The Wind Through The Keyhole (19 page)

“I know about sai Cosington’s accident,” Tim said. In spite of his anxiety, he was curious about this turn of the conversation. “My mama sent them a soup, even though she was in mourning for my da’ at the time. The tree fell across his back, but not
square
across. That would have killed him. What of it? He’s better these days.”

They were near the water now, but the smell here was less strong and Tim heard none of those smacking bugs. That was good, but the pooky was still watching them with hungry interest. Bad.

“Yar, Square Fella Cosie’s back to work and we all say thankya. But while he was laid up—for two weeks before your da’ met his dragon and for six weeks after—this stub and all the others in the Cosington-Marchly stake were empty, because Ernie Marchly’s not like your steppa. Which is to say, he won’t come cutting in the Endless Forest without a pard. But of course—
also
not like your steppa—Slow Ernie actually
has
a pard.”

Tim remembered the coin lying against his skin, and why he’d come on this mad errand in the first place. “There
was
no dragon! If there’d been a dragon, it would have burned up my da’s lucky coin with the rest of him! And why was it in Kells’s trunk?”

“Dump out my basin, young Tim. I think you’ll find there are no bugs in the water to trouble thee. No, not here.”

“But I want to know—”

“Close thy clam and dump my basin, for you’ll not leave this clearing while it’s full.”

Tim knelt to do as he was told, wanting only to complete the chore and be gone. He cared nothing about Peter “Square Fella” Cosington, and didn’t believe the man in the black cloak did, either.
He’s teasing me, or torturing me. Maybe he doesn’t even know the difference. But as soon as this damn basin is empty, I’ll mount Bitsy and ride back as fast as I can. Let him try to stop me. Just let him tr—

Tim’s thoughts broke as cleanly as a dry stick under a bootheel. He lost his hold on the basin and it fell upsy-turvy in the matted underbrush. There were no bugs in the water here, the Covenant Man was right about that; the stream was as clear as the water that flowed from the spring near their cottage. Lying six or eight inches below the surface was a human body. The clothes were only rags that floated in the current. The eyelids were gone, and so was most of the hair. The face and arms, once deeply tanned, were now as pale as alabaster. But otherwise, the body of Big Jack Ross was perfectly preserved. If not for the emptiness in those lidless, lashless eyes, Tim could have believed his father might rise, dripping, and fold him into an embrace.

The pooky made its hungry
sloooop.

Something broke inside of Tim at the sound, and he began to scream.

The Covenant Man was forcing
something into Tim’s mouth. Tim tried to fend him off, but it did no good. The Covenant Man simply seized Tim’s hair at the back of his head, and when Tim yelled, the mouth of a flask was shoved between his teeth. Some fiery liquid gushed down his throat. Not redeye, for instead of making him drunk, it calmed him. More—it made him feel like an icy visitor in his own head.

“That will wear off in ten minutes, and then I’ll let you go your course,” the Covenant Man said. His jocularity was gone. He no longer called the boy young Tim; he no longer called him anything. “Now dig out thy ears and listen. I began to hear stories in Tavares, forty wheels east of here, of a woodsman who’d been cooked by a dragon. It was on everyone’s lips. A bitch dragon as big as a house, they said. I knew it was bullshit. I believe there might still be a tyger somewhere in the forest—”

At that the Covenant Man’s lips twitched in a rictus of a grin, there and gone almost too quickly to see.

“—but a dragon? Never. There hasn’t been one this close to civilization for years ten times ten, and never one as a big as a house. My curiosity was aroused. Not because Big Ross is a taxpayer—or
was
—although that’s what I’d’ve told the toothless multitude, were any member of it trig enough—and brave enough—to ask. No, it was curiosity for its own sake, because wanting to know secrets has always been my besetting vice. Someday ’twill be the death of me, I have no doubt.

“I was camped on the Ironwood Trail last night, too—before I started my rounds. Only last night I went all the way to the trail’s end. The signs on the last few stubs before the Fagonard Swamp say Ross and Kells. There I filled my basin at the last clear stream before the swamp begins, and what did I see in the water? Why, a sign reading Cosington-Marchly. I packed up my gunna, mounted Blackie, and rode him back here, just to see what I might see. There was no need to consult the basin again; I saw where yon pooky would not venture and where the bugs hadn’t polluted the stream. The bugs are voracious flesh-eaters, but according to the old wives, they’ll not eat the flesh of a virtuous man. The old wives are often wrong, but not about that, it seems. The chill of the water has preserved him, and he appears to be unmarked, because the man who murdered him struck from behind. I saw the riven skull when I turned him over, and have put him back as you see him now to spare you that sight.” The Covenant Man paused, then added: “And so he’d see you, I suppose, if his essence lingers near his corse. On that, the old wives reach no consensus. Still all right, or would you like another small dose of nen?”

“I’m all right.” Never had he told such a lie.

“I felt quite sure of who the culprit was—as you do, I reckon—but any remaining doubts were put to rest at Gitty’s Saloon, my first stop in Tree. The local boozer’s always good for a dozen knucks come tax time, if not more. There I found out that Bern Kells had slipped the rope with his dead partner’s widow.”

“Because of
you,
” Tim said in a monotone that didn’t sound like his own voice at all. “Because of your gods-damned
taxes.
”

The Covenant Man laid a hand on his breast and spoke in wounded tones. “You wrong me! ’Twasn’t
taxes
that kept Big Kells burning in his bed all these years, aye, even when he still had a woman next to him to quench his torch.”

He went on, but the stuff he called nen was wearing off, and Tim lost the sense of the words. Suddenly he was no longer cold but hot, burning up, and his stomach was a churning bag. He staggered toward the remains of the campfire, fell on his knees, and vomited his supper into the hole the Covenant Man had been digging with his bootheel.

“There!” the man in the black cloak said in a tone of hearty self-congratulation. “I
thought
that might come in handy.”

“You’ll want to go
and see your mother now,” said the Covenant Man when Tim had finished puking and was sitting beside the dying campfire with his head down and his hair hanging in his eyes. “Good son that you are. But I have something you may want. One more minute. It’ll make no difference to Nell Kells; she is as she is.”

“Don’t call her so!” Tim spat.

“How can I not? Is she not wed? Marry in haste, repent at leisure, the old folken say.” The Covenant Man squatted once more in front of his heaped gunna, his cloak billowing around him like the wings of an awful bird. “They also say what’s slipped cannot be unslipped, and they say true. An amusing concept called
divorce
exists on some levels of the Tower, but not in our charming little corner of Mid-World. Now let me see . . . it’s here somewhere . . .”

“I don’t understand why Square Peter and Slow Ernie didn’t find him,” Tim said dully. He felt deflated, empty. Some emotion still pulsed deep in his heart, but he didn’t know what it was. “This is their plot . . . their stake . . . and they’ve been back cutting ever since Cosington was well enough to work again.”

“Aye, they cut the iron, but not here. They’ve plenty of other stubs. They’ve left this one fallow for a bit. Does thee not know why?”

Tim supposed he did. Square Peter and Slow Ernie were good and kindly, but not the bravest men ever to log the iron, which was why they didn’t go much deeper into the forest than this. “They’ve been waiting for the pooky to move on, I wot.”

“It’s a wise child,” the Covenant Man said approvingly. “He wots well. And how does thee think thy steppa felt, knowing yon treeworm might move on at any time, and those two come back? Come back and find his crime, unless he screws up enough gut to come himself and move the body deeper into the woods?”

The new emotion in Tim’s heart was pulsing more strongly now. He was glad. Anything was better than the helpless terror he felt for his mother. “I hope he feels bad. I hope he can’t sleep.” And then, with dawning understanding: “It’s why he went back to the drink.”

“A wise child indeed, wise beyond his— Ah! Here it is!”

The Covenant Man turned toward Tim, who was now untying Bitsy and preparing to mount up. He approached the boy, holding something beneath his cloak. “He did it on impulse, sure, and afterward he must have been in a panic. Why else would he concoct such a ridiculous story? The other woodsmen doubt it, of that you may be sure. He built a fire and leaned into it as far as he dared and for as long as he could take it, scorching his clothes and blistering his skin. I know, because I built my fire on the bones of his. But first he threw his dead pard’s gunna across yon stream, as far into the woods as his strength would allow. Did it with your da’s blood not yet dry on his hands, I warrant. I waded across and found it. Most of it’s useless mickle, but I saved thee one thing. It was rusty, but my pumice stone and honing bar have cleaned it up very well.”

From beneath his cloak he produced Big Ross’s hand-ax. Its freshly sharpened edge glittered. Tim, now astride Bitsy, took it, brought it to his lips, and kissed the cold steel. Then he shoved the handle into his belt, blade turned out from his body, just as Big Ross had taught him, once upon a bye.

“I see you wear a rhodite double around your neck. Was it your da’s?”

Mounted, Tim was almost eye-to-eye with the Covenant Man. “It was in that murdering bastard’s trunk.”

“You have his coin; now you have his ax, as well. Where will you put it, I wonder, if ka offers you the chance?”

“In his head.” The emotion—pure rage—had broken free of his heart like a bird with its wings on fire. “Back or front, either will do me fine.”

“Admirable! I like a boy with a plan! Go with all the gods you know, and the Man Jesus for good measure.” Then, having wound the boy to his fullest stop, he turned to build up his fire. “I may bide along the Iron for another night or two. I find Tree strangely interesting this Wide Earth. Watch for the green sighe, my boy! She glows, so she does!”

Tim made no reply, but the Covenant Man felt sure he had heard.

Once they were wound to the fullest stop, they always did.

The Widow Smack must have been watching
from the window, for Tim had just led a footsore Bitsy up to the porch (in spite of his growing anxiety he had walked the last half-mile to spare her) when she came rushing out.

“Thank gods, thank gods. Your mother was three quarters to believing you were dead. Come in. Hurry. Let her hear and touch you.”

The import of these words didn’t strike Tim fully until later. He tied Bitsy beside Sunshine and hurried up the steps. “How did you know to come to her, sai?”

The Widow turned her face to him (which, given her veil, was hardly a face at all). “Has thee gone soft in the head, Timothy? You rode past my house, pushing that mule for all she was worth. I couldn’t think why you’d be out so late, and headed in the direction of the forest, so I came here to ask your mother. But come, come. And keep a cheery voice, if you love her.”

The Widow led him across the living room, where two ’seners burned low. In his mother’s room another ’sener burned on the bed table, and by its light he saw Nell lying in bed with much of her face wrapped in bandages and another—this one badly bloodstained—around her neck like a collar.

At the sound of their footsteps, she sat up with a wild look upon her face. “If it’s Kells, stay away! You’ve done enough!”

“It’s Tim, Mama.”

She turned toward him and held out her arms. “Tim! To me, to me!”

He knelt beside the bed, and the part of her face not covered by bandages he covered with kisses, crying as he did so. She was still wearing her nightgown, but now the neck and bosom were stiff with rusty blood. Tim had seen his steppa fetch her a terrible lick with the ceramic jug, and then commence with his fists. How many blows had he seen? He didn’t know. And how many had fallen on his hapless mother after the vision in the silver basin had disappeared? Enough so he knew she was very fortunate to be alive, but one of those blows—likely the one dealt with the ceramic jug—had struck his mother blind.

“’Twas a concussive blow,”
the Widow Smack said. She sat in Nell’s bedroom rocker; Tim sat on the bed, holding his mother’s left hand. Two fingers of the right were broken. The Widow, who must have been very busy since her fortuitous arrival, had splinted them with pieces of kindling and flannel strips torn from another of Nell’s nightgowns. “I’ve seen it before. There’s swelling to the brain. When it goes down, her sight may return.”

“May,” Tim said bleakly.

“There will be water if God wills it, Timothy.”

Our water is poisoned now,
Tim thought,
and it was none of any god’s doing.
He opened his mouth to say just that, but the Widow shook her head. “She’s asleep. I gave her an herb drink—not strong, I didn’t dare give her strong after he cuffed her so around the head—but it’s taken hold. I wasn’t sure ’twould.”

Tim looked down at his mother’s face—terribly pale, with freckles of blood still drying on the little exposed skin the Widow’s bandagements had left—and then back up at his teacher. “She’ll wake again, won’t she?”

The Widow repeated, “There will be water if God wills it.” Then the ghost-mouth beneath the veil lifted in what might have been a smile. “In this case, I think there will be. She’s strong, your ma.”

“Can I talk to you, sai? For if I don’t talk to someone, I’ll explode.”