The Sweetest Spell, Page 4

  I made a quick decision. “Please take my donkey,” I said. “If you take him to safety, you can keep him. He’s a good donkey.”

  The milkman jumped out of the cart. He grabbed a rope then waited as I bribed my donkey with the last carrot. As Milkman Boar tied the donkey to the cart, I gave the creature a reassuring scratch. Maude said nothing to me. She pulled the blanket over her face and huddled against her mother. Even if the Boars had offered to take me to safety, I wouldn’t have gone. Not without Snow.

  As the milkman’s cart headed down the road toward Furrow, I waded up the road. My feet grew numb in the cold water, as did my calves. Rain pelted my aching face. The rough fabric of my farm dress clung to my skin. I clenched my jaw, forcing my legs to run. Pain shot up my right leg. I stumbled, falling twice before reaching the milkman’s farm.

  The pasture had been swallowed. Water flowed through the barn. Chickens perched in the barn’s rafters, clucking unhappily. Snow was not inside. If I could find her, I could lead her into the hills to wait out the rain. She’d follow me anywhere. But where was she? “Snow!” I called. “Snow!”

  A soft moo sounded. I pushed through the water, around to the back of the milkman’s cottage. My heart nearly stopped. Snow lay on the ground, water running over her back. She kicked her front legs, struggling to keep her head above water. “SNOW!”

  I tried, summoning strength from the deepest places in my body, but I couldn’t get her onto her hooves. “Get up,” I pleaded. “Please get up.” She groaned. Her body felt as cold as the river itself. I pushed and pushed. “Snow,” I whispered. Shivering, I wrapped my arms around her neck and held her head as the water flowed past. “Please don’t die, Snow. Please don’t die.”

  There was no feeling left in my arms or hands. My body, like Snow’s, had become river. The only part of me not numb was my heart, which ached as if being squeezed. I moved my hands to either side of Snow’s face. A tiny bit of life remained in those warm brown eyes—the first eyes to have looked directly at me. “You saved my life,” I said, tears mixing with rain. “Why can’t I save yours? Please, please get up. Please don’t leave me. I have no one.” I kissed her muzzle, then pressed my forehead against her white forehead. “Please stay.”

  Snow released a long last breath, and as she did, her final surge of life blew over me. I stopped shivering as warmth filled my entire body. The warmth spread down my spine, out to my fingertips, into my boots, wrapping around my curled foot. There, soaked to the bone, I was suddenly as warm as a griddle cake. As we locked gazes, I knew that Snow would be with me forever.

  I held her head for as long as I could after she died, even as the water rose up to my waist. The current took on a merciless speed, carrying furniture and trees, collecting everything in its path.

  As I was swept away, Snow disappeared beneath the churning water.

  PART TWO

  Dairyman’s Son

  Chapter Seven

  I was born a dairyman’s son.

  It’s not too bad. Lots of work, but that’s life, right? My father says that if you work hard, treat others with respect, and give your heart to a good woman, then life will reward you. He’s always telling me things like that. But it’s not entirely true. Life doesn’t always reward those who follow the rules. Sometimes you have to make your own rules.

  Which is why I got home late last night. I’m not supposed to compete in the barefist fights, but I did. I couldn’t resist. The challenger was a one-eyed oaf twice my size, bragging about how he’d been a champion back in his village. I watched him for a while. He wasn’t drunk, but he lumbered like a bear, tripping over his feet as if he’d forgotten they were attached to his legs. His reaction time was slow too. When I called out “Hey, Oaf!” he circled around twice before he saw me. Smaller, faster, I knew I could beat him. Besides, the prize was a snakeskin belt all the way from Londwin City.

  I won. In the last fight of the night. Now it was morning, and I stood in my bedroom cinching my britches with the new belt. Maybe snakeskin was too fancy for a dairyman’s son, but I was going to wear it anyway. If Mother asked where I got it, I’d tell her I bought it from Peddler. She’d lose sleep if she knew I was fighting again.

  Dawn felt extra early that morning. I wished I could have slept a bit longer, floating lazily between dreams—girls with long hair, a plump fish pulled from the river, another victory won with my fists. But Father had stuck his head into my room. “One of the cows is missing.”

  We owned one hundred and twenty-two milk cows and two bulls. The Oak Dairy Farm, my father’s dairy, was the largest in the Wanderlands. It was rare for a cow to go missing. Coyotes were no concern because they kept themselves fat on a plentiful supply of rabbits and mice. Thieves were no concern either. Wander was a prosperous town of merchants, the kind of people who could afford to buy the best cheese and butter. No one had ever stolen a cow. Most likely the cow had gone missing due to its own stupidity. They’re not the smartest creatures.

  I slipped my arms through my vest and started down the hall toward the kitchen. Six generations of Oak men had walked that very hallway. I learned to shovel manure at age four, the sharp fumes stinging my eyes. At age six I learned to clean the milk buckets and the water troughs. At age eight I learned the art of churning butter, and at age ten I learned to milk. I remember how strange it felt to pull the teats. How difficult it was to aim the milk stream into the bucket. Milking’s the hardest job on the farm. Sitting on that stool all morning makes your back ache something fierce. But I liked the company, surrounded by the milkmaids who tousled my hair and kissed my cheeks, their breasts spilling over the tops of their aprons. But on the eve of my fifteenth birthday, when Mother caught me and one of the milkmaids half-naked, she decided it was time for me to leave the milking barn and join her in the shop. Now my main duty was to load our wagon with milk, cheese, and butter, drive into town, open the shop, then sell our wares to the people of Wander.

  The snakeskin belt in place, I tiptoed past Mother’s room. She was always the last to rise. Our shop didn’t open until noon, after the morning milking, so Mother liked to get a few hours of extra sleep. But Nan, our cook, who constantly complained about lack of sleep, was already working up a sweat in the kitchen. “Morning,” she grumbled as she set a bowl of hard-boiled brown eggs onto the table.

  “Morning,” I replied, grabbing one of the eggs. I cracked it on the table’s edge, then slid the shell away with my thumbs. “Morning, Father.”

  “Morning, Owen.” Father sat at the head of the table, his hands wrapped around a large mug of hot broth. We shared the same brown curly hair, but Father wore his in a tail, tied at the back of his neck. I kept mine short. Long hair is too easy to grab during a bare-fist fight. “It’s one of the brown woollies,” Father told me. “She didn’t come back to the barn yesterday. By the time we did the counting, it was too dark to go looking.”

  “She probably got stuck in the mud,” I said, stuffing the entire egg into my mouth. I grabbed another egg and sat next to Father. “I’ll go find her. Just need something to eat first.”

  Father raised his eyebrows and gave me a knowing look. “You got home late last night.”

  My mouth full, I said nothing.

  “You sure you want to wear that belt? Your mother will notice.” I glanced sideways. No use lying to him. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?”

  “Stupid boy,” Nan hissed as she set a platter of sliced cheese on the table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with men, getting into fights on purpose.”

  “You won’t tell her, will you, Nan?” I smiled sweetly. She was a difficult one to charm.

  “I don’t want no part of this,” Nan said, cinching her apron tighter. “I don’t approve.”

  Father took a sip of broth, then nudged my arm. “Lay off the fighting for a while, just until spring has passed. You know how difficult spring is for your mother.”

  “I know,” I mumbled.

  I’d tried, many times, t
o explain to Nan and Mother why I liked the barefist fights. The thrill when everyone cheered. The rush just before the final blow when I knew I’d be victorious. The look of respect in my opponent’s eyes when I helped him to his feet. But Nan and Mother only considered the dangers of fighting, not the glories.

  A knock on the front door called Nan from the kitchen, but she soon returned with a familiar face. “Peddler,” Father greeted, motioning for the morning guest to join us at the table.

  “Morning, Mister Oak. Morning, young Mister Oak,” he said, lifting the hem of his coat as he settled in the chair across from me. His coat hung down to his knees and was covered in patches and pockets. As a little boy, I was fascinated by the treasures that emerged from those pockets—marbles made from polished stones, seashells from distant shores, a shiny green beetle.

  “Mornin’,” I said, cramming three slices of cheese into my mouth. I didn’t know Peddler’s age—just seemed as if he’d always been old with his crinkled skin and those deep grooves. But he moved nimbly and his eyes flashed as if a young man was trapped behind the old skin.

  Nan set a mug of broth in front of Peddler, a shy smile flashing across her wide face. “Thank you,” he said with a wink. “You have the prettiest cook in all of Wanderland, Mister Oak.”

  Nan snorted, then ripped a loaf of bread from my hand and offered it to Peddler. “Glad to see the rain’s stopped,” Peddler said, tearing off the end of the bread.

  “That it has. That it has,” Father said.

  “You’re lucky,” Peddler said. “You only got three days of rain. It’s been much worse upriver.”

  Father scratched his beard. “Is that so?”

  “Loganberry jam?” Nan asked, shoving a small jar in Peddler’s face.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, dipping a spoon into the jam, then spreading it on his bread. “Rain’s been real bad up north. Heard tell it rained for seven straight days and nights. Heard tell the Flatlands flooded.”

  “Flooded?” Father leaned on his elbows. “The river’s high, that’s for sure, but we haven’t had any flooding down here.”

  Peddler licked jam from his fingers. “The river’s lazy up that way. Meanders and turns like a snake. And the land is as flat as parchment. With that much rain, the water rose quick.”

  “Have you ever been to the Flatlands?” I asked my father.

  “Never,” he said.

  “No reason to go there,” Peddler said. “Dirt-scratchers don’t have the coin to buy nice butter and cheese like you folks make.”

  I knew about dirt-scratchers but had never met one. They had hair the color of fire. They were fierce and primitive and couldn’t be trusted. That’s what I’d heard.

  “Heard tell from another peddler that the road into the Flatlands has been washed away,” Peddler said. “A village is gone. I don’t do business with the dirt-scratchers so it’s no loss for me. There’s too many of them anyway. Stupid, filthy people, those dirt-scratchers.” He smiled with jam-covered teeth. “A few less won’t make much difference.”

  “Dirt-scratchers don’t bathe like the rest of us,” Nan said as she kneaded dough. “And they don’t send their children to school. They don’t love their children the way we do. They live like animals. They—”

  “Did you say an entire village is gone?” I interrupted.

  “Washed away. Buildings, livestock, people, all of it gone. Those dirt-scratchers never belonged in this kingdom,” Peddler said, picking up the broth bowl. “I say good riddance to all of them.”

  Father and I shared a long look. No one in our family would call Peddler a friend. He was a businessman who stopped by now and then, bringing news and trinkets. As a boy, I’d looked up to him as a magical sort of figure with his pockets of surprises, but at that moment I realized he was full of ugliness. “You think it’s good that an entire village has been destroyed?”

  Father set his hand on my arm. “You’d best go see to our missing cow. If she’s injured, we don’t want her to suffer.”

  “Right.” No use getting into an argument with Peddler. The river’s damage had been done. I grabbed another egg and started peeling it on the way out the door, leaving flecks of shell in my wake.

  “That’s a fine snakeskin belt,” Peddler called after me. “You interested in selling?”

  “Not a chance.”

  The clear morning sky promised a break in the rain. Peddler’s horse snorted as I walked past Peddler’s tented wagon. Blue flashed at the corner of my eye. The milkmaids in their blue dresses and white aprons were just arriving. Town dwellers, they walked to our dairy each morning, rain or shine. They smiled and waved at me.

  In order to be a milkmaid at the Oak Dairy, a girl had to be unmarried. That was my mother’s rule and the reason was simple. A milkmaid worked every single day because the cows needed to be milked every single day. A maid could make this commitment, but a married woman with children had too many distractions. So once a girl got married, she left the dairy. Mother hired all the maids. Ever since that day when she found me half-naked in the barn, she’d done her best to hire only ugly girls. This preference was well-known throughout the town of Wander, so the girls who wanted jobs would make themselves look ugly for the interview. One girl painted her teeth black. She was hired immediately. But as the months passed, the girls would slowly transform back into their true selves, and by that time they’d be expert milkers and Mother couldn’t bring herself to fire them just because they were pretty.

  “You stay away from those girls,” she always told me. “I don’t need them falling in love. They get no work done when they fall in love.”

  I wasn’t the least bit interested in falling in love. My friend, Barley, had already made that mistake. Barley had lost himself to love, like a wagon rolling downhill then crashing into a tree. With one babe just born and another on the way, Barley rarely had time to attend the barefist fights or go fishing. He complained about his wife’s expensive tastes and about her parents, who always needed money. Falling in love had ruined Barley.

  I waved at the milkmaids but didn’t stick around to talk. Hurrying into the stables, I threw a saddle over my horse. Then I hung two coils of rope from the saddle’s horn. If the missing cow had gotten stuck somewhere, fallen into a ditch or ravine, I’d have to pull her clear. But if she’d been injured and there was no saving her, I’d have to put her out of her misery, which is why I slid a knife under my snakeskin belt.

  No fences marked our farm. Grazing land was shared and plentiful in the Wanderlands. The cows grazed one field in the spring where the clover was tender, and another field in the heat of summer where the alfalfa was plentiful. But the missing cow was not in either field.

  Our cows liked to drink from a nearby stream. I rode up and down the stream, expecting to find that the creature had fallen in and broken a leg, but she wasn’t there. I let the horse graze as I tried to guess which direction she might have traveled. My gaze settled on the distant river.

  It was rare for one of our cows to amble all the way to River Time. When it had happened in the past, it had been a sick cow, confused by fever. Cows are particular about the terrain they cross, and river rocks are unsteady beneath their hooves. There was no reason for the cow to wander that far.

  I shaded my eyes. Though not much more than a speck, I could tell from the wingspan that a vulture circled on the horizon, just above the river. Another vulture approached from the north. If the cow had wandered all the way to the river and if the vultures were circling, then surely the cow had drowned. Or worse—the vultures were waiting for her to die. They’d go for the eyes first, then the belly. I shuddered. There was a place for vultures in the world, but the way they waited for death gave me the creeps.

  I kicked the horse and we galloped across the low, rolling hills. The horse seemed to sense my urgency for it kept a steady pace and did not slow until we reached the riverbank. Strange objects littered the bank—a wooden chair, a waterlogged basket, and a wooden bo
wl. They must be from the drowned village, I thought, remembering Peddler’s story. I turned the horse upriver toward the circling vultures, passing more bits and pieces of village life. Not long after, I sighed with relief at the sight of the brown cow.

  Brown woollies were unique to the Wanderlands. Their long, wavy hair kept them warm during winter. Their short stumpy horns, found on both the females and males, were prized for knife handles. If the cow had died, I would have carefully removed the horns to sell in town. But there she stood on the riverbank, her coat rippling in the breeze. She didn’t appear to be injured so why had the vultures gathered?

  Something was lying on the ground in front of the cow. More rubbish that had floated downriver, perhaps. I pulled on the reins, slowing the horse, then took a quick, sharp breath.

  The rubbish was a girl!

  Chapter Eight

  The girl lay on her back, her eyes closed, her face turned toward the sky. I slid off my horse and rushed to her side, wincing as my knees hit river rock.

  Her long red hair fanned across the rocks. Her drenched dress clung to her small frame, her hipbones protruding. The cow lowered its head and nuzzled the girl’s neck. She lay perfectly still, even as the cow licked her face. Was she dead? I pushed the cow away, then touched the girl’s cheek, which was as cold as the river itself. Then I held my hand over her mouth and nostrils. There it was, a slight tickle as she exhaled, barely felt but there. I pressed my ear to her chest. The cow snorted. “Quiet,” I told the cow, but I couldn’t tell the river to be quiet. Straining to hear, I pressed my ear closer and there it was—a faint thump thump.

  “She’s alive,” I announced. The cow flicked its tail. “She’s not dead,” I hollered at the three vultures who’d settled on a nearby boulder. They stared at me with their disgusting red eyes. “Get outta here. She’s not dead.” I rushed at them, waving my arms. They took off.