The Islands of the Blessed

Mother’s hand flew to her mouth and she stood up abruptly, knocking over the loom. “Oh, Giles! Oh, Giles, look!”

Father turned and for a moment seemed utterly bewildered. He reached out and then yanked his hand back as though he’d touched a live coal. “By all that’s holy, she looks like my old da,” he whispered.

Hazel dropped Pega’s skirt. Her eyes grew very big.

“She’s the image of you, Giles,” said Mother.

Jack realized that his father had forgotten how he himself looked. He’d never looked in the chief’s mirror, the only one in the village, and only rarely at his reflection in a puddle. He often said that thinking about one’s appearance was wicked vanity. In fact, Hazel was exactly like him. She had the same gray eyes and brown hair, the same sturdy frame and determined expression.

“Well, Hazel, what do you think?” the Bard said. “Do they meet with your approval?”

Hazel shrank against Pega. “They’re all right for mud people,” she said. Mother looked up, puzzled.

“That’s what her foster family calls people in this part of the world,” the Bard said. Jack noticed that he didn’t use the word hobgoblin.

“Then she is… who I think she is,” said Father. The old man nodded.

“My dear, dear child,” Mother said, holding out her arms. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

The little girl recoiled. “This isn’t my home, and you’re not my mumsie!” she cried. “My mumsie is pretty. You’re an old mud woman. Da says you want to steal me and never let me go!” She began to hiccup, and then she screeched the way a young sprogling did when it was distraught.

“Hey!” shouted Pega, rapping Hazel on the head with her knuckles. “What a rotten thing to say! You ought to be glad to have more than one mumsie. I never even had one, or else I don’t remember her. She probably sold me for a loaf of bread.”

Hazel looked up, her eyes blinking erratically. She had never seen Pega so angry.

“Pay attention, you brat. You’ve got two mothers and two fathers. You should thank God on your knees for such luck. Now march over there and apologize to that nice lady.”

Hazel snuffled and wiped her nose on Pega’s skirt. “Really? You can have more than one?”

“Of course, you ninny.”

The little girl turned toward Mother. She still clung to Pega, but she had stopped crying. She made a hobgoblin curtsy, somewhat like a frog lowering itself onto a lily pad. “I’m sorry, nice lady.”

Jack looked at Pega over Hazel’s head, and she nodded slightly. He knelt beside the little girl and smoothed back her springy hair. “You have only one brother, I fear, but he loves you as much as two. Welcome home, little sister.”

She studied him very seriously from head to foot. Jack thought for a moment and decided to risk it. “Long ago I asked you to look at my hands. Do you remember?”

Hazel grimaced. “Maybe.”

“I said that our hands were shaped alike. Our fingers weren’t long and sticky like… the others. It showed that you belonged with me. Have you thought about that?”

The little girl hung her head. “After you went away, I looked into a pail of water. I saw… I saw…” Her lip quivered and she looked ready to cry again.

“It’s all right,” Jack said softly. “You don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you.”

“I saw him!” She jabbed her finger at Giles Crookleg. “I saw my face and it was like him. Then I knew I was the ugliest sprogling that ever lived!” She howled and buried her face in Pega’s skirt.

“We have our work cut out for us,” said the Bard.

Jack was exhausted by the time evening came. The Bard and Thorgil had departed; Pega had gone to stay with Brother Aiden, hoping to avoid another marriage proposal from the Bugaboo. Jack was left alone to shield Hazel from trouble.

The Bard had cautioned Hazel not to mention her past, but the Tanner girls had already been alerted that something odd was going on. “What’s a sprogling?” they asked at the first opportunity.

“It’s the Pictish word for ‘child’,” Jack replied quickly. It had been decided to say that Hazel had been stolen by Pictish traders and raised in the far north. He worried that the little girl would blurt out the truth, but she was more mature than he’d realized. Hazel only looked like a five-year-old. She was actually eight. Though the Blewits had frequently taken her to Middle Earth, she had not aged in the Land of the Silver Apples.

“Is that why she’s so tiny? Because she lived with Picts?” demanded Ymma, the older Tanner girl. She had grubby, blond braids and a wiry body like a stoat’s.

“Ma says she was born the same year as me,” said Ythla, the younger. “That means she’s eight, and she’s a runt.” Ythla was like a fox with a sharp nose and reddish hair.

“Picts are small because they eat small food,” Jack said, improvising rapidly. “Dwarf cabbages, dwarf apples, chickens the size of sparrows. It’s all that grows in Pictland.” His head was beginning to ache from all the lies he had to tell.

“Do giants get fed giant cabbages?” said Ymma, interested.