy groaned as she lay down on a thin pallet near the fire, which Grayling fed with twigs and seed cones dry enough to burn. She turned out the remains of the biscuits and cheese, and Auld Nancy directed her to a crock of cider and two mugs.

Grayling joined Auld Nancy on her pallet, and they supped.

Auld Nancy reached out and gently touched the scar that remained on Grayling’s cheek. “You bear here a remembrance of our journey,” she said.

“Auld Nancy,” Grayling asked, “tell me truly: do you think ’tis over? That the wise folk are themselves again and not rooted to the ground, now that the force is vanquished? And will all be well, though Pansy has gone to the warlord with her hurtful magic?”

“I do not know, but I have hope. Hope is an excellent and necessary thing to have in this world. Hope and bread and good friends.” She sighed in satisfaction. “Now I am home, girl, and my belly full, I think I just might live.”

“Indeed I think you might, and ere long, you will have your weather magic back and be again cloud pusher, fog mistress, she who controls the rain.” Grayling paused a moment to frame a question and then asked, “What does magic feel like?”

Auld Nancy stared into the distance. “Using magic is like flying a kite. You think you are in control of it but then the wind catches it—it tugs and then shoots away like an arrow released from a bow.”

As it had done for Pansy, Grayling thought. “Sylvanus says true magic is like a sausage, made of bits and pieces of things we all have.”

“Aye, true. Magic be a paradox, everything and nothing,” said Auld Nancy.

“Pansy has skill and real power. Not everyone has such. I do not.”

“Pansy’s is a powerful, greedy, wicked sort of magic. You too have skills.” Auld Nancy yawned and stretched. “But even better, you have good sense and a caring heart, sharp eyes in your head, and the wits to use them. No matter what magic she has or learns, Pansy will never have that.”

Grayling nodded. It was enough.

Pook climbed slowly out of Grayling’s pocket and scoured the floor for crumbs and seeds. With a squeak of contentment, he climbed onto the pallet and settled down next to her to groom his whiskers.

The next morning, Grayling prepared to begin her walk home. She wrapped Desdemona Cork’s shawl around Auld Nancy’s frail shoulders and tied it tight. “I am reluctant to bid farewell to you, for I have grown fond of you and your grumbles.”

Auld Nancy smiled and said, “And I, you. You have cared for me most tenderly.” She took two wrinkled apples from a green bowl, wrapped the last biscuits and large crumbs of the remaining cheese in a cloth, and gave the bundle to Grayling for her journey. Grayling gave the old woman a quick hug.

“Pook,” she said to the mouse, who was cleaning his paws with a tiny pink tongue, “we must be off. ’Tis a long walk to my valley.” Her heart gave a little flutter.

With a squeak and a sigh, the mouse said, “Mistress, this mouse is wearied from the traveling and quite elderly for a mouse.” He coughed once and continued in a weaker voice. “This mouse would stay here.”

Grayling was surprised at the rush of sadness and loss she felt. “Are you certain? What shall I do without you?”

“Ahh, Gray Eyes . . .” His voice grew faint and feathery, and he shuddered.

Her eyes burned. How could she leave him behind? They had been through so much, and she loved him. A mouse, and she loved him. She swallowed hard and said, “Then farewell, Pook. You are a prince of a mouse, a wonder of a mouse, an entirely splendid mouse, and I shall miss you.” Terribly, she thought with a snuffle.

Pook had turned aside for a fit of cleaning and paid no attention to her, continuing to groom his paws. He looked different . . . quite mouselike. Grayling bit her lip and looked away. This mouse was a mouse now and Pook no longer.

She wrapped her cloak about her, took her bundle, and set off alone into the morning mist.