Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Spring morn

At a clothier’s, they purchased pants and shirts and undergarments to avoid having to constantly wear their leathers. And since they knew not what they might face in the realm of the Changeling Lord, at still other stores they purchased rope and grapnels and climbing gear. Rucksacks they bought, and lanterns and oil and candles, as well as flint and steel and tinderboxes and medicks and gut and needle and bandages, and other such paraphernalia as they might need.

Not all of their time was spent in acquiring goods for the journey, for in the evenings they sang and ate and drank and joshed with the crew of the Sea Eagle, and Celeste showed the sailors how to dance the reel, and they showed her how to clog. Sea chanteys the crew sang and Celeste sang ballades, and Roel added war songs to the mix, and with a shrug of an apology to the princess he also sang tales of willing women and randy men, and Celeste laughed right along with the crew and clapped her hands in appreciation.

And their nighttimes were spent speaking of many things as well as making sweet love.

Just after dawn on the fourth morning since dropping anchor, Captain Chevell bade, “Au revoir!” and the Sea Eagle sailed away on the ebb of the morning tide. Most of the crew stood adeck and shouted their farewells, not only to Celeste and Roel, but also to a goodly number of ladies of leisure who had come to the dock to bid their own adieu. And when the ship was gone from sight

’round the shoulder of the headland, Celeste and Roel returned to the Golden Cup to break their fast.

That eve the fletcher and smith and leather worker delivered the last of the ordered goods.

The very next dawn, Celeste and Roel saddled their horses and laded their pack animals with gear and, map in hand, rode out from the town of Port Cient and toward the Changeling realm.

There remained but eighteen days ere the dark of the moon would fall, just eighteen days until Roel’s sister would be bound forever to the Changeling Lord.

Missive

A cross the deeps sped the Sea Eagle, bearing a cargo of recovered wealth along with a treasured map, bearing as well a letter written by Princess Celeste to be dispatched to Springwood Manor telling everyone that she and Roel had survived and were even then on the way to the Changeling realm.

On the deck paced Vicomte Chevell, captain of this three-masted, full-rigged craft, and he eyed the sails and asked Destin if they were making the best of the wind.

“Oui,” replied the bosun. “We’re flying all canvas and the wind is on our beam, and nought better can she do.” And so the craft sliced through the waves with all due haste, the Eagle bound for Port Mizon.

On the third day after setting out from Port Cient,

“Land ho!” cried Thome, lookout on the foremast above.

“Mizon dead ahead.”

“Steady as she goes,” said Chevell.

“Aye, aye, My Lord Captain,” replied Gervaise, the helmsman.

A candlemark later, Chevell debarked from a swift gig and sprang into the saddle of a waiting horse. In haste he rode to the palace, but e’en ere seeing King Avelar, he stepped to the stable where the king’s messengers stood by. “Quint!” he called, and a lithe lad sprang down from the loft, his pants unbuttoned and his shirttail out, and there came a giggle from above.

“My lord?” he said, grinning, while stuffing in his shirt and buttoning his breeks and buckling his belt.

Chevell handed the lad a letter. “Quint, grab a remount and take your fleetest steed. Be as swift in delivering this as you are with the ladies.”

“Where be I going, my lord?”

“To Springwood Manor. Know you the way?”

“Oui, my lord. ’Tis where Giselle lives.”

“Ha! My boy, have you a doxy in every port?”

“Well, my lord, I would not call them doxies, but, oui, I know many a femme. ” Quint grinned. “Such is the life of a king’s messenger that he spends much time in households away.”

“Then be on your way, lad.” Chevell handed the youth a golden coin. “Take care, and see this gets into the hands of the steward himself, or if not him, then give it over to the armsmaster.”

“Someone in charge, my lord,” said Quint, leading a saddled and provisioned horse out from its stall, and then another to tether to that mount.

Moments later, away galloped the lad, Chevell watching him go.

Then the vicomte turned, and he made his way across the yard toward the palace, for there was much to tell the king.

Forest

Beyond Port Cient the land rose up from the sea to become rolling hills, with scatters of thickets and groves amid ground cleared and filled with vineyards and fields of grain and cultivated rows of vegetables, as well as orchards and nut groves. Farmhouses dotted the land, some attached to byres, others not, and an occasional manor graced a hillside. Pastures with herds of grazing cattle and flocks of sheep gathered ’round these dwellings, and gaggles of geese hissed at the pair of sunwise-faring riders, but only if they ventured too near.

The air smelled of turned earth and new-mown hay and the tang of fruit ripening, and of the dung of cow and sheep and horse, and of barnyard and henhouse and sty, and of sawed and chopped timber and woodsmoke from hearth fires. Traces and pathways and lanes and farm roads crisscrossed the region, and Celeste and Roel followed a well-travelled way as it wended among the hills and passed nigh many a dwelling. Field workers or drovers or farmwives and children would pause in their daily chores to watch these two strangers riding by.

“Where be ye bound?” some would call, and Roel would point ahead and answer, “Yon.”

“Well, don’t go too far-the forest be that way,” said a straw-hatted man ambling along the lane in the same direction Celeste and Roel fared, the man leading yoked oxen pulling a wain filled with large, pale yellow root vegetables-parsnips, most likely, their sweet fragrance redolent on the air.

“The forest?” asked Roel.

“Oui. It be a terrible place.”

“Terrible in what way?”

“Strange goings-on and mystifications, that’s what.”

“How far?” asked Celeste.

“Two days by horse, or mayhap three, all told,” he replied, raising his voice to be heard above the grind of bronze-rimmed wheels now running over a rough patch of road. “They say it lies beyond the pass through the mountains, and that’s just a day away.”

“They say?” asked Celeste.

“Oui, them what should know, for I wouldn’t be fool enough to go there myself.”

Celeste glanced at Roel, and as he began to grin, she gave a faint shake of her head, and so he put on a sober mien and said, “Merci, mon ami.”

“Eh,” said the man, with a gesture of dismissal, as he continued his unhurried walk and led his oxen onward, the wagon trundling in tow.

Celeste and Roel rode beyond, leaving the man in their wake.

By midday the pair had ridden well past the farming region, and the land had continued to rise.

When the noontide came, they stopped in a willow grove nigh a stream for a meal and to feed and water the horses. As soon as the animals had been taken care of, Celeste sat down among the tall, waving grass along the bank, the seed-bearing heads nodding in the faint breeze. Roel handed her a torn-off hunk of bread and a wedge of cheese and plopped down beside her. Celeste took a bite of each and peered at her map. “Hmm. .,” she said, chewing and then swallowing. “Roel, look at ONCE UPON A SPRING MORN / 159

this.” She tapped a spot on the chart. “This place might be two or three days hence.”

Roel leaned over and looked. “A twilight bound, eh?