Sigrid sighed and tried to shift to a better position on the wooden bunk. “How did you come to be here, Eshkol? Did they kidnap you, too? Surely the captain can’t steal all her crew; it seems like that would take a great deal of time.”
Eshkol laughed again, a sound like damp leaves falling into a swift-running creek. “No, no, I came aboard of my own will. I volunteered.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “I’m not tired either. I don’t mind telling the tale—it’ll pass the hours till dawn…”
I WAS THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER OF MY COPSE—NO other of my sisters or my briar-bearded brothers did our parents love more. The Yew was a large and prosperous family; we had enough to eat and plenty of wine to make us merry. We were known far and wide for the amazing number of offspring each Yew managed to produce—daughters and sons dropped from each of us like cones from a pine. We were envied by the Willow and Larch copses, positively worshipped by the poor Firs, who were lucky to have one child in a century.
The Forest held us all in its green shadows, and the race of Satyrs went about life as we always had: we chased the prettier fauns and drank ourselves into fits of giggles under a cornucopia of stars. It was a simple life. If a Satyr died, which did happen now and again, he did not so much die as plant himself, and from the place where he went to root a tree would grow that we could still love and converse with as though our uncle or cousin were still with us. From this had come the names of our copses, in the beginning of the world when the Forest was new—the first of us sent up trees of unrivaled beauty and size, whose branches arched like embracing arms over the meadows and glens. Their descendants took the names of these gods among trees and thus I am called Yew, my friend is called Birch, and her friend is called Pine.
And so it was that I sat under the bristling branches of the great Yew the day the man in the vulture-skin came to the Forest.
I was too young to mate, but only barely—the fauns were beginning to gather around our door like snails after a rainstorm. As all the Yew girls are, I was lovely as a spring sapling. The color was high and bright as a dahlia in my cheeks, and my voice was high and perfect as a grass whistle. My father kept me near to him, for Satyrs are not known for their restraint in the presence of a sweet-faced girl. But that day of all days, I slipped his sight while he prayed over the cut wood for the evening’s fire and cu
rled up against the dark, knotted wood of Grandfather Yew.
Good rainfall last winter, he hummed. Too many squirrels, but what can you do?
I chased a few of the chittering fellows away with flung cones.
Sunshine this spring was of the highest quality, he harrumphed. Savory as biscuits.
I scratched affectionately at the bark behind a sappy burl.
“Would you like to buy a skin?” the voice came from behind the Yew, and for a moment I had the two confused in my ear, wound together like a weed and a rose. But then they separated, and the strangest creature emerged from behind my grandfather.
He had a lion-skin pulled up over his head—a frayed, ratty old thing with mats in its fur and a mane that hung down into his eyes like unkempt hair. The skinny paws hung limply over his shoulders and the sorry tail hung down around his ankles—which were scaly and black, and tipped in claws like a buzzard’s, and beneath the lion pelt I saw the tips of wings. In his hands was a fat leather satchel, bulging like a wine-skin.
“How about it, pretty goat-girl?” He smiled, a broad young face with a pointed chin and hairy eyebrows.
“A skin, sir?” I said, curious as all young things are.
“Oh, yes, my dear. I am Ghassan, the Skin-Peddler. All sorts of skins! Skins for a penny, skins for a meal, skins in trade and skins in debt, skins for all occasions. Besides the noble lion you see displayed on my own humble shoulders, I have on my person many fine articles: Strix-skins and Manticore-skins and Mermaid tails, cloaks of Harpy feathers and capes of Catoblepas, a number of lovely red Leucrotta-skins, very fashionable, shining salamander coats and even a rare ghost-skin, human-skins and Yale-skins and any skin you can think of.”
“What in the world would I do with a skin? I’ve already got a very nice one.” But my hand was already reaching for the satchel.
“Why, you wear them, girl! Make a fine dress for those fetching hips or drape it over your comely shoulders when the winter’s nip comes a-happening by—skins have a thousand and one uses. Some are magic, some are plain, some will change you, some will change in your hands. A skin is a door—step through it, and see what’s on the other side. Me? I like the girl-skins—now don’t look shocked. I peddle; I don’t procure. It’s none of my nevermind how they became detached from their owners.”
“How odd, to prefer another person’s skin.”
“No more odd than court ladies who prefer to wear blue sashes or shoes of jade and glass. Why, I’m wearing six or seven skins at this very moment—it always pays to display the merchandise to effect.”
I peered at his legs, his wings, his long, silvery hair, but could spy no seam. “Then… what are you beneath your skins?”
He leaned into me, confidant-close. “I’ll never tell,” said Ghassan. “But enough about me! Wouldn’t you like to try one for your own? Better than any blue sash, I assure you.”
I blushed, deep as damask. “I haven’t any money, sir. My father thinks young folk ought to keep to acorns and leaves until they’ve a good pair of horns on their head.”
“A shame, a shame. But a man must eat, no matter what skin he’s in.”
The Skin-Peddler turned to leave, to go on to his next customer, who would surely have piles of opals and emeralds in his fireplace grate and buy up the whole lot, while I had to suffer skinless with no coin at all of my own. I was paralyzed with anguish, and I must have let out a little cry, a half-bleat, because he turned halfway back to me.
“I suppose I could let you have this one for very little,” he mused, and pulled from his satchel a very strange skin, folded over many times. It was rubbery and gray, dull and mottled, and did not look like it would make a very fine sash at all.
I did not care—I wanted it like a squirrel wants the highest nut in the walnut tree. “What would I have to do for it?” I asked, shuffling my hooves a little.
“Well, I don’t suppose you’d trade your own skin—and I’ve no need of Satyr in my inventory at the moment anyhow. But I would take a strip or two of bark from this lovely tree of yours. Quite a rarity, the grandparent-trees.”
I think not, groused the Yew. Of course Ghassan heard nothing—blood speaks to blood, sap to sap, and to the rest the forest is silent.
“Oh, Grandfather, you’ll never miss it,” I assured him, “and it won’t hurt a bit, I promise. And I shall keep the squirrels off you all winter this year.” Hurriedly, before he could protest further, I stripped off two long pieces of black bark and handed them over.