Greenglass House (14 page)

“‘What on earth are you?' Julian asked, bewildered. Shooting stars and wishing wells he had at least heard of before, but a stick creature that granted wishes . . . well, that was something else again.

“‘I am a wishing stick,' the thin man said with wounded dignity. ‘You gave me life when you cut me from the blackthorn and made a wish upon me.'”

“A wishing stick?” Dr. Gowervine scoffed. “I've never heard of such a thing.”

“Would you kindly stop interrupting?” Mrs. Hereward demanded.

Dr. Gowervine looked from Mrs. Hereward to Georgie, who he seemed to have decided was the closest thing they had to an authority on folklore. “Is that a thing, wishing sticks?”

Georgie shrugged. “Sounds like it is in this story, Doc. I mean, I've heard of wishing trees, so I don't know that wishing sticks sound all that preposterous. Also, it's a
story,
” she said pointedly.

“‘I'm Julian,' said Julian,” Mrs. Hereward pronounced loudly, frowning at Dr. Gowervine. “‘Sloe,' said the thin man. ‘Pleased to meet you. Now, Julian, would you mind phrasing your wish in the
form
of a wish? Then we can get on with things.'

“‘I suppose I wish to know if I have a destiny, and if I do, what it is.'”

Negret sat forward a little.
It's just a story,
he reminded himself.
It doesn't mean anything.
And yet he was as eager to hear the answer as if it had been his own destiny they were discussing.

“Julian prepared himself for a lecture from Sloe about what would make a better request. After his encounters with the other two wishing creatures, he was beginning to think he didn't have the knack for wishing at all. But when Sloe spoke, he said instead, ‘That's two wishes. Pick one. If you really want to know, that is. I've never understood all this stock people put into destiny anyhow. Only fools rely on destiny.'

“‘I agree!' Julian exclaimed. ‘But twice tonight I've been told I'd be a fool to chance crossing destiny with a wish. How does anyone get anything done, worrying about destiny?'

“‘I suspect they don't,' Sloe answered. ‘Plus, if destiny exists, it doesn't seem it would be very functional if you could thwart it with a single wish. But tell me about these wishes you made before.'

“Julian did. The blackthorn man listened, nodded occasionally, interjected a question or two, and at the end, asked to see the pebble. ‘Very interesting,' Sloe said quietly, turning the little stone in his twiggy fingers. Then he returned it to Julian. ‘It seems to me Baetylus and Wielle gave you sound advice when they suggested you rethink your wishes, not because of destiny but because you yourself admit that you don't really want to be mayor and you don't really want money; you just want a better road. Perhaps they only mentioned destiny because they thought the idea might make you more likely to reconsider. Wishing creatures aren't supposed to argue about the wishes that are made to us, only we can't help having opinions.'

“‘Do you have an opinion about what I ought to wish for?' Julian inquired.

“Sloe shrugged. ‘Not really. But I owe you something for cutting me loose, so if you'd like me to give it some thought, I'd be glad to try and come up with something useful.'

“‘Yes, please.' Julian and the blackthorn man sat side by side on a piece of fence that had once held up the dunes. Sloe leaned his head on his palm and tapped his skinny fingers against his angular cheek. ‘I suppose I think the problem with asking about your destiny,' he said at last, ‘is that it can't possibly help you to know anything about it. Knowing would make you change your behavior somehow, and there's no way to be sure whether that would help or hurt your cause.' He turned to Julian. ‘Let me ask you this: what do you really want?'

“This was a very good question. Julian hadn't given much thought to what he actually wanted. Except for one thing, of course.

“‘Sloe, could you fix this road, between the town I came from and the one I'm going to?' he asked. ‘I mean
really
fix it, with new paving stones and drainage ditches and everything? Make it a proper road? That's all I wanted in the first place.'

“Sloe looked at Julian, then looked at the muddy dirt track. He nodded once and got back to his feet. ‘I can do better than that. Give me one of your shoes.' The boy took off one of the shoes Baetylus had fixed up for him and handed it to Sloe, who cut a sign onto the sole with a fingernail tipped with a thorn. ‘There,' Sloe said, pleased. ‘Now wherever you walk in these shoes, good roads will follow.'

“Julian put the shoe back on and laced it up. It felt just the same as before, but when he stepped off the dune and onto the road, a neat surface of rounded cobblestones spread out beneath his feet like a stain. He took another experimental step, and the cobblestones poured forth, extending to the edge of the dunes, where they somehow seemed to sense that their work was done and stopped. The cobbles that had appeared under his first steps remained where they were. He stared at the new paving and then at Sloe.

“‘Choose your paths carefully,' said the blackthorn man, ‘and take off the shoes when you wish to feel grass or sand or water beneath your feet. But now when you wish to blaze a trail, you will always have the means. And while we're at it, why don't you give me that lantern, too, and your knife. The one you cut me free with.'

“Julian handed over his knife along with the lamp he'd extinguished earlier that night. Sloe scratched the symbol he'd cut into Julian's shoes onto the hilt of the knife and onto the underbelly of the lantern. ‘Now you will always be able to cut a path, and you will always be able to light your way, as long as you have a flint. That stone that was giving you so much trouble would work nicely, I think.' Then he leaped down to the newly paved road and shook Julian's hand. ‘Roam well, until we meet again.' And with that, Sloe also hiked northward and disappeared into the star-spattered night. And Julian walked home, marveling at the feel of the new cobbles that came up under each step.”

Mrs. Hereward paused. “According to my father and his father and his mother and her father and his grandmother and so on and farther back, Julian was the first of the roamers, the great wanderers of the country, and the roads that he paved with his wish-magicked shoes became the most sacred of all the roads used by the creatures of their world, which is called in folklore the
roaming world.
And he always kept the shoes, the knife, the lantern, and the flint pebble. And . . . well, that's it.” Mrs. Hereward made a little bow over her mug and plate.

Milo's mother began to clap. “That was wonderful, Mrs. Hereward!” Everyone else very quickly joined in the applause.

Behind the tree, Sirin sat back and folded her arms. “All right,” she admitted. “That was pretty good. That's what you call a creation story, Negret. I can probably use that in a campaign someday.” She fished in her pocket, found a piece of paper and pen, and began scribbling.

Negret frowned and scooted off the hearth into the tree-cave. “But it was just a fairy tale,” he whispered.

“I don't care. I liked it.”

“But it doesn't tell us anything about why she's here.”

At this, the scholiast peered up from her paper. She looked at Mrs. Hereward through narrowed eyes. “Doesn't it? Ask her what happened to the wishy stuff, the things the magic people gave Julian Roamer. Bet you're wrong.”

“That's a bet. Mrs. Hereward,” Negret called, leaning out from behind the tree, “what happened to Julian's things, the shoes and the pebble and stuff?”

The old woman gave him an oddly discomfited look. “Well, I'm sure I don't know, dear. Goodness, my tea's gone cold. Must see about some hot water.” And she got awkwardly to her feet and bustled to the tea tray Mrs. Caraway had left on the coffee table.

Sirin looked up from her notes. “See? I told you.”

“What just happened?”

“The logical grownup answer would've been to say it was just a story, and the wishy things didn't really exist. But that
isn't
what she said.” Sirin grinned. “Here's a wild guess: I think Mrs. Hereward
doesn't
think it's just a story. And I think maybe she thinks there's some connection between it and this house.”

“I see.” The two of them watched Mrs. Hereward refill her cup with hot water, completely forgetting to add more tea.

Negret clambered back out into the open. “Anybody else?” he asked the other guests hopefully, climbing into the vacant chair on the other side of the fireplace.

Clem spoke up from where she sat on the rag rug before the hearth. “Can I make a request?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“I'd like to hear a story about this house.” All of a sudden, Negret was pretty sure if he'd dropped a pin in that room, it would've made a noise like the clash of cymbals. Did she mean she wanted
him
to tell a story?

His stomach gave a hard twist. Why hadn't it occurred to him that if he was going to ask everyone else to share, he might have to tell a story himself? In the book, the man who suggested the stories had told the first one.

But Clem beamed up at Milo's mom, who was leaning beside the grandfather clock that stood against the wall between the living room and the kitchen. “Would you mind telling us a bit about it?”

Mr. and Mrs. Pine glanced at each other. This was a tricky question, because while smuggling was a big part of the fabric of the city of Nagspeake and a huge part of life in the Quayside Harbors, the district Greenglass House overlooked, it was still, strictly speaking, illegal.

“I'd be glad to tell you what I know,” Mrs. Pine said at last. “Of course, Nagspeake records . . .” She shrugged. “Well, everybody knows they're not great. I've lived in this house since I was about Milo's age. My dad bought the place, mostly furnished, from a family named Whitcher.” She paused momentarily, probably, Milo figured, to give anyone who knew the name a chance to say
Wasn't that Doc Holystone's real name?
Nobody did.

“But now that you mention it,” she continued, “I do know a story you might like. It's a ghost story, though—something that happened here. Is that going to bother anyone?”

Around the room, the guests shook their heads and waited.

“Okay. Well, it happened . . . let's see, Milo was a baby, so ten or eleven years ago? One of our regular guests—a fellow who'd stayed with us before—came down to breakfast and told us he'd seen a dead man from his window.”

Milo nearly dropped his mug.
“What?”

“You heard me.” His mother wiggled her eyebrows. “And I'm sure you've all heard of Doc Holystone,” she continued. “Along with the Gentleman Maxwell and Ed Pickering and Violet Cross, he was one of the great runners—runners being what smugglers call themselves—of the last half century. Doc Holystone was supposedly captured and killed when I was a little girl. But I'm from the Quayside Harbors, so I grew up hearing about his exploits. And some say he was captured right on the grounds of this house. Some say that his son was here at the time and saw it happen.

“Of course,” she continued, “nobody said anything about that to my father when he bought the place. Folks didn't start talking about it until afterward, around the time my father opened the house as an inn, although certainly it was clear that something had gone very wrong—Holystone had vanished, and the surviving members of his family and crew had gone to ground so fast that the house hadn't even been cleared out. Years later, Ben and I inherited the inn, along with its regular guests. And then, one summer night when Milo was little, one of those guests . . .” She paused and looked at Mr. Pine. “It was Fenster, wasn't it?”

“That's what I remember. It was late for Fenster—that is, when he came to stay with us, it was usually in the early spring.”

Smugglers and their seasons,
Milo thought. He knew just who they were talking about. Fenster was a spring-season runner because he usually traded in illegal seedlings.

“Right. Well, maybe because it was summer, we put him in a different room than we usually did, one on the cooler side of the house.” Mrs. Pine's eyes flicked over at Mrs. Hereward. Fenster must've been staying in 3N, and it looked as if Milo's mother was working out whether to tell the old lady that the events she was about to relay had taken place in her room.
Don't do it,
Milo thought. Mrs. Hereward flew off the handle too easily to be told she was staying in a haunted room.

“A different room in a creaky old house can be a little disorienting, even frightening, perhaps,” Mrs. Pine went on, apparently coming to the same conclusion. “Milo can tell you something about that. Milo's camped out all over the inn. How different is each room, Milo, in terms of the creaky-freaky factor?”

“Very different,” he admitted. “It's not that they're scary, but you get used to the noises and drafts in one and they start to seem friendly and comfortable. Then if you move to another, they don't seem quite as friendly at first. You have to get used to them all over again.”

“Exactly. So when Fenster came down the first morning and mentioned that he'd seen something strange, we all sort of thought he was just having that new-room adjustment. Something woke him up, he said, and then something outside the window caught his eye. No, he didn't know what had woken him—probably a sound of some kind—and no, he didn't know what he'd seen. Probably a flash of something in the trees, or in the sky. No, he didn't want to change rooms, he'd just wanted to mention it. Then he ate three helpings of pancakes and everything seemed to be fine.

“But the next morning it happened again: Fenster came down and said that he'd woken in the night and seen something from his window. This time, though, he said he'd gotten up and crossed the room to the window for a better look. And what he'd seen was the figure of a young man standing in the trees and staring up at the house.