Never Kiss A Stranger (21 page)

The thought made Alys shiver.

Ira turned to her, his mouth twisted as if he’d consumed something bitter. “I don’t want you here,” he said without compunction. “‘Tis due to the likes of you that we live as
we do, and I’d as soon cut off one of me own arms than allow you above.”

“Ira, I—”

“But if I turn you away,” he said over her words, “‘tis likely you’ll only give away our place.”

“I wouldn’t,” Alys insisted. “I couldn’t find it myself—I have no idea where we are, where the road is, the river. I’m completely lost.”

“Think you I believe your lies,
lady?”
he spat nastily. “I can’t ken why you’d be with a commoner such as the man who lies above us but I would wager that it’s not but for your own greedy gain.”

“I love him,” Alys said. She hadn’t intended the confession, but there it was, and it was true. She wanted to tell Ira that Piers was her husband, but if Ira asked Piers, in his current state of delirium—and even once he was completely clearheaded—he would likely only deny her. “I’ve held my tongue in thanks for the aid you are giving us, but it is grossly unfair the horrid things you assume about me, simply because of my birth. You know me not, Ira.”

“I know enough of your kind,” he said, as if she were a terrible poison. “And a young woman run off from her rich family can only mean so many things.” He looked her up and down and Alys wanted to cringe. “Have his child in your belly, do you?”

“No!” Alys said, horrified. Her skin crawled with stinging heat.

Ira’s eyes narrowed and then he chuckled. “No? Perhaps not. But, surrounded by limp lords as you are, ‘tis likely what you love about him is in his breeches, you noble whore.”

Alys struck him. Ira’s old face snapped to the side with her sharp blow, but when his head came round again, his whole body followed. He grabbed Alys by her upper
arms, his gnarled fingers biting into her sore muscles. Layla jumped screeching to the ground, and Ira began marching away from the tree, pushing Alys backward in front of him while she struggled and flailed and tried not to drop Piers’s pack.

“Let go of me!”

Ira approached the swell of ground that sloped away from where their village hid and then shoved her over, grabbing Piers’s pack in the last instant. Alys windmilled her arms before falling and tumbling down the slight grade, Layla scampering through the leaves after her.

Alys slid to a stop on her side, her hips and back already weeping pain from her encounter with the old man’s snare. Layla scurried nimbly over to her and crouched behind her body. Alys looked up the hill to where Ira glared down at her, and eight or so of the wood people from deeper in the village had come to flank him. They stared down at her with blank faces, as if they were not at all surprised to see her there or by Ira’s treatment of her.

“Hah!” Ira growled and flung his hand at her as if he was shooing away a troublesome dog. Piers’s bag was already slung over one of the old man’s bony shoulders. “Get you from here,
whore,”
he emphasized. “Dare you not return, else I break with the oath I swore my father and kill a woman.” The old man turned and disappeared from the brink of the hill, while the wood people filled in the void of his presence, all still staring at her and none of them speaking.

“Are none of you going to help me?” she demanded, astounded.

No one so much as flinched.

Alys wanted to lay her numb face on her frozen forearms and simply cry. She felt as though she were living in a nightmare, lost in a dangerous wood, starving, injured,
and surrounded by rough social deviants who now had possession of a very ill and helpless Piers, not to mention his precious ring. No one would listen to her, no one would help her.

Her brow lowered.

Alys pushed herself to stand with her palms—sore and reddened from the cold and her death grip on the branch from earlier. She stared right back at the wood people while she snapped her fingers at Layla, calling the monkey to her shoulder. Alys began to climb the hillock in stuttering strides, one arm flailing out to the side for balance, the other clutching her bag at her hip. Layla clung to her like a barnacle.

When she reached the lowly summit, the wood people gave way for her to stand. She looked around at their faces, blowing hair out of her face. Her stomach was in a knot, but she was not about to let this group of people see her fear.

“Which way did he go?” she asked.

A middle-aged looking man pointed a leather clad arm toward the tree the brothers had climbed with Piers. Alys glanced at the double rope ladders hanging down and then back at the cluster of faces appraising her interestedly.

“None of you will try to stop me?”

“Why should we?” the man asked mildly. “You want to get tossed out of a tree …” He crossed his arms, shrugged. “Your neck.”

Alys squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Thank you.” She began marching toward the dangling ladders as if approaching a battlefield.

“She’s really going up there,” Alys heard the man say to his companions, as if he couldn’t believe her brazenness.

“Child, wait!” a woman’s voice called from behind
Alys, but she kept walking. She would not be turned away from the one thing in her life that was important, that mattered more than anything ever had. Piers. If she had to physically fight the old man, she would.

“Child!” Alys’s elbow was seized and she was pulled to a halt by a woman perhaps ten years her senior, with rich brown hair partially hidden by her hood, and eyes with kind tridents at their corners. The woman hesitated and looked askance at Layla for an instant. “Don’t go above. When Ira’s in a temper, he’s apt to say and do aught which he heartily regrets come the morrow.”

“My—” Alys again wanted to say husband, but she was unsure how the wood people would take her declaration. Would they then mark Piers as related to nobility and turn him away? “My friend is very ill, and he is up there alone with strangers, including one very mean old man, who has stolen a bag not belonging to him.”

“Your friend is in fine, fine hands. No better than Linny’s for a thousand fathoms,” the woman insisted, her grip gentling, but becoming more insistent all the same. “Ira is not a bad man, and if he’s taken your friend to Linny, no harm will come to him or his possessions by hand of those who dwell here.” The woman seemed to hesitate and then asked, “Did he fall?”

Alys shook her head. “No. It’s a fever.”

“God have mercy! Was he cut? Bitten?”

“He was injured a fortnight ago, but—” Alys paused suddenly, her mind going at once to the bandages on Piers’s hand, and then further back, to the night they had met at the Foxe Ring. Her stomach clenched.

“He was bitten. Layla”—she gestured to the monkey on her shoulder—“accidentally bit him, several days ago.”

The woman frowned and released Alys’s arm as she edged away from Alys and her monkey. “Well, there’ll be
naught you can do for him this night, as exhausted and cold as you seem.” She looked Alys up and down. “And hungry, too, I’d wager?”

Alys felt her eyes well with tears and she could do little more than nod hesitantly. “I am. Layla will not bite you, mistress. She is a gentle animal, you have my vow. Piers took her by surprise the night he was bitten, and she was merely frightened. She shan’t harm you.”

“I see. That is often the way with animals. Well, then.” The woman drew her arm around Alys’s waist, steering her gently toward the heart of the village. “I’m Ella. You—and Layla—may stay with me and my family tonight, rest, and then someone will speak to Ira for you in the morning.”

“No,” Alys said, shaking her head. No one would take her responsibilities from her again. “I would speak for myself.”

Ella paused. “Alright. But will you come with me? Take some food and drink and lie down?”

“Thank you very much,” Alys said in acceptance. “I’m Alys, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lady Alys,” Ella said with a smile.

“No. No lady here,” Alys said wryly. “Just Alys.”

Ella’s smile grew wider with knowing. “Come along then, Just Alys. I’ll help you into the tree.”

Alys balked to a stop.

“Tree?”

Alys awoke with a start, her breath huffing in white rushes from her mouth. In an instant, the nightmare that had roused her was gone, like the clouds of her own steamy breath. She blew out a relieved sigh and leaned back fully onto the sagging rope cot that was her bed. It felt like the most luxurious ticking, even after a long night of hard sleeping. She looked down to check on Layla, but the monkey was not there.

Alys bolted upright in the bed, her hands reaching out to grasp the rope sides and steady the swinging her motion had set off. She’d had quite her fill of swinging from a rope the previous evening. Ella’s family’s hut circled a large tree, its platform perhaps eight feet wide, trunk to outer edge. She could hear the sounds of the forest beyond the skins that covered the sidewalls like a tent, and the interior was largely dark thanks to the skins and the pine boughs laid over a crisscrossing frame of skinny limbs which formed the roof. Alys guessed that the hut was used mostly as sleeping quarters, as the interior contained little else save several more of the swinging cots and clothing hanging from pegs hammered into the tree trunk.

“Layla?” Alys called softly, not wishing to call attention to any of the villagers yet—she needed time to collect her thoughts and work up a plan of action for approaching Ira. But she was concerned that the monkey was gone from her side. Although Ella’s hospitality was a kindness Alys had not expected, she was still unsure about the nature of these people who chose to eke out such a rugged existence as outlaws that they had been relegated to legend. Alys herself could still scarcely believe any of it was real.

“Layla?” she whispered a bit more insistently.

“Not to worry, Lady Alys—I’ve your lovely pet right here.”

Alys looked over her left shoulder and saw the murky outline of a person—a girl from the sound of the voice, or perhaps a very young boy. Whoever it was clearly had Layla on their lap, and was feeding her something from a bowl.

“Oh. Hello,” Alys said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was unused to having a stranger present when she awoke. “Who are you?”

“I’m Tiny,” the shadow replied. “I—and most everyone else—was asleep when you arrived last night. Good morn to you. I fancy your monkey, milady. Reminds me of me baby brother.”

Alys huffed a laugh. “Thank you. She is very pretty, but also very troublesome at times.” Alys didn’t want to seem stingy, but she was uncomfortable with the entire situation. She patted her thigh. “Come here, Layla, and bid me good morn.”

Layla’s shadow seemed to turn toward her as if debating, and then Tiny spoke up again in a giggling voice.

“I don’t think she wishes to leave her breakfast just yet,
milady.” The shadow held forth a bowl. “Fresh turnip? I sliced it meself.”

“Perhaps in a bit,” Alys hedged. “Tiny, are you one of Ella’s”—daughters? Sons?—“children?”

“Aye, milady. Her oldest girl, am I. Nearly thirteen,” Tiny said proudly. “‘Tis why Mam allowed me to sit with you.”

“Oh.” Alys was deciding on the best method for disembarking from her cot. She shifted one leg as if to throw it over the side, but the whole thing swayed wildly, prompting Alys to bring her legs together quickly and grip the side ropes. Her experience with Ira’s snare was still too fresh in her mind.

“It’s best to just roll out at once and catch your feet under you,” Tiny advised sagely. “Else you’ll come upon your nose.” She set the bowl on the hut floor and then stood, and Alys saw Layla hop onto the girl’s shoulder easily. Tiny took a step toward the bed and held out her palm. “Take my hand, milady—I’ll steady you for your first time.”

“Thank you,” Alys mumbled and was surprised at the delicate feel of Tiny’s small hand—the child had been named suitably. Holding her breath, Alys rolled, and was grateful when she was able to catch her feet under herself with a huff of breath. She stood fully upright. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Well done, Lady Alys,” Tiny praised in her little girl voice. Standing next to the child, Alys was shocked to see that she—no giant herself—was likely a full foot taller than Tiny. Layla looked like a mighty griffin perched on the girl’s slender shoulder. “We can go to ground now, if you wish—I’m certain Mam’s put back some porridge for you if you’d prefer it to turnips.”

“Yes, thank you.” Alys began following Tiny around the perimeter of the platform, to the other side of the tree.

“I hope you don’t mind using the lift,” the girl called back over her shoulder. “I’m disallowed from using the ladders ‘cause of me being spindly—Papa fears I’ll slip and break me very back. He’s likely right. The lads, they simply swing down from ropes more oft than the ladders, but not me and Mam.” She paused. “But I reckon you could go on down the ladder yourself.” The girl seemed reluctant to offer this courtesy.

“I must confess that I was not fond of the ladder last night.” In fact, Alys had been scared for her life, feeling that the rope conveyance would buck out from beneath her feet at any moment and spill her to the ground. Spindly or not, it would not have been a comfortable landing.

“You’ll fancy the lift then,” Tiny said. “And since we’re together, we can lower ourselves and not have to wait for one of the lads.”

Alys frowned to herself as Tiny and Layla ducked through a fold in the skin-wall. Then a triangle of forest appeared as Tiny pulled the covering aside. It looked as though Alys was about to step into the thin, cold air between the gray branches.

“Don’t fear, milady,” Tiny encouraged. “We carry Mam and all the littlest ones up it in a go—it will for certain hold three wee girls such as us.”

Alys stepped onto a square wooden platform butted up to the hut floor, and her breath caught in her throat at the view around her. They were truly in the trees, the ground at least twenty feet below. The breeze stirred her hair, scented with wood smoke and winter and the perfume of the trees themselves. Under their feet, villagers crossed to and fro attending to their chores, several carried
bundles of long branches strapped to their backs, two men suspended a large buck on a spit, a woman herded bright red chickens with a switch. Children ran among the busied in play, fires crackled under tripod and bubbling cauldron. All around them in the surrounding trees, other huts had their skin walls pulled aside, and long ropes strung from branch to branch supported laundry and several woven rugs.