Her eyes noticed a flutter of a leaf on a bush, then the touch of a morning breeze on her cheek. It came from directly ahead. The movement of the leaf confirmed the breeze came from in front of her. But the pink dots oddly moved right to left, in the opposite direction.
“What are those?” she asked.
“What are you talking about.”
“I’m sorry. The pink things.”
He paused before answering, his eyes darting around. “Where?”
She pointed to another approaching from her right, right in front of her.
“Where? In the trees? Pink?”
Her finger followed the bouncing path of the tiny pink dot until it disappeared into the trees on her left. “That thing right there.”
“I’m afraid I can’t see what you’re pointing out. Let me know if you see another.”
Hannah clamped her jaw shut. There were now five of the things in plain sight. Sir James didn’t joke often. It was as if he couldn’t see them. The path came to a Y. She took the right branch, the direction where the pink dots seemed to emerge. She did it without asking him if he could see them, or if it was the right way to go.
The further down the path they went, the more of the pink dots floated past. One came so near that Hannah reached out with a forefinger and touched it. It exploded in a silent pink mist, and she laughed.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“I just popped one.”
“Hold up,” he pulled his horse alongside her. “What did you just pop?”
She waved her hand at the dozens of dots floating in the air in front of them. “Those pink dots.”
“Pink? Dots? I can’t see anything like that, Hannah. Tell me exactly what you’re looking at.”
Hannah described them as well as she could, popping two more in the process and giggling. She watched his eyes as she pointed to another dot, moving her finger closer and closer. “Right there. See it just beyond my finger? Watch when I touch it.”
It popped silently out of existence in a minute, pink, silent explosion. Hannah turned.
“I still didn’t see what you did. Or do.”
“There are floating pink dots all around us. They’re coming from over there.”
He sat taller in his saddle and loosened the knife at his waist. “I cannot always see what a mage does. Lead the way. I think we find where they’re coming from, but be prepared to let me pass you if there’s danger, in fact, let me go first, and you direct me.”
“They’re just pink dots.”
“Pink dots that I cannot see, so there may be a danger. But it makes me think of magic.”
“Oh,” she muttered, suddenly reluctant to follow the trail of pink. But she turned off the faint trail, and the floating pink dots increased in number with every step of the horse. Sir James moved carefully ahead, following the faint trail. In a hundred steps, the numbers of dots grew so much that she found it hard to see far ahead.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he ordered as if she was his squire.
“There are more of them. Lots. If I touch them, they poof away.” She looked at the largest tree she’d seen all morning and realized dots left the tree in all directions. “They are coming from that big tree.”
They moved closer, pausing fifty steps away. Sir James said, holding out his hand, one finger pointed ahead, speaking almost in a whisper, “Can you take my wrist and direct my finger to one?”
“Sure.” She moved his finger to a dot, and nothing happened. It passed right through his hand. She tried again, this time making sure his finger touched it. When nothing happened again, she reached for it, and poof, it was gone.
“Let me guess. My touch did nothing. Yours destroyed another.”
“Yes, that’s what happened.”
He pointed beyond the tree. “I see a path leading up to that tree.”
Once pointed out, the path in the fallen needles became obvious. It approached the tree, but from the other side. They slowly walked the horses on the soft ground carpeted with generations of soft needles. Circling the tree brought them to a stand of smaller trees growing next to the massive one where the pink dots first appeared.
“What do you see?” he whispered.
“More dots floating all around us. They’re thicker here, more of them, I mean. They’re coming from inside that big tree. Are you sure you can’t see them?”
“Look,” Sir James pointed above the smaller trees. An inverted V showed darker on the reddish-gray bark.
He dismounted, his short sword in hand. A wave of his palm told Hannah to remain in her saddle while he went to investigate. She slid to the ground, shaking her head. “I can see them. You can’t. I have to go with you.”
He nodded once, then turned and took the lead. Crouched, he moved quietly and deadly ahead. Pushing through the small opening the path took them to, he pulled to a stop. She peeked around his shoulder.
The inverted V was an opening in the tree. The trunk was hollow and the V the opening. A veil of material hung from high up on one side of the opening and had been pulled across to the other, closing off the opening inside.
Sir James eased ahead, one agonizingly slow step at a time. Hannah followed, looking for anything unusual, but wishing he’d go faster. She saw nothing but more of the pink dots emerging through the material, and the bark of the tree itself. The dots spread out from the center of the tree as if it didn’t exist.
“You might as well come on inside instead of skulking around out there like a pair of thieves in the night,” a female voice called, sounding impatient and annoyed at the same time.
Sir James looked at Hannah in confusion. She returned the look and shrugged. Neither of them had made a sound. They had tied the horses to bushes far enough away that any small sound couldn’t have carried that far.
“We’re not here to harm you,” Sir James called.
“Then why is that sword in your hand?” she called back.
Hannah watched his confusion as he put his sword away. He’d defeated three assassins only the night before, so she didn’t think putting his sword away made him any less dangerous. He reached for the side of the curtain, but before he touched it, the thing fell away to one side.
Inside stood a tall, thin woman who had opened the curtain. The woman’s hair had been dark brown at one time but now hung in limp brown and silver streaks that reached almost to her lower back. Parted in the middle, it fell to either side in long slow curls. She wore a peasant dress without decoration. Her smile was that of a young girl, but the glint in her eyes that of an old woman.
“Come in,” she said, throwing her arms wide to encompass the area where she stood.
Hannah’s eyes left the woman. The inside of the tree held crudely built tables standing side by side in the open middle of the tree. At least ten of them. Most had shelves nailed to the inside of the tree. Every flat surface in the room held bottles, jars, vats, boxes, containers, flasks, and flagons. Some appeared old. Every flat surface seemed to hold something that she valued. A single bowl in front of her sat beside a partially unrolled scroll.
Her eyes were on Sir James. She said, “I don’t recognize you, sir. I believed I knew of every mage in the kingdom.”
“You don’t know me,” he said.
“Then how did you find me?”
“We followed the pink dots,” Hannah said to break up the silence when Sir James didn’t answer.
“I knew it,” she declared, moving a step closer to Sir James and giving him a distasteful look. “Are you in need of my services or a potion?”