n the morning, Grayling fo und frost on her nose and her eyelashes. The air was filled with the noisy honking of geese, and she studied them as they passed overhead. How easily they moved and how much faster than human folks on foot. Grayling recalled persuading Pook the raven to stay on the ground where it was safer. Watching the geese, their undersides flashing white and gray, Grayling thought she might have been mistaken. How would the world look from up there? What could she see from the sky that she had never seen? Were she a bird, would she choose to stay on the ground or soar, no matter the danger? She knew what she once would have said, but now she was not so certain.
The memory of Pook the raven moved her to take the mouse from her pocket and jiggle him awake. He opened his eyes and snuffled, with bits of acorn still adorning his whiskers. “Mistress Gray Eyes, do you wish the assistance of . . . ” He yawned a great yawn—that is, great for a tiny creature like a mouse. “. . . this Pook?”
Grayling stroked his head gently. “I have been thinking ’tis a long while since you shifted into another shape.”
Pook said in a faint, thin voice, “This mouse will likely not be taken with that again. I believe this Pook is only a mouse now.”
“But a very special mouse,” Grayling whispered. He coughed a tiny cough. “Are you quite well?”
“Aye,” he said, “but weary. Most weary,” and he slipped back into her pocket.
A late autumn market provided biscuits and pears and soft sweet cheese in exchange for the last of Sylvanus’s coppers. Bellies full, they walked on, slower and slower as the morning grew later.
The cold sun was high in the sky when they neared the spot where they were to part ways.
“We must each set out for home now, Auld Nancy, or we shall freeze into statues here on the road.” Grayling wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. “’Tis still a goodly walk for us both.”
Auld Nancy dropped to the ground, broom in her lap.
Grayling gasped. “Auld Nancy, are you ill?”
“The fingers of giants are making shadows in the sky,” Auld Nancy said.
Grayling looked up. “What mean you? I see only bare branches against the gray.”
“Of course, tree branches.” Auld Nancy shook her head. “It appears my bones and my wits are both failing me.”
As she helped Auld Nancy struggle to her feet, Grayling felt her heart near pulled in two. She was most eager to be home, but she could not leave Auld Nancy to travel alone. With a sigh that she pulled all the way from her toes, Grayling said, “Come, we have walked all this way together. I will not leave you now. I shall see you home.”
She tried to remember if her mother had a staying-alive song. Such a song was called for now, but if Hannah Strong did, Grayling did not know it. Their footsteps beat out a sort of a tune, and words came into her head, and tune and words came together in a melody. With the old woman leaning heavily on her, Grayling began to walk, singing the song she was inventing as they went:
Be strong, look around you,
Blue asters are blooming, the yarrow is tall.
Apples and sweet pears are yet on the tree.
The wide world calls.
Take my hand, take my hand.
Winter will come soon.
Your nose and your cheeks will pink with the cold
When frost paints the walls
And footsteps sing crunch songs
To snowdrops and crocus.
In spring you’ll be walking
In fields newly white-capped
With marguerite daisies,
As geese winging home honk their calls.
Summer will sizzle and warm your old bones,
As you lie in the meadow and look forward to fall.
Stay alive, Auld Nancy, for living is all,
Full of promise and friendship.
Take my hand, take my hand.
“Hannah Strong is indeed a fine one for making songs,” said Auld Nancy. “I vow, I feel stronger.”
“I most sincerely hope so,” said Grayling, “but that is my own song that I just now made and none of my mother’s.”
“So you have her song skill as well as her wisdom and her strength.”
Grayling nodded. I do. It seems I do.
They climbed up and down, through woods chilly and damp, rich with the smell of mushrooms and decaying wood. In places Grayling saw small trees standing on their roots as if on tiptoe. Auld Nancy followed her gaze. “The nurse logs have rotted away,” she said. “The young trees need them no longer and grow on their own.”
On their own. Grayling nodded in understanding.
The day wore on, and finally they saw the smoke from many hearth fires. There backed against a hill was a village. Auld Nancy sighed, and her face grew calm. “My heart is lifting now I am near to my bed,” she said. She directed Grayling to turn here and there and no, not that path, this path.