Page 49

“Gods, no, not me,” she said, slapped a palm on the table in farewell, and strode out the door. “I have a proper job to do.”

Bailey followed her, turning on his way out the door to tug his forelock at the captain.

That left me with Grant, suddenly quiet, and Demery, who cocked his head at the highwayman.

Grant looked as though he’d swallowed a fly.

“Well,” the captain said, “there’s only one other person here who can’t sail and has nothing else to do with their time. You two can get better acquainted before your time in Hesten. Keep her out of trouble, Mr. Grant.”

Bonny, Bonny Grant was He,

He was, or so they said,

Handsome as a Devil be,

With Gold upon his Head

Lace he wore about his Throat,

His Breeches, Buckskin fine,

His Eyes they danced a-merrily

His Coat was darkest Wine

A Road, a Coach, a fine Lady,

He’d offer out his Hand

He’d rob her blind a-while she swooned

And pluck her Wedding Band

The Girl from the Wold

The Girl from the Wold is in shock. She sits in a rattling carriage with half a dozen strangers, staring out the window and trying not to think, not to feel. There is a bag in her lap, stuffed to bursting with her most treasured possessions. Her father and stepmother are sending her away, to an aunt who can find her a suitable husband.

She is twenty-two years old. Her last fiancé went to war, and he had no house to leave her in. So the marriage was called off. The girl and her fiancé did not love one another, but their fondness had been growing, and the girl is devastated.

The girl sees something out the carriage window, among thetrees—ashadow, too dense for a waning autumn wood. They are not in her Wold, but they are in a normalwold—theLesterwold, which cloaks the road west in fallen leaves and reaches spindly, clacking fingers up into a grey sky. These trees have all obeyed the change of seasons, and their shadows stretch obediently away from the meager sunlight.

Instead of soothing the girl, the predictability of this common wold doubles the ache in her chest.

There is movement again, among the trunks and branches and bobbing conifer boughs. It does not scare the girl, though she leans forward and squints through the shutters. She is used to forests and their creatures. This is their place, not hers, and she understands her position as guest in a wild realm.

But soon after, the horses whinny and the carriage stops. The girl hears raised voices and the other travelers glance at one another.

The carriage door bangs open. Another passenger shrieks in surprise, then terror. Hands grab the travelers closest to the door and haul them out like screaming chickens from a coop.

When the hands come for her, she lashes out with a boot. She hears a curse. But another set of fingers digs into her skirts.

Then the girl is in the leaves beside the road, terrified and clawing to her feet. Running away.

And a highwayman with a pistol stalks behind her.

***

EIGHTEEN