Foundling (25 page)

 

 

 

F
OURACRES whistled a cheery tune as they strolled past the high hedge-walls of the gentry. He walked with an easy stride and smiled at anyone who passed. Rossamünd trotted happily beside him along the weedy strip that ran between the lanes, right down the middle of the road.

“So, Mister Rossamünd,” the postman finally said, “how is it that yer could be at the Dig with a fancy carriage but no driver?”

Rossamünd thought for a moment. “There was a driver, sir, but he was killed by the grinnlings.”

Fouracres looked at him. “Grinnlings?”

“Aye, sir. Those nasty little baskets that attacked us—the ones with sharp teeth and the clothes and the great big ears . . .” Rossamünd stopped short and, looking quickly at the postman’s own organs of hearing, hoped he had not offended him.

Fouracres seemed not to have noticed any insult. “Aaah, them! Nasty little baskets indeed! Hereabouts they call them nimbleschrewds. They’ve been a’murdering wayfarers here and there in the Brindleshaws for the last three months or so. I’m sorry ter hear they got yer driver too.”

“He fought hard, Mister Fouracres, killed many, but they got him in the end. I watched it happen—they just smothered him.”

The postman nodded approvingly. “Well, there yer have it! To kill one or two is a doughty thing, but ter go slaying more, my word, that’s a mighty feat indeed! But tell me: what was it that coaxed yer and yer driver to linger in that part of the woods—it being common knowledge they be haunted?”

The foundling did not know how to answer. He screwed up his face, scratched his head, puffed and sighed. In the end he just told the truth. Starting with Madam Opera’s, he told the entirety of his little adventure to the postman, who listened without interrupting once.

“So the ettin’s dead, then?” was all he said when Rossamünd had finished.

“Aye, it was killed, sir, or as near enough to it, from what I saw,” Rossamünd replied glumly. “I was there to watch, but I had nothing to do with it, really. It was a cruel thing, and I didn’t know what to do . . .”

Fouracres seemed sad to hear this himself. He sighed a heavy sigh. “Ahh, poor, foolish ettin,” the postman said, distractedly—almost to himself. “He did not want to listen to me . . . I warned him this would happen . . . There yer have it, lad: cruel things like this are done all the year long.”

“Did you speak to the schrewd, Mister Fouracres?” Rossamünd was stunned.

“Hey? Oh, that I did, and often,” the postman answered, after a pause. “He is—was—on my round, yer see, between Herrod’s Hollow and the Eustusis’ manor house. I told him no good would come of his enterprise, but he was powerfully put upon by those nasty little nickers ter keep it up. Who did the dastardly deed?”

“It was, um, Miss Europe, sir, and her factotum Licurius—but he died at the task, sir. He was the driver.”

“Aah, the Branden Rose . . . I had heard she might have been hired for the job, with that wicked leer as driver, you say . . . a fitting end for him, perhaps?” The postman gave Rossamünd a keen look. “I’ve not had anything ter do with either, but I know the lahzar by her work and the leer by his blackened reputation. Is the Branden Rose as pretty as they say?”

Rossamünd shrugged but offered no more. “What were the grinnlings doing to the schrewd?” he persisted.

“Huh?” The postman looked momentarily distracted. “Oh. Well . . . if yer go by what the big schrewd said, it was the nimbleschrewds’—grinnlings, you called them?—idea to haunt the Brindlestow and stand-and-deliver travelers. I think they thought his great size would scare people more. It was inevitable really: such a scheme could never last so deep within our domain.” Fouracres sucked in a breath. “I’ve seen the Misbegotten Schrewd about long before now. He ought’er have known better, but those grinnlings—I like that name, very fitting—those grinnlings must have come in from the Ichormeer or some other wildland up north. I say that ’cause, if it was their idea, then they can have only been ignorant of the ways of men or just plain stupid.”

Rossamünd listened with rapt fascination. Here was a man who had not only seen monsters, he had talked with them!
Why couldn’t they have made me a postman so I could wander around and talk to monsters too?
To Fouracres he said, “I can’t believe you actually spoke with the Misbegotten Schrewd!”

“Well I did, many times. Great talks they were, very illuminating.” Fouracres became sad again. “It’s a great shame he had ter go the way he did—that ettin was a nice enough fellow.”

Angry tears formed in Rossamünd’s eyes. He kicked at a stone and sent it cracking into the trees. “I knew it! I knew it! But
she
just went and killed him anyway!”

“Now there, Rossamünd, master yerself,” the postman soothed, bemused. “It’s a bitter truth of our world that monsters and the vast majority of folks can’t live together—certainly not happily. In everyman lands, monsters give way; in monster lands, everymen give way. It’s a law o’ nature.”

“But you lived happily with them!”

“Some I did, that is sure, but certainly not all I met were worth stopping ter chat with. Besides which”—Fouracres leaned closer—“I ain’t the vast majority of folks.”

Rossamünd wiped his nose. He was angry still. Things would never be as simple as they were at the foundlingery. “I would have liked to have been his friend too!” he growled.

The postman leaned forward and replied quietly, almost secretively, “A noble feeling, Rossamünd. It does credit t’yer soul, and I heartily believe yer would have made an excellent chum: but I have ter warn yer not ter say as much ter many others. Such talk can get you a whole life o’ trouble. Keep these things ter yerself.” Fouracres thought for a moment. “I’ll not trouble yer, though, nor say anything of what yer’ve just told me. ’Tween us alone, this . . .” But suddenly he stopped—stopped talking, stopped walking and stared rigidly at nothing.

Rossamünd had walked some way ahead before he realized. Alarmed, he turned back to the postman. “Mister Fo . . . ”

“Uh!” was all Fouracres said, his hand whipping up to signal silence. After only a moment more he stepped forward and whispered to the startled foundling. “We have something wicked on our path. Follow and step very lightly—yer life depends on’t . . .” With that the postman crept into the trees on their left.

Looking over either shoulder in awe, Rossamünd followed as quietly as he could into the wood, every snap and click underfoot a cause for chagrined wincing. He could not see anything on the road. How was it possible for this fellow to do so?

The ground all about was very flat and the trees broadly spaced. Some way in Fouracres found a modest pile of stone all about a small boulder and indicated that this was to be their hiding place.

His gizzards buzzing with fear, Rossamünd gratefully hid behind these rocks and found a gap between them through which he stared back at the road.

Fouracres put down the large bag he carried and held up a finger, whispering seriously. “No noise, no movement—ye’re the very soul of stillness. Aye? The soul of stillness.”

“Aye,” Rossamünd replied in a nervous wheeze.

“I
will
be back.”

The postman returned to the road, rapidly yet with little sound. Watching through the gap in the stones, Rossamünd saw him pick up a long stick as he went, then take out something from the satchel he carried and unwrap it. The strangely pleasant odor of john-tallow came back to him in the light early afternoon breeze. Quickly, Fouracres skewered the john-tallow on the end of the stick and began to rub it on the ground, on trunks, on leaves, creeping off the road and into the trees on the opposite side.

He’s making a false trail!
Rossamünd realized.

With fluid, careful speed, the postman worked deeper into the woods. Rossamünd lost sight of him and began to feel all-too-familiar panic.

I am the very soul of stillness! I am the very soul of stillness . . .
he chanted to himself.

There was a
click
close by.

With that one sound he became the very soul of dread!

There, just showing above one of the larger rocks, appeared the glaring head of a monster. Not more than five or six paces away, its long face was covered in mangy gray fur, with a pointed nose and equally pointed teeth, the top ones protruding over the bottom lip. A matted beard grew in limp strands from its chin. It had great, rabbitlike ears tipped with black fur that drooped out from behind its eyes. Large yellow eyes rolled about between slitted lids. This creature snuffled at the air as its ears twitched and swiveled.

Rossamünd had never imagined such a thing—how very happy he would have been to have Europe with him now! He clenched every muscle he knew he had, holding his wind for fear that even breathing would make him move too much.
I’m not here, don’t see me . . . I’m not here, don’t see me . . .

However, the creature’s attention was clearly absorbed by the perfume of the john-tallow. It stalked away without noticing the foundling cowering in his temporary rock shelter. Remaining frozen, Rossamünd was nevertheless able to watch it through the gap as it stepped onto the road. Hunched and gaunt and taller than a man, the nicker bent down to smell the spot where Fouracres and the boy had only just been standing. Its long, furry arms ended in long, furry hands from which grew long, curved claws that clicked and clacked together with every move of its fingers. Its legs bent backward like the hind legs of a dog, and it used them to walk in an awkward, jerking way. The creature looked up the road, it looked down the road, sniffed at the ground again. Finally it started into the opposite trees.

But where was Fouracres? Daring to move a little, Rossamünd peered through his small gap in the rocks, looking for the postman out there somewhere in the trees.

Nothing.

Wanting to flee, wailing, into the woods, Rossamünd determined instead to be patient. He had survived the grinnlings—the nimbleschrewds; he could survive this.

With a soft snort, the creature pranced farther into the shadows on the other side of the road. It lingered there in the twilight under the eaves. While Rossamünd watched it, he began to get this strange niggling sensation to look to his left. He was reluctant to take his eyes from the creature, but in the end he did and looked over his shoulder. There was Fouracres sneaking back to him one slow cautious step at a time, his eyes never leaving the shadows of the opposite wood.

Relief! Sweet relief. Rossamünd could not recall ever feeling so glad, so lightened within, to see someone as he did just then. Encouraged, he returned to his vigil, in time to see the creature thread its jaunting way through the trunks and eventually disappear from sight.

Turning back to watch the postman, he found Fouracres, his eyes still fixed on the farther trees, almost up to the rocks. He no longer had the john-tallow: that would be stuck somewhere cunning as far from them as possible on the opposite side. Rossamünd went to move, but the postman cautioned him to remain as still as he had been.

“We’re not free of it yet,” he hissed almost inaudibly as he crouched down beside the foundling.

Taking the postman’s lead, Rossamünd stayed still and kept his watch through the gap. Muscles began to ache and an annoying hum started in his ears as he strained to hear any clue of the creature’s return. This waiting was getting very hard.

Seconds slowed to minutes, minutes slowed to hours.

Rossamünd gave Fouracres a pleading look.

“Keep waiting,” Fouracres insisted once more, and Rossamünd sat till he thought he could not take the buzzing of his joints or the ringing in his ears anymore. He had no idea for how long they waited, just that it was so very long.

Even when a carriage went by, they waited still. But when another clattered by only a few minutes later, the postman seemed satisfied, and at last released them, saying, “It’s safe enough. Let’s get away from here.”

Leading Rossamünd through the trees, still in silence, Fouracres allowed them to travel on the open road again only after they had put an hour’s distance between themselves and their temporary refuge. Once clear of the trees, they hurried the rest of the way and arrived at the Harefoot Dig, safe at last.

It was late afternoon.

Exhausted, but promising to meet the postman in the common room, Rossamünd went to tell Europe the good news.