A dark shape sneaked into view, creeping around the side of the boxthorn, a small figure, mottled and unexpectedly familiar… Was it? Surely not! It couldn't be… Yet it was! Shuffling on the opposite side of the small dell was Freckle. There before him was the glamgorn who had comforted him in the hold of the Hogshead, one hundred and fifty miles and over two months away. For a shocked breath they simply looked at each other.
"Freckle?" Rossamund hissed, remembering himself and looking quickly about, too startled to fuss with greetings. "You can't be here! There's half a platoon of lighters in that cothouse back there." He pointed over his shoulder at the shadowy tower. "Many of them, watching us!"
"No, no, no, little once-weepy Rossamund, it is you that cannot stay, and stay you can't," the little fellow said musically, hopping from one foot to the other, deep yellow eyes catching the meager, dappled light brilliantly. These eyes were limpid and anxious-wide, and Freckle's cheeky, once-happy face was now drawn with worry and fatigue. "Not here. Not with these people who don't know yet what they ought never to know. I have come and you must get away with me."
"What do…? But how…?" Rossamund wanted to dash over and hug Freckle, but this would be the action of an outramorine-the worst kind of sedorner. Indeed, Freckle himself proved keen to keep a little space between them.
"I kept a good long look and I saw you and I followed you and I waited," the little barky-skinned bogle said quick and low, "and sometimes Cinnamon would do the following and the waiting for this one while I went on other ways."
Cinnamon has been watching too? Rossamund could not quite fathom what he was hearing.
"I have watched you learning all the dividing, conquering ways with your friends who would not be friends if they knew. Come along now, now come along," Freckle said, waving with his hand. "You saved me so I save you.The Sparrowling will have you and keep you, just as he ought.You belong nowhere, but it is safer for you to be with him. He-"
"Rossamund?" came a soft, too-familiar voice. "Wh-what are you doing with that-that thing?"
Threnody! "Ah-I-" He looked back. There she was, picking through the underbrush, looking deeply anxious. She was staring with stark intensity at Freckle, and even as she came, the girl put her hand to her forehead.
"Threnody, no!" Rossamund cried and was instantly overwhelmed with her ill-practiced scathing, which drove him to his hands and knees. "Threnody… no…" Gritting teeth, Rossamund forced himself to clarity, growling under his breath as he struggled to sit and reach into his salumanticum for something to-to stop Threnody from hurting Freckle! — but it did not matter, for the clever little glamgorn was already clean away.Threnody sprang after it, sending again, running wildly past the boxthorn and into the net of low branches through which Freckle had first come. Her hat was sent flying as she crashed through the growth, falling at Rossamund's feet. He heard her flailing about fruitlessly, feeling the frequent edges of her scantly managed witting.
Rossamund had seen Freckle avoid a fulgar, and now the glamgorn had eluded a wit-albeit an unskilled one.
Forcing herself back through the thickly interleaved branches Threnody returned, the clinging stems tangling with her hair.With a prolonged and angry grunt she pushed clear, yet something remained behind: her lustrous black curls.They were now a knotted mass weighing down several snaring twigs. For an awful breath Rossamund thought the wicked undergrowth had wrenched her hair from her very scalp. With another shock he realized it was actually a wig. She had lost her hair from witting after all.
The girl stood in the clearing, blinking and pale, caught in a confusion of shame and fear and doggedness, her now bald head part hidden beneath white bindings.
"Haven't you ever seen a wit without her hair before?" she said darkly as she snatched her wig back from the twiggy snare, bringing most of it with her.
Utterly astounded and perplexed, Rossamund said nothing.
Sequecious came rolling over, rubicund face dribbling sweat.
"What is being yee problems?" he huffed, then puffed, "No yelling or crying, tank yee! Come! Come! We must be to going back at castle," which was his term for Wormstool. "Yee noises make for th' ungerhaur to come!"
For the short walk back to the cothouse Threnody remained tight-lipped, fidgeting with her wig, unable to set it right without a looking glass. "If mother had let me be a pistoleer…," Rossamund heard her mutter, "and not made me into a stupid hair-losing neuroticrith!"
They achieved the safety of the cothouse unharmed. Hands on head, Threnody fled to her cot. Down in the cellar, Rossamund washed himself, expecting some angry observer to hurry down and haul him before the house-major as a monster-loving outramorine. Required in the common-mess, he went as quietly as he might. Despite his fears there was not one comment; no one grabbed him and cried "Sedorner!" as he shuffled past the observers on the entry floor. Shamefaced and with his head down, he returned the hack-watch to the house-major. Grystle said naught, while Semple the day-clerk simply gave Rossamund a firm, gentlemanly nod-a greeting and nothing more. No one saw me with Freckle! They do not know! Rossamund could not decide which was the stronger emotion: his guilt or his relief.
In the common-mess he and Threnody came back together and were set to cleaning the thrumcops: sitting at the trestle, lopping the stubby stalks just above the ring, rubbing dirt from the spotty caps.
Vanity restored,Threnody refused to look at Rossamund.
"Th' good in these here," Sequecious chuckled, holding up a thrumcop, "is these are being making us uneatable to the ungerhaur. Gets in tha sweats and so we tastes too bad. Very very good, tank yee."
Rossamund nodded, scarcely following the cook's monologue, wrinkling his nose at the off-smelling fungus. I don't blame them.
Sequecious rolled out of earshot.
"What were you doing with that blighted bugaboo today?" Threnody whispered in a passion. "You had your salt-bag-you could have fought it. Instead I find you talking to it?"
"I–I was…" Rossamund had been caught and there was nothing to do but admit it.
"Tell me, what in the Sundergird were you doing with it?" Threnody pressed. "Swapping potive recipes? Bogles are for slaying or driving away, not chitter-chatter! I did not get it, and now the little blightling will be off to murder someone's chickens-or worse!"
"Not every bogle is a ravening gnasher, Threnody, deserving nothing but a hasty death-and certainly not Freckle! He helped me-"
"That's the talk of a sedorner, Rossamund! Watch your words," Threnody seethed under her breath, looking to Sequecious obliviously chopping at something in the kitchen proper. "I cannot believe you actually know the wretched thing's name."
"I'm not a sedorner just because I can see that not all monsters are bad," Rossamund countered quietly but hotly. "Else you could accuse me a murderer just for saying that not all folks are good!"
"Ugh, lamp boy!" The girl rolled her eyes. "You sound more like Dolours every time we talk!You should have been an eeker, not a lamplighter.You're most fortunate the cook did not spy what was what, or someone else on sentries for that matter. If you meet the thing again, get rid of it!"
"I will not!"
Threnody looked at him with slit-eyed scorn. "To be hung on a Catherine wheel is a bad way to end," she warned.
"How is it a good end to murder a friend?"
"You just don't understand, do you, lamp boy? Well at least you can trust me to keep this between you, me and the rising moon."