After two days’ hard riding over increasingly steep terrain, we finally reached the village of Donques, on the flank of the crooked mountain. My garden’s wild man, Tiny Tom, lived in a cave somewhere nearby. He was eight feet tall with clawed talons for toes; surely he didn’t come near the village. We would stay at the local palasho and spend a couple days combing the surrounding mountainside.
When I’d reported my failure with Od Fredricka, I’d mentioned the proximity of Tiny Tom. “You should go after him,” Glisselda had said, “but don’t forget that you’re due in Fnark, in Samsam, by St. Abaster’s Day. Can you still make it if you detour through Donques?”
“Josquin says so,” I replied, but I was a little disconcerted. There was St. Abaster again, as if he were following me.
Of course, there was no guarantee of finding the Samsamese ityasaari even if I made it to Fnark in time. If an extra day in Donques ensured that I could bring an ityasaari home, I would insist that we stay. Tiny Tom seemed like a bird in the hand.
As we rounded the last turn of the switchback trail, we saw the villagers of Donques out en masse. The men wore fine embroidered smocks and hats; the women had braided ribbons into their fair hair and given the children a quick spit polish. The whole village was resplendent; the gold, orange, and crimson flag of Ninys flapped from every peaked rooftop, and the window boxes overflowed with pink and yellow blooms.
The crowd was following an ox-drawn wagon far ahead of us, festooned with bright ribbons and garlands of flowers, carrying a statue draped in gauzy fabrics. Beside me, Moy grinned. “It’s Santi Agniesti. She’s our patroness here. Makes good cheese.”
The citizenry were following the statue up the road at a funereal pace. At the sound of our horses, the crowd parted to let us pass. Are we part of the procession? asked Abdo. Without waiting for my answer, he stood upon his saddle, holding the reins one-handed with confident subtlety. He smiled down at the gaping villagers, waving his skinny arm and blowing kisses. He did a standing backflip on the saddle; the crowd gasped and then applauded lightly.
“Is this all right?” I asked Moy, but I could tell by his grin he was loving it.
“My cousins are all here somewhere; they’ll enjoy this show. But be careful, moush!” he called, using Nan’s nickname for Abdo. “Don’t fall on your head.”
Abdo batted his eyes like innocence incarnate, then gripped the front of his saddle and lifted his legs into a handstand.
“Santi Merdi!” boomed Moy, laughing. “I should tie you to your horse.”
Abdo made it a one-handed handstand.
The village’s market square was packed with people. Santi Agniesti’s cart veered off toward her rosy chapel, painted with murals of birds, cows, and alpine flowers, but the crowds lingered among food stalls, merchants’ booths, and puppet shows. “The palasho is up the road to our left,” Josquin called, but our party had come to a grinding halt. Moy exclaimed joyously, dismounted, and was mobbed by people clasping his hands and slapping his back. Moy tossed small children into the air and kissed their foreheads.
Nan rode up to where Josquin and I were waiting. “Cousin, cousin, cousin segonde,” she said, pointing at villagers as if counting off. “How you say … oncle.”
“You’re not leaping off your horse to greet them?” I asked.
“I am raised in Segosh.” Nan haughtily lifted her chin. “Not to be milkmaid.”
Josquin drummed his fingers on his saddle horn, squinted at the sky, and sighed. “The sun sets soon. We weren’t going to find your ityasaari in the dark, in any case.”
I opened my mouth to reassure him, but Abdo interrupted: Phina madamina, Tiny Tom is close. Abdo was staring eastward, craning his neck as if that would help him see through buildings. His mind is a strange color. All swirly.
Noted. I wondered whether to leave Moy here and pursue Tom with a smaller group. This ityasaari was strong and scary, but he’d never struck me as dangerous.
Moy strode toward us through the crowd, shouting in Ninysh. From his tone and her frown, I guessed he was teasing Nan for snubbing her cousins. “Would you play your flute, Seraphina?” he cried, switching languages. “A show for my cousins. Abdo and I could dance the saltamunti.”
I hesitated, but Abdo was already leaping off his horse enthusiastically. Yes, let’s! It would be perfect. Tiny Tom will hear your flute and come to us.
You do realize he’s not tiny, I said, wondering what my garden denizens looked like to Abdo, if the garden didn’t look like a garden. People might be alarmed.
The Eight can protect everyone, he insisted, taking Moy’s hand and leading him to the center of the square.
I dismounted and rummaged for my flute in my saddle pack. Josquin, realizing Moy was serious, climbed off his horse, tugged at the hem of his doublet, and addressed the crowd, introducing us in grandiloquent tones. The villagers cleared the center of the square, chatting excitedly among themselves, pink faces eager.
Moy tossed his helmet to Nan and posed opposite Abdo, arms raised. They were amusingly mismatched: short and tall, skinny and burly, dark and blond. I lingered over my warm-ups. Abdo tapped a foot, melodramatically impatient with me. I took a deep breath, silently wished us luck, and lit into a furious saltamunti.
It was a dance for soldiers and muscular farmhands, full of athletic feats and manly posturing. Moy grinned ferociously, boots and breastplate gleaming, gifted with enthusiasm if not elegance. Abdo, on the other hand, executed moves gracefully but didn’t have the presence to carry off the posing. Together they made a surprisingly good team. Moy leaped and stamped while Abdo did barrel turns around him. The crowd shouted and whistled approvingly.
Tiny Tom likes this music, said Abdo. He’s coming.
I looked around; Tiny Tom’s great woolly head would be visible above the crowd if he got close.
Moy knelt, and Abdo leapfrogged over him; Moy made a stirrup of his hands, lifted Abdo into the air, and flipped him. The crowd roared. Moy lifted Abdo onto his shoulders, and then Abdo did a handstand atop Moy’s upraised palms. The Eight clanged their swords against their shields in cacophonous applause.
Above the din, I heard a terrible, marrow-freezing scream.
I cut off mid-note, looking around wildly. Everyone stared at me, and I realized with a start that only I had heard the sound: Abdo had screamed inside my mind.
He was still in a handstand, held up by Moy, but a knife handle protruded from Abdo’s left forearm. He crumpled. Moy caught him, thank Heaven, before he hit the ground. “Des Osho!” Moy barked, and the Eight were at his side at once, looking frantically searching for Abdo’s attacker. Moy cradled Abdo, who curled up in agony, his blue tunic soaked with blood.
Josquin shouted, “There!” and pointed at a figure on a balcony of an inn across the square, scrambling to the roof. The man wore the habit and tonsure of St. Abaster’s Order. His cassock hindered his climbing, but if he made it across the roof, we would quickly lose him.
As the monk rushed up the pitched slate roof, a pale shaggy head with leaves matted into its beard rose above the ridgeline in front of him like a full moon. The head was followed by a great hairy body, eight feet tall, inadequately clothed in scraps of blankets stitched together. The wild man had dragon talons for toes and patchy silver scales up to his ankles; his claws screeched against the slates as he walked down the steep roof toward the monk, who stood frozen, a second knife falling from his stunned fingers.
Tiny Tom picked the man up like a rag doll, snapped his neck, and tossed him off the roof into the crowd.
For a moment, the world seemed frozen. Then someone screamed, “Gianni Patto!” and the square erupted in pandemonium, some fleeing, some trying to recover the monk’s body, some hurling stones at the monster on the roof.
Moy rushed back toward Josquin and Nan, clutching Abdo to his chest. Abdo stared at nothing, too shocked even to weep. Nan ripped the Ninysh flag off the front of a tavern while Josquin took Abdo from her father; together they extracted the knife and bound Abdo’s arm in the colorful fabric. Moy turned back to join the Eight, who were shooting arrows at the monster on the roof. I caught up to the captain, grabbed his arm, and cried over the din, “Tell them to stop shooting! He’s the one we’re looking for!”
“You said he was tiny!” Moy shouted back. He shouldered his way through the panicking crowd toward his troops.
Across the square, Gianni Patto jumped from the roof onto the inn’s balcony. He grinned as the Eight’s arrows bounced futilely off his leathery skin. His terrible mouth was full of broken and decaying teeth. He leaped into the crowd below, villagers scattering around him like ripples in a pond. The Eight, now directed by Moy, encircled the wild man, swords drawn. Gianni Patto made no threatening move, but held out his hands, crossed at the wrists, as if asking to be bound. It took a couple of tries, but Moy did just that. Gianni offered no resistance.
Gianni Patto stared at me across the square. I stared back. He did not look like he had in my visions. That is, he was physically the same, but there was an intelligence in his eyes, something I knew but could not name, a cat-like deviousness.
The wild man roared inarticulately, then roared again, saying words this time and turning my insides to ice: “Sera! Feee-nah!”
How could he know my name? I asked Abdo, but he did not respond. I glanced over in alarm; Nan was on horseback, holding the wilting boy before her on the saddle.
Josquin plucked at my sleeve; he’d been speaking, but I hadn’t been listening. “… Abdo to the palasho,” he repeated, his voice a balm to my frantic heart. “The baronet will have the best physician. We need to hurry.”
I nodded numbly and mounted my horse. Our guard rode ahead, two soldiers carrying the bundled body of the monk between them, two pulling Gianni by his bound wrists, and two flanking him with their swords drawn. Nan carried Abdo, and Captain Moy took up the rear with me. Gianni Patto docilely allowed himself to be led, his taloned toes scrabbling at the cobbles of the square, but he never took his eyes off me. I lagged as far behind as I dared; he twisted halfway around just to stare at me.