The Catswold Portal Read Free

on the rim of the steep valley.
    The old woman took her time saddling the horse and tying on her baskets full of woven cloth for trading. She was roundly built, with a face as wrinkled as an ancient apple.The bay gelding she was saddling stood obediently tethered by her spell, his ears back in resentment. On the other side of the corral a pony snuffled at the hay manger. Behind them the valley dropped away, and across the ravine rose a line of cliffs jagged as dragons’ teeth. As Mag tightened the girth and mounted, she glanced toward the cottage window and raised her hand to the girl.
    From the open window Sarah waved back, and watched Mag force the gelding through the orchard and down along the ridge that lipped the valley.
    She was seventeen, slim, and taller than Mag. There was a deceptive softness about her, like velvet over lean muscle. The corners of her wide mouth turned up as if with some secret pleasure. Her green eyes were wide, her lashes thick and black. She had long hands, clever at weaving. Her long brown dress was the typical valley coarsespun. As she watched the old woman and horse disappear down the cliff, intently she watched the pony, too, for he did not like being left behind. He was a big, sturdy pony of elven breed. When he raised his head and charged the fence suddenly, meaning to jump it, she lifted her hand in a sign that jerked him back. He turned away, his ears flat, his tail switching.
    She could not see the village below, the land dropped too steeply. She would have gone with Mag but for the sow, due to farrow and as likely to eat her piglets as nurse them. The cottage felt larger without Mag, and she liked its emptiness. Mag’s occasional absence was the only privacy she had. She loved Mag, but the cottage was small. She turned from the window, took up the mop, and began to scrub the wooden floor, mopping first without spells. When she tired of that she sent the mop alone over the boards, making it dodge around Mag’s loom and around their two cots, around the table and their two chairs.
    The one room served the two of them for cooking, for sleeping, for weaving and mending, and for canning and drying their garden produce. Its stone walls were smoke darkened, its rafters low, with herbs and onions hanging from them. She seldom went beyond the cottage and garden,except when Mag took her trading to some small village. There were no neighbors; she was used to the company of the beasts. The cottage was the only home she remembered. She thought she was no kin to Mag. Mag was as sturdy as a turnip, always the same and always steady. Sarah was, Mag said, as changeable as quicksilver. In this room Mag had taught her the jeweler’s arts and taught her to weave so she could earn a living, and had taught her the spells for gardening and gentling the beasts.
    She could remember nothing of her childhood. That part of her life was without form, and Mag would tell her nothing about her past. When they did travel to some small village among other Netherworlders, the old woman sometimes put the deaf spell on her so that, listening to the villagers’ conversation, suddenly she would lose meaning and know that she had for a few moments been deafened, made unaware. Though Mag would never admit to such spells.
    She took up a cloth and carefully dusted the clothes cupboard and the kitchen safe, then knelt to polish a carved chest. She liked to dust by hand, rubbing oil into the ancient wood. But now as she pulled out the drawers of the chest to do the edges, the bottom drawer stuck. Kneeling, she tried to straighten it by reaching underneath.
    When she felt papers stuck there, up under the bottom of the drawer, she drew back.
    Then she reached again, fingering them. They crackled dryly. When she started to pull them out, one tore. Dismayed, she hissed a spell to free it. Three sheets came loose, the old, yellowed papers dropping into her hand. She spread them on the floor.
    She thought Mag would