R. L. LaFevers (7 page)

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entered the stream without causing a single ripple. He took up a position in front of a large rock that cast a shadow over the water. He tossed his beard over his shoulder and then bent over, hands poised.

The old man held so still it was as if he had frozen. The shadowed grays of his hair and cloak blended in with the shadows cast by the trees and the silver water as it rushed over the rocks. He was difficult to see, and Wat had to blink to make sure he was still there. After watching for a while, Wat grew bored and stretched out on the rock, flexing his aching foot. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest, trying to identify them all. It was a game he played often, a way to keep his hearing sharp. He heard the rustling of the leaves, grass being buffeted by the wind, the gurgling of the stream, the hum of an insect, and a loud
whoop!Then
a large splash. He jerked to a sitting position.

The old man sat waist-deep in the stream holding a giant trout in his hands. "Don't just sit there gawking! Come grab this cursed fish so I can get up!" Wat hurried over and took the slippery, wiggling fish from the gnarled hands. The old man pushed himself to his feet and stared down at his dripping robe in disgust. "Must've lost my balance," he muttered. "Too old for this sort of thing, really." He squelched his way to the stream bank and snatched the trout from

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Wat's hands. "That's my dinner, boy. Now I'll sit in the sun while you go catch your own."

"Aren't you afraid of taking his lordship's fish?" Wat asked, more than a little nervous about doing just that.

His question was met with a snort of disgust. "Norman lords! Those brutes don't own that which lives here. These creatures belong to the earth, as they have for hundreds of years before these Normans came. Saying otherwise doesn't make it so."

Wat thought the Thatcher family might be tempted to disagree, but he was emboldened by the old man's words, so he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

It took far longer for Wat to catch his trout. He tried to copy what he had seen the old man do, but there must have been some other secret to it. His sharper hearing was no help at all with the loud bubbling of the brook, and time and again his hands came up empty. When he was done, he was even wetter and grumpier than the old man had been, but at least he had his fish, even if it was small and probably the slowest fish in all of Britain.

The old man watched Wat emerge from the stream with a spark of approval in his eye. "You don't complain much, do you, boy?" he said at last.

Wat paused for a minute, aware of the icy water trickling

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down his back and puddling between his toes. "I've never found it to do much good, is all."

The old man nodded. "True enough. Come, we've still much work to do before nightfall." He turned and headed back to the cottage.

As they reentered the shadow of the trees, Wat's damp flesh chilled instantly, and this time he couldn't help but shiver.

A thought occurred to him. "Do you have a name, or something, I could call you ...?" His words stumbled to a halt as the old man turned and fixed him with an unfathomable gaze. Wat saw all sorts of things he couldn't recognize flicker in the depths of the man's eyes. The old man regarded him for a full minute before he turned and continued walking.

"Well, now that you ask," he said over his shoulder, "Grandfather would do nicely, I think."

Wat's mouth dropped open in astonishment.

"But if you choke overmuch on that," the old man continued, walking on, "you can call me Griswold. And you'd best close your mouth before I mistake you for the trout you just caught and fix you for my supper."

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***

Chapter 8

Wat couldn't find his tongue. "M-my grandfather?"

"Yes, your mother's father, to be exact."

"But ...she never talked about you."

The old man stopped again and turned around. "She didn't?"

"Well, only once or twice. And it was as if you were part of a story that had happened long ago."

Griswold turned and resumed walking. "And so it was."

Wat could scarcely believe his ears. All these years of being alone, of struggling to get by, just him and his mother, and there'd been someone else all along. Barely a stone's throw away. And amid all their suffering, his mother had rarely talked about him. Did she know that he still lived here--so deep and alone in the forest? Why didn't he ever come to the village? Wat had assumed the man was dead.

Wat quickened his pace to catch up to his grandfather. "How come I've never seen you before?"

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"You've never come this far into the forest before," was the reply.

"But you could have come to the village to visit us," Wat persisted.

"I never knew you existed until a few hours ago."

"You didn't?" That felt better somehow. As if, maybe, he would have visited Wat if he'd only known. But how could he not know?

"I knew your mother was living in the village," Griswold continued. "Where else would she have gone? But she walked out on me, on our life. It was clear she wanted nothing more to do with me or our forest home, so I let it be. The time comes for the young to leave the nest. It was her time and I would not hold her back. Now," Griswold said, looking up at the horizon. "We must hurry so we can make ready for nightfall." He began walking faster.

Wat's mother had just walked out, with no explanation? Had she come to hate the forest, then? Now that Wat thought upon it, she had never ventured out into it with him, almost as if she had avoided it. But why?

Wat's questions followed him all the way back to the cottage. And while he knew they would not leave him, he tried to put them aside for the rest of the afternoon as he and

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Griswold did what they could to make the cottage ready for the night. Besides, Wat was reluctant to do much thinking in Griswold's presence. The old man had an uncanny ability to sense his thoughts. It was probably safest to do his thinking in private.

His first chore was to empty the old stuffing out of the mattress and fill it with the new leaves while his grandfather, or Griswold, as Wat had decided to call him, retied the ropes on the bed. When Wat brought the freshly stuffed mattress back inside, he found the old man still struggling, his gnarled fingers fumbling helplessly with the stiff, coarse rope.

"Here, I'll do that if you like," Wat offered.

"Eh?" Griswold looked up in some confusion. "Aye. That would be good." He stared at his hands ruefully. "These don't seem to work as well as they once did." Wat knelt beside the bed frame and grabbed the end of a piece of rope while his grandfather went to study the door to see what it would take to get it back on its hinges.

Just as Wat got the last of the ropes retied, he looked up to find the old man struggling to wrestle the heavy door up off the floor. Wat hurried over and grabbed one end, and together they were able to hoist it to an upright position.

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Griswold peered at him from around the side of the door. "You're a handy bit to have around, aren't you?"

Wat shrugged, but felt a warm glow of pleasure spread through him at being found helpful. All his life he'd been shooed away, dismissed as useless. He'd always known he could be helpful, if only someone would give him the chance. But no one ever had. Until now.

He stepped forward and used his back to hold the heavy door in place while Griswold tried to fix the decayed hinge. "There!" Griswold said at last, and stepped back to survey his handiwork. Wat stepped away from the door and turned to look. It hung crookedly and daylight showed all around.

Griswold snorted in disgust. "I'm no carpenter. But the nights are warm now. It's going to have to do."

Next, Griswold handed Wat a long branch, jagged and scarred on one end, with dried leaves still clinging to the other. "Birch," the old man explained, "knocked down by a storm some time ago, in case you're wondering. Use it for the cobwebs on the ceiling and shelves, as well as any other harmful things that lurk among the dust."

Wat hoped he meant spiders, but couldn't help feeling that he meant something else entirely, then decided he didn't want to know more. When he was finished, Griswold

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instructed him to use the branch to sweep the biggest bits of debris off the cottage floor.

Just when Wat was sure he was done, Griswold turned to him one more time. "Get those two buckets and take them back to the stream for filling. Your nose will lead you right to it."

Grateful for the chance to be alone, Wat picked his way through the trees, letting his thoughts wander as they would. He had a grandfather. To have a grandfather in his life was something he'd never imagined. His family consisted solely of himself and his mother. That was all there had ever been. He wasn't sure he needed more. And why had his mother told him that his grandfather lived too far away? Why did his mother never visit her father? Why had she run away? No matter how many times he asked the questions, he could find no answers.

When the stream came into view, he gladly put aside his thoughts and filled the buckets with the cool, clear water. When they were full, he set them down, knelt near the edge of the stream, and dipped his hands into the water to wash his face.

A fluttering motion caught his eye and he noticed the feather in his hair, reflected back by the water. Quickly, he averted his gaze, as he always did when confronted with his

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own reflection. But the stream called to him just as surely as if it whispered his name. There was no one to observe him looking at himself, no one to call out jests and crude remarks. For some reason, his reflection beckoned. Perhaps it was to see if he had changed somehow. If all that he had been through in the last day had changed him as much on the outside as he felt changed on the inside. Pulled by some force he could not name, Wat leaned over the water and looked.

There he was, reflected in the water. Slowly, his hand reached up to his face and his fingers traced the scarred, bruised flesh around his eye, the dark red skin that surrounded his pale, unseeing eye and caused people to cross themselves whenever he was near. He had been born this way, and no one knew why. That's why they blamed it on the work of the devil. His mother had told him that his birth had been long and difficult. Perhaps that is what had caused the deformity. He would never know. All he knew was that it had shaped his life since the day he was born, and no one had been able to see past it, except his mother, and now Griswold. They seemed to see it as a mark of favor.

He sighed and pushed himself to his feet. Maybe living in the forest, away from the townspeople, would be for the better. He wouldn't miss the pain of their cruel taunts and

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jeers. He had often longed to be free of their harsh judgments, their suspicions, and had looked forward to not having to wonder when the next boot heel or clenched fist would come his way. No, the only thing he would miss from the village was his mother, but between her duties in the kitchens and his home in the stable, their paths rarely crossed much, and when they did, it was always at great risk to her. He turned and headed back to the cottage.

"Ah! There you are," Griswold called out as Wat approached. "Here, I'll take those. Bring in the kindling, and while I start the fire, you can clean and gut our fish."

Wat handed Griswold the buckets and headed back outside. Cold, hungry, and fatigued, he found he was tired of being ordered around like a scullery maid. It was bad enough in the village, where anyone above him in station-- everyone in the village--had the right. Here in the forest, where he'd imagined he'd be free, it bothered him more. He thought briefly of telling this to the old man, but a lifetime of training held him back. Instead, he set about his task. When his arms were full of small dry twigs and bracken, he returned to the cottage.

"Excellent!" Griswold declared as he took the kindling from Wat's arms. He placed it in the hearth, then handed Wat the fish. "Here. Clean these, and then we will have supper.

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Oh, and save the innards for the falcons. It's the best we can do for tonight."

Wat hated cleaning fish, but it was something he was familiar with and certainly easier than skinning a small mouse. When he was done, he carried the cleaned fish back to the cottage in one pail and the disgusting parts in another. He stopped at the door, surprised at how welcoming the place felt. The cleaning they had done that afternoon had greatly improved the cottage's appearance, and the fire crackled merrily, casting warm light throughout the dim room. It felt like he'd always imagined a home would feel.

"Thought you'd never finish." Griswold came and took the fish from Wat. "I'll roast these while you tend to your birds."

Wat hurried over to the makeshift nest and knelt beside his charges. "I'm going to have to come up with names for you." He held out a small piece of fish gut to the smaller one, who snatched it from Wat's fingers. Once the fish was in his mouth, the bird paused, puzzled at the strange taste. Wat laughed out loud. The falcon looked as if he would like to spit it out, if he could only figure out how. Wat held out a piece to the larger bird, who approached it with caution. She seemed less surprised by the taste, maybe because she took the time to smell the food first. The birds ate the fish, but not as eagerly as they had the mouse.