I considered. “I could. It’s something I’ll think about, Gryffin, I promise you. But for now I cannot leave. Too many people depend on me and I—I think you need to find your own place in Wodenderry. You need to learn how to live your new life before you start bringing bits of your old life into it.”
He gave me a somber look out of those blue eyes. “You think I will forget you,” he said, his voice accusing. “You think I will go to the palace, and make friends with highborn nobles, and drink tea with the queen, and forget about you. You think if you were there, I would start to find you embarrassing or annoying. You think that once I am the Dream-Maker in the royal city, I will be too good for you to know.”
Now I was the one who was embarrassed, for that had been exactly what I was thinking. Not easy to lie to Gryffin, so I just shrugged. “I think a little of that may come true,” I said. “I think you should see who you might become before you can be so sure you want to stay who you are.”
He watched me a long moment, his face utterly serious, then he held his hand up, his fingers slightly cupped. I leaned forward until my cheek settled against his palm. I had spoken so calmly up till now that I had not realized how agitated I really was, how close to the brink of despair. But Gryffin’s touch gave me back a measure of peace, transferred to my skin the knowledge of his own conviction.
“Whoever and wherever I am, I will always want you as my friend, Kellen Carmichael,” he said softly. “If you won’t follow me to Wodenderry, I’ll have to come back to Thrush Hollow to find you.”
I smiled widely enough that the corner of my mouth caught against the edge of his hand. “I won’t put you to the trouble,” I said. “I’ll give you a year in Wodenderry. And if you still miss me, I’ll come to the city then.”
“What a great thing it is to be Dream-Maker,” he said. “Just so will I be able to make my own dreams come true.”
“If you have that kind of power, you’d better choose your dreams with care,” I warned.
“My dreams have been the same since the days before I had any power,” he retorted. “I imagine they will not change once the power leaves me.”
“A year, then,” I said. “I will see you then.”
In the morning, Ayler came for him, and Bo loaded up the cart with Gryffin’s meager things. We all stood out in the courtyard and madly waved good-bye. Then Ayler shook his reins, and his mare pulled forward in her traces, and the wagon moved forward, and then Gryffin was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
That year was the longest of my life.
I think we all felt a sort of heaviness come over us once Gryffin was gone, as if he had been a buoyant element that kept us all afloat. The days were filled with more drudgery; it was easier to be irritable. The cascade of joys that had poured over the Parmer Arms came more sparingly now, at a more ordinary rate, and were mixed in with the usual complement of unpleasant events. Nothing too miserable, but nothing too ecstatic, either. Just common life.
Despite Josh’s worst fears, business did not entirely slack off at the Arms once Gryffin was gone. Oh, certainly, the pilgrims who came to Thrush Hollow just to meet the Dream-Maker were scarcer now, though there were still plenty of folk who dropped by out of curiosity to see where Gryffin had once lived. And many travelers had simply gotten in the habit of changing horses in Thrush Hollow, and they did not alter their routines even though Gryffin was gone. The expanded dining room and inn still were full about a third of the time, and business remained steady.
Sarah and Bo were married just as fall folded over into winter, and it was the high point of the season for all of us connected to the Arms. Juliet traveled in from Merendon and Raymond from Wodenderry. Gryffin sent a gift with Raymond since he was not strong enough to make the journey himself. Emily and I acted as bridesmaids and carried bouquets of holly and truelove vines. The newlyweds were gone for a week on their honeymoon and returned looking as if they had discovered the answers to the mysteries of the world. I suspected Jack Parmer would be next to marry. Emily, it turned out, was due to have a baby in the spring. So even without the Dream-Maker there to grant our wishes, we learned we could still expect blessings, and gradually we grew reconciled to Gryffin’s absence.
Or at least the others did. I did not. I missed him every day. I felt a blankness always at the edge of my vision, an incompleteness to my thoughts. I wrote him every few days and received letters back from him even more often. At the end of each note he always, without fail, printed the words, “I have not forgotten you.” Often I looked for this reassurance before I even read the salutation. I told myself that if he ever failed to write that line, I would take it as a sign; I would not go to Wodenderry after all. I would know that my deepest fears had been realized, that he had moved beyond me, and I would not trouble him by appearing at his side like some unwelcome ghost from his past.
But he never forgot. He never failed.
A few days before Wintermoon, he sent a package from Wodenderry, filled with small trinkets for each of us to bind to the wreath. To Emily and Randal he sent a tiny rattle filled with birdseed—and a larger one that they could keep when the baby arrived. To Sarah and Bo, he sent exotic dried fruits—some to attach to the wreath to symbolize prosperity, the rest to eat.
To me he sent a miniature and beautifully carved representation of the queen’s palace, complete with minuscule flags flying from the petite turrets. Since he had to have realized I would never burn anything so exquisite, he also sent me a small wagon wheel, obviously pulled from a child’s toy. The message was obvious. He expected me to travel to the royal city.
I tied the wheel to the wreath and watched as Josh and his sons tossed the big circle of greenery into the hungry fire. I wondered if your wishes were even more likely to come true if a Dream-Maker wished them for you.
But winter came cruelly and brought sickness with it. Half the town was shut down at one time or another, and there were days we had only a handful of customers at the Arms. That was lucky for me, because I spent two weeks unable to work my shifts. My mother fell violently ill, and for three days I was sure she would not survive. I closed the house to visitors while I nursed her around the clock. Her skin was so hot that I thought her fever might blister her flesh; she succumbed to delirium. Even after the fever broke, her mind wandered and her sentences sometimes made no sense. She did not want to eat and distrusted the liquids I tried to convince her to drink.
“It’s just tea, Mother, it will do you good,” I would say. Or, “Try a little broth. You need to get your strength back.”
“It’ll make me forget,” she replied once in a croaking voice. “Then they’ll trick me.”
“Who will trick you?”
“They will. They’ll tell me lies.”
I spooned some soup into her mouth, and she reluctantly swallowed. “I’m the only one here, and I never bother to lie,” I said.
“And they’ll take him,” she said.
I wiped her chin with a napkin. “I don’t think they will. That was good, you swallowed some soup. Will you take some more?”
Obediently, she took another spoonful, and then another. “You’re so kind to me,” she said.
I felt some guilt at that, for I wasn’t feeling kind. I was feeling impatient and trapped and desperate to get away. But she was too sick to leave behind. “I want you to get well,” I said.
She grabbed my wrist with one of her hot, thin hands, pulling at my arm so strongly that I almost spilled the bowl. “If I’m good, will you tell me?” she asked in a pitiful voice. “If I eat every bite?”
“I’ll tell you anyway, even if you don’t eat anything,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
“Where is he?” she whispered. “What have they done with my son?”
She was disoriented, I told myself. She had forgotten herself, forgotten her own story; it was the fever talking. The sickness had taken her all the way back to her other great illness, more than fifteen years ago when I was born. But
I felt such bitterness when I realized that she did not recognize me, as I sat beside her doing my best to keep her alive. That she did not acknowledge me as her daughter. Probably could not have told me my name. In her hour of greatest desperation, she did not call on me. She did not even know who I was.
The sickness passed, and winter finally grew too exhausted to torment us any longer. Spring gamboled in, petulant and charming by turns. Emily had a baby girl and straightaway said she wanted another. Randal’s father and sister came to Thrush Hollow, having left the household in secret, to make themselves acquainted with the newest addition to their family.
“If you write your mother,” Randal’s father said to him, “if you ask her, she will forgive you now, I think. It has been so long, and she misses you so much.”
Randal tossed his baby in the air and caught her as she squealed with laughter. “I have done nothing for which I need forgiveness,” he said. “I won’t ask for it. But she should ask it of me.”
His father watched him, sadness on the face that looked so much like his son’s. “That’s not the way the world works,” he said.
“I don’t much care for how the world works outside of Thrush Hollow,” Randal replied. “I am happy here.”
Emily’s was not the only baby born to my small circle that season. One day a few weeks later, during the rainiest season imaginable, a young woman who was very close to term came to my mother’s house seeking a bed for the night.
“It might be a bed for two or three nights,” the woman said as she gratefully lowered herself onto the mattress in the guest room. “I’m not sure I can travel any farther. I think—I believe the baby is coming any day now.”
I had to wonder if my mother had any memories of her own lying-in, when she had been alone and some distance from home as she was overtaken by labor pains. “Is there anyone I can send for?” my mother asked. “Your husband or your parents?”
The pregnant woman shook her head. “They are all so far away,” she said. “I don’t think any of them can help me now.”
Her name was Anna, or so she said. I thought it was obvious she was concealing secrets, and her name might be only one of them. For one thing, I didn’t believe she had a husband, and I had to wonder if, like Emily, she had been a maid servant who caught the attention of a wealthy man. But that only made me feel sorry for her. I fetched her a pail of heated water so she could sponge off the grime of travel, and I made sure she had a glass of warm milk before she went to bed.
And in the middle of the night when she woke us screaming, I ran to fetch the midwife. My mother bustled about the kitchen, pleased rather than not at the midnight turmoil, excited by the idea of ushering a new life into the world. The labor went more speedily than some I had heard of, and by the time dawn came in golden splinters through the bedroom window, Anna had delivered herself of a baby boy.
“What will you call him?” my mother asked as she cuddled the swathed baby in her arms while the midwife cleaned Anna up.
“I don’t know,” Anna replied in an exhausted voice. “I haven’t been able to settle on a name.”
The midwife patted Anna’s stomach, said, “You were built to have babies,” and packed her battered bag.
“How soon can I travel?” Anna asked her.
The midwife shrugged. “Soon as you want. But you might not feel up to it for a day or two.”
“I need to get home,” Anna said.
“You can stay as long as you like,” my mother said. She was still holding the baby, and whispering silly things in his tiny curled ears. “But you sleep now. Kellen and I will watch the little one.”
Actually, my mother watched the newborn while I took my shift at the Parmer Arms. When I returned that night, nothing had changed: Anna was still sleeping, and my mother was still holding the infant boy. Eventually Anna roused long enough to eat a light dinner and nurse her son, then returned to her bed. The exertions of the night had worn us all out, and my mother and I were asleep not an hour after Anna was.
In the morning, Anna was gone, offering no note, no coin in payment. She had left her son behind.
I spent a day trying to track down where Anna might have gone, making inquiries at the Arms and the stables and the inn and anywhere else that catered to travelers. But no one could offer me any information about a driver who had taken up a lone woman in the middle of the night. I couldn’t believe she could have gotten far on foot, and for another two days I worried that she might be found dead on the road. If she was, word never got back to Thrush Hollow.
There remained the question of what to do with the baby boy.
The whole town knew of his abandonment at our house, of course, and various neighbors dropped by to bring blankets and infant clothing. The woman two doors down, who had just weaned her own twins, was happy to serve as wet nurse and earn a few extra coins. My mother showed the baby off like some exotic trinket purchased at a shop in Merendon. Though I advised against it, she bestowed a name upon him, calling him Georgie after her father’s father. More times than I could count in the following days, I came across her with her nose brushing against his nose, cooing to him where he lay in a borrowed cradle. “Hey, Georgie, how’s my boy? How’s my little baby…?”
It was another week before I realized she intended to keep him.
I had not had much luck finding a foster family. The people I knew and trusted, like Emily and Sarah, were too busy with their own lives, and my mother vetoed most of the others who seemed willing. “That house is filthy. I wouldn’t send a dog to live there…. She’s a fine wet nurse, but she’s already got five children, can she really handle another?…I don’t think he brings in enough money to be able to afford to feed another mouth….” No one was good enough for little Georgie. No one except my mother.
“You seriously think you have the time and energy to raise a baby?” I demanded the night she confessed her desire. “And run a household and entertain the occasional paying guest?”
“I do. Kellen, I really do. Samantha is thirteen now, a very responsible girl, and she’s told me she’ll work full-time from now on. You’re gone so much, I know I can’t expect much help from you. But Samantha lives next door and can be here in the middle of the night if I need her. We’ve had such a successful few years that I’ve got a good bit of money saved, so even if I turn away customers now and then, I won’t be hurting for funds. And—I want him. His mother left him with me. It’s like I’m supposed to have him.”
Just then Georgie gave a demanding little cry. My mother picked him up and rocked him against her chest. “Isn’t that right, Georgie?” she crooned down into his scowling face. “I’m supposed to have you. My baby, my sweet little darling boy…”
And then I understood. This was the boy child she had wanted for almost sixteen years; this was the changeling’s replacement. I had been wrong, all those times, when I thought her secret desire was to see my father again—that had not been the wish she entrusted to the Dream-Maker, after all. She had whispered, “Give me a son,” and her wish had been granted. She finally had what she had always wanted.
Two days later I had packed everything I owned and was on my way to Wodenderry.
Part Three
Chapter Eighteen
I hitched a ride with Ayler, who happened to be passing through Thrush Hollow on his way to Wodenderry. He was patient through the tearful good-byes as I said farewell to everyone at the Parmer Arms, and quiet during the first two hours of the trip, as I sat beside him and tried not to be depressed. I had never been outside of Thrush Hollow in my life, and I almost felt as if I was ripping off a layer of skin as I left the town behind.
But gradually I was possessed by a sense of excitement as well as intense curiosity about the land we were passing through. Ayler, an inveterate wanderer, pointed out interesting sights we encountered, bade me watch the changeover in vegetation as we headed south, and told me the names of the small towns we stopped at. During the four days of the trip, we stopped
quite often. Sometimes we would merely get something to drink at the posting house; other times we would have a leisurely lunch or dinner before taking a room for the night at a boardinghouse or an inn. Still other times we would just stroll once through the market square, nodding at people who glanced our way, and then move on.
The point, of course, was to allow anyone with a secret a chance to come up to Ayler and whisper in his ear. The Safe-Keeper was a familiar figure in many of these hamlets, I soon learned. Whether or not people wished to unburden themselves, they were always pleased to see him. The tavern-keeper would not take his money; the posting houses brought us meals for free. We always paid for our beds at night, but at a greatly reduced rate. While I was with him, I was accorded Ayler’s status. No one told me secrets, but everyone welcomed my presence.
While I was with him, everyone wondered why.
“So, Ayler, found yourself a girl, have you?” an elderly man asked at our very first stop on our very first day.
“No, she’s just a friend. I’ve known her since she was quite little.”
An appraising look, then a shrug. “Well, that’s your own secret,” he said. “What’ll you be drinking today?”
Some version of this conversation occurred at every stop that entire day. If Ayler was as disturbed by the questions as I was, he gave no sign. But, early the next morning, halfway between towns, he obediently pulled the mare to a halt when I said I wanted to take a short break on the side of the road. He fed the horse an apple while I disappeared into the brush.
When I returned, I had exchanged my flat shoes and dress for scuffed boots, loose black trousers, and a long white shirt with the tails hanging out. I had settled a bulky vest over my shoulders to camouflage the shape of my body. I also had pulled back my long hair and tied it with a bit of leather. I knew from experience that anyone who inspected me casually would think I was a boy.