The Dream-Maker's Magic (4 page)

“Someday he'll be sorry,” I said ominously.

Gryffin shook his head. “Someday I'll be out of here. At the university in Wodenderry. Or
somewhere.
It won't matter then.”

“And I'll be lady-in-waiting to the queen,” I said rudely. That made him smile, just a little. I dropped my bag to the floor, knelt beside it, and pulled out some books. “Mr. Shelby gave me these to give to you. This is the story we read in class. And we did some math problems, but he said you wouldn't have any trouble with them, so you shouldn't worry about them. And there was some history, but it was boring. So all you really need is to read this story.”

“Thank you, Kellen,” he said gravely, but the smile lingered in his eyes. “I feel as if I didn't miss a minute of class.”

The next day Gryffin returned to school. He earned a few sideways glances from the younger students, and a rather searching interrogation from Sarah, but he told everyone the story he had almost told me. One of his canes had slipped on the stairs and he had tumbled painfully down. He was better now, yes, though his ankle was twisted and it was even harder to walk than it usually was. Mr. Shelby allowed him to stay in at recess, and allowed me to sit beside him, even though there was no one to tutor and no chores to do for the teacher. Merely, it was a kindness. Within three days, the most visible cuts and bruises were healed, though I noticed that Gryffin still walked with an extra stiffness.

From then on, it seemed, Gryffin was a little less mobile in general, as if he had sustained some permanent damage from those careless blows. I wondered if he had perhaps broken a bone without realizing it, as the fresh pain was masked by the ongoing familiar ache, and if that bone had knitted itself back together in an imperfect fashion. The incident reminded me of how fragile Gryffin could be—something, oddly enough, I had forgotten as soon as we became friends. His mind was so lively, his conversation so informed, that he had a palpable presence; his personality always struck me with an almost physical force. It was true he couldn't walk or run or play like other boys, but I never thought about that when I was with him. With Gryffin, it was so easy to overlook what he couldn't do—or, at least, it was easy for
me.
I suppose other people saw him as broken and a little sad. I saw him as astonishing.

I
t snowed for the entire week before Wintermoon. With the ground so icy and treacherous, it was impossible for Gryffin to walk even the short distance between the tavern and the schoolhouse, so he missed every class that week. I accepted books and assignments from Mr. Shelby and carried them to Gryffin's house every night, parroting back to him what I remembered from class. Then we would sit at the window and watch the snow come down like so many tumbled feathers. It was magical to watch the sunlight fade and the darkness flow over the town, thwarted only at random intervals by bright points of candlelight in the windows of the surrounding houses. The snow lay over everything like a veil, hiding cold mysteries.

“Sarah says the snow's so deep on the north road that her father can't get the wagons out,” I told Gryffin. “It's better going south, but not by much.”

“So everyone will have to stay in town for Wintermoon,” he said.

I rubbed at the fogged windowpane. I could hear my unconvincingly careless tone come to my voice. “Does your uncle do much to celebrate Wintermoon?” I asked.

“Well, the tavern's pretty full Wintermoon Eve,” Gryffin said. “A lot of folks come in to drink to midwinter. So my uncle doesn't have time to build a bonfire or anything. What about you and your mother?”

“We used to have a bonfire, when my father was here. But these days…” I shrugged. “It's too much of a bother. Make a fire, stay up all night tending it—it was fun when there was someone to share it with, but my mother's always in bed early.”

“Do you make a wreath?” he said.

I laughed. “I hadn't thought about that. I suppose you could make a wreath even if you didn't have a bonfire. What would you tie onto yours?”

He thought that over. “Something that meant freedom. A bird feather, maybe. Something to represent happiness. Something for travel. What about you?”

“Money. Happiness. Love,” I recited. Who wouldn't want those things?

“Well, I don't see why we can't make our own wreath,” Gryffin said. “It could be a really small one. You'd have to gather all the pieces, of course, but we could burn it in the grate in my room.”

I was sitting on the floor next to Gryffin's ottoman, but now I practically bounced where I sat. “What a wonderful idea! I'll go through my mother's ragbag and see what I can find. And I'll cut some branches from the spruce tree in the square. Maybe some holly—there's some down the street. There are plenty of things I can find for us to braid into a wreath.”

“Will you be able to come over on Wintermoon? And stay till midnight?” The wreaths were always burned as the hour struck twelve. A way to welcome in the new year the very minute it stumbled into the world.

I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

“Maybe your mother will worry?”

“She won't know I'm gone.”

He smiled. “This might be my best Wintermoon ever.”

The next two days were not school days. I spent my mornings working around the house, helping my mother with the holiday baking, and then I prowled through Thrush Hollow, looking for symbols. Traditionally, Wintermoon wreaths were woven from spruce, cedar, and rowan, but I didn't want to go far afield to the wooded areas a few miles outside of town. Instead, I contented myself with what the local trees had thrown down during recent storms. Half-buried in snow, I found switches of willow and sprays of holly, inflexible oak limbs and springier maple branches. I even cut some live branches down from a kirrenberry tree still growing before the house where a Safe-Keeper used to live. Everybody knew that kirrenberries signified silence, and Safe-Keepers were famous for never breaking theirs.

Some people said that when you burned something on a Wintermoon wreath, you were asking for a particular wish to be granted. Others said, no, sending something up in flames meant you wanted to free yourself from the influence of that specific item. If I brought in a length of kirrenberry, would I be begging to keep my secrets or hoping to leave them behind?

I didn't pause long to wonder; there was too much else to do. As I headed home, I saw the skeleton of a rosebush poke its bones above the drift line of snow, so I trimmed off a few thorny inches and stuffed them into my bag. Here and there, bird feathers lay like discarded jewels along a white coverlet, so I claimed these as well. Someone had lost a shoe buckle in the street. I didn't know what it might stand for, but I liked its silver twinkle, so that went into my bag with the rest.

My mother was making dinner when I returned home. “Goodness, what do you have there? The neighbors' kindling pile?” she asked me.

“No—just a few things I picked up outside,” I said.

Incurious as always, she merely said, “Well, get the table set. Dinner's almost ready.”

She had made a special meal for Wintermoon and seemed happy as she served it. These past few months she had been doing piecework for a local seamstress, and while she liked the money, the close, painstaking work was hard on her hands and eyes. Like everyone else in the whole world, she had been granted a holiday on Wintermoon and the reprieve made her cheerful. We ate meat pie and fresh bread and lemon cake, and toasted each other with apple cider.

“Any Wintermoon wish?” she asked me.

“A new pair of gloves,” I said. I had accidentally found them in her closet one day, so I knew that was the gift I would find before the parlor fire in the morning.

She laughed. “I meant in the larger sense,” she said gaily. “You know. You want to go to sea as a sailor, you want to marry a nice girl and have a family…?”

I smiled. “I want to pass into the next grade at school. I haven't thought much further ahead than that. What about you?”

She looked suddenly sad, in that familiar way. “I'd like to hear from your father again,” she said.

“Do we need money? I can see if the Parmers want me to work more than two days a week.”

She shook her head. “No, I'd like more than money from him. I'd just like—someday—to see him.”

I was fairly certain this was never going to happen. In fact, if we hadn't received funds from him from time to time, I would have been convinced he was dead. I rarely thought about him anymore. I certainly wouldn't have put his appearance on my list of desires. “Well, it's Wintermoon,” I said, lifting my cider glass again. “Maybe your wish will come true.”

We sang seasonal carols while doing the dishes, and then my mother yawned. “Goodness, Kellen, I'm too tired to stay up till midnight,” she said. “Are you going to? Will you look out the window and watch the neighbors' bonfires?”

“I might even step outside to see them better,” I said, to still her fears if she happened to wake and find me out of my bed.

She kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, then. Warm Wintermoon wishes.”

During the hour that I waited for her to fall asleep, I sorted through her embroidery basket and her rag pile, finding all sorts of treasures. Scraps of lace, snippets of thread, mismatched buttons, and patches of discarded clothing all made their way into my bundle. When I had everything I thought I might need, I checked my mother's bedroom, and she was sound asleep. Pulling on my coat and boots, I headed out into the frosty night.

The full moon was high overhead, an unblinking watchful eye. Stars were suspended in the black sky like raindrops too crystalline to fall. Every breath I inhaled was scented with snow. I hurried through the streets of Thrush Hollow, catching echoes of talk and laughter, glimpsing light and shadows playing around the bonfires in so many neighbors' back yards. The whole world was celebrating Wintermoon.

Certainly much of the world seemed to be celebrating at the tavern, for noise and light spilled out from the front door all the way into the street. I was not used to being this far from home once the sun had gone down, and I was not entirely comfortable as I skirted the front of the building and headed to the back. The laughter inside seemed overloud; the smell of beer and spilled wine was very strong. This was a place for adults, and I was sure I did not belong.

But I had spent much of my life trying to make myself fit in.

The back door was unlocked, and no one was watching the hallway. I crept upstairs, clutching my bag, and was relieved to find Gryffin's door already open. He was seated on a rug before the fire, both canes leaning against the wall. He smiled widely when he saw me.

“I wasn't sure you would come!” he said in a low voice.

“I told you I would,” I replied in what was almost a whisper. Even though it was impossible that anyone from the noisy tavern would overhear us, we both had the sense that we were embarked on an illicit adventure, and the more caution we employed, the higher our odds of success. Nonetheless, I could see by the excitement in his face that Gryffin was as delighted with the night's possibilities as I was.

“Show me what you've brought,” he commanded, and I dumped the bag of treasures at his feet.

We spent the next hour sorting through the hodgepodge and deciding what we could bend to our uses. First we twined a wreath from the muddle of branches I had found. Holly, of course, always stood for joy, any kind of evergreen for reliability, oak for strength. We lashed them all together with a length of emerald ribbon, which Gryffin said would represent hope, because hope was always green. Then we tied on all the other little bits, and began to endow them with ever more outlandish characteristics.

Gryffin had torn a page from an old book, first assuring me that half the rest of the book was already missing. “This stands for knowledge,” he said, and wrapped it around the wreath.

I added a bow of red yarn. “This stands for warmth. You know, like a warm sweater.”

“This button will represent a shield. It's a miniature shield. It will keep us from harm.”

“A toy boat for travel.”

“A bird feather for mobility.”

“A rose thorn for strength!”

“An acorn for plenty!”

And on this way, giggling our way toward midnight. By the time we were done, we had a very small wreath—barely big enough to rest on my head like a crown—dangling with a colorful assortment of wishes.

“Poke the fire a little; make sure it's really burning,” I suggested.

Gryffin shook his head. “Let's go outside. Let's burn our wreath in the back yard, so the smoke goes straight up to the moon.”

I was concerned. “It's cold out. And there's still snow everywhere. I don't want you to fall.”

“I'll stand just outside the back door,” he promised. “I want to see a Wintermoon wreath burn against the night sky.”

“It's almost midnight,” I said. “Let's go downstairs.”

I carried the wreath like a large bracelet over one arm; in the other hand, I held a torch sifted from the fire. Gryffin came behind me, navigating the stairwell with his canes. We could hear the noise of the tavern swelling even more loudly as the clocks ticked closer to the magical hour. The small sounds of our passage were wholly drowned out by the yelling and cheering down the hall.

I helped Gryffin across the threshold and out into the bitterly cold night. He gasped, then smiled, and took a firmer grip on his canes as he planted them in the snow. Behind us, a wild yell from the tavern indicated that laggard midnight had finally arrived.

“Do it now,” Gryffin said, and I touched the brand to the wreath. The greenery was slow to catch on fire, but the drier scraps of wood and cloth instantly danced with flame. I slid the torch through the circlet of fire, holding the safe end of wood in my ungloved hand, and watched them both burn. Orange and yellow and red against the white and black of the snowy night.

Finally the wreath was blazing so fiercely that its shape was hard to distinguish, and then it fell apart completely, landing with a hiss in the snow. I tossed my burning branch down beside it, and both of them continued to smolder for another five minutes, till the wetness of the snow and the disintegration of the fuel put them out. Black cinders flickered against the whiteness of the snowbank, and the scent of spruce circled us on a lazy drift of smoke.

“Warm Wintermoon to you, Kellen,” Gryffin whispered. “May everything you wished for come true.”

Winter wound its way through the season as if each month was a maze of hedges, too overgrown to navigate with speed. The air always felt heavy, the sky on the verge of darkness. It was dreary and cold, with very few moments of brightness. I felt as if I trudged through the season.

The weather was bad enough so often that Gryffin missed a great deal of school, and consequently, we fell out of the habit of going to the Parmers' house on a regular basis. Sarah still invited us over from time to time, and I would work while Gryffin and Sarah studied, but the visits were rare and seemed too short.

I was needed at home more, anyway. My mother had decided that one way to supplement her income would be to take in travelers, and so she had worked out an arrangement with the local inn that she would accommodate visitors whenever their own rooms were full. She also discreetly advertised this service with a small sign set in the parlor window, and we often caught the attention of customers who did not want to pay the prices the innkeeper charged. So, in a typical week, we might have four days when strangers slept at our house. Naturally, they all required fresh bedding and tolerable meals, as well as a fire in the grate, so there was much more work to do around the house.