Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

cold!”

“Her family died from fever, but she keeps their bodies under the floorboards, so now her house is haunted, and they eat those bones she keeps stealing!”

Lelia propped her head up in her good hand, regarding the three scamps with some amusement. She’d made friends with the children of the village, and Jarsi, Bowder, and Aric were three of her best informants. They’d do anything for a song—literally.

Questions about Herda, unfortunately, had yielded nothing but childish speculation.

From what Lelia had gleaned, Herda really was the village madwoman. She lived out in the woods, in a cabin once shared by her family until they’d perished of snow fever. She foraged for a living: mushrooms, medicinal roots, rare minerals, exotic barks, and so on. She also had a thing for creatures of all sorts, especially abandoned ones: wounded rodents, broken-winged birds. She loved—or perhaps the proper word was related to—animals more than people. There were even rumors of wolf cubs that had been tended to by the wild-eyed Herda.

That, Lelia suspected, was why she’d been pestering Olli for bones. Whatever menagerie she tended, she had to feed them.

No one shunned Herda, per se, but no one invited her over for tea and jam tarts, either. The kindest emotion Lelia had seen directed at the girl was pity. She was considered impoverished, even by local standards. No one sat next to her when she watched Lelia’s performances.

“Wolves and monsters and ghosts, eh?” Lelia arched a brow at the boys. “And you’re all three reliable eyewitnesses, I take it?”

“My cousin saw the colddrake!” said Aric. “She, uh, ran before it could eat her.”

“I saw the ghosts!” said Jarsi.

“So you’re saying you did see them?” Lelia asked.

“Yeah.” Jarsi squirmed. “Kind of. It was dark. I saw something! I ran before it could suck out my eyeballs.” He looked nervously at his two friends, both clearly skeptical. “What? That’s what ghosts do!”

“Wolves,” Bowder, the eldest boy, muttered. “I’m telling you, she talks to wolves. You ask her! She won’t deny it! She just ...”

“Grins,” Aric whispered.

“Right.” Lelia smiled and sat back. “Well, if you can prove any of this ...” She palmed a coin into her good hand, walking it up and down her knuckles. “We’ll talk, eh?”

Olli wandered in when the boys were gone, his mouth tugging to one side. “You seem keen on finding out more about our dear, touched Herda.”

“I admit a bit of a fascination.”

“I’ve heard it all before.” He nodded with a rueful smile toward the door the boys had left through. “Her story was sad once. Now it’s just a curiosity for the children to make up wild tales about and the elders to discuss at night.” He met her gaze directly. “You ask me, there’s a part of her heart that went to the Havens when the fever caught her.”

“Hm.” Lelia pursed her lips. “What if it’s true? The wolves, the colddrake, the ghosts—any of them. But not true to us, just to her.” She raised her brows, contemplating her own dance with delirium on the road to Langenfield. “It doesn’t need to be real. She just needs to believe it is.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’d be a powerful delusion.”

“Just a theory.” She stood, arching her back in a brief stretch. “I suppose it’s time for me to set the tables. How many you think we’ll get tonight?”

“Who can say? Last time I saw this much business we had a gleeman claiming to be from Haighlei.”

Lelia scoured her memory but could not place the word. “Never heard of it.”

“Neither had we. Havens know how he wound up here, but he assured us he was from there, and after seeing his trick we half-believed him. A little snake he would coax out of a jar by playing music.” Olli mimed playing a flute. “Strangest thing. The snake would sway back and forth, just like a dancer ... people came from miles to see it.”

“Herda, too?”

Olli laughed. “You never give up, do you? Oh, yes. Herda was fascinated, just like all of us. He had a side business selling versions of the little egg-flute he played.” He grinned. “Took some doing convincing the littles that they weren’t magical, and snakes don’t just answer when you blow a few notes.”

Later, as Lelia set out pots of honey, she thought about the Haighlei gleeman. A Bardic Gift of a different color? Her hands itched for a flute. She might even be able to play it one-handed. First snake I see, I’ll have to try.

Lelia filled her mug herself and reclaimed her seat. Outside, the sun was a candlemark past dawn. She could hear the distant clop clop clop as Olli chopped the wood for the day. The Herald said nothing.

“In retrospect,” Lelia said after a long drink, “it was very foolish of me, sending the children to pry.”

“You didn’t know better.”

“True, but ...” She shook her head. “I like to think I would pick up on something—not right.”

“What makes you so special?”

She tapped her chest. “I’m a Bard, remember?”

“Bard or not, we all make regrets. And mistakes.”

“Yeah. The scamps never got me anything useful anyway.” She sipped ale.

“How are you not even a little tipsy?” he asked, a note of criticism in his query.

“Heyla.” She tapped the rim of her cup, grinning. “Still a Bard.”

“Whoever set this did an excellent job,” the Healer—introduced as Kerithwyn—said as she poked and prodded Lelia’s hand. “There’s little for me to do, really.”

Artel puffed up with pride. “Excellent job,” she echoed.

Lelia felt a smile glide over her lips. The old woman had checked on her hand daily for three weeks, suggesting poultices and brews. Lelia was confidant that she owed her a whole book of songs immortalizing her care.

Kerithwyn sat back and regarded Lelia. “It may be stiff and weak, but it’ll be back to its old callused self with use. No reason you can’t have a long and illustrious career.”

“Provided the snow doesn’t kill me,” Lelia said.

Kerithwyn nodded. “There is that.” She looked up at Artel. “You said something about Sandor’s wife carrying twins?”

The two bustled out of the inn, leaving Lelia to flex her fingers experimentally. Her eyes went to the gray cloak hanging by the front door, sewn from local fibers. It wasn’t red, but it was warm, and that mattered far more to her at the moment.

Evening came on the wings of a howling wind. The patrons who did wander in were notably subdued, shaking off snow and ice as they took their places. Lelia marked when Herda entered, waiting for her to settle and order her thinned ale from Olli.

Lelia approached her cautiously, as if confronting an easily frightened beast.

“Hey,” she said.

Herda looked up at her. “Wh-what?”

“Nothing.” She set a plate with a fat joint of meat in front of Herda. The girl’s eyes lit up, her tongue flicking like a snake’s. “I just wanted to talk.” Lelia indicated the plate. “For you. From me.”

Herda’s eyes darted up at Lelia and then back at the meat—and the marrow bone sticking out of it. “T- talk?”

Lelia sat down beside Herda, but with her back to the table so that her elbows rested on it and her hands dangled off the edge. “Sure. About anything.”

Herda carved off a sliver of meat and nibbled. One of the hearthcats wandered by, and she gave it an absent scratch. Lelia waited patiently.

At last, Herda leaned over, eyes downcast. “Can I trust you?” she asked softly. Her stutter had vanished.

Finally, Lelia thought. “Of course.”