Thank you for purchasing this Scribner eBook.
Thank you for purchasing this Scribner eBook.
Thank you for purchasing this Scribner eBook.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Tim barely noticed. “I have to go. My mother needs me.”<br />
Once again he started <strong>for</strong> Bitsy. This time he got almost half a dozen steps be<strong>for</strong>e the Covenant Man laid hold of him. His fingers were like rods<br />
of steel. “Be<strong>for</strong>e <strong>you</strong> go, Tim—and with my blessing, of course—<strong>you</strong> have one more thing to do.”<br />
Tim felt as if he might be going mad. Maybe, he thought, I’m in bed with tick fever and dreaming all <strong>this</strong>.<br />
“Take my basin back to the stream and dump it. But not where <strong>you</strong> got it, because yon pooky has begun to look far too interested in his<br />
surroundings.”<br />
The Covenant Man picked up Tim’s gaslight, twisted the feed-knob fully open, and held it up. The snake now hung down <strong>for</strong> most of its length. The<br />
last three feet, however—the part ending in the pooky’s spade-shaped head—was raised and weaving from side to side. Amber eyes stared raptly<br />
into Tim’s blue ones. Its tongue lashed out—sloooop—and <strong>for</strong> a moment Tim saw two long curved fangs. They sparkled in the glow cast by the<br />
gaslight.<br />
“Go to the left of him,” the Covenant Man advised. “I shall accompany <strong>you</strong> and stand watch.”<br />
“Can’t <strong>you</strong> just dump it <strong>you</strong>rself? I want to go to my mother. I need to—”<br />
“Your mother isn’t why I brought <strong>you</strong> here, <strong>you</strong>ng Tim.” The Covenant Man seemed to grow taller. “Now do as I say.”<br />
Tim picked up the basin and cut across the clearing to his left. The Covenant Man, still holding up the gaslight, kept between him and the snake.<br />
The pooky had swiveled to follow their course but made no attempt to follow, although the ironwoods were so close and their lowest branches so<br />
intertwined, it could have done so with ease.<br />
“This stub is part of the Cosington-Marchly stake,” the Covenant Man said chattily. “Perhaps thee read the sign.”<br />
“Aye.”<br />
“A boy who can read is a treasure to the Barony.” The Covenant Man was now treading so close to Tim that it made the boy’s skin prickle. “You<br />
will pay great taxes some day—always assuming <strong>you</strong> don’t die in the Endless Forest <strong>this</strong> night . . . or the next . . . or the night after that. But why look<br />
<strong>for</strong> storms that are still over the horizon, eh?<br />
“You know whose stake <strong>this</strong> is, but I know a little more. Discovered it when I made my rounds, along with news of Frankie Simons’s broken leg,<br />
the Wyland baby’s milk-sick, the Riverlys’ dead cows—about which they’re lying through their few remaining teeth, if I know my business, and I do—<br />
and all sorts of other interesting fiddle-de-dum. How people talk! But here’s the point, <strong>you</strong>ng Tim. I discovered that, early on in Full Earth, Peter<br />
Cosington was caught under a tree that fell wrong. Trees will do that from time to time, especially ironwood. I believe that ironwood trees actually<br />
think, which is where the tradition of crying their pardon be<strong>for</strong>e each day’s chopping comes from.”<br />
“I know about sai Cosington’s accident,” Tim said. In spite of his anxiety, he was curious about <strong>this</strong> turn of the conversation. “My mama sent them<br />
a soup, even though she was in mourning <strong>for</strong> my da’ at the time. The tree fell across his back, but not square across. That would have killed him.<br />
What of it? He’s better these days.”<br />
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<br />
was still watching them with hungry interest. Bad.<br />
“Yar, Square Fella Cosie’s back to work and we all say thankya. But while he was laid up—<strong>for</strong> two weeks be<strong>for</strong>e <strong>you</strong>r da’ met his dragon and <strong>for</strong><br />
six weeks after—<strong>this</strong> stub and all the others in the Cosington-Marchly stake were empty, because Ernie Marchly’s not like <strong>you</strong>r steppa. Which is to<br />
say, he won’t come cutting in the Endless Forest without a pard. But of course—also not like <strong>you</strong>r steppa—Slow Ernie actually has a pard.”<br />
Tim remembered the coin lying against his skin, and why he’d come on <strong>this</strong> mad errand in the first place. “There was no dragon! If there’d been a<br />
dragon, it would have burned up my da’s lucky coin with the rest of him! And why was it in Kells’s trunk?”<br />
“Dump out my basin, <strong>you</strong>ng Tim. I think <strong>you</strong>’ll find there are no bugs in the water to trouble thee. No, not here.”<br />
“But I want to know—”<br />
“Close thy clam and dump my basin, <strong>for</strong> <strong>you</strong>’ll not leave <strong>this</strong> clearing while it’s full.”<br />
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<br />
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<br />
<strong>this</strong> 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—<br />
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<br />
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<br />
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<br />
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<br />
Ross was perfectly preserved. If not <strong>for</strong> the emptiness in those lidless, lashless eyes, Tim could have believed his father might rise, dripping, and<br />
fold him into an embrace.<br />
The pooky made its hungry sloooop.<br />
Something broke inside of Tim at the sound, and he began to scream.<br />
The Covenant Man was <strong>for</strong>cing something into Tim’s mouth. Tim tried to fend him off, but it did no good. The Covenant Man simply seized<br />
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<br />
throat. Not redeye, <strong>for</strong> instead of making him drunk, it calmed him. More—it made him feel like an icy visitor in his own head.<br />
“That will wear off in ten minutes, and then I’ll let <strong>you</strong> go <strong>you</strong>r course,” the Covenant Man said. His jocularity was gone. He no longer called the boy<br />
<strong>you</strong>ng Tim; he no longer called him anything. “Now dig out thy ears and listen. I began to hear stories in Tavares, <strong>for</strong>ty wheels east of here, of a<br />
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<br />
there might still be a tyger somewhere in the <strong>for</strong>est—”<br />
At that the Covenant Man’s lips twitched in a rictus of a grin, there and gone almost too quickly to see.<br />
“—but a dragon? Never. There hasn’t been one <strong>this</strong> close to civilization <strong>for</strong> years ten times ten, and never one as a big as a house. My curiosity<br />
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<br />
enough—and brave enough—to ask. No, it was curiosity <strong>for</strong> its own sake, because wanting to know secrets has always been my besetting vice.<br />
Someday ’twill be the death of me, I have no doubt.<br />
“I was camped on the Ironwood Trail last night, too—be<strong>for</strong>e I started my rounds. Only last night I went all the way to the trail’s end. The signs on<br />
the last few stubs be<strong>for</strong>e the Fagonard Swamp say Ross and Kells. There I filled my basin at the last clear stream be<strong>for</strong>e the swamp begins, and<br />
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<br />
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<br />
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