But Will never forgot and never for an instant did he stop his vigilance in watching any strangers who appeared on the horizon.
17
Eight Years Later
1579
Horses!” Callie said in disgust. “You always want horses. Have you no imagination?”
“As much as you have,” Talis said, defending himself, but he knew it wasn’t true. Callie was the one with the stories in her head.
He was walking in the dusty road behind the slow-moving wagon as they returned from taking their produce to the village market. Will was, as usual, sitting on the wagon seat sound asleep, letting the ancient old horse find its own way home. Callie was sitting on the back of the wagon, swinging her insect-bitten bare legs, her hands tucked under her legs as she leaned forward and watched Talis brandishing his wooden sword.
They were very different-looking children. Talis was as dark as Callie was fair, and he was as big and sturdily built as she was delicately made; he was as handsome as she was plain. He was quite large for his age, being only eight, but he looked at least twelve years old, while Callie had a sweet, innocent expression that made her seem much younger than her years. Talis often demonstrated that he could pick her up and swing her around. But then Callie retaliated by slipping through tiny places that he could not get his big body through. She took delight in reminding him of the time he got stuck in the iron bars across a window in the cellar of an old house.
“Can’t you think of something better than horses?” she asked with great disdain in her voice.
Talis made a fierce jab at an imaginary foe with his sword. “Your job is to think of things.”
“Oh? If I am to think, what good are you?”
“Men are to protect women, to be brave and honest. Men are made for honor and good deeds; men are—”
“Ha, ha!” Callie mocked. “What do you know of brave deeds? Your last fight was getting that big turnip out of the ground. Unless you count the cow stepping on your foot.”
She didn’t bother him at all as he kept on thrusting with his sword. “All right, then, dragons,” he said after a while.
Callie gave a mock groan. “It’s always either dragons or horses.”
He ran a couple of steps, then leaped onto the tail of the wagon to sit beside her. “Someday you might be grateful that I know so much about dragons when I come to rescue you.”
“I can rescue myself.”
“Ha!” he said. “How can you defend yourself from a dragon? By talking him to death?”
Callie considered the question. “Why yes. I will tell him such a wonderful story that he’ll stop and listen.”
Holding out his sword, Talis narrowed his eyes. “Then while he is listening to you—”
“Listening so hard he cannot move,” she added.
“Turned to stone, he will be. While he’s listening, I’ll creep up on him and—”
Callie’s eyes lit up in a way that Talis loved: It meant she was about to tell a story. “You will climb up his back. He won’t feel you because you will have on magic shoes, shoes that were given to you by a witch who wanted you to kill the dragon, and—”
“Why?”
He didn’t ha
ve to explain his “why” because she knew what he meant. “You saved the witch’s baby and—”
“Witches don’t have babies!” he said in disgust.
Annoyed, she said, “All right then, it’s a baby she loves because it’s so beautiful. Everyone loves the baby, even the dragon. He loves it so much he wants to eat it. That way the baby will be with him forever.”
Talis’s eyes rounded at that.
Secure in her audience now, Callie dithered a bit. She was clever enough to have no vanity about her looks, but when it came to her storytelling, she had a great deal of vanity. For the rest of the way home she kept him enthralled with her story of magic shoes that made him weightless so he could climb the dragon’s back and pierce its heart. As it lay dying its only request was to hear the end of Callie’s story.