The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (28 page)

Valory seemed oblivious to her own
appearance and she ultimately treated my comment with the same indifference.
“Oh well,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know any Slaugh, so who’s to say I
should act like them?”

“But wasn’t Almyra a Slaugh?” I
asked.

Valory laughed. The robust cackle
was a little off-putting.

“Almyra, a Slaugh!” she said.
“She’d think that quite funny if she were here! I guess I haven’t mentioned it,
but Almyra was a Gnome!” she slapped her knee and burst out in more laughter.
When she finished she wiped her eyes and said, “While we’re on the subject,
I’ve been meaning to ask what kind of folk you come from. I thought when I
brought you back here that you was some kind of diseased Fay, but by the looks
of your ears I’d say otherwise.”

“I am part human.”

Valory gawked. “You’re yankin’ my
tail feather! Almyra said humans were just a myth, like a sort of bedtime
story!”

I had already told Valory my full
name. If she knew anything about Flute Keepers she didn’t let on. It was kind
of nice, actually. People who were ignorant of my origins never judged me as
harshly as those who knew history by rote.

“It’s real,” I said. “I was born in
the human world. I lived there until I was fifteen. That’s when I found out
that my dad was really from Faylinn and I came to live here.”

“Leapin’ larklizards! So where are
your parents now?”

“Dead,” I said.

Valory pinched her lips together.
“Geez, I’m sorry. I never knew my parents. Almyra said she found me out in the
woods, half-starved. She brought me home and here I’ve been ever since. I
s’pose that’s why I don’t care much for my fellow Slaugh. Any dolts that could
leave a defenseless little baby out in the woods aren’t worth two clods of
dirt, you know?” She spat on the floor. “To heck with em.”

By a month’s end, I was able to
hobble around the hut on my own. There was little to do but wait around while
Valory went out hunting. I didn’t get outside much, but I could hear the cold
winds blasting the sides of the little hut. When Valory came back she always
had to stamp snow from her boots. Her hunts became less fruitful, but she had
stores of dried meats hidden away. Some days she and I just sat in front of the
fire sipping hot mugs of herbal tea. I shared stories of the human world while
Valory told me all her accumulated mountain lore.

I couldn’t have asked for a better
host. Valory was attentive to the point of annoyance.

“Do you want your pillow fluffed
up?” she asked five times a day.

“No, I’m good, thanks.”

“Your tea isn’t steaming anymore.
Do you need it re-heated?”

“It’s fine, Val.”

“How’s your head?”

“A little tender today, but it’s
healing up nicely.”

At this point, she’d chew on her
lip for a moment and then offer to check my remaining bandages.

“No, no, no.” They’re fine.
Nothing’s falling off and I haven’t got a fever, so no infection.”

She’d look relieved for a while,
then come up with more awkward questions.

“So, um…everything coming out
okay?”

It took a few rounds before I
figured out what she was getting at with this one. “No problems in the outhouse,
although we could use some more dried flowers out there.”

By the time I was fully recovered I
was also crazy with restlessness. I had almost no hope of finding Garland and
Lord Finbarr. There was no news of goings on at the castle so I had no idea what
had befallen the Larues or if Chloe had come back.

“Sit down! You’re giving me the
jitters!” Valory chided me day.

I stopped pacing before the hut’s
lone, small window and glared at the snowdrift that covered it. “How long until
this weather lets up?”

Valory smiled knowingly. “I can
tell this is your first winter in the mountains. That snow won’t melt until the
first warm winds of spring. We’re in until the moon gets fat and thin again two
more times. Best get comfy.”

“TWO MORE MONTHS?” I wailed.

“Aye, the winter can be cruel,”
Valory said, blowing on her bowl of soup. She stretched out before the fire and
looked perfectly content. “No worries. You can come ice fishing with me on the
next clear day we get. The wind sounds like it’s dying down. Maybe tomorrow,
eh? Won’t that be nice?”

I didn’t want to go fishing. I
wanted to find my friends. I had given Valory sparse details about how I’d come
to fall from the sky, omitting everything about my ties to the royal family.
For all Valory knew, the Larues and I were wanted for opposing the duke. Valory
couldn’t have cared less. She paid no mind to Faylinn’s politics. Her awareness
of the world was limited to her flying distance within the mountain range. Some
days I found her ignorance refreshing. Some days it drove me mad.

“How can you NOT know about the
massacre at Moonlight Pass?” I exclaimed one afternoon as we knocked icicles
from the roof of the hut. I had been trying all morning to teach Valory about Slaugh
history. “It happened in this very mountain range!”

“These mountains stretch halfway
across the continent,” Valory countered. “Almyra showed me on a map once. It
had drawings with all these funny little squiggly symbols.”

I smacked a hand to my forehead.
“You mean you don’t know how to read, either?”

Looking offended, Valory pulled
herself up to her full height. She could not be very intimidating, though,
because her hat brim was full of snow. “I may not be some high-fangled scholar,
but I can read the moon and the signs in the forest better than anyone! You
think you could do better? Maybe you should go find your own dinner tonight!”

I did my best to glare back, but
the overloaded hat brim suddenly spilled snow in Valory’s face. I cracked up
laughing.

“Take that!” Valory said, shoving
me into a snowdrift.

We were both in high spirits
because the sun shone brightly and even though it was still cold, the air lacked
some of the bite that we’d grown used to. Winter seemed to be loosening its
grip.

Almost every day we trekked to a
nearby stream. The hole that Valory had cut through the ice was growing larger.
Valory had a collapsible fishing pole that she always carried on her belt. She
made me one out of a stick and a thin strand of rope. We used bits of dried
meat for bait.

There was a certain technique to
fishing that Valory had perfected. I was not nearly so skilled at it. All I
seemed to catch were crayfish and minnows.

Valory was usually patient with my
attempts, but she couldn’t help poking fun at me. “If you catch any more
minnows there won’t be any food left for the big fish to eat!”

I frowned as I tossed a tiny fish
back into the creek. “Cut it out. I’m using the exact same method as you.”

Valory angled her hat cockily. “Now
that’s where you’re wrong. You’re just poking your line in there and jerking it
around a bit. You’ve got to
hear
the fish. Listen for big ones
approaching and then tease em’ a little. Wiggle the bait ever so slightly, then
let it rest and wiggle a little more.” She demonstrated by landing a fish the
size of her arm. “See?” she said, holding it up proudly.

“I can’t hear the fish under the
ice,” I said. “That’s a Slaugh thing. I suppose you can smell them coming from
a mile downstream, too?”

“Oh, sure,” Valory said. She tossed
her catch into a woven basket and clapped the lid shut. “I reckon that’ll do
for now. We’d best get back. Smells like more snow’s coming.”

As usual, she was right. Hard little
flakes began pelting us before we made it back to the hut. I felt disappointed.
The past few days had been warm enough to melt a lot of the snow already on the
ground. I had watched it melt away in excitement, anticipating the coming spring.
Much as I enjoyed Valory’s company, I was eager to set off after the Finbarrs.

I trudged grumpily up the barren
slope that led back to the hut with the fish basket on my arm. Valory took to
the air to see if she could spot any animals roaming about before the snow got
too heavy. For once, I was glad to be free of her.

Valory unnerved me sometimes. Part
of it was definitely her laugh. It was very loud and hearty, but it always hit
me like an unpleasant case of déjà vu. Then there were the other mannerisms
that struck me as unpleasantly familiar. There was something in the way she
tossed her chin and in the haughty stiffness of her shoulders when she stood up
straight. Her eyes bothered me the most. In the rare moments when she was being
quiet or thoughtful, her dark eyes with their thick, black lashes roused all
sorts of strange feelings.

A slick patch of rock tripped me
up. I dropped the fish basket and caught myself by putting out my hands.
Grumbling curses, I sat up and brushed myself off. The hut lay just over the
next ridge. It looked tiny sticking out of the mud and snow. We’d left the fire
going. A thin trail of smoke came from the chimney.

Goosebumps rose all over my arms. I’d
seen this before. The little stone hut, whipped by snowy winds, wasn’t my own memory.
I’d seen it from another’s point of view.

“
Marafae,
” I whispered.

It was the very same hut where
Marafae had gone to give birth under the care of the old Gnome lady with the
eye patch. The Gnome must have been Almyra. But Almyra told Marafae that her
baby had died.
A baby girl
, she’d said,
a sickly little thing
…

That was roughly nineteen years
ago. Valory couldn’t be much older than that. With a prickle down my spine, I
realized that the thing I didn’t like about Valory’s laughter was that it was
so much like Marafae’s.
And those eyes—those are Hagan’s eyes
! I knew it
because Lev’s were the same.

When Valory landed next to me
several minutes later, I was sitting with my head buried in my knees, laughing
hysterically.

“Are you okay?” Valory asked. “Why
are the fish on the ground?”

My whole body shook. It was my first
real mental breakdown and I was determined to make the most of it.

“
She lied
,” I said in a high
voice. Then I broke down laughing again.

Looking alarmed, Valory reached out
a hand to help me up. “I think you’ve been outside in the cold too long. Come
on in and I’ll get you some tea.”

I slapped her hand away and jumped
to my feet. “SHE LIED!” I shouted with all the force in my lungs. “DO YOU KNOW
WHO YOU ARE?”

Valory wrinkled her brow. “Who
lied? What are you talking about?”

Without a word, I sprinted down the
slope. A little burial mound stood near the hut. Valory had adorned it with
rocks and an arrangement of sticks and animal furs. I kicked the little
memorial, then picked up some of the rocks and threw them violently at the
mound. “STUPID, LYING HAG!”

Valory pounced on me from the air.
She dragged me backwards. I kicked, clawed, screamed and cursed. It was no use.
Valory was much stronger. When gentle force didn’t work, she hauled back her
fist and punched me in the jaw.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
Valory shouted. “That’s Almyra’s grave!”

Stunned, but still unhinged, I
rubbed my jaw and pointed at the dirt. “That old Gnome is responsible for
things you can’t even imagine! A demon is free because of her—because of a lie
she told to your mother!”

Valory bristled. Her eyes blazed
black fury and her wings tensed stiffly above her shoulders. “How can you say
that? You never knew Almyra! She raised me from a baby, took care of me—”

“She stole you from your real
mother!” I shouted. “She caused her to go mad and countless people have died
because of it!”

Valory roared and launched herself
at me. She wrapped her hands around my throat. “Take it back!” she said,
shaking me. “Almyra was harmless!”

I began choking. Sparkly lights
danced into my field of vision. It was the wake-up that I needed. It occurred
to me that I was dealing with a very angry, very powerful Slaugh who could
snuff me out in an instant if she really wanted to.

With my own emotions back under
control, I sought strength from inside myself to create a barrier. It pushed
Valory backwards, causing her to fall. I stumbled away from her, wheezing for
breath.

Valory got quickly back to her
feet.

“I’m sorry,” I wheezed. “I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.” I held up my hands as a sign of defeat.

Valory stood rigid, clenching and
unclenching her fists. “What’s got these crazy notions in your head? I ought to
kill you where you stand you ungrateful little wretch!”

She looked frightful. The similarity
to Marafae was uncanny. I gulped and took a deep breath. “We need to talk about
this. I’ll tell you everything. When I’m done you can decide if I’m crazy or
not.”

“After you fix the grave!” Valory
said, pointing to the toppled memorial.

I lowered my head meekly and bent
down to pick up some of the stones I’d thrown. I had no idea how to convince
Valory of what I knew. I had no proof that Almyra had lied. All I had was a
memory that wasn’t even my own.

Then I recalled a small detail.

Valory stood over me, huffing like
an angry bull. “Pick em all up!” she barked.

As I placed the stones back in a
neat pile, I asked slowly, “Did it hamper Almyra much having an eye patch?”

“Well, no, not much but sometimes
she…wait a minute. I never told you she only had one eye! How did you know
that?”

“I’ve seen her,” I said.

Valory jerked me up by the elbow.
“Get in the house.”

“Only if you promise not to choke
me again,” I said, rubbing my sore throat.

“Sure,” Valory said in a not so
convincing tone.

In the tense hour that followed, I
laid out everything I knew starting with my own story of how I came to be in
Faylinn. I told Valory all about Bleeding Bastion and my first encounter with
the demon, Robyn. Then I related my meeting with Marafae on the Isle of Avalon,
carefully describing the memories that Marafae had shown me.