He had asked Old Destry about dragons, and what they might do to a fellow. Did it hurt? Would there be . . . well . . . parts left? The farmer had seen Tim's distress and put a kindly arm around his shoulders. "Nar to both, son. Dragon's fire is the hottest fire there is--as hot as the liquid rock that sometimes drools from cracks in the earth far south of here. So all the stories say. A man caught in dragonblast is burned to finest ash in but a second--clothes, boots, buckle and all. So if you're asking did yer da' suffer, set yer mind at rest. 'Twas over for him in an instant."
Clothes, boots, buckle and all. But Da's lucky coin wasn't even smudged, and every link of the silver chain was intact. Yet he didn't take it off even to sleep. So what had happened to Big Jack Ross? And why was the coin in Kells's trunk? Tim had a terrible idea, and he thought he knew someone who could tell him if the terrible idea was right. If Tim were brave enough, that was.
Come at night, for this jilly's son likes to sleep in the day when he gets the chance.
It was night now, or almost.
His mother was still sleeping. By her hand Tim left his slate. On it he had written: I WILL BE BACK. DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME.
Of course, no boy who ever lived can comprehend how useless such a command must be when addressed to a mother.
Tim wanted nothing to do with either of Kells's mules, for they were ill-tempered. The two his father had raised from guffins were just the opposite. Misty and Bitsy were mollies, unsterilized females theoretically capable of bearing offspring, but Ross had kept them so for sweetness of temper rather than for breeding. "Perish the thought," he had told Tim when Tim was old enough to ask about such things. "Animals like Misty and Bitsy weren't meant to breed, and almost never give birth to true-threaded offspring when they do."
Tim chose Bitsy, who had ever been his favorite, leading her down the lane by her bridle and then mounting her bareback. His feet, which had ended halfway down the mule's sides when his da' had first lifted him onto her back, now came almost to the ground.
At first Bitsy plodded with her ears lopped dispiritedly down, but when the thunder faded and the rain slackened to a drizzle, she perked up. She wasn't used to being out at night, but she and Misty had been cooped up all too much since Big Ross had died, and she seemed eager enough to--
Maybe he's not dead.
This thought burst into Tim's mind like a skyrocket and for a moment dazzled him with hope. Maybe Big Ross was still alive and wandering somewhere in the Endless Forest--
Yar, and maybe the moon's made of green cheese, like Mama used to tell me when I was wee.
Dead. His heart knew it, just as he was sure his heart would have known if Big Ross were still alive. Mama's heart would have known, too. She would have known and never married that . . . that . . .
"That bastard."
Bitsy's ears pricked. They had passed the Widow Smack's house now, which was at the end of the high street, and the woodland scents were stronger: the light and spicy aroma of blossiewood and, overlaying that, the stronger, graver smell of ironwood. For a boy to go up the trail alone, with not so much as an ax to defend himself with, was madness. Tim knew it and went on just the same.
"That hitting bastard."
This time he spoke in a voice so low it was almost a growl.
Bitsy knew the way, and didn't hesitate when Tree Road narrowed at the edge of the blossies. Nor did she when it narrowed again at the edge of the ironwood. But when Tim understood he was truly in the Endless Forest, he halted her long enough to rummage in his pack and bring out a gaslight he'd filched from the barn. The little tin bulb at the base was heavy with fuel, and he thought it would give at least an hour's light. Two, if he used it sparingly.
He popped a sulphur match with a thumbnail (a trick his da' had taught him), turned the knob where the bulb met the gaslight's long, narrow neck, and stuck the match through the little slot known as the marygate. The lamp bloomed with a blue-white glow. Tim raised it and gasped.
He had been this far up the Ironwood several times with his father, but never at night, and what he saw was awesome enough to make him consider going back. This close to civilization the best irons had been cut to stumps, but the ones that remained towered high above the boy on his little mule. Tall and straight and as solemn as Manni elders at a funeral (Tim had seen a picture of this in one of the Widow's books), they rose far beyond the light thrown by his puny lamp. They were completely smooth for the first forty feet or so. Above that, the branches leaped skyward like upraised arms, tangling the narrow trail with a cobweb of shadows. Because they were little more than thick black stakes at ground level, it would be possible to walk among them. Of course it would also be possible to cut your throat with a sharp stone. Anyone foolish enough to wander off the Ironwood Trail--or go beyond it--would quickly be lost in a maze, where he might well starve. If he were not eaten first, that was. As if to underline this idea, somewhere in the darkness a creature that sounded big uttered a hoarse chuckling sound.
Tim asked himself what he was doing here when he had a warm bed with clean sheets in the cottage where he had grown up. Then he touched his father's lucky coin (now hanging around his own neck), and his resolve hardened. Bitsy was looking around as if to ask, Well? Which way? Forward or back? You're the boss, you know.
Tim wasn't sure he had the courage to extinguish the gaslight until it was done and he was in darkness again. Although he could no longer see the ironwoods, he could feel them crowding in.
Still: forward.
He squeezed Bitsy's flanks with his knees, clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and Bitsy got moving again. The smoothness of her gait told him she was keeping to the righthand wheelrut. The placidity of it told him she did not sense danger. At least not yet, and honestly, what did a mule know of danger? From that he was supposed to protect her. He was, after all, the boss.
Oh, Bitsy, he thought. If thee only knew.
How far had he come? How far did he still have to go? How far would he go before he gave this madness up? He was the only thing in the world his mother had left to love and depend on, so how far?
It felt like he'd ridden ten wheels or more since leaving the fragrant aroma of the blossies behind, but he knew better. As he knew that the rustling he heard was the Wide Earth wind in the high branches, and not some nameless beast padding along behind him with its jaws opening and closing in anticipation of a small evening snack. He knew this very well, so why did that wind sound so much like breathing?
I'll count to a hundred and then turn Bitsy around, he told himself, but when he reached a hundred and there was still nothing in the pitch black save for him and his brave little mollie-mule (plus whatever beast treads behind us, closer and closer, his traitorous mind insisted on adding), he decided he would go on to
two hundred. When he reached one hundred and eighty-seven, he heard a branch snap. He lit the gaslight and whirled around, holding it high. The grim shadows seemed first to rear up, then leap forward to clutch him. And did something retreat from the light? Did he see the glitter of a red eye?
Surely not, but--
Tim hissed air through his teeth, turned the knob to shut off the gas, and clucked his tongue. He had to do it twice. Bitsy, formerly placid, now seemed uneasy about going forward. But, good and obedient thing that she was, she gave in to his command and once more began walking. Tim resumed his count, and reaching two hundred didn't take long.
I'll count back down to ought, and if I see no sign of him, I really will go back.
He had reached nineteen in this reverse count when he saw an orange-red flicker ahead and to his left. It was a campfire, and Tim was in no doubt of who had built it.
The beast stalking me was never behind, he thought. It's ahead. Yon flicker may be a campfire, but it's also the eye I saw. The red eye. I should go back while there's still time.
Then he touched the lucky coin lying against his breast and pushed on.
He lit his lamp again and lifted it. There were many short side-trails, called stubs, shooting off from either side of the main way. Just ahead, nailed to a humble birch, was a wooden board marking one of these. Daubed on it in black paint was COSINGTON-MARCHLY. Tim knew these men. Peter Cosington (who had suffered his own ill luck that year) and Ernest Marchly were cutters who had come to supper at the Ross cottage on many occasions, and the Ross family had many times eaten at one or the other of theirs.
"Fine fellows, but they won't go deep," Big Ross told his son after one of these meals. "There's plenty of good ironwood left in close to the blossie, but the true treasure--the densest, purest wood--is in deep, close to where the trail ends at the edge of the Fagonard."
So perhaps I only did come a wheel or two, but the dark changes everything.
He turned Bitsy up the Cosington-Marchly stub, and less than a minute later entered a clearing where the Covenant Man sat on a log before a cheery campfire. "Why, here's young Tim," he said. "You've got balls, even if there won't be hair on em for another year or three. Come, sit, have some stew."