THE BLACKBERRY WITCH: chapter 14

All chapters of The Blackberry Witch

XIV. Uprising

Thomas stared from the bowl of stew in his lap to the knife on his knee to the stern and unsmiling amphibian face of three-eyed Brak and back to the stew. The outside of the bowl had dripped a ring onto the legs of his trousers, wet from condensation in the little cave and from the slippery-but-sure spindly fingers of Thomas’s Vathca host. It smelled delicious, especially to Thomas’s growling stomach. He looked back up at Brak.

“Eat first, human boy,” said Brak, gesturing, a few stray droplets flying from his fingertips and hissing in the fire. The three-eyed frog-creature stoked it with a small metal implement, added a few long strips of bark as kindling, and served himself a steaming bowl. He then hunched next to Thomas, back against the wall, still crouching instead of sitting.

“You seem perplexed,” Brak continued, slurping from his bowl. “Take a few bites, at least, so that you do not faint midway through your story. And when you have finished the tale, then I will relate to you the story of my own woes at the crooked hands of the violet witch.”

Thomas took a sip of the stew. It was hot and herbed and heavenly. He gulped down large mouthfuls, then used the knife to pierce a chunk of the strange brownish-purple vegetable. He took a tentative bite. It was chewy, soft, with a taste like wood and onions. He finished it off and drank from the bowl again.

“Bekroot,” said Brak, ladling more stew into both bowls. “Hearty if unappetizing. Strong for the bones and sleek for the muscles.”

“I like the taste,” Thomas said, trying another chunk.

Brak nodded, as though those words were the answer to some great question. He slurped down some more of the stew.

With his immediate and gnawing hunger now at bay for at least a few minutes, Thomas set his bowl and the knife aside. He wiped his fingers off on his trousers. “I came upon the witch by accident,” he began, “when I was picking blackberries on Wednesday. I’d gone into the—”

“What is Wednesday?” interrupted Brak, blinking his center and left eyes.

“Wednesday? It’s . . .” Thomas paused for a moment, unsure how to explain. “It’s one of the seven days in a week. Today’s Saturday, I think—or it will be when the sun’s up.”

“Hmm,” said Brak. “I did not know the names of days. Humans have cleverer minds than I thought, it seems. When was the day named Wednesday?”

“Three days ago,” replied Thomas. The realization that he’d nearly reached the halfway point to his deadline with the witch turned the hot stew cold in his stomach. He gulped down another mouthful to wash away the sick feeling and pressed on with his story. “So three days ago,” he said, wiping his mouth, “I was picking blackberries in the hills, and I saw one that was bigger than any I’d ever seen  . . .”

Thomas carried on with the story of his encounter with the witch and Eleanor’s abduction. Brak interrupted infrequently with small queries about the details of the tale or, more commonly, about the phrases Thomas used to describe the events. For the most part, however, the Vathca crouched against the wall and slurped bowl after bowl of the simmering stew and let Thomas recount his woes.

“ . . . and so we decided not to go into the Grimgrove after dark, and we fell asleep on the shoreline,” Thomas concluded at last. “When I woke up, I was being paddled down the river by—well, by one of your kin, I assume. And that brings us here, I guess.”

Brak had a grave look on his face. “I see your travail,” he said slowly, setting his empty bowl aside. “It is nearly as terrible as my own. You would have been most distraught, I think, if I had eaten you and you hadn’t been able to save your sister from the witch.”

Thomas nodded. He was feeling sleepy now that the stew had settled and his erstwhile captor had suggested, if not actually said, that he no longer meant Thomas any harm. Thomas tried to think back to his last full night of sleep—the last time he’d slumbered in a proper bed with blankets and pillows and moonlight through a window to dapple his cheek. This cave was certainly no proper place for sleep, but the fire looked cheerier now than before, and the boy was certain he could find something soft in Brak’s piles and boxes upon which to lay his head to rest.

Thomas was about to suggest as much when the three-eyed Vathca spoke again. “I came upon the violet witch some time ago,” he said slowly. “Many, many Wednesdays and Saturdays ago, by the reckoning of human boys, I think. So long ago that the river is new and the trees are old. I was a young thing then and spry; sleek and lithe and comely; a child of my people and welcomed. Beloved, no, not that: but welcomed. I was not an outcast.

“I was splashing in a pond with my playmates, my brood-friends, when the witch came to me. She presented herself fair and beautiful by the eyes of the Vathca—skin glistening like the dusk on the lake, long-limbed and agile, her hair white and straight and sharp.

“She differed from my kind only in her eyes. They were two and they were violet, like the night sky before nightfall.” Brak gave Thomas a look and a blink of his right and center eyes. “It was a guise meant to trick, of course. When she appeared to you, was she beautiful to behold?”

Thomas gave it some thought. “I suppose,” he said. “White skin like a statue, black hair like a waterfall, and a lovely embroidered dress. But her eyes were black; it was her dress that was violet. I wouldn’t have called her beautiful as much as mysterious.”

Brak rubbed his brow. “Sometimes they are the same,” he said. “It seems the witch favors violet however she can display it. And the truth of her nature, as ever, lies within her eyes. I should have known as much. But I was a young thing and unwise. My playmates scattered at her coming; I stayed, curious, interested in this beautiful creature who looked so much like the others I had seen but who only had two eyes.

“The witch voiced no shadow of a reason for her actions. She did not accuse me of thievery or malice or misdeed. Instead she drew near and gripped me by the nape and thrust me into the pond.” Brak splayed his webbed right hand for Thomas to see a long, thin scar that puckered the skin between the second and third fingers. “I struck myself upon a sharp rock at the pond-bed in my struggle to escape, but the witch was too strong. The water was cold and dark and I soon began to gasp my last.

“The witch yanked me from the water mere moments before it filled me up, gills or no. I spluttered on the shoreline where she tossed me. No longer did she appear pleasant to the eye; now she stared with sunfire in her eyes and spoke with cold metal on her tongue. She cursed me then, commanded the waters to take and shape me into something hideous. They rose up like snakes and covered my face. When they receded, the witch was gone, and I was left as you see me now.”

Brak gestured to his face. “You may not see me as my kin, but assuredly I am a twisted wreck of the witch’s dark designs. Never did she give reason or justification for her actions. I do not even think she hated me. She seemed to curse me of a whim. And I am sure that my survival was a delight to her, for I have been an outcast since that moment, reviled by my kind and all others, forced into thievery and shadows.

“I would like nothing more than to find the violet witch and slice her up into little strips and eat her until she is gone and throw her bones into the bog. Perhaps that will return my features to their rightful order; perhaps not. But I will have my just revenge.”

They sat in silence for many moments. Thomas cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry, Brak. You didn’t deserve that, just like Eleanor didn’t deserve to be kidnapped.”

“Nor did you deserve her punishment,” Brak said quietly. “Even unwitting thievery is not so great a crime as that. The witch is a callous creature, a monster more than many. What will you do when you collect your four items and return them to her?”

Thomas stared into the fire. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just want to get Eleanor back. I’d like to have revenge or justice for the witch as well, but saving my sister is more important. Besides, I don’t know if I can do anything to the witch. I’ve been powerless to stop her so far.”

“What about your companions? Can they not attack the violet witch at your side?”

“They’ll certainly try,” Thomas said with a smile. “They are brave, though in different ways. But neither of them has magic. I don’t think the three of us can stop the witch.”

“Well,” said Brak, rising to his full height. “I have no magic, but if I meet the violet witch a third time, that will not stop me from claiming what is mine. I will take what she has stolen from me and more besides.”

“The third time?” Thomas asked, while Brak turned to the fire and stoked it with a long stick. “You mean you encountered the witch a second time?”

“Ah.” Brak looked back at Thomas, blinked with all three eyes. “Yes. I have forgotten that part of my story, perhaps in my anger at the curse. The second time I met the witch was not a close encounter; I only saw her from a distance. And I was unable to reach her before she vanished again. But perhaps this story too will help you, human boy.”

The Vathca crouched back against the wall, leaning his head back on the rock with eyes closed. With his wet webbed right hand he traced little lines in the dust of the cave floor, seemingly aimless scribbles. When he spoke, his voice was softer than before, and he kept all three eyes closed.

“The second time I met the witch was many days after the first and many days ago still. I had become an outcast but was not yet reduced to the lowly state in which you see me now; my kin tolerated my occasional presence and raised little fuss if a trout or a hummingbird went missing from their Waspan-nights.

“I spent much of my days and nights roving beyond the traditional grounds of the Vathca. Even a few times I went beyond the waters and trees of the Grimgrove into places we tread little for fear of humans or bears or larger beasts. One day, as I was crossing back into the Grimgrove, I became enamored of the sunfire that washed the sky in metal-red and flower-yellow, and I floated slowly upon my back along the stream toward the den I was using to sleep and shelter.”

The black-skinned frog-thing cracked open his central eye for a brief moment. “You have surely seen the prowess of the Vathca in swimming, yes, human boy? Even the fishes are not so swift.”

“Aye,” said Thomas, settling in more comfortably against the cave wall. “You seem to swim better than birds can fly.”

“Indeed,” said Brak, closing his eye once more, “and I the chiefest among my kin, my deformities and aberrations notwithstanding. Once I competed in great games among my kind, winning prizes and the finest morsels of victory; but this is not that story but another.

“While I floated denward, idling and enjoying the setting sun, my view was blocked for a moment by a silhouette of a bird far above. I had never seen its shape before, and I swiveled in the stream to follow its flight. The bird looked to be an eagle or similar, a large bird and majestic, glittering in golden sunfire and swooping proudly above the treetops of the Grimgrove. I watched the bird circle for several minutes, and then it dropped into the shadows of the trees.

“I surmised that the golden eagle had dropped into its eyrie to roost the night away. I thought to follow: but the darkness of the Grimgrove is treacherous, as you have said, even to my kind, and I knew not the region wherein the golden eagle had disappeared. So I paddled quickly to my den and ate my meager meal of crickets and sparrowflesh and slept in bright anticipation of seeking out the golden eagle when the sun returned to the sky.

“I watched the blue and gray and pink above for three more days before I caught another afternoon’s glimpse of the proud bird and his gold-tipped wings. That day, I crept upon the shores of the river and tracked his flight through the trees to watch where he made his nest. I watched him descend until I was sure I had the right tree, the very branch. It was a tall and sturdy tree of red wood and silver-patched bark, of great spiked leaves and plump acorns. It seemed to suit the golden eagle.

“I left and returned another morning soon after, creeping up the side of a nearby red-and-silver tree to wait for the proud golden eagle. I am not nearly so adept with climbing bark-skinned trees, but I safely perched opposite the golden eagle’s nest and sat in shadows to wait.

“The golden eagle appeared that afternoon, his wings alight with fire from the red-gold sun. He gripped the branch with sure talons and swiveled his head left and right to survey the forest around him. His eyrie was not in the tallest of the trees; sunlight and treeshadow surrounded him, half illuminating, half concealing. He was beautiful: I wanted a closer look.

“I tried to creep along the branch to see him better, but slick Vathca hands are not meant for bark or smooth wood, and I slipped and fell. The fall was higher than the rumble of water outside my cave”—Brak inclined his head toward the velvet night at the mouth of the cave and the waterfall beyond—“and there was no safe pool to cradle my bones when I landed. I surely was dead.

“But the golden eagle saw me fall and leapt to my rescue. He gripped my shoulder and my upper leg in his sharp talons and yanked me away from the shadows of the Grimgrove and carried me back to his eyrie, where he deposited me roughly and alive in a jumble of leaves and eggshells and small crunchy bones. I righted myself and blinked the leaf-dust from my three eyes and looked up at the golden eagle on his proud branch.”

Brak fell silent a moment, blinking his eyes in turn. “While I waited for him to return, earlier, I pondered what to do with him. He was beautiful. I thought I would snatch his feathers and use them for my bed. I thought I would fashion his talons into clever tools. I thought I would eat his golden flesh and that it would give me strength. I thought perhaps I would fight and kill him and place his body in the pool so that the water would take him back into dirt. I thought that maybe I should take his bones somewhere high so that he could be near to the sun after he died.

“But then, later, after he saved me and I was crouched in his eyrie looking up at him, I decided not to kill or eat him. I would perhaps ask for a golden feather, but I would not do him harm, even if he wished me harm.” Brak gave Thomas a very serious three-eyed stare. “I am not the velvet witch. She takes without cause. I take only with need or want. And I realized I neither needed nor wanted to take anything from the golden eagle who saved me, except perhaps a beautiful feather.

“I think the golden eagle, when he saw me fall, wanted to eat me as well. But then, later, after he saved me and he was perched in his eyrie looking down at me, he must have decided not to kill or eat me. He regarded me with that curious look of all birds—all arched eyebrows and swift tilts of the head and a keen piercing gaze.

“So, instead, he spoke to me. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You are a frog-thing and I saved you from dying.’ And I tell you now truly, human boy, that I laughed with mirth at the eagle’s words, for it had been many Wednesdays since any had freely spoken to me without rancor. And I told the golden eagle so. ‘You saved me from dying and I thank you, beautiful golden eagle,’ I said. ‘I followed you to your nest because I wanted to see you more closely. I have no friends or kin, so I do not often share in beautiful things.’

“The golden eagle made a chirping noise that I later learned was a laugh of his own. ‘You are welcome to my nest and home and friendship,’ he told me. He was noble then and kind. He told me his name. We did become friends, and later roamed the Grimgrove together, by air and water, catching fishes and gathering nuts and sharing our time and talk.”

Brak made a noise that might have been a sigh. “We shared another thing, human boy—the hatred of the velvet witch. My friend told me about his own trouble with the witch. She had come to his people in the guise of a silver eagle with violet-tipped wings, had flattered them with serpent’s words and promised many treasures to them. One by one the golden eagles believed the witch and gave her their gathered hoards of trinkets and jewels and precious feathers. Then some of the golden eagles started hurting their kin, following the witch’s words to attack any who spoke her ill. Slowly a division spread among the golden eagles, ire growing like root-rot.

“My friend told me that he and some of his kin had decided to resist those who followed the violet witch. By the time we spoke of it, she had abandoned her pretense of appearing as a silver eagle and walked among them looked like a human woman. My friend spoke of the difficulty of injuring his fellows and friends. He was mournful and sad when we spoke.”

Again Brak stopped speaking. When he continued his story, his voice was strained. “I arrived at the bottom of my friend’s tree one morning and began climbing up to meet with him, but before I reached the eyrie I heard him calling warnings to me—wordless cries of worry and pain. I scrambled up to the nearest branch and looked up. I saw my friend grappling by talon and beak with a silver eagle with violet-tipped wings. Both were bloodied. My friend told me to flee and then he broke away from the violet witch and flew away. She followed him, nipping at his tail-feathers with her beak.

“I climbed up to the ravaged eyrie and watched them soar above the treetops until they disappeared beyond my sight, flying toward the heart of the Grimgrove. I thought about following, but I knew I would not catch up in time to help and that I would not find the violet witch without her consent. I also knew that, if my friend survived, he would seek me out of his own will. So I returned to my cave at the pool to wait.”

Brak blinked three heavy tears from his eyes. “I have waited a very long time for my friend the golden eagle, Thomas,” he said. “But I have not seen him yet. I have heard, by listening to the Vathca gossip during their Waspan-nights, that more and more of the golden eagles have been taken by the glamor of the violet witch. I have also heard that some of the golden eagles remain unbewitched and have sought refuge deep in the Grimgrove, in the Great Trees that are their true home. My friend told me of the Great Trees many times, promised to take me there if he could. I hope that he is there now. But I do not know.”

“Brak,” said Thomas, reaching out to place his hand upon the Vathca’s soft, wet arm. “I’m sorry about your friend. I hope he’s safe in the Great Trees. If there are other golden eagles there, maybe they protected him from the witch.”

Brak nodded. “Maybe. But I do not know.” He pushed himself away from the cave wall, still in a crouch. His voice was stronger now, his eyes dry. “I have heard one more thing that you will want to know, human boy. The golden eagles claim many treasures in their Great Trees, items they have collected or stolen or crafted. I have heard stories about a prized acorn that was dropped from the Greatest Tree when the first golden eagles were hatchlings and the Grimgrove was a cluster of saplings. They hold this acorn among their sacred possessions and have hidden it in the safest eyrie of the Great Trees. If these stories are true—”

“—then that’s the acorn that I’m supposed to collect for the witch!” Thomas finished. “Maybe she realized she can’t steal it from the golden eagles so easily, and she wants me to do it for her.” He let out a long, frowning breath. “That doesn’t sound possible.”

“No,” agreed Brak. “But friendship often makes impossible things seem possible. Perhaps if you help the golden eagles, they will help you by allowing you to take their acorn.”

Thomas nodded. “But how do I help the golden eagles? I can’t fight off the witch by myself.”

Brak straightened up a little. “Not by yourself, no. But you are not by yourself. You have several friends, yes? You just need to find them and they will help you. And, human boy, I will help you also.” He gave Thomas an expression that mimicked a smile. “And I am an outcast from my kin, my former friends, but even so I believe that they will help you, though they may not realize that is what they are doing. I have a few ideas about how to make them help you.”

“Really?” Thomas scrambled up from his seat. “You’ll help me, Brak?”

“Yes. But listen, human boy—do you hear the splashing?”

Thomas listened intently. Outside, beyond the cave, in the pool at the base of the waterfall, he could hear splashing: soft and rhythmic, almost like music.

“That is the waking of the Melusi, the winged fish-women of the pool. They will soon begin to swim down the river in flight from the sun. When the splashing has stopped, we must leave the cave. I have a plan, and we will not have much time after the Melusi leave before the Vathca awaken from the Waspan. In that brief time, we must find your friends and enact my plan. Are we agreed?”

Thomas nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you, Brak.”

“Yes,” said the three-eyed creature. “Take what you need from my cave, human boy, and be prepared for flight and cunning and blood. We will probably die before the sun is gone from the day.” Brak tilted his head to one side and blinked. “But maybe not.”

#

Thomas soon learned that Brak’s plan was both audaciously dangerous and startlingly simple.

When the splashing of the Melusi stopped, Thomas and Brak leapt from the cave’s mouth and darted along the muddy shoreline. The three-eyed creature made little sound as he loped through the dirt and the brush, reaching down now and then to steady his gait with a webbed hand. Thomas, for his part, tried to keep quiet while balancing his new belongings in the rucksack over his shoulder. He’d taken from Brak’s cave whatever he thought might be useful: a stone knife, a length of rope, a wooden box, flint, a bent metal disk, and a bunch of carrots. The leafy tops of the carrots tickled his cheek while he ran, hunched over to duck beneath low branches and stay out of sight.

Thomas had wanted to catch a glimpse of the Melusi in the pool, or even to get a look at his surroundings and better acquaint himself with Brak’s cave and pool. But he only managed a glimpse of the waterfall thundering down across the pool before Brak was gone into the trees and Thomas lagging behind, so the boy turned his every attention toward keeping pace.

The first step of the plan, Brak had explained, was to reunite Thomas with his companions. Since neither the Vathca nor the boy could fly, they decided to start with Cathán Caolán, the doughty First Captain of the Thistledown Kingdom, whom Thomas sorely missed.

Thomas had asked, while waiting in the cave for the Melusi’s flight, how they might track down a small mouse in the darkness of the Grimgrove. Brak had responded by sniffing Thomas’s clothes and hands, his nostrils mere slits in his black and slippery face.

“I will find the mouse,” he said. “I am deformed, not useless.”

And so Thomas found himself leaping logs and shouldering past nosy ferns and trying to keep his footing on wild ground while the keen-scented Vathca trailed the Mouse Knight.

They ran until Thomas was sure he could run no farther and he gasped to a halt. To Thomas’s good fortune, at that moment Brak paused his searching and held up a webbed hand to ward Thomas.

“Close now,” said the Vathca. “Close as I can track a living thing. Call your friend, human boy.”

“Cathán!” shouted Thomas, his voice faint with panting. “Cathán, if you’re here, we—”

Brak let out a hiss and a gurgling noise of anger or pain. Thomas looked to see the Vathca pulling a small splinter from his shoulder and glaring at it—a tiny dart from a tiny bow.

Another arrow blossomed in the back of the three-eyed creature’s hand, and he made another noise, a pipe-like sound of clear anger. Thomas heard a small rustle in the bushes to his left.

“Wait!” the boy cried out, spinning around. He saw a flash of gray-brown in the air at the height of his face. Impulsively, Thomas flashed out a hand and snatched the flying shape in caged fingers. Something poked the inside of his palm; Thomas gritted his teeth and lifted his hand to his face and opened his fingers.

“Friend Thomas!” cried Cathán the Mouse Knight. His joyous expression was undercut by the realization that his sword was sticking out of Thomas’s palm. Cathán squeaked anxiously and plucked the sword free, stanching the droplet of blood with a tiny soft paw.

“Cathán!” Thomas returned, bothered not at all by the pinprick. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“And I you, my valiant friend.” The Mouse Knight squeaked again, happier, and darted a tight circle on Thomas’s palm. “I saw you taken from the feast of the frog-things but not what happened after. Through the night I have battled many dark things within the cursèd Grimgrove; but never did I lose hope of our reunion in safety. I am sure that you as well have battled many dangers—ever bravely!”

Cathán turned now to peer through Thomas’s fingers at Brak, who remained a few paces distant, grasping two arrows between his webbed fingers.

“A defeated foe?” asked the Mouse Knight, whiskers twitching. “A captive, perhaps, or an informant?”

“A new friend,” Thomas told him, “and an ally against the witch.” Quickly he related what had transpired since his awakening on the river-plank and a shortened version of Brak’s story about the golden eagles and the violet witch. “We’ve got to gather Avery,” Thomas said in closing. “And then Brak has a plan to help the eagles and get the acorn at once.”

“A thrilling tale,” Cathán proclaimed. He scampered down Thomas’s arm and trouser-leg and stood before Brak. “I thank you, fearsome creature and friend, for your actions toward mine own dear companion and his safety and need. We will carry out whatever bold plan you have conceived, that we might all gain victory and glory this day.”

Brak crouched down to closely peer at the Mouse Knight. “Take these back, then,” he said, handing the arrows over. “I don’t care for victory or glory, just revenge and friendship, but it will be as you say. You are brave and quick, little mouse. I will not eat you unless you stick me with your sharpened splinters again.”

“Argued and agreed,” replied Cathán, undaunted. He scampered back up Thomas’s side to take his position on Thomas’s left shoulder.

The boy breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar warm and weight there. “Cathán, I’m so glad to have found you safely,” Thomas said. “Do you know where we can find Avery?”

“Aye,” said Cathán, “I’ve an idea. Back at the feast of the Vathca—I think he has a perch somewhere nearby.”

“Very good,” said Brak. “My kin will still be slumbering there. Come.” And he loped off into the trees.

#

“He should be somewhere close,” Cathán called out.

They’d run a long while; Thomas again gasped to a halt. Brak seemed unperturbed, sniffing the air from his customary crouch, looking this way and that.

“The air is ripe with feast-wreck and the nightly things of the Grimgrove,” Brak said, blinking his left and right eyes. “I cannot smell correctly the bird. Mouse, perhaps you can find him up the trees? I’ve little talent for climbing.”

“No need,” came Cathán’s voice: but it did not come from Cathán, who stood atop Thomas’s shoulder, glancing around bewildered.

“None of you could find me unless I chose it,” came the voice again, now a different tone. When it spoke a third time, Thomas finally recognized it: “I am of the Blackhill Clan, and we are master of the air and wind and sky. We cannot be captured.”

A black shape ruffled down into the clearing, finding purchase on a branch a few feet higher than Thomas’s head. Feathers shuffled and materialized into the grinning countenance of Avery.

“Thought you could sneak up on me, eh? I expected better of two of you,” Avery clucked. “This frog-thing, of course, can’t be blamed for the attempt at sneaking. I’ve seen the dull wits and blanking blinking stares of his kin.”

“My kin,” said Brak calmly, “detestable though their actions are, took two of your feathers from you last night at the Waspan, raven. I can smell the hurt and anger on you. I would not strut so at such a loss.”

Avery, for perhaps the first time since Thomas had met him, was caught without words. He clacked his beak and shook his feathers and hopped from foot to foot. Finally the bird squawked and fluttered from the branch to alight on Thomas’s right shoulder.

“Thomas, friend,” said Avery, “why are you with this strange creature? We’re back together safely now. Let’s get out of this despicable forest and get on with finding the prized acorn for the witch.”

“Avery,” replied Thomas, “I’m so glad we found you and you’re not hurt. But this is Brak, and he’s our friend too. He wants to help.”

Avery squawked in dismay. “Help? Hardly, I should think, just by knowing what I do about the rest of them. They wanted to eat us last night, Thomas, don’t forget; and now he’s got three of us together.”

“Just listen to Thomas and Brak,” counseled Cathán from Thomas’s other shoulder. “We share common interests, common enemies.”

So again Thomas recounted what he knew. Avery’s protests soon hushed, and by the end of the story, he was nodded his beak in Brak’s direction.

“Fairly put, Vathca. I see your loyalty to your friend. What has been done to the golden eagles is terrible and must be accounted for to the violet witch. We can help each other in this, then. A temporary peace between us.”

“Yes,” said Brak. “I will not eat you, raven, not while we try to find the acorn and help the golden eagles.”

“And you’ll keep your eyes and ears, then,” said Avery, apparently unwilling to let the Vathca have the last word. “So—this plan of yours. What of it? How do we get the help of the kin that hate your being?”

Then Brak explained his plan in full to them, and Thomas learned that it was both audaciously dangerous and startlingly simple. “We will bait the Vathca into attacking the Great Trees of the golden eagles,” Brak told the others. “We will trick them. While they are attacking the Great Trees, we will sneak past them and find the acorn and perhaps help the golden eagles who have not been swayed by the violet witch. Then we will leave and I will return to my cave by the pool.”

Silence fell upon them. “Why would the Vathca attack the golden eagles?” asked Thomas.

“They already do not like the golden eagles,” said Brak. “The golden eagles often steal food and trinkets from my kin. Also, since the arrival many long Wednesdays ago of the violet witch, the golden eagles have been aggressive and derisive of my kin, more even than their nature would drive them. The Vathca are on the verge of attacking.”

“How will we sneak into the Great Trees and find the acorn?” asked Cathán.

“I know a small stream that winds through the Grimgrove into the heart of the Great Trees,” said Brak. “It feeds their roots. Then we will climb. And then I will smell and we will sneak.”

“What will we use as bait to draw the Vathca out?” asked Avery.

“Me,” said Brak. He shrugged. “They already hate me. I will taunt them and lead them away toward the Great Trees.”

Avery whistled at that. “A bold plan, but that’s the only foolish bit,” he said. “You want them to attack the golden eagles, not you. And you’re not very talented at taunting. No, what you need is an actual golden eagle to taunt them—a trick to get them thinking about how much they hate the golden eagles. Then nothing can stop them from attacking.”

“We do not have a golden eagle to help us,” said Brak.

Thomas could see Avery’s grin out of the corner of his eye, could feel the raven’s proud preening as his feathers brushed the boy’s ear.

“Give me some dust and larkspur and onionskin,” said Avery, now in a booming and majestic voice that thundered through the trees with authority. “I’ll show you what a real golden eagle is like. I’ll make those snoring Vathca jump up with bright anger for every slight the golden eagles have ever shown them!”

#

And so it happened that Avery disguised himself as a golden eagle. He colored his feathers with larkspur stems and onionskin until they gleamed gold in the rising sunlight, layering dust between each feather to rain down upon the sleeping Vathca around the remnants of their Waspan-feast. He practiced his booming and majestic voice, caring not at all that it matched very little with what Brak told him of the real timbre of the golden eagles. He strutted and prancing in the trees and tried out various japes and taunts against Brak.

Only once did the latter respond, flinging a small pebble toward Avery that caught the raven-turned-golden-eagle on his talon. Avery squawked and then laughed. “I’ll remember that one, then.”

Swiftly their preparations were made and the plan enacted. Thomas was disappointed when Brak instructed him to head back to the river and wait there. “You and I will follow down the stream from a distance,” Brak said to Thomas, “while the mouse rides the raven, leading the Vathca toward the Great Trees. We are best adapted to flight down the river, and less conspicuous there. You would make a fine meal for any Vathca. And your raven-friend has spoken true that my kin would not hesitate to ridicule and attack me were I to present myself among them again.”

Thomas saw the wisdom there, though it pained him to leave his friends, even momentarily, and disappointed him to miss Avery’s show. The raven promised to recount every action, intended and real, at a later date around a roaring fire while they shared the spoils of their adventures. Then Cathán hopped onto Avery’s back and the two disappeared, glittering gold, into the sky above the treetops.

“Go on, human boy,” said Brak, pointing him to the river. “I’ll join you when the raven has made his entrance at the Waspan.” And the Vathca left afoot into the trees.

Thomas picked his way through the brush back to the shores of the stream. There he sat, dangling his bare feet in the slow water and trying to wash them clean. He wished he had his shoes, but thankfully the floor of the Grimgrove was soft and earthy. He wished he had his satchel and travelling book and jacket and the rest of his belongings; he could only hope that the bit of boar’s tusk was safe at their campsite of the previous night.

Sitting there, Thomas realized anew how little time remained before the witch’s deadline. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday had passed; Saturday was still dawning, early and eager, stretching broad yellow fingers over the blue sky like a housecat after a nap. Thomas tried to avoid thinking too much about what remained after the acorn, focusing instead on Brak’s plan and on preparing himself for what surely would become a dangerous battle between the Vathca and the golden eagles.

At length, and perhaps too soon in the pleasant stillness of the shoreline, Brak emerged from the trees at Thomas’s back and placed a webbed hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Into the water, human boy, and I will swim us onward.” The Vathca sounded almost pleased with himself. “The raven has proven true to his boasts and stirred my kin to a hatred and frenzy I have never seen. This plan may perhaps work. Listen! even now they howl and moan and crash through the trees.”

Distantly, and growing in strength, Thomas heard angry pipe-noises and the rustle of leaf and branch. He stood and cinched his rucksack tight and nodded. Whatever his worries of the coming days and tasks, for now, he needed only to swim and sneak and do what he could to find the prized acorn and help the bewitched and beleaguered golden eagles.

He nodded to Brak. “I’m ready,” Thomas said, stepping into the water.

Brak gripped his arm firmly and dove them both forward into the slow sparkling water of the stream with astonishing speed.