Chapter Fifteen
Alys awoke with a start, her breath huffing in white rushes from her mouth.
In an instant, the nightmare that had roused her was gone, like the clouds of her own steamy breath.
She blew out a relieved sigh and leaned back fully onto the sagging rope cot that was her bed.
It felt like the most luxurious ticking, even after a long night of hard sleeping.
She looked down to check on Layla, but the monkey was not there.
Alys bolted upright in the bed, her hands reaching out to grasp the rope sides and steady the swinging her motion had set off.
She’d had quite her fill of swinging from a rope the previous evening.
Ella’s family’s hut circled a large tree, its platform perhaps eight feet wide, trunk to outer edge.
She could hear the sounds of the forest beyond the skins that covered the sidewalls like a tent, and the interior was largely dark thanks to the skins and the pine boughs laid over a crisscrossing frame of skinny limbs which formed the roof.
Alys guessed that the hut was used mostly as sleeping quarters, as the interior contained little else save several more of the swinging cots and clothing hanging from pegs hammered into the tree trunk.
“Layla?” Alys called softly, not wishing to call attention to any of the villagers yet—she needed time to collect her thoughts and work up a plan of action for approaching Ira.
But she was concerned that the monkey was gone from her side.
Although Ella’s hospitality was a kindness Alys had not expected, she was still unsure about the nature of these people who chose to eke out such a rugged existence as outlaws that they had been relegated to legend.
Alys herself could still scarcely believe any of it was real.
“Layla?” she whispered a bit more insistently.
“Not to worry, Lady Alys—I’ve your lovely pet right here.”
Alys looked over her left shoulder and saw the murky outline of a person—a girl from the sound of the voice, or perhaps a very young boy. Whoever it was clearly had Layla on their lap, and was feeding her something from a bowl.
“Oh. Hello,” Alys said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was unused to having a stranger present when she awoke. “Who are you?”
“I’m Tiny,” the shadow replied. “I—and most everyone else—was asleep when you arrived last night. Good morn to you. I fancy your monkey, milady. Reminds me of me baby brother.”
Alys huffed a laugh. “Thank you. She is very pretty, but also very troublesome at times.” Alys didn’t want to seem stingy, but she was uncomfortable with the entire situation. She patted her thigh. “Come here, Layla, and bid me good morn.”
Layla’s shadow seemed to turn toward her as if debating, and then Tiny spoke up again in a giggling voice.
“I don’t think she wishes to leave her breakfast just yet, milady.” The shadow held forth a bowl. “Fresh turnip? I sliced it meself.”
“Perhaps in a bit,” Alys hedged. “Tiny, are you one of Ella’s”—daughters? Sons?—“children?”
“Aye, milady. Her oldest girl, am I. Nearly thirteen,” Tiny said proudly. “‘Tis why Mam allowed me to sit with you.”
“Oh.” Alys was deciding on the best method for disembarking from her cot.
She shifted one leg as if to throw it over the side, but the whole thing swayed wildly, prompting Alys to bring her legs together quickly and grip the side ropes.
Her experience with Ira’s snare was still too fresh in her mind.
“It’s best to just roll out at once and catch your feet under you,” Tiny advised sagely.
“Else you’ll come upon your nose.” She set the bowl on the hut floor and then stood, and Alys saw Layla hop onto the girl’s shoulder easily.
Tiny took a step toward the bed and held out her palm.
“Take my hand, milady—I’ll steady you for your first time. ”
“Thank you,” Alys mumbled and was surprised at the delicate feel of Tiny’s small hand—the child had been named suitably. Holding her breath, Alys rolled, and was grateful when she was able to catch her feet under herself with a huff of breath. She stood fully upright. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Well done, Lady Alys,” Tiny praised in her little girl voice.
Standing next to the child, Alys was shocked to see that she—no giant herself—was likely a full foot taller than Tiny.
Layla looked like a mighty griffin perched on the girl’s slender shoulder.
“We can go to ground now, if you wish—I’m certain Mam’s put back some porridge for you if you’d prefer it to turnips. ”
“Yes, thank you.” Alys began following Tiny around the perimeter of the platform, to the other side of the tree.
“I hope you don’t mind using the lift,” the girl called back over her shoulder.
“I’m disallowed from using the ladders ‘cause of me being spindly—Papa fears I’ll slip and break me very back.
He’s likely right. The lads, they simply swing down from ropes more oft than the ladders, but not me and Mam.
” She paused. “But I reckon you could go on down the ladder yourself.” The girl seemed reluctant to offer this courtesy.
“I must confess that I was not fond of the ladder last night.” In fact, Alys had been scared for her life, feeling that the rope conveyance would buck out from beneath her feet at any moment and spill her to the ground. Spindly or not, it would not have been a comfortable landing.
“You’ll fancy the lift then,” Tiny said. “And since we’re together, we can lower ourselves and not have to wait for one of the lads.”
Alys frowned to herself as Tiny and Layla ducked through a fold in the skin-wall. Then a triangle of forest appeared as Tiny pulled the covering aside. It looked as though Alys was about to step into the thin, cold air between the gray branches.
“Don’t fear, milady,” Tiny encouraged. “We carry Mam and all the littlest ones up it in a go—it will for certain hold three wee girls such as us.”
Alys stepped onto a square wooden platform butted up to the hut floor, and her breath caught in her throat at the view around her.
They were truly in the trees, the ground at least twenty feet below.
The breeze stirred her hair, scented with wood smoke and winter and the perfume of the trees themselves.
Under their feet, villagers crossed to and fro attending to their chores, several carried bundles of long branches strapped to their backs, two men suspended a large buck on a spit, a woman herded bright red chickens with a switch.
Children ran among the busied in play, fires crackled under tripod and bubbling cauldron.
All around them in the surrounding trees, other huts had their skin walls pulled aside, and long ropes strung from branch to branch supported laundry and several woven rugs.
Alys’s attention was torn from the fantastical view by Tiny’s polite instructions.
“Just undo that rope there on your side, milady—take it from the peg, that’s it—but hold on tightly lest we spill sideways!
” The girl seemed to find the idea of this amusing—Alys did not.
And so she gripped the rough rope in her palms until her fingertips tingled.
“Now just let us down easy. One hand, then the other. Hold tight to me, little Layla!” Tiny began to release the rope into the carved pulley over her head, and Alys did the same, her eyes flicking to the girl periodically and also over her own shoulder at the ground that was inching up to meet them.
The ride was smooth and slow, and by the time the platform came to rest on the forest floor, Alys had decided she much preferred the lift to the twisting rope ladder.
She watched as Tiny tied off first her own rope and then Alys’s—presumably to keep the machine out of use to younger hands—and then followed the miniature girl off the conveyance and toward the nearest fire.
Ella was nowhere to be seen, and Tiny went without hesitation to a small black iron pot set near the side of the fire.
She lifted off the lid with a hooked instrument and peered inside.
In those brief seconds, Alys took the opportunity to study the girl in full daylight.
Her hair was straw colored, much like Alys’s own, and she immediately recalled the village woman in Pilings’s mention of Ella and her daughter.
The Pilings woman had alluded to the fact that there was something wrong with Ella’s girl, but all that Alys could tell was that she was of unusually small size for her age—more along the lines of an eight-year-old.
Tiny turned her face toward Alys with a smile, and Alys was fascinated by the girl’s impossibly light colored, gray-green eyes. In the forest light, with Layla on her shoulder, she indeed looked to be a figure from folklore, a fairy, an elf. She was enchanting.
“I was right—here’s some porridge if you’d be wantin’ it, milady.”
“I would love some,” Alys said.
Tiny went to the base of the tree, where one of the small, rounded huts crouched and walked straight in, whereas any other person her age would have needed to duck.
She emerged a moment later with a wooden bowl and a spoon, as well as a clay jug.
The earthen vessel seemed a burden, and so Alys approached her with her hands out.
“Let me help you—”
“Not at all, milady,” Tiny said cheerfully and swerved around her toward the fire.
“‘Tis unwieldy more than heavy. And I don’t need as much help as you would reckon.” She set the jug by the fire and Layla hopped to the ground, at last coming to greet Alys.
Tiny removed the lid of the pot once more and began scooping its contents into the bowl.
Not knowing what else to do, Alys sat on the ground. Obviously it was the right choice, for Tiny brought the bowl and jug to her, without directing her to any proper seating. Alys took the offered meal with a smile of thanks.