Oliver shook his head sadly. “His soldiers said they would still fight. Some bad knights had already picked the bad king too. They all still wanted to fight. They wanted to kill the witch!”
“Tolice,” said Raul’s aunt, winning a nod from Raul.
“The witch said they didn’t have to die, but they couldn’t live anymore,” Oliver said, his voice dropping into a dramatic whisper as he plodded back to Freddy’s side from his demonstration of the wold. “The king said she would die all the way and told his men to cut her with their swords, but shestopped being a woman then and started being a tree. The elder tree! It’s not here anymore because the witch probably turned back into a lady after that.”
“Sensible,” said Dot.
“But when she turned into a tree, the king and his men started to change too. They couldn’t be a tree, because trees are alive. Instead, they turned into rocks. The king, all the soldiers, and the knights too all turned into rocks right where they were standing, here, in this circle!” Oliver held his hands out wide to demonstrate. “Andthatrock by Papa Raul, that’s the Stone King! He’s still here. Forever!”
Everyone turned in tandem to observe the Stone King, the largest of the rocks, and perhaps believably human shaped, after a fashion. The king was not part of the circle. He was alone in his own private meadow, forever.
“These are the soldiers,” Oliver said, pointing at the rest of the circle, “and over there are the Whispering Knights. Don’t count them!”
“Oh, but I already did,” said Millie, frowning. “Twice.”
“Don’t count them, Aunt Millie!” Oliver said, dropping both hands on top of his head and squeezing his hair. “If you get the same number three times, you will die!”
“I will?!” Millie returned with a gasp. “I was so close! You saved me, Oliver!”
“I saved you,” Oliver agreed with a relieved sigh and a nod, releasing his hair, which retained the unfortunate spiky shape of his fists. “Because the Hightowers are related to the witch, you know. We have a little bit of magic too.”
“Well, you certainly do, lad,” Abe put in, throwing an arm around Millie. “You just saved my wife! Just like the witch saved England. Here’s to Oliver, the hero!”
Claire felt herself exhale as the gathered group cheered and applauded. She tried not to stare at her husband, at the way he beamed down at their son.
Related to the witch indeed.
Maybe they were.
She knew without asking that Tommy had told him that particular bit of lore. Whether or not it was real family legend or not was irrelevant, Claire supposed, finding her feet as the others began to do the same, many of them making a direct path for the Stone King.
“What if I count them first and then you count them and then we compare numbers?” Ember was suggesting to Joe, who just kept shaking his head and frowning. “Oh, come on, spoilsport. Then we can ask Millie. No one dies then, it’s just comparing notes!”
“Stop that,” Joe mumbled as they passed, making Ember cackle.
“The king,” said Raul’s aunt from the other direction, gripping his arm as they walked the circle, “he stands alone. Kings are always alone, are they not?”
“Ours certainly is,” Raul responded with a shrug. “England’s is too, I suppose. Alone in his own mind.”
When Claire had first heard this story, she’d marveled at it too. She’d never heard a fairy tale or a myth or a legend before where the witch was the heroine. Even if the woman had stayed a tree, there was still a romance to it, still a heroism.
In the Cotswolds, the savior of the kingdom was female. Claire liked that very much. She liked it even better that her son liked it, and that he would grow into a man who believed that women could save the world too, and that the powerful ones were good, not evil.
She frowned.
Freddy loved that story too. He’d grown up believing the same things, hadn’t he?
She leaned down to swipe a bit of bread and decided to check on the horses after all, just behind the barrow. No one would see her there. She could fill her lungs with beautiful, unobserved air and find her sanity again.
Of course, that’s not what happened.
She rounded the crest of the hill only to find herself wedged between carriage and wold opposite none other than Freddy, who, it appeared, had decided upon the same course of solitary action.
He was leaning against the door to the carriage, one foot propped behind him on the foothold, gazing up at the clouds as they passed. Her appearance immediately drew his attention, those ice-blue eyes falling and landing on hers with the same violent physicality that they always had.
If it had knocked her knees out and sent her tumbling in the grass, she would not have been surprised.
Somehow, however, she still stood.
