And now . . . what? He’d delivered the message, the strange and foolish message. Was any of it right? Was he on the Path he was meant to walk?
Lionheart closed his eyes more tightly still, squeezing away the questions and listening, listening. Please, my Lord, he whispered in his heart. Please tell me what I should do!
To his surprise, he felt two thin arms wrapping around him, deep in memory.
His mind’s eye opened and peered down into Rose Red’s face. She, his most faithful friend, his truest companion. She, whom he had betrayed.
He could not decide, here in his memory, which face he saw. Was it the bizarrely ugly face of the goblin girl he had known as a child? Was it the face of the queen who now sat on a throne in a distant Faerie realm? It didn’t matter. She was Rose Red; that’s all he knew or needed.
“There ain’t nothin’ you can do that will turn me from you,” she said.
But this wasn’t true. He’d betrayed her. He’d betrayed her and been unable to save her. And he must not seek atonement.
She stepped away from him now. And he saw that she was clad in royal robes, her head adorned in roses. The newly crowned Queen of Arpiar. He’d kissed her cheek. What a crazed, foolish act! How dare he even look upon her face, much less offer such a salute under any guise?
But then, he might never see her again. And if his last memory of his dearest friend—dearest and best loved—must be of a stolen kiss, so be it. When he died again, whether by starvation, noose, or blade, hers would be the last face before his vision, the last thought within his heart.
He opened his eyes in the deepening gloom of the evening-filled tower. The baron, catching his gaze, smiled like a dragon.
24
THE NIGHT AFTER FOXBRUSH’S TREK to the Twisted Man’s tree, Redman and his children sat around a fire outside their front door, using stone awls to enlarge the tiny eyehole at the bottom of each black fig. Through these holes they threaded strings made of stout grasses, gathering figs into clusters of five or six. The wasps buzzed dully as they pursued this work. Most of the adult wasps, Redman explained to Foxbrush, had fled, leaving only their pupae deep in the heart of each fig. “But they’ll grow soon enough,” he said. “And then you’ll see what they do.”
Foxbrush offered to help, but after his first few unskilled attempts with the awl—during which he very nearly succeeded in puncturing the fleshy part of his palm—Redman took the tools away from him and told him that he’d done enough for one day.
So Foxbrush took himself to the far side of the fire, sitting with his back to the jungle, watching the family at work. And his heart beat with an almost sickening thrill every time he considered what they did.
But I must watch. I must wait and see how it continues, he told himself. After all, he didn’t yet know how the process worked. He didn’t want to go running back to his own time with only half an idea in his head; not when a whole idea could save his kingdom!
There was also the difficulty of not knowing how he was supposed to get home again. And of course there was Daylily.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness washed over poor Foxbrush as he sat with the wildness of the jungle behind him and the wildness of the people who lived so near it before him. He did not belong in this world. He never would. He did not belong anywhere save in his own quiet study, with books and ledgers and interesting equations spread before him, his door shut on anything that might disturb or distract him from his work.
He did not belong here. And he did not belong on the throne of Southlands.
His hand went to the front of his shirt, and he drew out the scroll hidden there. Hardly knowing what he did, he unrolled it, then turned himself so that the light of the fire might fall upon the words written so elegantly in, he guessed, a woman’s hand. So much for it being a message from Bard Eanrin! Who was blind anyway, if Foxbrush remembered the stories correctly, and, if he existed, probably couldn’t write at all.
Yet Lionheart had felt the need to deliver this scroll and the message it contained. Why? Some mad joke of his? Leo always was one for jokes.
“What is that?”
Foxbrush looked up and found Lark standing over him, her awl in one hand, a cluster of figs in the other. Glancing beyond her, he saw that Redman had stepped away from the fire, leaving his three daughters and little son alone for the moment.
“It’s a message, I suppose,” Foxbrush said, a little unwillingly. Privacy seemed to be an unknown commodity in this village.
“Who from?” Lark persisted, sitting cross-legged beside him. She began work on the figs she’d brought with her, her head cocked to one side, waiting.
“Bard Eanrin,” Foxbrush replied with a mocking snort.