he path narrowed, and wild blackberry bushes on either side reached out to snag Grayling’s hair and her skirt. Soon it curved to reveal a clearing and Widow Bagley’s home. The dwelling was more hut than cottage, and the thatched roof was quickly becoming unthatched. In the yard sheep, goats, and a red cow grazed while tubs and tuns and a big vat bubbled unattended. The cottage door was open—or missing—and from inside came the odor of sour milk and herbs.
An old woman appeared and beckoned them in. By pig and pie, thought Grayling, she is even older than Auld Nancy, if that be possible. Desdemona Cork waved the invitation away, Pansy turned away, and Auld Nancy nodded on the mule’s back, but Grayling, curious, followed Sylvanus.
The cottage was dark and damp, and its sharp, musty smell made her nose burn. Dripping bundles of drying cheese hung from the roof over the table, making puddles that a yellow cat was lapping. Wax-covered orbs of finished cheese were hung in the rafters to smoke and in dark corners to age. The room looked to Grayling like a magical forest where cheese grew instead of flowers.
Sylvanus approached the cheeses. He rolled his eyes and twitched his nose, sniffing and poking and tasting slices of the creamy rounds. “This,” he said finally to Widow Bagley. “This cheese I will have, and I will give you two coppers for two rounds.”
Widow Bagley snorted. “Six coppers,” she said.
Sylvanus shook his head. “Six? Nonsense. ’Tis thievery and greediness. I will give three.”
“Eight coppers,” said the widow.
“Eight? Nay. ’Tis not done that way. When I increase my offer, you lower your price until we meet in the middle. Four, and that be my last offer.”
“Twelve,” said the widow.
Sylvanus sputtered. “You do not understand bargaining. I increase, and you decrease. Now I offer six, and ’tis absolutely as high as I will go. What say you?”
“Done!” said the widow, and she spit on her hand and offered it to Sylvanus.
Sylvanus cheerfully paid the amount she had demanded in the first place and left the cottage with two cheeses tied together and hung around his neck. The others hurried behind him. He is obviously no shrewd bargainer, Grayling thought, and he believes in magic cheese. Was he but a muddle-headed dolt and no help to them at all?
They turned again to the west, Pansy shuffling in the rear. Amidst the trees, the remains of a cottage still smoked. And there, as if standing guard, was a tall tree, not human anymore but not quite tree. Grayling poked Sylvanus with her elbow and bade him look. His face, what she could see of it beyond the beard, paled. Why had he not seen such before? Where had he been?
A fierce and menacing wind blew against them, buffeting them as they struggled against it, heads down. The wind bit at Grayling’s chin, clutched at her ankles, and crawled up the sleeves of her gown. Her heart grew cold, and she felt dark despair settling over her spirits again as she trudged on. Suddenly, with a last swirl of dust, the wind was gone.
Nor was this a natural wind, Grayling sensed. Something was happening, something ominous and bleak, something they could not understand or control. Would it only strengthen as they drew closer to the grimoires? How could they fight it? She looked at her ragtag band of companions, muttering and grumbling and limping, and she succumbed for the moment to the despair.
“How much longer must we trudge this road?” asked Desdemona Cork. “I wish to be quit of the journey.”
Grayling sang a snatch of song and cocked her head to listen. “The grimoire is near,” she said. “Mayhap we will reach it next day or the next.”
Auld Nancy scowled. “I fear this be too easily done—”
“Easy? You think this easy?” Grayling’s cheeks blazed. “I have left my mother rooted to the ground, trekked through woods and swamps, been threatened and menaced and imprisoned, suffered blisters, frights, and empty belly. I do not in any way think this easy!”
“Hist, girl. I did not mean ’twas not difficult, for all of us, but I wonder why some power would take the grimoires and then let us find them.”
“Easy?” Grayling muttered as she plowed on. “She says ‘easy’?”
The day was darkening when they stopped again, feet sore and bellies empty. Pansy huddled beneath a tree, her face gray with weariness, and Auld Nancy dropped down beside her.
Trees stood black against the sky, and all was silent but for the hoots of owls and shrieks of birds for which Grayling had no name. The very air seemed dark and heavy. Though reluctant to be alone among the trees, Grayling went to gather wood for a fire.
A bit of a brook, muddy and stagnant, seeped from ground rutted and tunneled by moles and voles. She glimpsed foxes and furry creatures she hoped were not wolves darting between the trees. Every rustle of leaf or crack of twig underfoot made her jump. Branches reached for her like fingers groping, poking, scratching. Had some of these trees been folks, were perhaps still folks deep in their woody hearts? At last, her arms full of branches and twigs, she hurried back to the others.