“Well done, Lady Alys,” Tiny praised in her little girl voice. Standing next to the child, Alys was shocked to see that she—no giant herself—was likely a full foot taller than Tiny. Layla looked like a mighty griffin perched on the girl’s slender shoulder. “We can go to ground now, if you wish—I’m certain Mam’s put back some porridge for you if you’d prefer it to turnips.”
“Yes, thank you.” Alys began following Tiny around the perimeter of the platform, to the other side of the tree.
“I hope you don’t mind using the lift,” the girl called back over her shoulder. “I’m disallowed from using the ladders ‘cause of me being spindly—Papa fears I’ll slip and break me very back. He’s likely right. The lads, they simply swing down from ropes more oft than the ladders, but not me and Mam.” She paused. “But I reckon you could go on down the ladder yourself.” The girl seemed reluctant to offer this courtesy.
“I must confess that I was not fond of the ladder last night.” In fact, Alys had been scared for her life, feeling that the rope conveyance would buck out from beneath her feet at any moment and spill her to the ground. Spindly or not, it would not have been a comfortable landing.
“You’ll fancy the lift then,” Tiny said. “And since we’re together, we can lower ourselves and not have to wait for one of the lads.”
Alys frowned to herself as Tiny and Layla ducked through a fold in the skin-wall. Then a triangle of forest appeared as Tiny pulled the covering aside. It looked as though Alys was about to step into the thin, cold air between the gray branches.
“Don’t fear, milady,” Tiny encouraged. “We carry Mam and all the littlest ones up it in a go—it will for certain hold three wee girls such as us.”
Alys stepped onto a square wooden platform butted up to the hut floor, and her breath caught in her throat at the view around her. They were truly in the trees, the ground at least twenty feet below. The breeze stirred her hair, scented with wood smoke and winter and the perfume of the trees themselves. Under their feet, villagers crossed to and fro attending to their chores, several carriedbundles of long branches strapped to their backs, two men suspended a large buck on a spit, a woman herded bright red chickens with a switch. Children ran among the busied in play, fires crackled under tripod and bubbling cauldron. All around them in the surrounding trees, other huts had their skin walls pulled aside, and long ropes strung from branch to branch supported laundry and several woven rugs.
Alys’s attention was torn from the fantastical view by Tiny’s polite instructions. “Just undo that rope there on your side, milady—take it from the peg, that’s it—but hold on tightly lest we spill sideways!” The girl seemed to find the idea of this amusing—Alys did not. And so she gripped the rough rope in her palms until her fingertips tingled.
“Now just let us down easy. One hand, then the other. Hold tight to me, little Layla!” Tiny began to release the rope into the carved pulley over her head, and Alys did the same, her eyes flicking to the girl periodically and also over her own shoulder at the ground that was inching up to meet them.
The ride was smooth and slow, and by the time the platform came to rest on the forest floor, Alys had decided she much preferred the lift to the twisting rope ladder. She watched as Tiny tied off first her own rope and then Alys’s—presumably to keep the machine out of use to younger hands—and then followed the miniature girl off the conveyance and toward the nearest fire.
Ella was nowhere to be seen, and Tiny went without hesitation to a small black iron pot set near the side of the fire. She lifted off the lid with a hooked instrument and peered inside. In those brief seconds, Alys took the opportunity to study the girl in full daylight. Her hair was straw colored, much like Alys’s own, and she immediatelyrecalled the village woman in Pilings’s mention of Ella and her daughter. The Pilings woman had alluded to the fact that there was something wrong with Ella’s girl, but all that Alys could tell was that she was of unusually small size for her age—more along the lines of an eight-year-old.
Tiny turned her face toward Alys with a smile, and Alys was fascinated by the girl’s impossibly light colored, gray-green eyes. In the forest light, with Layla on her shoulder, she indeed looked to be a figure from folklore, a fairy, an elf. She was enchanting.
“I was right—here’s some porridge if you’d be wantin’ it, milady.”
“I would love some,” Alys said.
Tiny went to the base of the tree, where one of the small, rounded huts crouched and walked straight in, whereas any other person her age would have needed to duck. She emerged a moment later with a wooden bowl and a spoon, as well as a clay jug. The earthen vessel seemed a burden, and so Alys approached her with her hands out.
“Let me help you—”
“Not at all, milady,” Tiny said cheerfully and swerved around her toward the fire. “‘Tis unwieldy more than heavy. And I don’t need as much help as you would reckon.” She set the jug by the fire and Layla hopped to the ground, at last coming to greet Alys. Tiny removed the lid of the pot once more and began scooping its contents into the bowl.
Not knowing what else to do, Alys sat on the ground. Obviously it was the right choice, for Tiny brought the bowl and jug to her, without directing her to any proper seating. Alys took the offered meal with a smile of thanks.
Tiny stood above her, beaming down, her hands foldedat her waist. Alys was not used to being watched so closely whilst having a meal, but she knew not what else to do, and so she saluted Tiny with the spoon and tucked into the bowl of warm grain.
It was bland, with perhaps a hint of some sort of sweet syrup, but it was hearty and heavy in her stomach, and Alys thoroughly enjoyed the first hot breakfast she’d had since leaving Fallstowe.
“Did Ira really throw you down the comin’-up?” The question burst from the girl, as if it had been growing and growing inside of her and she could simply no longer contain it. “And did you really get caught in his snare?”
Alys forced the mouthful of porridge down her throat when it threatened to stick somewhere halfway. “The comin’up?”
“The hill on the edge of the village. When someone approaches, they have to climb it, and they always call out—”
“Coming up,” Alys finished with a wry smile. “Clever. And yes, he did, and yes, I did. Is that how he usually behaves toward visitors? String them up and then throw them out?”
“Mercy, yes,” Tiny giggled. “Although most don’t make it past the snare. We haven’t had a proper visitor in ages, and never a truelady.”There was a hint of awe in the last word. “Were you a lad, Ira’d most likely had the brothers hand you a sound pummelin’ and then taken anything you were carrying.”
“I see,” Alys said, her hopes for any sort of amicable relationship with the old man being whisked away into the treetops with Tiny’s words.
“He’s simply protecting us, you see,” Tiny rushed to assure her. “Ira’s not cruel. He knows that for us to keep on living here like we are, intruders must be dealt with.”
“Well, he’s not been exactly welcoming,” Alys mumbled.
“It’s your title, milady. Forgive me, for sayin’.” Tiny stepped toward Alys and then sank into a cross-legged seat across from her. Layla immediately went to the girl, who produced nuts from her apron pocket as if she’d put them there earlier for that exact purpose. “Ira doesn’t fancy anyone of noble birth.”
