The Serpent Gift Read online

  DINA

  The Baying of Hounds

  Mama was shaking me.

  “Dina, wake up. We’re leaving.”

  “Mmmmh.” I didn’t feel like waking up. It had been quite a late night, and I had ended up dancing till my head spun and my feet hurt.

  “Are you awake? I need you to go and find Nico and Melli. I think they went down to the pond.”

  I struggled free of the blankets and got to my feet, somewhat stiff-backed from sleeping on the ground. Trekking through the Market grounds in search of my rebellious little sister was not high on my list of favorite things to do this morning. But packing up the tent was not going to be a much more pleasing task, so after a visit to the latrines I set out for the shallow pond that served as a watering hole for most of the Market beasts.

  I could hear Melli laughing long before I saw her. She was chuckling and snorting and giggling with laughter, and I sneaked in a little closer to see what was so funny.

  It was Nico.

  He was standing in the middle of the pond, with a long, wet garland of water weeds across one shoulder. In one hand he held a stick as though it were a proper staff.

  “I am Neptune, King of the Seas,” he called in a pompous voice. “And I bid the winds and the waters rise. Let there be such a storm as never was before!”

  And then he bent and blew at something—three little boats, I saw now, made from reeds and woven grass. The three boatlets rocked precariously, one of them threatening to capsize.

  “They’re drowning,” said Melli, her giggles coming to an abrupt halt. “Nico, please save them!”

  “As M’lady commands.” Nico bowed deeply, a real courtier’s bow. Carefully, he righted the little boat and sent it on its way.

  I just stared. I had never seen him like this before—clothes soaked, hair and beard dripping with water, yet luminous, somehow. His whole face was lit from within with laughter, with sheer unshadowed fun, and he looked as if he had never even heard of worries. I could hardly believe my own eyes. Here was the exiled heir to Dunark castle, playing the fool for the benefit of my six-year-old sister—and having a fine old time doing it, it seemed, with nary a thought for heroes and monsters now.

  I was almost sorry to interrupt, but Mama and the rest were waiting. The Market was over, and we had a fair way to go.

  “O Great King Neptune,” I intoned, “we’re packing up.”

  His head came up with a jerk. He obviously hadn’t heard me coming.

  “Dina,” he said, and I watched the laughter die from his eyes. “Yes. Quite. We’ll be with you in a moment.” He made a sudden gesture with one hand, spraying my skirt with a small shower of droplets in the process. “I slipped and gave myself a ducking. But perhaps Davin has a spare shirt I can borrow.” He brushed the weeds off his shoulder and headed for dry land.

  “The ships,” objected Melli. “They’ll have no one to give them good winds now.”

  “They’ll have to manage on their own,” said Nico, wringing the tails of his shirt to rid it of the worst of the wetness.

  Melli set her hands on her hips and gave me a defiant glare.

  “I don’t want to go home now.”

  “Too bad,” I said, “ ’cause that’s where we’re going.”

  “But I don’t want to!”

  I gave her a measuring look. Her cheeks were still flushed from laughing so hard, and her dress was stained with grass and mud and pond water. There was a stubborn set to her mouth, and she looked like a very angry and slightly chubby pond troll. She was perfectly capable of throwing herself on the ground, howling and screaming, and generally kicking up a fuss.

  “Come on, M’lady,” said Nico, settling to one knee. “Climb up and let your trusty steed bring you to the ends of the earth.”

  And lo and behold. The troll surrendered. Melli happily climbed onto Nico’s shoulders and rode piggyback all the way back to our camp. No doubt that made her even damper and muddier, soaked as he was. But I didn’t say anything.

  I don’t know how it happened, but by some mysterious magic everything we had brought with us had swollen to twice its original size, or at least that was how it seemed to us as we struggled to pack up the tent and the rest of the gear. Similarly, everything we had bought at the Market seemed bulkier than the stuff we had sold. It was a good long while before we were ready to hitch up and head for home.

  We had been traveling for less than an hour when Beastie started to act strangely. He struggled against Rose’s hold on his collar, and when she let go, he leaped off the back of the cart and began running around, circling us as though we were a flock of sheep he needed to protect. And then he barked. A series of short, sharp wrooofs, the way he often did when strangers approached the house back home. Silky danced uneasily, and I had to put a soothing hand on her neck.

  “Mama, can’t you get him to be quiet? He’s scaring Silky.”

  But Callan would have none of that.

  “Leave him be,” he said. “It’s a poor hunter who will not heed the baying of the hounds. And Beastie is not a dog to sound off over nothing.”

  Nico glanced at Callan. Callan shrugged his shoulder very slightly, as if to say maybe, maybe not.

  “M’lady must ride in the carriage for a while,” Nico told Melli, who was perched on his saddlebow.

  “But I want to stay with you,” said Melli.

  “Perhaps later,” said Nico. “Right now I need you to do as you’re told.”

  And once more, to my utter astonishment, Melli obeyed him, climbing into the cart and onto Mama’s lap with no further ado.

  “You really must teach me how to do that,” I muttered.

  “Do what?”

  “Get Melli to do as she’s told without a tantrum.”

  He smiled faintly, but his attention was elsewhere. He was sitting very straight on the bay mare, looking around him in a wary manner.

  “Best I take a little ride,” said Callan. “If yerself will stay here.”

  Nico nodded. Callan dropped back, not suddenly but bit by bit, as if by chance. The road here wound its way around low hills, and soon he was lost from sight.

  “Is someone following us?” I asked Nico, as quietly as I could.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Callan is checking.”

  My whole body had gone stiff and tense at the thought, but when Callan reappeared a little while later, he was shaking his head.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Least, nothing I could see. The dog has caught the scent of some animal, it may be.”

  “Yes, maybe,” said Nico. But he would not allow Melli back on his saddlebow, and his dark blue eyes kept flickering this way and that, left, right, ahead of us, behind us, all the way back to the cottage.

  It was evening before we got there. Black-Arse called good-bye and rode off home, and Nico also went off, home to Maudi’s place and grumpy Master Maunus. Callan stayed around for a little while, to help us unload and unpack. We let the horses into the paddock and watched for a few moments as they slumped to the ground, rolling and kicking and sighing with relief. The chickens all came running, cackling and begging for food, so I gave them a few handfuls of grain even though I knew Master Maunus had fed them earlier.

  “Can I go and fetch Belle?” asked Rose. “Please?”

  “Yes, do that,” said Mama. “She’ll have missed you terribly.”

  Belle was Rose’s dog. She was only about a year old and still quite puppyish, so Rose had not wanted to risk bringing her to the Market, among so many strangers and strange sights and sounds. Luckily, Maudi never minded looking after Belle, as it was Maudi who had given her to Rose in the first place.

  “Can I go too?” I asked.

  Mama frowned. “We have to unload everything before it gets dark,” she said. But then she relented. “Oh, well, we’ll manage. Go on, be off. But hurry home, the both of you.”

  Rose was so impatient that walking was too slow for her. Even though we were both tired, we ended up running almo
st all the way over to Maudi’s place. And even before we came into the yard, Rose gave a shrill whistle between her teeth.

  What a ruckus—wroof, wrooof, wouuuuh, woooouhhh! Yes, Belle had missed Rose, and she was busy telling the whole countryside, so much so that she soon had all of Maudi’s other dogs barking too. Maudi opened the door, and a black and white arrow shot out between her legs and aimed itself at Rose. Belle was not a small pup anymore, but she leaped straight into Rose’s embrace, so Rose keeled over backward, her arms full of dog.

  “Well, well,” said Maudi drily. “Looks like someone is happy to see you.”

  Rose muttered something into Belle’s fur, but I couldn’t quite catch the words. Belle’s pink tongue licked everything within reach: hair, sleeve, neck, and cheek. And I stood there feeling almost envious, because even though I knew I had Silky and Beastie, sort of, neither of them ever greeted me in that fashion.

  We said good-bye to Maudi and headed up the hill. Belle was racing in large circles around us, playing shepherd the way Beastie had earlier, but in a much more light-hearted manner. She kept so low to the ground that her belly touched the grass at times.

  It was dark enough now that the first few stars had appeared. Our cottage nestled in a hollow among the hills, protected from the strong Highland winds. On the tallest of the hills, the Stone Dance showed black against the darkening sky. There were few trees here, and almost all of those were birches. Other than that, yew and heather were the commonest of growing things, so on the day our cottage had had its first anniversary, we had made a neat sign to hang above the door: YEW TREE COTTAGE, it said, though most people still called it simply the Shamer’s place.

  Mama had lit the lamp in the kitchen and opened the shutters so that the glow from that and the hearth spilled onto the dusty grass of the yard. As we came down the hill, Beastie came trotting slowly up to meet us. He had become a little stiff-limbed lately, especially when he had been lying still for a while. We had had him for a long time, and he was not young anymore; not like Belle, who was busy greeting him with delighted little puppy noises, practically wagging her tail off.

  Mama was frying onions, by the smell of it. Supper. Mmmmh.

  “I’m soooo hungry,” said Rose.

  “So am I.” Starving, actually.

  Yet I still halted to stand for a moment, looking down at our small cottage with the tarred beams and the turfed roof, and at the stable and the sheep shed and the paddock where Silky and Falk were grazing. Behind the house the apple trees that Mama had planted last year were blooming, with pink and white blossoms like snowflakes against the black boughs.

  “It was a great Market,” I said. “But it’s good to be home.”

  “Yes,” Rose said simply.

  DINA

  Fog

  Two days later, the weather changed. We woke to a heavy, gray-white fog which clung so closely to the hills that we could barely see the sheep shed on the far side of the yard.

  “It might lift once the sun is properly risen,” said Mama.

  But it didn’t. Finally, we had to go out and be about our tasks, even though the fog slowly seeped through our clothes, until it felt like wet fingers touching one’s skin. Big fat drops of moisture collected in our hair and in the fur of all the animals. It would have been much nicer to stay indoors, but Mama had bought a lot of seedlings and seeds at the market, and if we didn’t get the planting done soon, nothing would come of it this summer.

  “This is disgusting,” I muttered, pressing the dark soil into place around the stem of a baby cabbage plant. “You can’t breathe without getting your mouth and nose full of fog!”

  “It probably won’t last much longer,” said Mama. “It’s nearly noon, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t tell,” I said irritably. “The sun might as well not be there for all the good it does.”

  “Let’s eat,” said Mama. “Maybe it will have cleared away by the time we’re done.”

  There was a lonely whinny from the paddock.

  “I think I’ll let the horses in first,” I said. “Sounds as if Falk doesn’t like the fog.”

  “You do that,” said Mama.

  I rinsed the dirt off my hands at the pump, wiped them on my apron, and headed for the paddock gate. It was still the old, somewhat ramshackle paddock we had put up when we arrived, but Davin was making a bigger and better one now that we had two horses. But even though the paddock was quite small, I could see neither Falk nor Silky. I heard hoofbeats and another plaintive whinny that I thought was Falk’s—that was all.

  “Silky! Falk! Come on, horsies!” I called out, then whistled the signal they usually obeyed if they felt like it. “Want to come in out of the fog?”

  Falk neighed once more. Now I could see him, at first only as a darker bit of fog, and then he came trotting out of the mists. But where was Silky? I peered into the mists behind Falk, but he seemed to be alone.

  “What have you done with Silky?” I asked. Our black gelding merely snorted and shook the droplets from his lashes.

  “Silky!” I called out. “Siiiilky!” I whistled again. Still no Silky.

  It was a little odd. But if I brought Falk into the stable, she would probably be standing by the gate by the time I got back—she didn’t much care for being alone in the paddock.

  “Come on,” I urged Falk. “If My lady wants to be coy, let her. There’s no reason why you have to be wet and hungry.”

  I put him in his stall and fed him a few handfuls of grain. But when I got back to the paddock, there was no dappled gray mare waiting by the gate. I wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or anxious. She was not usually so difficult. Could something have happened to her? I climbed across the fence and trotted toward the far end of the paddock, whistling and calling. My sense of unease grew. Granted, a gray horse might be more difficult to see in the mists than a black one, but even so…

  I reached the fence on the other side. And yes, the fog was dense, but not that dense. With a sinking feeling in my stomach I realized that my sweet-mannered Highland horse was not just being coy. She had disappeared altogether, and the paddock was empty.

  “Silky is gone!”

  Mama and Rose were setting the table and heating water for tea.

  “Gone?” Mama put down the bread knife. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “She’s not in the paddock!”

  The kitchen went very quiet. All the little noises—the rattle of plates and mugs, the sound of Melli’s feet kicking gently against the bench—had suddenly stopped. All you could hear was the hiss of the kettle.

  “Are you sure?” said Davin. “I mean, that’s quite a fog—”

  “Of course I’m sure! I went all the way around, following the fence, and… and I found a place where the top pole had come off.”

  Davin cursed. “I knew I should have checked that fence. Only, I was so busy with the new paddock—”

  “She won’t have gone far,” said Mama. “The two of you can go and look for her. By the time you’ve caught her, Rose and I will have lunch ready for you.”

  “We’ll bring Falk,” said Davin. “He’ll neigh his head off the minute he catches Silky’s scent, and she’ll come running.”

  I felt calmer now that we had a plan. And Mama was right. Horses rarely wandered far without their herdmates. If only there hadn’t been such a fog. Perhaps Silky really wanted to come home but couldn’t find the stable?

  We saddled Falk, and Davin swung onto his back. I took a bucket and some oats to use as a lure.

  “Let’s start with just a quick circle round the house and the gardens,” said Davin. “You go one way, I’ll go the other. Or do you want to go together?”

  “No, let’s split up,” I said. “We’ll find her more quickly.”

  “All right. But don’t go too far from the house. It’s easy to lose your sense of direction in this weather.”

  Davin turned Falk around and made for the sheep shed corner. I went the other way, past the house and
into the orchard. If Silky was eating Mama’s new apple trees, I would have her hide! But she wasn’t. The orchard was empty.

  “Silky. Siiiilky!”

  Wait. Was that a whinny?

  I whistled the three soft notes that was my special signal for Silky.

  Hoofbeats. I was almost certain… yes, there it was again. I stopped and listened, to get a better sense of where they were coming from. There, by the brook… clop-clop.

  “Siiiiilky!”

  The path was damp and slippery, and I skidded down the slope to the brook, nearly dropping the bucket. I had to grab at a birch branch to stay upright. The mists moved in slow swirls over the mossy green stones, like elfmaids dancing. I could almost see them, even though I knew they weren’t there—a curved arm, a graceful back. Music too. I froze. Music. Eerie and whispery, like a flute gone hoarse from the dew. I was nearly sure I could hear it, but who would be wandering around playing a flute in this weather? And what kind of flute made a noise like that?

  “Hello?” I called. “Is anybody there?”

  There was no answer, and now the music was gone again. Or perhaps it had never been there? It might have been just the rush of the water. Sounds behaved strangely in the fog, everyone knew that.

  Then I caught sight of something that drove every thought of mysterious flute music from my mind. On the muddy bank on the other side of the brook I could clearly see several prints left by hooves, Silky-sized hooves.

  I crossed the brook—Davin had laid down stepping-stones this summer, so that it was possible to get across it reasonably dry-shod—and climbed up the bank on the other side. A small copse of spruce and birch grew there, but I could see no gray horse shape among the pale trunks. Only the tracks, which showed up clearly in the leafy mold beneath the trees. She had come this way, at least. That much was certain.