Riverkeep (15 page)

“He was tryin' to bloody kill me. Decent effort, I has to say, but I should've been prepared. When he was puttin' those herbs together, I jus' watched him, like he was preppin' dinner or somethin'. Daft, daft, daft.”

“It made me hallucinate,” said Wull, remembering.
He looked at Pappa on the ground, frail and bundled like kindling.

“Really? I'd been wond'rin' why you hadn't jumped in to help me, I has to say. Guess that explains it.” Tillinghast grabbed hold of a tree and pulled on his wrist.

“What happened? What did you see?” said Mix.

“I don't know,” said Wull guardedly. “What about you? Where did you go?”

Mix's eyes shone. “I had a vision too. There were ships all around, comin' for me an' for us, then I was all tangled in roots an' the smell of mud, an' when I got free, I tried eatin' somethin' I
thought
was bread, but it was a lump o' dry earth full o' dead things. It was weird. So, what
did
you see?”

Wull tossed the oar into the long grass and shrugged. “Things. Impossible things.”

“That's the point of 'em, isn't it?” she said. “Did you enjoy it?”

Wull thought back to the weight pulling his head around, to the melding, burning colors, and the feeling of Pappa's fat weight against him.

“Aye,” he said, taking a long drink from his water pouch. “I s'pose I did.”

Mix laughed. “You'll be addicted next thing you know—bunches o' herbs stickin' out your pockets, rowin' in circles.”

Wull, despite himself, despite all the pain in his body,
laughed, then laughed again to find himself laughing.

“What's funny?” said Remedie, climbing through the riverside brambles, Bonn wrapped tightly on her front. “I'm there worried I'll be lost, and I come back to find you all having a lively chuckle. Hello, Wulliam, I'm glad to see you've found your . . . father.”

“I know,” said Wull, smiling. He knelt beside Pappa and tousled his hair. “I'm glad to see you. Mix an' me found Pappa. Thanks for goin' lookin',” he added, looking at Tillinghast.

Tillinghast's eyes bulged. “I told you I went lookin' an' all, only this one sent me back!”

“I did no such thing!” said Remedie. “I merely asked you to stay farther away from
me
—not to stop looking for Wulliam and his father.”

“You said I was repellent!” said Tillinghast indignantly.

“You are! I've never heard so many libidinous comments in my life!”

“You might if you fixed that bird's nest you's passin' off as hair!”

“See?” said Remedie. “This from a man of straw who hasn't a scrap of hair. Here, Wulliam, hold my Bonn for a moment while I empty the stones out my boots.”

“I's proud o' my baldness,” said Tillinghast. “It's manly to be without hair.”

“And so you wear a hat because . . .” said Mix, grinning.

Tillinghast opened his mouth, then closed it. “It's winter,” he said lamely. “I dun't need to be standin' here debating the merits o' hair with you people.” He straightened his hat.

Wull took Bonn from Remedie. She kept her hand on the baby's head until Wull had cupped it in his own palm and begun to move his arms as she did, in shushing, gentle rocking motions that felt sharp and clumsy. She smiled fondly at him.

“Your baby's made of wood, miss?” said Mix, her voice innocent and light.

“That's right,” said Remedie, balanced on a fallen tree, shaking one boot at the ground.

“How's that work, then?” said Mix.

“This one and her questions,” muttered Tillinghast, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Well, he's my baby, and I love him,” said Remedie. “There's not much else that needs work.”

“But how did, I mean . . . Where'd you get him?”

Remedie smiled sadly, heaved a deep breath.

“I had a son a year ago, the natural way, the blood and skin way, but he died. He was Bonn too.” She put her boot back on, swapped hands on the tree trunk, and shook the other boot. “He was a strong lump of a boy, then one morning after a few weeks he wouldn't wake. I found him in his
cradle, all cold, all heavy. So I kissed him and cleaned him and buried him.”

She sat down, folded her hands in her lap. The others were silent. Wull kept moving Bonn's fixed little body, watching Remedie's face. Beside him, Pappa let go a sharp snore and whispered unintelligible words.

“And that's that,” said Remedie.

“Wait a minute,” said Tillinghast. “Where'd this thing come from then?”

“This
thing
, Mr. Tillinghast? You mean my son?”

“Whatever, the wooden kid,” said Tillinghast. “D'you win it in a raffle?”

Remedie drew her face in against him. “From a homunculus with a mandrake,” she muttered. “I buried Bonn beneath a yew tree and made sure certain . . . conditions were met. A year to the day I dug down, and there he was, waiting for me.”

The three looked at Bonn, still and white in Wull's arms, perfect as a marble cherub.

“You mean . . . you didn't carve him?” said Wull.

“Carve him?” said Remedie, laughing. “Gods, no, he was there, waiting. This
is
Bonn. I dug to where he'd been buried. His flesh was gone, and here he is now, a new body of yew root, with his soul already inside.”

“So you did magic?” said Mix.

“I did.”

“So you're a witch?”

“Miss Cantwell doesn't need to be asked so many questions,” said Wull. He thought for a minute. “So you c'n control magic, then?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, I can, and I am a witch. But I don't belong to a coven.”

“'In't it dangerous?” said Wull. “Like lightnin'?”

“If you don't know what you're doing, it can be, of course.”

“So, did you”—Wull paused, looked at Pappa—“did you make the mormorach come here? Is it because of you it's in Canna Bay?”

“Oh heavens, no! I just . . . knew it would be, that's all. There'll be all kinds of other creatures around in the throes of a storm like this, I'm quite sure. Like in the sea, when there's a storm, all the water swirls up and the little beasts of the sand and rock are set in motion. It's amazing what little animals you find that would normally be hidden.”

“Right,” said Wull. He touched Bonn's cheek.

“So where's the magic come from then?” said Mix.

“In the name of . . .” said Tillinghast.

“It comes from the land,” said Remedie, “and my grandmother. She taught me.”

“That's int'restin',” said Mix, eyes wide. “So do you need to get naked an' chant beside a fire?”

“No!” said Remedie, laughing despite herself. “Why on earth would one do such a thing?”

“Keep your plums warm,” said Tillinghast.

“I saw it in a book once,” said Mix. “So you doesn't have to be in a certain place for it to work? Could you do it here?”

“Well, no. It comes from the ground—but from my
own
ground. There my family are all in the soil—here I can't connect to the same energies.”

“So do you have to be outside?”

Remedie laughed again. “No. The kitchen's just as good.”

“The parlor?”

“Yes, the parlor's fine.”

“The bedroom?”

“No,” said Remedie. “It's upstairs, too far from the soil. There's no magic in the bedroom.”

“Tha's a shame,” said Tillinghast. “Mibbe it's your squint?”

Remedie turned her shoulders so she couldn't see Tillinghast's face. “The point is that Bonn's ready to be reborn now with a new skin and a new body. A stronger one.”

“A wooden one?” said Mix.

Wull felt Bonn's weight on his palms and examined the ornate little face. The baby's surface—skin—was faintly iridescent, the sparkle of his fibers lit by the stars so that he appeared bathed in pale, glowing light. He seemed, without
moving a fiber, to respond to the pressure of Wull's hands, shifting in the same position: arms half raised, legs bent so that the heels almost touched, mouth slightly opened, as though searching for the teat.

Wull lowered his cheek to the little mouth. The wood was cold, but he hovered, expecting to feel a bloom of breath.

“Exactly,” said Remedie, “and when we get to Canna Bay and we're close enough to this creature—”

“Hey!” said Wull. “You're going after the mormorach too?”

“Of course,” said Remedie. “Is that your plan also?”

“For Pappa,” said Wull. “It has stuff inside it that'll cure him.”

“It has a body of magic and wonderful power,” said Remedie seriously. “I'm sure it holds the answer for your father's ills too. The mormorach will give Bonn
true
life once again, and then I will live with him in happiness.”

She lifted Bonn from Wull, kissed his nose, and strapped him into the sling on her body.

“Here,” she said, snapping off the bandage and striking a line of mud across Wull's cheek. “I made this for you while I was wandering in the forest.”

Wull touched his cut. The mud—tingly and at once hot and cold—had filled it like grout.

“Thank you, miss,” he said.

“You're quite welcome. It's burdock, mainly, with a few other things. It should clean up that nasty cut of yours.”

“Brilliant,” said Tillinghast. “So we're all on missions o' mercy an' helpin' each other out, 'in't that jus' peachy? Now let's get some oars an' get the hells out o' here.”

“And where are we going to find oars in the middle of the forest?” said Remedie as Wull rose and stretched. “Is there a ship broker up a tree?”

Tillinghast relished the chance to be insufferable. “No, Miss Cantwell, we's already sourced the supplies we needs, thank you,” he said, striding back toward the cave.

“Or we think we might have,” said Wull.

“From the Bootmunch,” said Mix.

“We bloody has!” said Tillinghast. “Don't tell her . . . that . . . Jus' come on. There might be other things as worth takin'.”

“Who's the Bootmunch?” said Remedie.

“A missing explorer—he tried to kill us,” said Mix. “Well, tried to kill Till, and got me an' Wull at the same time. Doesn't like homunculuses, apparently.”

“Homunculi, if you please,” said Tillinghast. “Let's jus' go.”

“What happened to him anyway? The Bootmunch?” said Wull, hobbling after Tillinghast, Pappa grumbling on his shoulder.

“Oh, by the time he'd caught me, my eyes had fair cleared up. It din't go the way he was expectin', I'd say.”

Numberless legs clacked and creaked through the ruin's untended wilderness. The wind blew across the garden, pulling the tops of the uncut, dying plants and bending the bare treetops toward the ground.

The wicker Things ran sightlessly and without aim, cracking their restless legs and changing direction in rapid swoops, responding to the slope of the ground and the air's patterned energies, their bodies channeling the magnetism and magic that flowed through the evening sky like the currents of the tide.

Something about the sky's energy had changed.

There was a sharpness and a focus that unsettled them. It jittered their limbs and whipped them into a swarm, like birds panicked in the gaze of a predator.

The wind swelled again, sending loose stone tumbling down the front of the wrecked building and into the long grass.

The man watched the Things from the window, chuckling at their wildness and speed. Then he let the
curtain fall and sat inside, listening to the thud of their feet, bathed in the silent hiss of flame on glass while the air filled with the flutter of thick-stitched wings.

The Bootmunch blinked at them. He was hanging by his heels from the cave's roof, trussed up by whip-thin branches and swinging gently. Tillinghast had wound some herb knives into his beard so that he tinkled as he swung, like a bulbous, hairy wind chime.

“And who is this lovely lady?” said the Bootmunch, spotting Remedie. “Could I be more charmed? I do not think so. How would it be possible? What a vision of loveliness! I would kiss you on the hands and face, but alas this devil of straw has seen fit to suspend me from my own ceiling—”

“You tried to kill me,” said Tillinghast, rummaging through the Bootmunch's belongings.

“Even if that were possible, straw devil, you have in return dangled me here like a Newsun decoration. So I must therefore apologize, madam, and leave my hands where they are, which is to say, tied completely behind my back.”

He smiled. Mix patted him on the cheek.

“Nothin' here's worth takin',” said Tillinghast.

“We're not
takin'
anything anyway,” said Wull. “We're payin' for whatever we get.”

“Payin'?”
said Tillinghast, scandalized. “I's got a reputation, you know.”

“I can imagine,” muttered Remedie.

“Mr. Bootmunch . . .” started Wull.

“Rushworth, remember?” said the Bootmunch quickly. “The Hiding Explorer?”

“Mr. Bootmunch,” said Wull again, “when you tried to kill Tillinghast, here—”

“That's impossible, he's a—”

“
When you tried to kill him
, you gave me a mighty strong hallucination that damn near got me and this lady here killed by an ursa. . . .”

“What about the little one?” said the Bootmunch.

“I was miles away, eatin' mud,” said Mix.

“Top work, that girl,” said the Bootmunch, grinning. “Yes, I'm awfully sorry about that. Sorry, sorry, everyone, frightfully sorry”—he tried to swivel round to include Tillinghast—“but he's a straw devil. I mixed the herbs wrong—I'd have bloody got him if I'd remembered the fennel. You should always remember the fennel.”