Into the Green

I ANGHARAD'S PEOPLE MET the witches the night they camped by Tiercaern, where the heather-backed Carawyn Hills flow down to the sea. There were two of theman old winter of a man, with salt-white hair and skin as brown and wrinkled as a tinker's hand, and a boy Angharad's age, fifteen summers if he was a day, lean and whip-thin, with hair as black as a sloe. They had the flicker of blue-gold in the depths of their eyeseyes that were both old and young, of all ages and of none. The tinkers had brought their canvas-topped wagons around in a circle and were preparing supper when the pair approached the edge of the camp. They hailed the tinkers above the sudden warning chorus of the camp dogs, and Angharad's father, Herend'n, went out to meet them, for he was the leader of the company. "Is there iron on you?" Herend'n called, by which he meant, were they carrying weapons. The old man shook his head and lifted his staff. It was a white wood, that staff; cut from a rowan: witch-wood. "Not unless you count this," he said. "My name's Woodfrost and this is Garrow, my grandson. We are travelerslike yourselves." Angharad, peering at the strangers from behind her father's back, saw the blue-gold light in their eyes and shook her head. They weren't like her people. They weren't at all like any tinkerssheknew. Her father regarded the strangers steadily for a long heartbeat, then stepped aside and ushered them into the wagon circle. "Be welcome," he said. When they were by his fire, he offered them the guest-cup with his own hands. Woodfrost took the tea and sipped. Seeing them up close, Angharad wondered why the housey-folk feared witches so. This pair was as bedraggled as a couple of cats caught out in a storm and seemed no more frightening to her than beggars in a market town square. They were skinny and poor, with ragged travel-stained cloaks and unkempt hair. But then the old man's gaze touched hers and suddenly Angharadwasafraid. There was a distance in those witch-eyes, like a night sky rich with stars, or like a hawk floating high on the wind, watching, waiting to drop on its prey. They read something in her, pierced the scurry of her thoughts and the motley mix of what she was, to find something lacking. She couldn't look away, she was trapped like a riddle on a raven's tongue, until he finally dropped his gaze. Shivering, Angharad moved closer to her father. "I thank you for your kindness," Woodfrost said as he handed the guest-cup back to Herend'n. "The road can be hard for folk such as weespecially when there is no home waiting for us at road's end." Again his gaze touched Angharad. "Is this your daughter?" he added. Herend'n nodded proudly and gave the old man her name. He was a widower and with the death of Angharad's mother many years ago much of his joy in life had died. But if he loved anything in this world, it was his colt-thin daughter with her brown eyes that were so big and the bird's-nest tangle of her red hair. "She has the sight," Woodfrost said. "I know," Herend'n replied. "Her mother had it tooBallan rest her soul." Bewildered, Angharad looked from her father to the stranger. This was the firstshe'dheard of it. "But Da," she said, pulling at his sleeve. He turned at the tug to look at her. Something passed across his features the way the grass in a field trembles like a wave when the wind touches it. It was there one moment, gone thede Lint, Charles is the author of 'Into the Green' with ISBN 9780765300225 and ISBN 0765300222.