Elmwood
Lady Croft entered carrying a big bundle of something that did not resemble dinner.
“How are you feeling?” she asked without preamble, assessing him with a frankness that had no business making him hot and flustered but nevertheless did.
“Moderately improved physically, but still distinctly rumpled in spirit,” he replied honestly. He found he couldn’t think of anything but the truth when she was looking at him like that.
“I thought that might be the case, so I have a notion to cheer you up,” she said, dumping the bundle onto the table.
It seemed to consist of a puzzling mix of blankets, fur, evergreen branches, and horns.
Rollo hoisted himself up, one paw steadying the wobbly column of his body on the table leg, so that he could sniff suspiciously at it.
“Do you, now?” Elmwood said, and he tried not to let it sound flirtatious. He was genuinely curious! But her answering scowl told him he had failed.
“The village is celebrating Springtide tonight. There’s to be a bonfire, and birch cakes, and the Wylderuckus, of course.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Wylderuckus. I don’t think it’s unique to the Gaze, but I suppose I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of it. Perhaps no one ever thought to invite me; more’s the pity. I was always inclined to fancy any party purporting to be a ruckus. What does it entail?”
She began sorting through the odd assortment of things she’d piled on the table.
“The men dress up and go off into the woods, then come back with the cider they’ve been fermenting since autumn and parade it through the village.
There’s dancing and drinking and feasting around a bonfire until everyone gets soused and heads off to bed.
It’s all very ancient. I’ve no idea why we still do it, except that everyone seems to enjoy it. ”
“That seems like reason enough to me,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear it, because I’ve brought you a Ruckuscloak.” She grasped one of the larger pieces of mysterious whatnot and swept it up, letting it billow into a sort of hairy, pine-needly cape and offering it to him. “It’s my sister Han’s, but she’s away.”
“I thought you said the men dress up.”
She shrugged.
“No one cares who does what. In any case, I think folk will be tipsy enough to forget she’s away and assume you’re her, so you needn’t worry about being recognized. The headpiece will hide you nicely.”
“There’s a headpiece?” He rummaged through the pile. “Is it this bit with the horn?”
“No, um, that bit goes on the…well, on the front. It’s a sort of belt, you see. You can leave it off if you want…”
He found himself grinning at her.
“Oh, no, Lady Croft, I will wear the belt. I wouldn’t want to compromise the mystical integrity of the Wylderuckus, now, would I?”
“May we be preserved from that tragedy,” she said flatly, but he thought he detected an amused sparkle in her eye, and it tickled him so much that he immediately began trying to strap on the horny belt to see if he could kindle it further, but she informed him that he was doing it all wrong and then began layering him up with all manner of lumpy garments that smelled of sheep and forest.
She wrapped her arms about him at one point, trying to fasten some sort of ties, and he held his breath, desperately trying not to let on how much he was enjoying it.
She wasn’t interested in him in that way, and he was going to respect that, even if it killed him.
It very well might kill him, he reflected as she maneuvered around his horny belt to lean in and buckle him into another layer, and that would be just fine.
He could not think of a more pleasant way to go.
Then she presented him with the headpiece, and he realized that he would have no such luck, because it was now clear that he was going to die of asphyxiation inside a fluffy, branch-laden bucket.
“Perhaps I’ll leave it off for the walk to the village,” he said. “I’m wobbly enough as it is.”
“Oh, I brought the ox and wagon. I thought you’d better leave your walking stick here, if you’re supposed to be Han. You can focus on the drinking and eating rather than the dancing.”
He would have liked to dance with her, he thought. He used to be very good at it.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I used to be a keen dancer, is all. It hasn’t come up since…it hasn’t come up.”
“Hmm. Well, Han dances like she’s wearing iron boots, so you might get away with it. Now, put this on.”
He allowed her to lower the bucket over his head and was surprised to find that it was actually fairly comfortable. He couldn’t see much to either side, but the view right in front of him was perfectly clear, through a sort of oblong cutout that he realized was a gaping mouth.
The view was of Lady Croft. She had taken several steps back and was scrutinizing him.
Feeling he ought to rise to the occasion, he drew himself up and swayed chaotically to shake the fur that dangled off the edges of the Ruckuscloak and waggle his horn at her.
Rollo began barking at him and leaping about, and then Lady Croft giggled, and the sight of it all made Elmwood so unexpectedly happy that he almost lost his balance.
“I think you’ll do,” she said at last. “Just try not to be too congenial and captivating, or everyone will know for certain you’re not Han. In fact, you’d probably better just stay near me and keep quiet.”
“You think I’m congenial and captivating?” he said, before he could think better of it.
She raised one eyebrow at him but then said, “Well, I’m not dead, am I?”
It was a good thing she couldn’t see him blushing underneath the headpiece.
“I will be the most obedient Wylderuckus beast you’ve ever seen,” he promised.
Elmwood had no recollection of Croftholde’s village from his childhood visit to Merewyth, but he suspected that even if he could have conjured it up in his mind, his memories would have borne little resemblance to the enchanting sight that greeted them.
The village itself would have been unremarkable, just a collection of low buildings clustered about a green, but now, bedecked with pine bough–laden bowers and an irresponsibly large bonfire crackling merrily, not to mention a raggle-taggle assortment of musicians scraping away at some sort of reel, it became the very picture of a city dweller’s dream of life in a country hamlet.
It had been a short ride in the wagon, during which Hilde explained that they would be arriving after the procession of the cider so that Elmwood wouldn’t have to navigate that with his limited knowledge of the Wylderuckus.
Indeed, as they climbed down from the wagon—Lady Croft offered him a shoulder to lean on just as he realized he wasn’t certain how to manage it without his stick and weighed down as he was by the Ruckuscloak—he noted that several large barrels of cider, also decorated with branches, were set up on a table near the musicians.
People encased in costumes similar to his own but distinctly adorned whirled around the green with their dance partners, capering to the music.
It gave the impression of some sort of ancient nonsense out of a fireside tale.
Which, now that he thought about it, it was.
“Do you know the tale of ‘The Boy Who Sets Forth to Find Truth’?”
With his narrow view through the headpiece, he watched as Hilde crinkled her brow in the way he was realizing she always did when she tried to remember something.
“I think I’ve heard it told. Isn’t there something about a donkey?”
“Well, yes, it starts with the donkey, but then the boy sets out to find Truth, and one of the trials he faces is capture by a troupe of wild men he comes upon in the forest, and he has to pretend to get drunk with them and dance until eventually they all collapse and sleep and he’s able to slip away. ”
She nodded a little, brow still contemplative.
“Are you comparing that to the Wylderuckus?”
“Yes! I bet the one comes from the other…though I couldn’t say which was first. You know, all the old fireside stories go back to before the Myran occupation. They’re full of traces of the ancient gods and the ways that people worshipped them.”
He glanced at her again through the mouth hole of his headpiece.
Up here in the Gaze, it seemed unlikely that what schooling they got went as far back as the Myran Empire, which had run its course in Eldmere more than a millennium ago.
He had no wish to make her feel as though he were talking down to her, and he wondered if he ought not to have said anything.
But she surprised him.
“I suppose it makes sense. Do you know, I’ve often found that the magicians and witches in fireside tales sound an awful lot like people with Charms? Maybe the same could be said about the Myran saints and their miracles.”
A little swell of excitement had him leaning closer to her and speaking without thinking.
“I actually made a study of Myran saintsongs when I was at the university in Neck. I, too, suspected that they were describing the work of Charmers under a different guise.”
“I haven’t heard many saintsongs, aside from the few that people still sing at Wintertide, of course. Were you able to prove your theory?”
Her interest was practically intoxicating.
“I had put together a rather convincing outline, but alas, my advisor insisted that I change the course of my research once he got wind of it. It’s forbidden to study Charming at the university, you know.
One can get away with touching on it peripherally, as long as it’s in a historical context, but apparently my thesis was too risqué to support. ”
“What did you study instead?”
“I didn’t. I withdrew and joined up with the cavalry.”
“Oh,” she said. “But did you continue your research anyway? In the one saintsong I know the words of, ‘The Song of Saint Ignys,’ it takes three saints to create the Miracle of the Evergreen Garden. Do you think all of them were Charmers?”