“You witches be fine singers,” their guard called out. “I vow I can hear the sound of the scythes cutting the hay.”
Grayling sang louder as she continued her song and the mice continued their chiff chiffs.
Her own true love was in the field that day—
His hair was gold and eyes were moonlight gray.
Chiff chiff, chiff chiff
With silvery scythe
He swung but swung astray.
He cleaved her head
And laid it in the field of hay.
Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.
Chiff chiff, chiff chiff.
“Chiff chiff, chiff chiff,” shouted Auld Nancy.
“And swish. Swish swish,” cried Pansy, her face red with excitement, “and slash slash!”
The listening soldier was so stirred that he had begun to chiff chiff along. “Finish the song,” he called. “What follows? How fares the girl?”
“Poorly,” said Grayling, “for she be headless and dead.”
“Dead? Nay! That be a poor story and not worth the listening,” the guard said, “with a most unacceptable ending.” He crossed his arms and, with a huff and a bah, walked away.
“Not all endings are happy,” said Grayling. And she sang on.
There were other sounds in the darkness: shouts and cries, the calls of soldiers striding through the yard, the grim and doomful echo of their boots. Ere long, the night grew quiet but for the chiff chiff of the mice. More songs were needed, but Auld Nancy and Pansy slumbered in a corner.
“Can you not hurry?” Grayling whispered, but to whom? The cold of midnight settled upon her, and she pulled her cloak tighter. She sang her mother’s healing song and a love chant and a song to cheer, although it did not cheer her.
She even sang to the grimoire, but there was no answering song. Face spots and flea bites! Had the song lost its magic? Grayling caught her breath but then remembered—a bridge. They had crossed a bridge. Water stood between her and the grimoire. She hoped it was no more than that.
After a time, the mouse hole had grown large enough for a person to pass through. “’Tis done,” Grayling whispered as she woke Pansy and Auld Nancy. And Pook? Where was Pook? She could not leave without him, but the mice were so many, crawling and climbing over each other. Gray mice, brown mice, fat mice, and thin—how would she ever find one special mouse? “Pook,” she whispered. “Pook, come hither to me,” but there was no response, no Pook with his pink nose and pink ears and more whiskers than any mouse truly needed.
“We must go,” said Auld Nancy.
“Not without Pook.”
“Who?”
“Pook. The mouse. The raven. The goat.”
Auld Nancy shook her head. Grayling could not see it in the dark, but she knew from the tsk sound Auld Nancy made. “He is a resourceful bird . . . mouse . . . whatever he is, and likely he will find you.”
They had to leave. Pook was resourceful indeed. Grayling took some comfort in that fact, but still her heart felt empty and sore.
She climbed out of the cage behind Pansy and Auld Nancy. Making what haste they could, they fought their way through a hedgerow thick with thorns and thistles that scratched their faces and snagged their hair. “Thistles and thorns! Begone! Begone!” Grayling shouted, as she yanked the skirt of her kirtle from the thorns’ grip, leaving a long gash in the skirt.
They crashed through bushes and brush to a path heading steeply down. With a sharp cry, Pansy fell, twisting her ankle beneath her. She pulled on Auld Nancy’s skirts and almost toppled her, too. “Clumsy girl!” Auld Nancy hissed. “Can you do nothing right?”
Pansy felt the sting of Auld Nancy’s bad temper more often than the rest of them, Grayling thought, but then she earned it more often. “Come,” said Grayling to the girl, “lean on me. I am strong enough for the both of us.” Pansy did, and like a two-headed beast, they scuttled away.
VII
heavy mist obscured the rising sun and darkened the path. Auld Nancy lifted her broom. “I shall banish the mist and let in the morning light.”
“Would that not make it easier for us to be followed when our escape is discovered?” asked Grayling. She sighed a sigh that ruffled the hair on Pansy’s head and, all unwilling, offered a solution. “I am accustomed to finding my way in the mist in my valley. I could, I expect, lead, and you follow.” Grumbling, she took Pansy’s arm and Auld Nancy’s hand, and they crept carefully through the mist down the steep and slippery path.
Grayling knew three kinds of mist—gentle mist that wrapped around her like a fine lady’s veil, mist thick with drops of moisture like peas in a soup, and a dense mist full of secrets and dangers and foreboding. This mist was neither gentle nor soupy, but menacing and somehow sinister.