My feet lost all feeling within moments—but I didn’t care. I quite forgot the snake in the privy, the pig in the pantry, and the Indian in the corncrib, absorbed in the rush of water past my legs, the wet, cold touch of stems and the breath of aromatic leaves.
Dragonflies hung in the patches of sunshine on the shallows, and minnows darted past, snatching gnats too small for me to see. A kingfisher called in a loud, dry rattle from somewhere upstream, but he was after larger prey. The minnows scattered at my intrusion but then swarmed back, gray and silver, green and gold, black marked with white, all insubstantial as the shadows from last year’s leaves, floating on the water. Brownian motion, I thought, seeing puffs of silt float up and swirl around my ankles, obscuring the fish.
Everything moving, all of the time, down to the smallest molecule—but in its movement, giving the paradoxical impression of stillness, small local chaos giving way to the illusion of a greater order overall.
I moved, too, taking my part in the stream’s bright dance, feeling light and shadow change across my shoulders, toes searching for footholds among the slippery, half-seen rocks. My hands and feet were numb from the water; I felt as though I were half made of wood, yet intensely alive, like the silver birch that glowed above me, or the willows that trailed wet leaves in the pool below.
Perhaps the legends of green men and the myths of transformed nymphs began this way, I thought: not with trees come alive and walking, nor yet with women turned to wood—but with submersion of warm human flesh into the colder sensations of the plants, chilled to slow awareness.
I could feel my heart beat slowly, and the half-painful throb of blood in my fingers. Sap rising. I moved with the rhythms of water and of wind, without haste or conscious thought, part of the slow and perfect order of the universe.
I had forgotten the bit about small local chaos.
Just as I came to the willows’ bend, there was a loud shriek from beyond the trees. I’d heard similar noises from a variety of animals, from catamounts to hunting eagles, but I knew a human voice when I heard one.
Blundering out of the stream, I shoved my way through the tangled branches, and burst through into the clear space beyond. A boy was dancing on the bank above me, slapping madly at his legs and howling as he hopped and fro.
“What—?” I began, and he glanced up at me, blue eyes wide with startlement at my sudden appearance.
He wasn’t nearly as startled as I was. He was eleven or twelve; tall and thin as a pine sapling, with a mad tangle of thick russet hair. Slanted blue eyes stared at me from either side of a knife-bridged nose, familiar to me as the back of my own hand, though I knew I had never seen this child before.
My heart was somewhere in the vicinity of my tonsils, and the chill had shot up from my feet into the pit of my stomach. Trained to react in spite of shock, I managed to take in the rest of his appearance—shirt and breeches of good quality, though splashed with water, and long pale shins blobbed with black clots like bits of mud.
“Leeches,” I said, professional calm descending by habit over personal tumult. It couldn’t be, I was telling myself, at the same time that I knew it damn well was. “It’s only leeches. They won’t hurt you.”
“I know what they are!” he said. “Get them off me!” He swatted at his calf, shuddering with dislike. “They’re vile!”
“Oh, not so terribly vile,” I said, beginning to get a grip on myself. “They have their uses.”
“I don’t care what use they are!” he bellowed, stamping in frustration. “I hate them, get them off me!”
“Well, stop whacking at them,” I said sharply. “Sit you down and I’ll take care of it.”
He hesitated, glaring at me suspiciously, but reluctantly sat down on a rock, thrusting his leech-spattered legs out in front of him.
“Get them off now!” he demanded.
“In good time,” I said. “Where did you come from?”
He stared blankly at me.
“You don’t live near here,” I said, with complete certainty. “Where did you come from?”
He made an obvious effort to collect himself.
“Ah…we slept in a place called Salem, three nights past. That was the last town I saw.” He wiggled his legs hard. “Get them off, I say!”
There were assorted methods of getting leeches off, most of them somewhat more damaging than the leeches themselves. I had a look; he’d picked up four on one leg, three on the other. One of the fat little beasts was already near bloat, gone plump and shiny with stretching. I edged a thumbnail under its head and it popped off into my hand, round as a pebble and heavy with blood.
The boy stared it, pale under his tan, and shuddered.
“Don’t want to waste it,” I said casually, and went to retrieve the basket I had dropped under the branches as I pushed my way through the trees.
Nearby, I saw his coat on the ground, discarded shoes and stockings with it. Simple buckles on the shoes, but silver, not pewter. Good broadcloth, not showy but cut with a deal more style than one saw anywhere north of Charleston. I hadn’t really needed confirmation, but there it was.
I scooped up a handful of mud, pressed the leech gently into it and wrapped the gooey blob in wet leaves, only then noticing that my hands were trembling. The idiot! The deceitful, wicked, conniving…what in hell had made him come here? And God, what would Jamie do?
I came back to the boy, who was bent double, peering at the remaining leeches with a look of disgusted loathing. One more was close to dropping; as I knelt in front of him, it fell off, bouncing slightly on the damp ground.
“Augh!” he said.
“Where’s your stepfather?” I asked abruptly. Few things could have taken his attention off his legs, but that did. His head jerked up and he stared at me in astonishment.
It was a cool day, but a light dew of sweat shone on his face. It was narrower through cheek and temple, I thought, and the mouth was quite unlike; perhaps the resemblance was not really so pronounced as I thought.
“How do you know me?” he asked, drawing himself up with an air of hauteur that would have been extremely funny under other circumstances.
“All I know about you is that your given name is William. Am I right?” My hands curled at my sides, and I hoped I was wrong. If he was William, that wasn’t quite all I knew about him, but it was plenty to be going on with.
A hot flush rose into his cheeks, and his eyes raked over me, his attention temporarily distracted from the leeches by being so familiarly addressed by what—I suddenly realized—appeared to be a disheveled beldame with her skirts round her thighs. Either he had good manners, or the disparity between my voice and my appearance made him cautious, because he swallowed the instant retort that came to his lips.
“Yes, it is,” he said shortly, instead. “William, Viscount Ashness, ninth Earl of Ellesmere.”
“All that?” I said politely. “Gracious.” I took hold of one leech between thumb and forefinger and pulled gently. The thing stretched out like a thick rubber band, but declined to let go. The boy’s pale flesh pulled out, too, and he made a small choking sound.
“Let go!” he said. “It’ll break, you’ll break it!”
“Could do,” I admitted. I got to my feet and shook down my skirts, putting myself in better order.