Grayling felt the rush of a familiar combination of overwhelming love for her mother, annoyance at her demands, and fear of her temper, her power, her determination. She paused to think. Belike she could find one of these others, one with magic and skill, who might know what to do and do it, and she could come home. It might be that simple.
“How would I find these others?”
“Go to the market square of a town, as many towns as there be, and sing.”
“Sing? Sing what?”
“There is a gathering song I will teach you. Sing this, and the others, if others there still be, will find you.” Hannah Strong, her knees brown and rough as bark, sang.
By wax and wick,
By seed and root,
Through storms of trouble,
We gather.
Strange matters appear:
Thunder and fog,
Dark and midnight hags,
Toads, beetles, bats
Surround us.
From town and country, hill and valley,
From mountain’s snowy crest,
From cellar, attic, church, and alley,
I call to you. I call to you.
Afore danger find us, shackles bind us,
And dreams go up in smoke.
Come to me, come to me,
All wise and cunning folk.
Come—
By wax and wick,
By seed and root,
Through storms of trouble,
We gather,
We gather.
Grayling brightened. “Have you now called them with the song? Will they come here and tell us what to do to free you?”
Hannah Strong shook her head. “It will be many miles and many singings before they will hear and respond. But they will, if any there be—there is power in the song. Now you sing.”
All unwilling, Grayling sang, stumbling over the unfamiliar words, again and again until she knew the song. Then her mother taught her a song to sing to the grimoire and how to listen for the grimoire singing back, provided that no water stood between them.
There were three kinds of songs, Grayling knew—a song with words and music, a song with melody and no words, and a song with no words and no melody that was instead a thrumming in the head and a throbbing in the heart. This last was what her mother taught her now, and Grayling heard it not with her ears but with her mind and her spirit. And she repeated it the same way.
“But do not sing to the grimoire until you find the others,” Hannah Strong said. “You will need their assistance and support.”
The sun was setting behind the trees, shafts of golden light piercing through the greenery, before the teaching was finished. Grayling took the basket of herbs, bottles, and pots and added the hawthorn stick against evil, a wool winter cap with earflaps, and half a loaf of bread toasted but not consumed by the fire. She slipped a piece of angelica root into her pocket for protection. Her mother, not one for hugging, patted her on her back.
“Mayhap,” Grayling said in a small, thin voice, “I should wait until morning and start fresh on the road.”
Hannah Strong said, in a voice as soft but strong as silk thread, “You are the wise woman’s daughter. ’Tis up to you to set this right. Go.”
Grayling pulled her cloak tight about her. She left her mother there in the valley and ventured forth on her own, reluctant and frightened, up the rise.
II
hen twilight turned to dark and clouds scudded across the moon, Grayling fell asleep in the hollow of an old oak, cushioned by fallen leaves and moss. The songs of sparrows and thrushes and soft-voiced doves woke her shortly after dawn, and she shivered, both from the early morning chill and from the memory of what had happened. The smell of the fire was yet in her nose and her hair and her clothes, the terrible image of her mother rooted to the ground in her mind and her heart. How was she to go on? She didn’t even know where she was.
Grayling sat up, rubbed dewdrops from her face with the hem of her skirt, and looked about for something familiar. She knew every inch of the valley, every path that twisted and turned through the forest, every tree, every clearing, every stream. But here, up the rise? Here she knew nothing.
She had sometimes been to a town but never by herself. She had merely followed her mother as she shopped, visited, and tended. Which was the road to the nearest town? Grayling wondered. What would she find there? And how did her mother fare? Mayhap she should go back and see . . .
A scritching in the grass startled her, but it was only a mouse, sitting near her basket, cleaning its paws with a tiny pink tongue. Her basket! Grayling let forth a squeal and held her hand over her heart. The basket had been overturned, and the pots were cracked and broken. And empty. The pots were empty. Her only defense against the evil that came as smoke and shadow was gone.
“Who has done this?” Grayling cried, her heart pounding as she looked wildly about her. She saw no one. “You, mouseling, are the only witness,” she told it. “How I wish you could talk and tell me how this happened.”
The mouse ceased its preening and twitched its bounteous whiskers. “This mouse must declare, girl with gray eyes . . .” It hiccoughed. “This mouse must declare, it spilled the jars and ate what they contained.”