The boy blinked and tried to understand. The accent was strange. “Are you talking the Altongue?”
“I am. And so are you.” He blinked a big slow ponderous blink. “I thinks so, anyways.”
Dapplegrim didn’t seem to have even noticed the strange child. He was stamping wildly, and snorting air through his big nostrils.
The boy shook his head, confused. “We’re trying to get out! These trees are killing us. Who are you? How’d you get up there?”
“Me? I’m Fleatterdeflest, though that’s such long nonsense. Call me Fleat. And I flew here, I did. Why’re you gettin’ all tanglesome up in them Merry Marching-Thorns?”
“The gorse? It isn’t very merry, and we aren’t doing it on purpose. We’re trying to get out!” Dapplegrim was thrashing in a near-panic now. It was hard to hold onto the saddle.
“What? Well, then stop stomping and cutting and hacking.”
“Huh?”
“Stop it. The Merry Marchers, they’re just twig and leaf and stem and wood. They have no ears to hear, no eyes to see. They can only feel you. Oh, they know if they’ve been threatened, yes, yes, they do. They don’t like being insulted or threatened. They hate any whisper of fire, mattock or root-grubber–but they can only find you through the earth. By touch and by prod. Just stop moving.”
“Stop moving!” yelled the boy, right in Dapplegrim’s ear. “Stop! Stop!”
Dapplegrim paused and craned his head and looked perplexedly with one of his great-big uncanny eyes.
Down below in the gorse there were rustling, struggling sounds and some angry, weak, low cursing.
“Caewen! Caewen! Stop!” The boy leaned down. “The child in the tree says to stop struggling.”
She replied, confused: “Child in the tree?” but stopped fighting all the same. Almost immediately the gorse relaxed, just a little. The three of them remained as still as they could for a few seconds. The gorse quivered and shivered now and then, as if it was looking for them, reaching about and searching with a blind groping of twigs. But they held still, and eventually the nearest thorns relaxed enough for Caewen’s bloody-streaked and pale face to peer up through a gap in the thorns.
“Well?” said the boy from where he sat in the saddle. “Now what? We can’t escape by not moving.”
“No,” said Fleat. “No you cannot. A quandary. A tricksy quandary. He looked around. Can you see those cliffs?”
To the east, a line of frowning cliffs wandered along the foothills of the mountains.
“The Merry Gorse-Knotlings don’t walk up cliffs. If you can fetch yourself to them cliffs, you’ll be safe. They might even give up long before you reach the first rocks. If you are lucky.”
“It’s a long way, and we can’t move an inch,” said Caewen. He voice drifted up from the green-swaddled darkness. “Um. Whoever you are up there?”
“I’m Fleat, I already tolds you. And I’ve a notion. Look, I’ll fly over that other way and find a good clearing. Then I’ll set down and stomp about a bit. That will draw the Merry Marchers to me. Thems being blind and deaf, and all–they can’t know nothin’ except that there’s thrashing over there a’ways now, and so they’ll think you must’ve got over there somehow. They aren’t very bright, lucky be you. I’ll hop about, and hop about, until the bushes over here are thinned out. And then yous lot can make a break for the cliffs. I’ll meet you there.”
“Very well,” said Dapplegrim. He eased his gaze down to glance at Caewen, then carefully looked up again. “But how are you going to fly?”
“With me wings,” said the boy. “I’m a hob-houlard, I am.” As sudden as a breath of wind, he threw himself from the branch. As he reached the zenith of his leap he seemed to pause mid-arc, and his skin sort of twisted inside-out, then burst with feathers. There was a strange queasiness to the change. It made the stomach a little bit ill, just to see it happen. But a breath of a flicker of a moment later, and there was no small brown-skinned boy falling through the air. Instead, there was a great brown owl of about the same size, with huge wings outstretched.
“Oh,” said Caewen, her breath betraying an air of surprise. Obviously she’d been able to see the change. “He’s a shapeshifter. It runs in bloodlines of some humans. Wolfskinlings, bears and otter-folk too–but I’ve never heard of it in one of the little people.”
“They have their ancestral magics too,” replied Dapplegrim, less impressed.
After only a handful of seconds they heard a great rustle and hoot that sounded like laughter. A moment later they saw the great owl fly up, circle, and land somewhere farther off. The gorse was trembling angrily in that direction now. Imperceptibly, the gorse bushes around Dapplegrim’s hocks and the prone Caewen moved and eased away. It was so gradual, that the exact movement of any one gorse bush was hard to discern. Nonetheless, not long after, a gap began to open. It was a haphazard opening in the spikes: not so much a trail as merely an absence of angry gorse-spikes. At first the boy was anxious for them to make a dash for it, but Dapplegrim said, “No. We need that path to be big and clear and easy. Caewen needs to get up before we can move, don’t you?” he said pointedly.
“Yes. And I don’t know if I can run fast. The nasty stuff was tangled right around my ankles and dug into the skin wherever it could. I’ve cuts up and down my legs.”
“I can reach down and take your hand,” said the boy.
“And pull me up? I’m more likely to pull you down.” Caewen looked as if she were suppressing a laugh. Her eyes lit up a little. It was nice to see.
Dapplegrim was holding himself rigid as they talked. “You’ll have to jump up and grab hold of the saddle, Caewen. I’ll do my best not to trample all over you.” An ear twitched. “The way looks nearly clear to me. Just a little more… a little…” And then he swished his tail and shook his head and said, “One, two, three… Now!”