Pippin Copperwick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Two nights of the new moon remained. Pippin had spent both crouched in the reeds, watching a Glowhorn Sheep graze near a stand of black-barked trees. Twice she had crept close. Twice the creature's antlers flared green, and it bolted before she cleared ten paces. Her jars stayed empty. Her hands smelled of bog rot. She needed a way to make the sheep hold still, and she had run out of clean tricks. She emptied her satchel on a dry hummock and took stock. A stub of candle. Her knife. A knot of luminous herb she had pulled from the mud, its slender leaves still glowing faint blue. She remembered the recipe's margin note, scrawled in the witch's brown ink: this herb calmed beasts when crushed into food. Pippin looked up at the trees. Orange fruits hung from silver leaves, glowing like small lanterns. The sheep had nosed the fallen ones all evening. She worked fast. She picked three fruits, split them with her knife, and crushed the calming leaves into the wet flesh. Then she rolled the fruit toward the sheep and waited. The animal sniffed. It ate. Its antlers dimmed from green to a soft gray. Its legs folded, and it sank into the moss, breathing slow. Pippin's heart slammed. She crept forward, jar ready, and pressed her hands to the warm udder. Milk came, pale and faintly shining. She filled the jar to the brim and sealed it. Then a branch cracked behind her. Something dropped from the fruit tree and landed on the moss. It was no bigger than a cat, and it was made of hard, glossy candy, striped in red and green, bright as a sugar toy. In its small hands it gripped a spoon nearly as long as its body. The candy monkey tilted its head at her jar and grinned. "Mine," it chirped. It jabbed the spoon at the sleeping sheep, then at the fruit tree. "You picked my fruit. You took my milk. Both mine." Pippin clutched the jar to her chest. "I need this. It's for a potion. One pint, that's all." The monkey's grin did not move. It planted the spoon in the moss like a flag. "Then you owe the grove. One pint out, one favor in. Bring me what I want, or the sheep wakes and the whole herd learns your smell." It pointed the spoon at the drugged animal, whose antlers had begun to flicker green again. Pippin scrambled back with the jar as the sheep stirred. She had her milk. She had crossed the first line of the recipe. But she had woken something in the grove that now knew her face, and it wanted paying. She backed into the reeds, the warm jar against her ribs, already dreading whatever favor the candy creature would name.