“I just can’t fix this on my own.” Rike looked up, eyes full of tears. His face was twisted in a knot of anger and fear. A boy too young to keep from crying, but still old enough so that he couldn’t help but hate himself for doing it.
“I need you to get rid of my da,” he said in a broken voice. “I can’t figure a way. I could stick him while he’s asleep, but my ma would find out. He drinks and hits at her. And she cries all the time and then he hits her more.”
Rike was looking at the ground again, the words pouring out of him in a gush. “I could get him when he’s drunk somewhere, but he’s so big. I couldn’t move him. They’d find the body and then the azzie would get me. I couldn’t look my ma in the eye then. Not if she knew. I can’t think what that would do to her, if she knew I was the sort of person that would kill his own da.”
He looked up then, his face furious, eyes red with weeping. “I would, though. I’d kill him. You just got to tell me how.”
There was a moment of quiet.
“Okay,” Bast said.
They went down to the stream where they could have a drink and Rike could wash his face and collect himself a little bit. When the boy’s face was cleaner, Bast noted not all the smudginess was dirt. It was easy to make the mistake, as the summer sun had tanned him a rich nut brown. Even after he was clean it was hard to tell they were the faint remains of bruises.
But rumor or no, Bast’s eyes were sharp. Cheek and jaw. A darkness all around one skinny wrist. And when he bent to take a drink from the stream, Bast glimpsed the boy’s back …
“So,” Bast said as they sat beside the stream. “What exactly do you want? Do you want to kill him, or do you just want to have him gone?”
“If he was just gone, I’d never sleep again for worry he’d come slouching back,” Rike said, then was quiet for a bit. “He went gone two span once.” He gave a faint smile. “That was a good time, just me and my ma. It was like my birthday every day when I woke up and he wasn’t there. I never knew my ma could sing …”
The boy went quiet again. “I thought he’d fallen somewhere drunk and finally broke his neck. But he’d just traded off a year of furs for drinking money. He’d just been in his trapping shack, all stupor-drunk for half a month, not hardly more than a mile away.”
The boy shook his head, more firmly this time. “No, if he goes, he won’t stay away.”
“I can figure out the how,” Bast said. “That’s what I do. But you need to tell me what you really want.”
Rike sat for a long while, jaw clenching and unclenching. “Gone,” he said at last. The word seemed to catch in his throat. “So long as he stays gone forever. If you can really do it.”
“I can do it,” Bast said.
Rike looked at his hands for a long time. “Gone, then. I’d kill him. But that sort of thing ent right. I don’t want to be that sort of man. A fellow shouldn’t ought to kill his da.”
“I could do it for you,” Bast said easily.
Rike sat for a while, then shook his head. “It’s the same thing, innit? Either way it’s me. And if it were me, it would be more honest if I did it with my hands rather than do it with my mouth.”
Bast nodded. “Right, then, Gone forever.”
“And soon,” Rike said.
Bast sighed and looked up at the sun. He already had things to do today. The turning wheels of his desire did not come grinding to a halt because some farmer drank too much. Emberlee would be taking her bath soon. He was supposed to get carrots …
He didn’t owe the boy a thing either. Quite the opposite. The boy had lied to him. Broken his promise. And while Bast had settled that account so firmly that no other child in town would ever dream of crossing him like that again … it was still galling to remember. The thought of helping him now, despite that, it was quite the opposite of his desire.
“It has to be soon,” Rike said. “He’s getting worse. I can run off, but Ma can’t. And little Bip can’t neither. And …”
“Fine, fine …” Bast cut him off, waving his hands. “Soon.”
Rike swallowed. “What’s this going to cost me?” he asked, anxious.
“A lot,” Bast said grimly. “We’re not talking about ribbons and buttons here. Think how much you want this. Think how big it is.” He met the boy’s eye and didn’t look away. “Three times that is what you owe me. Plus some for soon.” He stared hard at the boy. “Think hard on that.”
Rike was a little pale now, but he nodded without looking away. “You can have what you like of mine,” he said. “But nothin’ of Ma’s. She ent got much that my da hasn’t already drank away.”
“We’ll work it out,” Bast said. “But it’ll be nothing of hers. I promise.”
Rike took a deep breath, then gave a sharp nod. “Okay. Where do we start?”
Bast pointed at the stream. “Find a river stone with a hole in it and bring it to me.”
Rike gave Bast an odd look. “Yeh want a faerie stone?”
“Faerie stone,” Bast said with such scathing mockery that Rike flushed with embarrassment. “You’re too old for that nonsense.” Bast gave the boy a look. “Do you want my help or not?” he asked.
“I do,” Rike said in a small voice.
“Then I want a river stone.” Bast pointed back at the stream. “You have to be the one to find it,” he said. “It can’t be anyone else. And you need to find it dry on the shore.”
Rike nodded.
“Right, then.” Bast clapped his hands twice. “Off you go.”
Rike left and Bast returned to the lightning tree. No children were waiting to talk to him, so he idled the time away. He skipped stones in the nearby stream and flipped through Celum Tinture, glancing at some of the illustrations. Calcification. Titration. Sublimation.
Brann, happily unbirched with one hand bandaged, brought him two sweet buns wrapped in a white handkerchief. Bast ate the first and set the second aside.
Viette brought armloads of flowers and a fine blue ribbon. Bast wove the daisies into a crown, threading the ribbon through the stems.
Then, looking up at the sun, he saw that it was nearly time. Bast removed his shirt and filled it with the wealth of yellow and red touch-me-nots Viette had brought him. He added the handkerchief and crown, then fetched a stick and made a bindle so he could carry the lot more easily.
He headed out past the Oldstone bridge, then up toward the hills and around a bluff until he found the place Kostrel had described. It was cleverly hidden away, and the stream curved and eddied into a lovely little pool perfect for a private bath.
Bast sat behind some bushes, and after nearly half an hour of waiting he had fallen into a doze. The sharp crackle of a twig and a scrap of an idle song roused him, and he peered down to see a young woman making her careful way down the steep hillside to the water’s edge.
Moving silently, Bast scurried upstream, carrying his bundle. Two minutes later he was kneeling on the grassy waterside with the pile of flowers beside him.
He picked up a yellow blossom and breathed on it gently. As his breath brushed the petals, its color faded and changed into a delicate blue. He dropped it and the current carried it slowly downstream.
Bast gathered up a handful of posies, red and orange, and breathed on them again. They too shifted and changed until they were a pale and vibrant blue. He scattered them onto the surface of the stream. He did this twice more until there were no flowers left.
Then, picking up the handkerchief and daisy crown, he sprinted back downstream to the cozy little hollow with the elm. He’d moved quickly enough that Emberlee was just coming to the edge of the water.
Softly, silently, he crept up to the spreading elm. Even with one hand carrying the handkerchief and crown, he went up the side as nimbly as a squirrel.
Bast lay along a low branch, sheltered by leaves, breathing fast but not hard. Emberlee was removing her stockings and setting them carefully on a nearby hedge. Her hair was a burnished golden red, falling in lazy curls. Her face was sweet and round, a lovely shade of pale and pink.