What to do? What to do?
Run outside. Run and hide.
When your bright sword turns to rust?
Who to trust? Who to trust?
Stand alone. Standing stone.”
Denna grew paler as she realized what I was implying. She nodded and chanted the chorus softly to herself:
See a woman pale as snow?
Silent come and silent go.
What’s their plan? What’s their plan?
Chandrian. Chandrian.
Denna and I sat in the patchwork shade of the autumn trees, out of sight of the ruined farm. Chandrian. The Chandrian were really here. I was still trying to collect my thoughts when she spoke.
“Is this what you were expecting to find?” she asked.
“It’s what I was looking for,” I said. The Chandrian were here less than a day ago. “But I didn’t expect this. I mean, when you’re a child and you go digging for buried treasure, you don’t expect to find any. You go looking for dennerlings and faeries in the forest, but you don’t find them.” They’d killed my troupe, and they’d killed this wedding party. “Hell, I go looking for you in Imre all the time, but I don’t actually expect to find you….” I trailed off, realizing that I was blathering.
Some of the tension bled out of Denna as she laughed. There was no mocking in it, only amusement. “So am I lost treasure or a faeling?”
“You’re both. Hidden, valuable, much sought and seldom found.” I looked up at her, my mind hardly attending to what was coming out of my mouth. “There’s much of the fae in you as well.” They are real. The Chandrian were real. “You’re never where I look for you, then you appear all unexpected. Like a rainbow.”
Over the last year I’d held a silent fear in my secret heart. I worried at times that the memory of my troupe’s death and the Chandrian had just been a strange sort of grief-dream my mind had created to help me deal with the loss of my entire world. But now I had something resembling proof. They were real. My memory was real. I wasn’t crazy.
“When I was I child I chased a rainbow for an hour one evening. Got lost in the woods. My parents were frantic. I thought I could catch up to it. I could see where it should touch the ground. That’s what you’re….”
Denna touched my arm. I felt the sudden warmth of her hand through my shirt. I drew a deep breath and smelled the smell of her hair, warm with the sun, the smell of green grass and her clean sweat and her breath and apples. The wind sighed through the trees and lifted her hair so that it tickled my face.
Only when sudden silence filled the clearing did I realize that I’d been keeping up a steady stream of mindless chatter for several minutes. I flushed with embarrassment and looked around, suddenly remembering where I was.
“You were a little wild around the eyes there,” she said gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of sorts before.”
I took another slow breath. “I’m out of sorts all the time,” I said. “I just don’t show it.”
“My point exactly.” She took a step back, her hand slowly sliding down the length of my arm until it fell away. “So what now?”
“I…I have no idea.” I looked around aimlessly.
“That doesn’t sound like you either,” she said.
“I’d like a drink of water,” I said, then gave a sheepish grin at how childish it sounded.
She grinned back at me. “That’s a good place to start,” she teased. “After that?”
“I’d like to know why the Chandrian attacked here.”
“What’s their plan, eh?” She looked serious. “There isn’t much middle ground with you, is there? All you want is a drink of water and the answer to a question that folk have been guessing at since…well, since forever.”
“What do you think happened here?” I asked. “Who do you think killed these folks?”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “It could have been all manner of…” She stopped, chewing on her lower lip. “No. That’s a lie,” she said at last. “It sounds strange to say, but I think it was them. It sounds like something out of a story, so I don’t want to believe it. But I do.” She looked at me nervously.
“That makes me feel better.” I stood up. “I thought I might be a little crazy.”
“You still might be,” she said. “I’m not a good touchstone to use for judging your sanity.”
“Do you feel crazy?”
She shook her head, a half smile curling the corner of her mouth. “No. How about you?”
“Not particularly.”
“That’s either good or bad, depending,” she said. “How do you propose we go about solving the mystery of the ages?”
“I need to think on it for a while,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s find your mysterious Master Ash. I’d love to ask him a few questions about what he saw back at the Mauthen farm.”
Denna nodded. “I was thinking I would head back to where he left me, behind that bluff, then look between there and the farm.” She shrugged. “It’s not much of a plan….”
“It gives us a place to start,” I said. “If he came back and found you were gone, he might have left a trail that we could pick up.”
Denna led the way through the woods. It was warmer here. The trees kept the wind at bay but the sun could still peer through as many of the trees were nearly bare. Only the tall oaks were still holding all their leaves, like self-conscious old men.
As we walked, I tried to think of what reason the Chandrian could have had for killing these people. Was there any similarity between this wedding party and my troupe?
Someone’s parents have been singing the entirely wrong sort of songs….
“What did you sing last night?” I asked. “For the wedding.”
“The usual,” Denna said, kicking through a pile of leaves. “Bright stuff. ‘Pennywhistle.’ ‘Come Wash in the River.’ ‘Copper Bottom Pot.’” She chuckled. “‘Aunt Emme’s Tub’…”
“You didn’t,” I said, aghast. “At a wedding?”
“A drunk grandfather asked for it,” she shrugged as she made her way though a thick tangle of yellowing banerbyre. “There were a few raised eyebrows, but not many. They’re earthy folk around here.”
We walked a little longer in silence. The wind gusted in the high branches above us, but where we trudged along it was just a whisper. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Come Wash’ before….”
“I’d have thought…” Denna looked over her shoulder at me. “Are you trying to trick me into singing for you?”
“Of course.”
She turned and smiled warmly at me, her hair falling into her face. “Maybe later. I’ll sing for my supper.” She led us around a tall outcrop of dark stone. It was chillier here, out of the sun. “I think he left me here,” she said, looking around uncertainly. “Everything looks different during the day.”
“Do you want to search the route back toward the farm, or circle out from here?”