After they had eaten they lay pillowed by Fancy's saddle with the saddle blanket thrown round them while the flames leapt and cracked before their eyes.
'Tomorrow we'll head for the Wildwood,' Cat murmured into Michael's arm. 'Get under real trees again.'
Michael yawned. The open air was getting into his head. Woodsmoke and apple pie, horse and linen. The fragrance was as good as a lullaby.
'Anything you say,' he told her, and promptly fell asleep.
A FROST STIFFENED their hair in the morning and made the world into a brittle white fairyland, the sun picking it out in brilliance.
Michael jumped up and down, shuddering, whilst Cat grumbled at the lost warmth of his body. She spied on him disapprovingly with the tip of her pink nose just over the rim of the blanket.
'Get the fire going, Michael, for pity's sake, and stop hopping around like a frog on a hot stone.'
His teeth were chattering too much for him to reply and great clouds of his breath hung in the air like steam. He settled for coaxing the ashen warmth of the fire's heart into flame. Another of the precious matches was used to resurrect it.
'Done,' he said to Cat. 'You can come out now. It's a beautiful morning.'
'It would freeze the tail from a dog, and I'm not getting up till the frost is gone.'
Michael shrugged and greeted Fancy, who seemed none the worse for wear, and stood staring southwards to where the hills became covered with the frost-pale carpet of the trees.
The Wildwood.
Cat's arms came around him, cold fingers linking on his stomach and warm breath in his ear.
'It is wild, Michael. We must remember that. It is not like the forests in your world. Man is not the master in there. There are things older than him in the deep woods, and not all of them friendly.' She kissed his nape where the hairs had risen.
'What are you, Cat? Are you one of those things, a changeling or something?'
She dropped her arms, releasing him. 'Never you mind.' She turned to the fire. 'You'd best saddle that animal of yours. We have a fair step to put behind us today.'
He watched her as she scrubbed out the pan with a twist of rime-covered grass. 'Do you know why I'm here, Cat? Why this is happening to me?'
She paused and sucked her teeth for a second. 'I know the Horseman has some link with you. He wants something from you.'
'What?'
'How would I know that? He's not someone I pass the time of day with very often.' For an instant it seemed she was going to say more, then she clamped her mouth shut in a thin line.
'Who is he?'
'The Devil'
'Are you sure about that, Cat? Do you know what the Devil is?'
The sun caught her eyes as she stared at him, and the light in them was as green as emerald, the pupils mere pinpoints.
'Some say he is father to all the Wyrim in the Wildwood, that we are his children. It is the village folk who say this.'
'Wyrim?' He made it into a question.
'Some you have met. The troll. The manwolf. They are both of the Wyrim. And the morning I killed the pig. They were watching you then, the tree folk, but they left you alone because I was with you.'
He remembered hooted laughter in the branches, spidery limbs, the glimpse of a pointed face.
'What are you then, Cat? You look just like me. Normal.' Most of the. time, he added to himself.
'I'm one of them, Michael I belong to the land, too; its sap courses in my veins. Tree sap and old magic—they're the stuff I'm made of. I don't know when I was born or ... or from whom, what manner of home I had or how long I have been upon the earth.' She gazed down at her slim hands for a moment. 'There are others like me. The villagers call us ghosts, changelings. They shun us once they know our true nature—but I'm as real as l can be when you are here. I love you, Michael Is that not enough?'
Tears had set her eyes alight with green fire. Surprised, Michael bent and took her in his arms.
She was real; she was muscle and bone under his hands, warm flesh and blood and he would follow her to death's door if need be.
They took turns riding Fancy south, one of them always striding through the wet grass of the hills at her side whilst the other perched like a lord on her back. It grew warmer as the sun climbed; a fine, clear day reminiscent of an early September.
There were deer wandering and grazing in groups along the hills, kestrels overhead and hares streaking through the grass at their approach.
'No people,' Michael said. It was odd to see land as good as this unused. No hedges here, no fields. It constantly amazed him.
'No one lives this far north because this is where the most doors are between this world and the others. Strange things come through them at times— not only men such as the Brothers, but odd beasts as well. To the men of the wood this is a sorcerous region.'
Michael shook his head, frowning.
'What is it?' Cat asked.
'Now I know where the fairies and stuff came from. They were from here, these Forest-Folk you talk about, and werewolves and all sorts. They've been made into myths back home, but they're here, plain as day.'