Spinners: Chapter 3

Chapter Three

In Which Bess Dodges a Shadow and is Given Two Eggs Plus One

 

“So I’m to be your hound, then?” the Silkie laughed, catching up with her.  “’Spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me—only give me leave to follow you,’ is it?”

“I suppose,” she said.

“Well, it fits well enough,” he went on. “It’s a rare man that’s subtle as I am in a hunt.  Few woodsmen as crafty, no shadow more silent—”

“No bigger braggart,” she said.

“It’s boast, not brag,” he said, unruffled.  “A man’s allowed to boast if what he says is true.”

“All right, then. What are you, if you’re not a robber?” She rounded on him.

“A pookah? A banshee? A golem? Or maybe nothing more than a simple conundrum,” he said, dancing back.

“A flirt and a miscreant,” she said, starting off again.  “You are a pagan thing, certainly.”

“If there were but one god in the heavens, it might be true,” he laughed, trotting after. “But as I have seen little sign of that, I think I will deny the charge.”

“What are you saying?” she said.  “You don’t believe in the Creator?”

“Oh, of course,” he said.  “I believe well enough in him.  He made us, then went off on his own business, long gone, my dear one.  And here we are, alone.”

“How can you say such a thing?” she asked.

“How can you not, after this morning?”

“Well, that’s just stupid,” she said.  “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Only a petty thief,” he admitted.  “But I could have been a lovely robber, if I’d fancied it.”

“So you’ve said.”

“And what is Robert to you?” he asked.  “Answer for answer.”

“The only mother I’ve ever known,” Bess said, her face grim set.  “He didn’t mean to be rude to you.”

“Rude,” the Silkie said, happily.  “The man’s fierce.  And he meant it, never fear.”

“He is fierce.” She came to a stop.  “It’s kind of you to walk with me,” she said, turning to him.  “But I really don’t need you now.  Look—safe and sound and here’s the green and the sky almost light. But I do thank you.  Certainly, you were some help.”

“Look at your hands,” he said.

But she didn’t do it.  “I’m still shaking a bit.  But it’ll pass.”

“Listen, Bess,” he said, suddenly earnest.  “I’ll never make you a promise I can’t fulfill—only death would keep me from it.  And I will never lie to you knowingly.”  He drew the knife out of his sleeve and tossed it at a sapling some thirty feet away.  The gleaming blade buried itself in the heart of that little trunk with a solid thunk, the tree shivering with the impact.  “I am very good,” he explained, “at what I choose to do, and a useful person to know.  Can’t we be friends?”

She looked out over the green.  “You’ve been watching me. That’s too disturbing a thing.  I could never trust the likes of you.”

He looked at her silently.  Then, “I only watch to take care,” he said.  “Not to take advantage.”

“To steal.”

“Nothing that isn’t offered,” he said.  Then pressed his lips together and looked away.  “But that’s true enough,” he murmured.  “Certainly, what I live on, I never made myself.”  But he turned his eyes back to her.  “Can you not just let me walk with you this morning?  I’ve earned the favor, surely.  I won’t presume.  It’s just such a long time since I’ve had a good conversation. There aren’t many like me, you know.”

Oh, heaven, she thought.  But now the yellow eyes were sad, and he was altogether pitiful of aspect.

“Do as you will,” she said, and started off briskly across the still quiet green.  He trotted over to retrieve his knife.

 

When the rose cottage was finally there in front of them, Bess pushed the gate open gratefully and made her way up the walk, leaving him to wait outside the pale.  Old Alice was sitting beside her door, waist high in rose bushes, in the first blooming of sun.

“You’re late,” she announced, peering past Bess.  “And what’s that you’ve got with you?”

Bess held out the basket.  “I’ve brought the shears back, too.”

“Not this,” Old Alice said crossly, pointing a boney finger.  “That.”

Bess turned  and found the Silkie just behind her, his face buried in a rose.

“Where in the good earth did you pick that one up?” Alice demanded.  “Since when do you keep company with scallywags and scoundrels?”

“Do you know him?” Bess asked.

“You’ve never seen me in your life, now, have you old woman?” the Silkie said.  “You’ve never seen anything like me.”

Granny waved him away with disgust.  “I’ve seen plenty like you,” she said.  “All pants and no sense.  And keep your hands off my roses.”

“She does know me,” he said.

“And look at you, girl.  You’re all undone.  Did he give you a tumble already this morning?”

“Granny,” Bess said, both mortified and scandalized.

“A little spring smooching wouldn’t hurt you a bit,” the granny said, struggling up from her stool.  “Give me the flour.”  She put out her old hands and Bess, cheeks gone red, put the basket into them.  The old woman stumped off into the dark cave of a front door.  Bess took her place on the stool, face in her hands.

“Well, if you really need a tumble . . . ” he offered.

“Shut up,” she said.  She heard him settle himself on the gravel of the path.  A single lovely bird sang in a tree off over the green.  The whole place smelled of spring.  “How could you make a joke of it?” she asked him.

“How could you not?” he answered.

The old woman came back out of the house.   Bess jumped up, offering an arm for support, but Alice waved her away impatiently.  “Here,” she said, shoving the basket back at Bess. “Thanks for the bit of bread, though I’ll tell you there was dust in the butter.  There’s your two eggs, and one of them awful colored eggs, too.  Just take it, and I won’t have to worry about what to do with it.”

“Thank you,” Bess said, surprised.

“Go on,” Alice told her.  “And take that scallywag with you.  I don’t need to fret about finding something missing later.”

The Silkie laughed and was on his feet in one lovely, fluid motion.  “And joy to your day, old woman,” he said, sweeping her the ironic little bow.  Then he leaned in and kissed her wrinkled cheek.  She swatted at him, as scandalized as Bess had been a moment before.

“Get,” she said.  “Just get.  And you watch yourself—” this to Bess, “and find yourself some better company.”

“Good advice,” Bess promised her, making a face at the Silkie.  She traced her way back down the path and out of the gate.  The Silkie caught up with her a moment later.  “She sees you coming, you know,” he said.

“She doesn’t like you,” Bess told him solemnly.

“She loves me,” he said, and with a ceremonial flourish, offered Bess a new yellow rose.

“What did you do?” Bess hissed. “She’d kill you if she knew.”

He turned to her an innocent face.

“Still,” Bess said.  “She did give me this extra egg.  She never gives me an extra egg.  And I think, secretly she likes the speckled ones best.  I wonder what she intended me to do with it?”

“Cook it for somebody, maybe.”  This was said with a very unconvincing air of disinterest. Then, all of a sudden, he stiffened, his eyes closed, nose testing the air.  Bess caught it a moment later.  “The baxter’s,” she said. “Meat pie?  New bread.  But then, you’re the expert.”

“Bread,” he concluded, with deep pleasure.

“I don’t understand you,” she said all at once, and came to a stop.  “The only sight of you I’ve ever had was a glimpse of a shadow at Jen’s window.  But here you are, talking like you’ve lived here all your life.”  There’s too much of you, she was thinking, to have gone unnoticed for so long.  “How do you live?  You can’t have been stealing pies every day, or someone would have marked it by now—the baxter, certainly.  And you can’t just live on pie.”

But his head came swiftly round and he put a hand lightly on her arm.  “If you don’t mind,” he said, his eyes fixed on something over her shoulder, “I’ll leave you here.”

She turned her own head, but all she saw was the village, stirring now—smoke coming out of the chimneys in good earnest, children and dogs tumbling out of the doors.  She turned back, in the middle of asking him what he’d seen, but found herself talking to the air.  No Silkie beside her, or behind her.  She was alone, there on the edge of the green.  She pinched her shoulders together, frowning, then made one more turn, all the way around.  There was nothing of him to see.

“Miscreant,” she muttered, her arms prickling, and started off homewards.

It would be a beautiful day, the sky domed above, pearling away the grey dregs of night, and the tops of the trees blazing with early light.  Bess noticed this through her own haze, trying to make sense of the morning now she was alone and could hear her thoughts.  It had never before occurred to her that terrible things could actually happen.  Oh, there had always been the whispered stories.  And there were accidents, of course—people thrown by horses or bitten by dogs, cut by blades or plows or axes.  But real evil was another thing.  Even the robbers, bloodthirsty and wicked, seemed bound by the forest, never appearing in the village as long as she’d been alive.  They’d faded, by now, to nothing but fireside tales and parents’ warnings.

And there was no explanation at all for the Silkie.  Odder still, while she had meant it sincerely, telling both him and Robert she didn’t need their hovering—for the first time in her life, she felt shifty and shy as a nervous colt, worried about shadows and wary of corners.  But, a whole life cannot be a total lie, she told herself, and raised her chin and lengthened her stride, meaning to cast it all off.

When she came past the baxter’s house, the smell of bread was glorious.  There were a woman or two on the walk to the shop-front, chatting happily in the slanting light.  “Bess!” they said.  And “Bess,” Jen called to her from the doorway, waving.  Bess was surprised by a wave of another kind of shyness, jerking at her bodice to make sure it was straight, a worse-than-embarrassment—a shame that washed her head to foot at the sight of them.  She made a smile and sent a wave, but didn’t stop, too aware of what had happened to her beside the smithy and unable to break free of it.  It had made her different from them, somehow—set her apart, uncomfortable with their honest innocence.

She finally stepped off the green on the home side, and onto the east road.  The trees of the forest were thick here, crowded close to the way, and Bess stopped where she was, staring into them.

“Lions and tigers and bears,” said a voice, just at her shoulder.  The basket nearly flew in the air.  Bess spun, all eyes—and there was the Silkie again, grinning and proud of himself.  She nearly struck him.  She sucked in her breath and turning away, began to stalk off homeward.

“Await my dear—oh, Beth, await!” he sang, trotting happily behind.

“Leave me alone,” she said.  “And don’t call me Beth.”

“Bethany—Beth—Bess,” he said.  “But Bess is too heavy.  Beth is light and fire.  Perhaps later I’ll leave you alone.  But now, I’ll tell you all the names of the trees.”  Which he proceeded to do, ticking them off one by one as they went.

He’s Dill, she thought.  Nothing more than a big child. And with that, felt stupid for being so angry.  “You shouldn’t scare people,” she told him, but gently.

“People shouldn’t scare themselves,” he said.  “I’m sorry I had to leave you.  But open places are not healthy for me.”

“I was fine,” she said.

“You are now,” he told her.

“Look,” she said, turning to look at him.  “How do you live?”

He cocked his head.  “I hunt and steal,” he said.  “I’d have thought that was clear.”

“Don’t you have a home?  A place to wash?”

He seemed to find the idea of washing very funny.

“And in the winter,” she went on, frowning, “aren’t you ever hungry?”

The yellow eyes were fixed on hers, then.  And raised the hair on her neck all over again.  “I’m often hungry,” he said.

And then she thought she understood.  What he needed was a guide, a patron—a mother.  Or better, a motherly sister.  “We need to find you a job,” she decided.

“A job?”  This was also very funny.

“No, think.  If you had a trade, you’d have a home, somewhere to sleep—and you’d never be hungry.  Or cold.”

The smile was crooked.  “Is that the way it goes?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.  “Look at Robert and the smithy.  Look at the mill.  You wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.”

“And what, pray tell, would you have me do?  Weave cloth?  Make shoes?  Frighten children into being good?”

“You could be a wood cutter,” she said.  “Or a butcher—“ thinking of the knife.  “It’s too bad you’re not good with horses—“ because wolves generally are not.

But he didn’t like that.  “I’m the best man with horses,” he informed her. “Even when I’m not stealing them.”

“Are you?” she said, doubtfully.  “Well, if you were, you could work for Robert.  Heaven knows he needs the help.”

“It’s the ‘work’ part I’m not so good at,” he said, beginning to lag behind a bit.

“But that’s what a man does.” She forged ahead. “It’s much better than stealing.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said.

“No, really.” She was warming to the idea.  “You’d like working for Robert.  I’d work for him myself, if they’d let me.”

“But I’m irresponsible,” he said, falling behind.  “You can’t depend on me.”

“Not that he always needs that much help.”  She had almost forgotten him. “But he couldn’t say no.  Not just now.”  She came to herself and stopped, looking around.  “Where?” she said, and turned back.  “Why are you just standing there?  Come on.  Come on.  He won’t need you all the time, just when it gets busy.  So while you’re watching our little village, just keep an eye on the smithy.  You’ll know when he needs you.  Oh, this is a really good idea.”  Now, she headed homeward again—almost forgetting entirely the shadows behind the trees.

“It may not be an entirely bad idea,” he said, trailing behind.  But he couldn’t be down for long.  “I’m not sure just how you plan to broach the subject with him,” he said catching up.  “But I really can’t wait to see Robert’s face when you do.”