“Take off thy shoes,” Nikolias instructed Reynard.
“Why are we out here?” Reynard asked.
“Thou shalt walk decalced on the trod,” Nikolias said.
Reynard did not know that word.
“Barefoot,” Widsith explained.
Reynard still did not understand, but he pushed off his slippers with his toes and handed them to Widsith, then studied the others for some clue as to what they expected.
“The trod will judge,” Nikolias said.
“Judge what?” Reynard asked.
“Thou shalt not feel the same to the trod,” Nikolias replied.
“The same as who?”
“Stop asking questions,” Kaiholo advised, his tone soft. The morning was getting brighter, and a few dozen yards back they could hear the Travelers preparing for the day’s journey.
Kaiholo, Valdis, Calybo, and Nikolias walked down the path about fifty feet and turned to beckon Reynard join them. “Now walk,” Nikolias said. Reynard kept his eyes on Valdis, what he could see of her, for once again the Eaters resembled smoke or fog shaped into human forms. Her eyes glinted. Calybo seemed to have no eyes, only dark caves in his face.
“Walk,” Nikolias said again.
Reynard stepped out between the groups. Kaiholo waved him forward. The trod felt hard underfoot, but there were no sharp stones or thorns.
“Do your feet tingle?” Nikolias asked.
Reynard shook his head. “No.”
Kaiholo reached out to him. He almost touched the boy’s fingers… and then he felt the ground differently.
“The boy is not the usual sort of Traveler,” Nikolias said.
Yuchil had walked up silently to join the group. “His heritage is clear in his face and in his blood,” she said. “What he doth remember, and what his grandmother hath taught him!” The silver-haired woman seemed puzzled and disappointed. Reynard for his part did not remember telling her anything about his lineage.
“The trod knoweth Travelers, but the boy is not truly one of our clan,” Nikolias insisted.
“What is he, then? A master magician like Troy?”
“Hush!” said Yuchil. She knelt and touched the trod with outstretched fingers. Then she raised her hand to her nose and sniffed the fingertips. With a quizzical frown, she beckoned Nikolias to do likewise. He did, and they put their fingers together and rose.
Valdis and Calybo watched. With the least gesture of her hand, Valdis might have signaled to Reynard… but no one else saw it. Then he saw Calafi on the path, walking slowly toward them… surrounded by childers!
Nikolias doffed his hat and crouched before her on the path. She whispered to him, and the childers vanished one by one, as they had in the stable, like soap bubbles.
The silver-haired woman came to Reynard. “Calafi senses something different, and once again, she is our guide. The boy is a new kind of carrier, and a new kind of messenger,” Yuchil proclaimed. “The words he doth carry are new. This boy must go to the krater lands, and soon!”
Gifts Good and Bad
“I AM CONFUSED,” Reynard said as he and Widsith carried jugs to bring water back from a stream for Yuchil’s cooking. Kaiholo and the towering Kern trailed behind through the dense dry woods, and then caught up with them at the narrow run of water. Kaiholo squinted out over the flow with a yearning disappointment, as if he missed the sea. The four stood on the banks while Reynard filled one of Yuchil’s jugs and then did the same with theirs.
“Why confused?” Widsith asked over the water’s steady bubbling, sliding sound.
“Why must the trod judge me? And how doth it judge, and speak its opinion?”
“Nikolias knows more than any of us,” Widsith said.
“It hath judged,” Kaiholo said, “but the judgment is mixed and puzzling.”
“Childers are never easy to explain,” Kern said.
Kaiholo added, “Nikolias and Yuchil do not know what the trod is saying—and perhaps the trod doth not know, either! But Yuchil wants you to proceed, even so. That is a kind of faith.”
“Or she is simply rolling the die,” Widsith said.
“That sweepeth not my confusion,” Reynard said.
“Many are the languages Travelers have shared,” Kaiholo said. “The words Travelers brought the Crafters became flesh and growing green things and the fish and ropes and slimes of the sea. Words raised mountains and islands, roused storms, and lay over them calms. Words were brought that passed into age and never again made their play. Ancient words we still carry in our blood, and new words we speak through our blood and with our tongues. Our very shapes and dreams are strung out with words. So many words the Crafters have wielded since Queen Hel allowed them, some say chose them. Or did she?” He focused a sharp look on Reynard, shook his head, and walked off with his jug. Kern joined him, with a backward glance.
“What did I do?” Reynard asked, following the giant’s form up the bank and over to the trod.
“ ’Tis not thee, fox-boy,” Widsith said. “What fates the Crafters decree have been especially hard on those who ply the deeps.”
Kaiholo acknowledged this.
“May I speak, knowing also the sea, and having sailed often with those far islanders?” Widsith asked.
“Of course,” Kaiholo said.
“They knew the stars early on. They have gained and lost islands, in fire and storm, and along with them entire peoples, some they were, some they served. They know the sea as a spiteful wife. Did thine uncle share that opinion?”
“We knew many who died,” Reynard said.
Widsith cocked his head. “Languages divide and give us new reasons to hate—like the tower of Babel. Knowest thou that tale?”
“Of course!”
“That tower might as well have been built by Travelers, and they have carried a strange curse ever since—a curse that maketh them strong, until, some say, the day they are not, and then they will be harried and persecuted across the Earth. Perhaps that will be because they gave the Crafters power.”
“But I still do not understand! What be Crafters, and how can they do this?”
“I know some from Guldreth, and some from Troy,” Widsith said. “When Crafters first came down from the sky, invited, some say, by Hel, and until they had words, their minds were like the dark between the stars—shapeless. They brought to Earth, to the Tir Na Nog, and some say to the moon, the power to shift fates and change time and space—but they knew not how to record their tales or make others act out their plays—until Hel invited the Travelers to meet them.”
“How did they live, seeing such?” Reynard asked.
“That I do not know. Lacking language, the Crafters could do nothing and know nothing. Now they shape all of our history—and perhaps fill in the dark between the stars as well.”
“Guldreth collected the early drafts of many histories,” Kaiholo said. “You saw them. It was her passion.”
Kern returned through the woods and sat beside them, watching this discourse with quick eyes—especially focused on Reynard as the boy absorbed the tale wrapping round all tales.
Reynard squatted by the river, picked up a pebble, and threw it into the flow. “How can words give such power? We tell stories, but we cannot make such things,” he said.
“We are not Crafters,” Widsith said. He smiled ruefully and filled his own jug. “When they came here, Guldreth told me they fled from some force or malignity worse than themselves—but now, with the Travelers’ foolish gift, they fear no such malignity.”
“A lover’s bed is ripe for secrets,” Kaiholo said.
Reynard studied the Pilgrim’s changing expressions—amusement, disdain, and back to a defensive kind of amusement. “Crafters have neither human shape nor sympathy. They exercise their powers to make history without regard for how we feel, and so we are in their thrall. But they have no far-seeing eyes, no crystal ball, and so they send such as I out to discover and report—that they may celebrate their achievement! They wonder about what they have done… How doth it make the world different?” The Pilgrim poured his water back into the river. Then he bent and scooped again. “And why should not this island remain contented, and at the center of creation? I would it were so.”