The Truth-Teller's Tale (9 page)

“It was so
very
dull!” Roelynn gave as her own critique. “But everyone complimented me on my gown. And the food
was
really good. I'm sure my father will want to have another dinner next year—and the next year and the next.”

Adele looked at Micah, whose thin face seemed even thinner and more sober by firelight. “And you?” she asked. “What did you think?”

“Oh, well, Micah got to sit by all the pretty girls and act all lord of the manor,” his sister answered for him. “I thought Allea Marsters was going to forget all decorum and sit right in his lap. He didn't seem to mind, though. She was wearing a most—revealing—gown. And my father thought
I
was showing too much skin!”

“Allea was behaving quite properly, I thought,” Micah said stiffly. “She seems like a very pleasant young lady. She showed more decorum than you did, at any rate.”

Roelynn tossed her head. I looked at Micah in some surprise. “Really? The girls were flirting with you? The young women from Lowford and Movington, I suppose?”

“Of course they were,” Roelynn said, answering for him again. “Micah's quite a catch, you know. I'll inherit some of Father's money, but Micah will inherit the business. He'll be a very rich man, and you'd better believe all the girls know it. He might be quiet and a little dull, but that doesn't matter much in a husband if he's got a lot of money.”

“I don't want to marry a girl who wants to marry me for my money,” Micah said.

Melinda looked over at him with a little smile. The firelight made her look like some old-fashioned full-length portrait of a noblewoman from a bygone age, all styled white hair and poised elegance. “And what
do
you want?” Melinda asked him. “What are the dreams of Micah Karro?”

Micah looked uncomfortable to be asked that question in front of his sister and her friends. “I want what anyone wants,” he said in a low voice. “I just want a good life.”

“I think you'll have to be more specific than that,” the Dream-Maker replied.

Before Micah could respond, the back door opened, and my father called out, “Is that Melinda? Are you back? Hannah, Melinda's here. I'll go fetch the wreath.”

In a few minutes, he came out, holding the huge circle of decorated greenery. It was so large that he could scarcely support it, and Micah hurried over to help him carry it to the fire. Kind, I thought, a little surprised. Mother was right behind them, wrapped in a heavy shawl that she'd thrown over her head to keep her ears warm.

“Brrr! I don't remember a Wintermoon so cold for ages,” Mother commented as she joined us before the fire.

“Are we all ready?” my father asked, casting a quick look around. “Anything else you want to tie to the wreath? Roelynn? Micah? You girls?”

“My feather's already on there,” Roelynn said.

“It's not my wreath,” Micah said.

My father grinned at him. “Well, you can wish on any wreath you like, can't you? Here at the inn, at least, everyone's welcome to join their wishes to ours.”

“Did you tie your stone to Father's wreath?” Roelynn asked him.

He shook his head. I thought he looked a little embarrassed. “I didn't feel like explaining it to him.”

“What stone?” my mother asked.

He turned his head courteously to address her. “I was out at the harbor one day, overseeing one of my father's ships. And I found a white stone, worn almost flat, with a hole in the middle. When I picked it up, the sea captain told me it was a lucky symbol—a whole circle, beginning and end, the sign of a full and complete life. I thought it might be something to throw into the Wintermoon fire.”

My father, who had been sharing the weight of the wreath with Micah this whole time, now pulled it from Micah's hands and eased it down to rest on the ground. “Well, tie it on, then! Do you have it with you?”

Micah nodded and pulled the stone out of his pocket. I couldn't see much, but it looked quite ordinary to me. “I don't have anything I can use to bind it to the wreath, though.”

Without saying a word, Adele pulled a white ribbon from her hair and handed it to him. Micah thanked her gravely and, while we all watched, tied the stone to the wreath.

“There now,” my father said, sounding satisfied. He always loved it when people added personal items to the Wintermoon greenery. “Is that it? Any more last-minute contributions? No? Micah, if you would—”

The two men worked together to lift the ring of greenery to shoulder height. All the women, fearing shooting sparks, took a few paces backward. Micah and my father heaved the wreath into the fire and it crashed with a satisfying shower of fire onto the steepled logs. The scent of fire was suddenly haunted by the sharp tang of spruce.

“That's a good Wintermoon bonfire,” Melinda said in approval.

“We'll let that burn a little, then we'll add some more fuel,” Father said.

“Who'd like some hot chocolate?” Mother asked. “I've got the kettle on in the kitchen.”

Roelynn said yes, but Micah frowned her down. “My sister and I have to be getting back,” he said. “We left my father with a houseful of guests. We were only supposed to be gone long enough to deliver the Dream-Maker.”

“You can stay for hot chocolate, surely,” Mother said.

But Micah was adamant. While he was making his earnest good-byes to my parents, Roelynn looked at Adele and me, her face a study of irritation and resignation, but she followed him meekly enough when he led her back to the Karro carriage. The rest of us enjoyed Mother's hot chocolate and stood around the fire for another hour or so. Melinda went in first, Adele andIalittle later. As always, my mother and father got out a blanket and sat together before the fire until dawn. At least, I assume they did—I was sound asleep.

In the morning, rather late, I woke while Adele was still sleeping. Dressing quietly, I put on shoes and a shawl and crept downstairs. Out the back door, out to the fire, to sift through the cinders and see if anything remained. If you tied coins or glass or metal scraps to the wreath, often they would remain, charred but whole, after the bonfire burned down. It was considered lucky to retrieve such items, for they were imbued with Wintermoon magic and had tremendous power during the coming year. Usually Adele and I came down together to search through the coals and see what the ritual had left behind, but she had looked to be deeply asleep, and I was too impatient to wait.

This year, I couldn't find anything of interest. Everything we had attached to the wreath appeared to have been flammable—all our vines, all our wildflower stalks, even Roelynn's feather. I searched for nearly half an hour and never found anything to keep.

Just as I had decided to give up, my mother's voice called from the back door. “Eleda! Time for breakfast! Go wake up your sister and come eat!” I ran inside, snatched a biscuit from the stove, and ate it as I bounded upstairs. Adele was still sleeping in our room, lying on her side, her hands curled up on the pillow beside her cheek.

I came a few steps nearer and bent over, studying her fingers. They were faintly streaked with soot; a line of black showed under her right thumbnail. For a moment, I could not imagine what the fastidious Adele could have been doing to get her hands dirty in the middle of the night. And then I realized: She must have woken up earlier than I did, sometime after our parents had gone to bed, and crept downstairs without me to inspect the remains of the bonfire.

She had found something, too. The state of her hands attested to that. I stared at her another few minutes, wondering what treasure had been so important to her that she had lain awake all night to be sure she would be the first one to rise and go through the coals of the Wintermoon fire so she could find it and keep it for herself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Spring came; the world was sweetly green; Adele and Roelynn and I all turned fifteen. Melinda came to town right before the spring planting. The day after she left, a local farmer found a cache of old gold buried in his fields and instantly became the second richest man in Merendon. Joe Muller, who had indeed bought the Windermere property a couple of years ago, purchased additional land and began raising racing horses. He was soon the third richest. Roelynn's father took her to Wodenderry for another week of splendor, and she came back even more infatuated with the city and, this time, with a young guardsman who served the queen.

Again, the prince had been scheduled to be there for this visit, but he and his cousin Tobin had taken off for the southern parts the night before Roelynn arrived. The reason was unclear but seemed to have something to do with attending the hasty wedding of a rapscallion friend.

This was the year I learned about the perils of falling in love, although danger of any sort was far from my mind when I first met Edgar. He came with one of the acting troupes that traveled throughout the kingdom, putting on plays in small towns and performing private productions for the very wealthy. His troupe—as well as companies of mimes, jugglers, peddlers, clowns, and singers—had come for the Summermoon festival that was the highlight of the hot season. In fact, Edgar and his friends had arrived in the city three weeks before the festival itself to get themselves settled into their quarters, build a makeshift stage on the edge of town, practice their lines, and market their plays. They gave comedic performances three times a week, put on a drama once a week, and promised that the play they planned for Summermoon would be extraordinary.

Edgar would enact the romantic lead in this production. Of course he would—he was a beautiful young man. He was not particularly tall, but he was well built, with wide shoulders and a muscled physique. He had dark blond hair that fell most winsomely across his forehead, and his face was sculpted into the shape of perfect masculine beauty. He had a smile that was irresistible and an easy way with all kinds of women—from little girls to dowdy old ladies, all agog to meet a true actor. If I believed in magic, I would say he cast a spell of enchantment over any woman he met. Certainly he cast a spell over me.

I was running errands for my mother when I first came across Edgar. He was standing in the dressmaker's shop, glancing between four bolts of similar fabric, and looking full of a comical panic. Lissette herself had no time to spare for him—though I'm sure she wanted to give him all her attention—because the shop was full of women ordering finery for the Summermoon events. The stranger's expression of rueful helplessness made me smile, and I approached him rather boldly.

“You look lost,” I said. “Do you need some help?”

He turned to look at me, and I was instantly lost in the dazzle of his smile. “Oh, I so very much need help,” he said gratefully. “I was sent here to buy ten yards of striped blue cloth, which sounded easy enough, but now I see that there are dozens of choices that seem to answer that very description, and I haven't the slightest idea what to choose.”

His voice was extremely attractive—low-pitched and lilting, with a trace of an accent I could not place. He might have been from foreign parts, or just some corner of the kingdom that I didn't know well. “Well, it depends on what you want the fabric for,” I said. “Clothes? Curtains? Upholstery? Though none of these are really suitable for upholstery, I have to say.”

“Clothes,” he said. “A lady's gown and a man's waistcoat.”

I raised my eyebrows, because it would seem a bit odd for a man and woman to go about dressed in matching garments, but I didn't say anything. “And will these be everyday clothes that will see a great deal of wear, or will they be special-day clothes that will be brought out only once a year? Because
this
fabric, though it costs more and is a little prettier in finish, is not nearly so sturdy as
this
fabric and will not do at all if you're going to expect it to stand up to much use.”

He smiled again. “I suppose you'd call it everyday wear. We'll be dressing up in these outfits every time we perform
Killed by a Kiss
, which is two or three times a week—and we're hard on our clothes, we are.”

“Every time you perform—why, then, you're with one of the acting troupes that's come to town?” I asked. I could tell I sounded excited as a little girl. But really, what could be more glamorous than an actor's life? I would be a dreadful actress, of course; I couldn't even speak a quick lie, let alone spend a couple of
hours
pretending to be someone I wasn't. But I had a secret love for theater.

The fair young man swept me a very elegant bow. “Indeed I am. Edgar Beauman at your service, of the Harst and Hope Regional Traveling Company. Though you could just as truthfully call me Dirk Daggerhand or Handsome Joe Hamilton and half-a-dozen other names I could give you.”

“But those are only parts you play,” I said, “and not really you.”

He laughed. “I play them so often sometimes I think I am more Dirk than Edgar.”

“And you have come to town for Summermoon?”

“Yes, this is our third or fourth trip to Merendon. It's our favorite city to play! Just the right size—big enough to fill the house every night, but not so big you get lost when you try to find your favorite shops from last year. And I've always found the people most friendly.” He grinned.

I grinned back, something I rarely did. It was so obvious he meant
I find the women most friendly.
“What play will you be performing over Summermoon?” I asked.

“I just told you—
Killed by a Kiss
. It's a romance and a mystery, and there's a great bit with sword fighting right in the middle. You'll have to come see it.”