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maybe not until next month, but more likely next week (or even tomorrow!), when Big Kells would decide to get his bar, or remember that he had
more clothes than the ones he’d brought in his kick-bag. He would discover the trunk was unlocked, he’d dive for the deerskin bag, and find the coin
it had contained was gone. And then? Then his new wife and new stepson would take a beating. Probably a fearsome one.
Tim was afraid of that, but as he stared at the familiar reddish-gold coin on its length of silver chain, he was also truly angry for the first time in his
life. It was not a boy’s impotent fury but a man’s rage.
He had asked Old Destry about dragons, and what they might do to a fellow. Did it hurt? Would there be . . . well . . . parts left? The farmer had
seen Tim’s distress and put a kindly arm around his shoulders. “Nar to both, son. Dragon’s fire is the hottest fire there is—as hot as the liquid rock
that sometimes drools from cracks in the earth far south of here. So all the stories say. A man caught in dragonblast is burned to finest ash in but a
second—clothes, boots, buckle and all. So if you’re asking did yer da’ suffer, set yer mind at rest. ’Twas over for him in an instant.”
Clothes, boots, buckle and all. But Da’s lucky coin wasn’t even smudged, and every link of the silver chain was intact. Yet he didn’t take it off
even to sleep. So what had happened to Big Jack Ross? And why was the coin in Kells’s trunk? Tim had a terrible idea, and he thought he knew
someone who could tell him if the terrible idea was right. If Tim were brave enough, that was.
Come at night, for this jilly’s son likes to sleep in the day when he gets the chance.
It was night now, or almost.
His mother was still sleeping. By her hand Tim left his slate. On it he had written: I WILL BE BACK. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.
Of course, no boy who ever lived can comprehend how useless such a command must be when addressed to a mother.
Tim wanted nothing to do with either of Kells’s mules, for they were ill-tempered. The two his father had raised from guffins were just the
opposite. Misty and Bitsy were mollies, unsterilized females theoretically capable of bearing offspring, but Ross had kept them so for sweetness of
temper rather than for breeding. “Perish the thought,” he had told Tim when Tim was old enough to ask about such things. “Animals like Misty and
Bitsy weren’t meant to breed, and almost never give birth to true-threaded offspring when they do.”
Tim chose Bitsy, who had ever been his favorite, leading her down the lane by her bridle and then mounting her bareback. His feet, which had
ended halfway down the mule’s sides when his da’ had first lifted him onto her back, now came almost to the ground.
At first Bitsy plodded with her ears lopped dispiritedly down, but when the thunder faded and the rain slackened to a drizzle, she perked up. She
wasn’t used to being out at night, but she and Misty had been cooped up all too much since Big Ross had died, and she seemed eager enough to
—
Maybe he’s not dead.
This thought burst into Tim’s mind like a skyrocket and for a moment dazzled him with hope. Maybe Big Ross was still alive and wandering
somewhere in the Endless Forest—
Yar, and maybe the moon’s made of green cheese, like Mama used to tell me when I was wee.
Dead. His heart knew it, just as he was sure his heart would have known if Big Ross were still alive. Mama’s heart would have known, too. She
would have known and never married that . . . that . . .
“That bastard.”
Bitsy’s ears pricked. They had passed the Widow Smack’s house now, which was at the end of the high street, and the woodland scents were
stronger: the light and spicy aroma of blossiewood and, overlaying that, the stronger, graver smell of ironwood. For a boy to go up the trail alone,
with not so much as an ax to defend himself with, was madness. Tim knew it and went on just the same.
“That hitting bastard.”
This time he spoke in a voice so low it was almost a growl.
Bitsy knew the way, and didn’t hesitate when Tree Road narrowed at the edge of the blossies. Nor did she when it narrowed again at the
edge of the ironwood. But when Tim understood he was truly in the Endless Forest, he halted her long enough to rummage in his pack and bring out
a gaslight he’d filched from the barn. The little tin bulb at the base was heavy with fuel, and he thought it would give at least an hour’s light. Two, if he
used it sparingly.
He popped a sulphur match with a thumbnail (a trick his da’ had taught him), turned the knob where the bulb met the gaslight’s long, narrow neck,
and stuck the match through the little slot known as the marygate. The lamp bloomed with a blue-white glow. Tim raised it and gasped.
He had been this far up the Ironwood several times with his father, but never at night, and what he saw was awesome enough to make him
consider going back. This close to civilization the best irons had been cut to stumps, but the ones that remained towered high above the boy on his
little mule. Tall and straight and as solemn as Manni elders at a funeral (Tim had seen a picture of this in one of the Widow’s books), they rose far
beyond the light thrown by his puny lamp. They were completely smooth for the first forty feet or so. Above that, the branches leaped skyward like
upraised arms, tangling the narrow trail with a cobweb of shadows. Because they were little more than thick black stakes at ground level, it would
be possible to walk among them. Of course it would also be possible to cut your throat with a sharp stone. Anyone foolish enough to wander off the
Ironwood Trail—or go beyond it—would quickly be lost in a maze, where he might well starve. If he were not eaten first, that was. As if to underline
this idea, somewhere in the darkness a creature that sounded big uttered a hoarse chuckling sound.
Tim asked himself what he was doing here when he had a warm bed with clean sheets in the cottage where he had grown up. Then he touched
his father’s lucky coin (now hanging around his own neck), and his resolve hardened. Bitsy was looking around as if to ask, Well? Which way?
Forward or back? You’re the boss, you know.
Tim wasn’t sure he had the courage to extinguish the gaslight until it was done and he was in darkness again. Although he could no longer see
the ironwoods, he could feel them crowding in.
Still: forward.
He squeezed Bitsy’s flanks with his knees, clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and Bitsy got moving again. The smoothness of her
gait told him she was keeping to the righthand wheelrut. The placidity of it told him she did not sense danger. At least not yet, and honestly, what did
a mule know of danger? From that he was supposed to protect her. He was, after all, the boss.
Oh, Bitsy, he thought. If thee only knew.
How far had he come? How far did he still have to go? How far would he go before he gave this madness up? He was the only thing in the world
his mother had left to love and depend on, so how far?
It felt like he’d ridden ten wheels or more since leaving the fragrant aroma of the blossies behind, but he knew better. As he knew that the rustling
he heard was the Wide Earth wind in the high branches, and not some nameless beast padding along behind him with its jaws opening and closing
in anticipation of a small evening snack. He knew this very well, so why did that wind sound so much like breathing?