“What’s the matter?”
Mitt rushed up to Maewen and towered over her still pulling at his finger. “I got you the ring. The flaming thing’s stuck on my finger! I think I’m in for life!”
Maewen seized the hand he flapped in her face. She could feel the ring, a tiny metal waist in a finger that seemed as large and hot as a fresh-cooked sausage. “Oh my lord!” She tugged. Mitt yelped. It was most well and truly stuck. “Don’t you know any better than to put on a ring that’s too small for you?”
“How should I know? I never wore a ring in my life!”
“Well, you should have thought! People were smart in the old days!” But this is the old days. He’s not smart. Never mind.
They bent over Mitt’s hand, both of them in the same panic. “I’m stuck in this thing forever!” Mitt squalled.
“Lick it. See what lots of spit does,” said Maewen. “Or soap.” There had been no soap in her baggage roll. But surely soap was invented by this time? No one struck her as that dirty. “Or—water—water might cool your finger down.”
“I’ve got some soap,” Moril said from beside them. “Shall I fetch it?”
“Yes, and a light, too,” said Maewen.
Moril dashed away. Mitt put his hand to his mouth and slobbered on it mightily. Maewen helped him spread the spit up and down the swollen finger. Then she pulled. Mitt pulled. Neither of them had budged the ring one fraction by the time Moril dashed up again with a piece of soap and a lighted lantern from the cart. By the light Moril looked both awed and scornful.
“That’s the Adon’s ring?” he said.
“Yup,” said Mitt, soaping for his life.
“It only fits people with royal blood,” Moril pointed out.
“I know that!” Mitt snarled. “I only wore it not to lose it, you stupid little—”
“Cool it, cool it,” Navis said, arriving with a slopping leather bucket.
“Oh no!” said Mitt. “Keep him away from me! He’ll try to boil it off or something!”
“It’s only cold water,” Navis said. “Put your hand in it.”
“Yes, that should take the swelling down.” Wend agreed, coming, yawning, up beside Navis.
Mitt plunged his hand in the bucket. Took it out, soaped it, hauled on the ring, sighed, and put his hand in the water again. He did this four more times. “I’ll bring this water to the boil, at this rate,” he grumbled. As he plunged his hand in for the sixth time, Hestefan arrived, yawning, rubbing his beard and wanting to know what the fuss was about. By this time it was plain to Maewen that she could not have kept the theft of the ring secret, as she had meant to, any more than if she had shouted it from the top of the nearest mountain.
As Mitt took his hand out of the bucket for the seventh time, Wend said wearily, “Here. Let me.” He seized Mitt’s bony wrist in one hand and the ring with the other. And dragged.
“Yow!” said Mitt. “Leave me my hand!”
But the ring was off. Everyone was silent while Wend held it under the lantern light, where they could all see the red stone flash, and then passed it to Maewen.
She felt sweat popping out among her freckles. “This is the Adon’s ring,” she said, making a clean breast of it, “that Mitt very kindly—er—obtained for me. I intend to collect all the Adon’s gifts. Tomorrow we’re going to Gardale.”
“How convenient,” Navis murmured to Mitt. But Mitt was watching Maewen across the finger he was sucking. They were all watching.
Maewen realized there was no way she could distract them. She was going to have to put this ring on, now under the light, and it was not going to fit. It was huge. Mitt’s fingers might look long and bony, but each of them would have made two of hers. If Dad was right, she told herself, Mum does go back to Amil the Great somewhere. But she was afraid that drop of royal blood had got very watered down by the time it came to her. She took a deep breath—and an even deeper risk—and slipped the w
ide gold band round her right thumb, this being the only place it had even a chance of fitting. And it fitted. Everyone sighed.
“I’ll see to your loathsome horse,” Navis said to Mitt. “You get some sleep.”
10
It took some days to get to Gardale, even straight through the heart of the mountains. Long before they got there, everyone except Mitt was heartily sick of pickled cherries. Mitt was simply sick with himself. The Countess-horse was tired and subdued, and he rode slackly at the rear, watching clouds come down and stream like gray scarves below spiky black mountain peaks, and then seeing those mountains wheel aside to show more and yet more ranged behind, and clouds stream against those mountains, too. It seemed as if the green road was gradually rising to take them through the central heights of the North.
Mitt supposed it was all very beautiful and grand, though it was not what he was used to. It was harsher than the sea and even more obviously cruel. And empty. One of the times they stopped, Navis remarked that they had not met another soul on the way. “Everyone is at home celebrating Midsummer, I imagine,” he said. “It makes this the best time to travel and not be found.”