Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (36 page)

There was an old woman a-lying in bed.

She's pulled all the blankets up over her head

For every midnight the spriggans come in,

Dividing their plunder down to the last pin.

But one night they argue and cannot agree.

The woman peeps out from the bedclothes to see.

She slips off her shift while they squabble and fight

And dons it the other way, out of their sight,

(For inside-out clothing protects against wights.)

She leaps out of bed with the gold in her sights,

And seizes the treasure! They all run away,

She’s rich but the shift’s cursed to this very day.

—“
THE OLD WOMAN WHO TURNED HER SHIFT
”

Asrathiel sojourned briefly at High Darioneth before returning to her new home in King’s Winterbourne. Even with its steep gables bathed in the pomegranate glow of sunset, the house in Lime Grove failed to appear tremendously inviting as
Lightfast
descended over the driveway and across the graveled crescent before the front steps, making for its landing-place
near the stables. The damsel missed the company of the other weathermasters, and was beginning to entertain doubts about the wisdom of her move to the city. Now she came to understand the reason her kindred so rarely migrated outside the Mountain Ring. Weathermasters possessed qualities that separated them from other people and united them with a strong bond. Yet she herself, immortal and invulnerable, wondered if she could ever truly belong anywhere, even amongst the weathermasters.

The porter hurried out to meet the dirigible and collect Asrathiel’s luggage. Moodily she disembarked from the basket, leaving the two crew-members to stow away the aerostat, and made her way up the front stairs of the house. One of Mistress Draycott Parslow’s footmen opened the door, greeting her respectfully as she passed through, followed by the burdened porter. Asrathiel’s butler Giles had set supper on the table, and a hearty blaze flared on the grate.

After supper there came a knocking at the side door of the weathermage’s apartments.

“Go and see who’s at the door, prithee Giles,” said Asrathiel, who was reclining in an armchair and staring meditatively into the gold and crimson dreamscapes of the fire.

The butler returned from the hallway saying. “Mistress Draycott Parslow is here to see you, ma’am.”

“Show her in.”

The widow hurried into Asrathiel’s parlour, unwrapping her shawl from her shoulders. With a gracious bow, the butler received the wrap and hooked it on a coat-peg.

“Good evening, Mistress Draycott Parslow,” said Asrathiel, sitting upright. “Pray take a seat. Giles, bring refreshments.”

“I am pleased to see you have returned safely, m’lady,” said the widow. She settled her trim frame into the armchair opposite Asrathiel. “They are wild lands, down south, wild indeed. I would never eventuate there meself.
’Never set foot out of Narngalis,’
that’s my motley.”

“Have you been keeping well?” Asrathiel asked politely.

“Well enough thank ye, m’lady, well enough. As you know I teach lessons once a week in my cottage. I show small groups of children how to knit and sew and crowsherray, and do all those useful things. Some of them pay heed to me but, well, with a few of them I start to wonder. I can talk till I am blue in the face but they never listen. Sometimes I feel as if I am fading away.”

The butler came in with a carafe, some plates of food and two footed cups on a tray.

“Fading away?” Asrathiel queried.

“Getting invincible. You know, I can talk and talk to them, but it’s as if they don’t see me, sain their little hearts. I think I must be getting more invincible every day.” At Mistress Draycott Parslow’s elbow, Giles poured a cup of wine and handed it to her. She sipped, and directed a meaningful gaze at her tenant. “Pray tell me when you cannot see me any more,” she appended.

The damsel suppressed a smile. “Cake?” she offered, holding out a dish.

The widow waved the sweetmeats away. “Gramercie, my dearie, but I did not come here to eat you out of house and home. I came to warren you.” She paused, directing another significant gaze towards Asrathiel.

“To warn me about what?”

“Whilst you were away, a funny-looking little creation began lurking about the house. Some sort of wight. I don’t suppose it’s dangerous—at any rate, my dogs don’t bark at it and the horses don’t seem afraid—but I have never before seen its like, and I am not sure what it is, because it has only been spotted at nights, half-glimmered, you might say. I am just dimensioning it to you because I don’t want you to get a fright if you see it. Anyway there’s enough charms and wardrobes around here to scare away the king of the goblins himself, what with the iron horseshoes over every door—mercy me, one fell on me head the other day, I told Perkins to go around and hammer them all in proper-like—and red ribbons and rowan everywhere, and bells on the trees—I keep thinking I’ve a ringaling in me ears every time the wind blows—but dearie, we’ve got everything to keep unseelie wights away from the Laurels, so this one won’t trouble ye. I daresay it will go away eventfully.”

“Wait,” said Asrathiel, leaning forward attentively, “where was it seen?”

“Once by the well in the courtingyard, the oridgeling well. And another time under the old ymp tree, the graftated apple that leans over the wall of the kitching gardens.”

“Do not let anyone chase it away,” said Asrathiel, “until I have seen it for myself. It might be a seelie wight. It might bring good fortune to this house if it is treated well. I shall leave a bannock and some blackberry preserves out by the side doorstep for it this very night.”

“Very well, m’lady, do as you please, but for me I’ll not be having truculence with no wights meself in my cottage. I still wonder if them spriggans is a-looking for me. I will not let any wight over my freshold.”

“I am grateful for your advice, Mistress Draycott Parslow.”

“You’re welcome, m’lady. Well now, I mustn’t sit here gaberdining all night, you’ll be wanting your rest after your long and weariful trip to them feasible lands.”

“Good evening, Mistress Draycott Parslow. Giles will see you home.”

“Good evening, m’lady.”

The butler appeared bearing the shawl, and conducted the elderly woman across the grounds to her cottage. Meanwhile, Asrathiel rummaged in the larder. She piled some foodstuffs on clean dishes, which she placed outside the side door, next to the threshold.

“Leave these here,” she instructed Giles when he returned from his errand, “and tell the staff I am not to be disturbed tonight. You must all go to bed. If you hear voices during the night, ignore them.”

“As you wish, my lady.” Giles bowed, his face devoid of expression. Nothing a weathermaster could do or say would surprise or shock Asrathiel’s handpicked and devoted household.

Having removed the wight-repelling charms from the door’s lintel, the damsel sat down in a wicker chair in the well-yard and commenced her vigil.

Hundreds of Mistress Draycott Parslow’s thimble-sized bells dangled in the trees that surrounded the house and cottage. The ymp tree, the grafted apple, was the only one free from the dull tinkle of rusting metal. People did not like to meddle with ymp trees, because it was held that they were closely connected with eldritch wights. Some claimed that these trees guarded entrances to a world that was blissful and perilous beyond imagining, and that if you fell asleep beneath them you would be whisked away to that other world, never to be seen again.

The side-courtyard of The Laurels was small and paved with flagstones in a herringbone pattern. An old well stood in one corner, the coping mossy and overgrown. Stone figurines of frogs crouched upon it, and the pitched roof was falling in. A new well had been sunk closer to the center of the courtyard, with a hand-operated water pump next to it. A carved dragon’s head spouted water into the new well’s basin. The old reservoir had long ago become choked. It was popularly believed there was a curse on it, which is why they had abandoned the shaft and sunk the recent one. Elsewhere in the well-yard a couple of cracked urns perched on pedestals.

Resting in the chair of woven cane, the weathermage let her senses drift out into her surroundings. The wind was in the west. “Sefir, the West Wind,” she murmured, but she was not wielding the bri, merely caressing the name of the
wind with her voice. Sefir drove thin clouds across the sky, vintage purple and dusted with lambent glimmers of constellations. The voice of the wind was a lullaby, and the tiny, soft chimes of the bells rhythmically hypnotic.

Asrathiel awoke to the sound of bird-choruses greeting the sunrise. The dishes beside the doorstep were bare; not a crumb or morsel remained. While she slept the food had been taken. Her waiting had been futile. Vexed with her laxity she vowed to set out more victuals and repeat the vigil the following night.

She kept the vow. Next evening, seated in the wicker chair, she leaned back, letting the hours of sunlessness roll by while she watched the stars slowly wheeling and the clouds scudding past like ragged refugees. The night sky streamed in through her open eyes, filling her mind with a vast darkness speckled with silver. Thus it eventuated that she was barely cognizant of the difference when her lids closed, and soporific hallucinations of infinite silver-studded shadows enveloped her, drawing her into slumber.

Next morning the bannock and berries were gone again, and the dishes were clean.

“Giles,” she said to her butler, “I am unable to stay awake these past two nights.”

“Apothecaries sell herbs that promote wakefulness.”

“I wish to wake only, not be transformed into a maddened wasp.”

“Wear thorns around your wrist to prickle you, my lady, so that you will get no rest.”

“My tolerance of pain is exceptionally high.” The servants were unaware she was invulnerable and consequently insensitive to suffering. Perhaps they guessed, but they did not know for certain.

“Sleep this afternoon, my lady,” he suggested. “Then you will not be weary at night.”

“An excellent idea.”

So she slept. After sundown, when evening came shyly peeping around the corners of the world, she roused herself and took to the side-courtyard once more. Giles had removed the wicker chair. There was nowhere to be seated, except upon the flagstones or the well-copings. Refusing to allow herself to sit down, she walked, sometimes singing in a low voice. She carried three wooden balls, with which, from time to time, she practiced juggling in an effort to keep her mind alert. Moths gusted soundlessly past, and possums skittered across the eaves. The tree-bells tinkled in long, languid waves when the deep-hued breeze breathed on them, and the copious folds of Asrathiel’s grey
woolen gown swished as she moved. A strange bird hooted from the top of the ymp tree.

The weathermage walked round and round, and presently the moon rose. She tilted her head to gaze up at it.

A voice said, “To look into Space is to look back in Time.”

Moonlight spilled with the shimmer of glycerine, and in the gleam of it the urisk was standing by the old well, leaning on the coping.

The damsel experienced a flood of relief and joy that surprised her. She had not understood how keenly she had missed the creature. His curly head and stubby horns were a welcome sight, and she greeted him warmly.

“I am glad to see you—” she was about to call him “thing,” then hesitated. It was her custom to title him “thing” or “creature,” but the terms did not seem appropriate for the occasion. “What is your name?”

“Ask no questions, be told no lies. You ought to know better,” said the urisk.

“What can you mean?”

“Names are not lightly to be asked for, or given.”

Of course, he was right. There was weighty significance in a name. Telling someone your name gave them power over you. In particular the names of wights were notoriously difficult to discover, as many of the old tales confirmed.

“Very well,” she said. “You won’t tell me your name but I shall tell you mine.”

Name-telling did not matter quite so much with humankind. All the world might know one’s name and no great harm done. Appellations were necessary to social interaction.

“I know it already,” said the wight.

The damsel frowned. “I am overjoyed to learn you are as ill-mannered as ever. I would hate to suspect you had suffered any improvement. You have journeyed far. Will you take some refreshment?” She gestured towards the crockery by the door. Half a loaf sat on one dish, while the other brimmed with strawberry jam.

The urisk uttered a short laugh. “These past two nights the hedgehogs have devoured your feast and licked the platters clean,” he said, “while you slumbered in the willow withies like a babe. Why not let them enjoy it tonight, as well?”

Even as he spoke, a family of three hedgehogs scampered across the flag-stones and began to nibble and slurp at the provender.

The urisk’s cavalier attitude abraded Asrathiel’s patience. For some reason she felt insulted. She had intended to please him with a gift, but now she felt like a patronizing fool. Her pleasure at the reunion was marred by her irritation. “What—did you think I left that food there for
you?”
she scoffed. “Of course not. What is it urisks prefer? Worms and fungus and stolen leftovers?” Petulantly, she tucked the juggling balls back into the drawstring pouch that hung from her girdle.

“Prithee, do not confuse your own tastes with those of more fastidious diners,” the wight said icily, turning his shoulder.

At this evidence of rejection Asrathiel became suddenly penitent. After all, it was a long way on foot—or on hoof—from High Darioneth to King’s Winterbourne. She wondered whether the wight had journeyed all that way just to visit her, or if he were calling on her while passing through on the way to some other destination. The question was best left unasked; in general, querying him only led to complications. If he had made the journey specifically to see her she would be greatly flattered and delighted. Were he only passing through, she would still be glad he had paid her the compliment of a call. The past connected the two of them. He meant more to her than she had believed, and the last thing she wanted was to estrange him, de-spite his infuriating manner. She hoped to entice him to stay at least a while longer.