a lass from the next village whose father would kill her if he knew. Auntie apprenticed the girl to the weaver in the glen, who asks few questions. Once she’d birthed the babe, she returned to her people, now skilled in a craft with her da none the wiser about this wee one.”
“But what will you do with a child?” Galen reached out a hand, smiling when the infant wrapped his finger in a tight grip. “Tiny li’l thing.” Strong too.
Esja sighed again. “There is a place for him, if only I knew how to get him there.”
Galen snapped to attention. Only one place came to mind. “Where?”
“Lined with silver lies the road to the lord’s dwelling,” the old witch recited, repeating the tale she’d told around the fire on many winter nights, when Galen should have been tucked in bed and not sneaking out to spend time “filling his head with nonsense,” in his uncle’s way of thinking.
“Follow the path of silver,” Galen finished for her. Since childhood, he’d dreamed of the derring-do of the forest lord, and Kitta shared many tales. Galen clung to every word, enjoying the telling as much as the witch’s company.
“Aye, the forest lord will take the boy and be glad for him.” Esja twisted her features into a comical face, teasing a chortle from the child in her arms.
The baby pulled Galen’s fingertip to his mouth, gnawing with toothless gums, though his eyes never left Esja. Galen said, “I never believed the tales. Wolves are evil creatures, eating unwary sheep and banished villagers. No kindly old grandfa could be their master.”
Kitta shook her head. “They’re not merely tales, lad, and the current lord’s not so very old. He’s scarcely two and twenty summers, so I’m told. And haven’t I shared the bravery of the mountain warriors, who take the shape of great, flaming birds whilst in battle? Many a villager they’ve saved from raiders.”
Actually, Galen loved every story he’d heard of them in this very cottage, and as a child had often pretended to be a legendary warrior, silver-haired and golden-eyed, cutting a swath through the enemy with a double-edged blade, cornstalks filling in for evil lowland raiders. Still, “They be just tales,” he argued, “along with the seal people, and horse people, and…”
The closest thing Galen had to a mother brandished a spoon at him. “Hear me well, Galen Olaf-kin. Many things I know nothing of, but these I do. The northern tribes be real, as be the forest dwellers and the rest of the lot. Any honest soul seeking out the forest lord in his fortress on the hill, in the midst of the great oaks, will find sanctuary. The people of the forest are far more accepting than backwoods farming folks.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Braw and bonnie be the forest lord, a comely man indeed.”
Entertaining tales or not, along with his daydreams of Svienn, the smith’s son, Galen often conjured images of the mysterious lord (youthful and handsome, of course) coming to his rescue, single-handedly fighting back the encircling wolves that had gathered to seal his fate. But what could the witch mean by stating the man’s comeliness, and to Galen, not Esja? Surely she didn’t know of Galen’s great secret, a secret too burdensome to share with even his closest friends. She was skilled in herb-lore, but did scrying have a place among her arcane talents? If so, he’d no prior knowledge of it. He swallowed hard, recalling past misdeeds for which he’d gone unpunished—thus far—and the one thing he hoped to keep hidden forever.
“Above all things,” Kitta said, distracting him from his building panic, “the forest people treasure the young of any race. All who carry a babe into his domain will be safe from the lord’s creature-servants. The dwellers there do not harm the young.” She asked with her eyes what she didn’t with her lips.
“I canna take this child!” Galen cried, grasping her meaning, if half a click slow. “What do I know of children?”
“You know all you need to: children are to be loved and protected. If these people,” she swept a hand out toward the village, “learn of his sire, they’ll do far worse than sell him to the traders as they do the other by-blows.” Her age-wrinkled face took on a pleading air. “It’s but a day’s journey, lad. I’ll petition your uncle for a day’s service at harvest end, to run messages to the neighboring villages.”
“I am a man full grown,” Galen countered,