Grayling squealed again. “You are talking? Or do I still sleep? I must still sleep and dream.”
“This mouse is most astonished, mistress, but it is talking indeed. It was an ordinary mouse one moment, and you wished it could talk, and now it can.”
Grayling understood. “The wishing potion!” she said. “You ate the wishing potion!”
“’Tis likely. This mouse ate a great many things.” The mouse burped a tiny burp and looked up at Grayling. “Ah, Gray Eyes, be kind. This mouse is yours and pledges to stay by you and serve you always.”
“And the binding potion also!”
The mouse clambered onto her lap. “Tell this mouse what you would have it do for you.”
Grayling stood. The mouse tumbled to the ground, where it shook and shivered and became a frog. “And the shape-shifting tonic! You foolish creature, you have left me defenseless.”
The mouse appeared again for a moment and then the frog was back. “Shape shifting? This mouse finds it strange and a little frightening but quite stirring,” it said. “Mistress Gray Eyes, this mouse loves you and will never leave you.” And the frog became a goat with two horns and a beard that waggled as he chewed.
Grayling’s head swam in anger and confusion. Even so, she could not help but find it funny. A shape-shifting mouse. Whoever could have imagined such a thing? “You silly thief! The jar held enough shape-shifting potion for a giant of a man, and ’twas eaten by one small, ridiculous mouse. Or goat. Or whatever you be. Likely you can expect much adventure to come.”
She plopped herself back down on the ground, her legs curled beneath her. A girl and a shape-shifting mouse against the fury that could fire a cottage and curse Hannah Strong? Grayling was certain her efforts would come to nothing, but she could not go back to watch her mother become a tree. The other wise folk—the hedge witches and charmers and cunning women—certes they would know what to do. If she could find them.
Towns, Hannah Strong had said. Many towns. “Know you the way to a town?” Grayling asked the goat.
The goat shook its shaggy head. “This mouse may look like a goat, but within, it is still a mouse,” the goat said in a voice still distinctly mouselike. “This mouse knows only what mice know: eat, sleep, mate, and run away.”
It was up to her. “Well, then, I say we go this way,” she said, pointing. “This path leads down, which is easier than going up. My legs still pain me after yesterday’s climb.” Grayling ate her bread, then considered her basket. But for her winter cap, it now held only wilting herbs and a few empty and broken pots and jars. Should she trouble herself to carry it with her? It spoke to her of home, so she grasped it tightly and got to her feet.
She looked one last time down the hill to her valley. There was mist on the treetops, but still she could see their herb garden and, through the trees, a peek at the ruins of their cottage. She blinked to banish her tears, squared her shoulders, and turned away.
The girl with the basket and the goat took the path down. Sunshine caressed the soft hills, their green now marked with autumn’s browns and golds. It would be a good day, Grayling thought, for weaving straw into hats or finding honeycombs or watching her mother brew a rose-petal tonic to calm the belly. It was not at all a good day for being brave, going into a town and singing, and battling powerful, mysterious beings.
The path was dusty and deserted, and her footsteps padded on the soft earth. The goat, snacking on thistles and thorns, followed.
As the day wore on, the sun grew warm, and Grayling, grown drowsy, tripped over a tree root and stubbed her toe. I knew ’twas an unsound, unwise, daft, and doltish decision sending me, she thought. I cannot even walk to town without bumbling. But what if her mother knew that Grayling had some hidden power, unknown to Grayling herself, and that was why Hannah Strong had sent her? What if she could shake her hair, and flowers would appear in her path, or wave her hand, and sausages be brought her, or snap her fingers, and her mother be released? Would that not be splendid? She shook her hair like a pennant, waved her hand, and snapped her fingers, but nothing happened, and Grayling walked on, limping a bit and grumbling.
Around a corner they happened upon a party of children, young enough to be cocky and hotheaded and old enough to make trouble. Grayling froze, and she held tightly to the angelica root in her pocket.
“Hie, girl. Give us your coins!” a boy shouted. He grabbed one arm just as another boy grabbed the other, and they pushed and pulled her back and forth between them. She tripped and stumbled and fell to the ground, and the boys danced around her.