The man … one minute he looked younger than my father, and the next he'd be looking older than anybody I ever saw, older than people are supposed to be, maybe. He didn't have any gray hair himself, but he did have a lot of lines, but that's not what I'm talking about either. It was the eyes. His eyes were green, green, green, not like grass, not like emeralds — I saw an emerald once, a gypsy woman showed me — and not anything like apples or limes or such stuff. Maybe like the ocean, except I've never seen the ocean, so I don't know. If you go deep enough into the woods (not the Midwood, of course not, but any other sort of woods), sooner or later you'll always come to a place where even the shadows are green, and that's the way his eyes were. I was afraid of his eyes at first.
The woman gave me a peach and watched me bite into it, too hungry to thank her. She asked me, «Girl, what are you doing here? Are you lost?»
«No, I'm not," I mumbled with my mouth full. «I just don't know where I am, that's different.» They both laughed, but it wasn't a mean, making–fun laugh. I told them, «My name's Sooz, and I have to see the king. He lives somewhere right nearby, doesn't he?»
They looked at each other. I couldn't tell what they were thinking, but the tall man raised his eyebrows, and the woman shook her head a bit, slowly. They looked at each other for a long time, until the woman said, «Well, not nearby, but not so very far, either. We were bound on our way to visit him ourselves.»
«Good," I said. «Oh, good.» I was trying to sound as grown–up as they were, but it was hard, because I was so happy to find out that they could take me to the king. I said, «I'll go along with you, then.»
The woman was against it before I got the first words out. She said to the tall man, «No, we couldn't. We don't know how things are.» She looked sad about it, but she looked firm, too. She said, «Girl, it's not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, kings change.»
«I have to see him," I said. «You go on, then. I'm not going home until I see him.» I finished the peach, and the man handed me a chunk of dried fish and smiled at the woman as I tore into it. He said quietly to her, «It seems to me that you and I both remember asking to be taken along on a quest. I can't speak for you, but I begged.»
But the woman wouldn't let up. «We could be bringing her into great peril. You can't take the chance, it isn't right!»
He began to answer her, but I interrupted — my mother would have slapped me halfway across the kitchen. I shouted at them, «I'm coming from great peril. There's a griffin nested in the Midwood, and he's eaten Jehane and Louli and — and my Felicitas — " and then I did start weeping, and I didn't care. I just stood there and shook and wailed, and dropped the dried fish. I tried to pick it up, still crying so hard I couldn't see it, but the woman stopped me and gave me her scarf to dry my eyes and blow my nose. It smelled nice.
«Child," the tall man kept saying, «child, don't take on so, we didn't know about the griffin.»
The woman was holding me against her side, smoothing my hair and glaring at him as though it was his fault that I was howling like that. She said, «Of course we'll take you with us, girl dear — there, never mind, of course we will. That's a fearful matter, a griffin, but the king will know what to do about it. The king eats griffins for breakfast snacks — spreads them on toast with orange marmalade and gobbles them up, I promise you.» And so on, being silly, but making me feel better, while the man went on pleading with me not to cry. I finally stopped when he pulled a big red handkerchief out of his pocket, twisted and knotted it into a bird–shape, and made it fly away. Uncle Ambrose does tricks with coins and shells, but he can't do anything like that.
His name was Schmendrick, which I still think is the funniest name I've heard in my life. The woman's name was Molly Grue. We didn't leave right away, because of the horses, but made camp where we were instead. I was waiting for the man, Schmendrick, to do it by magic, but he only built a fire, set out their blankets, and drew water from the stream like anyone else, while she hobbled the horses and put them to graze. I gathered firewood.
The woman, Molly, told me that the king's name was Lir, and that they had known him when he was a very young man, before he became king. «He is a true hero," she said, «a dragonslayer, a giantkiller, a rescuer of maidens, a solver of impossible riddles. He may be the greatest hero of all, because he's a good man as well. They aren't always.»
«But you didn't want me to meet him," I said. «Why was that?»
Molly sighed. We were sitting under a tree, watching the sun go down, and she was brushing things out of my hair. She said, «He's old now. Schmendrick has trouble with time — I'll tell you why one day, it's a long story — and he doesn't understand that Lir may no longer be the man he was. It could be a sad reunion.» She started braiding my hair around my head, so it wouldn't get in the way. «I've had an unhappy feeling about this journey from the beginning, Sooz. But he took a notion that Lir needed us, so here we are. You can't argue with him when he gets like that.»
«A good wife isn't supposed to argue with her husband," I said. «My mother says you wait until he goes out, or he's asleep, and then you do what you want.»
Molly laughed, that rich, funny sound of hers, like a kind of deep gurgle. «Sooz, I've only known you a few hours, but I'd bet every penny I've got right now — aye, and all of Schmendrick's too — that you'll be arguing on your wedding night with whomever you marry. Anyway, Schmendrick and I aren't married. We're together, that's all. We've been together quite a long while.»
«Oh," I said. I didn't know any people who were together like that, not the way she said it. «Well, you look married. You sort of do.»
Molly's face didn't change, but she put an arm around my shoulders and hugged me close for a moment. She whispered in my ear, «I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man in the world. He eats wild radishes in bed. Crunch, crunch, crunch, all night — crunch, crunch, crunch!» I giggled, and the tall man looked over at us from where he was washing a pan in the stream. The last of the sunlight was on him, and those green eyes were bright as new leaves. One of them winked at me, and I felt it, the way you feel a tiny breeze on your skin when it's hot. Then he went back to scrubbing the pan.
«Will it take us long to reach the king?» I asked her. «You said he didn't live too far, and I'm scared the griffin will eat somebody else while I'm gone. I need to be home.»
Molly finished with my hair and gave it a gentle tug in back to bring my head up and make me look straight into her eyes. They were as gray as Schmendrick's were green, and I already knew that they turned darker or lighter gray depending on her mood. «What do you expect to happen when you meet King Lir, Sooz?» she asked me right back. «What did you have in mind when you set off to find him?»
I was surprised. «Well, I'm going to get him to come back to my village with me. All those knights he keeps sending aren't doing any good at all, so he'll just have to take care of that griffin himself. He's the king. It's his job.»
«Yes," Molly said, but she said it so softly I could barely hear her. She patted my arm once, lightly, and then she got up and walked away to sit by herself near the fire. She made it look as though she was banking the fire, but she wasn't really.
We started out early the next morning. Molly had me in front of her on her horse for a time, but by and by Schmendrick took me up on his, to spare the other one's sore foot. He was more comfortable to lean against than I'd expected — bony in some places, nice and springy in others. He didn't talk much, but he sang a lot as we went along, sometimes in languages I couldn't make out a word of, sometimes making up silly songs to make me laugh, like this one: