The Ruby Dream (3 page)

Chapter Four

I stepped hesitantly past the tree line of the
Haunted Wood. I knew I shouldn’t be wandering with a stranger about, but after
the man had disappeared toward Pat Manor’s and I’d parted ways with Wyn, I
couldn’t help but take a peek, drawn to the woods by an invisible force. I’d
been having my persistent dream again, and the Haunted Wood held a hope I
didn’t dare put into words. A hope I’d harbored for years … a yearning for a
mere glimpse of my past.

There was a spindly white
tree just past the edge of the forest that glowed bright as a star at night. It
was where I usually saw my specters. But tonight, the sun hadn’t set yet, and the
tree was just a flat, chalk white. As soon as I touched a hand to its trunk,
Zora appeared.

The only hummingbird I’d
ever named, the little iridescent green bird whipped out of a hole in the tree
as if she’d recognized my footsteps. This particular bird had been visiting me
for as long as I could remember. Many hummingbirds flew down to follow me
through the forest or the fields when they pleased, but this one sometimes
swooped into my room to sit with me at night. In the hours I’d lain with her,
dreaming and musing the thoughts of a lonely child, I’d named her Zora.

“Hello, there,” I cooed,
extending a finger. The tiny bird’s wings hummed as she lowered to rest on my
finger, her tiny feet grasping my skin with a scratchy squeeze. Her black feet
were covered by two tufts of white cottony down, making it look like she wore
little boots.

With a heavy heart, I gazed
around me. I loved the tiny birds, and they usually lifted my mood, but that
isn’t what I’d come to see tonight. No matter how many times I saw the strange,
ephemeral little girls in the Haunted Wood, I would always trudge back, longing
to see them again. To verify that it hadn’t been a dream. To wait for another
ghost to appear. One I longed to see with all my heart – a ghost from the
depths of my past. And also to assure myself that I wasn’t as mad as a
meadowlark. Which is what Maisie called people who said they saw visions in the
Haunted Wood.

“It’s the name that does
it,” Maisie liked to complain. “If you called it the Flying Pig Wood, they’d be
seeing flying pigs, wouldn’t they?” In fact, Pat Manor was the only one left in
Killybeg who saw apparitions in the Haunted Wood. Well, besides me. But nobody
knew about me. It was the kind of thing to solidify people’s opinion of you,
and in the old days, people were known for sending away the “loons,” as they
were still apt to be called. It was said there was danger in keeping the
deranged around society, so they were sent off to fare for themselves in the
wild bogs. Pat Manor had narrowly escaped that fate due to a slightly mad mother
of his, but there was no telling how the townspeople would react to another.

So I kept my mouth shut.

When the girls had first
appeared to me back when I was nine, I hadn’t told anyone. Even children knew
it was dangerous to be deemed a loon. I’d eventually divulged what I saw to
Wyn, but he’d urged me to tell no one else, and suggested that the moon was
playing tricks on my eyes.

Tricks or not, with the sun
still ruling the sky, my ghosts wouldn’t appear today. I’d never seen them in
the daylight. And I didn’t dare wait here until dark. Not with a stranger in
Killybeg.

“There’s danger afoot, you
know,” I whispered to the little hummingbird on my finger, smiling as she cocked
her head at my words. Her tail was long and forked, each half ending in a shiny
black spade-shaped feather that flowed like waves through the wind when she flew.

“Do you want to come home
with me?” I asked. “I’d hate for you to be out here with the stranger.” I
turned to leave the Haunted Wood and the little bird settled on my finger
comfortably. Unlike the spectral girls in the woods, the hummingbirds were
something I
could
share with Maisie.

When I reached the little
azure house, I paused. Maisie was framed in the front window, which sported a
splintery crack clean across it. She was washing dishes, but her head didn’t
move pleasantly from side to side as she hummed. Not anymore. It had been a
long time since Maisie hummed or sang or danced while she worked. Now she
rubbed one lumpy hand, twisted with pain, against the other and lamented the
way her knees ached. It sent a worry through me that I didn’t know how to cope
with.

Maisie had been old for as
long as I could remember. She’d come to Killybeg around the same time I had. And
while she was leaving the bigger cities in the East, looking for a quieter life,
my parents disappeared at sea together in a town down South. I’d been swept
into nearby towns by neighbors looking for someone to take in the orphan, and in
Killybeg, the kindly old maid, new to the area, had taken me, only a toddling
child then, into her home without a second thought. With Sarah and Vill Martin
next door, and their little boy, Wyn, I’d had a family. A real family. When
Vill was crushed by his horse in the fields, I’d mourned as his own daughter.
When Pat Manor had given Wyn one of his dog’s pups, I’d helped Wyn pick out the
name Felix. When I’d grown up and yearned for a job to make my own living,
Sarah had given me a job in the bakery. When I outgrew my dresses, Maisie sewed
me new ones. They were my family, and I was part of theirs. So every time
Maisie complained of an ache or a pain, my own heart skipped a frantic,
desperate beat.

Could I really leave Maisie
to grow old alone? The woman had taken me in when I was orphaned. Could I
really walk away on The Great and Mighty Voyage just as she was facing the
years in which she would need care and love?

“Child? What are you doing
staring like you’ve seen a ghost?” Maisie had stuck her head out the little
window and was smiling warmly at me. Probably the first smile she’d given all
day, I thought. She didn’t smile as much as she used to.

Before she could go on, her
old eyes squinted at my finger and an even bigger smile lit up her face. “Ah, a
visitor, I see!”

She shut the window with a
rap
and, a few moments later, appeared
in the doorway, wiping her hands on the long, blue apron embroidered with
colorful birds, which she’d worn every day since I was little. Little holes
were scattered throughout the fabric now, but Maisie wasn’t the type to care.

“Hello, dear creature,” she
said. She stepped carefully through the rock-strewn yard. “Won’t grow a weed,”
she muttered, kicking angrily at a rock that blocked her path. It bounced
across the yard and landed in a pathetic bunch of lettuce that we’d been trying
to grow for months. The rocky terrain of Killybeg only increased the
townspeople’s dependence on the wealth of the mines, but that didn’t stop
Maisie from trying to grow vegetables with increasing annoyance.

She stopped in front of me,
her brow wrinkled. Most people found her rather harsh and difficult, but I knew
the real Maisie. The one who’d tucked me in all through my childhood and sat up
with me when the trees outside cast scary shadows on my bedspread. She wiped
the back of her arm across her forehead, ruffling the tips of her curly, white
hair that she always wore short – “practical,” she would say. Her sight
wasn’t what it once was, and she had to squint to see the tiny creature. “Did
you come to visit Ruby?”

“I went to visit her,” I
corrected.

“Ah. Of course. But she’d
only travel all that way with a true friend,” she explained. “In the old days,
you know, before the siege, people who claimed to be mages said that they would
tame hummingbirds for the royal family to keep as pets.”

Of course I had heard this
all before. I’d been hearing it all my life. But along with her sight and her
frail body, Maisie’s memory was not what it had been. People whispered that her
mind was going. And it was the fear for her health that kept me from correcting
the old woman now.

“Yes, it was a symbol of
the royal house.” She touched one wrinkled finger to the hummingbird’s back and
instead of shrinking away like she did when Wyn tried to touch her, the
hummingbird bent her head into Maisie’s touch.

“It was said the mages
could talk to the hummingbirds,” I offered, playing along to Maisie’s favorite
fairy tale.

“Mm-hm, that’s right,
child.” As she smiled, her eyes crinkled, and such love and pride shone through
the gold flecks that I couldn’t find it in me to believe what people said about
her. Maisie was old as the mines, but she’d outlast each one of us.

“And the way these
creatures follow you,” she went on. “Why, you
must
have mage blood in you.”

She said it with some
humor, as though she didn’t actually believe in the mages, but she had no idea
how many times I’d wished, prayed, hoped, begged the God above that I was a
mage. Anything to change my quiet orphan existence into something exciting.
Something worth living.

But the God I prayed to had
never seen fit to reveal my true heritage to me, and now that he was finally
giving me a way to live an exciting life, going across the water with Wyn, I
was shrinking away from it. I was scared. And that made me feel guilty.

“Let’s go start dinner,” I
said, placing a hand on her arm and steering her back toward the house.

As we neared the door,
Zora’s wings started their frantic dance and she lifted away with a hum. Inside,
it was sweltering. Maisie had two fires going despite the warmth outside, and my
spine straightened involuntarily. Was the old woman’s mind really going?

“Are you cold, Maisie?” I
asked skeptically.

“Ah, heavens no, child.
Isn’t it a million and two degrees outside?”

“Then why have you lit the
fires?”

“Ah, the little one’s
feeling blue. The poor thing’s been shivering since the morning,” she explained,
pointing a crooked thumb toward the open fireplace.

Relief and concern flooded
me at the same time. Maisie wasn’t going mad just yet, but a tiny lamb was
curled up on a red yarn blanket in front of the fire. As I knelt beside him, I
could see that his tiny limbs were shaking.

“What’s wrong with him?” I
asked, gingerly running a finger over his curly wool back. Maisie’s sheep made
the warmest sweaters on the Amethyst Coast, so they were taken care of as the
tiny princes and princesses they were.

“Times are difficult for
everyone, child,” she said cryptically. “Did you hear about the stranger?”

I nodded, but realized
Maisie was busy cooking and wouldn’t have seen me. “Yes … ” I said, my voice
trailing away. Mentioning that I’d spoken to the man would only worry Maisie.
And if Sarah found out … she was the worry queen.

“Word has it he’s been
walking around asking all sorts of questions,” Maisie said.

“Like what?”

“Like what sort of mines
are in the area. How much of that is retained here, and how much is traded. Pat
Manor has it in that thick skull of his that he’s sizing the place up for a
band of thieves.” She didn’t sound particularly convinced.

“It’s not unheard of,” I
said. “Especially in a town with such close wood coverage. They’d escape as
easily as that.” I snapped my fingers.

But she didn’t look
convinced, and I myself didn’t actually believe a thief had come to Killybeg.
If he truly intended to sack the place, surely he wouldn’t be so bold as to
stay in a boardinghouse in the town, seen by all. Would he? The feeling of his
eyes on my ruby necklace sent a spark of shivers across my back.
Maybe he would.

I heard Felix barking
before I heard the angry chatter that followed him. When the front door creaked
open, Felix darted inside before the Martins.

“Why are you shouting on my
doorstep?” Maisie demanded, hands dripping with gravy perched on her hips.

“Because this here lad’s
just told his poor mother he intends to take to the mines!”

Chapter Five

Felix stepped quietly toward me and looked
down at the lamb in my lap, pressing his wet, black nose against the lamb’s
head. The hackles on his back slowly raised and I clamped a hand around his
muzzle before he could bark.

“You leave him alone!” I
snapped. The dog’s ears fell backward and his eyes opened wide, embarrassed to
have been reprimanded for doing his job. I scratched him behind the ears to let
him know I wasn’t angry.

“Why would you risk your
life like that, child?” Maisie demanded of Wyn. She had yet to return to the
soup, which was bubbling over on the cooking fire.

“Why’s everyone so
worried?” Wyn demanded. He plopped down on the straw mat in the corner of the
room that served as Maisie’s bed. “Nearly all the men on the Amethyst Coast
work in the mines. Why should I be any different?”

“You’re not a man!” Maisie
said with a mean laugh.

“Near enough!” Wyn shouted
back.

My cheeks went scarlet. It
had been a long time, if ever, since I’d heard Wyn raise his voice. And it was
down to me. To The Great and Mighty Voyage. Which we’d never exactly told Sarah
or Maisie about. In fact, we’d very carefully
not
told them. In order to avoid a conversation exactly like this
one.

“Edwyn, why are you in such
a hurry to grow up, dearie?” Sarah asked gently. “If there’s not a collapse,
it’ll be your skin or your heart that suffers.”

“It’s not like the old
days,” he protested. “It’s safer now. It’s not as though they’re mining
Diamond’s Peak or anywhere else that’s dangerous.”

The room fell silent as
Maisie turned back to stir her soupy concoction, and Sarah joined her in the
corner. Maisie was known to throw anything she could find into a big pot and
boil it until she could call it soup, but the smell emanating from the corner
was not what was making my stomach churn.

I felt just as strongly as
the older women, but the truth was the truth. Wyn wasn’t a child anymore. My
own body’s reaction to his gaze was testament to that. Besides, was working the
mine any less dangerous than sailing across the ocean to a new world?

His face softened and he
seemed uncomfortable with the silence. “The old gaffer was in to Mam again
today,” he said for a change of subject.

Sarah snorted. “He’s only
an ‘old gaffer’ to you, child. Sure, isn’t he ten years younger than me?” Her
smile belied the tiny bit of pride she felt at being pursued by a younger man.
“But I don’t encourage him. He’s got problems enough without adding me to the
batch.”

“That’s three days this
week,” I chirped up.

“You should set him
straight,” Maisie said, shaking her head. “It’s only trouble he’ll bring.”

“Sure, haven’t I tried
every day I’ve ever spoken to him?” Sarah cried. “The last day he was in pure
drunk. In front of the child and all.” She nodded toward me, and my pride
bristled at all the mention of “child” being thrown around. I’d grown taller in
recent years, and filled out until my body was shaped more like a woman than a
girl. So why did they still call me a child?

“He constantly smells of
rum,” Wyn complained.

That day Oren had appeared
at the bakery all sweaty and stinky and drunk, I myself had told him to get
lost a few times, but the man had only chuckled. What did a little girl know
about adults and their urges, he wanted to know.

More than you
, I wanted to answer, thinking of his trying to court such a
disinterested woman.

“If you had another man it
wouldn’t be a problem, you know,” Maisie said.

Sarah snorted. “If he fell
off Diamond’s Peak when nobody was looking, it wouldn’t be a problem, either.”

“Sarah Martin!” Maisie
gasped, appalled. She glanced over her shoulder at Wyn and me, sitting by the
open fire. “Maybe that’s where your boy gets his rebellious spark.”

Sarah’s smile eased and she
looked melancholy as she turned to gaze at us, petting the lamb and uttering
commands at Felix to stay away. “No, I’d say that comes from his father.” She looked
wistfully at Wyn, and I did likewise, taking in his disheveled brown hair and
shiny, chocolate eyes. As he sat near me, stroking the little lamb with the
practiced hand of a shepherd, he looked older, stronger, and manlier than my
familiar Wyn, the one I held in my heart. He looked almost strong enough to
make his own way in the world. To work in the mines. To whisk me away across
the sea.

As Sarah turned back to the
food, I whispered, “Just be safe,” loud enough for only Wyn to hear.

Without needing
clarification, he slid off the straw mat to sit beside me, and said, “I always
am.” He smiled. “How would I protect you lot if I wasn’t safe myself?”

Across the room, Maisie
banged her spoon against the iron pot, the telltale sign that supper was ready.

Sarah had the earthen bowls
on the table and a pile of bread ready to be smeared with gravy. “Have you seen
the stranger?” she asked as we settled around the table.

“Not with my own eyes,”
Maisie said. “But enough of Killybeg has, I’d say.”

I looked to Wyn. He met my
stare and shook his head once, so slightly that I wasn’t positive he’d done it
at all. But his eyes held all the answer I needed. He was right – Sarah
didn’t need another thing to worry about.

“Sizing up all of our
defenses so he can run and tell the other thieves, I’d say,” Sarah said, and slurped
her soup.

“Defenses?” Wyn snorted.

“Not you, too!” Maisie
moaned, swinging her spoon at Sarah. “Worrying’s all this town’s good for
anymore.”

“Well, I won’t lay like a
sitting duck and let them catch me off guard.” Sarah shook her head again, angrily
tossing her beige hair about. “Wyn, be a good lad and lock up the animals
before you sleep.”

“You think they’re wanting
your old sheepdog, do you?” Maisie chuckled. “Maybe that old cow that’s stopped
giving you milk?”

Sarah ignored her. “And the
windows, child. Bolt all the windows. It’s not a lot of nice things I have, but
there’s enough that I’d be sad to lose ‘em.”

“I will,” Wyn said. He
didn’t make light of Sarah’s worrying or protest that she was overreacting. No,
he would always protect us without complaint. Without a second thought. He was
my own knight, lacking only the shining armor.

I was already in my own room, a tiny nook
poking off the back of the house, when I realized I could hear Maisie speaking
outside. I was curled up in bed with the ill lamb, listening to Wyn’s pipe
playing somewhere outside as he meandered home, Zora perched in my open window.
And I could hear Maisie talking to Sarah. Rather angrily.

“Keep your voice down,”
Maisie commanded quietly. It sounded as though the pair were in the back of the
cottage, near the sheep’s night shed.

The Martins had just left
our house – Wyn to lock up the animals and Sarah to sleep – and
Maisie had already bolted our door for the night. What had called her back
outside? I crept to the window and Zora hopped playfully onto my hand, but I
wasn’t there to play.

“You don’t think it’s
wise?” Sarah asked, her voice breaking near the end.

“You’re worrying over
nothing,” Maisie assured her.

“But –”

“Where would we go?” Maisie
asked in exasperation. “There is nowhere. This is the safest place.”

What on Earth are they talking about?
Was Sarah so very scared of
this stranger that she wanted to flee Killybeg?

“Maisie –”

“Acting now will only
arouse suspicion.”

“Mam,” Wyn’s voice
interrupted, the music stopping. “The sheep are shut up. Let’s go home.”

I sat up in my bed, pulse pounding in my neck
and my heart racing, and wiped a shaking hand across my sweaty forehead. I’d
dreamed that dream again.

I’d told Maisie about it
once, when I was younger, and she’d scolded me for making up fairy tales. So
I’d kept it to myself ever since, cradling it close like a precious gem. It was
always the same.

It started with me walking
in the Haunted Wood, then coming upon a clearing bathed in an ethereal pink
light. It was a clearing I had never seen in the real Haunted Wood, no matter
how long and hard I looked. I could only find it in this dream. There was a
great big willow tree in the middle of the clearing, with long, weepy branches
creating a green dome. Every time, as soon as I neared it, a smiling face would
peek out through the silky branches. A face I recognized in the dream. It was
my mother.

Of course, it wasn’t my
real mother. I’d never seen my parents’ likenesses, so there was no way for me
to dream of them. But what orphan doesn’t dream of her parents? In the dream, I
knew this was my mother. And for now, that’s all I had – a dream mother.
In fact, that’s all I would
ever
have.

In my dream, the woman with
big bouncy curls like my own would sweep the branches aside like a curtain and
gesture for me to join her. Inside, hummingbirds crowded the air like flies.
Big, beautiful flies that squeaked with excitement.

There were parts of the
dream that I never remembered. I knew I played with my mother, but I never
heard her voice or could recall the games we played. I only memorized her
happy, shining face.

But the dream ended the
same way every time.

There would be a great roar
and the woman would tremble in fright. And though I sometimes knew it was a
dream, and what was coming, I was always scared.

The hummingbirds wailed and
my dream mother shook until tears fell from her eyes. The roar grew so loud, it
sounded as though there was a great lion outside the willow tree. And then a
tiny orange flame would lick a branch.

And it would grow. The
woman would cry and I would cover my ears, willing myself to wake up as flames
engulfed the tree.

Eventually, I’d wake.
Sweating, scared, and determined. Determined to go back to the Haunted Wood. Because
if the little girls I saw there had been real people, long ago, those could be
their ghosts.
Real
ghosts. And if
ghosts were real, maybe, just maybe, I could see my mother. Not the one from my
dream, concocted by a heartbroken child’s flighty imagination, but my
real
mother. And maybe my father, too.
Long dead now, my only hope of seeing them with my own eyes would be in a
haunted wood.