The Tree Shepherd's Daughter (2 page)

Irritated, Keelie blinked back the tears that threatened
to return.

"Suck it up," she muttered. "Show no fear." She didn't
want to be all weepy when she saw her father for the first
time since she was a toddler. Her bio dad, she reminded
herself.

The mud made slurping noises against her feet as she
struggled to follow the lawyer's prim, dark blue suit. She
was so not dressed for this. Neither of them were.

The visitors who streamed toward the entryway looked
tired, but laughingly retold their favorite parts of their
day. Keelie rolled her eyes as they passed. If they'd all lived
through the same events, why retell them? Did they all suffer from short-term memory loss?

Ms. Talbot moved upstream through the human river,
effortlessly sidestepping to avoid colliding with the tourists. How did she do it? Her high heels should have sunk
into the mud, but she moved as efficiently as if the rustic
path was the polished granite floor of Talbot, Talbot, and
Turner's L.A. office.

Keelie moved faster, determined not to stop. No whining, she told herself. Ms. Talbot paused at a jewelry booth
and talked to the clerk behind the counter. She pointed
toward Keelie and brandished a folder. Keelie knew its
tidy white label read, "Keliel Heartwood," project number
whatever in Ms. Talbot's busy life.

The pinch-faced clerk behind the counter, plump and
tightly corseted in her medieval costume, shook her head.

"Don't know, ma'am," she said. Her enormous bosom looked as if it was about to burst out of her bodice, like cantaloupes in bondage. She looked over at Keelie, frowning.

An ancient relic of a man, his weird medieval outfit
covered by a disgustingly greasy leather apron, tapped Ms.
Talbot's shoulder.

Keelie hid a smile as the attorney stifled a shriek.

"She means the woodcarver," the old man told the
clerk, speaking with an outrageously fake British accent.
He turned to Keelie. "So you're one of them? We heard
you'd be coming. Ye be wanting to go down the way a bit,
miss. Heartwood's in the two-story wood building, next to
the jousting. Isn't that right, Tania?" He cocked an overgrown eyebrow at the big-bosomed clerk.

Jousting. Keelie shook her head. Too much. And what
did he mean that she was one of them? She wasn't one
of anything in this place. She pretended to look at the
necklaces and charms on display. A box of polished stones
caught her eye.

"How much are these?"

"Just two dollars, dearie." The word was affectionate,
but the woman's tone was cold.

Keelie pulled two crisp bills from her bag and laid
them on the counter, careful not to touch the wood. Ms.
Talbot called her name from farther up the dirt road.
Keelie ignored her. She examined the rocks in the box and
pulled out a white-veined pink oval. "I'll take this pink
one. What is it?"

"Rose quartz." The dollars had vanished. "Go on, that
woman's calling for you. And thanks for the business. This is the second straight week of bad weather. One more like
it and we'll all be in the Muck and Mire Show."

Keelie took it, afraid the woman might start a laying on
of hands and chanting to the rain gods. Thunder boomed
again, causing Tania the melon smuggler to scrunch her
face with worry.

"Good thing it's near closing time," she said. "Looks
like another devil of a storm brewing."

Wind gusts made the colorful banners overhead snap
and stretch against their ropes. The breeze smelled sharply
of ozone-rain was definitely near. Keelie hooked her
leather bag back on her shoulders, then glanced down
at her white sweater set and light blue linen capri pants
and muttered, "I shouldn't make fun of La Talbot. I am so
overdressed for Never Never Land."

Across the wide dirt path, a family guffawed as they
stumbled out of a tent marked "Magic Maze," bumping into each other dizzily. Keelie hated them for being
happy, for being together. The mother glanced at them
as they passed, eyebrows raised as she eyed Ms. Talbot's
suit. Keelie figured their clothing made them as remarkable as the jesters, stilt walkers, and medieval peasants that
swarmed the grounds. Her stomach rumbled, again. "Ms.
Talbot, can we-"

The lawyer was gone. Keelie looked around. No blue
suit anywhere.

A crash sounded behind her. A shelf of jewelry stands
had fallen. Necklaces were pouring onto the muddy
ground.

"My stuffl" Tania scrabbled around, gathering them
up. "This Faire is cursed."

"Hush, girl. Don't let management hear you say that."
The old man had lost his accent.

The place was packed with visitors, not all heading toward the exits, and it was hard to go in a straight line. She
thought she saw a glimpse of the blue suit, but then she
was surrounded as a crowd of faux peasants, cheering and
singing, came down the path from the crest of the hill.

One huge man, wearing a red coat lined with fake fur
and trimmed with dozens of jingling silver bells, yelled
out in a megaphone voice, "Make way for the king and
queen.

The peasant-dressed crowd that surrounded Keelie
shouted, "Huzzah, huzzah."

She tried to push her way out, holding her breath. It
was humid and hot, and several of the peasants were carrying authenticity a bit too far. Her nose detected that some
of them had a serious need to get reacquainted with using
modern-day deodorant.

A flash of blue flitted through the trees on the other
side of the path. Ms. Talbot.

Keelie shoved her way clear, then saw the attorney waving her folder in a man's face. The man wore a jester's hat
and multicolored patched silk pants. And stilts. He leaned
over from the waist, trying to read the papers Ms. Talbot
waved. A black-haired goth girl stepped up, dressed in a
form-fitting black gown with long, flowing sleeves pushed
back to show tight undersleeves that buttoned from her
elbows to her wrist. She spoke to Ms. Talbot and pointed toward a clearing on the other side of the hill, then turned
and melted into the milling throng. The man on stilts
yelled, "Long live the King and his new Queen."

"Yeah, whatever," Keelie said. Long live the King and
his new Queen. Well, she hoped so. Long lives to them.
She wondered what had happened to the old Queen.
Probably came to her senses and fled this loony bin.

Keelie blinked back the tears that seemed to hit her by
surprise every once in a while, even though Laurie's mom,
Elizabeth, told her she was taking it very well. Yeah, well,
that meant she could fake being okay when in public, and
she wasn't about to quit now. She blinked fast to get rid of
the wetness without having to wipe at her eyes and give
herself away.

Through blurred vision she saw another flash of dark
blue. She pushed through the jostling crowd, ignoring the
curious looks she got from several of them. She suddenly
realized she wasn't queasy any more. She looked down at
the smooth pink rock in her hand. Whatever works. She
tucked it in her pocket.

At the other side of the mob was a throng of people
watching a man with a bird with a leather hood on its
head. Falconry. Okay, now this was interesting. She'd studied medieval history in eighth grade at Baywood Academy
and had done a report on falconry.

Up close, she could see the big falcon also had long
leather ribbons tied around its legs. Jesses, she remembered.

Poor birds. They were prisoners, too. Just like Mom had
said, the people here were a bunch of childlike dorks who wanted to live in the Middle Ages. They were totally out of
touch with reality. Who'd want to relive a time when there
was no sanitation and people walked around with scented
pomander balls held up to their noses to cover the stench
of unwashed bodies?

Mom had warned her about these Renaissance folks.
And about her father, who had done the medieval version
of running away to join the circus.

An owl hooted next to Keelie and she saw that there
were more of them in the enclosure, along with hawks and
falcons.

There had been a stuffed owl in Mr. Stein's biology lab
at Baywood Academy, but it had looked bald and motheaten. The white owl on its stand swiveled its head to follow her, yellow eyes huge and unblinking, feathers fluffy
and soft. Keelie wished she could touch it.

A man in a puffy-sleeved white shirt and soft, black
knee-high boots walked into the center of the circle, a hawk
on his gloved hand. Despite the bird's size, the man held it
as if it didn't weigh much. "Can anyone tell me why this
bird's eyes are covered?" His voice was loud, and he was
faking an English accent, too. Voices offered answers.

Keelie looked at the bird, its wings fluttering. It shifted
its weight from foot to foot, as if impatient.

"Hello. Interested in the birds?" The voice made her
turn quickly. She hadn't heard anyone come up. The
woman wore her hair boy-short and was dressed in a feminine version of the falconer's outfit, with a big poet's shirt
and tall boots. She nodded at the owl Keelie had admired.

"This is Moon. She's a snowy owl," the woman said.
"She bites, so don't get too near."

"She's beautiful," Keelie said. Her voice sounded
grumpy to her own ears. She didn't want to be here, and
she hadn't planned to live in the Colorado woods with a
bunch of hippie weirdos, but she wasn't a liar. The birds
were incredible.

The sound of running feet made them both look up.

"I need more bait," a man said breathlessly, sweat dripping down his sun-reddened face, following the tributaries
formed by the wrinkles around his eyes.

"Ariel is in the tree." He pointed up toward the tops of
the tall pines around the clearing.

Keelie looked up into the wind-tossed tree tops,
not sure what she was looking for. A climbing woman?
Branches swayed and needled boughs fluttered wildly
in the wind, but near a fork in the trunk of a large tree
she saw the still outline of a large bird. Ariel, she bet. She
wanted to tell her to fly free. Keelie would escape, if she
could. If she had wings, she would fly home.

Or maybe she'd fly back to the past and cherish each
day with her mom. She'd tell Mom not to take the flight
back from San Francisco to L.A. She'd tell her not to trust
the commuter plane.

Her chest hurt. She took a deep breath. No crying. No
more. "Fly free and never look back," she whispered.

"Keelie, keep up. I'm running out of time," Ms. Talbot said. She was standing about twenty feet away and, for
the first time, looked a little cross. A thin dribble of mud
stained one of her stockings.

The bird handler looked Ms. Talbot up and down,
then bit her lip, as if trying to keep in whatever she was
going to say.

"Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Zekeliel Heartwood? This is his daughter. I promised to deliver her in
person, and it's getting late. I have to catch a flight back to
California." Ms. Talbot's smile seemed insincere.

The bird woman pointed to a leaning post in the crossroads, covered in haphazardly nailed street signs. "Follow
Water Sprite Lane to Wood Row. He's on the left. Can't miss
him." She turned to Keelie. "And you're his daughter. I'm
ashamed of myself for not seeing it. You're the image of him."
She grinned. "I'm Cameron. I'm a friend of your dad's."

A friend? She just bet. But despite her certainty that
the Faire was full of geeks and weirdos, for some reason she
felt herself warm to Cameron. She frowned and walked
away quickly, then slowed as she realized that she didn't
need to follow Ms. Talbot's blue suit. She knew the way.
Cameron's directions were clear.

A few yards away the path split. The left side of the
fork was marked "Wood Row." Just her luck. More wood.
The right read, "To The Jousting Ring." She pulled the
map out. Sure enough, a big oval was marked "Jousting."
Interested, and not eager to see if Ms. Talbot succeeded in
her quest, she took the right fork.

She jumped back as a big bird flew in front of her,
swooping low over the path before arching into the trees.
For a second she thought it would hit her. Was it the
hawk? She looked up and saw a flash of bright red. Not the hawk. There was too much wildlife around here for
her taste.

The jousting ring wasn't a ring at all. It looked like a
sandy football field, with a grandstand on one side and
a wooden wall across from it. People still milled around
excitedly, and the stands were crammed full. Food vendors
hawked steak on a stick and turkey legs.

"Get your food poisoning on a stick," Keelie muttered,
keeping a tight grip on her bag. The place was full of pickpockets and thieves, according to Mom.

As she climbed the hilly road, she got a better look at
what lay beyond and stopped, mouth open. Knights in
armor galloped toward each other on giant horses, just like
in the movies. For a moment, she wasn't at a twenty-firstcentury Renaissance Faire. She was there, in sixteenth-century England.

The horses were covered in brightly colored cloth that
rippled with their movements, and the knights' armor
looked real, although instead of being shiny, most of it
looked sort of dented and used.

They held long wooden pole lances, and every time
they passed each other one would try to knock the other
down by hitting him with the pole, which made the crowd
go wild. Bloodthirsty geeks-what a concept.

Behind her the birds cried out, their keening cries competing with the long trumpets blowing fanfares, yells from
the crowd, and the clang of armor and swords, a confusion
of sound that echoed and swirled through her body.

Her father was close by. This place was supposed to be
her home now. How scary was that? She looked around at the cheering crowds and the costumed players. She didn't
know anybody aside from Ms. Talbot. Even though she
didn't like her, she was a part of her old life, and Keelie
wanted to hold on to every little piece that was left.

When she was gone, Keelie'd be left alone in this lopsided fairy tale land. Well, not alone. She'd be with her father, and she'd heard enough about him to know that life
was going to be less fairy tale and more nightmare.