Chapter 23

Tree Shepherd, Tree Shepherd

With your eyes of blue,

Where are you going

In the cold morning dew,

When the sun is just rising

And the day is so new?

Where are you going

With your eyes of blue?

Tree Shepherd, Tree Shepherd

With your cloak so green,

You slip through the forest

Without being seen -

They say you have gazed on

The true fairy queen -

You slip through the forest

In your coat so green.

Tree Shepherd, Tree Shepherd ,

Your boots are so brown.

Worn out and muddy

From traveling around -

They walk through the woods

Without making a sound -

Worn out and muddy

Your boots are so brown.

Tree Shepherd, Tree Shepherd

With your eyes of blue,

Where are you going

In the cold morning dew,

When the sun is just rising

And the day is so new?

Where are you going

With your eyes of blue?

Traditional children’s song, collected by Meaves Goldstone of the Alder Branches, published in Songs of the Sunlit Lands

The day started innocently enough. After a fine breakfast of porridge, bread and bacon, chased by a bit of her apple pie, a meal approved of by all the pixies in attendance, Mistress Gan went outside to the front of the house, her sleeves tied up, her apron on, her hair bound in place with a practical white cap. She had made a fire and put a big copper laundry tub to boil, and was filling a second tub up for her rinse tank. “One more bucket of water will do,” she said, then headed to the water tank. The last bucket went in, splashing two of the pixies who were following her around, Lila and Damask. They sputtered as she put the bucket down, but she paid them little mind. Instead, pleased with her preparations, she wiped her hands on her apron and moved onto the next step.

Pye, evidently familiar with this process, curled up in a bit of sunlight peeking through the trees that shaded the front, far away from any splashings. After moving her bucket out of the way, Gan took a length of rope out of her pocket and stretched it between two trees.

“What ya doing?” Gilly asked, hovering near the woman’s shoulder.

“Laundry,” Gan said, giving the rope an extra tug to make sure it could hold the weight. “Somehow every piece of kitchen linen I own is sprinkled with pixie dust.”

“Gee.” said Seamus in true innocence. “I wonder how that happened. Who would have done that?”

“Maybe has something to do with a certain pixie getting locked into my clothes chest,” she said affably.

“It was such a good place to sleep. So soft and lovely.” Moxie alighted on Mistress Gan’s cap. “I didn’t know any place could be so lovely. Your linen is so soft.”

“And you’re the girl who told me to just find a pile of leaves to sleep on, “ Gan said, looking at her clothesline with some satisfaction. “I think that’s enough line for what I’ll be washing.

“I didn’t know any better,” Moxie admitted.

“I don’t think it was about softness. I think it’s just that you wanted to get away from us,” Arne said, landing on now taut clothesline. Gan gave it a thump and he tumbled off. Moxie started to laugh at him, and he chased her away to the edge of the roof.

“What...what’s that?” Moxie sneezed mightily. She sneezed again, twice.

“What’s what?” Gan asked as she shook the pixie dust out of a white linen shift. “I don’t hear anything.” The dust was a bit like glitter, shimmery, catching the light. The sparkly bits danced in the breeze.

A squirrel nearby saw what was going on, and ran into his nest. Pixie dust was potent, and he didn’t want to be fox food. This was a good idea, because there was a fox nearby. The vixen, on the other hand, got a big whiff of it, and plopped down in the shade, a big foxie grin on her face. Pixie dust gave foxes the best dreams. There were always foxes near Pixie Hollow for just that reason.

Moxie sneezed again. “Something.”

“You can’t be getting the sneezes from pixie dust,” Gan noted.

“That would be really weird,” Rosebud, another female pixie said. Rosebud, a little redheaded sprite, usually preferred the barn instead of the house. Ever since the goats came and took up residence, and the cows spent the night there, though, she had been showing up around the house more and more.

Moxie sneezed again, the biggest sneeze yet, and it knocked her off the roof. Catching herself in mid-air, she landed on the clothesline. “It stinks, whatever it is.”

“Don’t look at me that way,” Seamus said, feeling defensive. “I went for a swim this morning.”

The woman took a bright red petticoat off of her stack, poked her finger in a small hole and sighed. “I don’t smell anything in particular,” Mistress Gan said as she shook out the garment. “But I don’t have a pixie’s sense of smell.”

“Be glad,” Moxie said. “Then you’d have to smell Arne.”

“Hey, I heard that!” Arne said. He gave Moxie a shove and they both tumbled off the clothesline.

Gilly shot up rather high in the air at this, turned towards the road, scattered handsful of pixie dust in surprise, and dashed back to others. “Someone’s coming. Lots of someones!”

Moxie sneezed again.

“That smells like...Ixip!” Arne said. He pinched his nose closed, and flew off.

“Ixip!” Moxie said. “Ixip always makes me sick.” She went off to join him.

“Ixip, eh?” Gan said. “I hear that that’s the most potent anti-pixie potion out there. Does it really work?”

Nobody answered her, except a robin on one of the trees. She looked around, and all the pixies were gone.

“Well, what do you know? Ixip does work.” Taking her laundry basket in hand, she moved it into the house. “This will wait. I can cope with a little pixie dust. Hopefully Moxie didn’t get my good apron.”

Her visitors turned out to be Lady Elaine on horseback followed by her carriage, and then a whole group of wagons. Three of the wagons were filled with of supplies, and two others carried workmen wearing large, very visible sigils against pixie magic, and the slight but persistant floral odor of Ixip over everything.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Lady Elaine dismounted most gracefully as Tam, his nannie Edelkyn, and a woman who looked much like Elaine, but golden haired stepped out of the carriage. A groomsman hurried to take care of her mount, and then the four of them gathered around the bemused woman.

Gan looked at the crowd of workers beginning to fan out across the farm. “It’s quite a party you’ve brought with you, Elaine. I knew you’d be coming soon, but I didn’t expect such an….” She paused for the right word. “Entourage? Crowd? Party?”

“I hope you don’t mind, Gan,” Elaine said, taking off her riding gloves. “It occurred to me that the grounds here haven’t been tended to in a long time. It seemed like a good time to see what needed repairing and to take care of it. ”

“You didn’t have to, Ellie. I was just getting ready to go to Waterford or the Goblin Market. I could get most of what I needed there, and maybe even a workman or two.”

“Nonsense,” the lady said. “This is on my lands, and belongs to the estate. I believe in keeping everything usable in good shape. It’s just that with nobody here but the pixies...” Pye mewed at that. She looked down on the cat and smiled. “Yes, it was that way. It was just something I hadn’t yet gotten around to.”

Tam was walking around looking at everything, a bemused look. He pushed through some brush, lifted a large leaf, looked under a rock. “Where are they?” he asked.

“The pixies?” Gan asked.

He nodded.

The golden haired woman laughed a little. “With everything drenched in Ixip? They’re all in hiding or run off somewhere.”

Tam looked crestfallen. “I wanted to see them, Aunt Arriane.”

“We’ll have plenty of time for that, I’m sure,” Gan said. “Arriane? So you’re the little sister Elaine used to talk about so much! I thought you were on the White Isle.”

She gave the older woman a brilliant smile. “Oh, they let me out on holiday. Once I heard that the Gan Thistleberry of all my sister’s stories had come to Allynswood, I hopped on the Dragon Web and got here soon as I could! Mother was bogged down with Alder Branch business. There’s some conference coming up that they’re leaning on her to deal with, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t come.”

Nearby, Morvran lighted on a tree overlooking the work party, but on Cullin’s side of the property line. “Quite a crowd Lady Elaine brought.”

“Hmmm,” his companion said.

A pixie flew by, ignoring them both, obviously unhappy about the turn of events in Pixie Hollow. “I want to go home!” she cried as she circled around the farmstead.

“Then go home,” Morvran said.

“Meanie,” Gilly said, landing on a branch nearby. “Does anybody make anti-raven potions?”

“If you find out, tell me.” Cullin adjusted his hat, giving the raven a sharp look.

Morvran cawed, and fluttered to a different branch.

It was clearly going to take a while. One crew of workmen had begun unloading roofing materials for the barn and raising scaffolding to reroof it. Another crew were in a field cutting fresh turfs that they would use on the house’s roof. There were even four gardeners working on the abandoned vegetable patch, pulling weeds and hoeing it out, and another group working on the flower beds.

Fence mending was going on in the pasture fields, much to the cows’ amusement. Blowie liked to come up and gently butt anybody bent over, until they turned around and patted her on the nose. Hedges were being trimmed. Fruit trees were being pruned, apple and peach and cherry. But the plow lands were left alone, except for their fencing.

“Amazing what you can do if you can dose enough people with anti-pixie goop,” the raven continued from his perch by the Tree Shepherd. “And can afford to pay them. Mistress Gan, she would have never gotten around to this. Impressive, what it’s going to look like.”

He turned around to look at his quiet companion. “I thought you’d be angry, ready to throw mud everywhere. Or even rocks.”

Cullin pulled his cloak closer.

“They aren’t on my land,” he said.

“Never stopped you before,” Morvran said.

Cullin didn’t reply.

Down below, workmen had set up a table far enough from the work and spread it with a white cloth. Someone had taken over the fire where Gan had been heating laundry water and now a tea kettle was set on the grate. Three women sat around the table, Elaine, Edelkyn and Gan. Instead of watching the progress on the house, where workers were fixing the shutters and making sure the windows were tight, the women were watching Tam and the golden haired woman playing some sort of game with a ball.

Cullin couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“Who is that woman?” he asked the raven. “The one with golden hair?”

“That’s Arriane, Lady Elaine’s sister. You’d learn a thing or two if you’d get out of your woods sometimes,” the raven replied. “But that might not have helped. She’s been away a long time. Just got back.”

“Arriane? That can’t be Arriane. I met her in the forest not long ago, over by the Three Oaks She had gotten lost, and I guided her back to the road. She was no bigger than the boy is now. Maybe smaller.”

“You really don’t have any sense of time, do you? Arriane got lost in the woods before Lady Elaine got married to Lord Gweir. Lady Gwenyth was still the Lady of Allynswood. She’s been at the White Island years now, and she took Arriane with her. Got tired of being the Lady of the House, I heard, and dumped it all on Elaine.

“You’re right,” Cullin said. He shook his head. “Has that much time past?”

“How long has it been since the great fire? The one that drove tall those people away near Ravenwood?”

“Trees that grew up in the ash have grown up and have died,” the tree shepherd said.

“I think you need a better clock,” Morvran cawed, and flew off.

“Has it been that long?” Cullin said to himself.

He climbed down the tree and headed into Pixie Hollow. Work stopped as he hopped the stone wall that marked the dividing line between the Allynwood estate and his forest. Men watched, and ducked where they could as they watched the thin man in his mossy green cloak and his wide brimmed hat walk across the field that led to the road.

“Watch out, Rob! You don’t want any of his mud on you!” someone yelled to one of the gardeners. The gardener looked up and saw who was heading his way, dropped his hoe and ran behind the house. Cullin’s reputation had proceeded him.

“Oh my,” Lady Elaine said. “It looks like we’ve attracted a little more company.”

Mistress Gan picked up a slice of cake off the table and put it on a saucer, then stood up.

“I don’t think he’s here to do mischief,” she said. “He’s already come by to introduce himself. I fed him dinner.”

“That must be a first,” said the nannie. “Nobody expects the Tree Shepherd to come calling with anything but rocks and mud.

Gan moved towards him, cake in hand. He walked in the direction where Arriane and Tam had been playing, although both had stopped to watch him, instead. Morvran, his curiosity getting the better of him, circled closer, then casting caution to the wind, landed on the ground near Tam’s ball, now being ignored. For good measure, he gave it a peck. It rolled a little bit, and then stopped. Morvran pecked at it again.

“Who’s that?” Tam asked, pointing. “He’s not one of the work crew.

Arriane looked at the green clad man quizzically as he neared, and then suddenly the dawn of recognition lit up her face. Somehow, in her surprise, she began to glow, ever so slightlyl

“The green man!” she said. Her hands covered her mouth in surprise. She let them fall, taking a step in his direction. “My green man! You...you rescued me when I was young. I had wandered into the forest following a rabbit and got totally lost. But you found me. I wanted to thank you, but I never found you again to thank you. My father never let me get close enough to the forest after that to even look.”

Mistress Gan had reached the two, holding her cake like it was a talisman of power, ready to be used in case of emergency, but neither Arriane nor Cullin had eyes for anybody else.

“You...you...” Cullin said, biting his lips as he tried to put words together.

“Yes. Do you remember little Arriane?” the young woman said. She gave him a brilliant smile and a small curtsey. There was laughter in her voice, but not the hurtful kind. “I must have looked a mess. I had skinned my knee and you bandaged it. I know my nose was runny, because you gave me your hankerchief. I still have it, back on the White Isle. There were sticks in my hair. I know that because it took my nannie forever to brush it out. But you were so kind.”

It was hard to tell if the Tree Shepherd even heard a word she said, his look was so intense.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Cullin said at last. “More lovely than the sunrise at Midsummer’s day, more beautiful than the snowdrops that grow in the spring. More beautiful than the orchids in the wood.”

His eyes grew wide and wild when he realized what he had said, and he blushed bright red. Gan offered him the cake, and grabbing it, he ran back for his forest.

“Now that was rather unexpected.” Gan scratched her head. “He acts like she hit him with glamour, and you’d think a man his age would be totally immune to a young woman’s excitement magic. And what he said - who knew he had a poet’s soul?” She went back to the table.

“I didn’t know Tree Shepherds could be smitten that way,” Elaine said.

“Me either,” Gan replied. “Lady Arriane made quite an impression on him. But was it because he met her as a child?”

“He’s always been kind to children.” Elaine nodded. “Maybe so.”