Page 52 of Time's Fool

But it was fresh, coming out of plum shaped fruits as large as his fist, and was a pale purple color. There were also earthenware pots full of juice, as well as a whole animal’s carcass roasting over a spit to the left of the pergola. A handful of women were bustling around a large sized cleared area, finishing a meal on tables set up near the spit, and they looked normal enough, which Kit was relieved to see.

Because the juicers were definitely not normal.

The juicers . . . weren’t even human.

“What are they?” He asked Gillian softly, because he didn’t want to get attacked again.

Not that any of them looked capable of it. They were tiny, not even coming up as far as his waist, mostly bald with a few wisps of long hair trailing over their scalps, and with huge, sunburst eyes. They reminded him of the dragon’s massive orbs except for dark pupils.

They were busy with the fruit, with some of them chopping it into mash, others spooning the mash into molds, and still more pulling the molds away and wrapping the remaining blocks of chopped fruit in cloth to keep them together as the heavy press came down. Liquid gushed into a large pan with a hole in it below the press, and through that into containers that the little men raced to replace, trying to keep up with the turning of the screw. They were intent on their work and didn’t even look up as Kit’s group approached.

“Fey, before the gods tinkered with ‘em,” Rilda said, answering his question while striding forward. “Soup for our friends, Joan,” she told another woman, who was slicing bread at a table beside the roasting meat. The woman looked up, appearing somewhat frazzled.

“They can get it for themselves, can’t they?” she demanded. “The rest’ll be here soon.”

“You heard her. Get it for yourselves,” Rilda said, and Kit was almost knocked down by a stampede of thieves.

They grabbed wooden bowls from a stack at the end of the table and then clustered around a pot that was bubbling away over some coals. It was a large one, more of a caldron, and was echoed by five others just as big over nearby fires behind the tables. Likewise, a stone-built oven, which Kit hadn’t noticed because the pergola had been in the way, was busy, as more women pulled out additional loaves and heaps of the big pies that he’d seen in the ale house.

They looked ready to feed a small army.

The thieves dished up what smelled like a tolerable chicken pottage and grabbed some of the bread. They took it over to where a cluster of trees stood, to the side of the cleared area where the women were working. There was shade there, but no seating, as the tables were all being used for food preparation.

Kit followed without a bowl as his body couldn’t gain nourishment from it and he didn’t want to take anything away from the army. Which started trickling in a few moments later, in small clumps at first, and then in larger and larger numbers until the whole road was filled. But not with soldiers.

Instead, hollow cheeked children and gaunt men and women filed over the hill, carrying whatever manner of containers they had been able to find. The women workers loaded them up with loaves and pies and meat and pottage, and the tiny folk dispensed the product of their labor, which was accepted as gratefully as the rest, with the kissing of hands and tear-filled eyes. It might be the only meal their families would get all day, Kit realized, and was suddenly thankful that his fine clothes were ruined.

He would have been ashamed to wear them here.

He would have been ashamed.

“Rilda! Rilda!” a bunch of skinny, but grinning children called. “Do magic, do magic!”

The old witch laughed and took out a wand. “You mean, like this?”

The children clapped their hands in excitement as a bunch of fallen leaves swirled into the air and linked up in the sky. They coalesced into the shape of a huge butterfly, made of every color in the rainbow from bright yellow to purple, and with so many shades of orange in between that Kit couldn’t count them all. And then a breeze came by, shuddering the wings and making it look for a moment as if it was really flying.

Kit stared upward, as entranced as all the rest. The sunlight streaming through the delicate “wings” reminded him of the stained glass in the windows of a mighty cathedral. Except that this glass could move, sending multicolored shadows dancing over the ground.

Another flick of the wand and the butterfly broke apart into a great storm that swirled madly overhead for a moment. And then came together into an equally huge bird, bright of eye and brown of wing, showing off the underside of the leaves that had been laying on the ground and had lost some of their color. They moved, too, shivering like ruffling feathers as the giant creature hopped about the sky, pausing to poke its head curiously into the face of this delighted child and that wondering adult.

The spectacle went on, with a red dragon coming next, with all the crimson leaves being used for the body and the yellow ones for the great gush of flame from its mouth. And an orange tiger after that, with darker orange stripes flowing across its heavily muscled form as it prowled about the skies. And then a huge brown bear.

The children and many of the adults squealed in delight at every new creation, while also forming themselves into orderly lines, one to get food, another juice, and a third massed on the riverbank to fill buckets, water bags and small barrels. The brook Kit had seen was just visible through the trees to the right of the pergola, burbling in parallel to the road before breaking off to run toward a mill in the distance. And all of it was as crystal clear as if it had just flowed down from snowcapped peaks.

Perhaps it had. There were hills and trees hedging the view, limiting his vision. But when the breeze shifted just right, it carried scents that reminded him of wide-open spaces, snow and distant, half frozen pools.

No wonder these people were clean! They had access to better water than anywhere in London, even better than the queen could boast in her palaces. He just didn’t know why.

“Rilda takes care of them,” Gillian said softly, from beside him. “She used to have a coven to tend to, but after the war . . . I think she didn’t know how to go on, with no one to look after anymore.”

“The cats,” Kit murmured, finally understanding. “They’re from her coven’s witches, aren’t they?”

Gillian nodded, but didn’t say anything else. In truth, what was there to say? Kit thought back to the dozens and dozens of felines in the little alehouse. Each one represented someone Rilda had known, loved and lost. Friends, or even closer, for Gillian had taught him that a coven was like one’s family.

And now Rilda had none.

“She has them, and they have her,” Gillian said, nodding at the mass of people when he voiced his thoughts. “And right now, they need her. I just worry as to what will happen if the Circle shuts all of this down.”

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