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I’ll count to a hundred and then turn Bitsy around, he told himself, but when he reached a hundred and there was still nothing in the pitch black
save for him and his brave little mollie-mule (plus whatever beast treads behind us, closer and closer, his traitorous mind insisted on adding), he
decided he would go on to two hundred. When he reached one hundred and eighty-seven, he heard a branch snap. He lit the gaslight and whirled
around, holding it high. The grim shadows seemed first to rear up, then leap forward to clutch him. And did something retreat from the light? Did he
see the glitter of a red eye?
Surely not, but—
Tim hissed air through his teeth, turned the knob to shut off the gas, and clucked his tongue. He had to do it twice. Bitsy, formerly placid, now
seemed uneasy about going forward. But, good and obedient thing that she was, she gave in to his command and once more began walking. Tim
resumed his count, and reaching two hundred didn’t take long.
I’ll count back down to ought, and if I see no sign of him, I really will go back.
He had reached nineteen in this reverse count when he saw an orange-red flicker ahead and to his left. It was a campfire, and Tim was in no
doubt of who had built it.
The beast stalking me was never behind, he thought. It’s ahead. Yon flicker may be a campfire, but it’s also the eye I saw. The red eye. I
should go back while there’s still time.
Then he touched the lucky coin lying against his breast and pushed on.
He lit his lamp again and lifted it. There were many short side-trails, called stubs, shooting off from either side of the main way. Just ahead,
nailed to a humble birch, was a wooden board marking one of these. Daubed on it in black paint was COSINGTON-MARCHLY. Tim knew these
men. Peter Cosington (who had suffered his own ill luck that year) and Ernest Marchly were cutters who had come to supper at the Ross cottage on
many occasions, and the Ross family had many times eaten at one or the other of theirs.
“Fine fellows, but they won’t go deep,” Big Ross told his son after one of these meals. “There’s plenty of good ironwood left in close to the
blossie, but the true treasure—the densest, purest wood—is in deep, close to where the trail ends at the edge of the Fagonard.”
So perhaps I only did come a wheel or two, but the dark changes everything.
He turned Bitsy up the Cosington-Marchly stub, and less than a minute later entered a clearing where the Covenant Man sat on a log before a
cheery campfire. “Why, here’s young Tim,” he said. “You’ve got balls, even if there won’t be hair on em for another year or three. Come, sit, have
some stew.”
Tim wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to share whatever this strange fellow ate for his supper, but he’d had none of his own, and the smell wafting
from the pot hung over the fire was savory.
Reading the cast of his young visitor’s thoughts with an accuracy that was unsettling, the Covenant Man said: “It’ll not poison thee, young Tim.”
“I’m sure not,” Tim said . . . but now that poison had been mentioned, he wasn’t sure at all. Nevertheless, he let the Covenant Man ladle a goodly
helping onto a tin plate, and took the offered tin spoon, which was battered but clean.
There was nothing magical about the meal; the stew was beef, taters, carrots, and onions swimming in a flavorsome gravy. While he squatted on
his hunkers and ate, Tim watched Bitsy cautiously approach his host’s black horse. The stallion briefly touched the humble mule’s nose, then turned
away (rather disdainfully, Tim thought) to where the Covenant Man had spread a moit of oats on ground which had been carefully cleared of
splinters—the leavings of sais Cosington and Marchly.
The tax collector made no conversation while Tim ate, only kicked repeatedly into the ground with one bootheel, making a small hole. Beside it
was the basin that had been tied on top of the stranger’s gunna. It was hard for Tim to believe his mother had been right about it—a basin made of
silver would be worth a fortune—but it certainly looked like silver. How many knucks would have to be melted and smelted to make such a thing?
The Covenant Man’s bootheel encountered a root. From beneath his cloak he produced a knife almost as long as Tim’s forearm and slit it at a
stroke. Then he resumed with his heel: thud and thud and thud.
“Why does thee dig?” asked Tim.
The Covenant Man looked up long enough to flash the boy a thin smile. “Perhaps you’ll find out. Perhaps you won’t. I think you will. Have you
finished your meal?”
“Aye, and say thankya.” Tim tapped his throat three times. “It was fine.”
“Good. Kissin don’t last, cookin do. So say the Manni-folk. I see you admiring my basin. It’s fine, isn’t it? A relic of Garlan that was. In Garlan there
really were dragons, and bonfires of them still live deep in the Endless Forest, I feel sure. There, young Tim, you’ve learned something. Many lions
is a pride; many crows is a murder; many bumblers is a throcket; many dragons is a bonfire.”
“A bonfire of dragons,” Tim said, tasting it. Then the full sense of what the Covenant Man had said came home to him. “If the dragons of the
Endless Forest are in deep—”
But the Covenant Man interrupted before Tim could finish his thought. “Ta-ta, sha-sha, na-na. Save thy imaginings. For now, take the basin and
fetch me water. You’ll find it at the edge of the clearing. You’ll want your little lamp, for the glow of the fire doesn’t reach so far, and there’s a pooky in
one of the trees. He’s fair swole, which means he’s eaten not long ago, but I still wouldn’t draw water from beneath him.” He flashed another smile.
Tim thought it a cruel one, but this was no surprise. “Although a boy brave enough to come into the Endless Forest with only one of his father’s
mules for company must do as he likes.”
The basin was silver; it was too heavy to be anything else. Tim carried it clumsily beneath one arm. In his free hand he held up the gaslight. As he
approached the far end of the clearing, he began to smell something brackish and unpleasant, and to hear a low smacking sound, like many small
mouths. He stopped.
“You don’t want this water, sai, it’s stagnant.”
“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t want, young Tim, just fill the basin. And mind the pooky, do ya, I beg.”
The boy knelt, set the basin down in front of him, and looked at the sluggish little stream. The water teemed with fat white bugs. Their oversize
heads were black, their eyes on stalks. They looked like waterborne maggots and appeared to be at war. After a moment’s study, Tim realized they
were eating each other. His stew lurched in his stomach.
From above him came a sound like a hand gliding down a long length of sandpaper. He raised his gaslight. In the lowest branch of an ironwood
tree to his left, a huge reddish snake hung down in coils. Its spade-shaped head, bigger than his mama’s largest cooking pot, was pointed at Tim.
Amber eyes with black slit pupils regarded him sleepily. A ribbon of tongue, split into a fork, appeared, danced, then snapped back, making a
liquid sloooop sound.
Tim filled the basin with the stinking water as fast as he could, but with most of his attention fixed on the creature looking at him from above,
several of the bugs got on his hands, where they immediately began to bite. He brushed them off with a low cry of pain and disgust, then carried the
basin back to the campfire. He did this slowly and carefully, determined not to spill a drop on himself, because the foul water squirmed with life.