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Skye thrust the last burlap bag of colored fleece through the doorway of the dye shed, waiting for her father to pull up with the wagon. It was early still and chilly although spring had recently touched the highlands, and her breath came like the ragged smoke from the unseen chimneys of the lower valley. As she watched, the sun crested the eastern slope of Top Notch, bathing their narrow pass in fierce white light that glinted from the icy outcrops at the base of the Teardrop Lake above, to the drifts of rotted snow that dotted the river valley like sheep. Before her, the freshly washed fleeces glimmered with a silken light all their own, the mohair locks naturally tipped mauve and baby blue from the dye swirled Lavender Rill. Now swollen with the spring run off from crystal freshets of the Northland Glacier, the Rill surged through their valley from the Teardrop above, in the colored waters that their mountain goats so favored.
Absently, she twisted her corn silk hair into a loose bun and turned in the doorway, adjusting her eyes, eyes like bits of turquoise sky to the dim of the shed where she and her mother Sierra had toiled this long hard winter past. The bubbling dye pots lay dormant for once, the heavy lanolin odor of sheep's wool and mohair nearly absent from the still steamed glass. The spinning wheel stood silent as well, and the warped wooden drying racks stretched bare before the dying hearth, empty of the hank upon hank of handspun yarns now piled into the split twig baskets leaning against the porch rail outside.
Even the ripple stitched afghans that usually carpeted the window bench at crazy angles lay neatly folded on the rush seat, a seat where she has spent many a winter evening knitting row upon row of all manner of headscarves, vests, potluck hats and mittens, as well as clogs, slippers, shawls, mufflers, and the odd cardigan or pullover. In the disarray of her cozy little nest, flanked by a honeyed mug of cinnamon tea and a plate of blackberry scones, she passed the hours between supper and bed knitting before the fire, while Sierra felted her handspun garments, boiling them in the colored waters of the high Glacier ponds in preparation of the Middlemarch World's Fair. And she told stories of old, stories Skye and her younger brother Garth loved to hear. She called them her yarns.
Today Skye could not wait to leave the pass, but she tried to feign indifference as her father, Kendrick, rolled up with the wagon, the only sound the soft chuff chuff of the tolting mountain ponies Chuffer and Shep, no bells this year, nothing to call attention. All tried to pretend that this year was no different than the last, but the truth was that it could be no stranger. Over the winter her brother Warren, a boy not two years her senior had been conscripted by the Northland army to defend the Glacier against Lowlanders, those who would burn it out for the crystalline mineral water and plunder and the secrets of old. Warren was gone two passes of the moon now and no word had traveled up the echoing river valley, to the small fiber farm below Teardrop Lake at the inlet of the Lavender Rill. Her younger brother Garth, slight for his 15 years, proved no substitute for his brother and he would never be, Skye could see, at least in the eyes of her father.
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Side by side, Skye and her father loaded first the bags of raw fiber from their Alpine Goats into the wagon. Each snowy fleece was skirted and tagged, the long silky staples tinged aqua and teal green depending upon which glacier fed freshet the mountain goats drank from. Then came the prepared fibers, the bats and roving, ready to be spun into yarn. These, too, were shaded natural lavenders and light blues, a product of the loose crystalline rock flour that ceaselessly stirred through the glacial ponds and streams formed by the runoff of the Northland Glacier into the Teardrop Lake. Dyeing with glacier crystal was forbidden now, Skye knew, wondering if the judges at the fair were learned enough to know the difference between Sierra's naturally dyed fiber and fiber shaded intentionally with powdered crystals. All forms of crystal use was forbidden during the war, lest someone mistakenly unleash bad magic the way it was said the Lowlanders burned out pestilence and disease from the frozen underbelly of the glacier and worse in their thirst for water.
As if magic even existed anymore, Skye thought, as the ponies snorted. If there was magic in the air or water or the pink quartz crystals she kept on her bedside table, she would certainly like to see it. Any amount of pink crystals under her pillow and blue crystals in her bath had not rescued her from the constrained life Top Notch this past fall and winter. She was so starved for conversation that after Warren left, she felt like screaming, but all she did was cry.
Skye glanced at her father, afraid to voice her fears, lest he keep her home, too. At daybreak as they breakfasted quickly on goat's milk and porridge laced with dried berries, Kendrick had surprised the women by announcing that neither he nor Garth would accompany them to the fair, a family outing that Skye had not missed in her seventeen years.
Garth did not raise his voice to complain; he never did, so small compared to Warren, who had been as tall as Kendrick when he left for the Northland Guard, an avid hunter, and the best Sledder in all of the Middlelands.
"Kendrick," Sierra protested, her tawny eyes raised in surprise, as she smoothed Garth's sandy hair away from his face. Her eyes reminded Skye of a mountain cat, lion eyes.
But he cut her mother off. "How can we all go?" he asked, begging her to understand. "The goats are not down from the highlands, and the Teardrop threatens to flood the Rill at any moment." He lowered his voice, not angry, Skye could tell, just afraid. "What will become of the farm if the Lavender Rill floods the valley and we are all a day's ride away in Middlemarch with the ponies?"
While what he said was true, what remained unsaid was their shared uneasiness now Warren had been taken from them. The rumor had reached them even as high as this small valley at the top of the Notch that one male from each family to serve the Glacier Guard would not be not enough. Now the Northland Border Patrol would pick up anyone, man or boy, to swell the ranks of the Northland army, anyone who dared show his face along the main track into Middlemarch. Skye thought of her friend Katarina who lived in the village at the bottom of the Notch, and Katarina's brother Averill, no older than Skye herself and wondered if she would see him this day.
Skye handed the last bag of lavender fleece up to her father and asked at last, the question that had been burning in mind her all morning. "Do you think the Lowlanders really mean to harm us, father? Are they coming to burn out the Glacier as the Northlanders say?"
"I do not doubt the folk of the Lowlands are already here." Grunting, Kendrick loaded three forkfuls of hay and a bucket of sweet feed for the ponies into the back of the cart, and brushed off his sheepskin coat. "Here among us. And they want the water—they need it badly. They will do whatever it takes to free the ice and funnel the fresh waters down to their parched lands."
"But it is said that melting the Glacier will unlock secrets of old," Skye said with a troubled glance. "Dark things buried since the last age of ice. And that is forbidden in all the lands."
"Some say the world will end in fire. Others say yet again in ice." Her father shrugged uneasily, sweating so that he pushed up the brim of his Potluck hat. "In the meantime, you do what you feel you must."
The Potluck hat was a real one, Skye realized, for it was just recently that she had been blessed with the discernment to tell. The rare handpainted crystal dyed fiber came from the original Potluck Yarns of the Northland, where it was said that her mother had apprenticed more than twenty years ago, intending to forsake farm and family to become a dye master. What happened to prevent that, Skye had never been able to prize from Sierra. The deep multicolored blues and greens of the hand knit hat melted together in a mosaic of jades and teals that made Skye think of the calming strength of the sea. Her father was a weak man, but he always seemed strong and sure of himself when he wore the hat, which was all the time, lately.
"Have you ever seen the Lowlands, father?" Skye asked.
Kendrick's watery blue eyes looked away. "It is a wasted place," he murmured. "A burning dustbowl with all the goodness of the land used up. It is no longer a place to grow crops or hunt or fish for food."
"You have been there," Skye said and it was not a question.
Kendrick took off his hat, turning it around and around in his hands before giving a slow nod. "Don't you ever tell your mother."
Then the rumors were true, Skye thought, biting her lip, trying not to think as she watched her father. But it all made sense now, did it not? Someone had been leading bands of Lowlanders through the Top Notch and up the far shore of the Teardrop to the Northland. And back. Once last fall and then again this winter after the Glacier Guard had come for Warren, Kendrick had set out fully provisioned to track the elusive Alpine Moose and come back from the sleep out with nothing to show but grimy hunting clothes and an empty pantry sack a week later. I wonder if Warren knew, Skye thought.
Her thoughts were broken as the door of the farmhouse creaked and out came her mother with their alpaca traveling cloaks piled atop more bags and bundles. All I want is a little fun, Skye told herself, as she hurried to help Sierra, even if only for a day at the fair. Carefully she had packed the sky blue ribbons she planned to wear to the Spring Carnival dance, so hoping she would meet up with Katarina, and entice her bashful brother Averill to join them for the Sugar on Snow. But maybe he was gone too, Skye reasoned with a sad smile as she took the basket of potato bread and goat cheese with dried apples and then the flask of mulled cider from her mother and stored it beneath the plank seat of the pony cart. Or maybe he was hiding at their farm at the bottom of the lower valley, afraid to drive their wagon into town like her father.
Skye had not been away from the Notch since the road snowed in the fall before. Since then, the only other folk she had seen were Sledders, rangy youths from the North who climbed the Notch trail with Warren, a master at guiding the quick runner sleds through the narrow mountain passes. The hunters came up too, although less often and now not at all since the Glacier Wars started, to drink hard cider in the sleep out and track the elusive Alpine Moose with her father. Sometimes Garth would trail along to help clean and quarter the moose, and skin the precious gray white hide that would later be sewn into windproof and nearly invisible garments.
The mountain ponies stamped impatiently in their black leather harnesses gleaming dull silver. Sierra slipped back into the house and quickly returned with her rucksack containing a precious bundle wrapped in waterproof cloth.
No one needed to ask what was rolled up in the cloth. They all knew that the garments inside were Sierra's winter's work, prized more that any other handcraft in all the Middlelands for their quality of the workmanship. The traveling cloak and cinch bags and knapsacks were virtually seamless, the caps and mittens warm and comfortable forever. There were those, too, that said that the glacier dyes gave the garments certain qualities. Surely not magical qualities, for no one that Skye knew took magic seriously anymore.
It was true that Sierra's garments were warmer than most and windproof, but she attributed this to the way she boiled and finished the felted pieces in the clean mineral waters that trickled south from the glacier. Water and snow failed to penetrate Sierra's felt, but then their Alpine Goats had finer staples and the mohair yarn a higher twist than most handspuns. The blues and lavenders and grays made the wearer almost unseen against the icy outcrops and snow, but perhaps this too, was because the snows themselves looked blue in the shadows and the invisibility was but an optical illusion. Or perhaps not. There were those that said that when Sierra apprenticed at the Potluck twenty years ago, she was the star pupil of Aubergine, the undisputed queen of the potluck yarns. It was not known now if Aubergine ever existed and Sierra claimed that Potluck Yarns where she worked before she met Kendrick was nothing more than a glorified yarn shop. It was not something Skye ever brought up to her mother without receiving a warning glance from Kendrick.
"This is the end of it," Sierra said, loading her bundle, as Skye slipped into the knitted cloak that matched her mother's, both garments a combination of wool and alpaca the opaque color of sun touched frost flowers, almost invisible against the snow on this spring morning. She pulled on her moose mitts and climbed up to join her mother in the wagon. Sierra's hair was tied back by a multicolored strand of yarn in a practical ponytail, under her hat. The only sign of age in her unlined face was the touches of gray at her temples, the few white strands mixed in with honey blond.
"Better get a move on," Kendrick said, with an eye toward the fields. From the hillside a patch of red approached and even in the glare, Skye knew it to be Garth, in his old red barn sweater, on his way back from feeding the goats.
"We'll at least say goodbye." Sierra accepted the reins from her husband as Garth slammed the gate and rushed over, his cheeks red from running, empty grain bucket banging against his wiry legs.
"Can't I go?" he begged his father, with a longing look at the wagon.
"Maybe next year," Kendrick said gently. "By the look of the Rill, my guess it that we will have to move the goats to higher ground. Did you see the rim of the Teardrop from the slope?"
"Higher yet," Garth admitted, with a quick nod, dragging his eyes from the wagon. "And the water's darker, almost purple. It's flush with the top of the sluice board." Chuffer nuzzled at the grain bucket and Garth stroked Chuffer's head, letting the small soft muzzle sniff his felt mittens.
"Then there is your answer," Kendrick said. "Dark water means the Crystal Caves are flooding and even the Crystal Lakes can't hold back the water."
"It happens every spring," Garth muttered.
"Not like this," Kendrick shook his head. "I smelt smoke last night."
"And I," Sierra nodded. "Rotten glacier smoke."
"Lowlander smoke," Kendrick said. "We've already lost one son to this war. We'll not lose another just yet."
Garth said nothing, just looked down and stroked the pony's neck, and Skye could see that although his eyes were rimmed with tears, he would not let them spill over in front of his father. It had been months since he had left he pass, too, Skye reminded herself and he sorely missed his older brother, said nothing about the added chores that he'd had to shoulder since Warren was gone.
"See you in three days time?" Sierra asked it like a question.
Kendrick seemed not to notice. "Be careful," he said.
"And you," Sierra said, then more gently to Garth. "And you."
She slapped the reins and the ponies stepped out surefooted. The wagon wheels creaked in the snowy ruts as they left the yard.
An unsettling fear gripped Skye and she looked back at the little farmhouse with its neat stone foundation and timbered walls and cedar shingled roof. Lavender Fleece Farm, they had always called it after the crystalline Rill that ran the length of the pass. A feeling came over her then, feelings were always coming over her whenever she wore her traveling cloak. This feeling was that she would never come back to the Notch, never see her house again. But it was gone as quickly as it had come and she shook it off as a shiver, pulled her felted cloak tighter.
The sun rose quickly in the sky, burning through the morning mist that hung over the valley. The road widened into a muddy track and the snow disappeared as they made their way toward the lower notch, the Lavender Rill always rumbling off to their right as it spilled down the mountain. A cluster of stone buildings hugged the narrow defile of the lower pass, dwarfed by the great grain mill straddling the river. Mill on the Rill it was called, and almost everyone in the lower valley had some what to do with it. Skye flung back her hood, breathing deeply of the scents of winter wheat and cherry that flavored the air from the bread ovens. The wagon was missing from Katrina's house, she noticed, and there was no sign of Katrina or Averill, just their grandfather, the Gaffer, at the well spring near the hitching post. Sierra turned the ponies into the low enclosure and halted at the watering trough.
"What news, Gaffer?" she called as the ponies drank deeply.
"If it isn't Sierra," the old man smiled, bringing them a pitcher of water. "And young Skye, the image of her mother."
Skye's smile quickly clouded. "Where is everyone?" She asked, as her mother drank from the pitcher and Gaffer handed it dripping to Skye.
"Gone," Gaffer's blue eyes flashed under snowy brows. "Katerina and her mother left before daybreak, to set up their stall at the fair while the bread was yet warm."
"And Averill?" Skye asked anxiously.
"Gone too," Gaffer said and this time there was no light in his eyes. "This past fortnight."
"Just like Warren," Sierra nodded sadly. "We've had no word."
"Nor us. They say the Northland border is where they've taken them. I never been to Bordertown, but ‘tis a rough place is what I hear. Full of bad magic."
Skye saw something flicker in her mother's eyes. A knowing look of fear? It couldn't be.
"Old magic anyway." Gaffer continued, unaware, nodding to the wagon. "The rest of your men? Safe, are they?"
"Hiding," Sierra said brightly. "Tending the goats."
"You'll have that," Gaffer said looking toward the swollen river and the mountains beyond. "The air is warm, too warm this time of year. There's smoke in the valley, which bears no good tidings. Take care on the road."
"And you," Sierra said, picking up the reins, backing the ponies away. "It would not surprise me if the Teardrop spills this day."
Turning onto the main road, their ponies fell in line behind other wagons headed south from Banebridge. Here the fierce Lavender Rill emptied into the River Runne, where it's purple water diluted to an almost colorless hue instantly in the wider flatter river. Middlelanders rode horseback or trudged on foot, driving sheep or leading a prize bull or calf. Ahead of them and behind, as far as Skye could see, other carts were pile high with handmade quilts and jars of mountain berry jams and jellies as well as crates of protesting goats and lambs, yipping Shepard puppies and piglets. But something was amiss, more than the scent of smoke growing stronger as they headed into the valley, bringing with it the fetid scent of rot and disease.
"Mother, there are no men," Skye realized all at once. "No men and hardly any boys."
"It is as I feared," Sierra said with a grim nod. "The world is changing again. Smell that smoke? It's coming from the northwest. A glacier fire, I believe, though all will deny it." She turned to her daughter. "No matter if we hide in the mountains of the Notch, change reaches us still and we are unprepared."
"What do you mean?" Skye cried. "Hiding from Lowlanders? Are they that terrifying?"
"Not as a race," Sierra said, her lion eyes watching the distance as the ponies slowed to a walk behind a trail of wagons that snaked toward the Middlemarch Bridge. "But there is one who rules them, one who would mine the glacier for secrets of the days of old."
"Who is he?" Skye said.
"No he," Sierra eyes darted to the hold up at the bridge. "They are stopping wagon loads ahead. Prepare yourself."
"She? You mean the dark lady from your yarns?"
Sierra nodded. "The world is not ruled by men," she murmured. "It just looks that way."
"But I thought those were just old stories," Skye said, recalling nights by the fire, the enchanting tales of the Potluck Twelve. And the one who stole from them all and fled south forever into the night. "Your yarns. So this Tasman is real?"
Sierra nodded as they approached the checkpoint. "Shh," she said as they approached men in gray uniforms. "This is not the time nor place."
Skye stiffened as two men of the Glacier Guard approached, one on either side of the wagon. Chuffer snorted and backed away, almost pushing the back of the wagon into the mule cart behind them, until Sierra calmed him. Skye recognized the short tunics embroidered with the white crest of the Northland Glacier, the stiff leggings tucked into nailed glacier boots, although she has seen such garb just once before. Men in these same uniforms had taken her brother away.
"Good Morning," Sierra said, coolly.
"And you." The taller of the soldiers had a distinctly Northland accent that reminded Skye of her mother's. She noticed the weaponry hanging from his leather belt: an ice pick, a length of thin braided rope and a short blade. He must be a climber, a Sledder maybe like her brother. "Where do you ride from this day?"
Sierra appraised him. "Top Notch."
The tall guard feigned a questioning look to the other soldier.
"Here in the Middlelands, at the base of the Tear Drop Lake," the shorter man explained to his superior. "A handful of families raise mountain goats and hunt moose along the lake. There is a grain mill, hunting lodge not much else. A forsaken place."
"Tear Drop Lake," the tall soldier said. "Good Sledding up there, I hear."
The short soldier was armed with only a long pike, Skye saw, although a wicked looking knife was strapped to his waist and a shield and broadsword were propped against the bridge abutment. He had the look of a bully about him, Skye thought warily.
"What is your purpose here?" he demanded as he began swatting his pole at the bags and bundles.
"We've come to sell our garments and yarns." Sierra turned in alarm as he stuck his pike into a bag of fleece. "Take care," she warned. "You'll spoil the roving."
"We come every year," Skye interrupted, anger beginning to rise in her breast. She watched as the taller guard unlatched the top of one of the twig baskets spilling hanks of lavender and blue yarn. He jumped back as if stung.
"Shards!" he swore.
"It is not what you think," Sierra said, ever calm.
Skye gathered the stray yarns. "Why do you spit oaths and spill yarns?"
The shorter guard flicked a hank away with the tip of his pike. "They're not crystal dyed?" he asked slyly. "I heard you people up in the notch do things your own way. Sledding and moose hunting disguised as Lowlander guides."
Sierra gave him a sharp glance but said nothing.
"You know my brother Warren?" Skye blurted out. Her eyes turned from the shorter soldier to search the face of the taller guard. She sensed he was not as mean spirited as his companion. And he was out of place. A foreigner. "Do you have any word?" she asked. "Is he alive?"
"We know of him," the taller guard said before the shorter one cut him off.
"Yes, the great deserter." He gave a cruel laugh. "Must be you've not heard magic's forbidden. Using crystals are forbidden." He flicked a hank of yarn with the tip of his pike and his eyes narrowed at Sierra. "You could go to the darkest chamber of the Burnt Caves for this."
"They are not crystal dyed at all," Skye said hotly. "And they have no magic." She picked up a skein of yarn and shook it at him. "Watch closely. Nothing happens."
"Our goats drink from the freshets spilling from the Teardrop," Sierra explained, stilling her daughter's hand with her own. "There the glacier waters are most pure. Some ponds are blue and purple, even pink from the glacier flour. It tinges the locks of hair on the mountain goat and colors at the crimp that is all." She pulled her traveling cloak tighter, eyes on the taller guard. "It is just natural dye, not magic."
"Natural dye, not magic," he repeated, under her spell.
Skye was growing warm in her cloak, whether from her anger or just sitting here in the balmy air before the bridge she did not know. She began to shrug out of her cloak, but again her mother's hand stayed her.
"I don't like it," the shorter guard murmured to the taller one. "What with the fires and him gone missing."
Skye began to sweat. Her mother's arm was like a vise. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
"Our shawls and sweaters are entered in the Goat to Garment contest. Let the judges decide," Sierra suggested, but it was not a question.
"Let the judges decide," the taller soldier echoed as the other guard gave him a quizzical look.
"Up at the top of the Lavender Rill," Sierra said, pointing down to the colorless water that thundered beneath the bridge, waiting until both guards looked down at the swollen river, "the water really is lavender."
"The judges decide, then." The shorter one agreed, lifting his pike to let them pass. Skye waited until they had safely crossed the bridge and passed under the arch of the fairgrounds. Above them flapped the blue and pink banners of the Middlemarch World's Fair, held the middle of March each year, signifying spring.
"Mother, I've seen you do that before." Skye said softly, looking ahead. Soldiers were everywhere she could see, dotting the sodden grounds with short tunics of gray. These were simple foot soldiers, she could see with short swords or knives strapped to their belts, pikes in hand. She saw no others dressed for climbing or sledding like the taller guard who had stopped them at the bridge.
"Do what?" Sierra brought the wagon to a halt before the grand hall, flags flying in the breeze. She smiled, knowing their empty stall stood within, waiting to be stocked with all manner of garments and yarns as it had these past twenty years.
"Get people to do what you want," Skye said serenely. "Is that part of the magic? I know when Father wears his Potluck hat—" She broke off, not wanting to reveal the conversation of this morning. "Well things just seem a bit different."
Sierra shrugged. "I just used a little power of persuasion." She paused. "It is a womanly ploy."
"But I grew so warm," Skye complained, shedding her outer garments at last, "And you wouldn't let me take of my cloak. I could not speak."
"Well," Sierra laughed, laying her cloak aside as well. "There is a little magic simmering in the dye crystals then?"
"You've known all along," Skye accused her, as they got down from the wagon and began unloading their bundles. "There was more to that Potluck than yarns!"
Sierra took her precious bundle of garments, while Skye strapped on the first of the twig baskets. "Yes there was," she said at last.
"You've known forever."
"I've known since my days at the Potluck," Sierra admitted. "But that meant nothing until now. If anything ever were to happen to me, that is where you'll go. Promise me."
"But what of Father?" Skye asked. "And the farm?"
"There will be naught he can do," Sierra said. "It will be too late. There is a yarn shop in Border Town called Potluck Yarn along the main thoroughfare of Merchant's Pass. Go to the side door through the herb garden. Ask for Aubergine."
"Aubergine," Skye breathed. "So she is real, too. Must be they all are."
"She will know you," Sierra said. "Now let's go inside and see who is about."
Inside the dim of the tent, the air was rich with the smell of lanolin and sheep's wool, fresh bread and eucalyptus soap. Skye breathed deep listening to the festive trill of flutes and pipes from one of the booths.
"Katarina!" She called, spying her friend at their bread stall just inside the east entrance. The familiar small banner strung over their table proclaimed Mill on the Rill, with the emblem of a stone hut straddling a lavender river.
The dark haired girl looked up and wiped her floury hands on her gaudy show apron and came around the counter to hug Skye. She smelled of rye and honeyed oats.
"Skye," she breathed into Skye's neck. And then stepped back. "How have you fared? I have been so worried since the soldiers—" she trailed off, glancing at the line of buyers before their table. "Oh, let me cut you a slice of fresh bread."
Skye glanced at Sierra, deep in conversation with Katerina's mother, who was weighing sacks of milled grain for a waiting farmer's wife. "But you're so busy, already!"
"I know," Katerina, plopped a half dozen tarts onto a scrap of paper and twisted it loosely before handing it across the counter to a guardsman. "Those soldiers, they are ravenous. And they have Northland silver." She showed Skye the newly minted coins with the stamp of the glacier on one side.
"But aren't you afraid?" Skye asked, accepting a slice of bread spread thick with honey from her friend. "They are everywhere."
Katerina shrugged. "They have to eat." She paused. "You heard about Averill?"
"Your grandfather told us." Skye nodded hungrily, demolishing the bread, realizing she hadn't eaten since dawn.
"He wanted to go, that is the truth." Katerina said. "He could not wait to leave, not since father died."
Skye recalled the terrible accident was it four or five years ago now? The great grinding millstone that split and heaved to the ground, the crushing blow.
"He has been gone only a fortnight," Katerina shrugged. "Maybe still in training at the great garrison in the Northland, who knows?"
"We've heard no word from Warren," Skye mentioned. "But did you see that guard at the crossing, dressed as a Sledder? He seemed to know something. And he wasn't from around here."
"Lots of folk aren't from around here," Katerina shook her head, going to wait on another customer. "We're at the World's Fair. I've seen Northlanders, Middlelanders, folk from the West, and East."
"Tall," Skye murmured about the Sledder. "He seemed to know more than he was saying. I thought maybe he knew something about Warren."
"Did you get into trouble for your yarns?" Katrina asked, distracted as she turned to slice more bread. "They have been throwing people out of the fair left and right for supposed use of magic."
"That's ridiculous," Skye said, with growing worry for her shawl.
Sierra turned to Skye with a weary smile. "Come, we must let these ladies to their work and get to ours."
As they headed down the center aisle toward their stall, Sierra murmured, "Trouble is brewing. Be watchful of the soldiers."
As they approached their spot, they saw that the booth to the right which sold buttons and clasps handcrafted of metal and wood, shell and bone, was half set up, but the booth on the other side which usually sold herbal remedies stood empty.
"Chloe," Sierra greeted the robust button lady. "All is well with you?"
"Sierra." Smiling, Chloe looked up from arranging cards of matched buttons. "Yes, and you? I wondered if you would show this day."
"Nothing could keep us away," Skye insisted with a glance toward the empty booth. "Now where is Esmeralde?"
"Never showed," Chloe said. "And every year she is here before me, already selling herbs and teas while I set up. So many have been by looking for her." She lowered her voice. "Not all of them friends."
"Oh, mother, she is so old," Skye ventured. "You don't think she died?"
Sierra's eyes flashed. "She did not die. Soldiers, too?" she asked Chloe.
The plump woman nodded slowly. "Word is she's afraid of being arrested for using magic in those colored syrups of hers. Some says she was one of those potluckers way back."
"Northland soldiers would arrest her for selling cough medicine," Sierra shook her head, covering their table with a cloth and stowing her precious bundle underneath. "These are strange times."
They had almost finished unloading the wagon when the trumpets sounded and they heard the announcement for goat to garment.
"Should I enter my shawl?" Skye asked as they hurried back to their stall, soldiers passing them to the right and others walking behind. There, the suri lace shawl lay airing across several baskets of yarn.
"Of course," her mother lifted the featherweight garment tinged turquoise and amethyst. "It is your winter's work. Take it to the judge's stand."
"They will say it is crystal dyed," Skye whispered.
"You will just explain," Sierra said. "Everything will be fine."
Skye ran from the stall as soldiers turned down the main aisle. She looked up in alarm, recognizing the short one from the bridge, but not the Sledder.
As she waited in line to enter her shawl, she saw that in addition to entries for the Goat to Garment, the tables were already loaded with entries for the Sheep to Shawl, the Moose to Mittens, and the Bear to Blanket. Her breath caught in her throat. None of the projects were shaded as her own. She was about to leave when abruptly, it was her turn to stand before the judge. Perched behind the table heaped with garments, he gazed at her expectantly from under snowy eyebrows.
"I would like to enter the Goat to Garment competition," she faltered, laying her shawl across the others.
"Nicely knit," the old man admitted, fingering the intricate fairisle pattern. "But crystal dyes are forbidden, under the new guidelines. We cannot qualify you under the fair rules."
"The yarn is not crystal dyed, it is natural," Skye protested. "Our goats drink from the colored freshets below the Teardrop Lake, and their locks keep the color. Have you heard of the Lavender Rill? It flows right by our house and the water really is purple."
I have never heard of it," the judge said. He turned to another. "Have you heard of naturally dyed fleeces, pink and blue?"
"I have heard," the other man said, giving the garment a fearful glance over the top of his spectacles. "It is an old woman's tale. Take the shawl and hide it well," he admonished Skye, "before you are thrown out of the fair."
"But last year—" Skye began.
The first judge raised his hand. "There is nothing that likens this year to the last," he said, not unkindly. "Do you not see the soldiers and smell the fetid smoke in the air? The Middlelands have fallen under the rule of the Northland Guard, we just do not know it yet."
"Will not admit it is more likely," the other man agreed with a sage nod. "Times will get worse before they get better. Some say soon you will see signs: Do not drink the water. For fear of pestilence and death. Do not drink the water!" He pushed his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose and shooed Skye away with a wave of a gnarled hand. "Now go."
Skye's eyes stung with tears as she made her way back to the main tent. One glance at the show table had told her that her patterned shawl was easily the best-executed garment in the competition and most original. Skye had designed the motif from the web of fine lined frost flowers that had decorated the windowpanes winter mornings a design that she liked to call Elfin Lace. Lost in her own disappointment, she failed to notice the commotion at the east entrance of the main tent. Katarina stood outside and pulled her into the bread stall as soon as she entered the building.
"Katarina," she said woodenly. "They disqualified my shawl. They said it looks like magic."
"Skye," Katerina hissed as they hunkered under the table. "The soldier's have taken your mother. They're looking for you!"
"What?" Skye cried in alarm, hitting her head on the underside of the table. "This day can get no stranger."
"Shh," her friend cautioned. "They say Sierra uses magic. They say she is one of the potluck twelve from the days of old."
"She worked at a yarn store at the Northland border when she was young, that is all." Skye said stubbornly, remembering her mother's earlier admission. "Where are they taking her?'
"To the Northlands most likely," Katerina said. "Bordertown maybe. Nobody really knows."
Katerina's mother lifted the cloth. "Shh," she said. "Soldiers."
The girls watched nailed boots approach. They were so close, Skye could touch one. Then the questions began. Who was Sierra, where was Skye. Where were they from? Katarina's mother offered frightened one word answers until finally the boots steps away.
The tablecloth lifted and the girls stumbled out into the dim light. Katarina's mother took Skye's shoulders. "You must go," she said, "before they find you."
"But where?" Skye asked with terror. "I am naught but a girl. Where would I go?"
"Home to the Notch?" The older woman asked. "To your father? Mayhap he will know the right course."
Skye shook her head tearfully. "No," she said quietly, remembering the promise she had made her mother just hours earlier. "He would not." She untied her show apron and wiped her face with the edge of it. "I must follow my mother to the Northlands."
"How? You cannot walk all that way. And the soldiers will find you with the wagon." Katarina began to cry. "Skye I fear I will never see you again."
"Nor I you," Skye said miserably. "Nor I you." She turned to Katerina's mother. "Will you unhitch the ponies? I will ride one and lead the other until I find my mother."
Moments later, Skye stole silently to the side entrance, the hood of her traveling cloak pulled low. Wooden stools held back the great canvas tent flap and on one of them sat the heavy figure of Chloe the button lady.
"I managed to save these," Chloe said with a grunt, pulling out Sierra's precious bundle of felted garments. "The soldiers took all else."
Skye took the knotted rucksack and hugged it to her chest. "Did they say anything? What did they say?"
"She is to be held for misusing magic. They will take her to the burnt part of the Crystal Caves." Chloe frowned. "I do not know what any of that means, do you?"
"The Burnt Caves," Skye nodded. "Yes I've heard of them. I have listened to her yarns. I believe them."
"Well then," Chloe patted the rucksack. "Your mother said: let nothing happen to these, no matter what." She gazed at Skye. "They took her cloak away. They said it was magic." She narrowed her eyes. "Sierra was a potlucker, too, wasn't she?"
Skye hugged the bundle to her chest, saying nothing.
Muttering, Chloe heaved herself to her feet. "All these years, set up beside two of the twelve and I never knew it."
Riding Chuffer and leading his mate Shep, Skye stole through the maze of tents staked behind the fairgrounds. Scavenging what little she could carry from the wagon, she had fashioned pack straps from Shep's harness and now Sierra's rucksack and Skye's split twig baskets hung from either side of the pony's broad back.
Behind her, the midday fair was well under way. Cheers rose over the bleachers as the sheep dog trials began and from the mead tent the strains of lute and flute were about to give way to music and afternoon revelry, but all was nothing but a dull roar to Skye whose only thought was to how to pass unseen and escape the grounds to rescue her mother. Breaking away from the last row of sheltering tents, she came upon the river rushing past the far side of the camp grounds, the same River Runne she her mother had crossed with the wagon this morning over the high expansion bridge. But that was guarded on both ends and she had little hope of passing over it without being stopped. Riding slowly along the river's edge she scanned the foaming water for a way to ford but it looked impossible. Spring run off had swelled the river such that it looked too fast and deep for small mountain ponies, even ones as sure footed and hardy as Chuffer and Shep. Few rocks showed above the water and even they looked too slick to use for stepping stones. Discouraged, Skye turned away from the raging river's edge to find herself facing the tall soldier she had met at the bridge this morning.
"Where are you going?" he asked softly.
Skye looked about wildly but there were no others, just he. "You've been following me!"
"It wasn't hard, if that's what you're thinking," he said with a smile. "That cloak may able to you pass unseen, but those two fat ponies are less easily hidden."
"What do you want?" Skye asked, backing Chuffer away from the soldier. She was too close to the river's edge and as Chuffer backed into Shep, she saw that the pack pony could easily slip over the muddy embankment and into the slick muck along the water. "Leave me be," she hissed, trying to urge Chuffer past. "Don't follow me."
"You have the wrong idea," the soldier said, his palms out showing no weapons. "I am a friend, an unlikely ally."
"You are neither." Skye strained at Shep's tether, but it was too late, he was sliding over the edge and if she held on, he would take her with him. She began to sweat inside her cloak. "Get up, Shep," she urged. "Get up!"
The tall soldier caught at Shep's halter but missed just as the lead slipped through Skye's hand. Sliding through the mud he went down the embankment after the pony. For a fleeting instant Skye thought to escape with Chuffer but she could think only of the rucksack and the garments within strapped to Shep's back, with Chloe's admonishment to let nothing happen to them and so remained rooted.
What did the soldier mean about her traveling cloak, she wondered? Because there was another in the rucksack, she had seen Sierra pack it. Which was probably good—Sierra would need it now that the soldiers had taken hers away.
As she watched the tall soldier flail in the mud as he led Shep up the embankment, she almost wanted to laugh. She had never passed unseen in all of her life. She opened her mouth, but the laughter died in her throat as she realized her self-deception. She had passed unseen, more than once; only she had not realized it. The memories came back to her like a dream. She recalled as a young child, taking her mother's fresh baked bread to the sleep out for the returning moose hunters and wearing her traveling cloak, a miniature of the one she wore now. How she startled the men appeared--for they had already returned from the hunt empty handed--once she took off the garment inside the lodge and how uneasy they were toward the small girl sneaking upon grown men who hunted the most elusive moose in all the lands. She took the cloak off because she was too hot. It made her feel unbearably warm. Like now.
And there was another time, she remembered. Chancing upon her friend Katarina at the mill, while Sierra visited with Katerina's mother upstairs in the bread kitchen, how she stood in the doorway waiting for Katarina to notice her, but it was loud with the wheel grinding and Katarina never looked over. Downstairs was hot with the yeasty smell of ground wheat and rye, almost too hot for her traveling cloak. Katarina's brother Averill passed by with a sack of grain and still neither one of them saw her. She decided to sneak over and tap Katarina on the arm, to surprise her. But instead her cloak slipped off her shoulders and Katerina's eyes lit up as she beckoned her friend to a pile of grain sacks next to the bins. "Skye, come see! Poppy had her kittens!"
Skye watched as the tall soldier led her pony safely up the bank away from the river.
"Now tell me what happened," he said, dirty and out of breath. "Where are you going and where is you mother?"
"Don't you know?" Skye asked, curious now, no longer angry. "Some of your men—your so called Northland Guard took her away to who knows where because they say she uses magic."
"They are not my guard," the soldier said, thrusting Shep's tether into her hands. "I didn't know," he said. "I am not from around here."
"Your clothes," Skye reasoned, heat rising in her face. "Your accent. You're a Sledder from the North, aren't you?"
When he looked at her, his eyes were glacier blue. "I'm Niles, and if you are Emerald Skye, I'm a friend of your brother's."
"I knew it," Skye said, flush with the familiar heat that only her traveling cloak offered. "I knew it when I saw you."
"And I you. Warren's spoken of you oft enough." Niles smiled. "He never said you were pretty."
Skye grew even redder. "Why did you act that way at the bridge?"
"Maynard, he's trouble," Niles said of the short soldier. "He fears anything to do with magic, crystal or other. And I've been in more than enough trouble already to want to cross him. He is dying to report me and draw a new partner."
"They're a small minded lot here in the Middlelands," Skye explained. "Sometimes narrow valleys make for a narrow vision. At the Top of the Notch you can see for miles."
"How could Maynard like me?" Niles agreed, with a laugh. "I'm from the North."
Skye threw back the hood of her traveling cloak and loosened the tie. "We got past you on the bridge because of our cloaks, didn't we? Mother's crystal dyed cloaks. But we did not have the power to pass unseen, just the power of persuasion."
"One in the same if rightly used," Niles said. "Your mother let us see what she wanted us to see: a mother and daughter with yarns and fibers to sell at a fair."
Skye nodded. "Maybe there is such thing as magic."
Niles nodded. "More than you want to know," he said soberly. "And most of it not used for much good."
She gazed at Niles. "I must find my mother."
"And I your brother," Niles said. "What Maynard said is true. No one has seen him. He is called a deserter."
"Warren?" Skye gave him a troubled look. "He could desert no one. He does not have that trait within him."
"Mayhap not," Niles agreed with a shrug. "But he's gone. He slipped out of our unit after a battle between the Lowlanders and a Middleland detachment in the foothills beneath the Crystal Caves. We watched from above with our sleds and could do nothing. After that, he left without saying a word."
"That's not like him," Skye argued hotly. "It doesn't sound like him at all. He must have a reason."
"When I reported back to the garrison at Bordertown, no one had seen him for days," Niles said. "Our detail was broken up and we all were reassigned lest there be more traitors and deserters among us. So now I am here." He wiped sweat from his brow. "It's too warm down here."
"We need to find him," Skye said. "And my mother. Come with me!"
Niles shook his head. "Then I would be named a deserter, too. The best way for me to help is to stay with the army. I'll hear more that way. Mayhap I'll see something." He scanned the fairgrounds and then the sun, no longer high in the sky, "You need to go. Quickly and alone."
Skye nodded sadly. "How am I ever going to ford this river?
"There is only one way," Niles said. "Come, let's get you across that bridge."
"The soldiers will see me," Skye argued. "You said yourself I can't pass unseen with mountain ponies."
"No worries," Nile smiled. "This soldier will lead you. I may not hail from around here, but I do know now to ride a mountain horse. Does this pack pony have a bridle?"
"In the saddle bag." Skye said.
She watched as deftly Niles fitted Shep's bridle and swung a long leg across his back. He looked so tall for the squat pony, it made Skye laugh.
Ignoring her, Niles flashed a bright smile and kicked Shep into a tolting trot. "Let's ride."