The Nethergrim Page 9

  “Back left, Master.”

  “Walk them.”

  Tom took up the stilts and murmured to the team. “Cush, now. On we go.” They started off again.

  The whip cracked down. Thunder gave a bellow and threw himself forward in the yoke. White fear blinded Tom—for a moment he could not tell where the whip had struck, could not tell panic from pain. He lost his grip on the stilts, then darted forward to seize them before the plow fell over. Athelstan watched their progress for a few paces, then held up a hand for them to stop.

  “Pull him off,” he rasped. “We’ll slaughter him.”

  The oxen quaked, their heads curled to the earth. Blood seeped from the welt on Thunder’s back. Tom reached out to touch his side.

  “Master.” He chose his words with care. Any hint of pleading would seal the ox’s fate. “I can fix him, Master. He’s a good worker. He just needs some rest.”

  Athelstan grunted. “I’ve no time for laggards and layabouts. Finish the acre today or that ox isn’t worth his feed.” He turned to Oswin. “You’re off to Jarvis Miller’s. You work to dusk. The pay’s a penny—you keep a farthing.”

  Oswin raised his eyebrows to the brim of his cap. “A farthing?”

  Athelstan thrust out his stubbled chin at Oswin’s chest. “Get on with you, or you’ll be back to begging your bread by nightfall.”

  Oswin muttered something ugly, then dropped the mallet and walked away across the field. Tom’s stomach chose that moment to growl.

  “Not a morsel, not a bite until you’re done.” Athelstan pointed down the field with the coils of his whip. “Get to work.” He turned on his heel and slumped off.

  Tom found his grip on the stilts and dug the share of the plow into the earth. He tried his best to shift the load from Thunder to his partner, Lightning, a somewhat smaller ox with a blaze of white around one eye. He spoke no more words—his urgings were hums and grunts, the push and pull of his hands on the plow. The sun reached its highest, then made for the west and fell. The sky turned orange-red, then dark blue. A flock of starlings ten thousand strong took possession of the trees. They were a kingdom, and talked of nothing but themselves.

  Evening came to night. The cold returned. Tom’s shoulder throbbed from the effort of making up for Thunder’s limping gait. His stomach gnawed and churned. Weariness enfolded him. He sank until he saw nothing but the furrow dividing on the plowshare below him, dark waves cresting in a pattern that never quite repeated itself.

  The plow stopped. Tom sagged against the stilts, letting himself breathe into the peace that came over him until he felt himself falling asleep. He jerked up his head. “Not far now. Come, now, onward. Not far.”

  The oxen did not move. Tom looked around him. They had turned the last furrow. An acre.

  He stumbled forward to lay a hand on Thunder’s heaving side. “You did it.” He untied their harness and wound the leather straps over his shoulder. He grasped the plow by the stilts to drag it behind him. The oxen followed him home.

  The door of the master’s house hung wide. “You’re accursed late.” Athelstan leaned through the doorway and kept an eye on Thunder’s shambling walk across the yard.

  Tom dropped his head. “An acre, Master. All of it.”

  “To the pasture with you.” The door slammed shut.

  Tom dragged the plow into the byre. Heads rose from the straw all around him, most of them pink and woolly white with dark lobed slots for pupils, but among them a few whose eyes glimmered green in the moonlight that came in over his shoulder. Oswin snorted awake, then turned in the straw and put his arms over his face.

  “Jumble.” Tom whistled. “Jumble, come now!”

  A laughing face thrust up from the straw, patches of black-and-white fur under a pair of half-cocked ears. Jumble woofed for joy and jumped from his bed in the corner of the byre. He leapt on Tom and licked his nose, beating his ragged plume feather of a tail on the hard earth floor.

  “Good boy, Jumble. Good boy. Time for work.” Tom reached down for the cloth bundle that lay on the tree stump he used for a table. “Bring them, Jumble. Get by, now.”

  Jumble raced to the back of the flock and barked. The cats mrrfed and scattered to the corners of the byre, leaping out of the way of the swelling mass of sheep. Tom picked up the shepherd’s crook that leaned by the door and led the flock out into the yard. The oxen fell into step, dark shadows in a cloud of dirty white.

  They marched north off the rise where stood farmhouse and byre, making for the pasture on a narrow path between the hedges. Jumble capered along at the back, darting left and right behind the stragglers. The bell that hung around the neck of the ram made the loudest sound in the world.

  Tom found a place with good grazing where the land began to rise again. He sat down at the trunk of a lonely elm. Jumble pranced up and put a paw on his shin.

  “Watch them, boy. Watch awhile.”

  Jumble padded away to the edge of the flock. The sheep got on with their evening meal, making slow circuits inside Jumble’s guard, lambs following close to their mothers. The oxen lay themselves down to rest, too tired even to eat.

  Tom opened the bundle. It contained a hunk of stale bread and a turnip. He wolfed them down, then sank back against the tree. The stars wheeled above him. The wind shook the grass at his feet. Peace came over him and sang him down. . . .

  • • •

  He startled up, not knowing where he was or what side of a dream he was on. The veil of sleep dropped away and left tom sure he was awake and watching the sheep scatter wide across the pasture. Jumble backed away from the trees, growling with his tail dropped low.

  The terror grew. Tom smelled, he heard, he felt something watching him, something sizing him up for a meal. The oxen stared about them white-eyed, ears perked, ready to bolt but unsure of which way to run. Jumble licked his chops—his growl broke into a whine.

  “Calm.” Tom got to his feet. “Calm now, all is well.” Something made a noise, somewhere west down by the bend of the stream—a quick, hard clacking. He could not place the sound with any animal he knew.

  “Round them, Jumble.” Tom felt about him for his shepherd’s crook. “Get by, round them, hurry!”

  Jumble turned to dash. Tom was not sure if he was just running away, but when he reached the edge of the flock, he cut a hard left with a spate of frantic barking, rounding in the sheep before they scattered. More clacking came from a gap between the trees, and the sound of breath drawn hissing through teeth.

  “Go on.” Tom smacked the flanks of the oxen. “Run!” He sprang off through the clipped low grass, too fast in the dark to see a rock or clump of earth in his way and simply hoping for the best. The oxen followed at a charge. They could easily have trampled him, but kept an arm’s length to either side.

  Something flashed in the trees along the stream. Tom was nearly sure he saw a pair of eyes, bulbous and bright yellow, set too wide apart to match any creature he could name. “Jumble! Jumble, bring them!” He spared a look the other way. Jumble had done his best, but could not force all the sheep to run in the right direction. A clump of ewes followed the ram away into the dark. The clacking sounded again, farther away but louder.

  They reached the yard. The farmhouse door swung open. “What is all this?” Athelstan squinted out at Tom. “What are you doing back here?”

  “There’s something out there, Master. Out in the trees.” Tom looked back north. Jumble raced up behind the last of the sheep, but they were missing four at least.

  Athelstan flicked a look around at the flock in the yard. He glared at Tom. “Where are the rest?”

  “They’re in the pasture. I brought all I could, but—”

  “You half-wit!” Athelstan reached for his whip. “Get out and find those sheep. Move!”

  Tom hurried the flock into the byre, nearly bowling Oswin over in the doorway. He did not stop to explain what was happening. He turned and pelted back into the pasture, looking all about him for the missing sh
eep. He could hear nothing but the wind, no breathing, no clacking sounds—he could not even hear the ram’s bell.

  “Where are they, boy?” Athelstan stalked down off the rise, a bent shadow in the trampled grass. “If you lose them—”

  Tom screwed up his courage and plunged into the trees, searching blind, following up under the eaves as far as he dared. It was no use—they were gone.

  “Where?” Athelstan’s face resolved in moonlight. The way he held the whip turned Tom’s guts to water.

  “Master, I swear to you, there’s something in the trees.” Tom cringed and sidled back. “There’s something out there!”

  Athelstan seized him by the collar and thrust him back toward the yard. “Get to the byre. Now.”

  “Please, Master. Please, I’m sorry. I would never have left—”

  Athelstan cracked the whip at his heels. “Get yourself to the byre. You run there, boy, you kneel at the post and you wait for me. You think about what’s coming when I get there.”

  Chapter

  9

  Edmund felt for a point of light in the sky. He drew it down. “Let the light of the stars descend.”

  He wavered. There was no point—there was a point. He looked up at the spin of stars and drew an axis. “Stars attend me. Let your light descend.”

  Nothing happened.

  Edmund set the book on the log he used for a seat. He paced around his circle, and then back. What was wrong?

  It had something to do with chords, or angles. Edmund lay back in the grass and tried to sort through what he had read before the sun went down. None of it made sense—not the ordinary sort of sense, anyway. He shut his eyes and fought to calm himself, taking each breath a little slower than the last.

  The trouble was, whenever he shut his eyes he saw Katherine, and started thinking thoughts a long way away from the magical union of angles and Light.

  He let his eyelids fall open. He watched the constellations wheel above.

  “Let the light of the stars descend.” He raised his hands, reaching for the rhythm. “Stars attend me. Surround me. Let your light descend.”

  Nothing.

  Edmund glared at the sky. “Descend!”

  The wind moaned and rattled through the trees. There was no point.

  “Ugh.” Edmund got up and took a seat on the log. He set the book in his lap and felt his finger down the pages, past the strange drawing of seven children on the rays of a star. He found lines of text a few pages before it, inked thick and firm enough that he could read them in the feeble light:

  There are words that have never been spoken, words that cannot be spoken, words that, if spoken, would shake the earth.

  “What does that mean?” Edmund wanted to throw the book into the weeds. “What can that possibly mean?”

  These words trace thoughts too large for the mind to hold—they cannot be grasped, they can merely be touched in the tremble of a moment. This is the language of magic, the voice of all that is, the chatter of the growing grass, the command that holds the moon aloft in the sky.

  Edmund rubbed at his temples. Maybe he was just too stupid. He bent to squint at the curling script:

  Everything is connected to everything else. Everything is a symbol for something deeper. For the worker of the will, the symbol is a place to begin, the outline of a thought sublime beyond all—

  “You’ll go blind doing that, you know.”

  Edmund startled, and looked up. “Oh—Katherine. When did you get here?”

  “Just now.” She wore her hair loose over her embroidered shirt. Starlight touched her face from every side. “He’s over here, Tom.”

  Tom stepped in silence from the darkness. A flock of sheep swarmed past him to surround the hillock in the middle of the pasture. Jumble rushed up barking and leapt on Edmund, licked his face and thumped his tail on the ground.

  “No, Jumble—not on the book! Off the book!” Edmund grabbed for his forepaws. Jumble thought it a jolly game—he handed Edmund one paw and set the other down, once and again on the precious pages.

  Katherine laughed. “Jumble—naughty boy!” She bent to ruffle him by the ears, and got a slobber on the end of her nose for her trouble.

  “Here.” Tom whistled. “Get by, boy. Round them, get by.”

  Jumble raced off to circle the stragglers. His barks came from down the hillock to the north, then west, then south. Tom leaned on his crook and turned with the sound, watching his flock gather in. “Why were you asking for light?”

  “Never mind.” Edmund reached down to retrieve the torn corner of a page. He shut the book.

  “We won’t want any light tonight.” Katherine fussed at her belt, then laid something long and slender on her lap. “If we’re to be Tom’s bodyguard, we’ll want to have our night eyes.”

  Edmund gazed down in wonder. “Is that a real sword?”

  “It was my uncle William’s. Papa brought it home from the wars.” Katherine drew it halfway from its scabbard. “Want to see?”

  She set it on the flat of Edmund’s palms. He ran a thumb along the worn leather grip and then a finger on the simple disc pommel. The crossguard stuck out straight and unadorned, scored deep in one place where it must once have turned a very heavy blow.

  “I’m glad you both could come.” Tom sat down in the grass at Katherine’s feet. “I didn’t want to sit out alone tonight, especially not here.”

  Edmund followed the direction of Tom’s nervous look, south over the trees at the shadowed mass of Wishing Hill. “Your master didn’t believe you?”

  “No.” Tom shifted, leaning back. His face twisted in a grimace, then he sat up straight again.

  “Here.” Katherine held out a hand. “Let’s have a look at you.”

  Tom rummaged in the threadbare bag at his side and drew out a stoppered wooden jar. He gave it to Katherine.

  “Pull up your shirt.” Katherine drew the stopper. Tom reached back and pulled up his ratty old tunic. Some of the threads got stuck in the wet, open wounds that crisscrossed on his back.

  “Oh!” Edmund looked more closely despite himself. “Oh, ugh!”

  Katherine dipped her finger in the salve. She touched it around the edge of a wound. Tom hissed in, then sighed out.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone in the world—but, Tom, I hate your master.” Katherine smoothed the salve along Tom’s back, following the course of a hot red welt. “I really, truly hate him.”

  Edmund sat back, feeling ill. “But—did you find all the sheep?”

  “No.” Tom hissed again. Katherine traced his wounds one by one in salve. The wind pushed the ash trees, one into the next.

  Edmund slid his fingers around to grip the hilt of the sword. He turned the blade point to the sky. “Listen—I’ve been thinking.”

  Katherine smirked at him. “Aren’t you always?”

  “I mean really thinking. Maybe we should run away.”

  His friends turned to look at him, brown eyes and green.

  “All of us,” said Edmund. “The three of us, together.”

  Tom let his shirt fall to his waist. Katherine replaced the stopper in the jar. “Where would we go?”

  “I don’t know, anywhere.” Edmund raised his arms. “Free of here.”

  Tom plucked up a blade of grass. He chewed on it and looked around him, up at the far peaks of the Girth, then out over the pastures. “This is home. I belong here.”

  “That’s the kind of thing you say to get from one day to the next.” Edmund shook his head. “It isn’t true. There’s something better in this world, and if we have the courage, we can go find it.”

  “Seeking for something better means always seeking and never finding.”

  Edmund could not help but make a snort of disgust. “How long until those scars heal on your back? How long until your master finds another excuse to whip you raw?”

  “Edmund, we’re fourteen,” said Katherine. “We can’t just run away—we’d end up starving on the roa
d, or worse.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” said Edmund. “And what happens if we stay? We don’t fit here, you know we don’t. What’s going to happen when we grow up? What’s going to happen if we keep living the lives laid out for us? None of us, not one of us will ever be happy.”

  Katherine cradled up the cracked and weathered scabbard in her hands. Tom let Jumble onto his lap.

  “I’m learning things in this book, in all the things I read.” Edmund touched a hand to the binding. “There is a world out there, a great wide world. Seas of sand, cities of a thousand towers, courts of ebony and marble. We don’t have to stay in this place.”

  “This is a good place,” said Katherine. “A safe place. A lot of people died to make it that way. We should be grateful.”

  “How will we know if this place is good or bad if we never see another one? How will we know if our lives could be better if they never, ever change?” Edmund heard his voice echo back from the pasture and came to know that he had raised it too loud. “No one needs us here. If we stay, we’ll all end up stuck in lives we don’t want.”

  Katherine took her sword back. “Life is not all about getting what you want, Edmund. It’s not just doing what you like and forgetting everyone who needs you. You’re just being selfish.”

  “You used to want to be things, to do things!” Some part of Edmund told him to stop, but he ignored it. “You’ve changed!”

  “Yes, Edmund, I’m growing up.” Katherine snapped a look at him. “You should try it sometime.”

  “Oh, so you just want to sit around and wait until you get married off to some blacksmith? You think he’ll let you practice with a sword whenever you like once you’ve popped out his babies? You think you’ll ever touch a warhorse again? You think—” Edmund closed his mouth, but it was far too late.

  Katherine turned away, blinking hard. “You are such a child.”

  “I’m sorry.” Edmund wanted to bite off his tongue. “Please, I’m sorry.”

  Katherine kept her back to him. Jumble leapt from Tom’s lap with his ears pricked up. Tom got to his feet and followed, around the log and down past the trees.