The Truth-Teller's Tale (8 page)

“I can't take the cart no farther,” the driver announced at length. “I'll sit here and make a fire, and you girls run in and chop down what you like.”

We scrambled out of the cart and chased each other into the woods. We really didn't have much to hunt for, since our father had gathered most of the spruce ropes and oak branches that would be used to weave the Wintermoon wreath for the inn, while servants had performed the same function for the Karro household. But everyone wanted to add something special to a Wintermoon wreath—a sprig of holly, a spray of rowan, a raven's feather, a river stone. Every year since we'd been seven or eight, Adele and Roelynn and I had searched for truelove vines; every year we had failed to find them. We continued to look for those and other treasures.

According to tradition, every household designed its own Wintermoon wreath and displayed it for a week or two during midwinter. The basic form of the wreath would be braided from evergreen and oak, and then it would be decorated with all manner of additional items, all of them representing something—holly for joy, a cornstalk for plenty. Adele and I usually pulled a few twigs from the kirrenberry and chatterleaf trees and wound them around the wreath, signifying our commitment to our professions. Our mother always attached a few dried plums and apricots, to represent a full pantry and a well-stocked cook pot. Father usually went to Lissette's shop to buy a length of gold thread to tie everything together—and to call down riches on our home.

Roelynn chose something different every year to bind into her father's wreath—bird feathers (for lighthearted-ness), dried roses (for love), once even a snakeskin that we had found abandoned in the woods. Adele and I had refused to touch it, but Roelynn had snatched it up with a cry of pleasure.

“What is
that
supposed to represent?” I had said rather sharply.

“I don't know. A new skin. A new life. Casting off old things,” she had said.

“What do you want to leave behind?” Adele had inquired.

Roelynn had laughed. “I'll know when it's gone.”

But she had never told us what that might have been.

This year we moved rather quickly through the spindly upraised arms of the winter-bare trees. It was cold, and the wind had a bitter edge to it, and none of us wanted to stay out for long. As always, we looked for the heart-shaped leaves of truelove, but we couldn't find the vines anywhere. The woods offered many other interesting finds, though—ropes of ivy, still blood red with autumn's coloring; wing feathers from half-a-dozen birds; the stems of dried wild-flowers; a tiny fossilized claw from what might have been a squirrel or mouse. Roelynn and I squealed and turned away, but Adele picked it up and seemed to like it.

“Strength,” she decided, and added it to her bag of trophies.

Down by the stream that was so small it sometimes meandered off to nothing during droughts, we found a long, swooping red feather. Roelynn ran forward with a little cry and snatched it up.

“From the tail of a tasselback,” she exclaimed. “Isn't it beautiful?”

Adele came forward to look. The quilled scarlet edges were decorated with random streaks of black and gray. “That's the bird in the royal crest,” Adele said. “It's painted on all the coaches and embroidered in all the livery.”

“I know,” said Roelynn. “The royal bird. I'll have to put this in my wreath.”

“What for?” I asked rather tartly.

Roelynn laughed and spun around in a circle, holding the bright feather like a candle under her chin. Just like a candle, it seemed to illuminate her face with its own particular colors and characteristics. “For saying farewell to royalty,” she said. “I'll tie this feather to my father's wreath, and then when we throw it in the bonfire, the feather will burn away, and I'll be forever free of any fear that my father will marry me off to the prince.”

“That's not usually how the Wintermoon wreath is supposed to work,” Adele said in a dry voice. “What you bind into the wreath is what you want to draw your way.”

“Or what you want to see go up in smoke and drift away,” Roelynn said firmly. “What really matters is your intention as you attach the object to the greenery.”

“So I suppose you'll tell your father why you're sewing a tasselback feather into his Wintermoon wreath?” I said.

Roelynn looked thoughtful. “No. I'll tell him—what you said. That it's a way to bring me the attention of the prince.”

“He'll be glad to hear that, I imagine,” I said. “He'll have you back in Wodenderry before the bonfire's even cold.”

“Hmmm. You're right,” Roelynn said. “Well, I just won't mention the feather to him at all. Or I'll just tell him—that I found it in the woods. That I don't know what it represents. I just thought it was pretty.”

“Micah will know what it is,” Adele said. “Won't he say something?”

Roelynn made a small sound of exasperation. “Micah! You're right. Well, then I'll just—I know! I'll bind it into
your
Wintermoon wreath, and then I'll come down to the inn at midnight and be there when you throw it into the fire.”

She often crept away from her house during her father's festivities and came to join us at the Leaf & Berry, so this seemed like a fairly workable plan. Adele held out her hand, and Roelynn rather reluctantly laid the feather on her palm.

“It seems almost too pretty to burn,” Adele remarked. “Are you sure that's what you want to do?”

Roelynn took it back. “I'm sure. I'm very glad I found it.”

The wind swooped low through the trees, and I shivered where I stood. “I'm cold,” I said. “Let's go home.”

We made our way out of the forest, back to the road, and we found that Karro's admirable groom had indeed built a fire while we were gone. He had also made us hot chocolate, which we gratefully drank, and warmed up a few bricks in the small bright flames. So we were almost warm and definitely happy as we headed back to town, our packs full of treasures and our minds full of Wintermoon dreams.

CHAPTER SIX

Wintermoon is the time for old troubles to die and new hopes to rise. It is a time when the whole world sleeps under a still, white patina of frost till it wakes to the fresh dawn of spring. Wintermoon is the time to take stock, look forward, make plans, shrug off the past. It is my very favorite time of year.

 

 

The inn was always very crowded the few days before and after Wintermoon, as people stayed for the night while journeying to and from the homes of their loved ones. But the day of Wintermoon itself, there was hardly ever anyone staying with us. Everyone wanted to be with their families. This was not a holiday you would choose to spend with strangers.

Even so, there were sometimes one or two travelers staying overnight at Wintermoon—usually people visiting Merendon friends whose houses were already overfull. Now and then there would be lonely old widowers or bony spinsters who had nowhere else to spend the holiday, and who checked in at the Leaf & Berry, pretending they were late for their own joyous gatherings. Once we had an entire family staying with us—father, mother, six children—unable to complete their journey because the mother had gone into early labor with her seventh child. The baby was born at midnight on Wintermoon, a most mystical time of year. The father carried the infant down to the bonfire and, with his other six children, tossed pinecones and holly berries into the flames. Plenty and joy. I thought the omens could not have been more propitious.

This year, the Dream-Maker was our only guest, and a most welcome one she was. She had been invited to Karro's dinner party, but I didn't think she had come to Merendon specifically to attend it. She just liked to settle into some big town over the winter holidays so that large numbers of people could brush past her during the course of the day and have some hope that their dreams might come true in the following year. It was easier to believe in magic on Wintermoon; it was easier to think that your secret desires might finally be fulfilled sometime in the coming months.

“Well, Hannah, any particular dreams in your life these days?” Melinda greeted our mother as she always did.

Our mother, as always, shook her head. “I've got everything I could ever wish for.”

Melinda glanced at Adele, who was taking her coat, and me, as I bent to pick up her luggage. “What about you girls?” she asked. “You're old enough to have some dreams and wishes.”

“Old enough to know better than to talk about them aloud,” Adele said with a laugh.

“Old enough to know which ones are never going to come true, even with years' worth of wishing,” I added.

Melinda's perfect eyebrows rose. “Old enough to be true cynics,” she said. “Give yourselves time. One day you'll have dreams that are bigger than you are.”

Adele and I helped get her settled in her room, then carried up hot water so she could clean and dress for the party. When she came downstairs, attired in a lovely rose-pink gown that made her white hair seem to glow, we exclaimed over her elegance and beauty.

“Well, I thought if it was good enough for dinner at the palace, it was good enough for dinner at Karro's,” Melinda said, pulling on long, fine gloves. “I don't plan to stay late, though. I'd rather celebrate the bonfire here. When will you be throwing your wreath into the flames?”

“We'll wait till you get back,” promised my father, who was ready to drive her to Karro's in our little gig. “We'll be up all night, of course. We don't need to burn it at midnight.”

“Goodness! I hope I'm back before then.”

“Should I send Bob to fetch you?” my mother asked.

Melinda grinned rather wickedly. “No. I'll make Karro find someone who wants a favor. I would think any number of people would be happy to drive the Dream-Maker anywhere she wishes on Wintermoon night.”

We all laughed, and the two of them left. Mother and Adele and I busied ourselves in the kitchen, cooking all our favorite foods and relishing the simplicity of making a meal for four instead of for the ten or twenty who might ordinarily be staying at the inn. After Father returned and we'd all eaten, Mother cleaned the kitchen while Father and Adele and I went outside to start the fire.

By this time it was completely dark and quite cold. Father had stacked cords and cords of wood in a cleared space behind the inn—an area between the toolshed and the vegetable garden. It was far enough from the two trees to be certain no stray sparks would catch the bare limbs on fire, but close enough to the house to allow us to run back inside if we got too chilly. Father carefully built the piles of kindling and put the bigger logs on top, then started the fire with a coal brought from the kitchen. So small, at first—a flicker, a tendril of yellow, a fugitive lick of untamed gold—and then a fire, and then a blaze, and then, as more logs were added, a true inferno. Its heat sent us scampering back toward the house until cold beat us back toward the fire's hungry embrace. My face and my hands were hot enough to seem fevered, but my feet were numb against the icy winter ground.

“That's pretty, that is,” my father said, admiring the leaping, twisting flames. “That'll last all night.”

I turned to view what I could of the neighboring buildings. A few of the merchants situated nearby had houses in other parts of town, but most of them lived in quarters above their businesses. So up and down our street I could see an almost unbroken string of similar fires, scarlet and saffron against the velvet night. Once I had climbed to the roof of the inn to look out over the Wintermoon landscape, and counted nearly fifty separate bonfires before I lost track.

Father yawned hugely. It was only eight or nine o'clock, and we would be up till dawn—and the next day's customers would probably start arriving by noon. “I think I'll go in and sleep for a bit,” he said. “Will you girls keep the fire going?” We gave quick assents. “Wake me up when Melinda gets back,” he said, “and we'll throw the wreath in.”

Father went in, and Mother never came out—but that, too, was a tradition on Wintermoon Eve, at least at our house. The two of them napped together, or perhaps took a couple of hours to love each other, while Adele and I stayed outside and watched the fire. I tended to be cautious with the logs, putting on a fresh one only when the blaze looked as if it might die down; Adele would add them with abandon, piling on three, five, six new ones while there was plenty of fuel still on the fire. It didn't matter. There was always more wood than we needed to see us through the coldest night.

Shortly before midnight, I was kneeling by the fire when I saw Adele turn her head and seem to listen to the wind. “Someone's coming,” she said, though it was hard to hear much through the crackling of the wood. Sure enough, a few minutes later, I caught the clop of shod hooves on the cobblestoned road—and a few minutes after that, I heard the mixed sounds of a man's voice and women's laughter.

“Melinda's back,” I said, coming to my feet. “It sounds like Roelynn is with her.”

“And Micah,” Adele said. “He must have driven them here.”

I
wouldn't have recognized Micah's low-pitched voice late at night when I was thinking about other things, but that was Adele for you. She never overlooked anything.

Sure enough, the three shadowy figures coming around the corner of the inn stepped into the firelight and revealed themselves to be Roelynn, Micah, and Melinda.

“How was the dinner?” I asked. “Was it grand?”

“Very elegant,” Melinda said. “The food was excellent, and all the guests were deeply impressed. Quite a success, I would say.”